This is a bonus podcast. I pushed my regular recorded podcast for tomorrow. Since I am out of pocket, I wanted to make sure to let my Carolina brothers know I see you, I hear you, I am praying for you. As preparedness minded as I am, I don’t know how you could ready for a situation like this. Keep up the good fight.
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May 2, 2023 – Need For Speed
I purchased this video on our recent vacation of me driving a Porsche 991 GT3RS. It was an awesome drive. The whole experience was expensive, but I paid the extra $70 for the video because everything was happening so fast. It is a new car, a new track and driving like you don’t normally do. If you watch it, you will see all of the instructions coming at you.
Even though my work is 90% serious, sometimes you have to have fun. I talked about my liner notes in the podcast that I couldn’t ever test drive a Porsche without putting in an offer to buy it. How do I know that I would like the car? I am not the kind of guy to buy a car just to see if I like it.
I have always been a race fan. I have gone to Indy, NASCAR and F1 races. I never really had a desire to drive a performance car until I started playing Need For Speed on the X-box. I won almost every achievement on the Shift version and then I suddenly came to an epiphany. This pastime has no real world value and it took a ton of time. At that moment, I pretty much quit playing video games. That was about the time I bought the Mustang.
I did enjoy driving the Mustang, but I never really felt that I got to enjoy the full potential. I wanted to drive it on a track but never got the opportunity. So this was the culmination of several dreams.
End Your Programming Routine: You can’t live your life in a video game. It is enjoyable, no doubt but all that time could be spend doing much more productive things. I paid for two extra laps so all told, it cost about $500 for those ten minutes of driving.
September 5, 2022 – Happy Labor Day
I am off today spending time with my family; enjoy yours. You can read more about the origins of the holiday here. Back tomorrow with a podcast.
Who knew an artichoke had such a beautiful flower?
June 21, 2022 – Hola desde Espana
This is a mobile update from Spain today. I will have plenty of time to unpack any lesson’s learned or anecdotes when I get back. I thought I would share some of my favorite pictures that I have taken so far.
Food is very important here. Our first night was dinner with ‘the family’ purchased with items from the market. I am positive that I will be talking more about food and eating habits coming up, since they play such an important prominence in life.
Our first trip was west to a nearby city called Tarragona. Roman influence dates all the way back to 200 BC. Consequently, there were many interesting things to learn about and see. Having been to Rome before, this is kind of small potatoes by comparison, but everything was lovely. I wish we could have seen some of the re-enactments while we were there.
Then, we learned about Gaudi. I should say re-learned because I remember his work from art history class in college. We spent several days looking at his work throughout the city. My pictures are not nearly as great as my wife’s. Maybe I will get them after the trip.
End Your Programming Routine: So far, so good. We are enjoying our trip so much. Today we are off to another adventure (and part of Spain). Look forward to more about Spain next week.
March 21, 2022 -What is Seafoam Green?
When I was young enough to have a spring break, going to the beach meant Cancun, Daytona or Padre Island. At least that is what I saw on MTV, remember this is pre-internet. Of course, I was never going to spend that kind of money so we settled on the Oregon coast. Frequently, we spend a couple of days during spring break week.
As I wrote about last week, a storm was coming, but we were going to the beach anyway. The family was staying for several days but I was just spending the day and taking the dog for a long walk. The truth is, the weather wasn’t as bad as I was expecting (for a storm). The surf was rough and I ran across to big piles of foam.
I don’t think the picture did it true justice. When I saw this in person, I thought it looked yellowish rather than greenish. I would say the picture looks more brown than green or yellow. You get the point. When I hear the name, I think of a washed out green. Or maybe a better description is Kelly green with a lot of white added to it.
I once heard an interview with Sherwin Williams marketing and the person said that each color name is unique and never to be repeated or changed. That means when they come up with a new color, they have to validate that the name has not been used before. What I can’t remember was what person in my life questioned the origin of the name Seafoam Green. When I saw this pile of foam, that question popped in my mind and I took a picture and now I am writing this.
End Your Programming Routine: I am keeping it light today. I guess this is more of an anecdote rather than my typical writing, but that’s OK because I am on spring break too.
March 16, 2022 – You Know Spring Break is Coming…
Spring Break starts this week for my kids. For me, this means that it is final’s week at the local university and things like traffic lighten up a little bit for the next couple of weeks. Since I live on Main Street, I see a direct correlation between school being in session and traffic.
However, I know that it is going to be spring break when I look at the weather forecast. Growing up, we often took extended camping trips during this week. I can think of multiple times it rained like cats and dogs the entire trip. In college, I remember distinctly having an inch of water in my tent with wet sleeping bags, pillows and clothes.
Lately, it has been more often a beach house rental. At least we are sheltered from elements but it tends to keep us in the house and less out and about. I don’t want to say that every trip was wet. I had a rafting trip on the John Day river that was dry. Ironically, 2020 at the pandemic’s very beginning it was a beautiful week as well. In fact the entire spring was dry as I spent 90% of the time working on the house. Remember that we had huge wildfires that fall as well.
I also don’t want to sound like I am complaining because I am not. I am simply saying that I cannot count on consistently nice weather during spring break. Any plans are subject to a deluge. Of course that is relative to where the plans are as well I am mostly talking about reasonably distanced local trips that are 4-5 days long.
End Your Programming Routine: With risk comes reward. Sometimes playing it safe, you miss the best opportunities. I am simply saying, make seasonally appropriate plans and prepare for the what-ifs. This year I am saving my vacation but the family is going to spend four days at the coast. I will be home to take care of the animals and work, but I will get some free time as well.
November 13, 2021 – Back From the Midwest
Funny, all of the sudden WordPress started working on my desktop again while I was gone. So, this is really a test post.
I am clearing out my in-boxes and get my expenses lined up, syncing my podcasts from the last week. I have been in the habit of checking my desktop every couple of days just on the off-chance it is working again. Low and behold, it is working again with no input for me.
This kind of frustrates me as you know I was blamed for the problem with my support case. I decided to lug a second computer with me on the trip so I could keep this up for a couple of days last week. I even took action to reconfigure my computer setup in my office to prepare for the inevitable. Now, it seems like I don’t need to do all of that.
End Your Programming Routine: I guess I should be grateful that this is the case. Quite frankly, it is better to not have the problem. However from a support standpoint, this kind unknown (to me) resolution is a risk. There is always an answer, I guess that I am not entitled to know what it is.
November 10, 2021 – The Glamorous Travel Life
Some of you have travelled for your career and I hope this resonates. Most others that I know haven’t and have their own impressions of travelling. I wrote about it a little on Monday but since I am living it now, I will write about it some more.
The impression that the non-frequent business traveler has is that this life is somehow glamorous. I get it, my expenses are paid and I get to pick where I eat for the most part. But, I think that is where the joy ends. Let me describe some of my day.
The only way to get hotel/airline status is to travel a lot. For instance it takes 30 segments or 30,000 miles a year to advance a rank on Delta. What does Silver get you? No checked bag fees and early boarding, whoop tee do. Using segments, that is a minimum of fifteen trips. If you don’t do that, then you get knocked down two status levels at the end of the year. I say that because that is over one trip a month in a year.
I got my airline status travelling to China frequently. I paid dearly for that at 7,000 miles and 16 hours of flight time for one way. To top it off, I was gone for six months out of a year on these jaunts. I got Hilton Diamond by spending 90+ nights a year at a Hilton. That is a whole quarter of a year people! The owners of the hotel franchise sent me a Christmas card one year. By the way, that does not count the nights I spent on non-Hilton hotels (this was not my China year).
The topic today is more about the hassles of travel. Here are some examples. I am in Cedar Rapids, a small city. I am staying downtown where I have to pay to park in a parking garage overnight. At least I do not have to valet… but when I put in my ticket to leave, it was rejected as ‘damaged’ and I had to pay the maximum daily rate outside the fact that I already paid for parking. I brought the issue to the front desk return my money for the day. We will see if it happens again.
When I got into my room, I really had to pee. When I stepped in the bathroom, I stepped in a puddle of water. No idea where it came from or why… but then I had to deal with maintenance thinking I overflowed the toilet, cleaning up the mess, etc. This is the glamor of travel. I have to be a steward of my companies’ and my clients money by being somewhere I don’t want to be doing something I don’t want to do. When my expenses are paid, it is fine but I am personally on the hook for non-approved expenses.
It’s the little things that you have to enjoy. When I was in middle school through college I had a subscription to National Geographic. I loved the articles about ‘Americana’ (ultimately, I cancelled my subscription because of social justice, even in the 1990’s). I get to see Americana. The burrito place in Lemoore, CA or the pizza place in Cedar Rapids, IA are benefits. These are places that are not are not easy to get to – meaning far off the freeway, but real interesting and good places.
To be 100% honest, I would rather spend one night in Fremont, MI than seven nights in Shanghai China. Having eaten at five star restaurants and all of the swanky places, my preferences is value. I am talking about value over glamor. I do sometimes imagine what it would be like to live somewhere. I do like going to the grocery store, walking in neighborhoods and seeing a small glimpse of life
Fortunately yesterday was a beautiful introduction for my first time in Iowa. It was 66 degrees and sunny.
End Your Programming Routine: I wont say that it is all one hundred percent bad. I feel sorry for people that travel as I once did. It is no kind of life, I would rather be home right now.
October 27, 2021 – Some Kind of Problem with Windows?
I haven’t solved the problem yet, but I was doing another test. I am trying another computer and things have resolved, at least temporarily. That means that the problem is either with the version of Windows or the browser.
I suspect that it is Windows because on my other computer I have the same problem with four different browsers Edge, Chrome, Brave and Mozilla. This computer that I am working on today has been off for several weeks and I have not run any recent updates at this point.
I am not going to get too deep today, but it is probably worth talking about troubleshooting for a little bit. As a software engineer and specifically in support, when diagnosing problems it helps to have a little methodology.
- Systemic Execution- I have yet to open a support case because I don’t completely understand all of the variables yet. Unfortunately, I have learned that most consumer level support is rarely going to solve the problem for me. It is going to take effort on my side as well and I want to be as thorough as I can be with information before doing so.
- Repeatable – What are the variables that cause this to occur? Can the problem be recreated reliably? Ideally, the problem is not intermittent (at least in appearance). Most problems are truly not random, but the unknown and unseen variables are in play and we are trying to solve a problem without all the known variables.
- Isolation – Just like repeatability if possible, it is important to try and isolate the problem. In my case here, I have isolated it to at least one computer. So, I have a part of the problem identified.
- Root Cause- This is the most important aspect of preventing the problem again as well as assuring the issue is really solved. This is also the step least likely to be completed. It is difficult to determine the root cause in most cases without a technical investigation. Most people are not disciplined enough to do it properly as well.
You could probably make the same case for using calculus to solve a math problem. Sometimes, it is really important to have the right and accurate answer and it is worth the effort to setup the equations and run through all of the math. Many times a close guess is almost as good and it certainly is a lot quicker and easier to do so. It depends on the depth of the problem and the risk of not solving quickly or completely.
End Your Programming Routine: It doesn’t matter if it is working on a vehicle or a problem with the computer, the steps are quite the same. It is what allows an amateur with gumption to solve complicated problems. If you find yourself with a difficult problem, try applying some discipline to your approach and you are more than likely going to learn some things as well as probably solve the issue if you don’t give up.
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