I am one of the few people in the Research and Development Department without an advanced degree. I don't really mind as continuing in school has not really appealed to me until the past few weeks. My current degree is in Electrical and Computer Engineering. While in school I had the option of focusing on analog or digital. Naturally I chose the digital option as I really wanted to do stuff with computers and not radios. Now that I have an interest in ham radio, I see the benefits of the analog option but am glad that I chose the digital route.
A natural extension for me would be to go back to school and get a Masters in Computer Science or further my Electrical Engineering degree. I could also try for a Masters of Business Administration (MBA). Unfortunately that sounds really boring. When I got my university diploma it never listed anything other than I have a Bachelor of Science degree. I felt cheated. I could have the same piece of paper even if I spent my time playing in college and got a much simpler degree. So now I am thinking about focusing on Outdoor Leadership or Recreational Management.
Follow my logic. My experience vastly outweighs any accolades I would receive from continuing with a technical degree. At this point in my career, a Masters is merely a checklist item on someone's list. Why not focus on fun? I am already spending a lot of time doing things like SCUBA diving, backcountry skiing, and mountain climbing. Should I want to retire from video games or the tech industry, I could switch careers and become a backpacking or heli-skiing guide.
For those of you looking to do the opposite or to go from a non-technical degree and trying to get a Masters in Computer Science, I don't recommend it. There are some fundamental Math and Physics that you will have to review or learn. I would hate to have to go back and learn to do integration by parts, which is something I did frequently in my electronic circuits classes.
Now if I can only convince my company that an advanced degree in Outdoor Leadership is worth our tuition reimbursement program. I doubt it but it is worth a shot.
Wednesday, January 29, 2020
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Carefully Balancing Battery Power
Every week I participate in at least one emergency amateur radio (ham) net. My Sunday evening net usually includes a training item to help us keep our ham radio skills sharp. Our most common topic is making sure we keep radio batteries charged and always have spares. This comes up so much because someone will start talking and then drop off the air with the primary cause being a dead battery. The guilty party will sheepishly rejoin the group and admit to what we already knew: no power.
This evening I find myself nursing the battery life on one of my two mobile phones. I am at the airport waiting to catch my weekly flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. While taking the shuttle bus from my office to the airport, I have been listening to music on my phone. I used my work phone as it is the one paired with my wireless headphones.
For the flight home I plan to watch a movie. Once again I will be using my work phone as it has a larger screen than my personal phone. I just looked at my power meter and I am burning through my battery rather quickly. I decided to turn off my music to help conserve power so I have more than enough to watch a movie on the plane. On my flight there are USB port at each seat to charge electronic devices. Unfortunately I don't carry a charging cable with me for my work phone. I may just want to get a spare for this occasion. Then I won't have to work so carefully to balance battery power.
This evening I find myself nursing the battery life on one of my two mobile phones. I am at the airport waiting to catch my weekly flight from San Francisco to Salt Lake City. While taking the shuttle bus from my office to the airport, I have been listening to music on my phone. I used my work phone as it is the one paired with my wireless headphones.
For the flight home I plan to watch a movie. Once again I will be using my work phone as it has a larger screen than my personal phone. I just looked at my power meter and I am burning through my battery rather quickly. I decided to turn off my music to help conserve power so I have more than enough to watch a movie on the plane. On my flight there are USB port at each seat to charge electronic devices. Unfortunately I don't carry a charging cable with me for my work phone. I may just want to get a spare for this occasion. Then I won't have to work so carefully to balance battery power.
Wednesday, January 22, 2020
Website Updates Can Be Difficult
Recently Alta ski resort updated their website and I am having trouble learning how to navigate it. As it is ski season, I have a morning routine I follow even when I am in California and not planning to ski that day. When I am home in Utah, I get my breakfast and then sit down with a web browser to check Alta's website. I am looking for how much new snow they received overnight, what lifts will be running, and what the grooming looks like for the day. Next I pull up Snowbird's site as they have different information that helps give me an idea of what the ski conditions are like. Finally I pull up the Utah Avalanche Center site and carefully go through the morning's report.
I am looking for specific things in all 3 sites and I had a system. With Alta's website redesign, I find myself having to go to 3 different pages to get the same information I used to be able to get from 1. The changes have frustrated me over the past week. I do have to admit that the new site is much prettier though.
This evening I decided to do more than just look at Alta's website and play around with it. Guess what, they have a shortcut to a page that has all the information I want in a single place. In the top right corner of the home page is graphic with information about what the weather is currently doing. All I have to do is click on that and it takes me to a much more graphically pleasing version of my previous favorite page. Furthermore it has more information than before and that is helpful.
The point of this post is that we sometimes resist change instead of embracing it. While a website update can be difficult, sometimes all it takes is playing around with the site a bit and you may find you like it more than before. That is definitely the case with Alta's site and I have to say, "Thank you."
I am looking for specific things in all 3 sites and I had a system. With Alta's website redesign, I find myself having to go to 3 different pages to get the same information I used to be able to get from 1. The changes have frustrated me over the past week. I do have to admit that the new site is much prettier though.
This evening I decided to do more than just look at Alta's website and play around with it. Guess what, they have a shortcut to a page that has all the information I want in a single place. In the top right corner of the home page is graphic with information about what the weather is currently doing. All I have to do is click on that and it takes me to a much more graphically pleasing version of my previous favorite page. Furthermore it has more information than before and that is helpful.
The point of this post is that we sometimes resist change instead of embracing it. While a website update can be difficult, sometimes all it takes is playing around with the site a bit and you may find you like it more than before. That is definitely the case with Alta's site and I have to say, "Thank you."
Wednesday, January 15, 2020
Your Smartphone is Telling Everyone Where You Are
This afternoon I read an article from the New York Times about how your mobile phone is collecting where you are and have been. This is something I already knew and have for a long time not allowed apps to know where I am located. I really don't have much to hide but I still find it creepy that services are out there collecting my location on a regular basis.
The article goes through a number of scenarios about how that information could be used for nefarious purposes. Fortunately I don't need to worry about any of them. I am not a secret service agent guarding the president. I am not engaging in illegal activities that might include robbing banks or prostitution. About the only scenario I should be worried about is that someone would be able to tell when I am not at home or on my boat and be able to rob either location. Fortunately I don't have anything expensive on my boat and I doubt there is much in my home that warrants worrying about thieves.
The things I really worry about are exactly why those smartphone applications are collecting the data: advertising. Companies like to be able to track that you have seen an ad and then visited a store to purchase something. Advertisers can also see that you walked into a restaurant and left immediately. That will just open the flood gates to restaurant ads spamming my phone. I am also not interested in ads for stores I just walked by. Imagine walking by a shoe store and then being bombarded with coupons about shoes you don't care about. I just wanted to get to the video game store on the other side.
After reading the article, I double checked my phones and Google account. I have made sure to turn off location notification on all of them. If I need to use a map application, I will turn it back on temporarily and then be sure to turn it off again.
The article goes through a number of scenarios about how that information could be used for nefarious purposes. Fortunately I don't need to worry about any of them. I am not a secret service agent guarding the president. I am not engaging in illegal activities that might include robbing banks or prostitution. About the only scenario I should be worried about is that someone would be able to tell when I am not at home or on my boat and be able to rob either location. Fortunately I don't have anything expensive on my boat and I doubt there is much in my home that warrants worrying about thieves.
The things I really worry about are exactly why those smartphone applications are collecting the data: advertising. Companies like to be able to track that you have seen an ad and then visited a store to purchase something. Advertisers can also see that you walked into a restaurant and left immediately. That will just open the flood gates to restaurant ads spamming my phone. I am also not interested in ads for stores I just walked by. Imagine walking by a shoe store and then being bombarded with coupons about shoes you don't care about. I just wanted to get to the video game store on the other side.
After reading the article, I double checked my phones and Google account. I have made sure to turn off location notification on all of them. If I need to use a map application, I will turn it back on temporarily and then be sure to turn it off again.
Thursday, January 9, 2020
Beauty Every Day
During the Holiday break I made an extra effort to look for beautiful pictures every day. When I found a scene I liked, I pulled out my phone and took a picture of it. Sometimes the shots worked out and sometimes they didn't. The important thing is that I looked daily.
I have noticed several things in my pursuit of daily beauty. The first is that not all smartphone cameras are created equal. Some take better shots than others. I have one phone with a really good camera and when I know I am headed into the mountains, I make sure to bring it along. The pictures it produces are exceptional. If you are into photography, splurge a little and get a phone with a good camera. There are plenty to choose from.
The second thing I have noticed by taking pictures every day is that there is a lot of beauty all around us. One morning I woke up and marveled at the spectacular colors of the morning sunrise. I grabbed my smartphone and took several pictures only to have the sun come up just enough for the spectacle to disappear completely. On another occasion, I noticed the sunset casting a magnificent light on the mountains to the East. I grabbed a picture at the perfect moment. Professional photographers will tell you that sunrise and sunset produce some of the best light for pictures but don't let your guard down the rest of the day. One of my favorite pictures of the break is in a complete whiteout where you can barely see the chair in front of me on the chairlift I am riding. It looks cold and miserable but those are the skiing conditions I like most.
When cameras first started appearing in phones, I didn't see the point. Then I started using it as a way of capturing whiteboard notes at the end of meetings. Now I am using the camera on my phone frequently. If I don't like the picture, I delete it. Otherwise I have a nice photo documentary of my daily scenery and have taken some beautiful pictures.
I have noticed several things in my pursuit of daily beauty. The first is that not all smartphone cameras are created equal. Some take better shots than others. I have one phone with a really good camera and when I know I am headed into the mountains, I make sure to bring it along. The pictures it produces are exceptional. If you are into photography, splurge a little and get a phone with a good camera. There are plenty to choose from.
The second thing I have noticed by taking pictures every day is that there is a lot of beauty all around us. One morning I woke up and marveled at the spectacular colors of the morning sunrise. I grabbed my smartphone and took several pictures only to have the sun come up just enough for the spectacle to disappear completely. On another occasion, I noticed the sunset casting a magnificent light on the mountains to the East. I grabbed a picture at the perfect moment. Professional photographers will tell you that sunrise and sunset produce some of the best light for pictures but don't let your guard down the rest of the day. One of my favorite pictures of the break is in a complete whiteout where you can barely see the chair in front of me on the chairlift I am riding. It looks cold and miserable but those are the skiing conditions I like most.
When cameras first started appearing in phones, I didn't see the point. Then I started using it as a way of capturing whiteboard notes at the end of meetings. Now I am using the camera on my phone frequently. If I don't like the picture, I delete it. Otherwise I have a nice photo documentary of my daily scenery and have taken some beautiful pictures.
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
New Year's Resolutions
This morning I headed into work on my bike and then to the company gym where I usually start my day. Keeping with my early-rising habit I developed over the Christmas break I found myself there earlier than usual. I expected the gym to be packed with those seeking to lose a bit of weight gained over the Holidays. Nope, it felt really empty. Perhaps the idea of making and then breaking resolutions has gotten to the point where the new trend is to not make them in the first place. I hope I am wrong about that as the new year is always a great time to reflect on how we can improve ourselves.
On Sunday my wife asked if I had set any goals or resolutions and I had to confess that I have not made the effort yet. I sort of have a few ideas that carry forward from previous years like skiing more and dropping a bit of weight. So far I have started the year off right as I am down a few pounds which is a freaking miracle considering all of the feasting most people do during the holidays. I have also come back to work with a sore body from skiing so much over the break.
In this vein of looking at ways of improving myself over the next 12 months, I think I would like to learn a new technical skill or two. I have a very strong understanding of relational database systems and have even dabbled with other database technologies. Therefore those are not good areas to expand. Instead I should look at where my weaknesses are and set some goals to improve those parts of my professional skill set. I have used both Amazon's (AWS) and Google's (GCP) cloud platforms but could definitely improve there. Our company has a learning portal and should probably leverage it first and then fill in any shortcomings with a local conference.
Another area I would like to focus some effort is improving my artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge. Last year I ran through a Reinforcement Learning book and learned a lot. The book wasn't all that great but I did enjoy the code segments and doing the examples. There are a number of new AI tools emerging and I will try to find one that catches my interest and do something with it.
Finally I want to do more with gaming technology. I have dabbled with the Unity game engine but think I could learn a lot by learning Unreal as well. There are so many samples and tutorials that it would be good to spend an extra hour on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings hanging out at the office and building something interesting.
While it is nice to create a list of improvements, be sure to write them down. Someone once said that a goal not written is just a wish. If you want the wish to come true, start by writing it down and then coming up with a plan. I have the starting part down, now I should follow through and make a proper plan for each of these resolutions. Good luck on your own New Year's Resolutions.
On Sunday my wife asked if I had set any goals or resolutions and I had to confess that I have not made the effort yet. I sort of have a few ideas that carry forward from previous years like skiing more and dropping a bit of weight. So far I have started the year off right as I am down a few pounds which is a freaking miracle considering all of the feasting most people do during the holidays. I have also come back to work with a sore body from skiing so much over the break.
In this vein of looking at ways of improving myself over the next 12 months, I think I would like to learn a new technical skill or two. I have a very strong understanding of relational database systems and have even dabbled with other database technologies. Therefore those are not good areas to expand. Instead I should look at where my weaknesses are and set some goals to improve those parts of my professional skill set. I have used both Amazon's (AWS) and Google's (GCP) cloud platforms but could definitely improve there. Our company has a learning portal and should probably leverage it first and then fill in any shortcomings with a local conference.
Another area I would like to focus some effort is improving my artificial intelligence (AI) knowledge. Last year I ran through a Reinforcement Learning book and learned a lot. The book wasn't all that great but I did enjoy the code segments and doing the examples. There are a number of new AI tools emerging and I will try to find one that catches my interest and do something with it.
Finally I want to do more with gaming technology. I have dabbled with the Unity game engine but think I could learn a lot by learning Unreal as well. There are so many samples and tutorials that it would be good to spend an extra hour on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings hanging out at the office and building something interesting.
While it is nice to create a list of improvements, be sure to write them down. Someone once said that a goal not written is just a wish. If you want the wish to come true, start by writing it down and then coming up with a plan. I have the starting part down, now I should follow through and make a proper plan for each of these resolutions. Good luck on your own New Year's Resolutions.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
