Time for a New Battery Again

I spent this last week on the Sony Pictures lot in Culver City, California attending meetings. Naturally all sorts of problems arose at home in my absence. My wife and I care for our neighbor's house across the street and we had a few sprinkler problems. Fortunately I could talk my wife through them and we resolved them all without having to dig up any pipes or sprinkler heads. The only problem that had to wait for my return is that of my wife's laptop battery needing to be replaced.

My wife loves to use her laptop around the house unplugged from any power source. Then at the end of the day, she'll plug it in so it is ready to use for the next day. I generally keep mine plugged in at my desk and work there unless I am traveling. A little over 2 years ago I had to replace my wife's laptop battery. Thanks to iFixit.com it is easy to order a new one and have instant access to instructions on how to replace it.

While in California my wife informed me that she can only get about 30-minutes of use from her laptop before the battery is dead. She tried the usual remedies that include charging it overnight and then using the computer until the battery dies completely. Unfortunately nothing worked and so I ordered one last night. Fortunately I have an account with iFixit and they had a record of what I ordered the last time. I didn't have to try and figure out what battery she needed. Three clicks after I visited their site, I had the new one ordered.

Usually I prefer to visit online shopping sites as a guest and try not to create accounts unless I know I will be back. I have an Amazon account as I find myself needing something there on a monthly basis. With iFixit, I'm only there every couple of years or so. This time I am glad I have an account as it kept me from doing time-consuming research. If you have at least 3 electronic devices, such as a smartphone, laptop, or other battery-powered device, I highly recommend getting an account and ordering from them. It will save you a bit of a hassle in the future.

The new laptop battery will be here in a couple of days. My hope is that it lasts a few years. When it comes time to replace it, I think my wife will want a new computer. Right now, $50 is a much better price to pay than $1000. Besides, who wants to transfer all the data and files from one computer to another?

It is Good to be Home

I just got back from 2 weeks of extensive travel and it is good to be home. At the end of August I headed to Los Angeles for work and while the distance is not that far from Salt Lake, I had full-day meetings which can take a lot out of you. Then I flew up to Alaska to spend the Labor Day weekend with my youngest daughter who is an ocean-kayak guide. She had to show us her fitness and ripped our arms off to beat us with them. Then I had to take a red-eye flight back to California for another set of all-day meetings. Once home I didn't have the luxury of sleeping in my own bed as I loaded up my truck and headed to Scott's Peak, which is right above Brighton Ski Area. I spent the night staying up and helping runners participating in the Wasatch 100 Ultramarathon. Needless to say, my internal body clock is just now getting back to normal.

One thing I miss while traveling is access to a second computer monitor. It is always helpful to have a primary working monitor coupled with a second one to put look-up information. For instance I may use my primary monitor for a video meeting and use the second monitor to display information I need during the meeting.

Another thing I miss while on the road is my second computer. While at home I make sure to do work on my Sony-provided laptop and personal things on my desktop computer. Not having that second computer means I am trying to do everything on my work computer. I mostly just read personal e-mail but that means I can't edit videos or write narrations for my YouTube videos. I have one that I am working on right now and wish I could have made progress on it while traveling.

Then there are all the comforts of home that I miss while away. Things like sleeping in my own bed, having access to my full wardrobe, or being able to watch movies in my theater room. Yes it is fun to travel to interesting places but it also feels good to be back home.

Keep It Simple

I am working on a project at Sony related to customer data consent that I made way too complicated. As a customer, you control what vendors can do with the information you provide them. In most of the United States, purchasing a product or service requires you to opt-in to a data agreement for the company using your data before you can make the purchase. California and Europe have laws that require vendors to allow you to opt-out of letting them use it. While nobody wants their personal information sold so another company can send you unwanted advertisements, vendors often use your information to customize your experience with their product. For instance a video streaming service can use your previous viewing history to recommend new movies or shows that you may be interested in watching.

The conversations I participated in a few weeks ago led me to believe that my team would want to keep track of various levels of data tracking for our customers. I felt we should have a number of different flags for how much data we can share. For instance, we should keep track of if people will let us sell their personal data to receive advertising e-mails. Ultimately we don't need to keep track of that because: 

1. Nobody in their right mind would want to receive more junk e-mail
2. Sony doesn't sell our customer data to other companies

I created a number of other consent flags I thought people wanted to keep track of only to discovered they similarly are not needed. Ultimately all my team needs to do is keep track of being able to customize our users' experiences or not. People that opt out of letting us use their data get the most popular recommendations while everyone else will have more a more personalized experience.

California has the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) and Europe has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that impose very strict requirements on what companies can do with your data. They came about because certain companies decided they could make more money by selling customers' data than actually selling products. These laws are there to protect you from such bad actors. Unfortunately that means companies that sincerely have your best interest in mind have to do a lot of explaining so that you will allow them to use your data for your benefit.

Laws meant to protect ultimately complicate things. I am discovering that I need to then unravel the complexities and try to keep things simple. Simple systems work, complex ones tend to be much more fragile.

The Unpredictable Nature of Life

I am halfway through my 5th week of working from home because of COVID-19. When I first looked at the spreading of the virus, I didn't think it would get this bad in the United States. You could say that my predictions were a bit off. Anyone who remembers the movie Jurassic Park learned that "life finds a way." Unfortunately that is true with pandemics but it is also true with us humans.

I read an interesting article today about how the number of respirators that New York City needs is less than they projected. I'm glad to see that I am not the only one making prediction mistakes. Yesterday I read that the Governor of California sent several hundred respirators to New York on loan. One silver lining behind this world-wide pandemic is that we are learning that we can help each other and that is surprising a lot of people.

I think the idea of us helping each other is something nobody predicted. Last week I got an e-mail from MatterHackers asking if I would donate items printed on my 3D printer. I have a rather basic printer that is not very fast but I jumped at the idea of helping those around me. I added my name to the list and 2 days later got an e-mail with a specific item to help print: personal protective face shields. They gave me specific instructions including the STL file of what they wanted printed. Once I accepted the assignment I became responsible for slicing the design (putting it in a format my printer understood so I could print it), providing all of the raw materials, and committing to making 30 shields. It only takes my printer an hour to do each one and my printer has been running non-stop for the past 2 days. Ok, I did have to stop at midnight last night so I could go to sleep but then I woke up at 6:30 this morning and got it going again. I should be done with my batch around 3am tonight and I will ship the shields out tomorrow morning. They will head to California where they will be distributed to a hospital that will accept this particular design.

I am not the only one helping with this project as the goal is to provide 10,000 shields. MatterHackers is not the only organization helping out either. I have a buddy in California that is doing something similar for another group. He has three 3-D printers and all of them are being kept busy printing personal protection equipment for hospitals.

Yes COVID-19 is a nasty virus that has a long incubation period and is very contagious. Yes people are dying around the world. However we also have some really smart people working to limit the spread. We also have a lot of people banding together and helping each other. In all of the bad news, there is some really good news and I attribute it all to the unpredictable nature of life.

Enjoying a Solo Roadtrip

Thursday last week I drove my car from San Francisco back to Salt Lake. It is a trip I make about twice a year. Once I drive from Utah to California and then I drive the other way. I do it as I take a lot of vacation at the end of the calendar year and don't want to leave my car unused for such a long time. It is also a great time to do maintenance and take care of licensing.

There are a number of strategies I have used to combat boredom on the trip. On occasion I have enlisted one of my children to drive with me. My youngest daughter often shares with others about the time she flew to San Francisco and only stuck around for an hour or two before driving home. We had a fun time and listened to book on CD. We both enjoyed the fictional story and could talk about it as we drove the 11 hours.

Unfortunately my car is 17 years old and does not have a Bluetooth nor other type of audio connection. That eliminates being able to use a service like Audible. So before my trip on Thursday, I went to the local bookstore and purchased a non-fiction book on CD and loaded up the 6-disc changer in the trunk. At around the 5-hour mark, I swapped out CD's and loaded the remaining 3 as my book required 9 discs. The system works well but books on CD are more expensive than other sources or services.

My chosen listening material recounted the non-fictional story of Apollo 8. There are some familiar characters if you have seen the movie Apollo 13 and I enjoyed the references found in both. The story kept me entertained and the miles seemed to pass quickly. Of course, the 80-mile-per-hour speed limit in Utah and Nevada helped a lot too. If you find yourself wanting to go back and learn a bit about America's space program, I highly recommend the book. It is called "Apollo 8: The Thrilling Story of the First Mission to the Moon" by Jeffrey Kluger.

I plan to bring my car back to California after the new year as soon as I catch a weather window where I don't have to worry about snowstorms closing the freeway around Lake Tahoe. When I do, I will be sure to get another book to listen to. With enough warning, I can probably find a better source for the stories so I can play it from my smartphone instead of on CD. That should save me some money.

It is Good to be Home

Friday night I made it from Tokyo back to Salt Lake without too much difficulty. It is good to be home again. Unfortunately it is a short weekend as I have to head to California for the week ahead. Two days in my own house is not enough and so I am looking forward to being able to return again Thursday evening.

While in Tokyo I used a number of technologies to keep in touch with my wife. Normally I use Skype but my wife's schedule didn't allow it this time. At least not computer to computer. I did use Skype on my iPhone while in my hotel and called my wife directly on her mobile phone number. It cost me only a few cents per minute but was well worth it.

My wife wasn't always available to talk and so I sent her a number of text messages. I kept my iPhone in airplane mode and just turned on the WiFi. As my wife and I both have iPhones, we were able to exchange text messages over WiFi and without me having to connect to the local network in Japan. I have written about this before and my son informs me that you can do the same thing with Android phones, but I have yet to give it a shot.

Next week my wife and my schedules should sync up a bit more nicely and that will make talking much easier. I love that technology has made it easier to call home as I will be missing it a lot this week.

Vacation From Technology

I just got back from a three-day vacation with my family in California. I brought my laptop just in case someone from work needed me to take care of something. I worked late the night before having to get up early for our flight and was sure I would need to fix an emergency while I was away. Fortunately I had some people at work who refused to contact me knowing that I was on vacation. I didn't bother to turn on my computer and check mail. The funny thing is that I could have done so on my phone. I just would have rather spent time with my family.

I blame the girls for ending up at Disneyland. My daughters are 19 and 23, yet they both wanted to go to "The Happiest Place on Earth." It was very crowded and I just assumed that other parents were paying as much attention to their kids as I was to mine. It surprised me as I rode the train around the park and watched parent after parent turn to their smart phones to check e-mail and play with apps. Aren't you there to spend time with your kids? How about talking to your kids instead of looking at cooking class coupons from Groupon?

When you go on vacation, it is perfectly fine to take a vacation from technology. I managed to pull it off and you should too. Your kids will thank you for it later.