Don't Lose Your Mobile Phone

I had the pleasure of spending last week in Orlando, Florida. While that is close to Disney World, I spent the week at other attractions including Legoland, Sea World, and Kennedy Space Center. On the last day we decided to double back and visit Sea World again. On the first day, we focused on all the animal shows, which are amazing. On the second day, we attempted some of the roller coasters.

Arriving at the park early allowed us to practically walk onto any of the rides we wanted. Eventually we found ourselves at Ice Breaker. My 8-year-old grandson wanted to ride with me and we had a great time on our first ride. Then he wanted to go again. Not having any line made it easy to experience it a second time. As we started our free fall, I noticed someone lost their mobile phone and thought they would be having a bad day. Then I checked my pocket and realized it was mine. I don't know how it fell out but it did and the only person to blame happened to be me.

Before riding the ride, we saw signs on the fence around the roller coaster with a QR code telling people how to report lost items. My grandson immediately asked what you should do if you lost your phone. We all laughed and didn't think anything of it until I lost my phone. Then my son used his to report the loss. Not wanting to give up on finding my phone, I started walking around the fence guarding the track from the public. In one of the few areas that had close access to the ride, I found my phone about 10 feet inside the fence. Now I couldn't reach through the fence and get my phone but I knew where to find it. I had hope.

I went back to the ride operators and asked if they could help me get the phone. They told me I needed to go to guest services, which I did. I waited in a 30-minute line only to be told to go to lost-and-found. I went there and was told I should have just asked the ride operators for help. I explained I did. They told me to go back to the ride and someone would help me get my phone. I walked back, which turned out to be about a mile or so and waited. Then I waited some more.

Eventually a young man came out and told me they would have to shut down the ride and he would go get the phone. I waited for another 15 minutes without any signs of the ride stopping and the young man eventually told me they would not stop the ride and I would have to come back that evening when the park closed down. Unfortunately I had a 7pm flight and so that was not an option. While waiting in the lost-and-found line, another park attendee told us stories of maintenance retrieving her phone only to have it stolen from the maintenance locker. The hope of Sea World getting me my phone back disappeared.

Think about it for a minute and when was the last time you backed up your phone? I don't think I have ever backed up mine. That means any of the pictures I took on the trip would be lost. I would have to download all of my applications again, including quite a few multi-factor-authentication (MFA) apps that I use for work. I started getting depressed and decided I wouldn't leave the park without my phone.

The young man that came to help me get my phone brought along an 8-foot claw and let me try my luck with it. His arm wasn't as long as mine and I could get the device fairly close to the phone but not quite reach it. At this point my inner Engineer kicked in and I wondered how I could extend the claw 2 more inches as that is all that I needed to reach my phone.

The first thing I tried was Geometry and picking the right slats in the fence to put the claw through. I could get close enough to the phone for the claw to reach it but couldn't see the phone due to a track support leg. I solved that by positioning my wife to help relay the outcome of my efforts. While I could reach the phone now, I couldn't grip it because the claw didn't have the usual rubber feet necessary to hold the phone. I asked my wife if she had any hair ties. She had 2 and I wrapped one around each of the claw ends. They provided enough friction for me to grab the phone and move it 2 inches closer. At this point I knew I would retrieve the phone. I just needed patience. On my next attempt, I got the phone withing 6 inches of the fence. At that point I reached through the iron slats and grabbed it. Amazingly the 50-foot fall didn't damage the phone. I didn't even crack the screen. That is amazing considering I don't have a screen protector.

I returned the claw and let them know I got the phone. My wife and I then left the park so we could pack up and get ready for our flight home. It felt good to be successful in retrieving my phone. In the future I will keep my phone in a zippered pocket and not rely on friction to keep the phone from falling out.

Waiting in a Virtual Queue

Today tickets went on sale for Disneyland's Star Wars Nite in April and May. Last year I had the pleasure of attending with my wife and daughter. We had a great time and planned on doing the event again this year. We hope to correct the mistake we made last year and not try to spend the morning and afternoon in the park. The event starts at 6pm and runs until 1am. They limit ticket sales and that allows you to walk onto almost any ride. Furthermore they have special events, unique food offerings, and themed swag.

I knew that tickets would go on sale this morning at 10am MST and so I started watching the clock as I did my morning exercise at Snowbird. I also knew they would start adding people to a virtual queue at 9:45. I happened to be on the Little Cloud chairlift at the time and so I pulled my phone out and joined the queue. I got to the top of the lift and saw that I had 20 minutes before I could make my purchase. I skied down to the mid-mountain lodge and checked my time. I had 15 minutes to wait. I skied to the bottom, walked to my car, took off my ski boots, and jumped into the car as my turn to buy tickets arrived. I quickly made the purchase and then put my phone away so I could drive home.

Last night I worried that I needed to be on the Disneyland website right at 9:45. Annual pass holders could purchase the special-event tickets a few days before the general public and some of the nights sold out. My worries turned out to be unfounded as tickets for all 4 nights are still available at 4:30pm today. However I thought it neat that I could log into the website on my phone while riding a chairlift and be placed in a virtual queue. That allowed me to stow my phone in a pocket and ski down the mountain without having to have my attention riveted to my phone. I wasn't sure turning off my screen would still allow my place to be held. It did and worked very well.

I always prefer to visit websites using my computer instead of my phone. This allows me to use a large display that is easy to read. I also don't worry about someone hacking my connection and getting my credit-card information. Fortunately my smartphone turned out to be the right tool for the job today. Any time I need to be in a virtual queue, I will use my phone in the future. 

 

Your Library Card and the Libby App

I have not had a library card for decades. I love to read but have purchased books instead of just borrowing them. This weekend my wife convinced me to go get a library card so I can use the Libby app on my Amazon kindle. The first thing that surprised me is that my local library is open on Saturdays.

To get my library card I just had show my local driver's license and confirm it had my correct address. I also filled out a short form and then the librarian gave me a choice of 4 colors for my card. I picked my favorite color and left the library. I went home and downloaded the Libby app from the Kindle store. It is also available for other Android and iOS devices. Once installed it asked me questions about my library card. I had to give the name of the county library I belonged to and then give my 15-digit card number. It quickly found my information and I could immediately start checking out electronic versions of books available to me. The current catalog has over 200 thousand titles.

I am currently reading a sailing memoir from someone that sailed around the world and so I didn't want to immediately reserve anything. I will wait until I finish my current book. I did look through a number of titles though. There are quite a few sailing magazines I can check out in addition to more books on the subject. I also did a cursory search of mountain-climbing titles. Spread amongst the non-fiction are quite a few novels, should I wish to escape from reality. I am excited to pick out my next read when my current one is finished.

I am not someone that has a lot of different apps loaded onto my phone or tablet. For me to actually download an app, there better be a good reason. If you like reading, I highly recommend Libby and should have gotten my library card a long time ago.  

Recording Guitar Music on my Computer

My youngest son's daughters are used to me playing the guitar when I go visit them in Ohio. It is a nightly ritual for me to sit on the end of a bed and play while the girls fall asleep. If I am allowed to play long enough, they fall asleep before I am done. The girls love it and so they asked me to record the guitar so they can listen to me playing even though I am in Utah.

It is a lot of work to set up the recording equipment and so I put it off until my oldest granddaughter asked me two days in a row. The second day, my son forwarded a video of an impassioned plea to record the music. How could I turn her down? On Saturday evening I pulled out my wife's old Mac laptop and connected it to my audio converter. Then I plugged in my acoustic-electric guitar and got ready to record.

The Mac comes with GarageBand which is great for recording audio onto your computer. I have a high-end microphone that I use to record audio for my YouTube videos but my guitar also plugs right in. I thought I could just start playing. I clicked on the GarageBand application only to have it crash repeatedly. The simplest solution is to reinstall the application so I loaded up the App Store and downloaded the latest version. That worked and I could run it on the laptop.

My audio converter connects to the computer though a USB cable and the Mac isn't quite sure what to do with audio afterwards. It can pull input from the converter but also send output to it even though it doesn't have a speaker. I had to go in and tell the Mac to use the device for input but to route output through the computer's speakers. I actually had headphones plugged into the Mac and couldn't hear anything until I adjusted these settings. Then I clicked the "Monitor" checkbox in GarageBand so I could hear my own playing and what the computer recorded.

When I play for my granddaughters before bed, they don't care if I make a mistake. When I practice for myself, I just play through the song and don't worry if the music doesn't sound 100% correct. All that changes when you record music to play over and over. I want it to be perfect and so it took me about 20 attempts on the first song before I felt I did it justice. Knowing I wanted to record around 15 songs, I had to come up with a better way to finish the project. Or I had to stop being so picky.

The first thing I did was to change how I recorded my songs. Instead of stopping the recording after a mistake and starting over, I would keep the recording going and just stop long enough so I knew where to cut the mistake from the track. That sped things up somewhat. I also decided to play each song through once before even attempting to record it. That helped a lot and I cut the number of takes from 20 down to just 1 or 2. Being less picky also had something to do with that.

It normally takes me about 20 minutes to go through the 15 or so songs I have memorized. Recording them took over an hour with all the stops and starts. It also made for great guitar practice as I could really see my common mistakes and work to fix them. I highly recommend recording your music practice on a periodic basis to help you improve. It is something I will incorporate into my practice.

I sent the music off to my son on Saturday evening thanks to some help from Google Drive. He put it on my granddaughters' music player. When I called them yesterday, I could hear my music in the background. This morning my son sent me a video of my oldest granddaughter listening to some of my songs and being happy that she can now hear them whenever she wants. That makes me feel great as a musician but even better as a grandpa.

Time For a New Printer

I don't think a home printer is necessary unless you are used to having one. Over a decade ago I bought a Samsung color laser printer. It worked for a few years and then the ink started bleeding all over the pages. I thought new toner cartridges would fix the issue and they did for about 5 pages. Then the bleeding started again. We have limped along with the printer for a few years but my wife decided it needed to be replaced.

I did not do a lot of research about what to replace the old printer with. Instead I did what a lot of other people do and selected it from Costco. I really just went to the store on our monthly trip and wandered over to the electronics section to see what printers they had in stock. When I asked my wife if we should pick one up, she wouldn't let me leave the section until we had one in our cart.

At Costco there are really only 2 selections: a color laser printer from HP or a color inkjet printer from Epson. Both are great printer companies and neither is a bad choice. My son has the inkjet printer and thinks it is great. My wife suggested it based on his recommendation as well as the significant price difference. Unfortunately for my needs, the inkjet wasn't going to cut it. I often print maps on waterproof paper and the instructions that came with the paper say it only works with laser printers. If you think about it, it makes sense. Laser printers melt little plastic beads onto the paper while inkjets spray liquid ink. Waterproof paper will not accept the ink and I imagine it makes quite the mess.

I hefted the 45 pound HP LaserJet Pro MFP 3301cdw into our cart which effectively limited what other purchases we could make that day. I still ended up with a $750 bill as the printer came in at $400 before tax. We brought the new toy home and let it sit in the living room for a couple of days. Eventually I summoned the strength to move it downstairs into my basement office.

The new HP printer does more than print. It is also a scanner, fax machine, and copier. The one machine allowed me to remove my 30-year old copier from my office as well as my scanner and old Samsung printer. I have no need for a fax anymore and threw my old one away more than a decade ago. I now have a lot more table space in my office, which is a good thing.

Setting up the printer went something like this: pull the printer out of the box, plug in the power cable, plug in a network cable, set the date and time, open the printer app on any computer in the house, scan for new printers, and the printer could print. I didn't have to do anything special as it just worked. Today my wife needed to scan a document. Because the printer was set up, the scanner was too. She put the document in the sheet feeder on top and open the scan application on her laptop. Then she needed to select the "use sheet feeder" option to automatically suck the page into the scanner bed. It saved the document as a PDF file in her Pictures directory on her Mac.

The new printer installation took significantly less time than I thought it would. It works with all the computers in the house. For those that don't have network cables lying around, The printer also works on WiFi and has a touchscreen to help set that up.

Again, I don't think a home printer is necessary. But once you have had one, it is tough not to. My wife and I love the new HP and look forward to documents where the colors don't run together. 

Setting Up Christmas Gifts

It can be nice to see a large number of Christmas gifts under the tree on that anticipated morning. This year I received a number of presents that required a lot of work to set up. Back in September my youngest son got me a ski rack to install in my garage. My wife liked the gift so much, she got another set. The only problem is that I hadn't installed the first ski rack as it required power tools. This begs the question of how my wife knew she wanted more if I never bothered to install the first set.

The idea behind the ski racks is that they hold the skis in place close to the wall so that when someone walks by the skis, they don't accidentally knock them over, which has happened frequently in the past. My son gave me racks for 2 pairs of skis. My wife then got a pack for 4. I installed my son's and then discovered that we only had room on the wall for 2 more pairs of skis. Not to worry, I just installed enough of my wife's gift to hold 2 pairs of skis and it works great. Naturally I did that on the Saturday of the MLK 3-day weekend.

The next gift my wife got me, and the reason I am including it in my blog, is a set of bed-side lamps. Now what do bed-side lamps have to do with technology and computers? They are battery powered LED lamps and come with a remote to turn them on or off. Furthermore, they colored so that you can choose between any shade in the rainbow. If they had the ability to connect to my home WiFi, they would be considered IoT or Internet-of-Things devices. Fortunately they are not that complicated nor do they need to be. The only downside is that they need be attached to the wall. I attacked that project on the Monday of the MLK 3-day weekend.

Once again, I had to pull out power tools, in this case a drill, and spend some time planning out the project, executing the project, and cleaning up after the project. It left me asking if I really received a gift or if my wife creatively came up with a way to get me to do work around the house? I drilled a couple of holes in the wall for each lamp on either side of my bed and installed the lamps. The light unit is about the size of a soup can and is covered in LEDs. On the top it has a USB-C port so you can charge it. I have no idea how long it will last on a single charge but we have been using the lights all week and they work well.

I enjoy setting up certain Christmas gifts like Lego projects. Other gifts like the ones I received this year have felt like work. Furthermore they are what I consider golf-club gifts. You know, when a husband gets his wife golf clubs knowing she will never use them but he will. I admit I am using the ski racks and the bed-side lamps but feel they are more for my wife than for me. Next year I plan to ask for gifts that don't require drilling holes in my house. 

Improving Problem Solving Skills

Monday I had the day off and looked forward to spending the morning skiing with my grandkids. I arrived at Alta ski area early and eagerly awaited their arrival. When my son pulled into the parking lot, he delivered the bad news that my oldest grandson had forgotten his jacket which also contained his ski pass. I could hear my grandson crying inconsolably in the car and I felt really bad for him. Instead of giving up on the situation, I started thinking about solutions to the problem that didn't involve driving the hour back home to get the jacket and pass.

Coincidentally, yesterday I found myself facing a tough computer problem for work and I found it difficult to face it. Instead I wanted to give up and drop the issue in someone else's task list. I spent the morning skiing at Alta but I would eventually have to show up for work. I knew I would be working until 8pm so I had the freedom to ski until 11am. I thought how easy it would be to just quit my job and spend the rest of the winter as a ski bum. That would not be financially prudent and so I skied my last run and headed to my home office.

My work problem related to setting up a Digital Clean Room (DCR) in Snowflake. I'll spare you the details but it looked like the configuration details were entered correctly as I could see my team's data set as well as the other team's. When I went to connect the two, the system tried to do something and eventually spit out an error. The error indicated my team had misconfigured something and so I researched how to fix it. After about an hour of in-depth searching, I confirmed I did not have the correct permissions to fix the problem and so I created a very detailed e-mail to the team and made sure to include someone that had the power to set things right. I then followed that e-mail up with a direct e-mail to the person with proper permissions to fix the situation.

I had done the best I could and waited for my colleagues in Japan to start their day as they had the permissions necessary to get things working. Once they arrived in the office, the DCR started working correctly and the problem no longer existed. I could move forward and didn't need to quit my job.

So what happened with my grandson? My daughter works at Alta's ski school and I knew they have extra ski clothing in the event a kid shows up unprepared for the weather. I walked into the ski school, found my daughter, and quietly asked if she had a ski jacket we could borrow. She quickly found one in my grandson's size and I walked it up to my son's car. Then I escorted my son and grandson to the ticket office where we looked at getting a single day pass to replace the forgotten season's pass. It cost my son $5, which will probably come out of my grandson's souvenir budget the next time we go to Disney World but we solved the problem. We then had a wonderful morning skiing.

Everyone enjoyed the ski day and midway through it, my son remarked that he now understood why I left him in the car one ski day when his ski pants broke. He was 17 at the time and perfectly capable of coming up with a solution without my help. Instead of waiting for me to finish skiing, my son went into the resort ski shop and asked for some duct tape and didn't take "No" for an answer. Once he had the tape, he gave his pants a temporary fix and then joined me on my second run. We had a good afternoon and didn't let a broken side-zipper ruin the day.

It is not uncommon to avoid problems when we encounter them. It happened to me when I faced the DCR problem. The best thing we can do is stop and take a deep breath. Then we need to look at all possible solutions and pick the best one. Fortunately for my grandson, I possessed some knowledge he didn't have and could craft a solution that didn't involve a lengthy drive nor an expensive purchase. Asking for help is how I solved my DCR issue and also how my son solved his ski pants one. You just need to be sure to ask the right source for help.