Best Buy For the Win

After careful consideration and thorough research I selected a new computer for my wife. I decided to get her a 13-inch MacBook air with 16 GB of RAM, the M3 processor, and 256 GB of solid-state storage. The next thing I needed to decide is where to buy it from.

Working for Sony, I have a number of fellow employees that have left and gone to work for Apple. I have helped a number of them pick up Sony products for a discount and they are willing to do the same for me. They receive a 15% discount on Apple products and so I used that as my base comparison price. If I couldn't find the computer cheaper somewhere else, I would call in a favor. That price came to $934.15 plus tax.

I keep getting daily e-mails for Costco and Best Buy, so I checked them first. Costco had the exact model I wanted for $899.99, which is cheaper than the Apple employee discount. Best Buy came in for a dollar less at an even $899.00. That became my new standard. My wife told me Amazon had a great price and so I looked there. They matched Best Buy at $899.00. I also looked at one of my favorite online stores: B&H Photo. They usually have great deals on Apple products and they didn't disappoint, or so I thought. They had the computer for $50 less. Then I carefully looked at the specs and saw that it was for the 8GB of RAM version. I'm glad I double checked all the specs. I came very close to making a big mistake.

Ultimately it came down to Amazon or Best Buy as the place to purchase the computer. How to decide? I looked at who could get it to me fastest as they both have free shipping. It turns out Best Buy beat Amazon by 2 days. That is where I made my purchase and I didn't have to call in a favor from a friend.

Online Insurance Quotes

I have never been one to shop around for lower insurance quotes and so I have resisted changing my auto policy. I currently bundle my cars, house, and sailboat with a single insurance company and have relied on the bundle discount to guarantee I'm paying the lowest price for the best coverage. Lately my wife has suggested we look at other insurance companies to see if we can get a better deal. Monday I pointed my browser at Progressive and entered my information to get a quote.

Not all insurance policies are the same. One has to pay careful attention to the coverage to make sure it is an apples-to-apples comparison between companies. That means making sure the deductibles are the same and coverage limits are as well. With auto insurance you also want to make sure things like rental car and glass coverage matches.

My current auto insurance needs to be renewed in January so I had my coverage in front of me when I put in numbers for the quote. The defaults are significantly less than my current policy and so I spent time adjusting them. As I have multiple cars, I can set deductibles and other parameters for each one. It took a few extra minutes. When I finished entering information, I had a quote for very comparable auto insurance. The quote came in at less than half of what I am currently paying. The savings surprised me and I will be switching automobile insurance companies. Furthermore I will reevaluate my homeowner's and sailboat's policies after the first of the year.

Now for the bad news: you can't do anything on the Internet without being tracked. This means I am getting a lot of ads promoting low-cost insurance. When I go to YouTube, 10% of the videos are on how someone saved a lot of money using different auto insurance. That doesn't include the insurance ads in the videos I do want to watch. I am also seeing ads in random websites I visit. Once I make the change, I don't plan on shopping around for at least a year so I won't be paying attention to those ads. Hopefully they go away soon.

The Internet is a very useful tool that can help us streamline tasks in our lives. Shopping for insurance is one of them. No longer are you required to call a company and provide countless amounts of information before getting a quote. Instead just fill out a series of forms at your leisure and you instantly get a quote. The only downside is the targeted advertising that follows.

MacBook Air or iPad Air

My wife recently went on a trip and brought her MacBook Air so she could do some work during her downtime. She used it for about 10 minutes and then shut it off to go play with grandkids. When she tried to turn it back on, nothing. We played with it a bit but decided to wait until we got home to really troubleshoot the problem. We got home and discovered she needs a new laptop. For the moment, she is making due with my old Chromebook I got for free but I have been wanting to replace it for the past 6 months. I figure I have a week before my wife will demand a replacement laptop.

Having used my Chromebook for around 6 years, it is a great device and will do everything my wife needs a computer to do. I thought about replacing her laptop with one and threw the idea out to my son, who works in technology. He suggested getting an iPad with a keyboard instead. This has brought on a research project over the past several days trying to figure out which device would be the best replacement.

Several months ago kids headed back to school or off to college and a number of articles appeared on the Internet as to which device parents should get for students. While my wife is not a student, she will use it like one and I found the articles very useful. I listed out what my wife uses a computer for and realized that a MacBook Air, an iPad Air, and a Chromebook would all work well. I could also throw a Windows laptop into the mix as my wife often uses Windows at work. Then I priced everything and discovered that if I get a keyboard for the iPad Air, the total price comes within $40 of the MacBook Air. Now I am shortcutting a lot of the technical details as you can find an older generation iPad for around $200, but I question the longevity of the device. When comparing computers, it is best to try and make the comparison as equal as possible with regards to CPU, RAM, and storage space. That is pretty easy with the Apple products, less clear-cut between them and Windows or Chromebook machines.

Right now I am leaning towards the Apple MacBook Air as it represents the least amount of a learning curve for my wife. It comes close to the same price as the iPad with keyboard but weighs significantly less. No it is not as versatile as you can separate the iPad from the keyboard, but knowing how my wife will use the computer, I think it to be the best choice. The only thing that can throw a wrench into those plans is that Costco has a Dell laptop that competes with the Apple one for about half the price. Ultimately I will leave it up to my wife to decide.

A Little Guidance Saves Time

On Monday I had to submit a purchase order request for some data quality assessment software. I have been at Sony for quite a few years but have never submitted a purchase order. This should have not been a time-sensitive matter but it took 2 weeks to get access to the system that allows me to submit purchase orders and the vendor started getting a little restless. Monday morning I received word that I had been granted access to our internal accounting system and felt excited to get this taken care of.

Having worked in software for decades, I didn't feel like I needed any extra training to use the accounting software. Then I logged into the system and discovered it to be a bit more complex than anticipated. I reached out to my contact in accounting who directed me to someone that could help me get the request completed. He couldn't meet immediately but I only needed to wait 30 minutes. When he became available, we jumped on a quick video call and I shared my screen with him. He then talked me through the process. We took about 10 minutes and everything got submitted correctly. The next day, the vendor successfully submitted the invoice.

As we walked through the steps necessary to submit the purchase order request, I realized I successfully filled in the correct information for 95% of what it needed. Having someone walk me through the process really streamlined things and helped me do it right the first time. You may be very skilled with technology but don't hesitate to ask for a little guidance for something you are doing for the first time. It may save you having to redo something because of a minor mistake. 

Christmas Shipping

Christmas is just around the corner and if you still have shopping to do, time is running out. Today I received an e-mail from a company from which I planned to get Christmas gifts. The e-mail said that orders need to be made soon if one hopes to receive the gifts before Christmas. Fortunately I had my orders ready and got them in before the deadline. My kids will receive their gifts before that important day in a few weeks.

There are a number of online retailers urging shoppers to get their orders in before it is too late. FedEx has listed the following dates that are important if you want to get gifts delivered on or before December 22nd:

• December 15 for FedEx Ground
• December 20 for 2-day delivery
• December 21 for 1-day delivery

They also go on to list that they will be doing modified home and ground delivery on the 23rd and 24th of December. All delivery services will be closed on December 25th, which is a good thing as I would hate to be forced to work that day myself.

UPS has a similar schedule where they say that December 20th is the last day to utilize 2-day delivery for packages that will arrive on the 24th. They then go on to say that 3-day deliveries sent on the 20th, won't be delivered until Friday the 27th. 

The Unites States Postal Service is also listing dates on their website. They include different schedules for Alaska and Hawaii, which is important. While some of the dates remain the same (i.e. First Class and Priority Mail service) Ground Advantage requires 2 extra days and Priority Mail Express Service 1 extra day. Otherwise the dates look similar to FedEx and UPS.

I want my Christmas gifts to arrive as close to the special day as possible and so some might think I have waited way too long before getting them shipped. Normally I would have to agree with one exception. This year, I have decided to get something that is perishable and so I don't want them to arrive too early. It would also be a huge disappointment for them to arrive late. Hopefully I timed it correctly this year and everything works out. Hopefully you also find the information above helpful this Holiday season if you still have gifts to send.

Killing Time in an Airport

This morning I find myself waiting for my son and his family's flight to arrive from Columbus, Ohio. I am here with my wife so at least I am not alone, which makes waiting a little easier. We have a lot of fog today and so flights are delayed coming in. So how can you pass the time at an airport waiting? That is a question I am sure a lot of people will be asking as they travel this Holiday season.

The airport in Salt Lake does not have a lot to keep you entertained outside of security. Once through security there are a lot of different shops and restaurants, including a Lego store which has a lot of different activities to keep one entertained. The only problem is that all of those little pieces are very easy to lose if you are not careful. So I'll pass on that activity for now. The real question is how to get through security if you are not flying. The easy solution is to purchase a fully refundable plane ticket for later in the day. Once you get through security, just cancel it and your money will be back on your credit card before you leave the airport. It is a trick I have used more than once.

Another thing to keep yourself entertained is to catch up on your e-mail. That is what my wife is doing right now. You do have to be careful with the free airport WiFi as it can be very easy for a hacker to steal your e-mail password. You may be better off using your phone as a hotspot and using it instead. Then there is my favorite, using a virtual private network or VPN that hides your network connection. I have a VPN for work and use it whenever I connect to the free airport WiFi. My e-mail only took me a few minutes this morning and so what should I do for the next hour?

I could watch a movie but it is too early in the day to start watching a movie. Perhaps if it is closer to the evening I would appreciate that more. I know my grandkids don't care what time of the day it is, they are always down for watching a movie. I'm sure that is what they are doing on the plane right now.

Last year for Christmas my wife got me a kindle electronic reader. I recently loaded up a new book on it and will probably pull that out shortly. Until then I've written in my blog, something else that helps pass the time. I could also annoy my wife. Maybe I should go get myself a breakfast burrito instead.

Computers in Cars

Yesterday I had to take my car in for its annual emissions test. When you buy a new car in Utah, you only need an emissions test every other year until it gets to a certain age. Then you need one every year in order to renew the registration. My car is old enough to require a test annually.

There are a number of places you can go to have the test done. I have a favorite place I have been taking my cars to for decades. They don't do anything other than emissions tests and the state restricts what they can charge for the test. Once the test is completed, the state has an immediate record if it passed or not. When it passes, I can log onto the state website and can see that information, pay the registration fee, and wait for the state to mail me my license-plate decals.

Yesterday I drove to the state test site and waited my turn. I didn't have to get out of my car, I just drove to an open garage door and waited for the car in front of me to complete its test. Then the service technicians waved me into the waiting bay. They connected a cable to my car's OBD-II port and my car's computer gave them all the information. A few minutes later the test completed and I found out I passed. I drove out the back of the garage bay and the guy waiting behind me pulled right in.

I remember buying a new car a couple decades ago and having the salesman tell me that the rapid rise in automobile costs had to do with the addition of new computers. Those computers have helped increase the reliability of most engines. They can tell you when a part has failed and needs to be replaced. They can also tell you how much your car is polluting. It is good that states around the country can tap into that information without any difficulty and help keep our air clean.

I left my house yesterday knowing I needed to get my car's emissions tested. Only twelve minutes later, I returned home with the task completed and ready to submit the results to the state. This is one case where computers have helped create efficiencies in my life. Hopefully you feel the same way.

Repeatability

Have you heard the story of a guy that traded a paperclip for a house? It didn't happen that simply. He traded the paperclip for something else and continued trading until he eventually had a much more expensive item. When I think about what he did, I imagine he took advantage of having something that someone else needed to the point where they would trade something more valuable for the less valuable item he had. I also doubt the process he followed is very repeatable. While someone could take some of the ideas, trades for different items would need to be substituted. Furthermore, I doubt many would have his same success.

This leads me to my topic of interest today and that is repeatability. When software engineers create a program, they require a team of quality assurance (QA) engineers to test their code to look for problems. The worst kinds of problems to find are non-repeatable ones. If the program runs 9 times out of 10, it becomes the QA engineer's responsibility to figure out the exact repeatable steps to find the one time it doesn't work.

One area where this becomes increasingly difficult is when using a program that creates random numbers. The whole point of random numbers is to make things unpredictable. This is why most random number programs have two calls. The primary call provides a random number. To make sure it is repeatable, it will always provide numbers in the same order. If you ask for a single digit random number, it might first provide a 3 and the next time you call the function it returns a 5. Stopping the program and restarting it give you the same numbers in order. This is very helpful when trying to locate software bugs. The important thing to remember is to also use the second call or randomize function. This tells the program to not use the same order but instead to mix it up.

Why is this important? Several years ago I noticed that the software provided by the governing body for ski racing forgot to include the randomize function in their software. My son attended a race at Jackson Hole and had yet to complete a Super-G race. He got lumped in with all the other first-timers. The weekend had 3 individual races where all the first-timers should have been given random starting orders within their group. Starting near the front has its advantages and so one would think my son would have his start position changed randomly. Nope the 10 to 15 racers all started in the same order for each of the 3 independent races. The developer of the software never randomized the start order as he or she should have. I tried to protest but ski coaches and race organizers don't understand the nuances of software development and accepted as fact that the coding had been done correctly.

When looking for software bugs, repeatability is important. It makes it a lot easier to find problems and fix them. Just remember to add in that randomize function at the end. Otherwise you are not really creating random numbers and that is one area hackers exploit to break into systems.

Thanksgiving is Over, Time for Christmas

Tomorrow is the last day of the Thanksgiving break. That means it is time to get all of the Christmas decorations put up in preparation for the great celebration at the end of the year. My wife and I made our finishing touches today and now we can focus on other activities during this festive season.

Normally I have all of my Christmas shopping done before Thanksgiving. This year I have identified what gifts I will be sending but am waiting as the gifts I am giving my children are perishable and I want them to arrive as close to the magic day as possible. I have a reminder on my calendar to make sure they are purchased online at the right time. For my grandchildren I am providing experiences and they have been purchased already. You have to love the Internet and the ease of ordering everything online including tickets to a Monster Truck show.

With the house decorated and gifts purchased or at least identified, I can focus on those other things that make this time of year special. My calendar is all set with my wife's office Christmas party as well as a few other festivities to attend. There is also a huge batch of Christmas movies cued up and ready to watch in the evenings. I also have my skis waxed and ready to go. Actually I skied every day during the Thanksgiving break so I probably need to wax them again.

Given the right preparation this can be a magical time of the year. Unfortunately a lot of people feel the stress associated with getting ready for Christmas. So my Christmas wish this year is that everyone can relax and focus on what is important. While some may emphasize the religious aspect of the season, one thing we can all agree upon is time spent with family. All the gifts, parties, music, and movies don't really matter.

Thanksgiving 2024

Thanksgiving is almost over and the uneaten turkey is sitting in the fridge waiting to be made into sandwiches over the next couple of days. I wanted to take a few moments and write about what I am thankful for. While it may seem like the world is in turmoil, there really is a lot going well and I would be remiss in not expressing thanks.

This blog is focused on technology and I am definitely thankful for all of the time-saving benefits technology provides. I like being able to instantly look up thing on the Internet. Want to know what stores remained opened on this holiday, simply pull out your smartphone and do an Internet search. Want to heat something up quickly, use that convenient microwave. I even enjoy centralized heating keeping me and my family warm as we gathered today.

That leads me to what I am truly thankful for, and that is my family. I got to spend this morning skiing with my youngest daughter who is a ski instructor. Fortunately she didn't have to work so we could take a number of runs together. My wife joined us and I am thankful for her. Later today my son and his family joined us for a wonderful feast. My parents and oldest daughter joined us as well. Then my youngest son joined us for a quick video call and shared his thanks with us along with his family. Yes, family is what I am most thankful for on this day of remembering what is important to each of us. 

I wish it was possible for my family to all be together on this special holiday but it wasn't. Fortunately technology filled the gap and those that couldn't gather physically could with a little help from technology. Hopefully you were able to spend time with those important to you today.

Serendipity

Last week I had to fly to New York City on business. I had hoped to be able to stay home and attend the meetings virtually. Then I received the invitation to be the emcee for the conference. Unfortunately you can't do that from a distance and so I flew out on Monday and planned to fly back early Friday morning. Towards the end of the week it looked like I could fly back on Thursday evening as our meetings would be completed by 2:30pm.

Usually there are a lot of dinners and socializing events when a large number of colleagues descend upon an office for such a conference. When I booked my flights and hotel, I assumed there would be something to celebrate the end of our working sessions. One of my coworkers based in New York pulled me aside on the first day and let me know he would not be able to attend anything on Thursday evening. Naturally I inquired why. He said that he and his wife planned to attend a screening of "Better Off Dead" where the main actor, John Cusack would attend and talk about making the movie.

"Better Off Dead" is one of my favorite movies from my teenage years as it came out in 1985. Naturally I told my coworker that sounded great. Next I did an Internet search to see if I could get more details on the event. I discovered they still had tickets and so I asked my coworker if I could attend with him. He knew my love of the movie and seemed excited to have me join him. He let me know what seats he and his wife purchased and I tried to get seats close by. 

The screening exceeded my expectations. How often do you get to see a movie with a bunch of fans that know all of the little jokes that most people miss unless they have seen it many times? Furthermore, tickets cost a lot, so only the most loyal of fans attended and so I experienced no distractions during the film.

John came up on stage shortly after the film ended and shared some interesting perspectives on making the film as well as his lengthy career. Then he opened it up to the audience for us to ask questions. I had one I wanted to ask but it became clear that John has made so many movies and made this one so long ago that he might not be able to answer it, so I remained quiet. I didn't want to put him on the spot and ask a question he couldn't answer. Others asked very good questions and I appreciated the extra hour added to the movie to listen to the main actor.

I got home and my wife asked me how I enjoyed the screening. I told her it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I enjoyed it. Should a similar activity come up in the future, I don't need to do it again. My kids are all jealous as they are fans of the movie and would also liked to attend. Unfortunately the only reason I did is because of a series of events that aligned in my favor. One that stands out is that I could find the screening with a quick Internet search and see that tickets could be purchased at the last minute. I call that serendipity.

AWS Documentation is Awful

This past week I had a coworker ask me to help with some Amazon Web Services (AWS) administration. I needed to go in and check the last time a handful of users had logged into the system. I had been shown how to do this in the past but didn't do a good job of taking notes. I didn't worry about it as I figured I could just use an Internet search engine to help me get the information I needed. That didn't work at all.

AWS is such a large system that there are half a dozen ways to get the information I needed. Furthermore the documentation kept saying to use a tool and write code to query log files. From my training at the beginning of the year, I knew there is an easy way to point-and-click my way to success. The thought of writing code felt like building a car before going to the grocery store to buy some eggs.

Fortunately I remembered some of what I had been taught and got roughly to the right place. Using information sent to me by my coworker I was able to stumble around for bit and get the information I needed. She sent me a screenshot and it provided the missing clues I needed.

I have a notebook that I keep for work. I write down notes from meetings and helpful hints. Naturally I wrote down all the steps to repeat how to get the information I needed. Logic follows that if I have had to get the information once, there is a good chance I will need it again. Next time I don't want to waste half an afternoon trying to figure it out.

Technology Improves Our Lives

This morning I woke up at 6am and ran through my usual morning routine of breakfast. Then I got ready to go skiing. It is early November which means lifts are not really running at Alta and so if you want to ski, you get to hike up the hill and earn your turns. My daughter joined me today.

Yesterday we did the same thing and had the luxury of clear skies. Today we started driving in a rainstorm that turned into snow the higher in elevation we drove. We arrived at the Wildcat lot in a full-blown blizzard. My daughter and I don't care as we live by the philosophy that there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. We got our skis ready and started climbing the hill while it snowed heavily around us. 

I felt incredibly comfortable as I hiked up the hill. We both made sure not to overdress as that would cause us to sweat too much which would freeze and make us cold. Instead the breathability of our Gortex-like shells kept the water out and allowed our perspiration to escape. I thought to myself that even though I was outside, I felt comfortable enough as if inside.

Technology constantly makes our lives better. I would not want to trade places with the wealthiest people of 200 years ago because of our many modern conveniences. Clothing is just one example. The many uses of electricity also come to mind. We can use it to keep us warm in the winter and cool in the summer, not to mention run our computers, light our homes, and power our entertainment devices. Yes, I am happy living right now.

An 8-Year Old with 8 Computers

Yesterday I talked with one of the kids in my neighborhood who is about 8 years old. He talked about how he had 8 different computers. Naturally I asked how he came to be the proud owner of so many computers. His dad answered that the local thrift store, Savers, sells used computers for around $5 and an amazing number of them actually work. That made sense and for a kid totally interested in computers, he probably loves playing with them as a hobby.

My next question amounted to what he does with all of them. He responded that he installs different operating systems. This got my mind wondering. While I imagined he played with Microsoft Windows, I wondered if he knew about the many other operating systems available for standard computers. I followed up with which is is favorite. He surprised me by answering MacOS.

While you can install MacOS on some Intel-based computers, it requires very specific hardware and I asked about that. His father responded that he has played with Hackintosh but it didn't sound very successful. That implies that you can find Mac hardware at Savers which is what is required when installing MacOS. I may have to go see if I can find a decent computer for $5.

Next I asked about Linux as that is an obvious choice for older Intel-based computers. The young man mentioned that his favorite flavor is Ubuntu and it impressed me. There are quite a few variants but Ubuntu is my current favorite flavor of Linux.

I remember being young like that and having a huge interest in computers. My dad did too and we actually had a large computer in our house. Back then it looked like 3 refrigerators and 2 dishwashers next to each other. It had a total of 256 kilobytes of memory and 20 megabytes of hard disk space. Calculators have more memory and storage than that now.

It is always interesting to see young people interested in computers and my neighbor surprised me. I enjoyed talking with the little guy and wish him the best of luck as he learns about this magnificent technology. My hope is that he continues with the hobby as it will serve him well later in life.

Daytime Television Blows

Last night I got a nasty case of the stomach flu. I woke up every 90 minutes to empty my stomach contents. Fortunately towards the end of the night, my stomach would cramp up, waking me, but I didn't need to go pray to the porcelain god. I think my body recognized I didn't have anything else to expel. I ended up staying in bed until 8am, which is late considering I usually get up at 6am. When I finally did wake up, I didn't feel like doing anything and so I turned on the television to see what I could find on broadcast TV. From the title of this post you can tell I came away disappointed.

When all of the streaming services became ubiquitous, I cancelled my cable subscription and increased my Internet speed. Now I really only use broadcast television to watch the nightly news every evening. Being too lazy to look for something to watch online, I cycled through the normal TV channels. Some of them had local news shows and others had national morning news shows. None of them interested me. I looked at a few of the public broadcasting networks and again came away disappointed. Ultimately after 30 minutes I turned off the TV and headed to my office to read e-mail.

I did the bare minimum e-mail for work and attended an hour-long meeting that got shortened to 15 minutes when I explained I spent the night with the stomach flu. Then I headed to my TV room to watch what I wanted in the comfort of my soft-padded-leather couches. While I could watch shows coming over the airwaves, I also had all of my streaming services including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, and even YouTube. I entertained myself while eating a very soft and bland breakfast without the hassle of channel surfing. After about an hour and seeing that all the food I ate stayed down, I ate some grapes and yogurt as my energy is low and my stomach empty.

I have not really watched daytime-broadcast TV in about a decade and I have to say I haven't missed much. It is filled with the same programming I used to hate when I stayed home from school because of illness. Fortunately we have many more entertainment options and are not stuck watching VHS video tapes with their lousy 320x240-pixel resolution. Technology really does make being sick easier to deal with.

Coming Together After Such A Publicized Election

My wife spent Tuesday in bed with a nasty case of the stomach flu. Rather than keep her awake in our bedroom by watching the election results, I migrated to the guest bedroom with another TV and viewed the news. While the country focused on the presidential race, I hoped to find out how some of our local elections fared. Unfortunately the majority of the news focused on who would become the nation's next president.

My wife is surprised at how much time I spent focused on this year's election. She is the Political Science major and so I usually just ask her who to vote for. This year I felt the need to do my own research and decide for myself the best candidates. In the past two presidential elections I felt I couldn't vote for any of the candidates and wrote in "Tom Hanks." He's a likeable guy and would probably win if he ever decided to run. I know that I threw my vote away and so this year I wanted to vote for someone that represented what I want to see in the government.

One thing I noticed while doing research is that you cannot trust the mainstream media for fair and unbiased reporting. We all have our favorite candidates and adjust the narrative to reinforce our position. It is a natural human trait and I can't fault the journalists for doing so. Unfortunately the CBS news show "60 Minutes" crossed the line with their interview of a presidential candidate. A question was asked and the candidate responded. 60 Minutes then went back and edited the answer. The answer they put in came from a completely different question. It is only because of the Internet that we have both answers and know the gravity of what took place. It is important to note that I do not fault the candidate for the actions of 60 Minutes. Decades of journalistic integrity disappeared after this stunt and I have stopped watching any news show from CBS.

After doing my own research, I discovered it takes a lot of work to find out what the truth really is. Truths have been reported as lies and in other situations, lies have been spread unchecked. The unfortunate result of all these lies is that the public has become polarized to the point of hating the other side. Once the emotion of hate enters our minds, it is difficult for logic to temper our actions. 

Now that the election is over, I have seen both sides trying to do the right thing. The winner seems gracious and the name calling has stopped. The loser seems gracious and is encouraging her supporters to continue to push for the changes she hoped to enact if she had won. Unfortunately there are a number of people on the Internet sharing videos of themselves reacting emotionally to the outcome. I started watching a YouTube video created by someone whose candidate won and it showed all of the emotional breakdowns of those who supported the other candidate. I didn't watch long as I found it to be in poor taste. Instead of gloating over a win and delighting in the suffering of the other side, we should all be reaching out and trying to understand the issues others felt so strongly about and why.

I did not watch the second presidential debate in this election cycle but I did watch the only VP debate. I came away having more respect for both candidates. While I had vilified one candidate thanks to the news, I realized both candidates agreed significantly and that put us all on more common ground than I originally thought.

My hope is that we can all come together and accomplish great things. Feelings may be hurt because a friend or family member voted for the other side. Now that the election is over, I hope we can forgive and rekindle those important relationships.

Is it too Early for Christmas Songs?

Halloween is over and our next major holiday in the United States is Thanksgiving. My daughters grew up saying that we need to respect the turkey and not get too excited about Christmas until after the giant eat-a-thon. Now they are changing their tunes and think it is fine to play Christmas music a little earlier.

The day after Halloween, the Disney resorts pulled down all their pumpkin decorations and re-themed their resorts for Christmas. On November first I started getting ads for Black-Friday specials and encouraged to start Christmas shopping. It seems that everyone is eager for the largest holiday of the year.

So is it too early for Christmas songs? My personal thought is I have to restrict how many times I hear certain songs that become popular at the end of the year. The most popular Christmas song is Mariah Carey's "All I want for Christmas is you." It turns out that it is also the most hated holiday song. I fall into the later category and want to limit how many times I hear it.

One advantage I see with starting the holiday song list early is it gives me time to learn more Christmas songs on my guitar. I generally take a few weeks to memorize one and if I wait until the month of December, I never really learn them. That being said, I have to like the songs I learn because I play them so many times.

So what do you think? Is it time to play those old familiar favorites or should we wait another month? Let me know your thoughts.

Vacation Planning

This morning my wife and I went for a walk and she expressed a desire to hike rim-to-rim in the Grand Canyon. This is kind of like her idea of climbing Mt. Rainier. While it sounds like fun, it is not something you think about and then do the next day. there is a lot of training involved and requires about a year of preparation. Even then, there is no guarantee you will be successful.

As we walked, we talked about the logistics required for such an adventure. Do we start at the North Rim and hike to the South Rim? Do we stay at the lodges on each rim? How long is the hike and what is the expected elevation gain? We talked through some of the details, most importantly that we would do south to north. While it is a 22-mile hike, the drive requires 4 hours and needs to be factored into the planning.

Most vacations require some planning and the Internet has become very useful for such adventures. In the past, you might have to go through travel magazines or books to find information. Now you just use your favorite search engine and all the data you need is at your fingertips. Everything from lodging to tips for training. You can even find videos of someone else doing the same thing.

We came home from our walk and I immediately looked at lodging options. Sometimes staying in one of our National Parks requires reservations be made over a year in advance, other times you can't make reservations until after January. Fortunately we can reserve our lodging now, provided we avoid a few important dates.

My wife wants to do the adventure with some of her coworkers and so she needed to go to the office to confirm dates. She knows which ones to avoid and we should be able to make plans soon. Now all we need to do is to develop a training plan. And stick to it, of course.

Dead-End Technology

Growing up the world seemed full of endless possibilities. I remember reading a story about how one day we would travel on supersonic aircraft regularly. I also saw promises of personal jet packs and flying cars. Those ideas seemed wonderful to a young kid and the future looked bright. Unfortunately none of that has really materialized. Why not? There are physical limitations that create what I call dead-end technology.

While we did have supersonic passenger flights for several decades, the fuel costs made it prohibitively expensive for all but the super wealthy. Friction and gravity require a lot of energy to overcome and there are physical limits to what can be achieved. The same hold true with personal jet packs. When it comes to flying cars, there are numerous safety issues but technology may catch up to where that may be possible, just not soon.

My oldest daughter asked me if I am concerned about the increasing size of hurricanes and I told her there are physical limitations that will keep them from getting much bigger. What will increase is the number of large hurricanes and that is something to worry about. The highest sustained winds ever recorded came from the Pacific hurricane Patricia in 2015 with sustained wind speeds of 215 miles per hour (345 km/h). I doubt we will get above that number by more than one or two miles per hour. We'll just see more hurricanes getting close to that number.

So what about computers? How come they continue to get smaller, faster, and less expensive? The limitations placed on them have not been based on dead-end technology. The switch from vacuum tubes to transistors allowed them to shrink and require a lot less power. Advances in photo lithography have continued to allow them to get smaller. Unfortunately we are getting to a point where it will soon be physically impossible to continue the shrinking trend. Right now, the smallest traces on computer chips are only 3 atoms wide. That is tiny.

So have we reached the limit on computers? Nope. Currently computer chips are built in a very 2-dimensional way where they are mostly, but not completely, flat. Instead of computers being built on chips, we can build them into cubes. Let's see how far that gets us but I think there are plenty of advances that can be made.

About 20 years ago I helped my brother-in-law make some decisions about buying a new computer and told him to get the biggest and highest-resolution monitor he could afford. I told him it would last a long time because monitor technology seemed very stable and his monitor would last through multiple generations of computers. Then flat-screen monitors entered the market and proved me wrong. It took an unforeseen technology advancement to enhance the art of computer and television displays.

So what will it take to have supersonic air travel for the masses? Or those personal jet packs? We will have to throw away the dead-end technology like we did with cathode-ray tubes (CRT) and embrace new technologies like we did with LCD and LED screens. What that is for transportation, I don't know. It may be as simple as devising a low-energy method of defeating gravity or cheaper and denser forms of energy. All I know is I hope someone figures it out cause those personal jet packs look like a lot of fun.

Camera on Your Phone

When cameras first started becoming integrated with mobile phones, I thought it was a needless accessory. I expressed this thought to a good friend who owned an electrical business. He explained that the idea had merit as his guys could take pictures of electrical panels and send them to the office for help with difficult installations. I realized my position was a bit short sighted and opened up to the idea that they could be useful.

As smartphones continued to evolve it became very clear that having a camera integrated with a mobile phone opens up quite a few possibilities. Probably the one used most often is video calls. In my case, I spend a lot of time talking to my grand kids with video. They are young enough that our interactions never last very long but I get to see them as they grow even though a couple of them are half-way across the country.

Working for Sony, I have a really nice DSLR camera but I hardly ever use it. The camera on my phone is not nearly as nice but it is good enough. My wife and I spent a week in Disney World with two of our granddaughters and we took a lot of pictures using just our phones. At the end of the trip, we compiled all of the pictures into a book and have it sitting on a table in our living room. I wouldn't have tried that with the original camera phones due to poor picture quality but technology has evolved to being much better than film cameras prevalent back in the 80's and 90's.

Recently my wife and I returned to Orlando, Florida on business and we rented a car from a very reputable rental-car agency. When we returned our car before catching our flight home, I noticed a gentleman using his camera to take pictures of his car to document the condition with which he returned the vehicle. I thought it could be overkill until I got home and received an e-mail from the rental car company notifying me that the car I returned had damage: a scratch in the door. When I picked up the car several days earlier I noticed the car had a lot of scratches including the one on the door but didn't bother documenting them. When picking up the car, I mentioned the damage to the agent. In hindsight, I should have used the camera on my phone to document all of the damage on the car so as not to get blamed for a scratch I didn't create.

I have been wrong with the usefulness of several technologies and can admit when I have made a mistake. Cameras integrated into smartphones is actually very useful. There are constantly new uses I am discovering. Should you find yourself reaching for a pen to copy a note, remember that phone camera and take a picture. You will capture more information and don't have to worry about reading your own writing.

The Marriott Pillows Scam E-mail

I just checked my e-mail this morning and received an interesting message that is obviously a scam. The subject line says, "Welcome to Our Marriot Luxury Pillows Survey Zone." The first thing I noticed is that they spelled Marriott wrong as there are 2-T's at the end of the name, not 1. My curiosity drove me to figure out what the scam is.

I am not foolish enough to click on the link in the message and so I typed the subject of it into my usual Internet search engine and came across a nice Reddit post explaining the scam. Unfortunately it is a world-wide scam as people from the UK posted about it as well as fellow Americans. It seems you fill out the survey and then to get the pillows you have to pay a $7 or $8 shipping fee. Later they go back and try to charge you around $60. If you use a debit card, you have to rely on your bank to catch the fraud as credit card companies provide protection from such nefarious individuals.

I am a big fan of Marriott hotels having recently stayed at one during a trip to Orlando with 2 of my grand kids. I hate to see a good company like that associated with such a scam even though they can't control bad actors on the Internet. Hopefully others will see my post and not fall for such an obvious fraud. I also can't believe the thieves are only trying to get $60. That seems like a lot of work on their part for very little reward. I wonder if they think that is the threshold where people don't pursue recourse. Whatever their thoughts, don't click on the link and stay safe online.

A Camera For the Blind

One of the advantages about working for Sony is that we can attend product presentations about some of our very unique product offerings. Yesterday I spent about 30 minutes learning about a camera we are making for blind photographers. That sounds a bit strange and so I made sure to listen intently.

The person giving the presentation is a Sony employee working on the product who is also legally blind. He has macular degeneration that has slowly progressed to where he is now. Fortunately he has been able to work on this product that uses a retina projection system allowing him to effectively see as it bypasses the parts of his eye that are no longer working. Instead an eye-safe laser projects the image seen through the viewfinder directly onto his retina. I found the technology and product utterly amazing.

One of the first questions a colleague asked is if we can use the technology to make glasses, effectively giving blind people the ability to see. Someone else provided a link to an existing product and so the short answer is, yes. I'm sure that a number of those with similar macular degeneration would appreciate knowing there is hope to see again. I know I value my eyesight tremendously and would love to know this technology exists should I need it in the future.

One of the first things pointed out about the Sony DSC-HX99 RNV product is that it will not work for everyone. That is why there is a try-before-you-buy program with 2 options before making the purchase. The first is to ask for a demo unit that Sony will ship to you for a 2-week trial. The second is to visit a handful of retail outlets where you can try the device. I imagine everyone will have different results based on individual levels of sight. After all, it would be a very poor product experience to make the purchase only to discover it doesn't work. I like that Sony is providing a 2-week trial for those not located near one of the retail stores as there isn't one near me, should I be interested.

There are a lot of amazing technologies that are improving life for those with special needs, such as blindness. If someone told me that Sony is making a camera for this demographic, I would probably have laughed not thinking it was serious. Fortunately they are and providing hope to others. This is one of those products that make me glad to work for Sony.

I Voted Today

This year's election season has received a lot of attention. We have a former President who didn't win a second term trying again and the current Vice President who nobody voted for in the primaries. While your Presidential vote is very important, there are also a lot of other races that can use your input. I have been eagerly awaiting casting my choices this year and so when my mail-in ballot arrived today, I immediately opened it and scanned through all of my choices.

I carefully read the choices for the President/Vice-President race and had to chuckle at one entry. Here in Utah, there is a candidate named "Lucifer 'Justin Case' Everylove". When you read the name aloud, the whole Just-in-Case should elicit a giggle or two. I don't plan to vote for him but I did take the chance to look him up to see if he is for real. He is and is from New Hampshire. I think he only made it onto Utah's ballot but you have to give him props for being there. That being said, please don't waste your vote on a novelty candidate. I selected my candidate of choice and then moved onto everything else.

Naturally there are a number of races where I already knew who I would vote for and filled those in quickly. Then I came to a number of the lesser-known options. Who should I vote for when it comes to county assessor? If you want to take the easy way out, you can vote along party lines. Unfortunately you might not be making the best choice. I actually took the time to look up all the candidates and make sure I voted for people who share my same values. It added a few minutes to the voting process but know I know my picks are really who I want to see elected.

The next section of my ballot listed out Judges. While Utah judges are not elected, we have the right to vote if they should remain judges or be removed. The ballot even provided a website to visit with basic information about each judge. I reviewed the information and decided that 3 of the 11 or so judges should be removed. Each judge met the minimum quality requirements set forth by the State of Utah but 3 of them could use some improvement. I hope others in Utah spent as much time researching. People may disagree with my choices but at least their choices are also informed.

The second-to-last section dealt with taxes and I have some very strong opinions on those. I made my choices accordingly and then looked at the final section which talks about amendments to our State Constitution. Interestingly enough, 2 of the 4 amendments have been eliminated so that no matter how I vote, it won't matter. I looked up the other 2 and discovered the reasoning behind them. More importantly I discovered that not one single group is opposed to them. To me, that seems pretty intuitive as to how I should vote. It also helps that I agree with them as well. Understanding why they are being proposed helped as I made my choice too.

I have to admit that I have done more research for this election than any in the past. Normally I just ask my wife as she is the Political Science major. I encourage you to take extra time as you vote this year to make sure you are choosing representatives that align with your values. You may not think your vote counts but it definitely does for some of the smaller races in this election cycle. Should you live in a swing state like Pennsylvania, it definitely counts for the Presidential election too.

Playing with Large Language Models (LLMs)

Yesterday I participated in a hands-on lab to integrate large-language-model (LLM) technology to help generate complex SQL queries to look into our data. The lab only lasted an hour and I learned a lot during that time. It also highlighted one of the use cases for LLMs for more than just a toy to help write high-school papers.

When ChatGPT released, it garnered a lot of attention. While everyone seemed impressed, I didn't see a lot of people asking how the technology can be used for good. Automatic code generations seem to be one of those good uses that can really help us in our daily lives. Rather than spending countless hours writing thousands of lines of code to do something important, you can specify what you want and have created and the LLM will generate the code for you. That is what yesterday's lab explored.

For those that don't know SQL, it is a very simple and almost English-like language used to query databases. If you have a table that contains information about customers you can use something like this to query the database:

SELECT firsname, lastname, first_purchase_date FROM customers;

This will list out all customers' names and date when they made their first purchases. It is pretty simple, right? Well it gets complicated once you try to filter that data or include info from other tables in the database. While most of my queries are 25 lines or less, it is not uncommon for me to write 500-line ones. This is where an LLM can really help streamline my work.

In order to keep the lab under an hour, all the data and most of the code was created so I just needed to put it in the right place. I loaded the data into an online database server and downloaded the code to my laptop. The only modification I needed to do to the code was update the connection string to point to my online database. Then we ran through the code see how it worked.

The code included a file to describe the 3 tables in the lab and that turned out to be the secret sauce. I closely looked through the description file and realized that it would take about an hour per table to duplicate this file for the database I work with on a daily basis. When there are only 3 tables, this isn't a large effort. Unfortunately my database has thousands of tables and it would be a huge undertaking to use this technology in my environment.

I had hoped that the LLM would be able to look at my database tables and infer what information they contained. This is possible but unfortunately is not nearly as accurate as having a data expert provide this detail first.

I'm glad I attended the lab and I learned a lot. It also demystified what is going on with this particular LLM. While I hoped I could use the output of the lab to make it easier for non-data scientists to query the database, I did come away with a strong understanding of the underlying technology.

Prepare Early For Natural Disasters

A few weeks ago I spent some time in Orlando, Florida at Disney World. Naturally I have an interest in the area as hurricane Milton heads towards it and is expected to do some serious damage. It is no secret that I enjoy keeping up on hurricanes every summer and keep the National Hurricane Center's website up on my computer throughout the summer months. I watched from a safe distance as hurricane Helene came up the west-coast of Florida and slammed into the panhandle of the state. Now only a short time later I am watching what is happening with Milton.

I am safe in my home in Utah nowhere near the devastating storm and so it is fairly easy to lob suggestions at those in Florida. While it is easy to tell everyone to get to safety and evacuate, that is much more difficult for some to do. I don't have to worry about finding a place to go. I don't have to worry about lost wages from missing work. I don't have to worry about going on a long drive where I probably won't be able to find gasoline for my car along the way. About the only thing I have going for me is that my advice isn't tainted with emotion, only logic.

Hurricane Milton isn't expected to make landfall until Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning. To me that seems like a lot of time to evacuate from those areas most likely to be dangerous. The reality is that leaving is so much easier said than done. That is why my advice to everyone really is to prepare early. I imagine a last-minute flight out of Orlando is not going to be cheap. Local authorities plan to close the airport Wednesday ahead of the storm's arrival. Looking at Delta's website this evening, a round-trip flight from Orlando to Salt Lake leaving tomorrow and returning a week later is over $2000. Furthermore there is only one seat left on a single available flight. No you don't have to go all the way to Salt Lake to escape the storm but the options to Atlanta are not much better and still cost almost $700.

So how can you prepare for such events? Take some time and sit down with your family to think about all of the possible natural disasters that can happen in your area. Think about earthquakes, major storms, wildfires,  or other things you have heard about that have hit close to home. Then think about possible options on where you could evacuate, should the need arise. If you have nowhere to go, do you have the supplies you need to shelter in place?

One of my biggest concerns is a lengthy power outage during the dead of winter. While I heat my home with natural gas I still require electricity to run the blower motor to circulate that heat throughout my house. I have a generator that I can use but it would take a lot of work to disconnect the furnace blower from my home electrical system and connect it to the generator. I would also have to be very careful to run the generator outside and nowhere near any air vents into the house. I don't want to kill my family with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Once you create your plan of attack for a natural disaster, it is important to have your plan written down and kept in a safe place. Trying to remember all of the great ideas you had will be tough as you try to avoid panicking. It is also a good idea to review those ideas periodically as things change and you may have better solutions. There are also a lot of resources on the Internet that may help with your planning.

My heart goes out to all of those in harm's way right now. I hope the storm lessens in severity and it is a regular-old-thunderstorm by the time it makes landfall. Unfortunately mother nature doesn't care what I want and so I don't put any stock into that happening. Instead let's hope most are prepared and there is little to no loss of life.

Modern Medicine

Yesterday I spent my morning at the oral surgeon having half a wisdom tooth removed. Today I am singing praises about modern medicine and how little pain I have compared to what it would have been like 30-years ago. Everyone talks about how much computers have evolved in a relatively short amount of time. I think medicine comes close.

So why only half a tooth? When I first had my wisdom teeth reviewed for removal over 30 years ago, they didn't need to come out. As I continued to get dental check-ups, I could see the root of one tooth getting more and more entangled with a major nerve in my jaw. Removing the tooth could damage the nerve and as it didn't impact any other teeth, I left it in. Then as luck would have it, I developed an abscess near that non-impacted wisdom tooth necessitating its removal. After talking with my oral surgeon, he suggested only removing the infected part and leaving the roots. Now of course the roots may need to come out later but not right now.

I got home from the surgery yesterday and had no pain whatsoever. They gave me a time-release version of Novocaine that lasted all day. The only downside is that I spent the day looking like a stroke victim as I couldn't really control one side of my face. I didn't mind as I didn't plan to see anyone except my wife and she frequently sees me at my worst.

I am not a fan of opiates to help control pain and opted to go with the new super painkiller on the market: Tylenol mixed with Advil. New research is showing that taking the two over-the-counter medications is more effective than either by themselves even in stronger doses. This is a fairly recent development and I have to confess it works very well.

Anyone who has ever done a lot of yard work or exercised especially hard knows that the worst day for muscle pain is 2 days later. My surgeon told me to expect the most painful day to be tomorrow and not just the day after surgery. Today I am not too concerned as I feel relatively pain free. I am making sure to keep up on my Advil/Tylenol mix as well as using ice packs about every hour. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

When I found out I needed to have half a tooth removed, the surgeon made a comment that recovery would be more difficult at my age now than if I was 20. My thought is that medicine has evolved to the point where I am glad I had half a tooth removed today instead of a full tooth 30 years ago. I'm sure I am doing better as an old man than I would have as a young one way back when.

Working From Home

My LinkedIn feeds seem to be dominated by news from Amazon that they are making their employees return to work. Needless to say, the employees are not too happy about it. There are theories about how Amazon is going to use the new policy to get rid of surplus employees. Normally a company would layoff those that are not needed. With this new policy they will be able to fire them without severance benefits, saving themselves significant money.

As you can imagine, I think this policy is disappointing. I think that one thing we all learned from COVID-19 is that not everyone is required to be in the office to get work done. It is proven that some people are even more productive working from home as there are not as many distractions at home as there are in the office. I recognize this is not true for everyone.

Fortunately the company I work for is embracing the work-from-home concept. Sony recently sent out an e-mail to a large group of employees talking about how only spending 2 or 3 days in the office has become the new way of working. The e-mail then goes on discussing changes the company is making to reflect this new normal. It is encouraging to me to know that my company is keeping up with new work trends and not trying to enforce policies that make things miserable for everyone.

While there are a lot of employees that thrive working from home, there are also those employees that become less productive. My wife worked with someone that only got about 80% of her work done because of not being in the office. Unfortunately she insisted on traveling around the United States in a recreational vehicle (RV) and so having her come into the office could not be an option. The business owner opted to replace her with someone that now completes 100% of the work assigned. Doing it in the office is not a requirement.

Amazon may lose a lot of quality employees with their new policy. It would be better for them to take a more personalized approach and only require those that need to be in the office to return. Unfortunately that is much more difficult to implement than the blanket policy they have unveiled. I'm glad I didn't take that job at Amazon now.

Get Your Flu Shot

There are a lot of strong feelings about vaccines and if you are opposed to them, feel free to disregard this post. For those that think they are a benefit, please keep reading. As you can probably guess, I fall into this second category.

My company sends me notices every fall to remind me to get my annual flu shot. When I actually went into an office, they had healthcare professionals come to the office and provide free flu shots to all those interested in receiving them. Now that I work from home, they send me a voucher that can be used at any Walgreens to get a free flu shot. This year I printed up the voucher and headed down to my local Walgreen's pharmacy. When I got there, the pharmacy area of the store had a huge line and so I turned around and came home.

I thought about going to another store in the area but opted to schedule an appointment at the one around the corner from my house. I logged into the Walgreen's website and set up a time for my shot the next day. Then I set an alarm on my phone so I wouldn't forget. I also added the appointment to my work calendar so nobody would try to schedule a meeting at the same time.

The next day the time for my appointment rolled around and I drove the short mile to the pharmacy. I went back to where they administer the shot and waited all of 30 seconds. Then a nice young lady escorted me into a private room, rolled up my sleeve, and gave me a shot containing the flu vaccine. While I set aside 30 minutes in my calendar, I only needed about 10. I quickly drove home and resumed my work.

The one thing common with all vaccines is a sore arm and I felt that the next day but not severely. Sometimes there are very mild flu-like symptoms but I didn't feel any of that. The weekend has passed and I actually feel this has been one of the easiest flu shots ever.

For the past couple years I have not bothered to get my flu shot and never came down with the flu. This year I don't want to take that chance. I let my COVID vaccine expire and came down with it in August. My dad didn't bother to get a shingles vaccine and just spent the last week suffering from the ailment. Because of these two incidents, I felt it prudent to get my flu vaccine this year.

Hopefully you don't fall victim to the normalcy bias where you feel it unnecessary to get the flu vaccine because you haven't gotten sick over the past couple of years without it. It only takes a few minutes to get the shot and most insurance covers the cost so it is free. You never know if you will get exposed and those few minutes can keep you from getting sick for a week or more. After all it could mean a lost week of skiing for me.

Robot Vacuum: Hide-and-Seek Champion

This morning I went to empty the dust bin on one of my robot vacuums and noticed my wife had beat me to it. I asked if she had emptied our second one and she had not. I headed upstairs and quickly saw that the device had not found its way back to the charging station. I announced the search by yelling, "Marco," like the pool game I played as a kid and heard my wife chuckle. I only wish the creators of my robot vacuum had added a function for the device to beep when it hears someone yelling "Marco."

My wife volunteered to help me find the disappearing robot and I told her not to worry as there is only 500 square feet to hide in. She still came and helped. I checked all the usual spots but could not find the device. I started opening closet doors to see if it had managed to squeeze in and close the door behind it. I checked under the 2 beds on that level of the house. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find the missing robot.

At this point I decided that I should award hide-and-seek champion of the world because I looked everywhere. Now my wife and I started looking more closely in places we had already checked. My wife eventually found the robot. It had climbed on top of some storage items under one of the beds and safely hidden itself next to the box springs. My wife came out carrying the device and laughing. She emptied the dust bin while put the robot vacuum on the charger.

We have quite a few devices that make our lives easier and our robot vacuums are still on that list. Should you decide to pick one or more up, just be warned that you may be playing hide-and-seek once a month. Most of the time it will be a short game. On days like today, it may be a lot longer.

Fact Checking Crazy Statements

I have not hidden that I am not a fan of election season and we are in the middle of it right now. One problem we have this year is all of the crazy statements being made. I try to stay politically neutral in this blog as I try to focus on technical issues and so I will try not to pick a side and just explain what I am seeing. Recently I have noticed that both sides of the US Presidential Election are making crazy statements. While the news tries to fact check some of the statements, they are definitely biased. Fortunately we all have the ability to check the validity of things being said.

As a child I used to make all sorts of crazy statements that seemed true in my mind but probably crossed the line with actual facts. I would say things like, "I just rode my bike faster than anyone has ever gone before." I doubt I am alone with such hyperbole but children are allowed such liberties. Politicians running for office should not be allowed to make similarly crazy statements. A quick Internet search would show that the record for the fastest person on a bicycle is 183.93 miles per hour and set by a woman in 2018 on the Utah Salt Flats. I don't think my 7-year-old self came close to that number even though I rode down a hill. Whenever you hear someone say something like crime rates and inflation are both down, it is easy to run your own Internet query and see if it is true. Doing so will allow you to see how the statistics have been manipulated and you may discover that you disagree with the politician's comment.

The problem with doing your own fact checking is that it takes more time than accepting statements as facts. Most people don't want to go through the effort and politicians know that. So does the media. Unfortunately a lot of the fact checking done by the media is wrong. When a politician says something crazy like, "This policy enacted by my opponent is causing birds to fly upside down," the media instantly dismisses the statement as an outright lie. Have they bothered to check the validity of it? Nope. It just sounds so outlandish that they dismiss it and nobody bothers to correct them even if it is true. I have discovered that a number of crazy statements thrown out by this year's presidential candidates sound utterly stupid and sensationalized but have more merit than mainstream media wants to admit. I only wish more people would do such research.

Ultimately there is a bias we all have called, "Confirmation Bias." In a nutshell it says that no matter what facts we are presented, we will use the data to strengthen our current belief. If we favor a particular candidate, we twist negative stories about him or her to reinforce why we like the person. My guess is that any fact checking results in strengthening of your current belief about a candidate. So if you have made up your mind as to whom you are voting for this year, fact checking is a waste of time.

Not a Fan of Disney's Magic Band+

I spent last week in Disney World with my wife and a couple of granddaughters. Whenever one of my grand kids turns 5, we take them to Disney for a couple days. This year we had 2 granddaughters turn 5 and so we brought them together. It made for a fun trip but I'm not sure the extra $35 investment in Disney's MagicBand+ is worth the extra cost.

My son is a huge Disney fan and loves taking his family to Disneyland and Disney World. He invested in the watch-like devices for his family and suggested we do the same. He loves staying close to Disneyland or at the lower-cost resort hotels within Disney World. He has also done a cruise on the Disney Cruise Line. For him, he just loads park tickets and room access onto the bands and doesn't have to worry about carrying extra key cards. He also is a fan of the Lightning Lane and can add that to the bands.

We had a very different situation for our trip last week. First off, we stayed at an off-property hotel using frequent stay points. That means the bands wouldn't help us get into our room. We also had a height limit with our 5-year old granddaughters. One measured just over 38 inches but under 40. That means we could not ride most of the thrill rides. Those are the ones with the longest lines where it makes sense to pay for Lightning Lane access. We also visited the park when it seemed fairly empty compared to other times of the year. We walked onto most rides.

Without the need to use the Lightning Lanes, we really only used the MagicBand+ to enter the parks. Of the 4 days we visited parks in Disney World, the bands had problems during 2 of them. They worked perfectly on the first day. On the second, 3 of the 4 bands had issues and needed to be reset. One thing they didn't tell us on the first day is that the finger print for a 5-year old is not very reliable and that we should have used an adult's finger. We fixed that and then my wife's device reported itself as stolen and turned itself off. We had to reactivate it. All of this took time.

On the last day of our visit we ran into another issue with the bands and had to visit guest services once again. I'm not sure we would not have had those problems with a free paper card that gets handed out for those not willing to buy MagicBand+ bracelets but I would not have had to pay for them.

If you are on the fence about purchasing a Disney Magic and+ here are some criteria I would use before spending the money:

1. Are the parks crowded and do you have kids old enough to make Lightning Lanes worth the extra cost? If so, the MagicBand+ is much easier to use than fishing around in your pocket for easily lost paper cards.
2. Do you plan to return to the Disney parks many times for years to come or spend time on a Disney Cruise? If so, then it might be worth it.
3. Do you plan to stay at a Disney hotel? If so, then the Magic Band+ can be used as your room key and might be worth it.
4. Is this probably a one-time visit to a Disney park? Save your money and use your smartphone, which is also an option, or the free paper card they give you.

I hope this helps as you debate whether or not to spend the extra $35 for a piece of technology that I don't think works very well. Disney wants you to buy the device as it allows them to track your movement throughout the different parks, thanks to their ubiquitous golden statues that light up your wrist band whenever you walk by them. In my opinion, because of that tracking feature, they should be giving them out for free.

Airplane Tickets Printed or on Your Phone

I do a lot of travel for my job and am coming up on having flown over 2 Million miles. When it comes time to print out a ticket for a flight there are 2 options. The first is to actually use an old-fashioned printer and print a paper ticket. The second is to send a QR code to a smartphone and use that to board the plane. One would think it is a no-brainer and the smartphone is the way to go. For the technically savy, I would agree. My preference is to print a paper ticket though.

Yes I know that my seat may be updated between the time I check in and when I actually board my flight. If I used the airline's app, the seat is automatically changed and I don't have to pay attention to the monitors in the terminal. I also don't have to worry about losing my ticket. As I have said, the smartphone ticket seems to be the way to go.

The problem is that smartphones slow the boarding of the plane. I'm not sure how so many people can have such problems getting the ticket scanner to read a phone screen but it happens. I have waited for several minutes behind passengers who don't know you need to turn up the brightness so the QR code can be read properly. I have also seen countless travelers not able to find their ticket on the phone. Then of course there is the dreaded screen lock. You have your ticket ready to scan only to have the screensaver kick in and blank out the screen as you go to scan it. Ultimately I have found that pulling out a paper ticket speeds things up and gets me onto the plane quicker.

Amateur Scientists and Explorers

It is no secret that I enjoy my job at Sony. I love what I do and my work conditions could not be any better. However that doesn't keep me from thinking about changing careers every now and then. I've thought about being a high-school teacher and even spent a week as a substitute one. Unfortunately kids treat substitutes with an insane amount of disrespect. The morning of the first day of class a kid walked in and said, "You must be a total looser if this is the only job you could get." Little did he know that I could afford to be a substitute teacher because of my successful career in the tech industry.

I've also thought about making my passion my career. I could follow my youngest daughter's career path and be a ski instructor or work at a ski resort. My fear is that skiing would then become like work. Right now when I head up to the ski resort before work, it doesn't matter what the weather is like, I will only be there for an hour and don't mind skiing in storms. If skiing became my job, I might learn to detest snowy days instead of embracing them like I do now.

I've also thought about doing something relating to sailing. I currently have a sailboat that I keep in the Great Salt Lake and love to take it out as my schedule permits. The only problem with a sailboat is that it is a hole in the water you pour money into and there are not a lot of ways to make money with them. Sure I could try to offer tours but that requires getting a captain's license and that takes a lot of work.

I was thinking along the lines of how to make money with a sailboat and came up with a new idea related to our planet's oceans. It doesn't require a sailboat but tiny submarines instead. Imagine a spherical submarine the size of a softball or large grapefruit with 3 or 4 fins and a propeller. When it sits in the water, it barely floats so that if it loses power, the submarine would automatically rise to the surface. Now put a solar panel on the top of it to charge the device's battery. You could include a number of sensors such as GPS, pressure, and temperature. You may even put a 4K camera on the front of it with some sort of low-power LED illumination. If you do it right and control costs, my guess is you could keep the price under $100. That would allow all sorts of amateur scientists and explorers to use them for any number of purposes.

I think the idea has merit and am looking for feedback. No I don't plan to leave Sony to create such a device nor do I think they have any plans to create one, though I could always ask. Instead I would like to open source the idea and get feedback on what sensors should be included and how it would be used. Some simple ideas might be tracking the changes in ocean currents or using AI and the camera to have the device follow specific marine life without attaching a tag. Who knows, it might best provide a platform to improve current marine research technology.

Let me know what you think and if there is use for such an inexpensive robot submarine. How do you think it would best serve the marine research community? With an idea like this, feedback is always appreciated.

Time for a New Battery Again

I spent this last week on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California attending meetings. Naturally all sorts of problems arose at home in my absence. My wife and I care for our neighbor's house across the street and we had a few sprinkler problems. Fortunately I could talk my wife through them and we resolved them all without having to dig up any pipes or sprinkler heads. The only problem that had to wait for my return is that of my wife's laptop battery needing to be replaced.

My wife loves to use her laptop around the house unplugged from any power source. Then at the end of the day, she'll plug it in so it is ready to use for the next day. I generally keep mine plugged in at my desk and work there unless I am traveling. A little over 2 years ago I had to replace my wife's laptop battery. Thanks to iFixit.com it is easy to order a new one and have instant access to instructions on how to replace it.

While in California my wife informed me that she can only get about 30-minutes of use from her laptop before the battery is dead. She tried the usual remedies that include charging it overnight and then using the computer until the battery dies completely. Unfortunately nothing worked and so I ordered one last night. Fortunately I have an account with iFixit and they had a record of what I ordered the last time. I didn't have to try and figure out what battery she needed. Three clicks after I visited their site, I had the new one ordered.

Usually I prefer to visit online shopping sites as a guest and try not to create accounts unless I know I will be back. I have an Amazon account as I find myself needing something there on a monthly basis. With iFixit, I'm only there every couple of years or so. This time I am glad I have an account as it kept me from doing time-consuming research. If you have at least 3 electronic devices, such as a smartphone, laptop, or other battery-powered device, I highly recommend getting an account and ordering from them. It will save you a bit of a hassle in the future.

The new laptop battery will be here in a couple of days. My hope is that it lasts a few years. When it comes time to replace it, I think my wife will want a new computer. Right now, $50 is a much better price to pay than $1000. Besides, who wants to transfer all the data and files from one computer to another?

Who's Lying? The Democrats or the Republicans?

It is election season and I really hate election season. It means you are guaranteed to have your evening news hijacked by political reports and meaningless stories about politicians criticizing each other. Last night I went to watch the evening news and caught the tail end of President Biden's speech at the Democratic National Convention. I'm glad I could catch it as I wanted to see if he did better than during his debate with Trump over a month ago. It's nice to see he can still read a teleprompter.

Unfortunately one of his comments is in direct opposition to to what former President Trump said during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally right as someone attempted to assassinate him. According to comments after the event, the former president said he turned his head to highlight a slide on illegal immigration causing the bullet to miss his head except for a small part of his ear, saving his life. Trump was attempting to show how illegal immigration has skyrocketed under the Biden administration. However last night, President Biden claimed that illegal immigration is at its lowest level since even before he took office.

So who is right? Is one lying? Or are they both telling the truth. The cynic in me says that any politician is incapable of telling the truth. So are they both lying? This prompted me to look at the numbers. Unfortunately you have to go to two different websites to get the statistics. The first place I found gave illegal immigration statistics all the way back to 1990. Unfortunately it only has numbers on a yearly basis but we can use them to compare how the Biden administration has done. The second site is the US Border Patrol website and they have numbers on a monthly basis for part of the current year and the full 3 years before that. I probably could have poked around on their site and gotten numbers back to 1990 but this keeps it simple. As the years are fiscal years, that means they run October through September and don't represent a calendar year. Fortunately if you adjust the component filter to only show just U.S. Border Patrol, the numbers match those on the first website. We can do an apples-to-apples comparison and not be misdirected, as some statisticians are prone to do.

The last year of President Trump's administration was 2020 and we had a fiscal year (FY) total of 405,306 illegal immigrants caught and/or expelled, known as "encounters." That seems to be a pretty low number. However if you look at FY 2017, you see that our country had the lowest number of illegal immigrants at only 310,531. I don't think that is a great number but it does represent years of decline for illegal immigration.

Now let's go back to Biden's statement from last night that illegal immigration is lower than when former President Trump was in office. It is important to remember that in June of this year, the President realized what an important issue this is and his administration started cracking down on it as seen by the dramatic fall in numbers. While it is true that numbers for July 2024 show a sharp decline for a single month, we still have over 1.4 Million encounters for FY 2024 with two more months to go. It doesn't take a math expert to realize no matter how few encounters happen in August and September, the total will never be below 405,306.

So former President Trump is using yearly numbers to make his case and President Biden is relying on a really good single month to make his. Technically they both can be telling the truth. I'll let you decide who is more correct. My guess is that if you are a liberal, you will side with the current president. If you are a conservative you will side with the former.

A Review of Investments

I know I've extolled the virtues of investments and if you do not have any consumer (think credit card) debt, you should seriously consider investing any of your excess money. I jumped back into the stock market in 2021 and have a number of years to look back upon to see how well I did. I also know that past performance is no guarantee of future returns. However it can serve as a rough estimate.

This past week I have reviewed my investments and have come up with a pretty good metric to determine how well it is doing. I encourage you to periodically do this as well. Investing can be logic based but there is also a lot of emotion and so it is good to have a consistent metric to help leverage logic over emotion.

Rather than talk about specific stocks, I want to focus on investment genres. I will provide some examples but leave it up to you to try this with your own investments. My ultimate metric is how long it takes me to double my money. Using a well-balanced portfolio, financial experts will tell you that you should be able to double your money in 10 years with no additional investment. Let's see how well my investments stack up.

Dividend Stocks

I've mentioned before that I like the passive income offered by dividend stocks. My investment portfolio consists of two different dividend stock genres: high dividend stocks and strong company dividend stocks. In the first I have a Real-Estate Investment Trust (REIT) stock. It is required to pay 90% of profits in monthly dividends. Every month I am paid a few dollars that I can reinvest. I am currently seeing about 13% annually that gets compounded monthly. It is not bad but the value of the stock always seems to remain around the same price. Looking at my own portfolio, this stock takes between 6 to 7 years to double my money. That is a good starting point.

My second dividend stock group is with two companies that pay quarterly dividends but are large corporations with solid financials. They don't pay as much as my REIT but the value of the stock has gone up over time. I have seen one company go from $35/share to $40/share over the course of 2 years. Factoring in the quarterly dividend payouts, it only takes this category about 6 years to double my money. As I am investing for the long term, this seems to be a slightly better investment strategy than REITs.

Whole Life Insurance

At the age of 23 I recognized I needed to provide for my family in the event I died. I picked up a whole-life-insurance policy that had a cash value I could borrow against. On occasion I did and then repaid the loan to myself to build back up the cash value. The premiums for the life insurance part of the investment started small and so it turned into a great value should I prematurely pass away. Now that I am older, very little that I pay into the policy is reinvested. Most of it is now going to really expensive life insurance that I no longer need, thanks to my other investments. Reviewing this is what helped me come up with the double-your-money-time metric.

I've had my life insurance for over 30 years and when I calculate how much I have put into it and the cash value now, I have barely doubled my money. Yes I know it is not fair as I am constantly putting more money into the investment and yesterday's payment should not be expected to be as far along as the one I made 30 years ago. However, 30 years is a really long time and so I am looking at options as to what to do with the policy.

Buy and Hold Stocks

This is what most people think of when they think of buying individual issue stocks. You buy a stock and hold onto it until you need the money. If you pick a solid company with sound financial practices, you should see the stock price climb over the years. Back in 2021 I wanted to invest in Berkshire Hathaway and so I bought a few shares of BRK-B, the less expensive of the company's stock. I wouldn't say the company has done exceptionally well compared to other investments I could have made but it hasn't lost money either. It has taken only 4 years for me to double my money. This seems like the clear winner and where I should put all my money, right?

Unfortunately you have to go back to my original statement that, "Past performance is no indication of future returns." It is also best to have a diversified portfolio and there are a number of investment options I have not even covered. While some of them are guaranteed to stretch my double-your-money-time metric to the 10-year average, they do help preserve my net worth even when the stock market falls like it did on Monday.

What's My Plan Now?

So how will this latest exercise change my investments? Well first I think I need to dump a number of my emotional stocks. You know, those favorite companies that you want to do well but aren't. I'm definitely going to invest that money in BRK-B. I'll probably keep my dividend stocks as they are not doing too badly and it is fun to reinvest those dividends when they show up. The big question is where to park all the money from my whole-life insurance. I'm still trying to decide.

Setting Up Magicband+ For Disney World

Two years ago my wife and I started a tradition with our oldest grandson by taking just him to Disneyland after he turned 5. We found a great deal on the Grand Californian hotel and booked the trip. We had a wonderful time and decided we would continue with the rest of our grand kids. This year we have two of our granddaughters turning 5 and so instead of a trip for each of them, we are bringing the both of them to Disney World. Why Disney World? One lives in Ohio and it is easier to pick her up on the way with the second granddaughter in tow.

Wanting to make sure we maximize our experience in the parks, my wife and I went online and purchased Magicband+ bracelets for ourselves and our granddaughters. Today I went about connecting them to my iPhone where I have the Disney World app installed. For some reason I could not get them to connect. Then I watched a video and saw my mistake.

My Sony smartphones have had Near Field Communication (NFC) capabilities for a decade. I didn't think it caught on for other brands but today I discovered it is available in my iPhone. The important thing is to know where the touch point is on the device. For my iPhone it is on the upper-back-right corner. Once I turned the Magicband+ on, all I needed to do was touch it to the right place on my phone. Then I just followed the prompts to connect everything. Before the enlightening video I tried touching every part of my phone with the bracelet except the upper-right corner.

Unfortunately the software engineers that create Disney's theme park apps do an insanely poor job on their user interface. Even though I selected the correct person in the app before linking the Magicband+, the app linked all of them to me. There is no way you can unlink them. I had to call Disney technical support at (407) 939-4357.

Disney is known for having the best customer service and their technical support lives up to that standard. I have to say it is second to none. I quickly navigated the menu to get to the right department and a real human answered the call. Furthermore she spoke English like an American. I don't care if she is in Mexico or India, I just care that I can easily communicate. I explained my problem and she solved it immediately. Furthermore she linked my wife's park ticket with her account. Her help definitely made up for a poor application.

Now we are set and ready to go. The only problem is that the trip is not for a long time. I can hardly wait.

Translating Japanese to English

I currently work for Sony and that means I interact with a lot of Japanese people as well as documents written in Japanese. One of my coworkers moved from Tokyo to Los Angeles to help with her English skills. Unfortunately she still lacks a bit of confidence. Sometimes she will start with a document in Japanese and then use a translation program like Google Translate to convert it to English. Today I found myself needing to review several of her documents even though they had not been translated.

At Sony we need to be careful as to what translation services we use. While it is probably not a problem to use Google Translate, some of our documents contain company secrets and so we have set up our own large language model (LLM) artificial intelligence (AI) service to help with translation. This keeps outside services from being able to review our documents and being able to deduce some of the projects we are undertaking.

Our private LLM is based off similar technology to ChatGPT and so some of the things I have tried will work on that publicly available service.

I logged into our LLM and selected what type of help I wanted. Some of my choices included General, Image, and Document as well as Translator. Naturally I selected the last one and it presented a dialog area where I could ask questions and it would provide a response. I started with, "Translate the following from Japanese to English:," and then copied and pasted a Japanese phrase from the document I needed to review. Before spitting out an answer, the LLM asked me to provide some context such as the intended audience. I mentioned it will be used for internal documentation and then it provided a translation. The English matched my expectation of what should be in the document and so I copied the text into the original document under the Japanese text.

Next I typed, "Translate:," followed by another Japanese phrase and the LLM replied with, "Certainly, here is the translation." It was so polite I wanted to start all of my requests with, "Please." I stopped myself from using such pleasantries knowing that the machine doing the work would ignore them. I also tried just copying and pasting the Japanese text without indicating I wanted it translated. Most of the time, the LLM would translate for me. Several times it responded with something along the lines of, "I'm sorry I don't know what to do." Simply prepending the phrase with, "Translate," would be all the instructions it needed.

I translated three or four documents rather quickly and could review them. The translations seemed clear and concise. I shared what I had done with my colleague and she is happy I took the initiative to get something done instead of waiting for her. She can now review the work done by the LLM and make sure it matches her initial intent.

My experience with Large Language Model AI impressed me today. I prefer to write my own documentation and so there are not a lot of other uses for the technology. It did do an amazing job translating a very difficult language like Japanese to English and is now my favorite technology for such jobs in the future. Should you need translation services, I highly recommend giving it a try.

More BSOD Issues But My Laptop is Fixed

Yesterday my IT department reached out to me via chat and provided instructions on how to get my laptop back from the dead because of the CrowdStrike BSOD. I immediately responded that I knew what to do but did not have administrator access for my laptop. A minute or two later, the contact provided me with a new login with admin privileges and the corresponding password. I am keeping that information should I need it in the future.

I rebooted my laptop into safe mode and logged in using the new credentials. As it is the first time anyone has ever logged into the machine with that user name and password, Windows had to set up a number of things with a lot of restrictions because of running in safe mode. It took about 5 minutes to complete. Unfortunately I experienced a new set of issues to overcome.

I had hoped I could just go into the command-line tool to navigate to the directory with the offending file. Unfortunately I couldn't get it to load. I had to right-click on the Windows menu and bring up the File Explorer. I put in the explicit path in the navigation field and successfully entered the directory. Then I scrolled down to the "C-00000291 . . ." file and right clicked on the file name. One of the options in the menu is "Delete" and I clicked it. Then just to be sure, I emptied the Recycle Bin as I didn't want anything to try and recover that file. The final step was a reboot. Then my computer came up without issue.

I made sure to thank the IT person and let him know my computer revived from the dead and I could start working. He thanked me for the confirmation and moved off to another system to restore.

The fix for getting the CrowdStrike problem is actually fairly simple on paper. The problem comes from Microsoft Windows and how it is impossible to fix without having someone log into each individual machine to remove a single file. That further gets complicated by various configurations like safe mode not being able to send output to the monitor on a DisplayPort or a new user with administrator privileges logging into a machine for the first time. So when you wonder why Delta Airlines can't get their machines back up and running quickly so you can fly home from a vacation, hopefully my journey has provided you with some understanding.