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.