More "Pause" than "End"

Some years back, on a particularly busy night, a new hire rubbed eyes and blearily asked the Nightstalker crew, "Just how long DO you work?"

I answered in the only possible way: "Until the job is done."

That, truly, is what makes the overnight hours in Data Services interesting. I say "overnight" because my hours can be a bit fuzzy- and this is true for everyone in our department. Some folks come in fairly early, some come in around the traditional office start time of 0800, and some come in at 2200 or even later. We have one person who works a traditional second shift, and the remainder of the crew work something of a hybrid 3rd shift, starting anywhere from 1800 to almost 2300. I don't believe there's anything like an official policy regarding this; it's more of a rule of thumb: as long as one works one's 40 hours, everyone is happy. But, back to "until the job is done."

I think I may have previously mentioned that our plant can be considered a "job shop" or "contract manufacturer." In other words, the product that we manufacture- direct mail- does not "belong" to us. You will typically not see our name on it anywhere. We may have some involvement in the design process, and we are often involved in the postal and logistics components of a job, but at the end of the day, we're simply the folks who manufacture something for someone else.

Sometimes...

Sometimes things just need to get done. One of our top clients has a job that runs every month, and it keeps the programmer pretty busy for around a week. However, once the client approves the job, yours truly ("me") typically swings into action. This particular job requires a lot of hard copy:  proofs for press and prepress, and tray tags for press. Printing, collating and marking up of this takes ~12 hours, and is best done when the office is empty. Why? Because one simply needs a lot of space to do the job correctly and efficiently, as well as tying up two printers.

So, the Friday before last, I came in with the expectation that I would be working on this job. I had put a dent in it when I left Saturday morning, and came back Saturday evening. I got home around midnight, and everything was done.

In a nutshell, my weekend was more of a pause than an actual end to the week. The obvious downside to weekends like this is that they are short. Jennifer and I got in a nice walk on the following Sunday- almost three miles. I did a bit of work in the Secret Underground Lair, as did Mr. T, and great progress has been made. My plan for the weekend, though, had been to get to the unused desk and hook up my Raspberry Pi. That hadn't happened yet, but we're on the cusp of it!

One other huge thing that happened the previous week was the Great Book Cull, during which time a few hundred books were donated to our local library. Although both Jennifer and I hate getting rid of actual paper books, there were a few compelling reasons for eliminating these particular volumes from our collection:

1) They were classics (Shakespeare, Tolstoi, etc)- these are readily available online and downloadable as plain text files

2) Cold War fiction- entertaining reading when it was written, but no longer plausible.

3) Out of date software texts- bye, bye, Windows 95 For Dummies, etc... I  kid you not.

So that was the two weekends ago. I visited the opthamologist for the last post surgery follow up for my right eye. (all is good- come back in a year). Don't get me wrong- if you're in the Des Plaines area, Dr. Winkler is the best. I'm just ready to get on with my life!

Pause, continued... this past weekend (Dec 19-20): I got out on time on Saturday morning for a change, but I knew I'd be coming back on Saturday evening. I figured a few hours would take care of a few quick production QC's- boy was I wrong.

The first job went smoothly, and it was done fairly quickly. The second, though, took much longer, as some paperwork was missing. It's not unusual for this to happen with this particular job, though. The third job was unexpected, but pretty easy- especially since the lead programmer was also in the office to explain a few things. The last job, though.

In a nutshell, it was programmed correctly but the output was set up incorrectly, and consequently compiled incorrectly, and the output was just plain wrong. As it was late and hadn't brought my meds to the office, I remade the files and recompiled the job, but did not perform the production QC.  

Finally, data.

I need to say something about my writing process, which will eventually relate to data. I promise.

When I write a blog, I generally have an idea of where I want it to go. Sometimes it goes there, sometimes it doesn't. This blog is a case of: IT DOESN'T CARE WHERE I WANT TO GO.

Point: my idea for this blog actually had to do with a concept for music opinion data analysis.

Way back when, in my college days, I started my music database. It was on looseleaf paper, and it was unwieldy and incredibly difficult to update or edit. At some point, I decided I'd create something of a personal "Top 40". Only looking at my stats was somewhat biased, I quickly surmised.  Undaunted, I expanded my pursuit to include what others were interested in. When I shared my results, however, some (many) of the participants were upset when I told them the results were weighted. That is, their top votes received 10 points, and their bottom votes received one point. Huh?

Participants in the survey were asked to vote for up to 10 of their favorite albums, and 10 of their favorite songs. I asked that they please put them in order of preference. When the results had been tabulated, I shared them. In my circle of friends and acquaintances, no one could believe that "Bread's Greatest Hits"  was more popular than "Barry Manilow Live" (joke).

I did it this way for a couple of (what I thought) were very good reasons. First: everyone probably has a favorite song. Hey, if its YOUR fave, why not weight it? Second, I wanted to be able to track which songs were actually more popular than which songs were most often voted for. Taking the two most "popular" songs of this era (from my polls), the hands-down winners were The Beatles' "Hey Jude" and Led Zepplin's "Stairway To Heaven". As my survey was quite small, let's say I had 10 voters: 4 went with the Beatles, and 4 with Led Zepplin. Let's say the other two went with Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird" as their favorite. If Hey Jude == 1, and Stairway == 1 and Freebird == 1, then we have 4 to 4 to 2. What matters next is what is the next greatest song.  So, two of the "Beatles" guys vote for  "I Saw Her Standing There", and a couple of Zepplin fans vote for "Rock and Roll". After that, each of the other Beatles and Zepplin fans votes for Hey Jude and Stairway, furthering the tie. Then, we factor in the Skynyrd fans, who generally might like the Zep guitars, but can sing to Hey Jude. So, the final score ends up being Beatles: 5.8 (among Beatles fans), Zep: 5.8 (among Zepplin fans). The two Skynyrd fans, though, both vote Hey Jude #2, and Stairway #3, giving the Beatles a total of 6.6 and Led Zep 5.8. Therefore, in this tiny, theoretical sample, "Hey Jude" is the greatest rock and roll song of all time.

Sorry about the length of this... I told you all of that to tell you this: I have a new data project which is based on my previous data project.

I know what songs I like and those which I don't like. I plan to quantify this data and publish my findings in a new format.

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

The State of the Blog, v.03

If it's December, then it must be time to...

Celebrate. Commemorate. Conjugate...?

Well, maybe not conjugate, but it's the THIRD anniversary of this blog! I'm somewhat e-excited about this. I can honestly say I never expected it to go this long, or have so many entries. Here's the quick recap, from the 1st blog The Final Frontier to the still strangely most popular one Why, 2K to the one that slipped through the proverbial e-cracks A Red Letter Day In History.

The unifying theme of this blog is data. A casual observer might not notice this, but I did say "unifying theme". So, if you're looking for the golden data nuggets of wisdom check out the twitters or websites of my good e-buddies Kirk Borne Ph.D. Lee Baker Ph.D. or Gregory Piatesky Ph.D.

For  those who think my data science is a bit sexist, please check out my good e-buddies Diego Kuonen Ph.D., Carla Gentry and Carol Lynn Curchoe Ph.D.

(In the FWIW column, these folks are some of my followers on Twitter). Not to drop names, of course! :)

In any event, I did drop a few names there, so I should probably clarify things a bit. Some of my more recent posts have been of a somewhat personal nature, and not much data was presented. For the (I'm sure this is a very small percentage of my) readers who were expecting some data in those posts, I apologize.

In actuality, most of my "data" occurs on Twitter, with some on Pinterest. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure what my most impactful social medium is these days... Twitter is the easiest, Blogspot is the deepest, and Pinterest is the broadest. And, most importantly, it's hobby, so I'm not paying for analytics!

I suppose I enjoy blogging the most, as it is the most creative. Pinterest is lots of fun- and easy. However, there's very little original content. Twitter is fun, but once again, not much original content, as I'm generally more of a repeater rather than an original content contributor. Blogger... this is my "original" e-home. To quote AC/DC- "No stop signs, speed limits...." Not that I'm an AC/DC fan.

An update on the SUL (Secret Underground Lair)....

This is my corner of the SUL. If you're curious, the two leftmost PCs are Win7 machines, and the other is an HP workstation running Ubuntu 12.10, I think. There's actually a 4th screen (which is off camera to the right) for Raspberry Pi use and testing), and there are two additional PCs- one of which is another Win7 box, and the last one is an offline XP machine. In fairly big SUL news, we've been getting rid of old tech boxes (those of the cardboard variety, to clarify), and have reclaimed nearly a square meter of floor space.

That's all for now. Oh... still hoping someone in Antarctica will pick this up!

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

...Can't. Sleep. Urrgh!

I discovered comic books rather late in life. I mean, as a grade school kid I would read comic books from time to time, but I didn't really get interested in them until high school. Brian, who sat behind me in homeroom, introduced me to them. By the time I was a junior, I was reading the larger format pulps like Conan the Barbarian, Kull, Red Sonja and Thor, and tried mightily to emulate the drawing style. After much effort, I became subpar. Oh, well, a graphic artist I'm not. I did learn one exceedingly valuable writing tool from the comics, though: SUPERHERO SPEAK. 

If you're familiar with comic books, you're probably familiar with the speech/thought bubbles that are where speech or thoughts are placed to accompany the illustrations. And of course folks like Thor, Wonder Woman and Conan are superheroes. And they often get into struggles, fights, and feats where extreme concentration is required. In instances like these, every superhero reverts to superhero speak- and this is not to be confused with pithy remarks or simple statements of fact. For example, of the following-

"The blog waits."

"I should finish the blog"

"Must. Finish. Blog. AUUURRGGYHH!"

-(the first is a lame pithy remark, and the second is a statement). Only the third example is superhero speak. Note each word is capitalized, each has a period after it, and there's what some would consider to be a requirement for true superhero speak: the somewhat unpronounceable expression of supreme effort, almost always completely capitalized, and finished with an exclamation (sometimes this last bit can be the entire superhero speak- as sometimes words get in the way, and you can bet your bottom local currency that these folks listen to pop music). Please note also: superhero speak is always expressed as two words, and is never anything other than a noun. It is not pluralized, conjugated or declined.

Wrong example: The superheroes spoke was like this: "This. Is. Wrong", grammarian! "ARRRRRRGH!" (Note: the parts in quotes is correct superhero speak- "grammarian, of course, is the "villian" and should be capitalized).

Correct example: Erase. This. Grammarian! SKREEESSSHK!

I hope this clarifies the title just a bit, as I bring this up because I went to bed at midnight, and for the third night in a row could not get to sleep in a reasonable amount of time. No clue why. So, I decided to make use of the time and get one more blog in before the end of the month.   

I'm happy to report that since my cataract surgery earlier this month, my vision has improved dramatically. 

I think that's about all for now. Oops- before I forget, a thank you and shout to all of my readers around the world and on the ships at sea- the blog broke 14K views worldwide. I've got a new reader somewhere (they're somewhere in Eurasia, but I hesitate to give a shout out because of current conditions there [no, it's not in the Middle East]). Still no one in Antarctica. Sigh. I'm putting the blog to bed... I've got least another hour and a half before I do the same.

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

Smokey has gone to a better place

In my last post, I introduced you to Smokey.

Now, before any readers who may be animal lovers get distressed, please be assured: Smokey is still "with us"... that is, he has not crossed over the rainbow bridge, kicked the bucket, met his fate, expired or achieved ambient temperature (that last one is a favorite at our house!) Here's what happened between my last blog (Saturday, Nov 14., and today Sunday, Nov. 15)

Jennifer has been watching the seven day weather forecast for the past few days, and last night noticed that snow is predicted for Friday of the coming week. She was concerned for Smokey, and accordingly tasked Mr. T with finding a nearby shelter where we could take him.

I should probably give a bit of background about "pet" animals in the United States.

This may seem a bit puzzling to those readers outside of North America, Europe and Australia, but we keep small (or sometimes, not so small) animals for pets. Be they cats, dogs, fish, birds, snakes (yuck), spiders (double-yuck!) or critters even more esoteric, we welcome them into our homes and adopt them as a part of the family. We love them. The livestock, in return, provide certain benefits to us.

Reptiles entertain- I suppose. I've never owned one of these, but some of them seem to have a universal "cool" factor- turtles, for example. Gerbils, chinchillas, ferrets and other rodents also tend to be popular with some folks. Fish are quite fun, generally pretty low maintenance and inexpensive. One typically does not develop much of an attachment to fish... they're almost biological art. I could stare at them for hours.

Larger animals- cattle- can also be pets. Jennifer's niece Paige was quite attached to a horse, and my cousin Lynda loved a bull that her family had raised for food.

There are others, but typically in the United States when one is talking about pets, one is usually talking about dogs and cats.

I can't speak for anywhere else, but here in the United States dogs and cats are LOVED. Pet owners treat their "furbabies" as they might treat biological children, and the most extreme ones will even put these critters into their will! Now, having been a pet owner for some time, I have to agree that a certain amount of bounding and love does occur between pet and pet parent. A certain amount of trust must be established. And, like children, not all animals are going to have the same personality, level of trust or personality.

Our own personal experience. A truism about cats which we lived out: a shelter from which we've adopted three of our four cats from, Furkeeps, had posted a picture of a beautiful pair of cats who were brothers (Cheech and Chong). We thought they would be a perfect addition to Schwarz and Tinka, but these two poor felines wanted nothing to do with us- they even hissed at us! We, of course, were quite disappointed: not only had we driven some distance to see these critters, but a lady from the shelter had agreed to meet us on her day off. The story ends well for everyone, though: we got Kenji (top photo) and Kaley (bottom photo) that day. Total opposites, but totally made for each other. In the small confines of their shelter environment, Kaley seemed to target Kenji. Kaley was a free spirit and Kenji was reserved; when we had them out of their caged environment, they were nice to us and each other, so we adopted them as a pair- and they've done quite well together.

Smokey, though....

As I had mentioned, Smokey is young- technically still a kitten. The weather reports indicate that we will get a cold snap by the end of the week, so we decided that it would be best to get Smokey in shelter. We could not take him, as we didn't want to expose our other four cats to any potential diseases. Mr. T was tasked with finding a shelter, and he came through. Buddy Rescue was the group he found.

There is a funny ending to Smokey's story.

We own a Subaru Outback. Subaru is somewhat famous among car brands in their support of pets. When we pulled up to The Buddy Foundation, there was a single car parked in the street- it was a Subaru.

I'm hoping that Smokey didn't contract some horrid feline disease while he was abandoned. I'm hoping he has a clean bill of health and will be adopted by a loving family.

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




                                                          

Hello, Australia... and blogging

I've mentioned this at least once before: blogs don't always go according to plan. This is my 188th post, and to my credit or dismay, I've probably only scrapped a handful of original ideas for updated ones in that span. I've changed my mind before words ever hit the screen on a number of times- at least ten, including this one, but have only totally scrapped ~five blogs, including the most recently published one.

So, what is up with the shout out to Australia, one might ask?

I might ask that myself, if I only relied on the data I receive from Google about this blog.  However, Blogger is only one part of my online marketing strategy. LinkedIn, Twitter (and Facebook) and most recently Pinterest, round out my online strategy. At this point, it would be fair to ask, "Why does a blogger need an 'online strategy' at all?" And how does Australia fit into the grand scheme of a single blogger?

For starters, I like to look at the big picture. I was pleased beyond words when I touched six continents in one year with this blog (Antarctica still eludes me!). My blog has been read in over fifty countries, most of which do not have English as their primary tongue.

And, even though I currently write for fun and not money, its better to have more readers than fewer readers.

So... Australia- continent, country, attitude.

In the current Google rankings, Australia ranks 24th in my worldwide blog readership. However, as I've said, my blog is only one part of my e-presence. I'm seeing a fair amount of attention in the Twittersphere (@CJoelHarrison) in Australia primarily because of some retweets about coral reefs and related Australia-specific marine science. My Pinterest account (www.pinterest.com/hochspeyer) has not seen much activity from Australia, mainly because Pinterest doesn't seem to emphasize locations. And, there aren't many infographics that I've found on the Great Barrier Reef.

So that's what I've got- in terms of casual analysis- on Australia. To my e-friends "down under", thanks for the likes and the blog reads!

Finally, I'd like to close with a very candid photo of Mr. T in action. This is a photo from our back yard of Mr. T and "Smokey". Smokey showed up recently in our yard. He's a very friendly neutered male around 2-4 years old. We think he might be a cat that actually belongs to someone, but he has no problem taking food and water from us, which leads us to suspect that even if he has a home, he is being neglected. He's a delightful little animal, and he's actually come up to our back door. It pains us greatly, but we can't let him in, as we know nothing about his medical condition. We don't want to expose our little group of cats to whatever Smokey might have. We're going to try to get him picked up by one of the local cat rescue societies.

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

Careful, kid, you'll poke an eye out

This had originally started out as a blog on data quality, but I wasn't too sure about the direction in which it was headed- trust me, you didn't miss out on anything. Something happened to me recently that I found quite interesting, and which totally pertains to my programming career and aspirations to deepen and broaden my programming skills.

Back in April of this year (2015), I went in for an eye exam. Everything was good, and I ended up getting a frame with progressive lenses. As I'm far-sighted with astigmatism, I've been wearing reading glasses since I was eighteen. This was my first foray into "distance" lenses. To be completely honest, I don't strictly "need" a distance prescription, but I was told they might help out with night driving, which I do practically every day. So, my progressive stack has distance on top, "computer" in the middle and reading on the bottom. They take a little getting accustomed to,  but they're quite effective- especially in the car, where everything both in and outside of the cabin is in focus.

I did have a slight problem with them at work, however: the computer part of the prescription was not large enough. I was offered the option of a wider field of view when I first purchased the lenses, but being that this was my first progressive lens, I decided to go with the basic one. Bottom line: this pair works great in the car and is fine with my 15" (~38cm) laptop, but with 23" (over 58cm) monitors at work and in the Secret Underground Lair (SUL), I could only see with clarity what I was looking at directly; to get focus on the left- or right-most parts of the screen, I had to do a bit of adjusting. And, as the nature of my work requires that I take in the whole screen (left to right and top to bottom), these didn't quite fit my needs. Therefore, I got a second pair of single visions lenses designed specifically for computer work.

This was pretty much what I was hoping to avoid- the expense of a second pair of glasses. However, upon trying out the new single vision computer glasses, everything was perfect, and I was happy.

Until the morning of September 12th.

September 12th was a Saturday, but (in my "quantum" time) it was actually Friday. I still had a couple of hours worth of work left, so I got up to have a short stretch and clean my glasses. Normally I'll use the piece of microfiber that I keep in the case, but this time I decided to give them a good dousing from the water cooler. I rinsed them, gave them a good wiping with the cloth and returned to my desk. I put them on, and discovered that I still had the same blurriness. I took them off, and looked at them through my desk lamp. Yup, they were clean- which meant that the problem, literally, was inside my head- my right eye, specifically.

So, if you'll pardon the pun, the chronology gets just a bit fuzzy here. At some point after that, Jennifer and Mr. T had their eye exams. As they were wrapping up, I nonchalantly asked someone about my recently discovered difficulty. As I described my problem, the nice folks at Vision Care Specialists decided that what I had described was important enough to squeeze me into their late afternoon schedule. After a bunch of tests, it was determined that I "probably" had a cataract.

Now, I'm told that pretty much everyone over the age of forty is in a "pre-cataract" condition- in fact, I was told this at my exam in April. What I was not aware of is that some folks have a rapidly-developing type of cataract. Unusual, but not rare... I'm an overachiever.

I was referred to an opthamologist. He confirmed the diagnosis and recommended the treatment: REPLACEMENT OF MY EYE LENS! This well and truly deserves all caps, as I had never heard of such a thing. And outpatient, to boot! No sutures, no bandages... not even a stinkin' pirate patch!

Anyway, it JUST SO HAPPENED that I had scheduled the bulk of my vacation for November. I had to rearrange two days, but this is how November has shaped up so far:

On Tuesday the 10th I started my eyedrops. With discounts, three tiny vials of eyedrops were $~120! I'm not one of those "older" folks who seem to be constantly medicated, so I can't tell you what these drops are... suffice it to sat that one stings a bit, and the other two do their job painlessly.

Wednesday, 11/11, the day of the surgery/procedure (throughout the entire process, the medical community referred to it as a "procedure"; in my mind, when someone stabs your eye, rips out your lens and puts a new one in, it's an operation).

I arrived at Holy Family Hospital, did some paperwork, paid part of the bill and was admitted. Jennifer and I were directed to a waiting room. After a very short period of time, I was invited by a nurse to a room where I was asked to put on a hospital gown... but allowed to keep my socks and fire engine yellow skivies. I was given booties, but they just didn't seem to want to stay on.

I don't want to say I was nervous at all, but the blood pressure measurements from admission to release showed about a 70 point swing.

And for all of the hype, the procedure itself was pretty painless. The pre-op prep was pretty painless; I experienced many firsts: first IV, first gurney, first operation. When the procedure was done, I was a bit woozy from something they gave me, and happily accepted the wheelchair ride to the curb.  Jennifer drove us home, and I'm happy to report that everything seems to have turned out exactly as planned. It looks like I'll be taking eyedrops for the next 2-3 weeks... it's a small price to pay to be able to see.

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

Sunday Night

By the time I finish this, some of my readers may be well into Monday morning (actually it will be closer to the following weekend!) . If you're one of these folks, I apologize. Because for me, Sunday night is about relaxing.

Surprisingly enough, there's a backstory here: this is the first weekend in five where I have not worked on Sunday. In other words, I've worked thirty-four days in a row.To be completely honest, I'm not crazy about the hours, but Jennifer and I love the pay. OTOH, I've had checks that were smaller than the Federal witholding tax I was assessed recently.

So, here it is, Sunday night. The end of the week. My first free Sunday night in five weeks. What am I up to?

Besides writing a blog, I'm catching up on some music that I haven't listened to in some time. That, and playing Railnation.

And today is now Thursday. After my first weekend off in five weeks, I've had overtime every day this week. And for those of you who might have missed this: depending on personal circumstances and job requirements, my coworkers are not always able or willing to take overtime, and when this happens, it falls upon whoever is available to pick up the slack. And even though I do not program jobs as often as I'd like, I'm familiar with so many of the jobs we do, as well as those we do for other plants, that I'm often called upon to pick up the slack in quality control.

And I do this partly out of a sense of duty and partly because I have a familiarity with a broad base of jobs few others in my department possess. And, to be completely transparent, I like the money.

I need to close this and get on to the next great adventure in my blog... whatever that may be. It's been a week since I started this, and as you might guess, I worked another Sunday. So, the tally follows: five of the last six Sundays I've spent at least some time in the office. Now, before anyone gets into the "evils of capitalism" or "wage slave" mindset, I'd like to remind my readers that although I don't always enjoy OT, Jennifer and I certainly do enjoy its benefits. And, as I live so close to the office, in the end the benefits ($$$) far outweigh the liabilities!

That's all for now from the Secret Underground Lair. As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.