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.