Greyhound From the Comfort of my Own Home

One of the downsides of COVID-19 is that most movie theaters are closed. Sure there are plenty of older movies to watch but lately I have been wanting to see a new movie and last night I got the chance. Earlier in the day, I got an e-mail from Sony Pictures telling me I should watch their new film with Tom Hanks called Greyhound. I thought it might be about a bus trip at first and so I watched the trailer. Then I discovered it is about a naval destroyer escorting ships full of supplies across the North Atlantic at the onset of World War II. This fit right in with one of the themes of my recently completed video games.

Earlier in the day my wife told me that she wanted a date. I thought about doing a few things but COVID-19 makes it tough to go out, especially with the number of new cases in Utah getting larger every day. The movie looked like it would be a fun diversion and I knew we would have the house to ourselves. I also have a really great home theater setup complete with 7.1 surround sound and a nice-sized TV. I showed her the movie trailer and asked if she would enjoy the movie. She agreed that it would be a good watch and so we made it a date, literally.

After dinner we pulled out some popcorn, found some movie candy, and each got a cold-beverage. Then we headed down to our home theater room. Usually I stream all of my movies to my PlayStation 4 but Greyhound is only available on Apple TV+. There isn't an app for it on the PlayStation 4. At least I couldn't find one and so I had to go to plan B: run it from my laptop. Fortunately my surround-sound system has an HDMI port I can plug my laptop into and so I did that. Then I signed up for Apple TV+. They are offering a free 7-day trial and so I started with that. I did have to enter my credit-card information but will probably cancel the trial on Monday. Then I switched my sound settings so I didn't have to listen to my tiny laptop speakers and could hear everything through my home theater setup. Finally we started the movie.

Greyhound is only 91 minutes long and maximizes every second. There is the necessary character development at the beginning and then the movie jumps into the task: getting a number of ships across the Atlantic Ocean without the luxury of air cover for protection. You pretty much can tell what the movie is about from the movie trailer and it played exactly to my expectations.

I have to say I really enjoyed watching the movie from the comfort of my own home. I didn't have to worry about anyone kicking the back of my chair or making noise. In the middle of the movie, I paused it momentarily and didn't miss any actions while I made a refreshment break. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and recommend it highly.

My wife and I took a walk around the neighborhood after the movie and stopped briefly to talk with our neighbors who work in the movie industry. They confirmed that the movie was originally intended to be released to theaters but switched to Apple TV+ because of COVID-19. I found it surprising that Sony Pictures would allow Apple to show the movie instead of their own streaming service or one of the other ones. I guess Apple TV+ is looking for content and paid the best price.

Had Greyhound been released in the theaters, my wife and I would definitely have paid the $20 (the price for 2 reserved seats in Utah) to go and see it. Instead I got to see it from the comfort of my own home for free, provided I remember to cancel my subscription. Thanks Apple!

Sometimes You have to Mow Your Own Lawn

Several years ago I paid a landscaping company to mow my lawn every week. It allowed me more free time on Saturday and only cost $20 per week. I don't have a small yard but it isn't that large either. For me the cost seemed pretty small and not only did they mow the grass but they took care of edging it as well. Then one day the landscaper knocked on my door and said I might want to increase the amount of water I was using as I had a few brown spots that needed attention. After he left, I went out and inspected my yard. I didn't have a few brown spots, I had large sections of dead grass that looked horrible. I discovered that one of the side benefits of mowing my own lawn is that I could continually monitor the state of the grass. I could see when I needed to increase the water as well as see where extra care needed to be taken with regards to weeds. Soon after I cut back on my landscaping service and used them just to do monthly fertilizer treatments. I still use them today and have the greenest grass in the neighborhood.

So what does mowing your own lawn have to do with computers? Well it is an analogy. Several months ago I started a new project at work. We use project managers or PMs to help keep track of all of the little details. I relied heavily on my PM to help me stay on top of all the technical details. Then she decided to take a job at another company and I had to take over all of the PM duties until we could find a replacement. Unfortunately I found out that I had been relying on her too much and the project was in a much worse state than I realized. It kind of felt like I started mowing my own lawn again and I didn't have a single green blade in the proverbial grass. I really had to step up and fix quite a few issues.

Several weeks after our PM left, we hired on a replacement and I had to figure out how to shift some of my new responsibilities to the new hire. I started with the simple things that would help her understand the scope of the project and how I could use her help to take care of the important but seemingly small details. I felt that I didn't want to turn too much over to her as I still had a lot of issues to fix. I'm glad I didn't rely too much on the new PM as she decided the job wasn't for her and left 3 weeks after she started.

Now the project is coming to a close and I have learned a lot. A good technical manager will delegate things to project managers but also follow-up on the details. I didn't need to micromanage but I should have been a lot more proactive about making sure stuff was getting done. It wasn't and I paid dearly for it. Some of the things I did to solve problems include daily status meetings. These don't need to be very long and ideally should be done standing up, which is why we call them stand-ups. I also talk more with the team members and ask about specific details for proposed solutions. I don't challenge the details but make sure I understand what is being proposed so that I can explain it to my management. Recently my boss told me that the changes I instituted have greatly improved the project and helped turn it from a failure to a success. All I could reply is, "Sometimes you have to mow your own lawn."

YouTube: It is not Just for Fixing Cars

My family always has a tradition of taking our sailboat out on the Great Salt Lake every 4th of July, anchoring the boat, and swimming/floating for hours. Sometimes we also actually get the sails up and go sailing. The Great Salt Lake is very shallow and is only 35 feet (10 meters) at its deepest. That means you have to walk a long way from the edge of the lake to get to where the water is deep enough to float. Taking a boat is the best way to get to where you can relax and float.

Unfortunately we thought we would have to miss our annual outing as I could not fix the engine on the boat. We really need the engine to get the boat in and out of the marina. Yes, it is a sailboat and we could use the sails to move the boat around but that is very difficult and best done only during emergencies. I have sailed the boat in and out of our slip and the process taught me a whole new list of cuss words I shouldn't use in front of small children.

As the name of the lake indicates, The Great Salt Lake is full of salt. Right now it is about 3 times as salty as the ocean. We often joke that if you drop a wrench into the lake, it will rust to nothing before the wrench lands on the bottom. That salt is not harmful to the sailboat as the hull is made of fiberglass. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the engine. Our little outboard engine slurps up water from the lake to help cool the engine. At the end of a day of sailing, we run fresh water through the engine to clean out all of the salt. After 19 years of sucking in salt, our engine clogged and I needed to take it apart to clean it.

We had the engine off the boat over the winter and had a local marine store service the engine. One of the things we asked them to do is replace the water pump. They did but they didn't replace the thermostat in the engine and I felt it might be the issue. When we put the engine back on the boat, it ran fine for the first 2 sailing trips and then gave us all indications that it wasn't being cooled properly.

Having replaced quite a few automobile thermostats, I knew the job is not that difficult. I got to the boat early one day over the recent break and pulled off the thermostat housing. Sure enough the 19-year old thermostat looked more like rust than any usable part. I pulled out the old one only to discover the new part didn't fit. I actually wanted to test if water was running through the engine and so I left the thermostat out, put the housing back on the engine, and started it up. There is a telltale that sprays a stream of water out of the engine and into the lake when everything is working correctly. Nothing came out. Knowing that you don't want to run an engine very long without a working thermostat, I shut the engine down, rinsed it off, and headed to the marine parts store. I worked with the manager there to use the serial number of the engine, which I had taken a picture of on my smartphone, and found the correct part. The correct part cost $6 less and so they refunded me the difference.

I didn't want to go back to the boat as the Utah sun was blazing away and being outside felt like being on the surface of the sun. Instead I came home and tried to take my mind off the fact I still hadn't fixed my engine. The next morning my wife and I got ready to head back out to the boat and see if we couldn't get it working. Before leaving home, I found a great YouTube video about fixing the cooling system on outboard motors. The guy narrating the video was from Australia and had an engine with a similar problem to mine. He tried a few things that I always try and had similar results. Then he gave me a small piece of information that I suspected but didn't know: not all of the water that cools the engine exits from the telltale. This effectively said that my engine might be cooling correctly and that the clog could be in the Y-valve where some of the water is diverted to the telltale and the rest exits the engine near the prop.

My wife and I headed to the boat armed with new information. I pulled off the thermostat housing and thoroughly rinsed the cooling path. I also followed the telltale hose all the way to the Y-valve and used compressed air to clean that out. I put the new thermostat back in and it fit perfectly. Then I started the engine and everything worked perfectly. An hour later, our children arrived ready for our annual tradition. YouTube is not just for fixing cars.

Video Game Review: Call of Duty: WWII

Normally I wouldn't bother adding anything to my blog on a national holiday but last night I finished playing a very fitting title given that today is Independence Day in the United States. Last month one of the free games on PlayStation Plus happened to be Call of Duty: WWII and I thought I would give it a go. The campaign is not very long and I finished it over the course of the month. I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Call of Duty is one of those franchise games from Activision that is one of the most played video games in the world. I have only dabbled in the games playing the beginning of one or two titles but always having something else on my list of games to play. Lately I have been studying a lot of history and am fascinated by World War II. For some reason my history teachers always spent so much time on discovering America that I never got to study anything past the American Civil War.  I don't have a lot of knowledge about what happened in the second great war other than what I see in movies. I figured I might learn something from the game and was not disappointed.

The game begins with the D-Day invasion. One thing I didn't realize is how late D-Day actually was. I know the United States entered the war on December 7, 1941 but D-Day didn't happen until June 6, 1944. What did we do up until that point? Was our only focus the war in the Pacific with Japan? Now I am going to have to do a bit of reading to figure that out.

The game then has 11 missions all based on actual events in the war. Each mission took me about an hour to complete. Your mileage may vary as some will be a lot faster than me and those new to video games may be slower. The story is pretty linear and there are very few side missions, if any. You do have the option of finding collectables and performing heroic actions but I didn't worry about that through most of the game. I did enjoy the story and that kept me playing.

Before COVID-19 I spent a good part of my week in California where I had a lot more time alone and I could spend it playing video games. Now that I have been at home in Utah since March 7th, I have not really played any video games. I'd rather spend that time with my wife and other family members. Call of Duty: WWII is something I started playing because it interested me and I'm glad I took the time to go all the way through the game. In other words, I highly recommend the game.

Call of Duty: WWII has an ESRB rating of M for mature because of violence and strong language. I wouldn't recommend the game for young children or teenagers for that matter.

I got my copy for free on PlayStation Plus and so the only thing I paid to play the game is my time. If I missed adding the game to my digital game library this month and saw it in the $15 bin at a local retailer, I would probably buy the game.

So Happy to Hear an Ad on Pandora

I had a really tough time waking up this morning. Normally I get up at 7, eat some breakfast, and then spend some time on a bicycle. This morning I ate breakfast and then fell asleep on the couch before getting out on my bike. I still have to exercise every day and so I had to find time later in the day. I finished a meeting and then jumped on my indoor bike for 30 minutes.

Riding a bike outdoors and listening to music are two activities that should never be mixed. I see a lot of people on the bike trail listening to headphones and it is dangerous. On a bike, you need all of your senses to keep from having an accident. However I enjoy listening to music while riding a stationary bike. Sometimes it is the only way to get through a 30-minute bike ride. In the United States, my streaming service of choice is Pandora. As Pandora is not available in Japan, I use Spotify there.

Lately I have grown rather disenfranchised with Pandora. I am one of those people that really likes to curate my music. If I like a song, I will give it a thumbs-up. If not, it gets a thumbs-down. There is no middle ground. The problem with Pandora is that it is always showing annoying ads. I will go into my phone to give a song a thumbs-up or down and have an ad appear right above both of the thumb icons. I try to click the appropriate thumb and get taken to an ad instead of rating my song. Most of the time it is fairly harmless. Today I went to rate a song and didn't see what ad I clicked. Nothing happened on the screen and I feared I just agreed to sign up for a free 30-day trial of premium Pandora. Then I would have to figure out how to cancel the premium service.

I worried about figuring out how to remove Pandora premium from my account for 3 songs. Then I heard an ad and was happy. I still don't know what ad I clicked on, but at least I am not signed up for something I will end up having to pay for later.

Those ads really annoy me but paying for streaming music annoys me even more. I don't mind listening to an add every once and a while during my music. After all, that is what happens on a normal radio station. However those visual ads are bothering me enough that I may give up on Pandora and start using Spotify instead.

My Favorite Video Conference Application

I have not been to my office since March 7 of this year. Fortunately I still have a job but not going to the office because of COVID-19 means that I have to do all of my meetings using video conferencing applications. While it would be nice to take my meetings outside using my smartphone, I do 100% of my meetings using my laptop computer. For this reason, my favorite app is based on features available for the computer and not the smartphone. Furthermore it is important to know that I use my MacBook Pro and not a Windows laptop.

There are 3 major video conferencing applications: Zoom, WebEx, and Microsoft Teams. If Microsoft Teams sounds like a new product, it is based on their acquisition of Skype and leverages many years of experience doing video calls.

Unfortunately Zoom got a black-eye with a security breech early in the COVID-19 days. Because of that, my company does not allow anyone to use it for meetings. My understanding is that Zoom did a great job getting a fix in place and has gotten a lot of users with their free product which limits meeting times to only 40 minutes and have less than 100 people. My wife holds a weekly Zoom meeting on Emergency Preparedness for people in our community. She likes the 40-minute time limit as it keeps her meetings short and they can't run long.

WebEx has been around for a long time and is the video conference application I have used the longest. Recently I had a company-wide conference hosted on WebEx with around 200 participants. I recorded the conference and then sent people in my company links to the videos. That allowed people to view the conference even though they couldn't attend in person. Some of the presentations contained videos and WebEx has the ability to optimize for presentation text or multimedia (video and audio). That came in very handy. I also recently attended a company-wide WebEx meeting with 1000 people, which is the upper limit for the tool.

Finally there is Microsoft Teams and it seems to be the application of choice that my company is gravitating towards. One reason is that we use Office 365 applications and that means Outlook is our e-mail and scheduling program. When you want to schedule a video conference, you just click a button in the calendar program and a Teams meeting is automatically created. With WebEx, you have an extra step of logging into WebEx and setting up the meeting. My personal observation is that the quality of Teams is better than the other two video conferencing applications. The audio seems to be more clear and the video is equally impressive. Finally my favorite feature of Teams is the ability to use a virtual background. I took a picture of Snowbird and use it as my background, hiding the ugly gray walls and whiteboard in my home office. It does have the added conversation starter as people continually ask me if there is snow still in Utah.

So what is my favorite video conferencing application? It depends. If you are looking for a free solution, I think Zoom is probably your best bet. Unfortunately I don't have much experience with it. I also like WebEx for large meetings as they seem to have the better solution. Ultimately my workhorse for small group meetings is Microsoft Teams and I probably use it the most. All 3 solutions are full featured and differ only slightly in capabilities.

One final note is that I never see the bill for any of the video conferencing applications I use and so I have no idea on how much any of them cost. If cost is an issue for you, then you may rank the solutions differently.

Time for Another New Laptop

My youngest daughter and I got to spend the day together. My wife is accompanying my youngest son on a road trip as he moves to Ohio. That allowed my daughter and I to spend the day together rock climbing, buying wood to replace our backyard fence, and watching a movie together. During the course of the day, my daughter told me it is about time to replace her aging MacBook. I asked her why and she reminded me that her current computer is 8 years old. I think she may be right about replacing it.

I recently went through the exercise of replacing a computer and know that you pay a premium when you buy a Mac. However it is hard to argue with the fact that her current Mac is 8 years old and lasted her well. When I bought her that computer, I told her to take care of it as her next one would be her responsibility. She has treated it well and only now does she need to replace it.

Having spent 8 years with a Mac makes it difficult for her to want a Windows computer. She knows all of the ins and outs of the Mac operating system. I think a shift to Windows would confuse her. I asked her what she wants, thinking that she might go for the less expensive MacBook Air. Nope, she wants another MacBook Pro. Given the difference in prices, she will end up spending about $400 to $500 more than for the MacBook Air. I thought about it for a bit and realized that the Pro will probably last another 8 years while the Air would only last 4. That justifies the cost of the more expensive laptop as it will ultimately be cheaper in the long run.

It is important to note that not all Mac laptops are supposed to last that long. My oldest daughter gets only a couple of years before things start breaking as she is a little harsher on her computers than my youngest daughter. My youngest daughter also really only uses her computer to do things like visit social media sites and browse the Internet. She is not a software developer nor does she require a lot of horsepower.

My daughter didn't order the computer today as she is waiting to make sure she doesn't have any expensive bills coming up any time soon. She doesn't want to deplete her savings until she does a little financial forecasting first. This is good as it will give her some time to evaluate which options she wants and is willing to pay for. I'm sure she will be excited when the new computer comes.