Updating My iPhone Software

Apple sent me a request on Friday asking me to update the operating system on my iPhone. It said before doing the update I would need to make more room on the device as I didn't have enough free space. That surprised me as I had over 10 GB available. Fortunately it brought up a utility to help me remove large files from the phone.

I take a lot of pictures and movies with my phone that I use on my YouTube channel. That requires me to copy the files from my phone to my desktop computer. I don't need the copy on my phone and so I spent some time making sure I had copies on my computer before deleting them from my phone. I did keep several photos on my phone as sometimes I like to show some of my pictures to friends and family. There is a balance though as keeping too many pictures makes them difficult to find and deleting to many means I can't share some of my adventures.

I went through my phone and freed up quite a bit of space. Apple's utility then showed me my largest text message attachments. My daughter-in-law often sends me large videos of my grandchildren being cute. I made sure I had copies and then deleted the ones on my phone. That freed up even more space to the point I felt I could install the operating system update.

I made sure to plug my phone into a stable power source and started the update. It ran smoothly and half an hour later, I had a phone with the latest operating system. My hope is that Apple doesn't continue to make more large updates. If they do, then I may need to upgrade my phone simply to have more memory so I don't have to worry about these updates in the future.

My Mac Not Recognizing my Password

Earlier this week I tried to log into my personal desktop computer, which is a Mac Mini from a few years ago. The machine is connected to the Internet but impossible to reach from outside my office, thanks to how I have set it up. As the only way to get on the computer is by being in my physical office in my house, I have a relatively easy password that I always remember. For simplicity's sake, let's assume that the password is "password" even though it is something different.

I went to log in and the computer didn't recognize my password. I thought I may have mistyped it so I tried again only to be denied access to my computer. I tried again making sure the caps-lock key didn't get inadvertently pressed. That didn't work either. I started to panic thinking that someone had hacked into my system. Then other equally problematic scenarios started running through my head. Fortunately I knew I didn't have to worry about my computer locking me out if I tried too many times. I took a deep breath and started applying my troubleshooting skills to the problem.

I looked carefully at the password field and started typing my password and it showed me the usual dots for each character. I typed "pass" but only saw 3 dots instead of the 4 I expected. I cleared the field and tried again watching the same result. For some reason, the first character I typed was not recognized and so I tried typing the first character twice. I entered "ppassword" and my computer let me in. I felt a huge wave of relief.

Eventually I stopped using my computer and the next time I came back to it, I had to enter my password to unlock it again. Fortunately the problem with the first character not being recognized did not happen. I counted the dots on the screen and they matched each key click I entered. I have not had the problem since that one time.

Should you find yourself trying to log into a Mac unsuccessfully, I suggest counting the dots and making sure all the characters are being recognized. If not, do what I did and double up on the first one. It may save you an anxious moment or two like I had.

Making Soap and Processing Data

My youngest son works at a liquid soap manufacturing facility in Cambridge, Ohio. Sunday evening I talked with him for our regular weekly call and asked about a project for which he is spending a lot of time. He mentioned that most soap factories mix all of the ingredients in large vats and then fill individual containers. He went on to say that his facility is more advanced in that it mixes the ingredients in the piping, does the appropriate cooking, mixes more ingredients, and eventually fills the individual containers. This is a much more streamlined approach where the only bottleneck is at the end.

I listened intently as I had no idea that making soap mirrored some of the data processes I work on at Sony. We have some data pipelines where all of the data is stored together and then cleaned in batches. Other pipelines clean the data as it comes into the system and quickly stores it in the tables that get used for analytics. The advantage of the second method is the data is always up-to-date. With batch processing you have to wait until the batch is processed before you can analyze the data. That may occur on a daily, weekly, or monthly frequency.

I explained the similarities to my son and he further elaborated that in the factory they have real-time monitoring of the systems. This includes flow rates and temperature values for different parts of the process. He asked if we have the same types of monitoring for the data and I responded that we do.

While my son is a Mechanical Engineer and I am an Electrical Engineer, the same ideas can be used in both disciplines with correspondingly similar pros and cons. This reminded me of a class I once took on "Thinking Outside the Box." The course mentioned that you may get ideas for solutions to problems you are working on by simply looking at other seemingly unrelated fields. I can't agree more.

Whiners vs. Problem Solvers

Recently I read a post on LinkedIn that seems to be going viral about the high cost of dice for board games due to the tariffs imposed on goods from China. The post talks about how the company has looked to source dice from other parts of the world but can't find any companies outside of China. As a result, they will have to pass on the added costs to their customers so that a $40 board game will now cost $60. I apologize for not having more details but the post bothered me because it sounded more like whining than someone looking for a solution. I don't like listening to whiners.

I immediately started engineering solutions for the problem and thought about what I would do in the same situation. As someone with a 3D printer, my immediate thought involved a minor investment in high-quality printers capable of churning out all the necessary dice required to meet with game demands. While my current printer might not be up to the challenge, there are a number of models that are and it struck me as very unimaginative to whine about not being able to manufacture dice. 3D printing is what a lot of Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) players do when they want to create their own multi-sided dice. Couldn't that work for a board game company?

Then I thought about other possible solutions. Ultimately there is nothing like physically rolling high-quality dice while playing a game. Perhaps until a dice manufacturer can be found the company could provide a smartphone application that simulates the roll of the dice. There are a number of existing apps already and so it wouldn't be that difficult to replace physical dice. While most of us think of standard 6-sided dice, D&D players require many different sided dice and resort to these types of apps when physical dice aren't available.

I'm sure there are even more possible solutions that this board-game manufacturer could employ. Yes these tariffs are going to be painful. But I see the pain as short-term as we shift some of our manufacturing back to the United States after spending the past several decades shipping it out. Fortunately my experience has taught me that growth only comes through trials and in the end it is worth it.