Multitasking in Microsoft Teams is Painful

I have spent time working on multiple projects for my employer today and one of the tools we use is Microsoft Teams. I discovered a serious flaw when it comes to multitasking with it. The interface does not lend itself to switching between multiple projects as easily as a web browser. It cost me a lot of productivity today and I need to remember that in the future.

When you are in a browser you can open up multiple tabs for different websites and keep them all open at the same time. If you see a link that you want to visit but don't want to navigate away from your existing site, right-click on the link and it pulls up another tab. I generally only have 5 tabs open at a time. After that it gets too confusing. I wish Microsoft Teams had something similar.

We store a lot of files in Microsoft Teams so that we can share them easily instead of passing them around in e-mail. They are stored in OneDrive but most people share the link in the chat feature. Today I had two different presentations I started working on within Teams. When I needed to make an update in the other presentation, I would go look for it and lose my place in the first presentation. Then to make matters worse, I would get a chat message and lose both presentations.

There are some workarounds that would have allowed me to keep both presentations open in different windows and still be able to answer chat messages. Unfortunately that requires a bit of preparation before starting to work on the presentations in Teams. By the time I figured out I tried to do too many things at once, I had already wasted a lot of time. In the future, when I go to work on a presentation found in Microsoft Teams, I will be sure to open it in the stand-alone PowerPoint application so I don't have to keep searching for it after interruptions. Hopefully this tip helps you if you are a Microsoft Teams user.

Christmas Ideas for 2022

Every year I try to post ideas for Christmas gifts related to computers and technology. I find it gets harder ever year as I try to come up with new ideas. After all, it is not hard to go back through old postings and see my recommendations from previous years. So what are some new ideas this year?

New Video Game Console - Yes I used to work for Sony PlayStation and now I work for another part of Sony and so it is easy to expect I would recommend picking up a PlayStation 5. They are still hard to find but not impossible. I have also seen several deals on the XBox Series X and Series S consoles. Which one you get really depends upon the person you are getting it for. If it is for your son and all his friends have XBox consoles, he will want to play online games with them and so I recommend an XBox. If all your son's friends play on the PlayStation then go for that console. I do not recommend just getting a new console because you found one in stock. Make sure it is the console that is wanted.

Video Games - Here you have a lot to choose from. Be sure to ask those probing questions about if there is a game the person on your list wants to start playing. I am not a fan of sports games and so I would be disappointed with one. I am an anomaly though and so don't base a game purchase off my preferences. Find out what games are wanted and then try to find a great deal on them. If you have no idea what to get and that someone on your list is a fan of Star Wars, I highly recommend "LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga" as it has games for all 9 movies. That is on my list this year.

A Quadcopter or Drone - When I worked in Research and Development at PlayStation we had a number of quadcopters on the floor and would race them around the office. It was a lot of fun. DJI has emerged as the drone vendor of choice and they make quality stuff. There are quite a few models to choose from and which one you get is determined by your budget and list of features. If it is a first drone, I recommend a budget version. More than likely it will meet with tragedy and you will know if it is a good replacement gift for next year.

Portable Bluetooth Speaker - I have a number of Portable Bluetooth speakers scattered throughout the house and use them all the time. Both my wife and I have small ones that put out nice sound and are great when you don't want to wear headphones or ear buds. They can range in price from $40 all the way up to $100's. I wouldn't suggest any lower than $40 unless you are willing to gamble with quality.

Another Robot Vacuum - My house has multiple levels and our current robot vacuum cannot go up or down stairs. To solve that problem my wife will carry the robot to another level and let it run until the battery dies. A better solution is to have a robot vacuum for each level of the house. Don't tell my wife, but that is probably what she is getting this year.

Hopefully there are some new ideas in this year's list and I have helped you out. If not, feel free to leave a comment about what you think would make a great gift.

Christmas Tree is Up

I like to use the Thanksgiving break to decorate the house for Christmas. Setting up the tree is actually a lot of work as mine is a custom tree I built several decades ago. I have a vaulted entry way in my house with a nice semi-spiral staircase. It is a very narrow area for a tree and so I custom built ours to fit perfectly. We then use the stairway to help decorate the tree. It works well but takes forever to set up, light, and then decorate. My wife and I have been working on it since Thanksgiving day. Fortunately we only really spend and hour or two each day. This evening we finally finished putting on the Christmas tree ornaments and it looks amazing.

One thing that has really helped speed up our decorating efforts is LED Christmas lights. Before we replaced all of the lights on the tree with LED's we would spend countless hours hunting down burned-out bulbs. It is nice to know that when I plug in the lights, they will just work. Thinking back on this Thanksgiving weekend about technology I am thankful for, I would have to say LED lighting is on that list.

Does Black Friday Still Exist?

This morning I rode up the chairlift with someone that works for a large online retailer where I asked about Black Friday and if it still exists because people do so much online shopping. To help illustrate the point, I got an e-mail on Monday and ordered a expensive ski jacket online at a huge discount. It arrived today and I didn't have to wake up early or stand in a line. In fact, I went skiing on Black Friday and had an excellent day. The person we rode the chair with said that her company had coupons that didn't get sent until Black Friday. She expects it will have more of an effect for Cyber Monday, which is where most online retailers see the largest number of purchases for a given day.

I watched the news last night before heading to bed and they said a lot of people were out shopping but we didn't have the crowds as has been seen in years past. The shoppers interviewed enjoyed being able to find great deals without having to deal with large crowds. I didn't see any stories of women and children being trampled by large and unruly crowds. I'm happy about that.

My wife and I have long since given up on quantity over quality when it comes to Christmas gifts. We spend a lot of time thinking about what people really want for that special day of the year. That has not always been the case as young kids care more about the number of packages they get to open, not about if they want what they are receiving. This year we know exactly what we will get for each of our kids. While we could wake up early on Black Friday and try to save a few dollars, ultimately it is easier to just go to our trusted sources for what we are looking for. After all, time is money and a great deal on something you don't plan to buy is worthless.

Thankful for Technology

I have had a nearly perfect Thanksgiving today and so I thought I would post some thoughts about the technology I am thankful for right now. After all, I do try to focus that in this blog on technology.

My oldest daughter and my youngest son are both in Ohio celebrating this special holiday. We would have liked them to join us in Utah but that just is not possible because of work schedules and the cost of travel. While my middle two children joined us with family and friends, my oldest and youngest joined in on the celebration with a video call. Furthermore it didn't cost any money for the call. Think back 30 years ago when you counted minutes for long-distance phone calls because every one cost money. The ability to make video calls is one thing I am very thankful for.

This morning I got to head up to Alta and go skiing with my family here in Utah. We had the luxury of riding on high-speed detachable quad chairlifts. When I first started skiing, everything was slow-fixed-grip chairlifts. The new lifts whisk you to the top of the mountain in about a quarter of the time of the old ones. On cold days I would turn into a popsicle long before reaching the top. Now I hardly spend any time at all and that is perfect for when I am skiing with my grandchildren who hate riding the lifts but love skiing.

In thinking about this post, I thought about some of the bad things associated with technology. There are computer viruses, identity theft, and other woes we did not have to worry about 20 years ago. Fortunately the conveniences technology provides greatly outweighs the problems. If it was the other way around, we would stop using it. So life moves on and while it may not necessarily get easier, technology at least makes it more efficient and for that I am thankful.

Delivery Drivers Contributing to Porch Pirates

I don't know about you but it seems that the delivery drivers in my area are helping contribute to Porch Pirates. This morning I ordered something from Amazon and it arrived this evening. I didn't think anything about it until I decided to check my e-mail before heading off to bed. I saw that my package had arrived thanks to an e-mail. I have a doorbell but it never rang. I was in the next room and never heard a knock. Someone looking for a chance to steal a nice large package of mostly air could have plenty of opportunity while I am at home watching a movie.

The Amazon driver is not alone. It is rare that a delivery driver from FedEx, UPS, or DHL ever rings my doorbell. I have sort of gotten into the habit of opening the front door and looking on the porch every time I walk by. It is actually starting to annoy me. Fortunately I have never had a delivery stolen but I hear about them on the news all the time.

I guess one way to ensure I am notified about deliveries is to turn on the motion detector for my Ring doorbell. Right now it is off because I was getting too many false alarms. I have a bird that likes to nest near my front door and when he flies in or out I get a notification. Ring already sends me too many messages no matter how I change my settings on my phone and so I have motion detection turned off.

Ultimately I will keep things as they are simply because I have not had any deliveries taken. The moment that changes, I may have to turn on my doorbell's motion detector and live with all of the false alarms. On the plus side, I can go out and shoot the nesting bird with a Nerf dart and help keep him from pooping all over my front steps. That usually discourages him from sticking around.

YouTube Season

I seem to have found a bit of a following with my YouTube videos that focus on the Top 5 Ski Areas of North America. That means that ski season is also YouTube season for me. I tried putting together some videos over the summer but discovered I couldn't easily run up to the ski resort and get more content when needed. I have also found that ski videos don't really get watched during the summer.

My most popular video has just passed 70,000 views, which I think is a lot. I know I would get a lot more if I was a 20-year-old girl trying on swimsuits but that isn't what I am interested in sharing. When I look at other ski videos, I am doing fairly well. There are only a few that get more views and most are less than that.

I am also discovering the content the people want to see. The videos I have the most fun making are about backcountry ski trips but they only get a few hundred views. Show something controversial like which resorts have the steepest slopes or the best powder and you rack up the views. Controversy also means you get people disliking your content and leaving mean comments. I try to respond kindly and let them express their opinion. Hopefully it is paying off.

Lately I have been getting some very nice complements from people that seem to like my videos. That is gratifying but I can't let it go to my head. Fortunately there is someone that will come along and tell me I am an idiot for suggesting a particular ski area and so I think I am staying fairly grounded. If I get back up to 8000 views per day like I did at the end of last season, then I can't make any promises.

Goodbye Comcast, Hello Google Fiber

A couple of months ago I had construction trucks in my neighborhood laying down Google Fiber. They told us it wouldn't take long before the service would be available and we all assumed 6 months to a year. Then a few weeks ago, I got a card in the mail saying it was ready for installation, should I be interested. I was and so I scheduled an appointment for them to bring it into my house.

A week before the scheduled installation, a worker showed up and dug a shallow ditch in my front yard so he could lay the cable up to my house. While it was the easiest path for him, I would have preferred the fiber-optic cable enter my house on the other side. They would have moved the box on the outside of the house if I put in a change request. Instead, I came up with a better solution and brought the line into part of my unfinished basement. They can run 250 feet of fiber optic cable without any problems and that allows for a lot of flexibility.

One nice thing about fiber optics is that you can run it next to electrical wires and there won't be any interference or signal loss. That made it very easy to snake the cable through the truss beams in my basement and bring the access point all the way to my office where we set up a WiFi access point. Google then set up another access point in the family room.

Both Comcast and Google claim to be providing Gigabit speeds and so the service should be the same. Unfortunately my first speed test with Google Fiber came back 10 times faster than Comcast. I am not sure why the speeds differ that much for the same service but I have a few ideas. Unfortunately it would be speculation so let's just assume that not having to worry about electrical wiring solves a lot of problems when it comes to Internet speeds.

So what caused me to switch Internet service providers in the first place? It boils down to the price I was paying and the notoriously poor customer support from Comcast. I'm saving myself $22 per month in costs and Google showed up within 6 minutes of when they said they would. Comcast gives something like a 4-hour window of when they will show up at your house. Now I hope I don't need to rely on that customer service ever again but it is nice to know it is there if I need it. I'm very happy with the switch and Comcast lost a 25-year customer.

Causal Analysis: The Buoy Pop

I spend a lot of my time looking at data. Sometimes I get the chance to look at trends and perform causal analysis. What is causal analysis? It is looking at data and figuring out when one event causes another. A good example is that is the old-time belief that the rooster crowing in the morning causes the sun to rise. Don't laugh, that was an actual belief. We all know that it is the rising sun that causes the rooster to crow and not the other way around.

A more complex example of causal analysis is in correlating wine drinking with good health. There was a study done that indicated people that drink a glass of wine a day are more healthy than those that don't. On the surface it would seem that everyone should drink a glass of wine every day. Unfortunately life isn't that simple. There are a number of other factors that need to be taken into account as well. The reality is that if you can afford to drink wine, you can also afford proper healthcare. It is not the glass of wine that makes someone healthy, it is affluence and the ability to get proper medical attention when needed. They never mentioned that in the study.

Yesterday I came across a very interesting article about the "Buoy Pop." There is a scientific buoy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that can predict a snow storm in winter for Utah 2 weeks before it happens. This is important if you are a skier and want to know when the next powder storm is on its way. Meteorologists discount the buoy because the best they can do is predict storms 10 days out with only 20% accuracy. How can wave height indicate a storm 14 days away? This is where data science comes in and says there is some other phenomenon at work that meteorologists have not yet identified. Before continuing, the "Buoy Pop" is only 66% accurate, not 100%. Still that is significantly better than what professional weather forecasters can do.

In order to do proper causal analysis, I would need to gather all possible variables and apply a number of statistical algorithms to see what the actual cause of the snow storm is. All I know for now is that something that causes the storms to arrive also sends a nice wave under a specific buoy in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

Ultimately the "Buoy Pop" is a nice statistical problem for me to think about but it doesn't effect my actions much. I purposely live in Utah near the ski resorts so that I can take advantage of powder storms as they arrive. For someone who has to travel to ski, I would definitely study when the buoy pops and plan a trip to my favorite Intermountain ski area.