The State of the Blog, v.04 (2016)

Well, it has been four years of writing... well, blogging. I sometimes question the literary validity of blogging versus other literary pursuits. I think blogging will be (or may be currently) viewed as a legitimate literary form, and so I throw up my feeble thoughts into the blogosphere every so often for amusement and evaluation.

Before I forget, I'd like to say "Thanks!" to all of my readers, loyal and occasional, new and old. And, in keeping with internet survey options which really make no sense, those who would answer "Other" also get my thanks.

I'm afraid this is going to be one of "those" posts, the sort I'd guess most blog writers dread: I've gotta write something, but I've got absolutely no clue as to what it will be.

I suppose I could go with the "ever-popular" "Year In Review" theme. Except I don't think anyone enjoys reading those- especially folks who don't know me or my family personally.

For a change, I'd like to say that this year has been pretty exceptional. Unlike last year when I had cataract surgery, we've not had and major illnesses or injuries- and we're quite thankful for this! Jennifer's Dad has been the exception, and out of respect for her family I'll leave it at that.

Daniel is no longer a newb at his job, and has scored some pretty impressive hours for a newcomer. Amanda and Mike are still at the ranch. Mr. T is ISO employment, and sharpening his graphics skills in the interim.

Jennifer and I are still knee-deep in home improvement projects. With the roof out of the way and the mulberry trimmed, we can now (hopefully!) turn our attention to other projects- more on these later.

And finally, one might ask: what's up in the wonderful world of data and programming?

Well, my latest endeavor I've been trying to do something which seems pretty simple- download and install Microsoft Visual Studio. We have an internal project or two at work which would benefit from multiple programmers poking at it, but I have as yet been able to successfully download and install Microsoft Visual Studio completely on my (personal) laptop. I've downloaded it to my work laptop and Jennifer's computer, so I'm more or less in business.

I've not done much with R or Python, but hopefully that will change in 2017. Who knows? For now, Merry/Happy Christmas! Here are a few recent photos I hope you enjoy!

Meerkat at home

New cat tree- Kenji on top, Tinka below

Meerkat, somewhere north of Springfield, IL

A Tale of Two Databases

Every so often I have both the opportunity and inspiration to write. I've been quick to lament virtually all summer that I haven't had much time for anything except for work. I've also mentioned that it's not the end of the world, as I do get overtime pay these days. Still, a part of me laments the lack of balance... I had copied a number of photo folders the other night, and was quite honestly shocked to see the date stamps of my last two folders from my camera. The first was dated  July 6, 2014, and the latter was dated September 22, 2014. In other words, ~2.5 months where I did next to nothing with my DSLR. I made up for it a bit this past Sunday, but photography is something I'm fairly passionate about, so I should be doing more- like getting into Lightroom and Elements, and trying to get some of my work published as photostock. In any case, I'm quietly working to get some balance back.

I hope the photos I've shared over the past few blogs were enjoyed. Tinka and Schwarz have been seen in China, Germany and the U.S. as of this writing. I think they're both on Pinterest as well. As far as I can tell, neither is impressed.

Besides the cats, I've published a few photos of the local flora. Still, this blog is about my adventures in the wonderful world of data- my data, to be precise. I've been doing a bit of work in the Media_Title table. This table currently has 950 records, and what I've been doing recently is updating the Media_listed_as column. Quite honestly, this column doesn't do much right now, and partially duplicates data on another table (but not really), as this column and the Format column from the Media table both pull data from the Format table. What I can do in the future, however, is query against the Media_Title table and find out specific information about movies- specifically, I can see all of the media which is associated with the a title, such as a movie, soundtrack, game or book. The other table, Media, lists the boring details associated with each piece of media- UPC, ISBN, publisher, format, etc.

I had a bit of a watershed moment at work last night... a pretty "watered down" watershed- if that is possible. Maybe an epiphany is a more appropriate description; perhaps in the end it was just an "A-HA" moment. Here's what happened.

Thursday nights at my office are the busiest time of the week for my fellow Nightstalkers and yours truly. I pulled into the parking lot and had to flash Meerkat's headlamps before Anna recognized me. She was all smiles and said, "You have to read your email- we have a new supervisor." We exchanged a few more words, and then she was off to her home and I was off to the double-wide in the sky (E-Man's quaint nickname our office). I climbed the nineteen stairs, swiped my badge, and I was back in action. Not surprisingly, the data for the big job was not yet in, so I grabbed another job and checked email. I found out who the new supervisor was and fired off a quick congratulatory note, and then dove into my job. As it was a variant of one I had tackled on Wednesday, it took relatively little time to complete, as I didn't need to keep on referring back to instructions. I signed off on it, and checked email again. I generally get between 50-100 or more emails per day, and I am happy to report that as of 0630, I have a Zero Inbox: absolutely NOTHING in my inbox- everything has either been relegated to folders or deleted. Nice. While I was waiting for the evening's main event to commence, I decided to open up the database. This database is very much a work in progress, and I am only in the beginning stages with three tables. At this juncture, I don't foresee too many other tables being added, primarily because the primary reason for this database is to be a quick and dirty way of getting some basic information about previous jobs related to what someone is currently working on. Last night's "A-HA" involved a simpler and more comprehensive way of finding and classifying jobs.

Two databases. One post. Excellent.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Data, data everywhere....

Queen Tinka I

Schwarz- Alpha cat

Tinka and Schwarz reminded me that they'd like to become world-famous. Who wouldn't? And since they've told me that they can't read (c'mon friends, anthropomorphizing aside, they're cats!) I've told them their cat Daddy's blog is read on six continents and in over forty countries. I've gotta say, as you can see by the photos, they're pretty impressed! They're pretty friendly, too- I'm sure that if the Zombie Apocalypse occurred at night, they'd be kind enough to tell the zombies where the slow people slept.

I took both of these shots in May, and although cats are not know for their expressive faces, their poses and places tell all.

Tinka (above) does not guard our home. She merely collects data on events in and around the home, and assesses threats to her own safety. She is  I.T. cat. After the Zombie Apocalypse and the complete demise of humanity, she will more than likely become the queen of the cockroaches. Schwarz (below) will probably survive until a zombie figures out that the cat is hungry. He is Alpha cat.

So, yeah, I just wanted an excuse to post a few photos- I haven't really done this in some time, so there you go- two of our four cats. One final note about publishing in general and the Google platform in particular- getting the layout right for the photos and text was a bit of a challenge- if anyone has ever done layout for print or electronic media, you'll agree that WYSIWIG sometimes only works with text, and the rule of thumb is preview, preview, preview!

I've got some big news (relatively speaking) on the data front. Tonight was not exactly a quiet night at work, but the work I was involved with gave me some time to do a bit of research during the running of some processes. In the course of my research, I was finally able to nail a good name for not one, but two websites. Of course, as I haven't registered them just yet, I'm not at liberty to divulge their names. I plan for one to be about data, but the second one is a different sort of project, and I'm really not at liberty to discuss it yet, save for it being a pet interest of mine. More to follow if and when either of these projects ever leaves the ground.

My main reason for even thinking about a website is education. I've never been a good school (formal) learner- if that's even a term- but I do pretty well hands-on at my own pace. I'm hoping that a venture into the real estate of cyberspace will give me the impetus to do something cool and useful.

The downside of this is that I don't really have a cohesive vision for my data site. I'd like to do some cool, interactive stuff, but most likely it will be quite a niche site- I figure 10 visitors on a good day.  On the other hand, the other site WILL be a niche site by design, but will probably be much more popular.

As always. I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.