Or, #200
Before anything else, I'd like to extend a huge "THANK YOU" to anyone and EVERYONE who has taken a bit of time to read this blog!
And, as far as I can tell, at least 20% of my readers reside in countries where the official or predominant language is not English, so I'm dedicating this post to YOU!
I'll be the first to admit that my list of "pet peeves" is long and extensive. But, as I've dedicated this to my non-native English speakers and readers, I'd like to spend some time on the quirks of the English language (American, not Queen's... that's a whole different topic!)
For starters, there's vocabulary and usage. I'd like to highlight two of my favorite abused and overused words: tactical, and organic. Both of these words have very plausible, somewhat specific dictionary definitions. And both are horribly abused in pop culture and advertising. Per Google, tactical is "of, relating to, or constituting actions carefully planned to gain a specific military end."
More specifically, tactical refers to the smallest units of battle- fireteams, squads, platoons or even companies. Above that is operational, and at the top of military planning and action is strategic. I often see ads for "tactical flashlights". Hmm- I wonder how large a strategic flashlight might be, and how many car batteries would be required to power it. Tactical also seems to refer to the militarized version of a common item, making it somehow superior. We purchased some shortbread cookies in tin canisters a few years back, and I quite enjoyed telling everyone that once the cookies were finished, these containers would be converted to "tactical snack containers", as they are approximately the same size and shape of a popular potato snack, except that they are metal rather than cardboard... hence, they are tactical. I also have a repurposed stainless steel water container- approximately .5 liter volume. It's been repurposed because it leaks- it is now a tactical utensil carrier. It keeps my eating utensils safe while I commute to work in a modern automobile on two- and three-lane paved roads at near-highway speeds.
Organic. Don't even get me started....
Okay, I went there. The opposite of organic is inorganic- like chemistry. Definition? "Not consisting of or deriving from living matter."
In other words... inedible. Poison. Stuff that will kill you. There is no such thing as inorganic food. So, it follows that there is ALSO no such thing as organic food, in the sense in which it is advertised: in actuality, ALL food is organic. There is such a thing as non-GMO food, or all-natural, or free-range.
So, basically, tactical is just silly, while organic is offensive.
That's it for a few of my favorite misused words.
My database is close to being brought back from dormancy to project status. I've made a few fundamental design changes- all I need now is data entry!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Thursday, February 18, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
Super Bowl L
I did not watch this year's Super Bowl.
For what it's worth, I have not watched a Super Bowl since the Chicago Bears humiliated, dominated, and destroyed the cheating, the Clam-bakes..., er... New England pre-Deflate-gate Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.
If the Bears are not there to win, or the Packers are not there to lose, the Super Bowl is unimportant to me.
In a way, I am a true sports fan. Not in the way that most folks would define a sports fan. I am a fan and a follower of teams that are MY teams. Da Cubs. Da Bears. Da Hawks. Ferrari. Subaru. I could care less about all other sports or teams. And, if you don't know what sports the previously mentioned teams are players in, that's okay.
So, you might be wondering how I spent "Super Bowl" Sunday? For starters, Mr. T. and I had a little adventure. We made a pilgrimage to the Central Continental Bakery, where we procured some exquisite pączki. The interesting thing about Central Continental Bakery is this- when you step through the door, a part of you steps into Europe. Mr. T had enjoyed pączki before, but they were from a different bakery. Once he had experienced "the real deal", though, his taste buds were forever tuned to the "real deal"
That's all for now- the next post is #200. It should be special.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
For what it's worth, I have not watched a Super Bowl since the Chicago Bears humiliated, dominated, and destroyed the cheating, the Clam-bakes..., er... New England pre-Deflate-gate Patriots 46-10 in Super Bowl XX.
If the Bears are not there to win, or the Packers are not there to lose, the Super Bowl is unimportant to me.
In a way, I am a true sports fan. Not in the way that most folks would define a sports fan. I am a fan and a follower of teams that are MY teams. Da Cubs. Da Bears. Da Hawks. Ferrari. Subaru. I could care less about all other sports or teams. And, if you don't know what sports the previously mentioned teams are players in, that's okay.
So, you might be wondering how I spent "Super Bowl" Sunday? For starters, Mr. T. and I had a little adventure. We made a pilgrimage to the Central Continental Bakery, where we procured some exquisite pączki. The interesting thing about Central Continental Bakery is this- when you step through the door, a part of you steps into Europe. Mr. T had enjoyed pączki before, but they were from a different bakery. Once he had experienced "the real deal", though, his taste buds were forever tuned to the "real deal"
That's all for now- the next post is #200. It should be special.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Saturday, February 6, 2016
Happy e Day
This was originally going to be Potpurri #3.
I changed my mind about the title when I found about e.
Now, I consider myself to be fairly well read as far as English Literature goes (vs the general population). I've read all of the "required" high school reading- Shakespeare, various classic and modern poets, and a few plays, as well as having read a substantial amount of both fiction and nonfiction outside of the classroom. Granted, the "classroom" list might be a bit old, but so are the classics of literature. Math, though... that's another story.
For those of us (and I include myself in this list) who are relatively clueless about the "higher" functions of math, I'd like to introduce a new player- new to me, at least.
Last year, I made a big deal about pi Day, as it was a centennial pi Day (3.14.15). This year is not a special e Day, but 2018 will be (2.7.18).
I should back up here a bit and mention that math and I did not get along well in high school. In fact, if a subject could have been personified, math would have been my scholastic bully... for all four years of high school- even though I had math subjects for only two years. My first year, I studied geometry, and did so poorly at it I nearly went to summer school.
I survived that, though, and had algebra as a sophomore. Although in algebra, I didn't get close to being banned to summer school (remedial education), I never really quite "got it". At this point in life, I was so turned off by math that I dropped a philosophy class later in college when I figured out that the class was actually (sort of) math: symbolic logic.
Flash forward a few decades to today. I'm integrating much of what I used to hate and misunderstand into everyday life. My current challenge is to embrace what was formerly despised.
Which brings me to today. It's a tradition where I work for 3rd shift to produce a short email detailing what was done overnight. These emails are fairly short and to the point. Somewhere in the past year I started adding factoids about the current month at the bottom of each email. To be honest, I'm not sure how many folks in my department read these emails, but I try to keep them at least a little interesting. That's how I learned about "e" Day.
Euro day occurred in European countries that simultaneously adopted the Euro on January 1, 2002. In New Zealand, eDay is a day where people can get rid of e-waste or old electronics such as computers and old appliances, so they can be recycled rather than being placed in a landfill. Engineer’s Day is observed in Paducah, Kentucky on February 21 where many have an egg drop contest, create edible cars and tape people to walls. Eday is also an island in Northern Scotland.
And, for those who are interested in sports in the United States, e Day coincides with Superbowl Sunday. I could care less, as the Packers will not be there to lose, nor will the Bears be there to win.
That's all for now. We will be celebrating e Day with pączki, purchased from Central Continental Bakery, a lovely European-style bakery in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. These pączki are incredible- stepping into this bakery is like stepping into Europe!As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
I changed my mind about the title when I found about e.
Now, I consider myself to be fairly well read as far as English Literature goes (vs the general population). I've read all of the "required" high school reading- Shakespeare, various classic and modern poets, and a few plays, as well as having read a substantial amount of both fiction and nonfiction outside of the classroom. Granted, the "classroom" list might be a bit old, but so are the classics of literature. Math, though... that's another story.
For those of us (and I include myself in this list) who are relatively clueless about the "higher" functions of math, I'd like to introduce a new player- new to me, at least.
Last year, I made a big deal about pi Day, as it was a centennial pi Day (3.14.15). This year is not a special e Day, but 2018 will be (2.7.18).
I should back up here a bit and mention that math and I did not get along well in high school. In fact, if a subject could have been personified, math would have been my scholastic bully... for all four years of high school- even though I had math subjects for only two years. My first year, I studied geometry, and did so poorly at it I nearly went to summer school.
I survived that, though, and had algebra as a sophomore. Although in algebra, I didn't get close to being banned to summer school (remedial education), I never really quite "got it". At this point in life, I was so turned off by math that I dropped a philosophy class later in college when I figured out that the class was actually (sort of) math: symbolic logic.
Flash forward a few decades to today. I'm integrating much of what I used to hate and misunderstand into everyday life. My current challenge is to embrace what was formerly despised.
Which brings me to today. It's a tradition where I work for 3rd shift to produce a short email detailing what was done overnight. These emails are fairly short and to the point. Somewhere in the past year I started adding factoids about the current month at the bottom of each email. To be honest, I'm not sure how many folks in my department read these emails, but I try to keep them at least a little interesting. That's how I learned about "e" Day.
So, let me explain the little I know about e. This is wikipedia's definition. As I've mentioned, my mathematical foundation is shaky at best, but I think I finally have an understanding of irrational numbers! That's my explanation. :) Another e-day note: Many celebrate e-Day as Euler’s constant day on February 7 (2/7) in the month/day date format. It is a day where people recognize the significance of the number e, which is approximately 2.71828. Although this is the most commonly recognized holiday for e-Day, there are other worldwide events that are observed that have nothing to do with the e number constant.
Euro day occurred in European countries that simultaneously adopted the Euro on January 1, 2002. In New Zealand, eDay is a day where people can get rid of e-waste or old electronics such as computers and old appliances, so they can be recycled rather than being placed in a landfill. Engineer’s Day is observed in Paducah, Kentucky on February 21 where many have an egg drop contest, create edible cars and tape people to walls. Eday is also an island in Northern Scotland.
And, for those who are interested in sports in the United States, e Day coincides with Superbowl Sunday. I could care less, as the Packers will not be there to lose, nor will the Bears be there to win.
That's all for now. We will be celebrating e Day with pączki, purchased from Central Continental Bakery, a lovely European-style bakery in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. These pączki are incredible- stepping into this bakery is like stepping into Europe!As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
You said this was about data analysis!
Regular readers are familiar with the tagline that ends every one of my posts, "As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to." There's a bit of truth there, as well as a bit of attempted humor.
For starters, I've been using "hochspeyer" as my online persona for years. "Hochspeyer" (upper cased H) is a village in Germany where Jennifer and I lived for a few years. My online name (hochspeyer, lower cased h) is something I've been using for years. And although the topic of data doesn't come up as frequently as I'd like, I do try to feature it when possible. One problem I have is that I don't do as much analysis as, say, when I was actually employed as an analyst... for 15 USD/hr.
Pregnant pause for effect.
Yes, I once made only $15/hr working as a data analyst (this might be lots of money in some parts of the world, but in the greater Chicago area, its not- especially when you're feeding, clothing and providing housing for five persons). According to payscale.com, it should have been (at a minimum) 39K per year. According to an inflation calculator, the USD inflation rate between then and now is ~17.6%, so I was roughly 2K under the base salary for an analyst, or roughly 5%. However, at that point in my life, it was the only gig I could score, and the plus side was I learned quite a bit about basic data analysis, Excel, Access, customers, internal and external deadlines, and adding value to both your output and your position.
As a temp, I did analysis for $12/hr. My boss there was a lady who was the Quality Manager. The plant was a contract manufacturer of aluminum die castings for the automotive industry. Although they produced products for all three of the "Big 3" (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), their main customer was General Motors (GM). This was when Saturn was an exciting GM product line. The company had made a significant investment in equipment that was specifically designed for small cars, such as the Saturn line. Unfortunately, the Saturn line had disappointing sales for GM, and was ultimately scrapped. I apparently was doing a good job there, however: there were two rounds of layoffs in the company before I was let go. My value add there wasn't special- I integrated Excel data into an existing Access database. I also had the temerity to give reasons when they asked why I couldn't extrapolate results (when one has neither data or experience, one is up the creek without a paddle in terms of validity!)
With overtime, computer crashes and life in general, I haven't had much time to think about data as of late, much less do any analysis. However, the further I get from 10K blog viewers, the stronger the pull is to do a bit of analysis on blog hits to date.
So, here we go: blog speeds and feeds.
I started writing this blog in December of 2012. As of January 2016, I've published 196 posts to this blog- roughly five posts per month. As I'm no professional writer, I've got to say that this paltry volume is a challenge to maintain.
I've been tracking numbers from Day One, and they break down like this:
As far as continents go, only Antarctica has zero readers- Antarctica is 7th.
South America comes in 6th. With the limited amount of data I get back from Google (it's free, so I'm not complaining), I can only guess that language may be a factor in the readership here.
In terms of continents, Australia has the fewest number of countries... 1, and it is predictably 5th in the ranking. However, I think a few more countries could probably be considered a part of Australia for statistical purposes- New Zealand comes to mind immediately, but that's about it. If anyone has any ideas, please comment. The rest of the continents are as follows:
Africa (4th) is actually tied with Australia in terms of total readers, but these readers are distributed among a few countries, so I have to award the spot to Africa.
Europe comes in 3rd, which is slightly surprising because of the widespread use of English there. Twenty-seven countries represent Europe.
Asia is represented by seventeen countries and comes in 2nd, mainly because of Chinese readers.
My top market, again not a surprise, is North America, with a bit over 75% of my global total in readership.
That's it from here for now. Before signing off, I'd like to extend special e Day (2/7) greetings to Prof. Diego Kuonen!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
For starters, I've been using "hochspeyer" as my online persona for years. "Hochspeyer" (upper cased H) is a village in Germany where Jennifer and I lived for a few years. My online name (hochspeyer, lower cased h) is something I've been using for years. And although the topic of data doesn't come up as frequently as I'd like, I do try to feature it when possible. One problem I have is that I don't do as much analysis as, say, when I was actually employed as an analyst... for 15 USD/hr.
Pregnant pause for effect.
Yes, I once made only $15/hr working as a data analyst (this might be lots of money in some parts of the world, but in the greater Chicago area, its not- especially when you're feeding, clothing and providing housing for five persons). According to payscale.com, it should have been (at a minimum) 39K per year. According to an inflation calculator, the USD inflation rate between then and now is ~17.6%, so I was roughly 2K under the base salary for an analyst, or roughly 5%. However, at that point in my life, it was the only gig I could score, and the plus side was I learned quite a bit about basic data analysis, Excel, Access, customers, internal and external deadlines, and adding value to both your output and your position.
As a temp, I did analysis for $12/hr. My boss there was a lady who was the Quality Manager. The plant was a contract manufacturer of aluminum die castings for the automotive industry. Although they produced products for all three of the "Big 3" (General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler), their main customer was General Motors (GM). This was when Saturn was an exciting GM product line. The company had made a significant investment in equipment that was specifically designed for small cars, such as the Saturn line. Unfortunately, the Saturn line had disappointing sales for GM, and was ultimately scrapped. I apparently was doing a good job there, however: there were two rounds of layoffs in the company before I was let go. My value add there wasn't special- I integrated Excel data into an existing Access database. I also had the temerity to give reasons when they asked why I couldn't extrapolate results (when one has neither data or experience, one is up the creek without a paddle in terms of validity!)
With overtime, computer crashes and life in general, I haven't had much time to think about data as of late, much less do any analysis. However, the further I get from 10K blog viewers, the stronger the pull is to do a bit of analysis on blog hits to date.
So, here we go: blog speeds and feeds.
I started writing this blog in December of 2012. As of January 2016, I've published 196 posts to this blog- roughly five posts per month. As I'm no professional writer, I've got to say that this paltry volume is a challenge to maintain.
I've been tracking numbers from Day One, and they break down like this:
As far as continents go, only Antarctica has zero readers- Antarctica is 7th.
South America comes in 6th. With the limited amount of data I get back from Google (it's free, so I'm not complaining), I can only guess that language may be a factor in the readership here.
In terms of continents, Australia has the fewest number of countries... 1, and it is predictably 5th in the ranking. However, I think a few more countries could probably be considered a part of Australia for statistical purposes- New Zealand comes to mind immediately, but that's about it. If anyone has any ideas, please comment. The rest of the continents are as follows:
Africa (4th) is actually tied with Australia in terms of total readers, but these readers are distributed among a few countries, so I have to award the spot to Africa.
Europe comes in 3rd, which is slightly surprising because of the widespread use of English there. Twenty-seven countries represent Europe.
Asia is represented by seventeen countries and comes in 2nd, mainly because of Chinese readers.
My top market, again not a surprise, is North America, with a bit over 75% of my global total in readership.
That's it from here for now. Before signing off, I'd like to extend special e Day (2/7) greetings to Prof. Diego Kuonen!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Adventures in Direct mail
I think I may have mentioned before, or at least alluded to, the fact that I am employed in the direct mail industry... colloquially referred to as junk mail. And, as the firm I work for is heavily involved in the production of direct mail, if you live in the United States there's a very good chance you've actually touched some of my company's handiwork.
And promptly recycled it.
Well, at least you were responsible enough to recycle it. After all, our plant outputs millions of pieces of mail for our clients. Every month. And we are typically just one channel of their marketing plans. And our division has several plants.
According to my job title, I'm a programmer (actually, my title sounds way more impressive- in fact, it doesn't really say "programmer"at all). The cold hard fact is I do a lot more quality control work than programming. And as boring as both of those functions may sound, quality control is way more boring than programming.
And, as sad as this may sound, I'm something of an expert at quality control.
So, as I look at a lot of mail, I have a few pieces of advice for those of you in business who are trying to sell to the general public.
#1. Actually, this is the only piece of advice I have for you. In fact, if you cannot understand this, you are hopeless, your business offers no value to anyone, and you are completely lacking in imagination and have nothing to offer to your prospective clients. I should charge $10,000 for this, but for you- today- its free.
GET A REAL BUSINESS EMAIL ACCOUNT.
Period. Pay me $10K right now, and everyone will be happy.
Seriously, how many of you expect someone to respond to your ad when the reply email is jonniebubbles@hotmail.com or edzachary89557@aol.com?
Bueller? Bueller? Does anyone else hear the echo of the buterflies' wings?
Insurance agents, car salespersons, realtors, ANYONE with a product or service: GET A REAL, BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS. Here's a hint: your business email address should not end in aol.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com... some folks even have issues with gmail.com. This list is not all-inclusive, but should be a good starting point.
Spend a few bucks and get a domain: sandy@realty.biz, george@hugeinscompany.com, or fname.lastname@agreatbusiness.com.
To be honest, most of the world that has money is at least a little internet-savvy, and while hotmail, gmail, and yahoo are all valid email addresses, none of them are typically the best choices for the business world. Why? Because they are free, and if you use them in your business, then you may be perceived as being a shoestring business operator.
In other words, you could be a cheap, fly-by-night operator to a prospect.
Now, I'm sure bubbleslovesbucky@hotmail really is a great sales rep, but as soon as I see that email, I immediately assume that her reputation might be for something other than sales. So, do yourself a favor and separate your professional email from your personal email.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
And promptly recycled it.
Well, at least you were responsible enough to recycle it. After all, our plant outputs millions of pieces of mail for our clients. Every month. And we are typically just one channel of their marketing plans. And our division has several plants.
According to my job title, I'm a programmer (actually, my title sounds way more impressive- in fact, it doesn't really say "programmer"at all). The cold hard fact is I do a lot more quality control work than programming. And as boring as both of those functions may sound, quality control is way more boring than programming.
And, as sad as this may sound, I'm something of an expert at quality control.
So, as I look at a lot of mail, I have a few pieces of advice for those of you in business who are trying to sell to the general public.
#1. Actually, this is the only piece of advice I have for you. In fact, if you cannot understand this, you are hopeless, your business offers no value to anyone, and you are completely lacking in imagination and have nothing to offer to your prospective clients. I should charge $10,000 for this, but for you- today- its free.
GET A REAL BUSINESS EMAIL ACCOUNT.
Period. Pay me $10K right now, and everyone will be happy.
Seriously, how many of you expect someone to respond to your ad when the reply email is jonniebubbles@hotmail.com or edzachary89557@aol.com?
Bueller? Bueller? Does anyone else hear the echo of the buterflies' wings?
Insurance agents, car salespersons, realtors, ANYONE with a product or service: GET A REAL, BUSINESS EMAIL ADDRESS. Here's a hint: your business email address should not end in aol.com, hotmail.com or yahoo.com... some folks even have issues with gmail.com. This list is not all-inclusive, but should be a good starting point.
Spend a few bucks and get a domain: sandy@realty.biz, george@hugeinscompany.com, or fname.lastname@agreatbusiness.com.
To be honest, most of the world that has money is at least a little internet-savvy, and while hotmail, gmail, and yahoo are all valid email addresses, none of them are typically the best choices for the business world. Why? Because they are free, and if you use them in your business, then you may be perceived as being a shoestring business operator.
In other words, you could be a cheap, fly-by-night operator to a prospect.
Now, I'm sure bubbleslovesbucky@hotmail really is a great sales rep, but as soon as I see that email, I immediately assume that her reputation might be for something other than sales. So, do yourself a favor and separate your professional email from your personal email.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Technology, at home
This is probably only the third post out of almost two hundred that I have scrapped completely and started afresh. While the title is still valid and likewise the topic, what follows will be a world away from the original.
Let's face it: in some of our quiet moments, the only voice we hear is our own. And it is not necessarily the voice of reason. To be perfectly clear, the old post was honest and told of my experience with one well-known manufacturer of computer motherboards. And although their tech support is legendary with well-documented internet tales of fail, I will neither name or accuse them.
Reason?
It's all about the internet, which is as close as we have come to eternity as mortals to date. In simple terms, what one posts online does not go away.
Ever.
So, I try to keep my online musings fact-based, as well as my complaints. One never knows who will be looking at a particular post, blog, tweet or review.
And, what does all of this cryptic musing mean?
Jennifer is once again having some issues with her PC that Mr. T and I built for her a while ago. It was fantastic at first, but then she started experiencing mobo USB bus failures. We RMA'ed the board, and after a few months the same problems cropped up in the replacement board. Lately, she's been having a number of audio problems.
To make a long story a bit less painful, the plan is to scrap my planned gaming rig in favor of a multimedia rig for her, and I get her current headache until we're ready to get me a new PC. It's actually a win all around, because her PC is very new compared to anything I'm currently using- except for my laptop, which is another story. And, my audio and USB requirements are rather light in comparison to hers.
The laptop is currently DOA, waiting for an operating system. I've completed the hardware replacements and upgrades. All that remains is a fresh Win 8.1 install. I was originally going to downgrade the machine to Win7, but ran into a brick wall with the BIOS. So, I will try to reinstall Win8.1 and should have a report on that (complete with some pretty cool pictures [the heatsink on the the primary videocard is a thing of copper beauty]).
There's not much else in the works. Mr. T is getting tired of the state of the Secret Underground Lair so much that he has taken it upon himself to learn the basics of Microsoft Visio. He's made some progress, but to be totally honest, we still need to move some stuff out of the office.
Lastly, I'd like to share a picture of something that Mr. T and I came up with. I got a Lego Friends set for dirt cheap at Sam's Club, and it had some neat parts. However, it also had these two girls (Emma and Natasha, I think) who seemed like great zombie hunter role models, so we humbly present the Zombie Hunter Lego Friends of 2015.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Let's face it: in some of our quiet moments, the only voice we hear is our own. And it is not necessarily the voice of reason. To be perfectly clear, the old post was honest and told of my experience with one well-known manufacturer of computer motherboards. And although their tech support is legendary with well-documented internet tales of fail, I will neither name or accuse them.
Reason?
It's all about the internet, which is as close as we have come to eternity as mortals to date. In simple terms, what one posts online does not go away.
Ever.
So, I try to keep my online musings fact-based, as well as my complaints. One never knows who will be looking at a particular post, blog, tweet or review.
And, what does all of this cryptic musing mean?
Jennifer is once again having some issues with her PC that Mr. T and I built for her a while ago. It was fantastic at first, but then she started experiencing mobo USB bus failures. We RMA'ed the board, and after a few months the same problems cropped up in the replacement board. Lately, she's been having a number of audio problems.
To make a long story a bit less painful, the plan is to scrap my planned gaming rig in favor of a multimedia rig for her, and I get her current headache until we're ready to get me a new PC. It's actually a win all around, because her PC is very new compared to anything I'm currently using- except for my laptop, which is another story. And, my audio and USB requirements are rather light in comparison to hers.
The laptop is currently DOA, waiting for an operating system. I've completed the hardware replacements and upgrades. All that remains is a fresh Win 8.1 install. I was originally going to downgrade the machine to Win7, but ran into a brick wall with the BIOS. So, I will try to reinstall Win8.1 and should have a report on that (complete with some pretty cool pictures [the heatsink on the the primary videocard is a thing of copper beauty]).
There's not much else in the works. Mr. T is getting tired of the state of the Secret Underground Lair so much that he has taken it upon himself to learn the basics of Microsoft Visio. He's made some progress, but to be totally honest, we still need to move some stuff out of the office.
Lastly, I'd like to share a picture of something that Mr. T and I came up with. I got a Lego Friends set for dirt cheap at Sam's Club, and it had some neat parts. However, it also had these two girls (Emma and Natasha, I think) who seemed like great zombie hunter role models, so we humbly present the Zombie Hunter Lego Friends of 2015.
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Welcome to #194
And this post will close out 2015 and welcome in 2016.
I'd like to start off by saying this is (was) the Monday before New Year's Eve/Day... so it's the end of the year for those of us who use the Gregorian calendar. I'm going to admit a bit of ignorance here, as it took me a little bit of internet searching to come up with the Gregorian calendar. I'm not sure how it is where you live, but in my neck of the woods, "Gregorian calendar" is not really an everyday household term.
Having said that, it's now the second week of 2016.
For the long-suffering readers of this blog, this means that the author has been fairly busy. So busy, in fact, that even the participation in his favorite MMO, Rail-Nation, has suffered.
Not to worry, though, as my e-life takes second place to my IRL life.
So, what's up IRL in 2016?
Well, for starters, Mr.T. and I had a meeting about the SUL, and came up with a goal: to finish the basic remodel of the SUL by May 30. I like this goal; however, the problem is this: every time we make a goal like this, overtime sets in.
Now, don't get me wrong- overtime pays for these upgrades. It's just that when I put in overtime, there's less time to do projects at home.
In the interest of publishing something, I'll close here. I hope the next post will be more interesting!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
06.04.16 update: the remodel is still nowhere near done!
I'd like to start off by saying this is (was) the Monday before New Year's Eve/Day... so it's the end of the year for those of us who use the Gregorian calendar. I'm going to admit a bit of ignorance here, as it took me a little bit of internet searching to come up with the Gregorian calendar. I'm not sure how it is where you live, but in my neck of the woods, "Gregorian calendar" is not really an everyday household term.
Having said that, it's now the second week of 2016.
For the long-suffering readers of this blog, this means that the author has been fairly busy. So busy, in fact, that even the participation in his favorite MMO, Rail-Nation, has suffered.
Not to worry, though, as my e-life takes second place to my IRL life.
So, what's up IRL in 2016?
Well, for starters, Mr.T. and I had a meeting about the SUL, and came up with a goal: to finish the basic remodel of the SUL by May 30. I like this goal; however, the problem is this: every time we make a goal like this, overtime sets in.
Now, don't get me wrong- overtime pays for these upgrades. It's just that when I put in overtime, there's less time to do projects at home.
In the interest of publishing something, I'll close here. I hope the next post will be more interesting!
As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.
06.04.16 update: the remodel is still nowhere near done!
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