It's high time I coined a word, and "sexperiment" seemed like a good one... except it turns out I didn't coin it. There's a book that was written a few years ago by Ed and Lisa Young with "Sexperiment" being the main word in the title. I've obviously not read the book, so I am not equipped to comment on it. My sexperiment is my previous blog, "My Night In a Cage with a Hot Woman", in which I sought to see if a suggestive title and a bit of teasing, along with accompanying keywords, would boost readership by a significant amount. As of right now- a little more than a day after publishing it, the answer is a guarded "maybe".
The numbers have not been huge, but there's been a bit more geographic diversity than I've seen of late- France, Poland, Canada and a country in Africa (the country in Africa has experienced some unrest over the past few years, so I won't be giving it a shout out). Before I forget Jennifer corrected me on a particular datum from that post- our anniversary is in a few days, not a few weeks. It's not that I don't know the date; I'm not the stereotypical husband when it come to that, at least. Then again, in the U.S. date convention, October 10, 1987, is rendered 10/9/87, so there is absolutely NO reason for me to forget it. Of course 10/9/14 falls on a Thursday this year (it was a Friday when were wed), so chances are good we won't be doing anything special on our "special" date, as Thursday night is our busiest night of the week, and I work nights, so we'll try to do something special on Saturday or, more likely Sunday.
I should also mention a couple of rules I try to follow in blogging. I try to avoid writing anything that may be morally questionable. This is generally not difficult to do, as I generally filter my writing and have no natural inclination to expound on salacious themes. Whenever I write on a topic that causes the hair on my neck to rise, I ask Jennifer to proof it before publishing. I'm certainly not a prude, but I write under the understanding that- I.R.S. assertions about emails aside- nearly everything that happens on the interwebz is stored somewhere. And I do not want my writing to come back and bite me. I also do not want to embarrass her. I'm also fairly certain that I've never used anyone's name without their permission. Jennifer, Anna and Ryan, for example, have all given me verbal permission to use their names. And apart from Ryan, I never use last names. Ryan D. Reynolds is a special case- he's an aspiring comedian, so this is publicity for him. Mr. T is also an exception of sorts: he's our youngest son. When he was first mentioned in a blog, he was under eighteen (the age of majority in the U.S., a.k.a. "adulthood"), so I felt a certain amount of anonymity was required. He is now eighteen, but his persona of "Mr. T" has been established in this blog, so he remains to be known as Mr. T.
I've also always had a very compact, terse writing style, so I try to keep my blogs relatively short and readable, although as I look at this particular blog, there are atypically large chunks of words. My writing style has pushed me to the brink in the past.
I've never been a model student, but have always had an interest in history. In high school, even though I was in the top third of my class, I had to beg, plead and petition to get into the senior Advanced Placement European History class (and for the record, I also applied for the A.P. English class, but my high school cancelled the class because they had decided that the incoming seniors' writing skills were deficient). Near the end of the school year, I took the AP History test, and decided to take the English test- even though I had absolutely no idea of what to expect. The AP classes not only taught the subject, but prepared the students for the test. At the time, the tests were graded on a scale of one through five, with a three generally guaranteeing college credit. I scored a four on the history test. On the other hand, I "only" scored a two on the English test. I should mention that I got this score with zero prep or mentoring, and I was the ONLY senior in a class of approximately 330 that even took the test.
Flash forward to freshman year of college. My then-girlfriend Dolores (sorry, Dolores, I couldn't find you on Facebook) and I were sitting in the Student Government office one day, and she casually asked if I had a term paper that was due soon. I looked at my planner- she was correct.
I had a paper due the next day.
The thing that I often forget to mention in this story (which has been told a number of times) is that the instructor was quite the feminist, so much so that she was know to grade males harsher than females, The college had been, until quite recently, an all-women's institution.
When the assignment was first given, I immediately had an idea for the topic. Each member of the class was to pick a Renaissance leader and show or prove how they fit the criteria as defined in class. The problem was this: the leader I had picked was Napoleon Buonaparte (as I write this, I have a red squiggly line under the word Buonaparte; however, this is not a misspelling- when he first joined the French army he was a Corsican and only in his mid-twenties changed his name to the more French-sounding Bonaparte). Discounting the popular feeling that he was not particularly "enlightened" and that he came to power at the dawn of Romanticism I felt I could successfully argue my case.
I had my work cut out for me. And the paper was due tomorrow.
Now, in my defense, when the paper was first announced, I hauled myself over to Rebecca Crown Library, and as was (and still is) my standard practice for doing research, I pillaged the shelves for anything related to the subject. Because of my daily ritual of visiting The Sutlers' Wagon, I had a good background in the Napoleonic period. However, because of my as yet undiagnosed ADHD, those books ended up sitting in a rather tall stack in the Student Government office. What happened next was the stuff of which legends and epic songs would be written.
As this was in the days of prehistory (that is, before computers), my paper needed to be typed out. I had an outline in my mind, and wrote as I found information to support my ideas. When I finished a page of handwriting on a looseleaf page, Dolores would type it. We labored for several hours, and in the end I had eight and a half pages of double-spaced text- Sister Kaye Ashe's minimum was ten pages.
To summarize: I wrote a paper the day before it was due, a page and a half short of the minimum, well outside the specified period, and handed in a rough draft which was submitted to an instructor who was known to be a rough grader.
The paper got an "A". Like I said, I'm a terse writer.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, October 5, 2014
Friday, October 3, 2014
My night in a cage with a hot woman
My life is pretty conventional- boring by some standards, I suppose. In a few weeks, Jennifer and I will celebrate our twenty-seventh wedding anniversary (yay, us!). Well, all things considered, maybe we're not conventional in that sense. Conventional more in the manner of Bilbo Baggins: no drama, no adventures. We mean what we say and we say what we mean.
This past Wednesday night was different, though- at least for me.
I work nights, of course. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the "double-wide in the sky" is a secured office. Our entire facility is secured, of course, requiring credentials just to enter the building, but because of the nature of the work and the data that is handled in my department, there is additional security. I naturally can't go into the specifics, but only a small percentage of employees in the plant can simply walk in.
Chloe (not her real name, but in certain circles it might be thought of as exotic and sexy) came up to the office Wednesday night and knocked on the door. As she is well-known in the plant, she was admitted.
I should also mention that our plant is quite noisy, and I have a rather large fan on my desk because the HVAC in our office is challenged, to be polite. I was engaged in a project, and between the noise of the factory and my fan, I didn't hear the short conversation that took place between Chloe and Hagar (also not a real name- he asked to remain anonymous!), even though his desk is barely 15' (~5M) away from mine. Out of the corner of my left eye I thought I saw something apprehensive in his face, and then he gestured toward me. She seemed to sashay over from Hagar's desk to mine. She was casual but comfortable in her walk. The clap of her dust spotted, stained, steel-toed black boots seemed to accent her faded, form-fitting blue jeans and ink-stained t-shirt. I looked up, and she explained what she needed in her been-around-the-world alto voice. I looked up at Hagar, and he gave me that all-knowing "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" look. I said to her, "Sure."
I pushed my work aside, and we went off to the cage. This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been alone with someone of the opposite sex in any cage, and this one was watched 24/7 by cameras. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, I could see the glitter of the gold pixie dust on her face mixed with sweat which accented her plaintive eyes. When we arrived, she showed me her problem: her box. I hoped no one was watching (remember, there are cameras everywhere). I grabbed the box, and gently blew on it. Some- okay, a lot of dust came off, but the LED on the front panel continued to flash yellow. Paraphrasing the spokesperson from a popular Dell commercial from several years back, I said, "Dude! You got a Dell!" Even though her problem was not fixed, she laughed at this.
I'm not an A+ technician... in the real world where I work, HR doesn't even know what to do with me and my coworkers, so I like to think of myself as semi-I.T. On a good day I'm not too bad at problem-solving, so I thought this through: if I had a PC with a flashing yellow light under the power button that wouldn't boot- what would I do? The best answer that came to mind was this: untangle the spaghetti mess in the back of the PC: USB, power, Ethernet, and monitor cables all snaking around each other like in an Indiana Jones movie.
However, in the real world of home and church, I do provide technical support, so I did what anyone would have done: I got rid of the spaghetti mess. I unplugged EVERYTHING from the back of the PC, and then, after untangling the cable mess under the table, I blew on the all of the I/O ports and reinserted each cable.
I was not surprised when the PC booted normally.
She thanked me, and I returned to Data Services and my waiting project.
It is said that "sex sells". Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't really know how to write about sex- this little true story was my first foray into "off-color" writing- I hope a few laughs came out of it.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
This past Wednesday night was different, though- at least for me.
I work nights, of course. I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but the "double-wide in the sky" is a secured office. Our entire facility is secured, of course, requiring credentials just to enter the building, but because of the nature of the work and the data that is handled in my department, there is additional security. I naturally can't go into the specifics, but only a small percentage of employees in the plant can simply walk in.
Chloe (not her real name, but in certain circles it might be thought of as exotic and sexy) came up to the office Wednesday night and knocked on the door. As she is well-known in the plant, she was admitted.
I should also mention that our plant is quite noisy, and I have a rather large fan on my desk because the HVAC in our office is challenged, to be polite. I was engaged in a project, and between the noise of the factory and my fan, I didn't hear the short conversation that took place between Chloe and Hagar (also not a real name- he asked to remain anonymous!), even though his desk is barely 15' (~5M) away from mine. Out of the corner of my left eye I thought I saw something apprehensive in his face, and then he gestured toward me. She seemed to sashay over from Hagar's desk to mine. She was casual but comfortable in her walk. The clap of her dust spotted, stained, steel-toed black boots seemed to accent her faded, form-fitting blue jeans and ink-stained t-shirt. I looked up, and she explained what she needed in her been-around-the-world alto voice. I looked up at Hagar, and he gave me that all-knowing "a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do" look. I said to her, "Sure."
I pushed my work aside, and we went off to the cage. This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been alone with someone of the opposite sex in any cage, and this one was watched 24/7 by cameras. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, I could see the glitter of the gold pixie dust on her face mixed with sweat which accented her plaintive eyes. When we arrived, she showed me her problem: her box. I hoped no one was watching (remember, there are cameras everywhere). I grabbed the box, and gently blew on it. Some- okay, a lot of dust came off, but the LED on the front panel continued to flash yellow. Paraphrasing the spokesperson from a popular Dell commercial from several years back, I said, "Dude! You got a Dell!" Even though her problem was not fixed, she laughed at this.
I'm not an A+ technician... in the real world where I work, HR doesn't even know what to do with me and my coworkers, so I like to think of myself as semi-I.T. On a good day I'm not too bad at problem-solving, so I thought this through: if I had a PC with a flashing yellow light under the power button that wouldn't boot- what would I do? The best answer that came to mind was this: untangle the spaghetti mess in the back of the PC: USB, power, Ethernet, and monitor cables all snaking around each other like in an Indiana Jones movie.
However, in the real world of home and church, I do provide technical support, so I did what anyone would have done: I got rid of the spaghetti mess. I unplugged EVERYTHING from the back of the PC, and then, after untangling the cable mess under the table, I blew on the all of the I/O ports and reinserted each cable.
I was not surprised when the PC booted normally.
She thanked me, and I returned to Data Services and my waiting project.
It is said that "sex sells". Well, to be perfectly honest, I don't really know how to write about sex- this little true story was my first foray into "off-color" writing- I hope a few laughs came out of it.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Monday, September 29, 2014
A cautionary tale of fixed values used in calculating extrapolated fields
Since writing A Tale of Two Databases, I've dusted off my Excel worksheet that I use to keep tabs on blog readership. Yes, deep, deep, way deep down inside of me- somewhere- there's a tiny bit of statistician. And this statistician, who lives somewhere on the Continuum-, er, that is, the Spectrum- likes to keep track of statistics about the blog.
A bit of background is in order at this juncture. I've long been a fan of collecting facts and figures- at least since high school. The year I was a freshman in high school, a new store opened that was on my way to school. The shop was named "The Sutler's Wagon", and Jeff Urquhart (the store has long since closed) was the proprietor. It was a hobby shop. Even back then, I LOVED hobby shops.
Prior to The Sutler's wagon opening, there were three shops I frequented whenever I could get my Dad to take me to them. One was Pilot. I don't remember the whole name of the business, but Pilot was more of a hardware store with a pretty bustling O scale and S scale tinplate selection and HO scale model railroading. Pilot was actually pretty close to Jeff's shop, and was derisively referred to as "the Pirate". Stanton in Chicago was a fairly large store, stocking everything from N to G scale railroading, as well as rockets, RC, plastic models, flying balsa planes... pretty much anything one could ask for in hobbies. The last store was Hill's in Park Ridge, which seemed to have a product range similar to Stanton but smaller selection.
The Sutler's Wagon was different. No trains. A couple of rockets. Some model cars. Everything else was military. Books. Models. Boardgames. Paint. Brushes. Miniatures. Miniatures in 15mm, 25mm, 54mm, 1/35th, 1/72nd, 1/144th, 1/700th, 1/1200th and 1/2400th scale. The 15's, 25's, 1/144th, and 1/2400th were generally diecast metal; the others were generally plastic. He had rules for the games- these miniatures were not just for looking pretty- they were meant for action!
And this has what to do with anything?
I've mentioned this game before. In a very real way, Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame taught me long division. While playing the game is fun. I think I had almost as much fun making the ship (data) cards. In the game, each ship has a point value. The point value is based on a number of data which need to be factored into an equation. That's the easy part. From the total point value, one must then create a damage table which shows how a ship's performance is degraded as she takes damage. So, say a ship has a point value of 10,000 and a max speed of 20 knots. The ship takes 1000 points of damage. 10,000/20= 500, so for every 500 points of damage, the ship would lose 1 knot of maximum speed. It's not perfect, and is designed to work best with WWI and WWII vessels, but it does work rather well. There are other factors that can make the game quite involved, but overall it is great fun.
From this point, I started looking at music. On the same block as The Sutler's Wagon was a music store called RPM records. Along with Rolling Stone Records in Chicago, I would scour their bargain "cutout" bins. I discovered a lot of great music in these bargain bins, and by the time I got to college, I had a few hundred albums. My earliest music databases were handwritten on loose leaf paper- I counted an album as being played when I had listened to at least one side.- this worked for both LPs and cassettes. I did have some 8-tracks, but I did not track these.
Flash forward many years. On a normal day I'm on a PC or two at work, and three PCs (simultaneously) at home. In all honesty, a lot of what I do currently is online gaming, but I also write this blog, do a bit of research, maintain a few spreadsheets, and work on my database, Sometimes, I even take a bit of time off to play a game or two on Steam (user= drehenthalerhof).
Here's a lesson for all of you budding data analysts, data scientists, statisticians and anyone else who uses spreadsheets and databases: if the datum doesn't look right, don't assume it is. Check it- even if you are the one that entered it!
So there I was Saturday night, updating the Excel blog readership spreadsheet. This is not a particularly complicated spreadsheet- fifty rows and thirteen columns. As I've repeatedly mentioned, Google's free analytics aren't too deep- they're pretty much stats, and they only show the Top 10. And- because they're real time, if I miss a day or two, I can potentially miss some data. So I've had extrapolate to get a more accurate picture. At some point, though, I accidentally overwrote a formula- and my beautiful table of extrapolated data suddenly was being calculated by a constant instead of a variable! I figured out the error quickly enough, but one can't count on an easy fix every time. When I suspect a problem, or when I need to do a QC on an Excel worksheet, CTRL+~ is my goto.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
A bit of background is in order at this juncture. I've long been a fan of collecting facts and figures- at least since high school. The year I was a freshman in high school, a new store opened that was on my way to school. The shop was named "The Sutler's Wagon", and Jeff Urquhart (the store has long since closed) was the proprietor. It was a hobby shop. Even back then, I LOVED hobby shops.
Prior to The Sutler's wagon opening, there were three shops I frequented whenever I could get my Dad to take me to them. One was Pilot. I don't remember the whole name of the business, but Pilot was more of a hardware store with a pretty bustling O scale and S scale tinplate selection and HO scale model railroading. Pilot was actually pretty close to Jeff's shop, and was derisively referred to as "the Pirate". Stanton in Chicago was a fairly large store, stocking everything from N to G scale railroading, as well as rockets, RC, plastic models, flying balsa planes... pretty much anything one could ask for in hobbies. The last store was Hill's in Park Ridge, which seemed to have a product range similar to Stanton but smaller selection.
The Sutler's Wagon was different. No trains. A couple of rockets. Some model cars. Everything else was military. Books. Models. Boardgames. Paint. Brushes. Miniatures. Miniatures in 15mm, 25mm, 54mm, 1/35th, 1/72nd, 1/144th, 1/700th, 1/1200th and 1/2400th scale. The 15's, 25's, 1/144th, and 1/2400th were generally diecast metal; the others were generally plastic. He had rules for the games- these miniatures were not just for looking pretty- they were meant for action!
And this has what to do with anything?
I've mentioned this game before. In a very real way, Fletcher Pratt's Naval Wargame taught me long division. While playing the game is fun. I think I had almost as much fun making the ship (data) cards. In the game, each ship has a point value. The point value is based on a number of data which need to be factored into an equation. That's the easy part. From the total point value, one must then create a damage table which shows how a ship's performance is degraded as she takes damage. So, say a ship has a point value of 10,000 and a max speed of 20 knots. The ship takes 1000 points of damage. 10,000/20= 500, so for every 500 points of damage, the ship would lose 1 knot of maximum speed. It's not perfect, and is designed to work best with WWI and WWII vessels, but it does work rather well. There are other factors that can make the game quite involved, but overall it is great fun.
From this point, I started looking at music. On the same block as The Sutler's Wagon was a music store called RPM records. Along with Rolling Stone Records in Chicago, I would scour their bargain "cutout" bins. I discovered a lot of great music in these bargain bins, and by the time I got to college, I had a few hundred albums. My earliest music databases were handwritten on loose leaf paper- I counted an album as being played when I had listened to at least one side.- this worked for both LPs and cassettes. I did have some 8-tracks, but I did not track these.
Flash forward many years. On a normal day I'm on a PC or two at work, and three PCs (simultaneously) at home. In all honesty, a lot of what I do currently is online gaming, but I also write this blog, do a bit of research, maintain a few spreadsheets, and work on my database, Sometimes, I even take a bit of time off to play a game or two on Steam (user= drehenthalerhof).
Here's a lesson for all of you budding data analysts, data scientists, statisticians and anyone else who uses spreadsheets and databases: if the datum doesn't look right, don't assume it is. Check it- even if you are the one that entered it!
So there I was Saturday night, updating the Excel blog readership spreadsheet. This is not a particularly complicated spreadsheet- fifty rows and thirteen columns. As I've repeatedly mentioned, Google's free analytics aren't too deep- they're pretty much stats, and they only show the Top 10. And- because they're real time, if I miss a day or two, I can potentially miss some data. So I've had extrapolate to get a more accurate picture. At some point, though, I accidentally overwrote a formula- and my beautiful table of extrapolated data suddenly was being calculated by a constant instead of a variable! I figured out the error quickly enough, but one can't count on an easy fix every time. When I suspect a problem, or when I need to do a QC on an Excel worksheet, CTRL+~ is my goto.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Friday, September 26, 2014
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Data, data everywhere....
 |
| Queen Tinka I |
 |
| Schwarz- Alpha cat |
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.
Monday, September 22, 2014
Goodbye Summer, 2014... the affair is officially over
As we're pretty much "officially" out of panic mode at work, I had this past Saturday off. This was really nice, as strong thunderstorms had been predicted for our area. We were thankfully spared from getting hit by the storms and had a quiet night. Sunday ended up being a "heavy" day- the humidity seemed to be off the scale, and we moped around for the better part of the day. I turned the television on around 1330, hoping to catch a part of the Chicago Bears' game. I mentioned in a previous blog that I enjoy watching the Bears. At noon on Sunday. Last week they played @1900; this week they're playing on Monday night. I work on Monday night- at this rate, I may not ever get to see a game this entire season. I could care less.
The photo above was taken with my Samsung Galaxy SIII; it shows my Nikon D3200 with dual battery grip, tripod, wired shutter release, 40mm Micro Nikkor lens and hotshoe mounted tri-axis level. It's a nice combination of equipment- I shot ~120 frames in 90 minutes. In a previous blog, I had introduced Darth Anna, Defiler of Planets. This past Friday I had brought my camera in to show her the battery grip. She seemed to be a bit puzzled about the need for two batteries, and I didn't try to explain my reasoning for the battery grip; suffice it to say that I shot for ninety minutes this afternoon without doing anything except for swapping a lens.
It turned out to be a glorious late afternoon photoshoot. There were definitely some photos that just did not happen because l had "lost the light"... that's one of those stock phrases that is SOOOOOO true; it's especially important in my subject area- railroads, where browns and reds predominate. Before this gets too boring, I want to pop in a photo that is important to me right here and right now- the very first image I captured with a DSLR (earlier this year).
No data to report, but one number: 2489. Not even a prime number... I thought it might be, but the internet said otherwise. It's the number of photo files I moved over to Adobe Lightroom. I had hoped to do a bit more than move files, but Adobe wanted updates, so I did the updates instead of real work. I have a few thousand more files on another couple of harddrives that also need to be moved over for renaming and archiving as well. One of those drives also has my music library, which is in serious need of deduping. I STILL need to replace the motherboard in Jennifer's computer. And, last but not least on my I.T. laundry list.... Mr. T. has apparently given up on his dream of building a computer with DDR4. It is his considered opinion that this new memory will not be reasonably priced in the foreseeable future. Last night, he said he had seen a 4GB stick for around 100USD; I laughed and told him that our first Windows computer had a pair of 4MB sticks that cost 78USD- and that was cheap!
In any event, Mr. T. has suggested that he can build a DDR3 PC pretty inexpensively. His plan is to wait for the Black Friday sales. In the interim, he'll be researching options... for building a dual graphics card box. I'm not seeing the "inexpensive" here.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, September 20, 2014
A credit card slogan that relates to traffic
Let me be the first to admit that I hate traffic. And there's no worse traffic than rush hour traffic.
"Rush hour" is a massive oxymoron, larger by magnitudes than classic oxymorons such as "jumbo shrimp", "old news" or "bitter sweet". I don't know what it's like where you are, but in my world it means "slow to a crawl" (or, in Latin [per Google translation]), "tardus autem ad repere". This, in turn, humors me, as I did a Latin to English translation just for fun: all of you Dr. Who fans out there may be disappointed/perplexed/or, in the know, that Tardis= "slow" in Latin.
The thing about rush hour traffic, though, that is particularly horrendous, is that you can actually count the grains of the sands of time sliding through the hourglass of your allotted days here on this planet, and there is nothing legal or civilized you can do to prevent them from slipping away. For example, I was in a left turn lane yesterday morning at a relatively short light trying to get from a side street on to a through street. The light turned green, and the two vehicles in front of me did not move. Finally, after what seemed like the half life of barium had elapsed, the first vehicle's brake light was extinguished. Progress!
But NO! Abandon hope... the second vehicle was also operated by a sleeper! Sheesh! Once the second vehicle started moving, I was on the throttle. The sad thing is that these folks are not only inconsiderate, they are unskilled drivers of vehicles with automatic transmissions. What is so bloody difficult about applying pressure to the accelerator (gas/petrol) pedal when the light turns green? Move your foot from the brake (the squarish one) to the gas (the tall one) for Pete's sake! In contrast, I have a manual transmission- I actually have to think when I get behind the wheel. To make a long story short, I passed #2 and then passed #1, and then suddenly #1 was behind me because I had passed him before he started tailgating a large truck (lorry).
It's times like these when I am reminded of a credit card slogan: "(credit card name), it's everywhere you want to be". I substitute "traffic" for the credit card name... "Traffic, it's everywhere you want to be".
I comfort myself slightly by recalling a term used in Formula One commentating- "lap traffic". The only difference between my situation and say, Interlagos, is that F1 drivers know how to drive; I cannot assume that anyone else I share the pavement with does.
Once again, no data (or programming) to report. The past week at work has been slightly odd; much else other than that I can't say. Before I forget, I'd like to repost the Top 5 most popular of my blogs, and my Top 5 favorites.
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2k.html I honestly don't have a clue why this one is so popular, but it's #1
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-free-night.html Short and sweet- this is #2
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-official-end-of-winter.html #3- this one was fun... what's not to like about borscht?
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/01/resolutions-and-other-useless-things.html This one was pretty cool. #4
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-does-that-anyway.html #5
"Rush hour" is a massive oxymoron, larger by magnitudes than classic oxymorons such as "jumbo shrimp", "old news" or "bitter sweet". I don't know what it's like where you are, but in my world it means "slow to a crawl" (or, in Latin [per Google translation]), "tardus autem ad repere". This, in turn, humors me, as I did a Latin to English translation just for fun: all of you Dr. Who fans out there may be disappointed/perplexed/or, in the know, that Tardis= "slow" in Latin.
The thing about rush hour traffic, though, that is particularly horrendous, is that you can actually count the grains of the sands of time sliding through the hourglass of your allotted days here on this planet, and there is nothing legal or civilized you can do to prevent them from slipping away. For example, I was in a left turn lane yesterday morning at a relatively short light trying to get from a side street on to a through street. The light turned green, and the two vehicles in front of me did not move. Finally, after what seemed like the half life of barium had elapsed, the first vehicle's brake light was extinguished. Progress!
But NO! Abandon hope... the second vehicle was also operated by a sleeper! Sheesh! Once the second vehicle started moving, I was on the throttle. The sad thing is that these folks are not only inconsiderate, they are unskilled drivers of vehicles with automatic transmissions. What is so bloody difficult about applying pressure to the accelerator (gas/petrol) pedal when the light turns green? Move your foot from the brake (the squarish one) to the gas (the tall one) for Pete's sake! In contrast, I have a manual transmission- I actually have to think when I get behind the wheel. To make a long story short, I passed #2 and then passed #1, and then suddenly #1 was behind me because I had passed him before he started tailgating a large truck (lorry).
It's times like these when I am reminded of a credit card slogan: "(credit card name), it's everywhere you want to be". I substitute "traffic" for the credit card name... "Traffic, it's everywhere you want to be".
I comfort myself slightly by recalling a term used in Formula One commentating- "lap traffic". The only difference between my situation and say, Interlagos, is that F1 drivers know how to drive; I cannot assume that anyone else I share the pavement with does.
Once again, no data (or programming) to report. The past week at work has been slightly odd; much else other than that I can't say. Before I forget, I'd like to repost the Top 5 most popular of my blogs, and my Top 5 favorites.
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/05/why-2k.html I honestly don't have a clue why this one is so popular, but it's #1
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-free-night.html Short and sweet- this is #2
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-official-end-of-winter.html #3- this one was fun... what's not to like about borscht?
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/01/resolutions-and-other-useless-things.html This one was pretty cool. #4
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2013/01/who-does-that-anyway.html #5
The posts above are listed in order of popularity. The following are my
favorites, in no particular order.
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/08/mind-blown.html Although I said in no particular order, this is probably my
favorite recent post.
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/05/may-fourth.html A fun romp through summer days in Germany.
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/04/tuddi-toots-or-night-in-life-of-wreakles.html Another fun romp through the past... well, it was fun for me, anyway!
http://hochspeyer.blogspot.com/2014/02/one-simply-does-not-raid-sul.html Last, but certainly not least, a bit of a feast (well, a light
snack, at least!) for my hardware buffs!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
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