My Latest Video: Salt Flats 100

This evening I finally finished my latest video for YouTube. It is a short history of the Salt Flats Endurance run, formerly known as the Salt Flats 100. The purpose of the video is to help improve my video making skills and so any feedback is appreciated. No need to comment here as commenting on the video is preferred.

Here is the short link to the video for your convenience:

https://youtu.be/zeN_RBMFciQ

I created the video using the MP4 format. When I played the video on my computer, everything sounded pretty good. Then when I uploaded it to YouTube and played it on my desktop, the audio seems a bit off in places. I am not sure if that is because of headphones vs. speakers or if the conversion from MP4 to YouTube's format caused any problems. In any event, I will probably be editing the audio levels and re-releasing the video.

With this video released, I am now ready to begin my next one. I have a few ideas but input is always appreciated. My preference is for videos related to the outdoors as it gives me a chance to not spend so much time inside.

Winter Driving Revisited

My daughter just got home after spending the day teaching skiing at Alta. It is 9:30pm and the drive took her over 5 hours. Normally it takes 20 minutes. Why so long? People don't know how to drive in the snow. My wife and I spent the morning skiing and had the same drive. It took us an hour and we came down at 1:00pm. During our drive, we saw a number of idiots trying to drive in the snow with 2-wheeled-drive vehicles and summer tires.

One of my most popular blog posts is from 2013 on Winter Driving. Unfortunately the video I reference is no longer available but there are some secrets of driving in the snow:

1. Make sure you have winter tires
2. Go slow

If you don't have item #1, then don't drive in the snow. Pull off to the side of the road and wait for the snow to melt. If that sounds harsh, sorry but that is reality.

While waiting for my daughter to make it safely down the canyon, I utilized several online tools. My favorite is maps.google.com. You can have it show traffic and see where the slowdowns are located. My kids all prefer Waze. This evening Waze had the better information. While I could see where traffic is slow, that doesn't help get home any quicker when there is only one way down the canyon. Interestingly, my daughter could have skied home quicker than it took to drive. Too bad they won't let you leave a car at the ski resorts overnight. After all, I will be back up there tomorrow and could have helped bring it home.

Christmas Limbo

The day after Christmas is always interesting. As a child I might be sad because the greatest holiday of the year is over but I also didn't have to go to school and had until after the new year off. In my current role, I also get the week between Christmas and New Year's off. So I am like a little child and that means I get to spend a bit of time playing with new toys.

Yesterday I mentioned some new video cameras I got in my stocking. I figured that before creating any new videos, I should probably finish the one I am working on about the Salt Flats Endurance Run. I recorded all of the narration this afternoon and will add it to the video tomorrow. I would do it this evening but should probably spend some time with my wife who had to work today. Look for the video in the next couple of days.

I love having this week off and spent today doing some of those things that I have not had time for earlier this year. As I don't have to quite go back to work, I am calling it "Christmas Limbo." Hopefully you can enjoy this time of year as much as I do.

Christmas 2018

I normally don't post to my blog on Christmas but have some extra time this evening after a very busy day with the family. I thought I would sit down and type a few words about this special day of the year. While it would be fun to pontificate on what makes a good Christmas, I like my blog to have a more technical focus and so I will try to stick to that. However I would like to add that a good snow always makes a great Christmas and today I had a great day skiing at Alta.

My kids and wife don't really have a large list of things they can get me for Christmas. If there is something I want, I will generally go out an get it. Everyone did surprise me this year and got me a few things that I had talked about during the year but had forgotten about.

My stocking contained a couple of off-brand sports cameras that I pointed out to my daughter when they came on sale for $50. They seem equivalent to the GoPro Hero 4 but I have only had the chance to play with them for a bit and may be overselling them. I have wanted to create more adventure videos and so I am hoping the cameras will help gather footage. One nice thing about having 2 of them is I can set them up to record from different angles and have more footage to choose from.

The new cameras are capable of recording in 4K and so it is important to make sure I have Class 10 or U3 micro SD cards (this is the technical part of the post). I have a couple of them from a few weeks ago and so I am good for now but will want to pick up more. I will be interested to provide a review of the camera hardware once I spend a bit more time with them. Stay tuned for that in a future post. Until then, I hope you have had a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Troubleshooting My 3D Printer

One of my tasks for this Christmas break is to figure out a problem I am having with my 3D printer. My youngest son and I sat down today to figure it out. Fortunately we succeeded and now have a better working device.

To troubleshoot the machine, we looked at any changes we had made to the printer. The first is a glass print bed and I highly recommend one as it makes a huge difference in print quality. I didn't think that could be the cause and so we looked at the only other change we made: changing the print nozzle. My son found a great deal on different sized print nozzles on Amazon and ordered them. For some reason he put one of the new nozzles on the printer after trying some of the different sizes. It turns out the new nozzle is not exactly the size advertised. It is supposed to be 0.4 mm in diameter but is slightly smaller. That makes it hard for the print material to bond to lower layers as it gets laid down. We were able to measure the nozzle diameter using a tool included with the printer. Replacing it with a correct-sized nozzle solved the problem and now our prints are working nicely. We measured all of the new nozzles and have identified the 0.4 mm nozzles that really are 0.4 mm.

Since discovering the problem, we have printed a number of small parts and all of them are turning out well. So if you have a 3D printer and suddenly the print material doesn't adhere to the lower layers of your print, the nozzle size could be the problem. Beware of low-cost 3D printer parts found on Amazon. They may not meet the tight tolerance requirements.

Fixing an Online Order

Back in March of this year, my wife and I decided to spend the $2300 to get her soft-top Jeep Wrangler a hard top. This required installing the wiring harness, which I did back in October with the help of YouTube. Since putting the hard top on the Jeep I have been trying to figure out if we ever paid for it. Today I discovered that we hadn't and fixed that.

When I originally ordered the parts back in March, it took several tries through an online website. The first time I tried, my credit card got declined. After that, my credit card stopped working and so I had to call my credit card company. It seems that there are a number of thieves that will place an expensive order to an auto parts company on the East coast and have it shipped to the West coast. The thieves then use the long shipping times to rip off online vendors and credit card companies. Noticing this trend, Visa listed my transaction as suspected fraud and shut off the card. I managed to get the card reinstated without too much difficulty.

While trying to purchase the hard top, I found several other online sites selling the parts I needed for even less than where I originally placed the order. One vendor took American Express and the transaction went through. A few weeks later I got an e-mail about how it would take 3 months to fabricate the hard top as it is not a part they keep in stock. I responded that I didn't mind waiting and in May the hard top with associated wiring harness arrived. We left the soft top on the Jeep for the summer and didn't worry about the hard top until the weather turned cold. The whole time I kept expecting the $2300 charge to appear on my American Express. It never did.

In October I started trying to track down if I had actually made a payment or not. I ran through my American Express statements and didn't see anything. I tried contacting the place I ordered the parts from but always seemed to try after they had closed for the day. Yesterday I finally sent them a message via their website (which didn't list a phone number). Today I got back a message saying they had cancelled my order and wouldn't be sending me a hard top. They must not have read my message closely because I already had the hard top and just wanted to pay for it.

I decided that I needed to try a different route and pulled out the paperwork from the original shipping crate. It listed the shipper along with a phone number. I called them and presented my story to a very confused secretary. She passed my call onto the boss and I recounted it yet again. For some reason he seemed amazed that someone would want to try and pay for something without the threat of legal action. He said he wanted to do some research and would call me back.

About 30 minutes later he called and explained what had happened. The original place I ordered the hard top from did not know that it had been sent. After a period of inactivity, the order was cancelled. Because of the cancellation, the shipper was responsible for eating the cost of the mistake. He then went on to politely ask me if I still wanted to pay for the parts. I told him that I did and gave him my credit card number. He continued to be amazed that someone would do all this work. I responded that there are still honest people in the world. He appreciated knowing that.

Sometimes online companies make mistakes. While we should expect these companies to fix any issues with orders, we should also do our part to as well.

The Beginning of Christmas Break

Today marks the official start of my Christmas break. While I have been working from Utah all week, today is the first day I didn't have to work. I did go through e-mails and helped one of my coworkers with a problem but the important thing is that I didn't HAVE to work. I did it by choice.

So what do I plan to do with all of my non-work time right now? Plenty. Of course my highest priority will be skiing every day possible. That will be a nice mix of resort skiing and hiking to the tops of local mountains. I also need to do some work on my 3D printer. Lately my prints have not gone that well and so I need to do some troubleshooting. I also have my usual list of games I would like to play. Realistically that means I will probably just play Red Dead Redemption 2 as that is my current game of choice.

I must also account for the unknown of Christmas morning. There is a very real possibility that I will get some technological toys (especially since I bought myself some inexpensive action cameras that my wife insists on putting under the Christmas tree). Speaking of cameras, I have my Salt Flats 100 video I have been working on for a very long time and will finish that up in the next few days.

This is my favorite time of the year as I have time to work on all of those projects that have been put off throughout the year. The only downside is that I probably need a year and a half to even put a dent in them.

E-mail Marketing

Like most people, I really hate getting unwanted e-mail. It clogs my inbox and instead of making me want to buy someone's product, it makes me hate it. In fact, every day I go through my e-mail and click the "Unsubscribe" link if it is trying to sell me a product for which I have no interest.

Every day I still get about 30 to 40 messages that I never read and just delete. The difference is that the e-mail comes from a place where I may eventually have an interest. For instance, I love playing the guitar and I get a message from Guitar Center and one from Musician's Friend every day. If you ask my wife, I already have too many guitars and so rather than be tempted to buy something that may get me in trouble at home, I just delete the messages without reading them. Every once in a while I discover I need something from a music store and so those are the first places I go to see what is available. Therefore I don't want to unsubscribe from them.

When you are looking to make a purchase, communication of any kind from a vendor that sells what you want to buy is seen as helpful. The rest of the time it is annoying.

A few months ago I received an e-mail from a company that provides a service to me and my wife. It announced that The Brian Setzer Orchestra would be playing in Salt Lake City on December 18th. As my wife and I are always looking for some fun Holiday activities I jumped at the chance to get early discount tickets to the sold-out show. My wife had never heard of them but agreed it would be fun. As we rode home from the show last night, she remarked about how much fun she had. I had to agree that it is one of the best Christmas shows we have ever seen. They even had an ode to the Nutcracker Suite at the end. I leaned over and asked my wife if that meant I could get out of seeing the ballet version this season. She said it counted.

Should you wish to sell your wares via e-mail marketing, remember that most people won't even bother to read your message. The exception is if they are looking to buy exactly what you are selling. Even then, that is questionable. So be careful and screen your recipients meticulously.

Dawn Patrol

Last night before heading to bed, my two sons and youngest daughter hatched a plan to wake up early and go skiing. My youngest son, daughter, and I all have unlimited seasons passes to Alta but my oldest son does not. We also all had to go to work and couldn't justify having one person pay for a pass only to ski for an hour or so. Instead we headed to the mountains before the resorts even opened and planned to hike to the top under our own power and then ski down at about the same time the lifts started depositing paying customers to the top. Some resorts don't allow hikers and those that do have specific instructions that must be followed. You are also required to have specific safety equipment that include avalanche beacons, avalanche probes, and a good shovel.

Hiking before the lifts even start running is commonly known as "Dawn Patrol" and is a great way to start any day. We followed the usual safety protocol and made sure to check all the appropriate websites before leaving the house. Then we drove to the "Summer Road" area of Alta and headed up to an area known as "Patsy Marley."

It has been about a week since the last snow and so the skiing didn't include glorious powder that most people associate with Utah skiing. Instead the high-point of the morning included spectacular scenery on our hike through the forest and up the mountain. We hiked for about 90 minutes and then skied down in about 5.

Interestingly I found it much easier to sit in front of a computer and get work done. I had the ability to concentrate for a lot longer and got a lot done. If you find yourself staring at the prospect of a long day in front of a computer, I highly recommend "Dawn Patrol."

The Internet is Down

This week I have changed my regular routine and am flying to California on Tuesday instead of Monday. That is because I will be flying home on Friday so I can attend my company's winter hackathon. That means I spent Monday working from home instead of being at the office. Things were going well and I got a lot done until all of a sudden the Internet stopped working. I had a virtual private network (VPN) into my office and it immediately told me about the problem. Then I checked on my personal computer, which is not connected to the VPN and it had a problem too.

Having my home Internet down really cut into my immediate productivity. Rather than worry about troubleshooting the problem, I just turned my work phone into an Internet hotspot and kept working. Unfortunately that meant the rest of the house still couldn't use the Internet but I was the only one home and so it didn't matter. When my wife got home from work, I let her know that we had a problem and she remarked that we had a Comcast truck in the neighborhood and he must be working on it.

I headed up to dinner and we still didn't have an Internet connection. At this point I felt an obligation to troubleshoot the problem as it was irresponsible to head to California without fixing the issue. The first thing I checked was to make sure our signal booster had power. Not all Internet connections require a signal boosters but ours does (thanks Comcast). A tripped circuit breaker has caused problems in the past. Then I reset the cable modem. That didn't change anything. Ultimately I just needed to wait for the Comcast technician to finish his work as that really turned out to be the problem.

Sometimes there is nothing that you can do when your Internet is not working. You should be proactive about solving the problem though. One more thing I could have done is to call my Internet service provider and asked about an outage in the area. If you do end up calling and a technician comes out, don't be surprised if you get charged for the service call should it be determined that you are at fault.

Avalanche Danger

This morning I got a text from one of my neighbors back in Salt Lake. He would like to do some ski touring where you hike to the top of mountain under your own power before skiing down. He asked where I thought there is enough snow this early in the season. As that is something I had hoped to do on Monday morning before heading to the Bay Area, I had some ideas I could give him.

This afternoon I got a call from my son asking me if I wanted to drive out to the Uinta mountains this weekend to do a quick ski tour. For those that don't know, the Uinta mountains are in Eastern Utah. My son asked if I thought there would be enough snow. As he called while I sat in front of my computer, I pulled up the first place to go when thinking about doing some backcountry skiing in Utah: The Utah Avalanche Center. I clicked on the area for the Uinta mountains and checked to see the avalanche danger. It is fairly safe right now for South-facing slopes and dangerous for North-facing ones.

While ski resorts keep you informed about the ski conditions within their boundaries, the Utah Avalanche Center does an excellent job showing the rest of the state. One of my son's concerns is if there is enough snow to even ski at this time of the year. The site showed that there is enough snow and that people are out there making turns. It also showed what to avoid with respect to avalanche danger.

Should you find yourself in Utah (Colorado has an equivalent organization and corresponding website) looking to do some backcountry skiing, the Utah Avalanche Center website should be your first stop before gearing up. It will give you an idea of overall conditions as well as warn you about which slopes are unsafe. After all, it is all fun and games until the mountain tries to kill you.

The Power of a Good Demo

While in Japan this last week I got the chance to look at a bunch of new technology currently in the research and development phase. Unfortunately I can't go into what innovations I think are exciting, due to non-disclosure agreements, but I can use examples from years ago to help illustrate the point I am trying to make.

There are some inventions that change the world yet can be difficult to understand without a compelling demo. Imagine being at Bell Labs in 1948 when William Shockley invented the bipolar junction transistor. At the time, it served as a replacement to vacuum tubes and some engineers saw it as an inferior replacement. Audiophiles or people who are looking for pure sound from their audio equipment still prefer tube amps to solid-state ones (those that use transistors). Yet look at how many inventions came out of something so small and simple as the transistor: calculators, mobile phones, computers, and pretty much every electronics device being sold today.

I think it took a lot of imagination for the early inventors to realized the importance of their discovery. I remember hearing about Google's acquisition of YouTube and laughed at the huge price they paid. At the time I didn't know how people would use this new online service. Now any time I go to work on a car, I check YouTube first to see if there are any helpful videos. I'm not alone as Thomas Watson, the president of IBM is claimed to have said, "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." We all can fail to see the greatness of certain innovations.

Going back to my trip to Japan, I got to see some really new technology and one of the things that made the trip so interesting was all of the compelling demos. While an introduction to a particular invention is good, seeing how it can be used really helped me understand how groundbreaking it is. This helped me with some of the projects I am working on as I can see that I need to create some compelling demos so other can catch the same vision I see. Now I just hope that I can write about some of the things in the near future.

Beware of Online Reviews and Comparisons

I spent all day flying home from Japan and ended up here before I left, thanks to the international date line. I thought about creating a travel comparison blog entry. Something with useful information like airlines with the most rude flight attendants or worst on-time performance. Then I realized that while I travel every single week, I often stick to the same airlines and don't experience the full breadth of companies offering services. That is partly because I have had poor experiences on some airlines and refuse to fly them ever again. I've even gone so far as to tell my company that I won't go on a trip because they insist on putting me on a carrier I refuse to fly. The more I thought about my seemingly objective travel blog, the more I realized I wouldn't be doing anyone a service. I just don't branch out and try all of the service providers for the travel industry.

When I got home this evening, I had a ski magazine waiting for me. Every year they publish a resort survey listing out the top ski resorts in North America. In years past they have used results from the survey to rank the ski resorts against each other. This can be misleading because it is really a popularity contests for the resorts and doesn't reflect which ones are actually the best, only the most visited. This year, the magazine just listed the resorts with short blurbs about each of them and left off the rankings. I think this is smart as I don't need a bunch of intermediate skiers raving about how great a place is because of expensive restaurants and raging parties. I want to know how the mountain skis and that had become overshadowed.

So what does all this have to do with technology? Well there are a lot of online reviews of goods and services. Some people are heavily influenced by those reviews. Great care should be taken when reading online recommendations. You have no way of knowing if the person writing the good review works for the company or the person writing the bad review had a poor experience and is trying to retaliate for an anomaly. So when you find yourself looking at reviews and rankings for products or services, ask yourself if the reviewer has valid points or not.

A Case for Telecommuting

Today is my last one in Japan and I will head back to Salt Lake this evening. This morning I walked from my hotel to my office and noticed the large crowds on the path from the train station to the office buildings in the area. I thought about how much foot traffic could be reduced by simply allowing all of these office workers to work from home one day per week. Unfortunately that is a near impossibility here in Japan.

Japan has a very strong work culture that will take a lot to break down. Employees are expected to arrive at the office before their boss and remain there until after he has left. When people do leave, the literal translation of their goodbye includes an apology for leaving before those still at the office. Interestingly if you look at what all of those workers are doing while waiting around for the boss to go home, there is a lot of social media and non-work being done.

The same is true in the United States. There are a lot of people who could work from home but are not trusted to do so. It is not because of anything they have done, it is just a general mistrust by those in management. Therefore they come into the office each day so someone can supervise their work even though they might not actually be working.

With all of the advances in virtual and augmented reality, I don't see why we can't create effective remote work environments. I would love the option of putting on a virtual reality headset and save myself a commute. If it could be accomplished for 20% of the workforce, think of how much traffic that would remove from our crowded roads, trains, and buses. We could also reduce the amount of office space and replace it with larger living spaces, especially in places like Japan where there is not a lot of space to begin with. Furthermore we could probably reduce the crowded cities as it would give some the option of moving out to less populated areas.

While telecommuting is something that could help solve a lot of problems, there are a lot of fears associated with it. That is too bad as I think it would result in an overall improvement in quality of life. Isn't that something we are all looking for?

Time Magazine's Top 10 Video Games of 2018

Yesterday I posted about Time Magazine's best inventions of 2018. The 2nd to last article in my copy of the magazine lists the top 10 video games of 2018. I couldn't help but comment on it today.

Once again I disagree with some titles on the list and agree with others. I do have to admit that they did a pretty good job of spreading the list across all different platforms. There are games for the PS4, Switch, Xbox One, iPhone, Android, and PC. If I were to create a list, it would probably be just games for the PlayStation console as that is the only place I play new games. Furthermore I have a tendency to play games a little bit after they have been released and want to make sure I have played them all the way through before recommending them or not.

As there are only 10 games, I can list them here (remember that this is Time Magazine's list and not mine):

1. God of War (PS4)
2. Spider-Man (PS4)
3. Into the Breach (PC, Switch)
4. Subnautica (Xbox One, PC)
5. Red Dead Redemption 2 (PS4, Xbox One)
6. Florence (iPhone, Android)
7. Super Mario Party (Switch)
8. Assassin's Creed Odyssey (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC)
9. Dandara (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC, iPhone, Android)
10. Donut County (PS4, iPhone, PC)

I have to be honest and confess that I have never heard of half of these games.  Part of that is because I don't play a lot of smartphone games. I have one that I play on a regular basis but it is an old version of the Risk board game and didn't come out this year. There are so many smartphone games that I don't even bother trying them out. I also don't play PC games nor do I own an Xbox One or Switch (I do have access to them at work though).

I have a copy of God of War as well as Spider-Man but have yet to play them. Seeing that they are both 1 and 2 on Time's list has me wanting to play them as soon as I finish Red Dead Redemption 2, which is number 5. Judging by comments made by coworkers, both of those games deserve to be on the list.

One surprise for me is Assassin's Creed Odyssey. One of my coworkers is in the middle of the game and speaks very highly of it. I am a fan of Ubisoft games but have never played any of the Assassin' Creed games. I may have to give this one a try. It will have to be after Spider-Man and God of War though.

It is the end of the year and so I am sure there will be plenty of lists like this one. If you don't see your favorite game in this group, don't fret as it probably appears on someone else's list.

Best Inventions of 2018

One thing about being in Tokyo is my hotel room always has the latest copy of the Asian version of Time Magazine. I used to read it in my youth but stopped as an adult as I didn't see the need to pay for a subscription. When I do see a copy in my hotel, I will go through it and this time found a number of interesting articles. The one that made me stop browsing and focus on the entire article is the one on the 50 best inventions of 2018.

I think Time has a tough job trying to come up with the top inventions for any given year. What may seem groundbreaking to some is ordinary to others. Therefore it is not surprising that I disagree with some of their winners. For instance, they awarded a bicycling helmet with built-in headlights and turn signals. While that is a cool-sounding idea, it is actually a bad one. Bicycling helmets are disposable items that are not meant to be kept for more than a year or two, depending upon frequency of use. Embedding lights in the helmet double the cost. That means people are going to be reluctant to replace their helmet at proper intervals. Now if the helmet lights could be removed and put in a new helmet shell, that would be an innovative idea and deserving of an invention-of-the-year award.

While I disagree with some, there are a few inventions that I agree should be listed in this year's awards. I think my favorite is the roofing from 3M that fights smog pollution. This is probably important to me because of the recent fires in California reducing air quality to extremely unhealthy levels. I also know that I create a lot of pollution driving my car and flying all over the world. Doing something to right that wrong should be high on my priority list. When it comes time to put a new roof on my house, I will definitely look into pollution reducing shingles.

Going through Time's list of inventions for 2018 has been insightful. There are a lot of good ideas out there. Reading about them may spark new ideas. I know I came away with some thoughts on how to improve some of the things I use every day. You may too.

OptOutside

This morning I find myself at the Salt Lake airport waiting to catch a flight to Tokyo, Japan. I take this trip every year and have to fly out on a Saturday so I can be there on Monday for a conference I host. The thing that makes the trip difficult is that I have to cut my Thanksgiving break short by 2 days. I wish I could schedule this for a different weekend but it coincides with another company-wide event and so I don't get to dictate the dates of the conference.

Every year before Thanksgiving we are bombarded with ads for "Black Friday Sales." Several years ago, a number of outdoor suppliers and retailers like Recreational Equipment Incorporated (REI) created a movement to give up a day of fighting shopping lines and spend the day outside. They call the event #OptOutside. REI even went so far as to keep their stores closed on Black Friday. As someone with a daughter that used to work in retail, I can support that. This year it helped that Alta's opening day happened yesterday and so I had something fun to do outside. I got to spend it with my daughter, wife, and son. We had a great time.

While it may be too late to buck the usual shopping trend and spend the day after Thanksgiving outside, it is not too late to think about how you can spend part of this Christmas season enjoying the outdoors. While computers and technology are great, sometimes it takes a walk outside on a crisp December morning to realized how wonderful the outdoors can be. I highly encourage it.

Which Flavor of Linux

This week I have been working from home and been doing some playing around with machine learning (ML) in Python. My home Linux box is using an old version of Fedora Core while my machine at work uses Ubuntu Linux. I am having problems getting Python updates to work correctly because some of my system libraries are so old. It is time to update my Linux and I am wondering which version to select.

I started using Red Hat Linux a long time ago. I don't feel the need to pay for Linux as I don't use it as a production server and so I have been running Fedora Core, which is based on Red Hat. If I want to continue using a Red Hat flavor of Linux, I could also install CentOS. So should I stay with Fedora Core or change to CentOS?

As mentioned, my machine at work uses Ubuntu which is based on the Debian distribution of Linux. I like it and it stays updated fairly easily. There are several other options as well but most of the world has settled on Debian or Red Hat. Suse used to be an option but Novell did a pretty good job of killing it in the early 2000's.

So what is the difference between them all? Mostly it has to do with system administration. PC users don't really want to do a lot of system administration work but they do like to install new versions of software. Red Hat uses "yum" to install software while Debian uses "apt-get". The programs are very similar. I have never had a problem finding updates for either flavor of Linux.

One problem I have noticed with Fedora Core is they are constantly changing versions. You may be on version 22 only to have version 23 come out a few months later. Updating your operating system can be a bit of a time sync as you have to make backup copies of your files and then spend hours making sure everything got moved to the same version without any problems. Ubuntu doesn't have that problem and so I think I will make that change over the Christmas break when I have more time. Until then I will have to remote login to my machine at work when running through my ML exercises. You may disagree and I would love to hear why. Feel free to send me a comment.

Video Game Review: Detroit Become Human

This evening I finished the game Detroit: Become Human on the PlayStation 4 and have to say that I enjoyed it. It is from Quantic Dream, the same studio that created Heavy Rain. I have to say that I enjoyed Detroit a lot more even though they are very similar. If you are looking to play a game that is more like a movie where you can make choices that effect the outcome, then I suggest taking a look at Detroit: Become Human.

The game starts out with you controlling an android that tries to keep another android from killing someone. You then go through the story playing as several different android while they all become self-aware. Unlike any of the Telltale games, your choices really do effect the story and you are shown how through a nice flowchart at the end of each chapter. This is something new to this game that didn't exist in Heavy Rain and is a welcome addition.

Detroit: Become Human is one of those games where someone can watch you play and still enjoy the story line. My wife came and joined me on several occasions. She would ask if it was the "robot game" and then sit down until I finished the chapter before going to do something together. Each chapter only takes between 15 to 30 minutes to complete. The final one takes a bit longer.

The game has an ESRB rating of M for Mature due to partial nudity, violence, and strong language. I wish the game had a setting to dial back the language as I think it didn't add that much to the story. As for the nudity, there are several scenes where you see androids without any skin, but they are more mechanical than human. During the course of play, you enter an android strip club but everyone is wearing rather modest swimsuits as opposed to being nude. That is one of the scenes my wife watched and had it been risque, I might have lost my game-playing privileges at home.

If you are a late teen or older looking for a fun interactive movie that runs about 20 hours in length, then I can recommend Detroit: Become Human. I picked up the game at a huge discount using my industry discount but you can find it right now for about $40 at places like Best Buy.

Relearning C++

I have a project at work that requires some C++ coding. For those that don't know, C++ (pronounced see-plus-plus) is a computer programming language. I learned it back in college but then never really did much with it. I spent part of my professional career writing C programs but it is slightly different and so I have been spending some of my spare time going through some old C++ books I have. Those that compare C to C++ have been most helpful.

It is fun to go back and relearn something I used to enjoy. While some software developers hate C++, I actually appreciate the language and prefer it to many others including Java. As I had a background in the language, it is much easier to pick it up again.

I had hoped when I started the project that I would simply be able to look at some example source code and remember everything I had forgotten. Unfortunately that is not the case. It has been helpful to run through my book and play with the examples.

Learning technology no longer requires a book to go through. You can use any number of tutorials and explanations found on websites. Once you get a basic understanding of the technology you are trying to learn, you may opt to supplement your learning with a book, but it is not necessary. The necessary thing to do when learning (or relearning) something new is to go through the examples. After all, we learn by doing.

Who Says Men Can't Multitask

This afternoon I am currently working on 5 different projects all at the same time. This got me thinking about how men are not known for being able to multitask, yet I seem to be doing it quite well. I don't think I am that special either. It just takes a bit of technology and anyone can do multiple things all at the same time.

The way that computers multitask is by working on a project for a bit, saving the state of the work, moving to the next project, and so on until tasks are completed. Newer computers have multiple central processing units (CPU's) that work independently from each other. However the process is relatively similar. One CPU will start a task, then the next CPU, and so on until they are all busy. If there are more tasks to do, one CPU will save the state of the work, and start the new task. The reason computers do this well is that they are built to save the state of the current process very efficiently and then start the next one. Humans are a bit less efficient when it comes to switching tasks. I find it very difficult to put one project down and start another when the first one is not yet completed.

Fortunately this afternoon, I am using modern technology to do some of my work for me. The first thing I started is laundry. I don't have to sit and watch the washing machine do its thing and so I moved onto my next task. Last weekend I started printing something on my 3D printer only to have it stop because of a jammed nozzle. After starting laundry, I spent 5 minutes, cleaned the nozzle and restarted the print. So now I have 2 things going at the same time.

Thursday evening I picked up my copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 and loaded it up on my PS4 on the boat. That took about 2 hours before I could start playing. I will be home for the Thanksgiving week and want to play the game as well. After getting the 3D printer started, I started loading the game on my PS4 at home. So now I have 3 things going: laundry, 3D printing, and video game loading.

Next I noticed that the dishwasher had a bunch of dirty dishes and so I finished loading all of the dirty dishes out of the sink. Then I started the dishwasher. That brings me up to 4 things going simultaneously: laundry, 3D printing, video game loading, and washing dishes.

Recognizing that I am doing so much all at the same time, I had to write about it and so that is the 5th thing. I'm feeling pretty productive. The only downside is when everything is finished. Then I will have to fold the laundry, put away the dishes, and clean my 3D print. On the plus side, I can forget all of that and just go play my game.  With my blog entry done, I am now down to 4 tasks.

Bay Area Air Quality

I just got to the airport to catch my weekly flight home back to Salt Lake and got an interesting e-mail from my employer. The air quality in the Bay Area is so bad that they are giving us the option of working from home tomorrow. While it is nothing extra special for me, I am sure a lot of my fellow employees are happy that they don't have to try and come in tomorrow.

The wildfire in Paradise, California is really wreaking havoc for the state. While it has a very negative effect on the Bay Area air quality, it has killed many people and destroyed countless homes. Compared to that, I can put up with a some bad air without complaining.

I arrived in the Bay Area this week knowing the air quality would not be healthy. My son who lives in San Jose spent Saturday running around to various stores looking for air purifiers. On his 5th store, he found one and immediately purchased it. By the time I arrived on Monday, all of the stores were completely sold out of air purifiers. I almost bought a few filters, some duct tape, and cardboard so I could make my own (I already have a fan on my sailboat). Knowing I only would be here for 3 nights, I didn't worry about it.

Today at work I passed quite a few of my coworkers wearing masks as they walked between buildings on our campus. Here is a good link about what the government recommends for masks. It is good advice and should be followed.

If you don't have the luxury of being able to skip town and get away from the bad air quality, do what you can to protect your lungs. The best advice I can give is to avoid heavy exercise. Use this as an excuse to play video games. That is what I would do if I had to stick around.

Video Games for Christmas

Yesterday I posted my Christmas list for 2018 and so I thought I would follow it up with a list of games that might make good gifts. Normally I include video games that I would like to play during the Christmas break and have done so at the end of October. Now I am a bit more realistic. I won't be trying to play a lot of games. Instead I will probably just play Red Dead Redemption II. I loved the first one and know that this one will be equally awesome. At least that is what all my coworkers are telling me as they play the game. If you have someone on your Christmas list that loves playing video games and they don't yet have this one, get it. They will love you for it.

There are a number of other video games that I can also recommend should your video game junkie be a bit to young for a game with an ESRB rating of M for Mature. In case you missed one of my earlier blog posts, Horizon Zero Dawn is a great game that can be picked up for $20. That includes the extra DLC.

At the end of October, I recommended Fallout 76. When I made that recommendation, I thought it was an open-world-action-adventure-campaign game. Now I discovered it is a multi-player-online game. While that would have interested me a decade ago, it is not the type of game I play now. It does have me thinking about picking up a copy of Fallout 4 though. I can get a digital download of that for around $22 and so I may do that as soon as I am done with my current game.

One more game I would recommend is the remastered version of The Last of Us. It started out as a PS3 game and then Naughty Dog remastered it for the PS4. I have yet to play it and so my recommendation comes from coworkers telling me I need to play it as well as an hour or two of watching my son play. I am told it has one of the best stories of any video game. You can pick up a copy for only $20. Part 2 will be released in the near future and so I want to be ready to play that when it becomes available.

There are a lot of really great video games available for this version of consoles (PS4 or XBox One) and so you should not have a shortage of ideas. Simply figure out what kind of games the person on your Christmas list likes to play and do a bit of searching. It shouldn't take long to find something with good reviews. Just be sure to stay away from the bad games as there are a lot of those as well.

Early Christmas Gift Ideas

Normally I wait a bit before trying to post my Christmas Gift ideas but my wife and I have been trying to come up with lists for each other. I thought it might be a good idea to write my list a bit early this year. That gives you time to stalk the Black Friday deals.

Early in my adult life I felt a good Christmas gift is something that you wouldn't get yourself and that you played with for several hours on Christmas morning only to never use it again. Then my wife and I matured and decided to only get things that our children would use for a long time. Since then we have always tried to get gifts that would get used for more than just a few hours.

Recently I have flown a lot with children. Not my own but other peoples. While I have nothing against flying with someone else's children, I do notice that they make a lot more noise than the adults around them. One of the most important pieces of high-tech equipment I bring on the plane is a good set of earphones. I have one set of ear buds that act better then most earplugs, even when they are not connected to anything. So if you have someone on your Christmas list that spends a lot of time on airplanes, make sure they have a good set of earphones.

This year I have noticed that while I have some great electronic gadgets, some of them are a bit dated and could be replaced. I think everyone can sympathize with this situation. I have made a number of videos recently and while I have a perfectly capable video camera, I could always use a new one with higher resolution and more features. My personal computer is also quite old and could use a replacement. Even my monitors are getting old. With Walmart and other budget stores selling 43-inch 4K televisions for less than $200, one can get a screaming deal on computer monitors with a lot of screen real estate. So take a look at those on your Christmas list and see if they need a newer version of something they use frequently.

Hopefully this gives you some ideas before the Black Friday deals get announced. That way you can take advantage of them. If you come up with some really good ideas, please share as others may benefit from your suggestions.

Video Game Review: Far Cry 5

I am a big fan of the Far Cry series of games from Ubisoft. I have played Far Cry 3 on the PS3 and really enjoyed Far Cry 4 on the PS4. Last night I finished up Far Cry 5 and so I thought I would write a review.

I enjoyed the other Far Cry games and so I paid full-price for the game. That means I didn't wait for one of my contacts in the video game industry to get me a deal. It is one of the only games I have ever done that with and that should show how excited I was to play the game. Now that I have finished the game, I can say the price is worth it.

As with the other games in the series, there are a number of areas to liberate and each one helps segment the game so you know how much is left to do. Once you have completed all of the main story missions in one area, you have the option of moving on to the next area or continuing to finish all of the side missions. These missions include looking for objects, hunting special animals, and clearing out bad-guy strongholds. The last story mission for each of the areas is a boss battle. In Far Cry 5 there are 3 areas with an additional boss battle at the end.

I enjoyed the game but with so many new games coming out, I opted to finish the game quickly instead of trying to do every single thing. Towards the end, things got a bit repetitive and I stopped enjoying it as much as the other games in the series. If I was to rank all 3 Far Cry games I have played, I would say that 4 is my favorite with 5 being a solid second place and 3 being last. That being said, I enjoyed them all and recommend them to anyone looking for a solid action-adventure game that runs between 30 to 40 hours. Far Cry 5 has a lot of downloadable content (DLC) should you enjoy it and want to spend more time playing.

Far Cry 5 has an ESRB rating of M for mature. There is no nudity in the game and so the rating is due to strong language and violence. There are a lot of torture-death images and some parents might not want their teenagers to see such graphic depictions. I would probably let those 16 or older play it, but you may disagree.

A Morality Setting for Artificial Intelligence

Many of us interact with artificial intelligence (AI) on a daily basis without realizing it. If you look at the recommendations provided by Netflix or Amazon, then you are being served results from some sort of AI. Most of the time, those recommendations are based on previous purchases or actions. If you watched one of the Marvel superhero movies, you might get recommended another one that you may not have seen.

Now imagine that you want to change your behavior. Perhaps you have decided that smoking is bad for your health and want to quit or that you want to stop watching violent movies. At first you may have a firm resolve to not do those things any more, then you get an e-mail telling you about a sale on violent movies or smoking products. While you may not immediately give in, you may find it difficult to resist the temptation to give in and go back to your old ways.

So how do you tell online retailers and service providers that you would like to change your behavior and to please stop sending you recommendations for products you are no longer interested in purchasing? Right now, you can't without doing something drastic like changing your phone number, e-mail address, and creating all new accounts.

This also leads to the question of if service providers should build in some sort of morality. When you go to watch the latest superhero movie, how would you feel if you received the message, "Violent crimes are up, perhaps you should watch a romantic comedy." Or you go to purchase cigarettes online (I don't even know if that is possible) and see, "Smoking is bad for you, how about some nicotine gum instead?" My instinct says nobody would be happy even though we would all be better off with such suggestions.

Buy, Rent, or Borrow Computing Power for Machine Learning

I am going through an interesting exercise at work. There are a number of us going through a Reinforcement Learning book and we all want to play with the code described in the various chapters. While I have the luxury of having a Linux machine sitting under my desk, others are not so fortunate. One of my coworkers has a rather large Linux box with a lot of computing power and so several people are running the exercises there. Unfortunately it can only handle about 3 really large jobs concurrently and so we are looking at other options for getting compute power for our Machine Learning exercises.

We tried the first solution by buying a large computer but there are a number of problems associated with that. I explained the first being that we are limited to about 3 people using it at the same time. the resources are fixed and don't scale well. The second problem is we have to maintain that computer. During one particularly large job, the computer stopped running at 4am and we have no idea why. We believe it might have been a hardware failure because the logs just suddenly stopped recording anything. It would be nice to have someone monitoring the computer 24 hours a day but that is not possible. Especially for a simple learning exercise.

The next option is to rent space on a cloud service such as Amazon (AWS), Google (GCE), or Microsoft (Azure). We do not require graphics processing units (GPUs) and so we can get enough computing power for all our experiments for around $650/month. We will take 2 to 3 months to read the book and would require about $2,000. That is significantly less than the price we paid for buying the computer mentioned previously. Furthermore the hardware will scale nicely. If we want to run more experiments, we increase the number of servers we rent. When we don't need them any more, we shut them down and don't pay to keep them running.

Finally there is the option of borrowing computing power. There are a number of other groups within the company that have spare compute cycles we could use for our learning exercises. This is the ideal solution if we only factor in cost. However the reality is that someone could be kicked off the hardware when other higher-priority tasks need to run instead or the problem of spreading out experiments evenly across the company.

We will probably end up renting servers from one of the public cloud companies as it seems to strike the balance between being cost effective and least troublesome. Your situation may be different and it is always worth considering all 3 options.

What to Play This Holiday Season

It feels like there are more high-quality video games being released than I can possibly play right now. I have such a huge stack of games to play I am having trouble figuring out how to get them all in. Right now I am trying to complete Far Cry 5 and rather than trying to do everything I will just do the basic minimum to get to the end of the game so I can move on to some of these other exciting games just released or soon to be released.

The sequel to one of my favorite video games was released on Friday last week and I will pick up my copy from a friend with ties to Rockstar Games. Yes, I am talking about Red Dead Redemption 2. I do want to finish Far Cry 5 before I start and so as soon as I can get back to my boat this evening, I will power through the final stages of that game.

There is also Spiderman that released back in September and has a lot of fans. My son completed the game, purchased the DLC, and has finished the first of 3 installments of the DLC. He really enjoyed the game. I don't know when I will get to that but it is on my list.

While I am currently playing Far Cry 5 on my sailboat when in the Bay Area, I am also trying to finish Detroit: Become Human back at home in Utah. I don't mind playing that game while at home because my wife likes to sit on the couch and watch me play. That is one of those games that is more movie with a few interactions than an action adventure game like most of the other games I play.

Looking ahead, there are a number of games to be released before Christmas that I also need to add to my playlist. Fallout 76 looks graphically amazing and should be an exciting follow-up to Fallout 4. Then Battlefield 5 gets released a week later. I really enjoyed Battlefield One and jumping forward in time to WWII will make for an interesting game. All of these should keep me busy through New Year's Day. Then there is a huge schedule of great games being released next year. So many games but so little time.

YouTube to the Rescue

Three years ago when we bought my wife's Jeep Wrangler we saved a lot of money by getting it with just a soft top. Then earlier this year we decided to pay the $2000 and get a hard top as well. Now as we get closer to winter, I thought I would install all the wiring and plumbing for the hard top.

I ordered the kit from Mopar and it didn't come with printed instructions. It came with a CDROM. I pulled up the instructions a few weeks ago and printed them out so I didn't have to keep a computer near me as I worked on the Jeep. My hands always seem to get dirty when I work on cars and I don't want to get my computer dirty as well.

I started working on the wiring at 9:30 this morning and quickly ran into problems. So I pulled up YouTube and found a video of someone else installing the the hard top kit for his Wrangler. I watched the beginning of the video and found a quick solution to the first problem: use a pre-run wire to pull the wiring harness through the firewall. Going back to my printed instructions, no mention of a helper wire could be found but I did discover that your run the wiring from the inside of the car into the engine compartment. Had I read the instructions more carefully I would have figured out the trick with the wire. The video did help though.

Working on the car took all day. I did stop for lunch, dinner, and to make a run to Home Depot to pick up a T50 bit for my socket set and a siphon hose so I could empty the windshield wiper fluid. At dinner, I thought about calling it a day and finishing up next weekend. Then I realized that I just wanted to be done and so I pushed through. I finished up at around 8:30. Yes, the job took me 11 hours. Any time I got stuck, I would go back in the house, wash my hands, and continue watching the YouTube video.

Having an online resource to help get through the tough spots made my job a lot easier. Unfortunately it didn't solve all of my problems. Both the printed instructions and YouTube video were for a 4-door Jeep while my wife's is only a 2-door. While I had a few shortcuts I could take, there were a few times I stood there scratching my head wondering what to do next. The video also missed a few tricks that I would have liked to know. Ultimately I am glad I had the help.

We Learn by Doing

Thursday I spent the afternoon in a First Aid, CPR, and AED class. My office provided it free of charge to those of us willing to take the time to get trained and certified. This is something I try to do every couple of years but had let my certification lapse. One important thing I took away from the course is the importance of practice.

CPR is one of those skills that everyone should know but nobody should ever want to have to use. I have a close friend who had to use it on a work associate. Things worked out and the person survived. My buddy went to visit him in the hospital and apologized for breaking the guy's ribs. The survivor didn't mind as being alive sure beats being dead.

I have practiced CPR on a purpose built dummy but it is always good to get a refresher. Everyone in my class on Thursday had his or her own practice dummy and we all simulated giving CPR at the same time. While it is not the same as doing it on a real person, it is a lot better than simply talking about the procedure.

So what does this have to do with computers and technology? Lots. I am currently going through a book on Reinforcement Learning (a sub-topic of Machine Learning) and there are a lot of examples in it. Rather than simply reading about the process, it is important to work with a computer at the same time I am going through the book. Practicing what I read is really vital to my understanding of the topic. So if you find yourself trying to learn a new technology, don't just read about it, practice using it and you will learn more in the process.

Children And Technology

Have you ever noticed how the previous generation always seems to be more knowledgeable when it comes to technology. In the 1980's, VCR's always seemed to be blinking 12:00 and the joke was to have your kid set the clock so it would show the correct time. Then the joke changed into having your kid help you with your computer. Now it is having your kid help you with your smartphone. Yesterday I got a call from my son that emphasizes just how true that is.

My grandson has always enjoyed mimicking my son typing on the computer. He also enjoys stealing his parents' smartphones and playing with them. Recently he figured out how to press the "Home" button on his Mom's (my daughter-in-law) iPhone. When Siri asks how she can help, he instructs, "Call Dad." Siri dutifully obeys and call's my daughter-in-law's father. To give perspective, my grandson is not quite 18-months old and has just started creating 2-word sentences.

I think my grandson has a ways to go to pass my son when it comes to understanding technology. So far he is on the right track though and I don't think it will take that long.

Paper or Electronic Boarding Pass

Yesterday I went to print my airplane boarding pass at the office before heading to the airport. One of my good friends seemed surprised that I didn't just send the boarding pass to my phone. He knows me as a technically-savvy guy and figured an electronic boarding pass on the phone is better than a printed one.

This is a discussion I have with several of my frequent flyer buddies all the time. Some of us prefer paper tickets while others prefer electronic ones. While I can't speak for everyone I can tell you why I prefer paper boarding passes: They are faster when going through TSA. When you spend as much time at an airport as I do, you start to notice that the people who slow down the security line are those trying to pull up their electronic tickets on their phones. The rest of us are stuck waiting behind them and even though we are not that much slower, it sure feels like it.

What is even worse is when a family tries to go through security and all of the tickets are on Dad or Mom's phone. You might as well just lie down and take a nap.

There is a secret if you insist on keeping your boarding pass on your phone. When you initially load the boarding pass onto your phone, look at it and take a screen shot being sure to capture the 2-dimensional bard code. Then you don't have to worry about having a fast network connection or where to pull up your boarding pass. Just bring up the screen shot and you will get through security without delay.

The second reason I prefer a paper boarding pass over using my phone is that the ticket readers take longer with a phone than with a piece of paper. Last night I boarded my flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake and my paper ticket scanned two to three times faster than Alex's who used his phone.

Now the detractors of paper tickets tout that they are not wasting paper by printing a ticket and they have a point. If saving paper is high on your list of priorities, then use the screenshot trick. As for me, I look for other ways of saving paper. Two pieces of paper a week is not that much. Also, paper does grow on trees.

Cleaning an Old Computer

For the past several years I have had an unused computer sitting under my desk at work. The power supply failed and I never bothered to replace it. Instead my company just got me a new Linux desktop and my change in responsibilities meant that I didn't need anything off the old one. This week I finally got tired of having a useless computer and so I had our IT department take the old computer away. I also asked them to pull the hard drive out and see if we could pull anything off it. They couldn't and so I resigned myself to have lost anything of importance off that computer. As a last-ditch effort, we put the drive in a new computer and tried to boot it. Guess what? That worked.

Going through the files on the old computer disk felt like traveling back in time. It reminded me of how my current work is so different from the work I originally got hired to do. My old disk had about 57 Gigabytes of files. I sorted through it rather quickly and copied import stuff to my relatively new Linux box. Anything that I knew I didn't need, I deleted. Then just to be safe, I saved everything else and will put it in a safe place in case I need it again.

Cleaning off an old computer is something I usual when I get a new one. I often find that I place more value in stuff I won't actually need. Having my useless computer sitting under my desk helped me realize that I should be a lot more discerning the next time I have to clean up an old computer. After all, if I have not needed something in a 2-year period, chances are I won't need it any time soon.

International WiFi Calling

I had the pleasure of spending last week in Fiji with my wife on a nice vacation. While some people don't care about mobile phone charges when traveling internationally, it is something that concerns me. For this trip I tried something new and it worked very well.

When I boarded my flight in Los Angeles, I made sure to put my phone into airplane mode. Then I turned back on the WiFi. When I arrived at my hotel in Fiji, I just connected to the hotel's WiFi internet and could easily make calls home without worrying about any extra charges being added to my monthly bill.

Those that do a lot of international travel probably have a mobile plan that provides for inexpensive usage outside the United States. That is what I have with the phone provided by my company. As I rarely travel internationally for pleasure I don't have anything like that for my personal phone. That being said, I still probably only saved myself about $10 in extra charges using WiFi calling instead of just turning off airplane mode and using my phone normally. If you are like me and appreciate saving $10 then this is a good trick to know.

Lightning

Last night I flew into Salt Lake and when we landed we couldn't pull up to the gate because of a lightning storm. In my 20+ years of air travel, I have never been delayed because of active lightning and so this is not a common occurrence. When the pilot made the announcement that the ground crew could not come outside to direct the plane to the gate, I understood. Unfortunately not everyone on the plane did.

My wife grew up the the Seattle area and spent a good part of her childhood playing outside in the rain. Up there they have cloud-to-cloud lightning and so nobody came inside during a thunderstorm. Here in Utah, as well as other parts of the country, we have ground lightning and that will kill you.

Lightning is one of the more unpredictable forces of nature. We try to control its path through the use of lightning rods but the reality is that lightning will go wherever it wants and there is not much we can do about it. Should you be caught outside and can see lightning go from the sky to the ground, your best bet is to go inside a building or car (as long as it is not a soft-top convertible). Buildings are safe because they will generally keep the lightning away from the middle, which is where you want to be. Cars are safe, not because of the rubber tires but because the electrical charge will stay on the outside of the car body. Planes are equally safe and so sitting outside did not pose any danger to us passengers.

So why are people told to turn off and unplug computers during lightning storms? The best explanation is that your house electrical system is not compatible with the high voltages produced by lightning. If your house gets hit by lightning, the electricity will try to find a way to ground. All of the copper plumbing pipes and electrical wiring make a great path to ground and so lightning will seek it out. If your computer equipment is plugged in and/or has a wired network connection, part of the lightning strike will get into your computer and fry everything. More than likely you will have to replace everything that is electrical in your house should it be struck by lightning.

Going back to the poor ground crew that met our plane last night. I had one vocal passenger behind me ignorant of lightning danger. With all the water on the tarmac, a strike could happen a fair distance from one of the workers yet the person could still receive a lethal shock. While I would have liked to disembark the plane sooner, I would not wanted to have risked the life of ground crew.

Entertaining an Infant

Yesterday I had the chance to bring my grandson from Utah to California on my weekly commute. He spent the week splitting time between both his maternal and paternal grandparents while his mom and dad vacationed in Europe. As my grandson is only 15-months old, I didn't need to pay any extra airfare to bring him with me.

As a frequent flyer, I know it can be a huge annoyance when someone brings an unruly child on the flight. I always pack earplugs just in case there is a noisy kid sitting close by. I didn't want to subject my fellow travelers to a screaming toddler, especially since we were sitting in First Class. Unfortunately the flight didn't start out too well. I had to wake my grandson up early so we could catch our flight. That made him a little grumpy. We got on the plane and he kept making a lot of noise. Not nice noises but screaming noises. The kind that annoy everyone. I started to worry that my fellow passengers would throw us off if I didn't come up with a way to quiet him down.

My son and his wife had sent us a number of videos throughout their trip and we tried to reciprocate by sending videos of their son. To quiet the upset toddler, I pulled out my phone and started showing him videos of his dad. That helped a bit and then I started a 20-second video where my grandson wanders around the living room and then falls on his bum. For some strange reason, the little boy loved watching the video of himself falling down. He would laugh every time. We watched the video 30 to 40 times before the flight even left the ground. Each time, my grandson would laugh hysterically watching himself stumble. We watched it so many times I grew afraid that we would chew through my phone's battery before we landed in San Francisco.

After about the 40th time of watching the video, the plane started rolling down the runway and we climbed into the air. We had a bit of turbulence all the way to 39,000 feet and that gently rocked my grandson to sleep. He then slept the entire flight.

If you find yourself preparing for a long flight with a toddler, you might want to take a few videos of the child before heading to the airport. Hopefully you find one that makes the kid laugh. It may help keep your fellow passengers from asking you to ride on the wing.

Inspiration From a Hobby

On Monday I met with our company lawyers to start the application process for another patent. This will be my second with my current company. I can't really go into the idea as it will take some time to get the application completed and it is best not to say anything about it until that point.

I can write about the inspiration for my idea though and where it came from. At the start of my career I took a class titled, "Thinking Outside the Box." There were a lot of people with many different careers and so it was kind of fun to find out what other people did and why they were there. During the course of the class we all talked about our hobbies. Our instructor mentioned that we might find solutions to our work problems from other sources, including our hobbies. For some reason, that idea stuck with me. I still can't figure out how to get good ideas from skiing, but the idea for my patent came from another hobby: ham radio.

I have been given a new project at work and started thinking about how to break up a really large task into smaller ones. In working with machine learning (ML), one needs a large training data set. So before you can really do anything with ML, you need to gather data. While thinking about how to get this information for my project I started thinking about the data gathering process and realized that something I do with ham radio could be used to help with my project. I immediately sat down with one of our patent agents who agreed my solution could be used to solve a number of problems and so he set up an appointment with our lawyers.

I used to think that the best way to get ahead with my career was to focus on computers and even make it my hobby. After 30 years in the computer industry, I can say that is a recipe for career burnout. Instead take the time to pick up a hobby or two. You never know when it will be the source for a brilliant idea.

Robots

Every year our department does a team-building activity where we take the entire workday and do something fun. My first year, we did a scavenger hunt in downtown San Francisco and I had a great time. This year we got together in a hotel near our office, divided into 10 teams, and built robots. Once completed, we had a competition between the build teams.

I had a few people on my team that I know very well and several others that I got to know better. We had a great time building the robot even though we had to substitute parts as our kit had a missing piece or two. The hours we had to build our robot passed quickly. We all felt like kids playing with a complex Lego set.

Once we completed our robot, we had fun with the competition. Interestingly we had much more fun building the robot than we did playing with it. I think if I wanted to get into robotics with one of my kids, I would want a kit that you could reconfigure for various purposes. Remember that as we approach the Holiday Season.

Future Technology

One of my work colleagues and I shared a ride from downtown San Francisco back to our office and we had a nice discussion about the future of technology. We started with the discussion about how certain high-tech celebrities happened to be in the right place at the right time. That coupled with a bit of luck propelled them into technological lore. My colleague is trying to help his sons figure out how they can be in the right place at the right time when it comes to future technology and how to increase their chances of becoming technological leaders.

I think if it was easy to predict where technology will be in five to ten years then everyone would be doing it. That didn't stop us from trying to figure it out for ourselves though. During my somewhat lengthy career in computers and high-tech, I have learned that people don't by technology, they buy solutions to problems. One of those problems is figuring out a way to streamline daily tasks. If you look at something as simple as cooking, think how the microwave has reduced the preparation effort of food. While not all food can be microwaved, a lot can and that has dramatically reduced the time it takes to cook a snack or meal.

As my friend and I drove, we applied the streamlining principle to our drive. We kept having to slow down for certain areas of traffic congestion. If all of the cars on the road could talk to each other and had the smarts to coordinate lane changes, we would have made it back to the office in half the time it took us. Based on that part of our discussion, my friend's boys should focus on self-driving cars. Then I threw out the idea of creating a virtual work environment that could eliminate the need to travel from your home to an office. It would immediately wipe out a significant portion of the traffic on the road. Following that logic, my friend's boys should look at virtual technologies and how to improve them.

As I mentioned, predicting the future of technology is incredibly difficult. This is because there are so many variables and unknowns. You could start moving towards one technology only to have it become irrelevant because of a significant shift caused by another. That is why it is important to always look at trends and constantly be updating your technical skills. Unfortunately that takes a lot of effort.

The Latest Games

We are entering the 2018 Holiday Season and that means there will be a ton of game releases over the next few months. I know it is only September and talking about the Holidays is a bit early. Those of us in the video game industry have an earlier time frame than the consumers. I'm sure those in retail feel the same way.

Last week Sony released the new Spiderman game for the PS4 and everyone at work has been playing it during breaks. I just got my copy of the game and have yet to play it. The games I am playing have been out on the market for a few months and so I am a bit behind the times. That being said, I am interested in a few of the upcoming games and will probably slot one or two of them in front of Spiderman, even though everyone seems to be enjoying it.

There is one game I played that convinced me to stop watching TV and play video games instead. The sequel will be released towards the end of next month. My hope is that I will finish my current game by them and I will be able to start the new one. Unfortunately I will probably not be done and Red Dead Redemption 2 will have to wait a few weeks before I can play it. Having so many games to play with more coming in the next few months is not really a bad problem.

Poor Use of Technology

Last weekend I helped out with the Wasatch 100 ultra marathon. Basically about 400 people signed up to try and run 100 miles in a 36-hour time period. I help with 2 such events every year, with this being the second one. I get to hang out with my wife and a few friends all night on Friday recording when runners come through the 64-mile aid station. We then send the runner number with arrival and departure times to the race organizers who make the information available on their website. This helps friends and family know where runners are but it also helps if we need to do any search and rescue for overdue runners.

I have been helping with the Wasatch 100 for about 4 years now and taken a primary role for the past 2. We use packet radio to transmit the data and that saves a lot of time over sending the information by voice. Both can be done with ham radio and both work well for us.

Last year I was asked to set up a new ham radio technology called a mesh network. The primary radio person before me had tried for 2 years to get it working only to have it fail. I didn't have enough time to work with the organizer ham radio operators to get it set up before the run started and so we went without it. Besides, we had a perfectly reasonable solution with packet radio. Sure it is slow, but it works.

This year, the organizer ham radio operators enlisted the services of a new guy to try and set up the mesh network again. The new guy let me know his plan and I welcomed him onto the radio team. I also filled him in on previous years and the attempt to get the new technology working. We all showed up and started getting things going. The packet radio worked as well this year as it did last and the new guy never could get the mesh network completely running. When it came time to take down our equipment, the new guy had a lot of hardware to pack up and fit in his truck. We just had a tiny little radio, laptop computer, and an antenna.

The new guy summed up his experience with using a mesh network instead of packet radio by saying, "It is a complicated solution to a problem that has already been solved." My fellow ham radio operators at our aid station couldn't agree more.

Another Useful 3D Print

Several years ago, one of the local ski resorts replaced an old 2-person chair with a modern high-speed-detachable quad. They made some of the chairs from the old lift available to the general public. I remember not having much money at the time but I scraped up $250 and bought one. My wife and son brought it home.

The chair sat in my backyard for several months until I scraped together a bit more money and built a frame for it out using wood from Home Depot. Unfortunately I couldn't find a support bar that fit the chair well and so it has been a little off balance. That has not keep people from sitting on the chair and swinging in it and so I haven't spent much effort fixing it.

Last week my son decided that with the help of the 3D printer, we could print a bushing that will hold the bar straight on the support bar. He pulled out my digital calipers and measured the inner diameter of the chair attachment tube and the outer diameter of the support bar. Then he printed a sleeve to go over the support bar. It took over a day to print. Now we will install it this weekend and should have a straight chairlift swing.

After printing the new part, I talked to one of my colleagues who does a lot of 3D printing. As I have mentioned before, he is constantly keeping his 3D printer busy. I asked him his secret and he said, "I look for problems and pain points in my everyday life. Then I try to see if I can print my way out of them."

The Fun of Hackathons

Last month I got the chance to spend part of a week doing a Hackathon. For those that have never heard of a Hackathon, it is where you work to solve a computer problem over the course of a couple days. My company sponsored the event and so I got to put down my normal work and play with something completely new. We had food brought in so we could continue to work through lunch and dinner. We also had plenty of snacks so we didn't have to worry about eating at all.

I partnered up with a couple of guys I eat lunch with on a daily basis. We all work on different projects in the department and so we picked a problem that was fun to solve and spanned each of our specialties. Unfortunately I can't go into detail on what we did as it may be covered by a non-disclosure agreement I signed when I started working at the company over eight years ago. I can tell you we had a lot of fun and learned some new and useful skills.

If you find yourself wanting to expand your technical abilities, I highly suggest participation in a Hackathon. Then pick a problem to solve somewhat related to your normal work but include other tools or pieces. If you spend all your time working on software, see if you can't work with some hardware kits like Raspberry Pi or Arduino. At my Hackathon, I ended up becoming quite skilled with an electric carving knife, a hot-glue gun, and camping mattress foam. Did I mention I had a lot of fun.

My First 3D Printer

My youngest son is in the Mechanical Engineering program at the University of Utah and has been asking me to get a 3D printer. I finally broke down, gave him a budget, and let him pick one out. It arrived last week and we have been printing things with it ever since.

I have a buddy at work who is really into 3D printing and has his in the office working non-stop. Naturally I went to him and asked his opinion before I set my budget number. He told me to get an inexpensive one and spend some time playing with it. If I really got into 3D printing then I would know what features to look for in the next printer. Furthermore if I didn't really do much with the printer, I wouldn't be out a large sum of money. That is great advice and so I thought I would pass it on.

I decided that there are a number of printers in the $300 range and so that is what I gave my son as a budget. He scoured the internet for reviews and we decided on the Creality Ender 3. We purchased it from Amazon even though we could have gotten a better deal from other sites. We also picked up a few upgrades and 2 rolls of Polylactic Acid (PLA) filament. We decided on black and red printing material.

The printer arrived on a Wednesday and I didn't let my son build it as I wanted that experience. I flew home on Thursday evening and then spent a couple of hours on Friday assembling the printer. It went together very easily, especially after watching several YouTube build videos. I didn't try to set any speed records as I put the printer together because I wanted it to be well built. I also wanted to understand how it was put together should I want to modify it later.

My son came over Friday evening and helped with the final tuning. You have to take some time and level the printing bed or your prints won't turn out. Then we printed a little plastic dog that came on a memory card with the printer. You have the option of printing "gcode" files from a computer connected via a USB cable or from a micro SD card. I like being able to copy a design to the card and have the printer print from it.

The next thing we decided to print is a tiny Darth Vader. My dad is a huge Star Wars fan and has a huge Darth Vader collection. We had the STL file which is just a drawing of the piece. We then ran the STL file into Cura, which is free software that creates the "gcode" file to be printed. There are all sorts of parameters as it ultimately controls what gets output. The printer can't print into thin air and so it adds support material when necessary. Once you are done printing, you can easily pull off the support material. Considering it is our first print where we had to specify a number of custom parameters, I think we did a good job.

Next we changed the print material (PLA) from black to red and printed a "benchy". Imagine Steamboat Willy in Mickey Mouse's first movie and that is what a benchy looks like. It is called a benchy as it serves as a benchmark for the printer and shows you how good your printer is. Our benchy came out well.

Finally I wanted to print something useful. I really don't have a need for a bunch of little plastic toys and so I found something my youngest daughter might like. My wife and I recently gave her an airbrush for decorating cakes. She likes to do that in her spare time and she recently ordered a bunch of stencils. I thought I could print some for her and save her some cash. As stencils are large but not very thick, it is a good test for printing on the entire print bed. I went to Thingiverse and did a search for stencils and found a lot of very interesting ones. The first stencil is of a snowflake and it looks amazing. I have a few other stencils to print for her and she is excited.

So should you run out and get a 3D printer? That is a good question. The Creality Ender 3 is advertised as not being a kit like a number of the other printers on the market. However it took a fair amount of technical knowledge and mechanical skills to put the thing together. If you have trouble putting together your kids' toys on Christmas eve, you may want to get help or not bother getting one. At first I didn't think I would find enough projects to keep my printer busy. Now that I have it, I have a seemingly endless list of projects to print. I don't think I am unique. If you have a spare $300 lying around, I can recommend getting one.

Time for Another Game

Even though I finished Horizon Zero Dawn back in May, I wanted to do all of the side quests and downloadable content (DLC). Tonight I finished the last of the game and received my platinum trophy. There are very few games I enjoy enough to do that. Now I find myself trying to figure out what game to play next.

There are a few games I have started and can now finish. I have dabbled around with Detroit: Become Human and could play through the entire story. I have also started Far Cry 5 as I enjoyed Far Cry 4 so much, I earned another platinum trophy. Both of these games would hold my interest and entertain me for the next few months.

I also have yet to play the latest God of War game. I understand that it is a lot of fun. My son who enjoyed Horizon as much as I have, really likes God of War and suggested that I tackle it next. Others at work have a similar opinion.

Selecting the next game to play is always a fun challenge and not really a difficult problem. I have selected some horrible games in the past and rather than continue, I have stopped and start another one. So tonight I have selected Far Cry 5 to install on my PS4 and will start it tomorrow evening. If something else distracts me before then, I may play it. Otherwise I'll be spending time in a virtual Montana.

My Blog and an Important Date

Recently I updated my work laptop's operating system to High Sierra. Naturally this broke a number of applications until I could update them as well. I updated everything except for iMovie and Garage Band as I kept getting a message about how my Apple ID did not have permissions to update those applications. I didn't worry about as I don't really use those apps on my work computer. However it is starting to get annoying that my computer tries to upgrade them each week but can't because of the Apple ID. Today I had a few minutes of time and so I went to the company help desk to see if they could help me.

Ultimately we came up with a workaround that involved creating a new user on my laptop and having the new user update those two programs. Once that worked, the help desk employee suggested that my laptop is getting old and is eligible to be replaced soon. On the way back to my desk I wondered how long I have had this computer. Then I realized I wrote about it in this blog. A quick search showed that I got it around February 4, 2016. We have a policy that allows me to replace the computers every 2 to 3 years. I will probably wait a bit but it is nice to have a written record of when I got it.

Cure for a Stroke

A good friend of mine suffered a stroke in December. He is one of those really healthy guys that just has bad genetics as he has suffered through several heart attacks as well. Unfortunately the stroke left him without the ability to speak. He is also unable to to use his right hand effectively but you wouldn't know that unless you are very observant or someone pointed it out to you.

Another friend came to me a month or so ago and said we need to use technology to help our friend recover and come up with a way for him to talk. He proposed creating a Google Glass application that can pair with a smartphone and talk for him. The original idea included looking at a keyboard on the Google Glass screen and spelling out words to be spoken by the phone. It sounds like a great idea, right?

Anyone who knows a stroke victim knows that there is often more damage than first meets the eye. While our friend can still read somewhat, he can't write, type, nor can he spell very well. It is very difficult for him to communicate with the rest of the world even though he can hear us and knows what we are saying. Talking with him is like playing 20 questions all the time and it gets old quickly.

A few more friends gathered with our stroke victim several weeks ago and flushed out some solutions. We decided that instead of trying to have our friend spell out words, we would use icons and pictures to represent phrases. We are doing prototyping work on a tablet computer. By selecting icons, we can create sentences to help our friend communicate. Now the trick is deciding what phrases are the most important and should be created first.

We have our friend's speech therapist who created a book of phrases that deal with time, eating, and other seemingly important stuff. While that is all fine, it doesn't represent the important conversations in our lives. I suggested a few more important phrases that probably need to be gathered first. Things like, "Are you single?" or "I'm a good listener." My friend is divorced and could probably use a date. These phrases are important for such activities but did not show up in the therapist's book. When I proposed them, you should have seen my friend light up.

The ability to communicate is important to us all. When my friend lost his ability to speak, he lost his purpose in life. Now we are trying to help him help others who have gone through similar ailments. Wouldn't it be great to add phrases like, "I have a tiny idea of what you are going through because I also suffered a stroke and lost the ability to speak," or, "Let me help you."

This is one of those projects that will never really end but it is a worthy cause for my time. I wish I could do more. While this may not be a cure for every stroke victim, it is something that will help a number of them and is very important to my friend. If you are interested in helping with the project, don't hesitate to leave a comment or contact me. One of the easiest ways to help is simply to think about your daily conversations and give us ideas of what phrases we should include in our app.

Fixing a 24-Year-Old Air Conditioner

Yesterday afternoon my wife texted me and asked me to call her. I couldn't because of a meeting and so she sent me another message saying the air conditioner in our house broke. When I could finally call her, I had her run through some troubleshooting steps to see if we couldn't isolate the problem. Ultimately nothing we tried would bring the AC back on. As this is the really hot part of the year in Utah, cooling the house is very important.

I left the office and rode back to my boat trying to figure out what the problem could be. I thought about all of the steps I had my wife try and figured that we either lost the blower motor, the capacitor for the blower motor, or the computer that controls the blower motor. Based on some issues we had a few weeks ago, I figured it was a 95% chance the computer died. Using the power of a smartphone with a camera, my wife helped me figure out the part number for the old computer and find a replacement part on the Internet. The only problem is that I couldn't guarantee the arrival before the end of the weekend when I would have to catch a flight from Utah back to the Bay Area.

This morning I had my wife call around and see if she could find a replacement part locally. She did and it cost $175 while the same part can be purchased for $75 on the Internet. When it is 95 degrees outside, $100 is a small price to pay for being able to cool the house immediately and so I had her pick up the part.

This evening I boarded a plane back to Utah and my wife picked me up at the airport. We came home and I began working on fixing the AC. One would think it would be as simple as labeling all of the dozen or so wires and plugging them back into the new computer. Nope, the new board had a completely different configuration and only a few of the wires had the same labels.

I went to my desktop computer and looked up part numbers on the Internet. My old AC computer is part number ST9120G2008 and my replacement is ST9120U1011. I searched for a bit but couldn't find instructions on how to rewire the computer but I did find one clue: white wires are neutral. I found all of the neutral connections on the computer and started there. Next I found labels on the the old computer and matched them with the new one. That left only five unknown wires. Fortunately the instruction manual came with a very nice wiring diagram. I just had to recall all of my Electrical Engineering homework from a long time ago and I matched the remaining wires.

While carpenters like to measure twice and cut once, electrical engineers like to recheck their work and so I did. Then I checked it again. Once you let the magic smoke out of electrical components, they don't work very well after. I didn't want to have to spend another $175 for a wiring mistake. Once I convinced myself everything worked, I did a quick test. The blower motor started right up. I then tested the AC and it is now working to bring my house down from an unbearable 85 degrees to a more manageable 76.

I am not an HVAC specialist and normally I would call a repairman for such a job. In fact I have done that in the middle of winter when the heater stopped working. The problem turned out to be a $4 light switch. I still had to pay $120 for the service call. I figure at that rate, I can spend a bit of my own time and try to figure it out. Furthermore buying a new part through the repairman would run me about $300. I figure I saved myself around $245 doing the work myself. I also learned a lot in the process.

If you find yourself in a similar situation but have the slightest concern that you didn't correctly diagnose the problem, then call the repairman. If you think the Internet will help guide you through the fix, then give it a shot. You might just save yourself some serious cash.