I Voted Today

This year's election season has received a lot of attention. We have a former President who didn't win a second term trying again and the current Vice President who nobody voted for in the primaries. While your Presidential vote is very important, there are also a lot of other races that can use your input. I have been eagerly awaiting casting my choices this year and so when my mail-in ballot arrived today, I immediately opened it and scanned through all of my choices.

I carefully read the choices for the President/Vice-President race and had to chuckle at one entry. Here in Utah, there is a candidate named "Lucifer 'Justin Case' Everylove". When you read the name aloud, the whole Just-in-Case should elicit a giggle or two. I don't plan to vote for him but I did take the chance to look him up to see if he is for real. He is and is from New Hampshire. I think he only made it onto Utah's ballot but you have to give him props for being there. That being said, please don't waste your vote on a novelty candidate. I selected my candidate of choice and then moved onto everything else.

Naturally there are a number of races where I already knew who I would vote for and filled those in quickly. Then I came to a number of the lesser-known options. Who should I vote for when it comes to county assessor? If you want to take the easy way out, you can vote along party lines. Unfortunately you might not be making the best choice. I actually took the time to look up all the candidates and make sure I voted for people who share my same values. It added a few minutes to the voting process but know I know my picks are really who I want to see elected.

The next section of my ballot listed out Judges. While Utah judges are not elected, we have the right to vote if they should remain judges or be removed. The ballot even provided a website to visit with basic information about each judge. I reviewed the information and decided that 3 of the 11 or so judges should be removed. Each judge met the minimum quality requirements set forth by the State of Utah but 3 of them could use some improvement. I hope others in Utah spent as much time researching. People may disagree with my choices but at least their choices are also informed.

The second-to-last section dealt with taxes and I have some very strong opinions on those. I made my choices accordingly and then looked at the final section which talks about amendments to our State Constitution. Interestingly enough, 2 of the 4 amendments have been eliminated so that no matter how I vote, it won't matter. I looked up the other 2 and discovered the reasoning behind them. More importantly I discovered that not one single group is opposed to them. To me, that seems pretty intuitive as to how I should vote. It also helps that I agree with them as well. Understanding why they are being proposed helped as I made my choice too.

I have to admit that I have done more research for this election than any in the past. Normally I just ask my wife as she is the Political Science major. I encourage you to take extra time as you vote this year to make sure you are choosing representatives that align with your values. You may not think your vote counts but it definitely does for some of the smaller races in this election cycle. Should you live in a swing state like Pennsylvania, it definitely counts for the Presidential election too.

Playing with Large Language Models (LLMs)

Yesterday I participated in a hands-on lab to integrate large-language-model (LLM) technology to help generate complex SQL queries to look into our data. The lab only lasted an hour and I learned a lot during that time. It also highlighted one of the use cases for LLMs for more than just a toy to help write high-school papers.

When ChatGPT released, it garnered a lot of attention. While everyone seemed impressed, I didn't see a lot of people asking how the technology can be used for good. Automatic code generations seem to be one of those good uses that can really help us in our daily lives. Rather than spending countless hours writing thousands of lines of code to do something important, you can specify what you want and have created and the LLM will generate the code for you. That is what yesterday's lab explored.

For those that don't know SQL, it is a very simple and almost English-like language used to query databases. If you have a table that contains information about customers you can use something like this to query the database:

SELECT firsname, lastname, first_purchase_date FROM customers;

This will list out all customers' names and date when they made their first purchases. It is pretty simple, right? Well it gets complicated once you try to filter that data or include info from other tables in the database. While most of my queries are 25 lines or less, it is not uncommon for me to write 500-line ones. This is where an LLM can really help streamline my work.

In order to keep the lab under an hour, all the data and most of the code was created so I just needed to put it in the right place. I loaded the data into an online database server and downloaded the code to my laptop. The only modification I needed to do to the code was update the connection string to point to my online database. Then we ran through the code see how it worked.

The code included a file to describe the 3 tables in the lab and that turned out to be the secret sauce. I closely looked through the description file and realized that it would take about an hour per table to duplicate this file for the database I work with on a daily basis. When there are only 3 tables, this isn't a large effort. Unfortunately my database has thousands of tables and it would be a huge undertaking to use this technology in my environment.

I had hoped that the LLM would be able to look at my database tables and infer what information they contained. This is possible but unfortunately is not nearly as accurate as having a data expert provide this detail first.

I'm glad I attended the lab and I learned a lot. It also demystified what is going on with this particular LLM. While I hoped I could use the output of the lab to make it easier for non-data scientists to query the database, I did come away with a strong understanding of the underlying technology.

Prepare Early For Natural Disasters

A few weeks ago I spent some time in Orlando, Florida at Disney World. Naturally I have an interest in the area as hurricane Milton heads towards it and is expected to do some serious damage. It is no secret that I enjoy keeping up on hurricanes every summer and keep the National Hurricane Center's website up on my computer throughout the summer months. I watched from a safe distance as hurricane Helene came up the west-coast of Florida and slammed into the panhandle of the state. Now only a short time later I am watching what is happening with Milton.

I am safe in my home in Utah nowhere near the devastating storm and so it is fairly easy to lob suggestions at those in Florida. While it is easy to tell everyone to get to safety and evacuate, that is much more difficult for some to do. I don't have to worry about finding a place to go. I don't have to worry about lost wages from missing work. I don't have to worry about going on a long drive where I probably won't be able to find gasoline for my car along the way. About the only thing I have going for me is that my advice isn't tainted with emotion, only logic.

Hurricane Milton isn't expected to make landfall until Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning. To me that seems like a lot of time to evacuate from those areas most likely to be dangerous. The reality is that leaving is so much easier said than done. That is why my advice to everyone really is to prepare early. I imagine a last-minute flight out of Orlando is not going to be cheap. Local authorities plan to close the airport Wednesday ahead of the storm's arrival. Looking at Delta's website this evening, a round-trip flight from Orlando to Salt Lake leaving tomorrow and returning a week later is over $2000. Furthermore there is only one seat left on a single available flight. No you don't have to go all the way to Salt Lake to escape the storm but the options to Atlanta are not much better and still cost almost $700.

So how can you prepare for such events? Take some time and sit down with your family to think about all of the possible natural disasters that can happen in your area. Think about earthquakes, major storms, wildfires,  or other things you have heard about that have hit close to home. Then think about possible options on where you could evacuate, should the need arise. If you have nowhere to go, do you have the supplies you need to shelter in place?

One of my biggest concerns is a lengthy power outage during the dead of winter. While I heat my home with natural gas I still require electricity to run the blower motor to circulate that heat throughout my house. I have a generator that I can use but it would take a lot of work to disconnect the furnace blower from my home electrical system and connect it to the generator. I would also have to be very careful to run the generator outside and nowhere near any air vents into the house. I don't want to kill my family with carbon monoxide poisoning.

Once you create your plan of attack for a natural disaster, it is important to have your plan written down and kept in a safe place. Trying to remember all of the great ideas you had will be tough as you try to avoid panicking. It is also a good idea to review those ideas periodically as things change and you may have better solutions. There are also a lot of resources on the Internet that may help with your planning.

My heart goes out to all of those in harm's way right now. I hope the storm lessens in severity and it is a regular-old-thunderstorm by the time it makes landfall. Unfortunately mother nature doesn't care what I want and so I don't put any stock into that happening. Instead let's hope most are prepared and there is little to no loss of life.

Modern Medicine

Yesterday I spent my morning at the oral surgeon having half a wisdom tooth removed. Today I am singing praises about modern medicine and how little pain I have compared to what it would have been like 30-years ago. Everyone talks about how much computers have evolved in a relatively short amount of time. I think medicine comes close.

So why only half a tooth? When I first had my wisdom teeth reviewed for removal over 30 years ago, they didn't need to come out. As I continued to get dental check-ups, I could see the root of one tooth getting more and more entangled with a major nerve in my jaw. Removing the tooth could damage the nerve and as it didn't impact any other teeth, I left it in. Then as luck would have it, I developed an abscess near that non-impacted wisdom tooth necessitating its removal. After talking with my oral surgeon, he suggested only removing the infected part and leaving the roots. Now of course the roots may need to come out later but not right now.

I got home from the surgery yesterday and had no pain whatsoever. They gave me a time-release version of Novocaine that lasted all day. The only downside is that I spent the day looking like a stroke victim as I couldn't really control one side of my face. I didn't mind as I didn't plan to see anyone except my wife and she frequently sees me at my worst.

I am not a fan of opiates to help control pain and opted to go with the new super painkiller on the market: Tylenol mixed with Advil. New research is showing that taking the two over-the-counter medications is more effective than either by themselves even in stronger doses. This is a fairly recent development and I have to confess it works very well.

Anyone who has ever done a lot of yard work or exercised especially hard knows that the worst day for muscle pain is 2 days later. My surgeon told me to expect the most painful day to be tomorrow and not just the day after surgery. Today I am not too concerned as I feel relatively pain free. I am making sure to keep up on my Advil/Tylenol mix as well as using ice packs about every hour. We'll see how tomorrow goes.

When I found out I needed to have half a tooth removed, the surgeon made a comment that recovery would be more difficult at my age now than if I was 20. My thought is that medicine has evolved to the point where I am glad I had half a tooth removed today instead of a full tooth 30 years ago. I'm sure I am doing better as an old man than I would have as a young one way back when.

Working From Home

My LinkedIn feeds seem to be dominated by news from Amazon that they are making their employees return to work. Needless to say, the employees are not too happy about it. There are theories about how Amazon is going to use the new policy to get rid of surplus employees. Normally a company would layoff those that are not needed. With this new policy they will be able to fire them without severance benefits, saving themselves significant money.

As you can imagine, I think this policy is disappointing. I think that one thing we all learned from COVID-19 is that not everyone is required to be in the office to get work done. It is proven that some people are even more productive working from home as there are not as many distractions at home as there are in the office. I recognize this is not true for everyone.

Fortunately the company I work for is embracing the work-from-home concept. Sony recently sent out an e-mail to a large group of employees talking about how only spending 2 or 3 days in the office has become the new way of working. The e-mail then goes on discussing changes the company is making to reflect this new normal. It is encouraging to me to know that my company is keeping up with new work trends and not trying to enforce policies that make things miserable for everyone.

While there are a lot of employees that thrive working from home, there are also those employees that become less productive. My wife worked with someone that only got about 80% of her work done because of not being in the office. Unfortunately she insisted on traveling around the United States in a recreational vehicle (RV) and so having her come into the office could not be an option. The business owner opted to replace her with someone that now completes 100% of the work assigned. Doing it in the office is not a requirement.

Amazon may lose a lot of quality employees with their new policy. It would be better for them to take a more personalized approach and only require those that need to be in the office to return. Unfortunately that is much more difficult to implement than the blanket policy they have unveiled. I'm glad I didn't take that job at Amazon now.

Get Your Flu Shot

There are a lot of strong feelings about vaccines and if you are opposed to them, feel free to disregard this post. For those that think they are a benefit, please keep reading. As you can probably guess, I fall into this second category.

My company sends me notices every fall to remind me to get my annual flu shot. When I actually went into an office, they had healthcare professionals come to the office and provide free flu shots to all those interested in receiving them. Now that I work from home, they send me a voucher that can be used at any Walgreens to get a free flu shot. This year I printed up the voucher and headed down to my local Walgreen's pharmacy. When I got there, the pharmacy area of the store had a huge line and so I turned around and came home.

I thought about going to another store in the area but opted to schedule an appointment at the one around the corner from my house. I logged into the Walgreen's website and set up a time for my shot the next day. Then I set an alarm on my phone so I wouldn't forget. I also added the appointment to my work calendar so nobody would try to schedule a meeting at the same time.

The next day the time for my appointment rolled around and I drove the short mile to the pharmacy. I went back to where they administer the shot and waited all of 30 seconds. Then a nice young lady escorted me into a private room, rolled up my sleeve, and gave me a shot containing the flu vaccine. While I set aside 30 minutes in my calendar, I only needed about 10. I quickly drove home and resumed my work.

The one thing common with all vaccines is a sore arm and I felt that the next day but not severely. Sometimes there are very mild flu-like symptoms but I didn't feel any of that. The weekend has passed and I actually feel this has been one of the easiest flu shots ever.

For the past couple years I have not bothered to get my flu shot and never came down with the flu. This year I don't want to take that chance. I let my COVID vaccine expire and came down with it in August. My dad didn't bother to get a shingles vaccine and just spent the last week suffering from the ailment. Because of these two incidents, I felt it prudent to get my flu vaccine this year.

Hopefully you don't fall victim to the normalcy bias where you feel it unnecessary to get the flu vaccine because you haven't gotten sick over the past couple of years without it. It only takes a few minutes to get the shot and most insurance covers the cost so it is free. You never know if you will get exposed and those few minutes can keep you from getting sick for a week or more. After all it could mean a lost week of skiing for me.

Robot Vacuum: Hide-and-Seek Champion

This morning I went to empty the dust bin on one of my robot vacuums and noticed my wife had beat me to it. I asked if she had emptied our second one and she had not. I headed upstairs and quickly saw that the device had not found its way back to the charging station. I announced the search by yelling, "Marco," like the pool game I played as a kid and heard my wife chuckle. I only wish the creators of my robot vacuum had added a function for the device to beep when it hears someone yelling "Marco."

My wife volunteered to help me find the disappearing robot and I told her not to worry as there is only 500 square feet to hide in. She still came and helped. I checked all the usual spots but could not find the device. I started opening closet doors to see if it had managed to squeeze in and close the door behind it. I checked under the 2 beds on that level of the house. No matter where I looked, I couldn't find the missing robot.

At this point I decided that I should award hide-and-seek champion of the world because I looked everywhere. Now my wife and I started looking more closely in places we had already checked. My wife eventually found the robot. It had climbed on top of some storage items under one of the beds and safely hidden itself next to the box springs. My wife came out carrying the device and laughing. She emptied the dust bin while put the robot vacuum on the charger.

We have quite a few devices that make our lives easier and our robot vacuums are still on that list. Should you decide to pick one or more up, just be warned that you may be playing hide-and-seek once a month. Most of the time it will be a short game. On days like today, it may be a lot longer.