Planning a Road Trip

Last year my wife and I headed to Mt. Rushmore on a road trip. We did a bit of planning before we left but really had no idea what the trip would be like. We made reservations to ride an old steam-engine train and made sure to have hotel reservations when we got to town. Otherwise we didn't stress about filling every second with activities. The trip turned out to be wonderful and we had a great time.

This year we decided to do another road trip and will head to Glacier National Park. We made our hotel reservations back in March and will be staying in some cabins right at the entrance. While visiting Dinosaur National Monument a few weeks ago, we picked up our annual National Parks pass so we already have that taken care of. Last night we sat down and did a bit more planning so we have some ideas of activities to keep us busy.

First I pulled out our National Geographic book with information about all of the National Parks in the United States. That is a great resource to get an idea of what there is to do in Glacier National Park. As can be expected with physically printed media, there is a lot that is out of date. Fortunately a lot of information is still valid.

Next we pulled out the laptop and brought up Google Maps. That is such a great tool for looking at driving distances and times. We mapped the route from our house to the park. It will take almost 10 hours and so we will break up the first day and only drive part way. As with our Mt. Rushmore trip, we won't worry about hotel reservations that first night as we don't know when we will decide to stop driving. I don't know if I want to try to make it to Butte or will stop early in Dillon. There are lots of options in either location.

I have a cousin living in Somers, Montana and so I sent her a text message letting her know that we may stop in on our second day of the trip as it is on the way. My wife has an aunt living in Eureka, Montana about an hour outside the park so we sent her a text as well. It is nice to be able to visit extended family on such a trip.

Lastly we looked at all of the things to do in the park. There is a lot to see and some of it can be done in a car but the majority requires hiking. Then there are the option of horseback and boat rides as well. We created a rough itinerary of interesting things to do. As the park is combined with Waterton Park in Canada we decided we want to bring our passports to facilitate a border crossing, should we decide to do that. We also looked at the weather to help us decide the clothing to bring. Right now, highs are in the mid 60's and so we will be sure to pack appropriate jackets and pants, not just shorts and t-shirts.

I now feel prepared for the trip we will take in the next week or so. While I still have a printed road atlas for the United States, I appreciate being able to use the Internet to plan road trips. Furthermore after looking up directions, Google Maps wanted to know if it should send directions to my phone. After all, once in the car, that is how we will navigate. We still have some time though so I will pass for now. 

Putting on the Pith Helmet

 

 

Early in my career I heard the story of a software developer that had the unique practice of putting on a pith helmet whenever forced to debug his own code. I'm not sure how true the story is but it evokes the image of an early explorer trudging through the jungles of a distant continent. In my current role, I am often asked to search for system problems and help resolve them.

Last Friday I received a cry for help and immediately looked into the issue. My manager didn't like how I responded as he wanted me to find the source of the problem before bothering the group that reported it. I saw it differently as I wanted them to know that we immediately started looking at the issue and wondered if they had any more information they could provide to help diagnose the issue. Ultimately the only thing I could do was log a bug with another group in the company and have them research the root cause of the issue.

We told the group that reported the issue that we would work to get the issue resolved by Monday. Such is the luxury of working for a world-wide company like Sony. I can go enjoy my weekend and hope another team working in Japan or India has enough time to find the issue and resolve it before Monday even starts in the United States. Unfortunately sometimes an issue can be more difficult to troubleshoot and so it is important to get as much information as possible on Friday so we don't have any back-and-forth with questions.

Fortunately one of our excellent engineers saw the problem on Saturday and worked through the weekend to get it fixed. The root cause boiled down to "too much data." As this means the problem may arise again we have a two-pronged approach to solving it: The first is to monitor for larger-than-normal data sets. That will alert the operations team before the system users get a hint that something has gone wrong. The second is to modify the architecture to handle larger volumes of data.

This morning I came in and saw everything that had taken place over the weekend and could report back to the system user who noticed the problem. I could also share the resolutions that we plan to implement so it doesn't happen again. The user confirmed the problem fixed and I closed the bug appropriately.

While I like the idea of wearing a pith helmet to signify that I am trudging into the jungles of code, I am glad I have not adopted the practice. First, I work out of my home office so nobody would have any idea of the significance other than my wife who would just laugh at me. Second, I would have gotten a lot of strange looks and questions wearing the unique hat through the weekend. 

Don't Use Disney's Genie+ To Plan Your Day

My wife and I recently returned from Disney World and learned a lot. We acted as tour guides for my wife's office trip. We took two couples that had never been to Disney World before and they appreciated our knowledge and help. One of the wives had refrained from going to Disney's Flagship park because of how large it is wanted someone who knew the parks to act as a guide.

One of my wife's coworkers has serious fear-of-missing-out or FOMO and did a lot of research on her own. That meant a constant barrage of questions as to if we would do things and if not, the reason why. We appreciated her thoroughness but it got old quickly. One of her suggestions included using Disney's Genie+ app to help us plan our day. Basically you enter all the rides and attractions you want to experience and it will string together a list of how you should attack them based on crowd predictions. Just to humor her, we entered all the things we wanted to do on our first day. It came back and said we wanted to do too much and would not be able to fit it all in. We assured everyone we would be able to get everything done before the park closed and did.

Ultimately we managed to get a lucky break or two and the projected crowds did not materialize as expected. It also helped to visit attractions close to the ones we just exited. Every day we started at the parks' openings and finished everything we wanted to by 7pm or earlier. At Animal Kingdom we finished everything by 3:30pm.

I am not sure what AI technology Genie+ uses to create your schedule but I do know AI is wrong 80% of the time. That is my personal metric and yours may be different. In the case of Genie+ it told us we would not be able to visit all of the attractions we wanted to experience, yet we did. Your best bet when visiting Disney World is to pick your must-do ride and head there right when the park opens. Build your itinerary from there by visiting the next ride on your list that is near to where you are. Doing that you should be able to get everything in that you want to do. Good luck! 

LLM Demos All Look the Same

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco. As you might imagine, AI played a huge part in the conference. During the product feature keynote speech, Snowflake told us the answer to every question is CoCo, or their form of AI that uses Large Language Models or LLMs.

AI is much more encompassing than just LLMs but that is what everyone thinks of when we talk about AI right now. The downside to LLMs is that all of the demos look exactly the same. Snowflake kept trying to show us new features in their product, would bring up a chat prompt and type in some sort of question. It would think about it for a bit and then spit out a text answer. Sure you didn't need to code or type SQL queries to the database but there really wasn't any difference from one demo to the next.

Last year I attended only 3 days of the conference as I had to get home and couldn't stay for the final day. I should have taken a page out of last year's playbook and only stuck around for 3 days instead of the 4 I did this year. By the last day, I lost all excitement and couldn't wait to get home. In fact, I left the conference at noon and tried to catch an earlier flight back to Salt Lake.

Ultimately I came away from the conference feeling like I wasted some of my time. When all you have to do is pull up a chat prompt and enter your question, there is no need to learn the intricacies of the product. Don't know the syntax to join data from two separate data sources, just let the AI figure it out for you. The conference can be reduced from days to hours.

When I left the conference, Snowflake asked me to fill out a survey. They provided dates for the event next year and asked if I would attend in San Francisco. Naturally I politely declined as it just doesn't interest me any more. Now if they held the conference in Hawaii, I'd be there but doubt I would spend any time at the actual Summit. When it came time to put together a trip report, I could always ask AI to do it for me. 

3D Printing Summer 2026

I had my whole family visiting over the Memorial-Day weekend and we all had a lot of fun. On Monday my oldest son brought over a bunch of fidget toys he printed with his 3D printer. All of the kids loved playing with them and it got me thinking about how far the technology has come since I purchased my 3D printer. The printers you can get today are much more advanced and can do many different things.

My oldest son had a neighbor who got into 3D printing as a business. Every time the neighbor upgrades his printer, he gives the old one to my son. While my printer can print a single color, my son's can print multiple in the same print. There are a number of ways to do that. My son's printer has a single print head (where the hot plastic comes out of) and so it creates purge blocks where it dumps the previous color while waiting for the new one to be ready. Sometimes those purge blocks can be larger than the object you are printing and so you want to be careful with how often you change colors. My son's neighbor has a more expensive printer with multiple print heads, lessening the need to use purge blocks on color changes.

The fidget toys my son brought to our Memorial-Day celebration had multiple different colors and looked very nice compared to what I can print. My younger son who also has a 3D printer also expressed praise for the print quality. This had me asking if I should upgrade to a higher quality printer.

Truth be told, I don't have a lot of use for a 3D printer. Mine sits idle most of the year. About the only time I use it is during the Christmas Holidays when we create ornaments or small and inexpensive gifts for neighbors. It does not make sense for me to upgrade something I rarely use. Would being able to print multiple colors change that? Not really. For me, there is not a compelling reason to upgrade. That being said, there are a number of people using their 3D printers all the time and newer technology will improve what they are making. 

You Did Not Win a Free Cruise

A few months ago I received a letter in the mail. When I opened it up, it told me I had one 1 of several prizes. I looked at all of the rewards and tried to guess what I really won. Was it the free week at a hotel or the free 7-day cruise with airfare. I guessed the hotel but it turns out I won the cruise. So what's the catch? I had to sit through a timeshare sales presentation. Okay it wasn't a timeshare but a travel club. What's the difference? With a timeshare you own the deed to a piece of property you can visit once a year or every other year. With a travel club, you gain access to wholesale room rates for hotels around the world. In both instances you have to come up with $50K or so. Naturally I declined the purchase but followed up on the cruise.

I received an e-mail from Gocrv.com telling me how to redeem the free cruise. Basically I filled out a form indicated the dates I wanted to go and the departure port I wanted to leave from. I also paid a $200 deposit. I then called a number to schedule the trip. I had enough trips planned for the year and so I wanted the cruise to be towards the end of 2026. When I called the number and finally met with the vacation specialist, she told me to call back in May as their inventory had not yet released for dates towards the end of the year. Today I called back.

One thing I have been practicing is being nice to people when I travel. This past weekend I took a trip to Las Vegas to see Donny Osmond and when we went to check into the hotel, we had to wait a half hour before we could get a key to our room. Rather than pitch a fit, I politely waited in line to talk to a real person instead of the check-in kiosk. The gentlemen told me they didn't have any king rooms available. He then upgraded my wife and I to a junior suite. It paid to be polite. It may not always, but it did last weekend.

So I called the nice ladies at Gocrv.com this morning and made sure to be polite. I got to hear a number of fine-print details that they speed over in commercials and I agreed to the terms. Then she put me on hold to see what options I had for a weekend cruise in November leaving out of Port Canaveral, Florida. After about 10 minutes, she came back on the phone and told me she could get me a weekday cruise to Ensenada leaving out of Long Beach, California in October.

I have only been on 2 cruises in my life and the first one was the exact same cruise she proposed to me. Furthermore I would be required to pay an additional $350. I asked if there could be any other cruise available. She said there was not and so I politely told her I didn't want to repeat something I had already done and asked for a refund of my $200. She transferred me to customer service where I politely asked for my refund again. I was told I would get an e-mail with instructions on how to process that refund. That was an hour ago and I'm still waiting.

So here is the question: Did I really win a free cruise with airfare? Not really. When my wife and I went on the Ensenada cruise several years ago, the whole thing cost about $1000. Most of that was an upgraded balcony stateroom. I could have done it for $500 if I opted for an inside lower-deck stateroom like I had won. I could have effectively done the same cruise for $50 less. Ultimately I have learned there is no such thing as a free cruise, no matter what the literature says. The cost for learning that lesson is about 2 hours of my time total. That includes the sales pitch and all of the time spent on the phone talking through details. Hopefully you learn from my lesson and save yourself those couple of hours. 

Who Keeps Trying to Hack Me?

Every day I get a number of e-mails trying to steal my personal information. Normally my SPAM filter catches them and doesn't let them get to my inbox. Some do make it though and they can be annoying. Of course none of them come out and say they are trying to steal your personal information. Most of them are offering you some type of gift you will never receive.

My favorite says it is from Marriott and due to a recent stay they want to send me 2 of their famous pillows. First off, I didn't know Marriott hotels has famous pillows worth wanting. The first giveaway that the mail is a fraud is that they spell Marriott with a single "T" at the end. Anyone who stays at the hotel frequently knows how to spell it. I imagine that the e-mail is meant to trap people that don't stay often but want a free gift.

A similar message comes from a hardware store telling me I have won some free power tool. I've seen the e-mail come from Harbor Freight, Home Depot, and Lowe's. There are similar telltales that let me know it is not really from the company they claim to be. Most of the time it is a poorly-created logo. Ultimately the return address is a dead giveaway too. It might be from marriotpillows@somecompany.com or powertools@somecompany.com. If Marriott or Home Depot is giving you something, the return e-mail will be from their domain, not some other company.

One day I received 4 or 5 solicitations to steal my personal information and it really annoyed me. I decided I wanted to see who kept trying to trick me and if all of the attempts came from the same people. I hovered my mouse cursor over the button to claim my various prizes and made a note of the domain name that the link would take me to. I never clicked the link, I just wanted to see where it would take me.

Then I pulled up a terminal window on my Mac and typed in: "whois somecompany.com" for all of the domain names. Each e-mail had a different one and so all of the e-mails seemed to be coming from different people. The utility whois does a domain-name lookup and tells you who actually owns the domain. As expected all information pointed back to the same company in Bellevue, Washington that acts as a domain name supplier and is not one of the major players. From that I concluded that all of the personal information thieves are related.

I wondered if I should pursue the matter any further but decided against it. I have a lot more important things I can do with my time. Perhaps when I retire I will spend time going after malicious hackers. Not right now though.

Special note: The "whois" command does not come standard on Windows. You will need to download it from the Microsoft website. I think that is a shame as everyone should be able to easily use it without having to do anything special.