Alexa Power Users

I have been staying at my son's house over the past couple of days and am experiencing what it is like to live with some young Alexa power users. My oldest son has to be in Amsterdam for 2 weeks. I used to have to travel like that and hated it when I had to travel over a weekend. When he mentioned the trip, I told him to take his wife. She could only manage one week and I knew my wife and I could handle watching their 3 children with the oldest being 8 and the youngest 2 and a half.

My son's house is only 20 minutes away and so it is not too much of a stretch to go home daily and check our mail or pick up packages before porch pirates find them. As soon as my youngest grandson wakes up from his morning nap, we will head home for a few errands. My wife will need her car as a way to get home once my daughter-in-law arrives.

Hanging out with my grandkids has helped me realized I am a mere novice when it comes to Alexa. We have a single device that sits between our kitchen and family room. Most of the time it acts as a rotating picture frame. We get to see photos from previous vacations and those of our grandkids growing up. When my oldest grandson comes over, he can carry on lengthy conversations with the device. If you have that kid always asking questions, just put him or her in front of an Alexa or Google home unit and let the questions fly. It is entertaining to watch.

My oldest son has quite a few Alexa devices strategically placed around the house. There is one in each of the bedrooms as well as various other rooms in the house. One contrast with my house is I have clocks everywhere while my son does not. That is because when anyone needs to know what time it is, they just ask Alexa. I heard my grandson talking this morning and he just asked the time to know if he could get up or not. He could and so he had Alexa reading him a story while he slowly gathered the strength to get out of bed.

When it comes time to go to bed, each of the children has a favorite bedtime track they listen to while they fall asleep. My youngest grandson who is 2 and a half listens to guitar music, my 6-year-old granddaughter likes Taylor Swift, and my oldest grandson listens to the music from the Harry Potter films.

Alexa does so much more than play music and tells time. My son has quite a few lights connected to smart outlets that can be turned on or off with voice commands. Any time someone needs a timer for important things like baking cookies or ending 30-minute reading session, you just ask Alexa to set a timer. It doesn't matter if she has one going already as multiple timers can run simultaneously. If you get stumped on a homework question, there's even an answer for that.

It has been very educational to see all the uses of Alexa and what smart devices can do. While some things are definitely easier, others become quite confusing. I'm not sure what lights are controlled by a switch and which ones are on smart outlets. When the bedroom light came on unexpectedly I quickly figured out I could just say, "Alexa, turn off the bedroom light," to turn it off. I suppose if I had set everything up, there would be much less of a learning curve.

I'm not sure I will purchase too many more Alexa devices but I could definitely buy off on the fact they are more useful than I have given them credit. I could probably expand to having a device in my office and one in my wife's. Then we could use them as intercoms to talk with each other. I could also see the benefit of adding one to our bedroom and maybe a few of the guest ones. The only drawback would be listening to my grandson carrying on a lengthy conversation in an empty room when he comes to visit.

Watching Old Movies

Recently I have found myself watching older movies and realize that younger generations may not understand them or be able to relate. Think about how many movies from the 1980's could be shortened to only 5 minutes with the introduction of mobile phones as a lot of the problems would immediately disappear. They have become so ubiquitous that the younger generations don't even know what a landline is anymore. My grand kids are not familiar with them at all as I discovered this weekend.

When I watch a movie depicting historical events such as World War II, I don't expect to see computers or modern technology. In fact, back then Jeeps represented the pinnacle of technological advancement. Now we see a movie from just a few years ago and things are familiar enough that nothing seems out of place. Then someone uses an old feature phone, which is one that makes calls and might have texting capabilities but is not a smartphone nor does it have a camera. It goes to show how much technology has advanced in a few short years.

While a number of modern conveniences are missing from these movies, there are a number of older technologies that people don't know how to use any more. I recently watched "Back to the Future" and Marty McFly tears a page out of the phone book. Does the rising generation even know what phone books are? He also checks the date by looking at a newspaper. I haven't seen one of those in a very long time. At least I know what they are, and quite frankly, miss them. The one scene showing how things have evolved is when Marty tries to twist a bottle cap off a soda bottle and his dad has to show him how to use a bottle opener.

I wonder how a 16-year old from 2025 would have to adjust to 1955? Would he or she immediately pull out a smartphone and try to get a signal? Would heating up food become a problem because microwave ovens didn't exist? Would everyone from 1955 laugh at the time traveler when he or she buckles a seat belt or puts on a helmet? These would all make comedic elements in a new movie. My only request is not to remake "Back to the Future" and come up with a slightly more original story.

 

 

Why Did Spotify Do That?

I used to ride my bike outside as often as I could. Now I have turned into a warm-weather cyclist. The weather has turned cooler so I prefer to ride on my trainer inside instead of out in the cold even though I have the clothing for it. Unfortunately riding inside is insanely boring and so I pass the time listening to music. Normally I listen to songs on Spotify but I am thinking about finding a new streaming service because of problems that recently surfaced.

I have painstakingly gone through and created a list of my 150 or so favorite songs to listen to while exercising. Recently I started hearing the same song played over and over. At one point the same song played 3 times in a row. That prompted me to go through my playlist and remove duplicates of the same song. Once I confirmed only one version of the song exists in my playlist, things went well for awhile.

Since Friday I have noticed another problem with my Spotify playlist. It has started playing "recommended" songs. I don't know what changed and can only assume Spotify did this. The problem is I don't like a lot of the songs that streaming music services recommend based on the songs on my list. While I like most Blink-182 songs, I don't like them all and have purposely left them off my playlist for a reason. I also don't like a lot of songs by All American Rejects but keep getting them recommended because they are similar to Blink-182.

Today during my indoor workout I got angry hearing "recommended" songs instead of the ones I chose for my playlist. I almost stopped listening to music altogether. Instead I just skipped the songs not on the list. The downside to that is I get to listen to more ads as I use the free service and don't pay for Premium Spotify. Basically the ad-to-song ratio went from 1:1 to an abysmal 4:1 which means I had to listen to 4 ads for every song. Secretly I think Spotify is trying to get me to start paying a monthly fee.

After my workout I immediately headed to my desktop computer and did a bit of research. I went into my settings and turned off the "Autoplay similar content" setting. My hope is that Spotify will now only play songs explicitly added to my workout playlist. If not, I will move on and give Amazon Music a try. After all I pay for Amazon Prime so I don't have to sign up for another streaming service. 

Bandwidth Explained

Lately I have doing a lot of studying about ham radio in my spare time. I get a monthly magazine from the American Radio Relay League or ARRL called QST and there are a lot of concepts I don't understand as I read articles. Rather than continuing to read and glossing over the complex subjects, I am trying to understand them more. This has me thinking about bandwidth and what it actually means.

We use bandwidth in our casual conversations with phrases like, "I don't have the bandwidth to work on that right now." That generally means that you are doing so much you don't have room in your schedule to do anything else or that the task consumes more time than you have free. We also talk about bandwidth for WiFi and how much data we can stream to our devices like smartphones, TV's, and computers. Here is a quick history lesson of what that all means and why it relates to ham radio.

When we first discovered that we could send messages over the air without having to use wires or connections, we found that we needed a carrier frequency for the message. At first, we sent messages using Morse code which uses short (dot) and long (dash) pulses of energy to convey a message. To do so, you might use 14.025 MHz as your carrier frequency with the bandwidth of your message only being a hundred Hz wide. What that means is that if someone else tries to send a message at a frequency too close to 14.025 MHz, say at 14.0251, the messages might interfere with each other. To fix this you would spread the carrier frequencies further apart. Perhaps you might use 14.026 MHz instead.

Now not everyone knows Morse code and so we learned how to encode voice messages in those same radio frequencies. We started with amplitude modulation or AM and later developed frequency modulation or FM. Anyone who has spent much time with a radio knows FM has higher quality sound than AM and so most of our music listening stations are on FM. The FCC has limited AM radio stations to a total bandwidth of 10 kHz. That means if you still use a carrier frequency of 14.025 MHz, your signal will fall in the 14.020 and 14.030 MHz range as AM splits the signal equally on either side of the carrier frequency (5 kHz below and 5 kHz above). In contrast FM signals are 200 kHz or almost 20 times wider than AM signals. It is no wonder that FM signals are higher quality than AM as you can fit more information in that space. It also means that FM radio stations have to space out their carrier signals much further than AM stations. By contrast, FM ham radio signals are only 16 kHz wide as they only need to transmit voice and not music.

Now lets tie this all together with how we think of bandwidth of our Internet links at home. When signing up for home Internet service, vendors like to use terms like 10 mega-bits per second (Mbps) or 1 gigabit per second (Gbps). With 10 Mbps it means you will be able to download 10 million bits every second. 1 Gbps is much better as it is 100 times more data in the same second at 1 billion bits every second. Now remember that there are 8 bits for every byte or character in a file so if you have a 10 mega-byte file, it won't take a single second to download it at 10 Mbps, the fastest you can download it would be in 8 seconds but even that is not true. Networks use parity and error correction bits to ensure you get the data correctly. While you are paying for 10 Mbps speeds, you are really only seeing about half that because of how the network works.

So how do kHz and Mbps relate? There is a bit of math that would make this post really long and confusing, not to mention boring. Suffice it to say that when you are talking about radio signals, you generally use kHz and when you talk about data, you use Mbps or Gbps. It all translates down to how wide the radio (in the case of WiFi) or network (in the case of wired connections) signal is needed to provide the information you are trying to receive.

Christmas Shopping Early

Yesterday my wife sent me an e-mail from a Jewelry designer that is retiring. All of her inventory is on sale for extremely low prices so she can clear it out. Today I checked out the website and wondered what I could get my wife. She told me Jewelry would make a great stocking stuffer and so I browsed trying to find something that would be perfect for her.

I found a quite a few rings that don't cost too much and look amazing. The only problem is that I don't know my wife's ring size. I know, that probably makes me a horrible husband but it really has been a long time since I bought my wife a ring of any kind. We have also been married for almost 35 years so I shouldn't be expected to remember her size when I got her engagement ring. Besides, she has had it resized several times and I'm not stupid enough to ask if it is larger or smaller than when I originally purchased it.

I continued to scroll through the site and found some necklaces, earrings, and bracelets that would be nice. Nothing really jumped out though. Then I found one item that I know my wife will love. It is kind of like seeing a bunch shirts that are all the same color and then finding one that is different and also happens to be in my wife's favorite color. I probably shouldn't say that I ordered it as she might read this post but I did find that perfect stocking stuffer.

Have I finished my Christmas shopping? No as I am not even close. I did get one gift though and now I can relax a little. Not completely but a little. 

Keeping Loyalty Status

Last week I received an e-mail from a major hotel chain letting me know I had 5 more nights I need to stay to keep my current loyalty level. I know I will be traveling later this month and will achieve 2 of those nights. The question is if I should book a 3-night stay somewhere and make a long weekend of it with my wife?

When I flew every week to go to the Bay Area for work, if I found myself falling short of a certain level, I would book evening flights to someplace cheap. Usually I would take stock of travel for the rest of the year sometime in October. If I didn't have the required segments reserved to keep my status on Alaska Airlines, I would start booking evening round-trip flights to someplace really cheap. Usually that meant I would fly to Orange County or Los Angeles from San Francisco. Most of the time I would be in those cities for a total of 30 minutes before boarding a new plane and going back to San Francisco. I remember only paying $100 for the round trip and always had a first class seat because of my status.

Once I achieved that airline status, it came with some pretty important perks. The most important perk is that I could upgrade to first class a week before the flight. I also got something like 100,000 miles to use for future travel. That more than covered the $300 or so to achieve the status I wanted. It worked out well.

I mentioned that I need 3 more nights at a specific hotel chain to my wife and she asked me where we planned to go this weekend. I told her we could go stay someplace local that has a pool and invite the grand kids to join us. She thought that to be a boring idea and suggested we catch a flight to Hawaii and have an extravagant weekend.  That idea has merit and so I did a quick search. Last-minute plane tickets to Honolulu are about $1300 for the two of us and the hotel will run us about $900. So for $2200 I can keep my loyalty status and have a really epic weekend. Or . . . I could spend $330 over the next 2 months staying at a lackluster hotel close to home.

While the epic weekend sound like a lot of fun, I would much rather use that money for an epic vacation with a bit more prep time. I got an e-mail this morning from a Cruise ship company and we can do a 7-day cruise to Alaska with an Ocean-view room for $2200. Of course the other option is to let my status drop one level and not pay a dime. Decisions, decisions. 

Happy Halloween 2025!

Tonight I am sitting by our front door answering it for all of the trick-or-treat kids in our neighborhood. Right now it is still the young kids and we always hand out glow-in-the-dark bracelets. The chemical kind that you get at night in amusement parks. My logic is that the lights will help the kids be more easily seen. As the night goes on, we will switch from young kids to older ones and they are more interested in candy and we have a giant bowl of that.

While handing out treats, I am also fixing a couple of technical problems. Tonight is probably the worst night to do that as I finally get a problem figured out and the doorbell rings. Fortunately I have solved two cumbersome issues and feel like I have accomplished something while still answering the door every couple of minutes.

While waiting for kids to come by this evening I noticed that our Amazon Show device had a really dim screen. I looked for an adjustment knob or button but there isn't one. As the device is supposed to understand verbal commands, I asked, "Alexa, how can I brighten the screen?" The device quickly replied, "Go into settings-appearance and adjust the brightness there." What a useless response, I thought as there are multiple setting menus on the stupid thing. Did I need to go into the settings on my wife's phone which controls the device? There is also a settings on the screen when you touch it. I started with the one on the screen. That only seemed to control where the pictures are coming from for the constant slide show we get to see.

I asked my wife for her phone. I went into the Alexa app and looked for settings to control the device. I couldn't find anything and so I headed back to the device. This time when I touched the screen on the Amazon Show, I noticed an icon that looked like a "V" at the top of the screen. That usually means to swipe down and so I did. It brought up yet a 3rd setup screen which had the appropriate controls for device brightness. I cranked it up a bit and now I can see the pictures clearly on the screen.

With the Amazon Show visible I thought I would sit down and crank out one more blog entry for the month. I had the option of going upstairs and getting my personal laptop, going downstairs and getting my work laptop, or using the Chromebook I keep on the desk next to the kitchen. Following the path of least resistance, I reached for the Chromebook. This turned out to be the most lengthy choice.

I opened the Chromebook and didn't see anything on the screen. Sometimes it can be a bit slow to respond but it needed to be turned on. I pressed the "On" button and saw that it had unexpectedly quit. I logged into my account on the device and it needed to do 2-factor authentication. Chrome being a product of Google likes to try to authenticate on our Android phone. I thought it would be simple as the desk by the kitchen is where we keep that phone. Unfortunately the first attempt didn't work and I got instructions similar to the ones from the Amazon Show. I ran through them without any luck only to have the doorbell ring from candy goblins. By the time I got back to the Chromebook and my phone, both had gone dark. I had to turn on the screens and discovered my Chromebook started the login process all over.

Fortunately when I entered my login information the Chromebook sent the MFA signal to my phone and I just had to confirm it was me logging in. I didn't need to follow any of the convoluted instructions that didn't match what I saw on the screen. As you can tell by this post, I solved the problem and used my Chromebook to write this post. Now it is time to go back to answering the door for the children in the neighborhood.

2-Minute Tasks That Take 20

Yesterday I had a number of errands to run during lunch. I jumped into my car and headed to my local pharmacy. I got there to an empty store and thought I could accomplish the first item on my list quickly. Then I discovered the Pharmacist goes to lunch between 12:30 and 2pm. I had the choice of going somewhere else or hanging out for 20 minutes. Unfortunately I didn't have the 20 minutes to wait and so I headed to another store close by. It was not a surprise to see that Pharmacist had the same lunch break as the first store. Ultimately I drove home and decided I would take care of the errand later. I still have yet to do it.

Don't you hate it when you go to do a very simple task that should only take a minute or two but ends up taking much longer because of a string of events that are out of your control? Perhaps you want a bowl of Fruit Loops but have to run to the store to get milk first. Then when you get in your car you realize you are almost out of gas or or forgot to plug in your electric vehicle. You can get to the store but chances are slim you will get home unless you refuel the car.

I find situations like that always happening on my computer or smartphone. I'll go to install an important program I need only to discover it needs another library that I also need to install. Or perhaps I have security settings set so stringent I have to temporarily relax them before I can complete a certain task. My favorite is not having enough space on my phone to update the operating system. I either need to delete lengthy multimedia files after saving them to another device or forego the update.

After getting back from my 2 weeks of travel I discovered I have never deleted any of the text messages from the smartphone we use as our home phone. While I swiped left thinking I deleted them, I really just moved them to an archive. Actually deleting the files required selecting each message, pressing the 3-dot icon, selecting the "Delete" option, and confirming that I really wanted to delete it. I did that for a couple of messages and realized there must be an easier way. A few minutes later, I figured out how to do mass deletes and got rid of everything in the archive. Then I found the blocked-message folder and did the same thing there. I don't know why but my wife and I received no less than 45 messages from different roofing companies even though we have a fairly new roof. After about 30 minutes, the phone is cleaned out and ready to stockpile more useless text messages. Oh, I also figured out how to make it so messages get deleted when I swipe left and archived when I swipe right. 

Azure Outage Causing Problems

I am trying to get a lot of tasks done today and am being thwarted by Microsoft's Azure outage. This is not a knock against Azure as I didn't think that many services used it. It is only during an outage that you realize how much you use that service and how it affects you.

I received an e-mail from my employer letting me know that the Azure outage made it impossible to contact our travel department by phone. They suggested using e-mail should we need to talk with someone. Having taken a few trips for work, I know that e-mail is a great alternative as they are quick to respond. I didn't worry about it and kept about my daily tasks.

Next my wife informed me that Costco might be a great place to get refills for a consumable item we need to replace which is filters for our furnace because it is running more with the cold weather. I didn't want to hop in my car and so I tried to log onto the Costco website. In white letters on a blue background it says that some customers are experiencing site performance problems. While some of the site works, not everything does. For instance I can't set my local store correctly. Even though I enter my zip code, it only shows me stores in the state of Washington. Eventually they will figure it out. Of course I do have the option of running down there in my car should it be an emergency.

Several days ago I received a letter from a previous employer saying that my employee information got hacked and they are providing me with free identity protection from Cyberscout. While it makes sense to be wary of a company you have not heard about, they are legitimate and owned by TransUnion, one of the major credit bureaus. In the course of setting up my account, they need to send a code to my phone for multi-factor authentication. While the phone number I provided worked once, it didn't send the second code. To finish setting up the account I had to call their service center.

Sometimes computers greatly simplify our lives. Other times, such as in the case of downed systems, they really slow us down. Fortunately we have old backup technologies like e-mail, phones and driving to a local store to help us get stuff done.  

A Difficult Expense Report

Yesterday I wrote about being gone for 2 weeks with one of those being a work trip. The downside of work trips is that I am required to submit an expense report with all of the receipts. For some reason, last week's travel created a very difficult expense report.

My company uses Concur to manage our expense reports. When I first started using the web-based application I would have bet money that the developers never once had to fill out an expense report as they made something simple so complex. Fortunately the software has gotten better but not painless.

The first difficulty came as I itemized the expenses for the hotel. Normally the rate is the same for every night. Last week my usual hotel decided to charge me different rates for every night of the week. They started small on Sunday night and got progressively larger. I had to carefully go through each line on the receipt. Then the total number had to match what the hotel charged my American Express Corporate card. Let's just say I didn't get it right the first time and had to go back through every day carefully to enter the right numbers.

Once I got the hotel figured out I moved onto all of the Uber charges. I had 12 different ones and they sort of all rolled together. Normally they would be in order by date and time so that the earliest rides would appear before later ones. Unfortunately that is not the way Uber charges the credit card company. I don't know why but I had several charges out of order and I had to go back through my receipts matching credit card charges with the number on a receipt. Dual monitors on my computer allowed me to view multiple receipts making them easier to match with charges.

It took way too long to get my expense report done but eventually I sorted everything out. I submitted the report not caring how long it took to get approved as I painstakingly made sure it is correct. I also never spend outside the company's accepted rules for travel. My boss is the first person to see it and immediately approved the expense report. Now it is up to our accounting department to sift through it and make sure I didn't make a mistake. They won't find any.

One thing I noticed about this trip is how much more expensive Uber has gotten in the Los Angeles area. I understand there are extra insurance requirements for the area and those costs are passed along to riders. I used to pay less than $20 to go from my hotel to the office, including a modest tip. Now the cost is more than $20 with some rides costing more than $30, depending upon traffic and surge pricing. It is almost less expensive to rent a car. The only downside is the hotel charges for parking and so Uber is still the cost-effective mode of transportation. At least for now it is. 

Glad to be Done Traveling

I have spent the last 2 weeks traveling from one side of the United States to the other. Now I am back in Utah and happy to be home. My wife and I enjoyed the time together and got to see some amazing things. We also consider ourselves fortunate not to be affected by the government shutdown. I understand that is about to change in a couple of days though. My hope is that our dysfunctional government will figure it out and pass a budget that meets the needs of its tax-paying citizens.

We started our 2 week adventure flying from Salt Lake City to Columbus, Ohio. We spent a week visiting our youngest son and his family. That included a trip to our country's newest National Park in New River Gorge. It didn't become a National Park until 2022 and is well worth a visit. Fortunately the state of West Virginia sees the value of the park and covered costs to keep it open until the end of October. We experienced a fully staffed visitor's center complete with knowledge of the park and places to visit.

My wife and I then flew home long enough to do laundry and repack our bags. We had a relaxing Sunday and then headed to the airport that night for an 11pm flight to Los Angeles. Before leaving for the airport we received word of our delayed flight. That gave us a bit of time at home. The downside is it meant we would arrive in Los Angeles really late. Once at the airport we discovered the cause of the delay and couldn't blame it on air traffic control (ATC) but instead discovered a series of cascading delays caused by the airline.

The delay meant we didn't get into LAX until after 2am. We quickly walked to the Uber lot where we found a ride and got to our hotel sometime around 3am. I considered myself fortunate that I didn't have any early meetings and could sleep in relatively late before heading to the office. My wife came with me and did a walking tour of Culver City that she downloaded to her smartphone for only $9. We then met back at the hotel at the end of the day.

My wife's office closed for a week because of Fall break for our local school district. That meant she could tour the area while I spent the time working on the Sony Pictures Lot. While spending time on a movie lot is a lot of fun, my wife got the better end of the deal. She made use of the area's transit system and figured out how to get from LAX to Disneyland for only $5 round trip. The tradeoff is that it took 2 and a half hours each way. I'm glad she figured it out because Uber runs about $130 each way and still takes an hour plus. My wife also visited the fashion district and the Getty Museum. On the last day of the trip, I only had one meeting and set my wife up on a tour of the Sony Pictures Lot. When she finished the tour, I asked her where they took her and then showed her all of the interesting places the tour didn't go. We even had lunch at the commissary, which is a great place to eat.

We both felt exhausted at the end of the week and a 5:45am flight back to Salt Lake on Saturday morning meant we felt tired all day. I tried to watch the World Series game that night but fell asleep around 8pm. We both went to sleep early and slept late on Sunday morning. Now I am looking forward to staying home for awhile.

We used a lot of technology over the 2-week period to make the most of our travel. We continually checked into the status of the National Park to ensure we wouldn't be locked out. The airlines constantly notified us about the status of our flights which allowed us to wait comfortably instead of bored at the various airports. My wife even used her smartphone to pay for bus and train tickets in Los Angeles, saving her a few bucks. The ease of our 2-week adventure serves as an example as to how our daily lives are made easier through technology. 

Real-Time Sensors

I once got in the car I purchased for my kids to use and noticed the speedometer did not register how fast I traveled. While I could see fine outside and had a rough estimate of how fast I was going, I sort of felt blind. I immediately turned around and headed home to see if I could fix the problem. Fortunately I just needed to spray some contact enhancer on the plug going from the car's computer into the dash gauges and everything started working again. While I was never in any danger, I sure felt unsafe on the road.

We have a lot of sensors that provide real-time feedback and tell us exactly what is going on. A speedometer is one very useful example. I used to own 2 boat, one in California and one here in Salt Lake. The one in California didn't have a depth meter while my one here does. I used to sail around the San Francisco Bay and just always assumed I had enough water underneath me to keep me out of trouble. With the shrinking of the Great Salt Lake, my depth finder is a critical piece of equipment. Lately I have been unable to sail because the lake is too shallow. Fortunately my depth finder has kept me from grounding the keel in anything but soft mud.

This morning I had a doctor's appointment where I got a spot check on a number of my health indicators. I stood on a scale and could see that I gained a half pound since my last visit. The nurse took my blood pressure and told me I am incredibly healthy because both numbers came in well under the 120 by 80 that we use as a standard. On Monday I visited the lab where they drew blood and provided many more health indicators. Unfortunately it is impossible to provide real-time values for most of those numbers. When I visited the lab, I had to do so fasting as eating anything has a tendency to skew results. 

I am one of those people that is very health conscious. I don't understand how anyone can smoke cigarettes as they are knowingly shortening his/her life. My visit to the doctor increased my own awareness of how important it is to get constant feedback on how healthy I really am. For someone who is watching his or her weight, standing on the scale provides constant feedback. Naturally it is best to choose the same time every day to measure one's weight as it fluctuates throughout the day depending upon a number of factors including what one is eating or drinking. I wonder though if we constantly measured our weight if it would help us reduce our portion size. You might look at that cheesecake a little differently knowing it might tip the scale against you. Perhaps we should remove the scale from our bathroom and put it in our dining room. Then again, eating is a pleasurable activity and a monitoring device might detract from it.  

Face-to-Face Meetings

I attend a fair number of meetings and mostly use video conference call software. My company prefers Microsoft Teams but my wife's company prefers Zoom. There are several other options as well. These technologies allows a single meeting to include people from all around the world without the need to get on a plane to meet in a central location. It is wonderful and allows me to work from home on most days.

Several weeks ago I had the chance to meet some of my colleagues in India. I had never been to India before and didn't know what to expect. While I wanted to add a new country stamp in my passport, I didn't want to spend that much time traveling unless necessary. Ultimately it took about 36 hours of travel each way thanks to both KLM and Air France having mechanical issues with their planes.

I arrived in Bangalore with enough time to get to the hotel, shower, and then head to the office. India is a beautiful country but Bangalore's population has grown faster than its infrastructure. While the airport is only about 40 miles from my office, traffic requires 3 hours to cover that distance. All that traffic means I couldn't walk from my hotel to the office even though the distance is just over a mile. Fortunately the office sent me a car every morning that also brought me back to the hotel in the evening. Another limit is that I knew I couldn't drink tap water and so I used the 6 liters of bottled water in my hotel room every day. When it came time to brush my teeth, I used that bottled water.

Now the reason for my trip centered around working with a team of guys I meet with regularly. I had met one or two in Tokyo but most of the team doesn't regularly get the chance to travel. The first thing I noticed is that my image of some team members didn't match reality. There is one guy that has such a soothing voice I imagined him to be about 5 inches shorter than me and just tiny. In reality he is 2 inches taller than me and regular build. He is still one of the nicest guys you will ever meet.

Another benefit of meeting in person is really getting to know the people I work with. When you are on a video call, you don't really have to interact with the other attendees. When you are all in the same room you get to find out what everyone is really like. That makes it easier to find common interests and get to know people.

I have been home from India for about 3 weeks and I have to say that my video conference calls are higher quality with the team in India. There is a lot more of that small talk before the meeting begins. While there never has been any disrespect, the respect for each other is higher after having met in person. I also find that the meetings seem to be shorter. Ultimately the people in the call are actually people and not just disembodied voices. I highly recommend getting together as often as time and distance allow. We had such a good meeting in India that I plan to go back next year. I figure that is often enough for such a long distance.

Add Robot Mechanic to my Resume

About a week ago our upstairs Eufy robot vacuum stopped working. It would start every morning at 8am as scheduled but then beep loudly for about 15 seconds and then just sit there until someone picked it up and put it back on the charger. Upon further inspection, the unit couldn't move forward. It could spin and go backwards but not forward. Having had this experience before, I knew what to do but turned the unit off and let it sit for a week.

This evening I have a number of meetings with Japan that will run quite late and so I thought I would take some time this morning and fix the busted robot vacuum. The first thing I did was clean the brush and wheels. My wife's sewing room is on that floor and the vacuum picks up a lot of string. Surprisingly the brush didn't have too much wrapped around it. The wheels had some. Once I removed all the string, I tested the vacuum. Nope, it still couldn't move forward.

I turned off the Eufy, flipped it over, and set it on my worktable. For the record, my worktable today doubles as my dinning room table at meal times. Next I removed the 8 screws that attach the front bumper to the vacuum. The bumper covers the front 3rd of the device and has about an 8th of an inch of play. I could still move the bumper in and out. When I pulled off the bumper I could see a lot of dust balls and fluff. I pulled out my hand-held vacuum and can of compressed air. Then I cleaned out the front third of the Eufy vacuum. Once everything looked clean, I put my bad pet back together and gave it a test. It worked fine and so I let it loose to clean the floor.

Today's electronics are meant to be disposable. That means when they stop working, you throw them away and buy new ones. Call me a bit old fashioned but I think you should be able to get more than 3 years out of a robot vacuum. Having had them for about a decade now, there really are only a few things that can go wrong. The first is the battery going bad and those are fairly painless to replace. The second is the front bumper getting jammed. To fix that you generally just need to clean it out. If you clean it out and it still won't move forward, you have my permission to throw it away. If you clean it out and you can't figure out how to put the vacuum back together, visit the University of YouTube and you should be able to figure it out. 

Purchasing In-Store or on a Website

Yesterday I received my new skis and they look beautiful. Now I need to put on bindings which connect the skis to the ski boots. I had thought I could pull a set of bindings off an old pair of skis I don't use any more. Unfortunately my boots have a new type of sole on them called GripWalk and they are not compatible with all bindings. I looked carefully at the bindings I planned to use and they do not indicate they work with GripWalk which probably means they don't. Newer versions of the binding do but I don't want to risk it as a proper release of the bindings will prevent injury. That means I am now on the hunt for a new pair of bindings.

The last time I needed a new pair of bindings, I went to my local Level Nine Sports store and asked for their best deal. They offered a pair of Tyrolia D12's for $100, which is an excellent price. Furthermore it is compatible with GripWalk and has performed flawlessly for 2 seasons now. I logged onto their website to see if I could order the bindings for the same price I paid in the past. Unfortunately they increased prices by $30. I gave them a call and asked if I could get the same deal from before. The person on the phone told me to come in and they could honor the $100 price.

Going into a store instead of purchasing from a website goes against conventional wisdom. Normally I would expect to get the best price on the website. This is something to remember as you visit brick-and-mortar shops. You may be able to get a better price in person than online. Just remember to be respectful and polite as an entitled attitude may negate any discount you hope to receive.

Now that I have found the bindings I want I need to work with my wife to see what her plans are. She doesn't require the GripWalk feature as she still has conventional ski boot soles. If she needs a pair of bindings, the $60 discount between 2 pairs of bindings definitely justifies the gas of driving a few miles to the physical store.

Cybersecurity Awareness Month

Among other things, October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I received an e-mail this morning alerting me to this fact and I found it timely given my post yesterday about my wife's Instagram account being hacked. The e-mail went on to provide 4 tips to stay safe online. I thought I would share them with you:

1. Recognize and report phish - While you may not have anyone to report the Phishing e-mail to, hopefully you can recognize suspicious e-mails and not click on any links in them nor respond. Interestingly I had a phishing text message this morning that claimed to be from UPS. I expected them to be delivering my new skis and the text indicated a problem. Fortunately my skis arrived just before the text or I might have been tempted to respond. Instead I deleted the message and reported it as junk.
2. Use strong and distinct passwords - Since I have been forced to create longer passwords I have embraced long phrases. I then replace characters with numbers and symbols to make them harder to guess. Instead of something simple like "skibum" I now use phrases like "iAmAt0ta!skiBum" where the "o" into total is replaced by the number zero and the "l" is replaced by the exclamation mark. It is easy to remember and tough to guess. For the record, that is not any of my passwords, just an example.
3. Turn on multi-factor authentication (MFA) - When you have the chance to turn on MFA, do so as it it adds another layer of security. Today I had to log into one of my credit card accounts and the usual MFA code grew from 6 characters to 8. That surprised me but is significantly more difficult to guess than the 2-digit codes I use 95% of the time.
4. Keep your systems updated - This is important because companies are always learning about security vulnerabilities in their systems and update them frequently to lock out bad actors. If you are using an old version of your phone or computer's operating systems, you could be vulnerable to hacking. Always make sure you have the latest software. Make sure you have automatic software updates set up on your devices to help ensure this.

Staying vigilant about your online security will help save you from potentially bad situations in the future. Unfortunately nobody is immune and the attacks will continue to get more realistic and tough to spot. Paying attention to all online communication is all the more important.

A Hacked Instagram Account

I woke up this morning and started the day with my usual routine. Shortly after I got out of bed, my wife received a phone call. I initially thought it to be a work associate but then I discovered her sister called. My wife's Instagram account got hacked and her sister wanted to warn her to update her password. My wife immediately went into her office and changed her Instagram password. My son also sent my wife a text message letting her know her account had been hacked.

Now I will confess that I don't even own an Instagram account so I am not sure how my son and wife's sister knew the account had been hacked. When I talked to my wife she said they both received "Follow" requests and incoherent messages. I assume that meant the hacker tried to contact all of my wife's Instagram connections. If I hacked my wife's account I assure you I would have been much more intelligent in my actions. I probably would have promoted my YouTube channel or something equally beneficial to me.

After changing Instagram credentials my wife logged into her Facebook account and changed her password there. Facebook owns Instagram and the two services are tightly linked and a breach in one account could lead to a breach in the other. Unfortunately my wife's Facebook account initially wouldn't let her change the password. She had to force a security code to be sent her and then she could change it. My guess is that the IP address associated with our Google Fiber account recently updated and it looks to Facebook like my wife is using an unknown computer to access the service. Ultimately my wife updated both Facebook and Instagram login credentials.

Now the question I have is how someone hacked my wife's account in the first place. Unfortunately all I can do is guess. Perhaps they discovered her password that is common with another account. That would be my first guess and underscores the importance of using separate passwords for all of your different logins. Other additional security measures include 2-factor or multi-factor authentication and passphrases that rely on face recognition or fingerprints. Unfortunately we live in a time when passwords may not be enough.

Time For New Skis

Recently I have been in the market for a new pair of skis. Knowing this, I have been keeping my eyes open for a good deal on a new pair. This is the time of the year when you can usually find the best deals and so I expected to find something soon. I am not too picky as I really am focused on getting the best deal possible. That means I want a high-quality ski for a low price. I'm sure ski manufacturers hate me.

Since Labor Day I have been visiting local ski shops and looking at all of my online sources to see what kind of deals I can get. Yesterday I got an e-mail from a company that caters to outdoor enthusiasts and provides severely discounted products should you qualify to receive their rock-bottom deals. This is the same site where I got my Suunto watch back in June.

Now this is an important point that I hope all online marketers understand: When a person is interested in purchasing something, a timely e-mail is appreciated. When a person has already purchased that thing, your e-mail is annoying. The trick is to be able to accurately figure out when your product is wanted and when it is no longer needed.

I logged into the site and could look at new skis from a number of top manufacturers. As I mentioned above, I am not that picky about skis. Then I saw the list of manufacturers and realized I might be a bit more picky than I originally thought. I am not that picky about skis as long as they come from a short list of companies. Fortunately several of those ski brands appeared on the list and so I narrowed the skis down to those that interested me. One pair stood out at a 65% discount, which put it in the sub $300 category. Anything below $300 is a great price for new skis.

Last night I wanted to get the approval from my wife before buying the skis and so I showed them to her. Her response was, "Can I get a pair of new skis?" The agreement with the website indicated I could pick up a pair for friends and family and so we looked. Normally the website restricts buyers to just the person meeting the correct criteria and so it would be a violation of the terms of use without the published exception. We found a pair of skis for her that met her criteria and happened to come in at $10 less than my new skis. They are also a specific women's ski, meaning it is lighter than the men's version. My wife and I ordered both pairs last night and they will arrive on Tuesday next week.

When the skis arrive I will get bindings mounted on them and will almost be ready for the upcoming ski season. I will be honest and confess I am looking for a new ski jacket too. My current one is faded and all of my family keeps telling me I need to replace it. For online marketers that want to sell me something, I am probably a bit picky as the jacket needs to be red, waterproof, breathable, and windproof. Let the e-mails begin. 

Fat Bear Week 2025

We are getting to the end of September and that means it is time to start voting for those bears up at Katmai National Park. The event is known as Fat Bear Week and I look forward to it each year. Today I logged into the site and could vote for 2 different contests. At the bottom of the page it shows how many more contests there are through the week.

In years past there has been a food scarcity issue. This year the salmon run has been plentiful with fish to go around for all the bears. That means they are a little chubbier than usual. That makes the carnivores more photogenic and less scary. Who doesn't like a round bear?

The one thing I like about Fat Bear Week is that millions of people love to join in the voting. They seem seriously interested in Alaska's Grizzly population and root for their survival. Without the Internet, this type of contest wouldn't be possible.

Now they keep people from stuffing the ballot box by allowing only one vote per e-mail address. Do be fair and only vote once per contest. I have multiple e-mail addresses (personal, work, and a few others) but only vote once. It's not like the bears get anything more than recognition. Join in the fun and show your support for those fluffy animals to the north.

Digging Into the Data

I spend my days working with data. Sometimes I do analysis and sometimes I am the guy the analysts go to when they need help solving a problem. While on vacation last week I had one of my coworkers ask me about some of the data in our system. I explained that I didn't really want to dive into the problem until I got back to work but would thoroughly investigate her question.

Yesterday I had way too many pressing tasks and so I couldn't look into the issue until today. This is one of those types of problems I love to solve and so I attacked it first thing this morning. I am going to simplify the problem for multiple reasons, not the least of which relates to my confidentiality agreement. The problem description is that I have a database with a CUSTOMER table without a date indicating when the customer entered the database. It is always nice to know how long someone has been a customer and the analyst wanted to know when that happened.

I figured there might be another table that might have that information and so I dug around a bit and found an EVENT table. I first looked at all possible event types and discovered about a half dozen. Unfortunately none of them indicated when someone became a customer. To help make sense of the EVENT table, I looked up all possible events for a specific customer and then sorted them by the event date column. A trend quickly appeared and it became obvious that all users would have a specific event once they became a customer. That event would occur frequently but all one needs to do is look at the earliest one and you have a rough approximation of when that person became a customer.

I sent my findings to the analyst that asked the question. About an hour later I received word that my technique works for only about a third of the customers. That is fine for some preliminary analysis but if we want to have beginning dates for each customer, we will have to go back to the group sending us the data and have them add an appropriate column.

I had hoped to solve the problem for all of the customers but fell short. I did find a preliminary workaround and that will allow us to test some ideas we have, which will then justify asking for the data from the source which will take a few days. Until then, the workaround will have to suffice. 

Sending Candy Inexpensively

My wife and I just got back from a trip to Disney World where we took part in "Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party" in Magic Kingdom. We had hoped that it wouldn't be crowded and that we would be able to ride a number of attractions without foot-cramp-inducing lines. It turned out to be the most crowded day of our 5-day trip. We did catch a bit of a break though when a giant thunderstorm drenched everyone in the Tron line and we only had a 15-minute wait.

One of the joys of the Halloween party is the trick-or-treating you can do. When you enter the park, they give you a special wrist band and a bag to store your sugary loot. We would find ourselves near a candy stand and quickly filled our bags with candy. The people handing out candy didn't give you one or two pieces, they gave you a huge scoop. When we filled our first bags, they gave us a second one each and we filled those too.

I love candy but can't really eat very much of it. I would estimate that I have about 3 year supply of candy for me. That translates to about a week for your average child. I have 6 grandkids that would love to take all of the treats off my hands. For the 3 that live here in Utah, I can just give the candy to them the next time I see them. For my grandkids in Ohio, I need to get it there somehow. I would love to use the trick that my 8-year-old grandson still thinks works but unfortunately it doesn't. I can create a package and send it in the mail, but postage will cost more than the value of the candy. Ultimately I will bring it to them when I see them next month as that is the most cost-effective way of sharing with them. 

Preparing for the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon

Every year my wife and I volunteer to help with the Wasatch 100 Ultra Marathon. We drive our 4x4 up above Brighton and Solitude Ski Resorts where we build a small tent city complete with food, water, computers, and radio equipment. We then help runners as they work their way through a 100-mile running course through very rough terrain. We happen to sit at the 65.3 mile mark, so a lot of the runners are fairly well spent by the time they make it to us.

Our job at the race is to set up a ham radio connected to a computer and transmit the bib number and times as runners come into our aid station. That information is then used by the race organizers to let spectators know where runners are on the course. It is an amazing system but I only use it once a year and so I make sure to practice at home before I am remote and don't have all the tools available to me in my home office. Last night I tested the system and familiarized myself with it yet again.

The technology we use for the race is actually quite ancient. Sure we use nice laptops but we could get by with a 1985-era one. The modem I use to connect the computer to the radio has an old serial cable interface and so I had to get a USB-to-Serial adapter. Then we just use Telnet to connect to the server on the other end. Telnet is a fairly old program and when you do an Internet search the first thing that pops up is how it is no longer considered "secure" and should be avoided. That is fine for our application as we actually want people to know the data we are sharing and not trying to keep it secret.

This year I have to leave the race a bit early as I have another event I have to get to. While the race organizers prefer us to use ham radio to transmit times, there is also an Internet portal where we can get to the master server and interface with it. All we need is a telnet client such as PuTTY. Today I have been testing it out from my Chromebook and working with my buddy who will be able to stick around after I leave. Our aid station sits right underneath a mobile-phone tower and we get great Internet service. I imagine it is only a matter of time before the entire race course has Internet coverage and we lose the ham-radio part of the infrastructure.

Actually the more I think about it, the more I want to ditch the ham radio now. I could leave my extra car battery at home. I also wouldn't have to pack up my antenna nor set it up at our aid station. That could save a lot of time. Maybe I should bring all the radio equipment but not worry about setting it up unless it is needed. I'm seriously thinking about it. 

More Comments Equals More Views

Monday I posted another skiing YouTube video listing my top 5 favorite sidecountry ski areas. One thing about throwing out a term like "sidecountry" is that if you ask 10 different people, you may get 11 different responses on what it means. I provided a definition in the video and it is getting several comments. Some people don't agree with my definition and are asking questions.

At first glance, it seems like all of these comments are causing YouTube's algorithm that shares videos to push this new one to the front. I published another video on Saturday about preparing for the upcoming ski season and it doesn't have nearly the traffic even though it came out 2 days before this latest one. My hypothesis is that comments indicate engagement and so they think others will also like the video so YouTube is sharing it more.

All of this traffic for my video suggests I can get more traffic by creating controversial content. That does have a downside though. If people don't like your content, they might disengage from the channel. I also don't like controversy. While it is fine to disagree with an undefined word, there is also the chance people could be offended and I make an extra effort not to offend people.

I plan to watch video views over the next few weeks and see if the trend hold true. I may need to solicit a few of my friends to submit comments and see how that effects outside views. Currently I have a number of new viewers but not any new subscribers. If the number of subscribers increases, that will strengthen my hypothesis. I'll be sure to keep you posted.  

My Latest YouTube Releases

One advantage of working for Sony is that we get 4-day weekends for both Memorial and Labor Day. I like it because we get the Friday off before the Monday holidays and that gives me a bit of extra time to get stuff done. One year I used the that time to go visit Alaska and do some ocean kayaking. This year I did something different: I released 2 YouTube videos.

I woke up on Friday and decided I would try and put out a video in a single day. There is a lot of work that goes into each video and I wasn't sure I could do it but wanted to give it a try. I sat down at my computer and put together a compelling script. Then I recorded the narration. The subject of the video is preparing for the 2025/26 ski season. I came close but didn't quite finish the video in a single day. I had to roll over onto Saturday but got it released that evening.

In order to put out the video quickly, I had to interrupt another video I started creating over a year ago. I liked the topic but just didn't feel the need to get the video out and so it languished on my computer in a half-done state for months. Getting a video put out early in the weekend ignited a desire to finish an update on my second most popular video on the Top 5 Sidecountry Ski Areas of North America. My wife had to do some sewing and so she gave me permission yesterday to sit in front of my computer and finish the video. I completed everything last night and immediately released it.

Of the 2 videos, the Sidecountry one is my favorite. I can't really pinpoint why I didn't finish it earlier. I know one thing that slowed me down was not having enough photo and video content for one of the ski areas. I had to go back through an old photo album and scan pictures from back in the 1980's. I have a really good scanner and once I digitized the images, the video sat uncompleted for months. Perhaps laziness kept me from working on it or I valued spending my time on other pursuits. Ultimately I got it done and in less than 24 hours it has been viewed close to 100 times.

In the past, the closest I have ever released 2 videos is 5 days. This marks the first time I have done it in 2 days. I will be interested to see how that effects the number of views. My channel has about 650 subscribers and I hope to get more. Unfortunately I have not received any new ones since the first video on Friday. Perhaps there is something else I need to do to increase my popularity. Until then, I hope everyone enjoys the videos.

First Rule of Demos: It will Crash

The first rule of doing any live demo is that it will crash regardless of how stable the product is. That is why you will often see videos of computer demos instead of an actual live demo. Today the first rule of demos reared its ugly head at the most inopportune time.

I had a meeting with my boss and he brought up the topic of needing to delete some data from our data warehouse. Not deleting the data puts us in jeopardy of being sued and so I wanted to show him all the different areas that contained the data. I made sure I had logged into our company's virtual private network (VPN) so I could get into the data warehouse. Then I tried to bring up a virtual desktop which is required to log into the database system. It immediately crashed. I tried several more times only to have the same thing happen. Ultimately I had to describe the many different places engineers had squirreled away the information.

Fortunately I didn't need to actually do a demo as I accurately described the many copies of the data. My boss explained that because the copies of data are anonymized, meaning there is no way to associate with with specific people, they do not need to be deleted, just the non-anonymized data. That came as a relief. Ultimately nobody is using the data and so there is no need to keep it around but deleting it is not an emergency.

I finished my video call with my boss and decided to troubleshoot what went wrong. As you would expect, everything worked fine. That only shows the validity of the first rule of demos. 

Importance of Blocking Time in Schedule

This morning I had a number of work-related meetings and then had to take my wife to the doctor's. She had one of those screenings where they knocked her out and she needed a driver to take her there and bring her home. Furthermore I was not allowed to leave the campus until the procedure completed and my wife awake enough to go home. Being required to stay at the doctor's office for 2 hours, I asked the admitting attendant if they had a soft-serve ice cream machine since I couldn't go anywhere. They did not but she said she would mention it to the doctors. I doubt anything will change but if US prisoners are required to be able to watch television, doctor's offices should provide soft-served ice cream when you have to wait more than an hour.

Fortunately the office did have WiFi to use for those of us waiting. I made sure to log onto the system and get some work done. Should anyone need to reach me, I made an entry in my public-work calendar that I could be reached for anything except meetings. That worked well as I had one fellow colleague reach out for clarification on some of the data I am very familiar with. I provided an answer and continued to work on other things.

Whenever I go to schedule a meeting with fellow work associates, I always check everyone's calendar to make sure I am not scheduling over their activities. My hope is that others do the same with me and they almost always do. There are some occasions when a meeting will have quite a few participants and the scheduler must pick a time that will work for the majority of the attendees. If possible, those that can move things to attend will.

After getting home from the doctor's office today, I looked at the next several weeks and scheduled my morning exercise. I am fairly flexible right now and don't need to exercise at specific times. However when I see my schedule filling up, I block time in my schedule to keep people from taking the only time slots in my day where I can exercise. While some treat daily workouts as optional, I don't; probably because of my love of soft-serve ice cream. My health is important enough to me that I do all I can to stay as healthy as possible. I also blocked off time tomorrow evening to spend time with my wife. That is the description I used: "Time with Wife." Most people wouldn't dare try to schedule anything over it and if they do, it must be really important but there is no guarantee I'll be there. My son is good about scheduling his personal time on his work calendar as well. He is a bit more cryptic in his description as he uses: "Personal time, do not schedule."

A lot of people complain about their work/life balance and with some companies there is a huge problem. For me, I try to let people know when I am tied up with personal things. Being forthright and honest provides a level of comfort and trust to management. That goes a long way towards evening out the work/life balance and helps make my employment at Sony that much more enjoyable. 

How Many Marketing E-mails Does One Person Need?

My wife and I are constantly thinking about possible vacations and I have ours planned for the next year. One of those vacations will be an Alaskan Cruise. I'm not sure if I should be sharing that as I already receive too many e-mails trying to help me plan that specific vacation. My fear is that announcing something on the Internet will only invite more e-mails.

I have been to Alaska several times in the summer and have a good idea of what to expect. For instance, I know that Alaska is a huge state and has many different experiences to offer. A week up there doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what there is to see and do. The idea of doing a cruise allows us to see some of the coastal cities all in the same trip, which is why we are planning it.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of letting one of the major cruise lines know I am interested in doing a cruise. Now I am receiving 2 e-mails every day from the company. Is there any difference between the e-mail in the morning and the one in the afternoon? The content seems different but when you click on any of the links in the message, you end up at the same spot. I'm surprised that any marketing department in the world would think it acceptable to send that much e-mail. My wife has suggested that I simply unsubscribe from the company. That is what a sane person would do but I find it just as easy to delete all of those e-mails. My justification is that when I am ready to book the cruise, I'll have the list of specials right in front of me. The funny thing is that we know the cruise we want to take and it isn't from the cruise line sending me daily information.

The reality is that there needs to be a way to tell marketing people your threshold for e-mails. Some people may be interested in multiple e-mails a day while others may only want to see something once a month. There should also be an options for daily and weekly. People may start out interested in all of the specials but it won't take long for them to sour on your messages if you send too many.

Got Caught with a Phishing Attack

Yesterday I received an e-mail from what I thought was my e-mail provider telling me I needed to change my password. It is something that happens every year or so. It really should be more frequent but I never look forward to changing passwords and am happy with the current frequency. I put off changing my e-mail password yesterday and decided to give it a try today.

First of all, the e-mail looked like it came from my service provider, which is to say it looked plain and simple. I clicked on the link and entered my current password. I immediately saw an invalid-password message. I entered my old password again with the same result. At this point I went back to the e-mail and realized someone was just looking to get my e-mail password. I felt like a fool.

Fortunately I realized within 30 seconds what was happening and immediately changed my e-mail password. I had to change it in my mail client for both incoming and outgoing messages. This caused very little disruption but I still felt bad for something I should have been able to prevent.

There is a rule we should all follow when an e-mail asks us to log into a system. That rule is to type in the URL of the site asking you to log in and not just click on the e-mail link. I didn't do that and now I can never use that password again for e-mail. I probably should never use it for anything. That is too bad because I liked it and doubt anyone would have guessed it even though I had an easy time remembering it. 

Trying to be in Two Meetings at Once

Today I found myself needed in two meetings at the same time. Both required my attention and so I had to defer one until the other completed. That didn't keep the second meeting from sending me instant messages, which kept disrupting my first meeting. I could relax a bit when my first meeting ended and I could concentrate on the second.

Contrary to popular belief, humans are horrible at multitasking. While some think they can do two things at once, they really can't. What happens is that they focus on one and ignore the other. They then switch their focus and it feels like they are multitasking. This works well for my wife sewing and watching television at the same time. It doesn't work so well when she is sewing and I try to talk with her. She has to stop sewing to participate in the conversation.

I found myself trying to focus on my first meeting this morning as it happened to be with my boss. Every time I got a message from the second meeting, I had to ignore the first meeting. That worked as long as I was not needed. I made sure to glance over at the message only when another team member talked about something unrelated to me. If the message needed a response, I would start to answer but stop at every word and listen to see if someone required my input. Then I would write the next word. Writing and listening slowed me down significantly. While I may have appeared to be multitasking, I really wasn't. Fortunately I got through the first meeting without making a fool of myself.

I immediately jumped to the second meeting and listened intently for an hour and a half, providing feedback when needed. We tried to solve a networking issue using a new technology and eventually ran out of time. The person we tried to help ran up against a time constraint. While my afternoon had just started, he works in a part of the world where it came up on midnight. I thought I had it tough with trying to juggle Europe and Japan. At least Japan understands when it gets late and won't keep me in a meeting past 9pm. We will continue the meeting tomorrow morning and my hope is we will be able to get the problem solved. Unfortunately my morning is so packed with meetings, I hope I don't have to juggle two at once again. 

Return to Office Mandates

A few years ago I spent 3 months working for a research company and made some good friends. Ultimately the company was not a good fit for me and so I headed back to Sony. Since leaving I have kept in contact with a few of those friends. I reached out to one today that left the research company the same time I did and discovered his return to office (RTO) mandate at the new company has him looking for another job. Fortunately he has until the end of September to find one.

My friend asked me if I am worried about an RTO mandate. I explained that I have an exemption from having to go into an office. I am beginning to understand what a luxury that is now. While I don't mind going to an office, it is a benefit being able to work from home. This is a reminder to me not to take the privilege for granted. This is especially true today as my wife is sick with the stomach flu and I can check on her throughout the day without having to ask for any special favors so I can be at home.

Now let's be honest, between my wife and I, she does a much better job of taking care of me than I do of her. Fortunately with the stomach flu I just need to make sure she is getting plenty of fluids and recouping some of that energy she lost last night praying to the porcelain god. When she explained that she drank a protein shake for breakfast, I reminded her she also needed some carbs to get her energy back. I asked if she wanted a cookie, which she declined. She opted for some high-quality Japanese ramen instead.

COVID 19 caused a lot of companies to re-evaluate their requirements to have employees in the office. Unfortunately the more time passes, the more companies are forgetting the lessons they learned. I know there are a handful of employees gaming the system and not working when they are supposed to but that is more of an exception than a rule. I just wished companies would send out RTO mandates only to those employees that prove they need to be in an office. That would at least keep my buddy from having to find a new job.

The High Cost of Embedded Computers

Every morning I like to go for a nice 10-mile bicycle ride. There are two factors that determine how quickly I will complete my ride. The first is if there is any wind. The second is how many times I get stopped because of traffic. Constantly being stopped because of traffic lights has me despising them more and more. It also has me thinking about the large computers that run them and why they have to be so big and expensive.

This got me thinking about how home and office computers have become so powerful and relatively inexpensive while the functionality required for a traffic light has remained unchanged for decades yet the cost hasn't matched normal computer pricing trends. Furthermore it seems that computers embedded in everyday objects such as cars are equally expensive. When you buy a new car the salesperson will justify the always increasing price with the complex computer inside. The funny thing is that automotive and traffic light computers are really simple and could be handled by the same computer chips found in ancient computers from the 1980's.

If you have never seen a traffic light computer, it is the large box located on one of the corners of the intersection it guards. They are generally about 4-feet tall, 3-feet wide, and 2-feet deep. That's a big box for something that can be run by a less powerful chip than I have in my watch. Now I can understand the size when lights required so much power to remain visible during daylight hours. Now we have ultra-low-power LED lights that don't need much power at all. So what is the big box for? My guess is it has to withstand a car running into it. It probably also goes towards justifying the $70K required for each intersection. Think about it though, if you could run a traffic light off the same computer found in a watch, you could put it in a much smaller box on one of the poles and save taxpayers a significant amount of money.

I know there are a lot of embedded computers that have dropped in price as one would expect. After all we have a lot of toys available that wouldn't be possible without such inexpensive electronics. I just wish those cost savings could be passed along to more things. Things I find I am paying more and more for that I honestly don't really want nor like. 

Two Hurricanes in the Pacific

In the winter time I have one of the tabs in my browser set to the weather page at Alta Ski Area as it guides me on what to expect when I go skiing. That information is useless in the summer time and so instead I focus on hurricanes. While this may not seem to effect me as I reside in the landlocked state of Utah, it actually does. Furthermore hurricanes have a huge effect on vacation and travel plans. An Atlantic hurricane can really screw up flights throughout the entire country.

I have been watching NOAA's hurricane site for about 10 years and have seen something today I have never seen before. There is currently a hurricane south of Hawaii named Iona. Fortunately it is on a westward path and Hawaii is safe, for now. Behind it is the tropical storm Keli. I wouldn't expect there to be hurricanes so close together as the first one should be pulling energy from the ocean that would be required for the one behind it. That is probably why Keli is only a tropical storm and not expected to grow as it continues west and well south of Hawaii.

While I have seen multiple storms in either the Atlantic or Pacific oceans at the same time, I haven't seen two additional storms starting to form with a probability greater than 60% to become named storms. The furthest west storm is just east of Keli and has a 70% chance of turning into a tropical storm. A little bit closer to Mexico the conditions are a bit higher for storm formation as it has a 90% chance of forming into something of concern.

I am not worried about a hurricane making its way to Utah but I have seen storms like that send copious amounts of moisture my way. While it could be devastating for those near the coast, it could provide the Western United States with some badly needed precipitation. For some it will be bad, for others it will be good.

Fortunately I am not headed to Mexico, Hawaii, nor Florida in the near future and so I don't need to worry about changing vacation or travel plans. If I planned to go to Hawaii next week, I would keep those plans as none of the storms seem to be headed that way. If I planned to go to the west coast of Mexico, I might be watching the storm forming there but probably wouldn't change my plans either. The Atlantic has been relatively calm this year so far and continues to look that way now. With that being said, now is a good time to pay attention to hurricane forecasts as this is the time of year when it really gets interesting.  

Enjoying the Tour de France for 2025

I have not bothered watching the Tour de France for the past 15 years. I really felt let down when Lance Armstrong admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs. While everyone suspected it, I had hoped he was beyond such tactics. This year I got back into it because of my youngest son. While not a cyclist, he is a runner and appreciates the athletic effort required for such an event.

A lot has changed in the last 15 years. Back then I had a cable television subscription and could watch the Tour on one of the many stations that came into my home. Since then I have ditched cable and rely on Internet streaming for most of my video entertainment. Fortunately NBC Sports is providing 2 levels of coverage on YouTube: Short 10-minute segments with the highlights and stage finish or 40-minute segments with more in-depth action. That is a far cry from waking up early and watching 4 hours of coverage every day for 3 weeks. I have to say that I prefer the shorter highlights.

I originally started following the Tour de France a year before Lance Armstrong started winning the race. I wanted to see how any of the Americans did. I feel myself doing the same thing this year but also enjoying the success of riders from other countries.

One thing I have enjoyed this year is watching the climbs through some of the most difficult terrain suitable for a bike. Here in Utah there are plenty of mountain climbs that rival those in Europe and so I know how difficult it is to get a bike up those hills. Watching the climbs is always part of the highlights. I just wish they would show equal coverage of the descents as that is where the speed is. Back 15 years ago there were some spectacular downhill specialists that really poured on the speed and it made for quite a show. Perhaps I just need to watch the longer segments and will see more descending.

Yes, the tour has been enjoyable this year so far and I am happy I am making the time to watch it. It is probably something I will continue in future years. Being able to have it on in the background while I take care of routine tasks makes it so much easier to watch. 

Top 10 Lists on the Internet

Last year my wife and I planned to climb Mt. Rainier and we had a wonderful time doing so over the 4th of July weekend. This year my wife wanted to do the Rim-2-Rim hike in the Grand Canyon. Unfortunately wildfires in the area have burned the North Rim lodge and so the area will be closed at least until the spring of next year. That makes it tough to do a Rim-2-Rim with one of the rims closed. Now we are looking at alternative trips as it is really depressing not being able to carry out our plans.

Today my wife sent me 15 bucket-list hikes in the USA. While not all of the hikes are in National Parks, some of them are and it is a pretty good list.  I like how it is divided into hard-moderate-and-easy hikes so you can choose them depending upon your ability. While I like the list, my bucket-list of hikes is much different. Yours probably is too. If you do an Internet search for bucket-list hikes, none of the lists will be the same unless one plagiarizes another. That's okay. All Internet lists should only be treated as a starting point, allowing you to cherry pick your favorites and leave off those you have done or know are not your cup of tea.

In my YouTube channel, I list a number of ski areas that make various top 5 lists. While one may think that I view myself as the absolute expert on each of the resorts, the real power of the channel is when others comment about how their list is different than mine. When it comes to the steepest areas in North America I talked about why I removed Squaw Valley, which is now Palisades Tahoe, from the list. I enjoy the friendly comments with others asking me to add it back. I also enjoy all of the other recommendations, which is why I skied Kicking Horse a year ago. The ski area did not disappoint and made it onto an updated list.

When you come across lists of any kind on the Internet, remember that they are not sacred nor infallible. Instead treat them as mere suggestions. They are starting points for you to create your own lists. My wife and I have a list of vacations we would like to take. As we come across lists of interesting places, we see if there are any additions or changes we need to make. Ultimately our list will become better because of the suggestions of others.

Time For Annual Security Training

As a Sony employee I am required to run through an annual 30-minute training course on computer security. In the past the training has seemed to be the same as previous years. Today I ran through the training again discovering it has been updated and it seemed like a whole new course, which I appreciated.

The course had the usual warnings against clicking on links in e-mails and verifying URL's before going to the sites. This year, they provided some more details that helped understand how different character sets can be different than the regular Latin letters we are used to in English. The example they provided is that a Cyrillic V looks like the letter B. Someone could then create a mischievous website using the Cyrillic V for something like the Better Business Bureau and you wouldn't know you are going to the wrong site. Having a concrete example like that really helped underscore how subtle character substitutions can cause havoc.

A new entry in this year's training highlighted mobile device security. I prefer a full-sized keyboard and so if I can keep my phone in my pocket and use a computer instead, I do. I am not normal though as the average person uses their smartphone 6 hours a day. My usage is down around an hour per day. The training pointed out a number of helpful tips to keep from clicking on malicious links that could open your device to malware and other bad actors. I decided that by doing as much as I can on my computer, I reduce my risk for security issues. Should I get a nefarious text, I now know what to look for.

Finally the training had a section on how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to create more realistic e-mails. Bad spelling and grammar used to be dead-giveaways of scam e-mails. Now those e-mails can be created to sound exactly like your supervisor or manager. They also warned against voicemails that can sound like the people you work with. That is a sobering thought.

The point of this post is that there are some persistent thieves and crooks trying to get access to your computer, online accounts, and smartphone. It is a good practice to review security best practices to remind you to remain vigilant against those bad actors. If you are not required to run through a 30-minute training session, you might want to find a trusted resource on the Web and do your own training.

Ring Doorbell For the Win

Looking at my last post regarding my Ring doorbell, I believe I have a love-hate relationship with the device. Today it came to my aid and kept from interrupting me while doing important work. Of course in order for that to happen, I had to have my smartphone connected to it so I could use the camera.

Lately my neighborhood has had a string of door-to-door salespeople ringing doorbells and interrupting my work. Normally it is too much of a hassle to open the Ring app on my phone and see who is at the door so I walk from my basement office up to the door only to get upset about being interrupted. Due to large bombs being exploded out in the Utah desert this week, I have been logged into my Ring app to see what others in my neighborhood are saying about the loud noises we are all hearing.

Today when I got the doorbell notification while working on something very important, I just pulled up my phone and quickly spied my front porch. When I saw 2 people I didn't recognize nor expected, I continued working. About 10 minutes later I finished my task and checked the door to see if they left something. Sure enough they left a brochure about something I am not interested in learning more about.

My Ring doorbell doesn't always work the way I want it to. Sometimes I have to go through and extensive login process just to get access to the camera and that can be frustrating. Fortunately today the stars aligned and it kept me working when I didn't need to get up. Today I like the device. 

Time for a New Exercise-Focused Smartwatch

I have loved my Suunto 9 Baro watch and use many of the features on it almost daily. Towards the end of ski season, I noticed the barometer in the watch stopped working. I would ski multiple runs but the device couldn't keep track of them. Instead I would have to look at my GPS path and count how many times I rode the chairlift. Then I started training for a trip my wife and I plan to take this fall: the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim hike. The amount of vertical feet I hike is a very important metric and so I decided to get a new watch.

I am a fan of Apple products as I have an iPhone and am typing this on a Mac computer. However I am not a fan of their smartwatches for one simple reason: short battery life. I need something I can use for multiple days without having to worry about charging my watch. With that in mind, I started researching a replacement watch.

When it comes to exercise-focused smartwatches there are 4 major brands: Suunto, Garmin, Fitbit, and Coros. I have not had much experience with Coros and so I wondered if I should take a chance and try one out. They seem to provide a lot of features at a low price point. After reading a number of reviews and comparing features, I decided to pass. I also passed on a Fitbit as my experience with the brand is not positive.

I am a sailor and when it comes to the most accurate GPS devices for sailing, Garmin wins every time. One of the people I ski with has a Garmin smartwatch and so I could compare notes. My wife also has a Garmin watch but unfortunately it does not have a built-in GPS and is very cumbersome to use. Ultimately I would have been willing to give a Garmin watch consideration except for one thing: I am invested in the Suunto ecosystem and wanted to continue using the same app on my smartphone.

Another factor that played into my decision is price. As an Eagle Scout, I get a 35% discount on Suunto watches and a 25% discount on Garmin. For those interested in how to get such a discount, comment and I will be sure to get back to you on details. Just make sure you have your certificate proving the accomplishment.

After weeks of looking, I narrowed my watch choice down to the Suunto 9 Peak Pro, the Race S, or the Vertical. I liked the 9 Peak Pro because is the follow-on to the watch I already have and I assumed it would be similar enough I wouldn't have to learn how to use it. I liked the battery life but it is a couple years old and is probably due for a refresh soon. I liked the battery life on the Vertical and all of the features specific to mountain climbing and hiking uphill on skis. Unfortunately it is also a few years old and the most expensive of the 3. Ultimately I decided on the Race S. It does not have the greatest battery life but is the newest and has some fixes that I wanted. The heart-rate monitor on my 9 Baro is very inaccurate and will double count heartbeats. This makes my fitness level rank with the worst of couch potatoes. The Race S has fixed that. It also had the best price of the 3.

I received the watch a week or so ago and my wife saved it for me to give as a gift for Father's Day. The first thing I noticed is how much smaller the new watch is vs. my old one. I used to have trouble wearing dress shirts because the size of the watch. The new one is very nice and will fit under the sleeves of my shirts. The second thing is how much more accurate the heart-rate monitor is. I went for a run and didn't spend the whole time with a heart rate of 212 beats per minute, which is well above my maximum.

Unfortunately I have only had a couple of days to test the watch but so far I really like it. Ski season is over so I won't be able to test that functionality for 4 or 5 months but I prefer the Suunto features over the Garmin so I am sure I won't be disappointed. While the Garmin does track alpine skiing, the Suunto has separate ski touring and alpine skiing settings and it is helpful to have both. If the watch doesn't live up to my expectations, I'll be sure to provide an update here.  

A Low-Tech Gift with High-Tech Uses

June is the birthday month of my oldest grandchild and so I need to think of an appropriate gift to get him. This morning my son reached out to me and suggested I get the same thing my wife's father got him when my son turned this age: a genuine Swiss-army knife. Thinking about the gift, I think it is a great gift for someone of my grandson's age and so I immediately ordered it from Amazon.

Now a pocket knife is controversial gift for a young boy. Some might say it is too young for such a dangerous weapon. My youngest son was slightly older when we decided to core apples while camping and he seriously cut the palm of his hand and required stitches. With the knowledge of that event now, I might have taken the time to do a bit more teaching on the proper use of knives and my son might not have required a late-night doctor's visit.

Looking at the picture of the knife on my computer, I doubt the knife blade will ever get used that much. I have a lot of adult friends that carry knives daily because of all the other tools they contain. The one I have chosen has both Philips and flat-head screwdriver blades. I am always using mine to remove covers off electronic equipment to replace batteries or scrape corroded connectors. Carrying a multi-purpose knife has its benefits. I'm sure it will get used.

One important thing I will have to stress to my grandson is not to ever bring it to school. While that is something I could do when I was his age, we are all a little paranoid when children bring weapons to school. Rather than have to deal with severe consequences it is best if he leaves the useful tool at home.  

Reconditioning Rechargeable Batteries

A year or so ago, I purchased a cordless vacuum to use on my sailboat. There are a lot of brine flies out on the Great Salt Lake and they love to infiltrate the cabin of my boat where they die within a few hours. I used to just sweep them up but having a vacuum is much easier. The only problem is that rechargeable batteries don't last forever. Over the Memorial Day weekend we went to the boat only to discover the vacuum lasted about a minute or two before dying.

Sometimes the rechargeable batteries still have a charge and it is the charge controller that thinks it is dead. I brought the vacuum down to my office so I could play with it throughout the day. The first thing I discovered is that I could plug the charging cord into the vacuum and it would immediately tell me I had most of a charge. I quickly unplugged the vacuum and would use it for a minute before it died. I continued doing this 3 or 4 more times until the charge only lasted a second or two. Then I let the vacuum charge for several hours.

I hoped by running the battery down to truly nothing would reset the charge controller and I could get more than a minute or two of use. Just to get an accurate reading I started a stopwatch as I turned on the vacuum and began cleaning my office carpet. One minute and six seconds later, the vacuum shut off with a dead battery.

I looked up the user manual on the Internet and quickly scanned the entire book. I didn't find any help about how to replace the internal battery. About the only hope I came across is that it told me to take the device apart and remove the battery before throwing it away. The good news there is that I should be able to easily take the unit apart and remove the battery. Unfortunately the battery is soldered into the printed circuit board and is not meant to be replaced.

Fortunately I have been able to put the vacuum back together and now have to decide how much effort I want to put into fixing it. It would not be difficult to cut the wires from the battery and solder in a new one. Then again, for the price I paid for the thing, it might be easier to buy a new vacuum. Naturally it would be a different one. One with better batteries.

Technology in the Desert

I helped keep runners safe at the Salt Flats Endurance Run held earlier this month. It is something I do every year as it combines off-road driving with ham radio. For some reason crazy people enjoy running out in the desert and a select group of people go out and help make sure they stay safe. Interestingly enough, I think the volunteers outnumber the runners two or three to one. I should try and figure that out next year.

Normally my wife and I drive out to Aid Station 6 and set up camp for the day. We bring lots of drinks and food to help fuel the runners. Once we are done, we drive back the way we came over a very rough road that requires high-clearance vehicles. The runners continue on a trail that we can't follow as per Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rules. It takes us about 45 minutes to make the drive to Aid Station 5, which also happens to be Aid Station 7. There we wait for all the runners to safely make it in. This year we didn't have to.

In the past we have waited as our vehicles might be needed to get as close to the runners as possible before having to continue on foot. This year the radio crew at Aid Station 5/7 had a new toy: a drone. Instead of driving out a mile or two and hiking to look for lost runners, they could send a drone equipped with a camera as well as night vision. That allowed us to leave at a reasonable hour of 9pm and get home by 1am. Previous years has had us sticking around until midnight or later. That makes for a long day.

This year we hung around for a few minutes and then made the lengthy drive back to the start/finish line. We dropped off all of our extra food and some of the remnants of the runners' drop bags that we brought out to our aid station. While checking out with the race officials, we could hear on the radio the happenings at Aid 5/7 and the status of the last runner, slowly making his way to them. We knew he would take time as he barely made it to our aid station before the mandatory cutoff time. They sent the drone to locate him and did so as the marvelous piece of technology reached its maximum range before needing to return or risk running out of battery. On that news, my wife and I jumped into our Jeep Wrangler and drove home. It felt downright luxurious being home by 1am.

Using AI Appropriately

I had the pleasure of helping develop the PlayStation 5 video-game console when I worked in Research and Development at Sony Interactive Entertainment. One of the advantages of the hardware is that the file system is fast enough so it is not necessary to keep multiple copies of digital assets. What does that mean? When you create a virtual world, it is made up of a number of digital assets such as trees, rocks, buildings, or any number of other things we find in the real world. Most of the time, those assets are used over and over again. For the sake of an example, a forest is made up of a lot of trees. There may be only 5 different tree models created for a game and then they are reused many times to give the illusion of a forest. With the PS4, game designers would copy those 5 trees hundreds of times. That isn't necessary on a PS5 as you can have just the 5 tree types and point back to each one on the file system any time you need it. Assuming each tree requires 4KB of memory (an arbitrary value pulled out of thin air) and you have 1000 of each tree in a game, the PS4 would require 4MB for each tree used while the PS5 only needs 4KB. Theoretically PS5 games should be significantly smaller than for other game consoles. This becomes very helpful for games like Red Dead Redemption 2 that required 2 Blu-ray disks for the game. For physical game disks, it saves a bit of money and for digital downloads, they don't take as long to put on your system.

So what does that have to do with using AI appropriately? It boils down to why game developers only make 5 tree models. Most gamers don't slow down and look at every tree in a forest to see if it is different than all the others. So why take the time to create more than 5? If you can throw the problem at a generative AI program, you can let it create hundreds of different trees. This provides a level of uniqueness currently missing in a lot of games. This totally eliminates the benefit of the PS5 over other gaming consoles as its games once again become bloated. The reality is that while the PS5 doesn't require duplication of digital assets doesn't mean game studios are using the feature. You will still find copies of digital assets spread throughout quite a few games. Why not make the games more unique?

I have been thinking about this issue for the past couple of days and came up with another area where the use of AI should be applied. I walked through my kitchen this morning to get myself some breakfast. My floor is a high-quality laminate with a simulated pine surface. While pine is great looking, it is a very soft wood and makes horrible flooring that is easily scratched and dented. Using a high-quality laminate allows it to be almost indestructible yet look beautiful. The downside to a laminate is that there are only about 5 patterns on the boards. They repeat quite often and if you look closely you notice a lot of the boards are the same. The laminate floor company could use AI to create 100 different patterns instead of just 5. This would create a much more unique floor.

Yes these two solutions for generative AI don't seem to be high priority. After all if they were, companies would spend the effort to make their products more unique. The beauty of using AI is that products can become more unique and special without humans having to spend more time making it happen. You will still need those humans to fine-tune what is generated but their time can be spent being creative and not doing repetitive and mundane tasks.