Happy Halloween 2025!

Tonight I am sitting by our front door answering it for all of the trick-or-treat kids in our neighborhood. Right now it is still the young kids and we always hand out glow-in-the-dark bracelets. The chemical kind that you get at night in amusement parks. My logic is that the lights will help the kids be more easily seen. As the night goes on, we will switch from young kids to older ones and they are more interested in candy and we have a giant bowl of that.

While handing out treats, I am also fixing a couple of technical problems. Tonight is probably the worst night to do that as I finally get a problem figured out and the doorbell rings. Fortunately I have solved two cumbersome issues and feel like I have accomplished something while still answering the door every couple of minutes.

While waiting for kids to come by this evening I noticed that our Amazon Show device had a really dim screen. I looked for an adjustment knob or button but there isn't one. As the device is supposed to understand verbal commands, I asked, "Alexa, how can I brighten the screen?" The device quickly replied, "Go into settings-appearance and adjust the brightness there." What a useless response, I thought as there are multiple setting menus on the stupid thing. Did I need to go into the settings on my wife's phone which controls the device? There is also a settings on the screen when you touch it. I started with the one on the screen. That only seemed to control where the pictures are coming from for the constant slide show we get to see.

I asked my wife for her phone. I went into the Alexa app and looked for settings to control the device. I couldn't find anything and so I headed back to the device. This time when I touched the screen on the Amazon Show, I noticed an icon that looked like a "V" at the top of the screen. That usually means to swipe down and so I did. It brought up yet a 3rd setup screen which had the appropriate controls for device brightness. I cranked it up a bit and now I can see the pictures clearly on the screen.

With the Amazon Show visible I thought I would sit down and crank out one more blog entry for the month. I had the option of going upstairs and getting my personal laptop, going downstairs and getting my work laptop, or using the Chromebook I keep on the desk next to the kitchen. Following the path of least resistance, I reached for the Chromebook. This turned out to be the most lengthy choice.

I opened the Chromebook and didn't see anything on the screen. Sometimes it can be a bit slow to respond but it needed to be turned on. I pressed the "On" button and saw that it had unexpectedly quit. I logged into my account on the device and it needed to do 2-factor authentication. Chrome being a product of Google likes to try to authenticate on our Android phone. I thought it would be simple as the desk by the kitchen is where we keep that phone. Unfortunately the first attempt didn't work and I got instructions similar to the ones from the Amazon Show. I ran through them without any luck only to have the doorbell ring from candy goblins. By the time I got back to the Chromebook and my phone, both had gone dark. I had to turn on the screens and discovered my Chromebook started the login process all over.

Fortunately when I entered my login information the Chromebook sent the MFA signal to my phone and I just had to confirm it was me logging in. I didn't need to follow any of the convoluted instructions that didn't match what I saw on the screen. As you can tell by this post, I solved the problem and used my Chromebook to write this post. Now it is time to go back to answering the door for the children in the neighborhood.

2-Minute Tasks That Take 20

Yesterday I had a number of errands to run during lunch. I jumped into my car and headed to my local pharmacy. I got there to an empty store and thought I could accomplish the first item on my list quickly. Then I discovered the Pharmacist goes to lunch between 12:30 and 2pm. I had the choice of going somewhere else or hanging out for 20 minutes. Unfortunately I didn't have the 20 minutes to wait and so I headed to another store close by. It was not a surprise to see that Pharmacist had the same lunch break as the first store. Ultimately I drove home and decided I would take care of the errand later. I still have yet to do it.

Don't you hate it when you go to do a very simple task that should only take a minute or two but ends up taking much longer because of a string of events that are out of your control? Perhaps you want a bowl of Fruit Loops but have to run to the store to get milk first. Then when you get in your car you realize you are almost out of gas or or forgot to plug in your electric vehicle. You can get to the store but chances are slim you will get home unless you refuel the car.

I find situations like that always happening on my computer or smartphone. I'll go to install an important program I need only to discover it needs another library that I also need to install. Or perhaps I have security settings set so stringent I have to temporarily relax them before I can complete a certain task. My favorite is not having enough space on my phone to update the operating system. I either need to delete lengthy multimedia files after saving them to another device or forego the update.

After getting back from my 2 weeks of travel I discovered I have never deleted any of the text messages from the smartphone we use as our home phone. While I swiped left thinking I deleted them, I really just moved them to an archive. Actually deleting the files required selecting each message, pressing the 3-dot icon, selecting the "Delete" option, and confirming that I really wanted to delete it. I did that for a couple of messages and realized there must be an easier way. A few minutes later, I figured out how to do mass deletes and got rid of everything in the archive. Then I found the blocked-message folder and did the same thing there. I don't know why but my wife and I received no less than 45 messages from different roofing companies even though we have a fairly new roof. After about 30 minutes, the phone is cleaned out and ready to stockpile more useless text messages. Oh, I also figured out how to make it so messages get deleted when I swipe left and archived when I swipe right. 

Azure Outage Causing Problems

I am trying to get a lot of tasks done today and am being thwarted by Microsoft's Azure outage. This is not a knock against Azure as I didn't think that many services used it. It is only during an outage that you realize how much you use that service and how it affects you.

I received an e-mail from my employer letting me know that the Azure outage made it impossible to contact our travel department by phone. They suggested using e-mail should we need to talk with someone. Having taken a few trips for work, I know that e-mail is a great alternative as they are quick to respond. I didn't worry about it and kept about my daily tasks.

Next my wife informed me that Costco might be a great place to get refills for a consumable item we need to replace which is filters for our furnace because it is running more with the cold weather. I didn't want to hop in my car and so I tried to log onto the Costco website. In white letters on a blue background it says that some customers are experiencing site performance problems. While some of the site works, not everything does. For instance I can't set my local store correctly. Even though I enter my zip code, it only shows me stores in the state of Washington. Eventually they will figure it out. Of course I do have the option of running down there in my car should it be an emergency.

Several days ago I received a letter from a previous employer saying that my employee information got hacked and they are providing me with free identity protection from Cyberscout. While it makes sense to be wary of a company you have not heard about, they are legitimate and owned by TransUnion, one of the major credit bureaus. In the course of setting up my account, they need to send a code to my phone for multi-factor authentication. While the phone number I provided worked once, it didn't send the second code. To finish setting up the account I had to call their service center.

Sometimes computers greatly simplify our lives. Other times, such as in the case of downed systems, they really slow us down. Fortunately we have old backup technologies like e-mail, phones and driving to a local store to help us get stuff done.  

A Difficult Expense Report

Yesterday I wrote about being gone for 2 weeks with one of those being a work trip. The downside of work trips is that I am required to submit an expense report with all of the receipts. For some reason, last week's travel created a very difficult expense report.

My company uses Concur to manage our expense reports. When I first started using the web-based application I would have bet money that the developers never once had to fill out an expense report as they made something simple so complex. Fortunately the software has gotten better but not painless.

The first difficulty came as I itemized the expenses for the hotel. Normally the rate is the same for every night. Last week my usual hotel decided to charge me different rates for every night of the week. They started small on Sunday night and got progressively larger. I had to carefully go through each line on the receipt. Then the total number had to match what the hotel charged my American Express Corporate card. Let's just say I didn't get it right the first time and had to go back through every day carefully to enter the right numbers.

Once I got the hotel figured out I moved onto all of the Uber charges. I had 12 different ones and they sort of all rolled together. Normally they would be in order by date and time so that the earliest rides would appear before later ones. Unfortunately that is not the way Uber charges the credit card company. I don't know why but I had several charges out of order and I had to go back through my receipts matching credit card charges with the number on a receipt. Dual monitors on my computer allowed me to view multiple receipts making them easier to match with charges.

It took way too long to get my expense report done but eventually I sorted everything out. I submitted the report not caring how long it took to get approved as I painstakingly made sure it is correct. I also never spend outside the company's accepted rules for travel. My boss is the first person to see it and immediately approved the expense report. Now it is up to our accounting department to sift through it and make sure I didn't make a mistake. They won't find any.

One thing I noticed about this trip is how much more expensive Uber has gotten in the Los Angeles area. I understand there are extra insurance requirements for the area and those costs are passed along to riders. I used to pay less than $20 to go from my hotel to the office, including a modest tip. Now the cost is more than $20 with some rides costing more than $30, depending upon traffic and surge pricing. It is almost less expensive to rent a car. The only downside is the hotel charges for parking and so Uber is still the cost-effective mode of transportation. At least for now it is. 

Glad to be Done Traveling

I have spent the last 2 weeks traveling from one side of the United States to the other. Now I am back in Utah and happy to be home. My wife and I enjoyed the time together and got to see some amazing things. We also consider ourselves fortunate not to be affected by the government shutdown. I understand that is about to change in a couple of days though. My hope is that our dysfunctional government will figure it out and pass a budget that meets the needs of its tax-paying citizens.

We started our 2 week adventure flying from Salt Lake City to Columbus, Ohio. We spent a week visiting our youngest son and his family. That included a trip to our country's newest National Park in New River Gorge. It didn't become a National Park until 2022 and is well worth a visit. Fortunately the state of West Virginia sees the value of the park and covered costs to keep it open until the end of October. We experienced a fully staffed visitor's center complete with knowledge of the park and places to visit.

My wife and I then flew home long enough to do laundry and repack our bags. We had a relaxing Sunday and then headed to the airport that night for an 11pm flight to Los Angeles. Before leaving for the airport we received word of our delayed flight. That gave us a bit of time at home. The downside is it meant we would arrive in Los Angeles really late. Once at the airport we discovered the cause of the delay and couldn't blame it on air traffic control (ATC) but instead discovered a series of cascading delays caused by the airline.

The delay meant we didn't get into LAX until after 2am. We quickly walked to the Uber lot where we found a ride and got to our hotel sometime around 3am. I considered myself fortunate that I didn't have any early meetings and could sleep in relatively late before heading to the office. My wife came with me and did a walking tour of Culver City that she downloaded to her smartphone for only $9. We then met back at the hotel at the end of the day.

My wife's office closed for a week because of Fall break for our local school district. That meant she could tour the area while I spent the time working on the Sony Pictures Lot. While spending time on a movie lot is a lot of fun, my wife got the better end of the deal. She made use of the area's transit system and figured out how to get from LAX to Disneyland for only $5 round trip. The tradeoff is that it took 2 and a half hours each way. I'm glad she figured it out because Uber runs about $130 each way and still takes an hour plus. My wife also visited the fashion district and the Getty Museum. On the last day of the trip, I only had one meeting and set my wife up on a tour of the Sony Pictures Lot. When she finished the tour, I asked her where they took her and then showed her all of the interesting places the tour didn't go. We even had lunch at the commissary, which is a great place to eat.

We both felt exhausted at the end of the week and a 5:45am flight back to Salt Lake on Saturday morning meant we felt tired all day. I tried to watch the World Series game that night but fell asleep around 8pm. We both went to sleep early and slept late on Sunday morning. Now I am looking forward to staying home for awhile.

We used a lot of technology over the 2-week period to make the most of our travel. We continually checked into the status of the National Park to ensure we wouldn't be locked out. The airlines constantly notified us about the status of our flights which allowed us to wait comfortably instead of bored at the various airports. My wife even used her smartphone to pay for bus and train tickets in Los Angeles, saving her a few bucks. The ease of our 2-week adventure serves as an example as to how our daily lives are made easier through technology. 

Real-Time Sensors

I once got in the car I purchased for my kids to use and noticed the speedometer did not register how fast I traveled. While I could see fine outside and had a rough estimate of how fast I was going, I sort of felt blind. I immediately turned around and headed home to see if I could fix the problem. Fortunately I just needed to spray some contact enhancer on the plug going from the car's computer into the dash gauges and everything started working again. While I was never in any danger, I sure felt unsafe on the road.

We have a lot of sensors that provide real-time feedback and tell us exactly what is going on. A speedometer is one very useful example. I used to own 2 boat, one in California and one here in Salt Lake. The one in California didn't have a depth meter while my one here does. I used to sail around the San Francisco Bay and just always assumed I had enough water underneath me to keep me out of trouble. With the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake, my depth finder is a critical piece of equipment. Lately I have been unable to sail because the lake is too shallow. Fortunately my depth finder has kept me from grounding the keel in anything but soft mud.

This morning I had a doctor's appointment where I got a spot check on a number of my health indicators. I stood on a scale and could see that I gained a half pound since my last visit. The nurse took my blood pressure and told me I am incredibly healthy because both numbers came in well under the 120 by 80 that we use as a standard. On Monday I visited the lab where they drew blood and provided many more health indicators. Unfortunately it is impossible to provide real-time values for most of those numbers. When I visited the lab, I had to do so fasting as eating anything has a tendency to skew results. 

I am one of those people that is very health conscious. I don't understand how anyone can smoke cigarettes as they are knowingly shortening his/her life. My visit to the doctor increased my own awareness of how important it is to get constant feedback on how healthy I really am. For someone who is watching his or her weight, standing on the scale provides constant feedback. Naturally it is best to choose the same time every day to measure one's weight as it fluctuates throughout the day depending upon a number of factors including what one is eating or drinking. I wonder though if we constantly measured our weight if it would help us reduce our portion size. You might look at that cheesecake a little differently knowing it might tip the scale against you. Perhaps we should remove the scale from our bathroom and put it in our dining room. Then again, eating is a pleasurable activity and a monitoring device might detract from it.  

Face-to-Face Meetings

I attend a fair number of meetings and mostly use video conference call software. My company prefers Microsoft Teams but my wife's company prefers Zoom. There are several other options as well. These technologies allows a single meeting to include people from all around the world without the need to get on a plane to meet in a central location. It is wonderful and allows me to work from home on most days.

Several weeks ago I had the chance to meet some of my colleagues in India. I had never been to India before and didn't know what to expect. While I wanted to add a new country stamp in my passport, I didn't want to spend that much time traveling unless necessary. Ultimately it took about 36 hours of travel each way thanks to both KLM and Air France having mechanical issues with their planes.

I arrived in Bangalore with enough time to get to the hotel, shower, and then head to the office. India is a beautiful country but Bangalore's population has grown faster than its infrastructure. While the airport is only about 40 miles from my office, traffic requires 3 hours to cover that distance. All that traffic means I couldn't walk from my hotel to the office even though the distance is just over a mile. Fortunately the office sent me a car every morning that also brought me back to the hotel in the evening. Another limit is that I knew I couldn't drink tap water and so I used the 6 liters of bottled water in my hotel room every day. When it came time to brush my teeth, I used that bottled water.

Now the reason for my trip centered around working with a team of guys I meet with regularly. I had met one or two in Tokyo but most of the team doesn't regularly get the chance to travel. The first thing I noticed is that my image of some team members didn't match reality. There is one guy that has such a soothing voice I imagined him to be about 5 inches shorter than me and just tiny. In reality he is 2 inches taller than me and regular build. He is still one of the nicest guys you will ever meet.

Another benefit of meeting in person is really getting to know the people I work with. When you are on a video call, you don't really have to interact with the other attendees. When you are all in the same room you get to find out what everyone is really like. That makes it easier to find common interests and get to know people.

I have been home from India for about 3 weeks and I have to say that my video conference calls are higher quality with the team in India. There is a lot more of that small talk before the meeting begins. While there never has been any disrespect, the respect for each other is higher after having met in person. I also find that the meetings seem to be shorter. Ultimately the people in the call are actually people and not just disembodied voices. I highly recommend getting together as often as time and distance allow. We had such a good meeting in India that I plan to go back next year. I figure that is often enough for such a long distance.

Add Robot Mechanic to my Resume

About a week ago our upstairs Eufy robot vacuum stopped working. It would start every morning at 8am as scheduled but then beep loudly for about 15 seconds and then just sit there until someone picked it up and put it back on the charger. Upon further inspection, the unit couldn't move forward. It could spin and go backwards but not forward. Having had this experience before, I knew what to do but turned the unit off and let it sit for a week.

This evening I have a number of meetings with Japan that will run quite late and so I thought I would take some time this morning and fix the busted robot vacuum. The first thing I did was clean the brush and wheels. My wife's sewing room is on that floor and the vacuum picks up a lot of string. Surprisingly the brush didn't have too much wrapped around it. The wheels had some. Once I removed all the string, I tested the vacuum. Nope, it still couldn't move forward.

I turned off the Eufy, flipped it over, and set it on my worktable. For the record, my worktable today doubles as my dinning room table at meal times. Next I removed the 8 screws that attach the front bumper to the vacuum. The bumper covers the front 3rd of the device and has about an 8th of an inch of play. I could still move the bumper in and out. When I pulled off the bumper I could see a lot of dust balls and fluff. I pulled out my hand-held vacuum and can of compressed air. Then I cleaned out the front third of the Eufy vacuum. Once everything looked clean, I put my bad pet back together and gave it a test. It worked fine and so I let it loose to clean the floor.

Today's electronics are meant to be disposable. That means when they stop working, you throw them away and buy new ones. Call me a bit old fashioned but I think you should be able to get more than 3 years out of a robot vacuum. Having had them for about a decade now, there really are only a few things that can go wrong. The first is the battery going bad and those are fairly painless to replace. The second is the front bumper getting jammed. To fix that you generally just need to clean it out. If you clean it out and it still won't move forward, you have my permission to throw it away. If you clean it out and you can't figure out how to put the vacuum back together, visit the University of YouTube and you should be able to figure it out. 

Purchasing In-Store or on a Website

Yesterday I received my new skis and they look beautiful. Now I need to put on bindings which connect the skis to the ski boots. I had thought I could pull a set of bindings off an old pair of skis I don't use any more. Unfortunately my boots have a new type of sole on them called GripWalk and they are not compatible with all bindings. I looked carefully at the bindings I planned to use and they do not indicate they work with GripWalk which probably means they don't. Newer versions of the binding do but I don't want to risk it as a proper release of the bindings will prevent injury. That means I am now on the hunt for a new pair of bindings.

The last time I needed a new pair of bindings, I went to my local Level Nine Sports store and asked for their best deal. They offered a pair of Tyrolia D12's for $100, which is an excellent price. Furthermore it is compatible with GripWalk and has performed flawlessly for 2 seasons now. I logged onto their website to see if I could order the bindings for the same price I paid in the past. Unfortunately they increased prices by $30. I gave them a call and asked if I could get the same deal from before. The person on the phone told me to come in and they could honor the $100 price.

Going into a store instead of purchasing from a website goes against conventional wisdom. Normally I would expect to get the best price on the website. This is something to remember as you visit brick-and-mortar shops. You may be able to get a better price in person than online. Just remember to be respectful and polite as an entitled attitude may negate any discount you hope to receive.

Now that I have found the bindings I want I need to work with my wife to see what her plans are. She doesn't require the GripWalk feature as she still has conventional ski boot soles. If she needs a pair of bindings, the $60 discount between 2 pairs of bindings definitely justifies the gas of driving a few miles to the physical store.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Among other things, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I received an e-mail this morning alerting me to this fact and I found it timely given my post yesterday about my wife's Instagram account being hacked. The e-mail went on to provide 4 tips to stay safe online. I thought I would share them with you:

1. Recognize and report phish - While you may not have anyone to report the Phishing e-mail to, hopefully you can recognize suspicious e-mails and not click on any links in them nor respond. Interestingly I had a phishing text message this morning that claimed to be from UPS. I expected them to be delivering my new skis and the text indicated a problem. Fortunately my skis arrived just before the text or I might have been tempted to respond. Instead I deleted the message and reported it as junk.
2. Use strong and distinct passwords - Since I have been forced to create longer passwords I have embraced long phrases. I then replace characters with numbers and symbols to make them harder to guess. Instead of something simple like "skibum" I now use phrases like "iAmAt0ta!skiBum" where the "o" into total is replaced by the number zero and the "l" is replaced by the exclamation mark. It is easy to remember and tough to guess. For the record, that is not any of my passwords, just an example.
3. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) - When you have the chance to turn on MFA, do so as it it adds another layer of security. Today I had to log into one of my credit card accounts and the usual MFA code grew from 6 characters to 8. That surprised me but is significantly more difficult to guess than the 2-digit codes I use 95% of the time.
4. Keep your systems updated - This is important because companies are always learning about security vulnerabilities in their systems and update them frequently to lock out bad actors. If you are using an old version of your phone or computer's operating systems, you could be vulnerable to hacking. Always make sure you have the latest software. Make sure you have automatic software updates set up on your devices to help ensure this.

Staying vigilant about your online security will help save you from potentially bad situations in the future. Unfortunately nobody is immune and the attacks will continue to get more realistic and tough to spot. Paying attention to all online communication is all the more important.