Announcements on a Plane

I had my son visiting last week with his family and he told me a hilarious story about his daughter on the flight out. She is only 3 years old and in order to help keep her entertained, he immediately gave her some headphones and let her watch movies on the screen found on the seat in front of her. There was no need to pull out a tablet and drain the battery watching shows she had already seen 100 times. It didn't take long for the flight attendants to make an announcement, which causes all in-flight entertainment to stop so passengers could hear those important safety messages. When that happened, my granddaughter immediately ripped off her headphones and hollered because her movie stopped. In video games we call that rage quitting. She thought the movie system broke and she would have to suffer through a long plane ride without entertainment. She continued to rage quit during every announcement even though my son explained what was happening and that she could continue watching soon.

My son and I got a good chuckle out of the story because we both feel the same way. I think there are way too many announcements given on flights and wish the flight attendants would keep them to a minimum. Unfortunately their primary job is not to serve you snacks or drinks, it is to help ensure you are safe. That means they really do need to make all of those announcements even if I have heard them thousands of times already. As an adult, I can't rage quit during my movie and have to suffer through interruptions.

Another thing that makes this story so funny is what happened to a buddy of mine on a flight a few weeks earlier. It was the final minutes of the playoff football game that would determine which team headed to the recent Super Bowl. My buddy said that a conservative estimate put 70% of the screens on the plane watching the game at this critical juncture as the plane touched down on the ground. The flight attendant came over the public address system and immediately killed the key moment of the game. Everyone shouted, "No!" In the back of the plane someone yelled out, "Can't you wait for just a minute or two." Fortunately the flight attendant let go of the talk button but it was too late, everyone had missed the final play. She did stay off the intercom until the last moment to give everyone their disembarkment instructions. The passengers appreciated that.

I always use my long flights to catch up on movies I haven't seen and do dislike announcement interruptions. It is during these pauses that I envy anyone on the plane watching movies on their own device. I'm just too lazy to fill a tablet or phone before my flights. I guess this means I will suffer through those relatively short breaks in the action.

A New Phone, a New Chrombook, or a New Laptop

I have been working back at Sony for 6 months now and I need to make a change to my electronic tools. A few weeks ago I got stuck because an avalanche came across the road during my morning workout and I couldn't get home until 5:45pm that evening. I had some deliverables that I couldn't complete because of it. If I had my work e-mail on my phone, I could have gotten some of those deliverables done. Instead I had to work late into the evening and the entire next day, which was a Saturday.

I am reluctant to load my work e-mail on my personal phone because of all the notifications I get. Working for a Japanese company means I get a lot of alerts at weird hours of the day and I find myself not listening to any noise my smartphone makes. When I have a work phone that is different from my personal phone, I find it easier to catch important work events as well as personal ones. I have found an inexpensive smartphone that does everything I need it to for around $325. Should I get it?

I also find that my Chromebook has slowed to a crawl. It is almost getting to the point where it is becoming unusable. I have had it for quite a few years and so I recently looked at getting a new one. I found 2 or 3 that would be significant improvements for only $225. Don't ask me why a phone is smaller than a Chromebook but costs more. That's just the way things work. So should I get one of those?

As I think about the Chromebook and if I should replace my existing one, I am wondering if I would be better suited by a new personal laptop. I would say that I can do about 85% of what I need with the less expensive device and I always have my desktop computer when I need it. However the laptop would be more usable and last significantly longer than a Chromebook. Should I get a new laptop?

I'm not sure what the best choice is right now. Should I get a new phone or just load my work e-mail on my personal phone? Should I get a new Chromebook or a new laptop? Finally, should I not do a single thing and just working along without spending any money? Let me think about it and I'll let you know what I decide.

A New AI Toy: ChatGPT

Several years ago I worked on a chat engine and learned a lot in the process. At the time we had a long way to go to create a program that did a great job mimicking human conversation. OpenAI is a company that released ChatGPT in November of last year and it does a pretty good job of realizing that goal. Today I decided to sit down and play with it for a bit and see how good it is.

One of my colleagues played with it as well and fed it a multiplication problem with 2 4-digit numbers. It came close to providing the right answer but a calculator revealed it didn't get the problem correct. Unless you pulled out a calculator though, you wouldn't know because it stated the answer with such certainty.

Armed with the information that it was good at answering questions but it wasn't that great at Math, I asked a different kind of question. I thought back to my college English courses and asked why experts consider "Moby Dick" to be such an example of classic American literature. I suffered through the book in college and hated it. Then I decided to pick it up after learning to sail in the hopes of understanding it better. While I understood the vocabulary, I actually prefer Herman Melville's "Typee" over "Moby Dick." I think Mr. Melville did as well.

ChatGPT came back with an amazing answer that would have greatly improved my grade in College. The answer had 5 parts discussing the detail the author included in the story indicating that Herman Melville actually spent time on a whaling ship. It talked about the struggle between good and evil as well as the futility of seeking revenge. Having read the book twice and really understood it once, I had to agree with the answer.

I don't think ChatGPT is going to take over the world. It would need to have a better understanding of mathematics and engineering to do that. It will give college professors something to worry about though. If I was back at the University, I would immediately use ChatGPT to help me start any papers I need to write. So is that plagiarism? Probably but if done correctly, it would be impossible for anyone to tell. I'm glad I am not a professor. About they only thing they can do is move from written papers and exams to oral ones.

Software Product Features

Earlier this week I attended 2 different seminars on how to get the most out of the software products I use daily in my job. I will confess that I didn't learn a lot but I discovered several new features that I didn't know about. It got me thinking about how to figure out what features are available in the many different software products we all use.

The first method of discovering new product features is when we do something new. This week I put together a Google Doc's document and needed one section to have 2 columns while the rest of the document just needed that standard single column. In Microsoft Word and other word processing software, there is a "Columns" icon. All you need to do is select the text you want to put into multiple columns, click the columns button, and select how many columns you want. In an effort to reduce screen clutter, Google decided it didn't need a column icon. Instead I just needed to select the text, click on the "Format" menu, and a drop-down menu showed a number of additional options, including columns. I correctly assumed the feature existed but didn't know how to use it until I had a document that required it.

The second method of discovering new product features is attending seminars outlining product features. This is what I did this week at work. We spend a lot of money with certain companies and they always want to make sure we are happy with our purchases and that generally includes taking advantage of all features. Unfortunately not everyone spends large amounts of money on software and don't have access to these seminars.

The third method of discovering new product features is through Internet searches and product videos. Perhaps you are trying to calculate something in a spreadsheet and the video you are watching shows you how to do the calculation but also shows some new features that you didn't know about. I find that very helpful.

Finally, there is the method of watching somebody doing something new that you have not seen before. Perhaps you are watching them edit a document and with a few keystrokes something amazing happens. Don't be afraid to ask them what they did. Then be sure to immediately give it a shot the next time you are working on a document. The best way to learn something new is to practice and so immediately trying something you have recently seen will reinforce the knowledge.

We all use quite a few different software products whether it is on our computers or on our phones. My personal estimate is that we really only use about a third of what the software can do. While we may not need all of those features on a daily basis, there are many more things we can do if we only know certain features exist.

A Case for YouTube Videos

Several days ago my truck informed me I needed to change the oil. I managed to get into the specialty service station on Christmas Eve as the establishment had no customers at the time. The last time I had the service performed, they had me stay in my car but this time they invited me into their 4-person waiting room. They had a television going with various YouTube videos playing.

My oil change only took a few minutes and I have to say that I enjoyed watching some of the YouTube videos while I waited. I didn't have the option of selecting which videos I wanted to see. Instead the television just showed some of the popular videos that only lasted a few minutes each. The first video showed some guys in Australia that have a large tower where they drop various objects. The series I watched extolled the virtues of some really strong tape. They made a landing platform out of the tape on a steel frame. The objects started out small like a ball made out of rubber bands. The tape held and so they moved up to larger objects. Next came a small anvil and once again the tape held. They progressed through a number of objects with the final item dropped being a giant 500 pound fist made of metal. The tape didn't break but it did lose its grip on the metal frame.

The interesting thing about the videos is that anyone could walk in for a service appointment and not require any background as to what is going on. When it is time to leave, you don't feel like you are going to miss something important. If you really want to see what happens as the objects get larger, you can just go home and pull it up on YouTube.

I came out of the oil change feeling entertained and like the service happened quickly. As someone that creates YouTube content I now have something to aspire to. Perhaps someday I will create a video interesting enough that strangers getting an oil change will enjoy watching it.

Merry Christmas - You've Got Jury Duty

Yesterday I got in my truck to head up to the ski resort and got the message that I needed to change my oil. Sure I could ignore the message for a bit but I am one of those people that likes to take care of such things as quickly as possible. Today after skiing, I gave the local oil-change service company a call to see if they are open on Christmas Eve and changing oil. They said they were and also that they didn't have any customers at the moment. I quickly drove the quarter mile to their shop and quickly got in.

It made me proud to get something done so fast and not have it hanging over me. When I got home, I checked the mail before going inside and saw that I have been summoned for jury duty. My pride disappeared into humility. This is one of those civic duties we all have as Americans and we should be happy to perform. Unfortunately we all feel it can be a giant time-sync and nobody really wants to do it. To make matters worse, I got the notice on Christmas Eve. Fortunately I don't have to report until February but I don't think it made for a good Christmas gift.

Excel Trick: The UNIQUE Function

Yesterday I found myself spending more time in my Excel sheet with 32,000 rows and 44 columns. One of the columns listed video games. As there are a finite number of video games that is much less than 32,000, I wanted to get a list of them.

I did a quick search on the Internet and came across a large number of ways to list out all the unique values in a column. Some seemed overly complex. I typed one formula into the spreadsheet cell only to have it do nothing. Eventually I tried Microsoft's site and discovered the UNIQUE function. It is as simple as it sounds. You put it in a cell with the range of cells that contain your values and it creates a list with each unique value filling that column. It is as simple as using the following fromula:

=UNIQUE(B2:B32000)

If I put the formula in cell C2, all of the unique video game names will populate the C-column. It worked pretty well and I then had a list of all 800+ video games in the spreadsheet.