Time For a New Television

Monday was my last day working at Sony PlayStation and I wanted to maximize my discount on Sony items before I left. So on Monday last week I ordered a new 85-inch 4K television. It arrived today. My previous one was only 60 inches and so I am now doing a lot of rearranging to make room for the new toy. Getting a much larger television requires a lot of work.

I waited around this morning for the television to arrive. Once it did, I just moved it into the house so I could plan out the next course of events. My old TV stand fit the 60-inch model perfectly but won't work for the 85-incher. I did an online search and found a stand that I liked at Ikea for a reasonable price. I drove down there and picked it up. Then I brought it home and put it in my home theater room and waited for some help to arrive before assembling it.

My oldest son came over after work and we moved the old TV into my bedroom so it is out of the way. Then we removed the old stand so we could build the new one. The build process went amazingly fast as we made sure to follow the instructions carefully. That is the trick behind assembling Ikea furniture: carefully following the instructions. Next we put the new television on the stand. Boy is 85 inches a lot of screen real-estate. It took awhile to plug in the PS4, the PS5, and the audio system. Once we had everything put together we tested it by logging into Disney+ on the PS5 and watching the first 8 minutes of "Return of the Jedi" in 4K.

There are still a few bugs to work out but I will take care of that tomorrow. My PS5 runs 4K video at 120 frames per second but my audio receiver can't handle that. To get around the shortcoming, we connected the PS5 directly to the TV and then run the sound back to the receiver. There is a bit of a delay between the picture and the sound but it should be fairly easy to fix with some setting adjustments. I'll work on that tomorrow.

So far I am very impressed with the new television. For the past few years I have felt that my 60-inch TV has gotten too small. I also like the added definition of 4K as the picture looks incredible. Now I just need to figure out what to do with the old stuff. Let me rephrase that: I need to figure out how to make my old television fit in my bedroom without upsetting my wife or buying any  more furniture. I'll be sure to report on the outcome.

Road Trip in a Ford Escape

Yesterday I boarded a plane and flew to San Francisco where I rented a car and drove to my boat at Coyote Point Marina. As Monday was my last day at Sony, at least for now, I had to clean out my sailboat so I could sell it. I pulled all of the big stuff off the boat and loaded into the back of the rental car and then sold the boat to an old coworker. His one request was that I help put the sails back on the boat so he could start using it on weekends. I obliged and showed him how to get everything set up. I also showed him how to start the engine. Then I got in the car and made the 11-hour drive back to Salt Lake City. The flight was much easier than the drive.

When I made my rental car reservation, I had the option of several rental car companies. Ultimately I settled on Hertz as they had cars available and also the best rate. I set the rental pickup at the airport and then gave myself until 10pm this evening to return the car to the location 2 miles from my house. Talk about convenient.

National has always allowed you to select the car you wanted when you arrive at their lot. This is something Hertz recently started doing and I really appreciated it yesterday. I knew I had a lot of stuff to bring back, including a generator, 2 televisions, and a mountain bike, so I passed on the Ford Mustang. While it would have been a fun car, not everything would have fit. I also wanted something that got great gas mileage as I would be responsible for filling the tank multiple times. Ultimately I settled on a very new Ford Escape. I put the back seats down and the bike fit nicely. Then I just loaded stuff around the bike. The generator rode in the front passenger's seat next to me.

Lately all of the cars I have rented have had key-less starts. You just have the key in the car and press the start button. It is a feature I really like. I also quickly connected the car's sound system to my phone so that I could use all of the hands-free features. It came in handy as I talked with my wife and other family members while driving. That kept some of the boredom at bay. It also had satellite radio that I started using just outside of Lake Tahoe when the traditional radio stations started getting scarce. I began with music but by the end of the drive, I was listening to comedy to help pass the time.

I turned the car back into Hertz this morning and saved myself $50 by not doing it this evening. I have to say that I really enjoyed all of the electronic features in the Ford Escape. Before I connected my phone to the car, its own navigation system did an excellent job routing me and also giving me an ETA into Salt Lake. Of course it didn't take into account the hour nap I would need outside of Elko, Nevada but it did factor in stops for gas and that soft-serve ice cream cone from McDonalds at midnight. Ultimately my favorite feature in the rental car was the fact that I averaged 30 miles per gallon of gas while mostly doing 80 miles per hour (the legal speed limit for most of the trip . . . once you get outside of California). My mother-in-law is looking for a good all-wheel drive car and I highly recommend this one. Full disclosure: I own a Ford F-150 truck and also own 190 shares of Ford stock. While both of these may influence me somewhat, I still liked the car a lot for my California-to-Utah road trip.

Fresh Fruit From Hawaii

One of my favorite things about visiting Hawaii is getting fresh papaya. For some reason, the papayas here on the mainland just are not that great. After eating a particularly bland one here in Utah, my daughter took it upon herself to figure out the difference between mainland papaya and papaya from Hawaii. It turns out the fruit on the mainland is usually "Imperial Papaya" from Mexico and is about the size of an American football. The fruit in Hawaii is actually "Strawberry Papaya" or sometimes known as Hawaiian Papaya and is much smaller. It also tastes a lot better.

The net is that I love Hawaiian papaya and think mainland papaya tastes like earwax. I mentioned this yesterday to some friends and one remarked that he misses Hawaiian-grown pineapples. He even went so far as to say that he would pay a premium for real Hawaiian pineapples. I told him that you can get Hawaiian fruit air freighted to your home. That is what I do when I want real papaya.

For those reading that are willing to spend a little money to get some fresh Hawaiian fruit, my favorite place to get it is: Dole Fruit Hawaii. Every couple of weeks I will get a box and eagerly await its arrival.

One nice thing about the Internet is being able to find such interesting food. If you have a favorite food that you can't find in the usual stores, let me know as I am sure I am not the only one that appreciates tropical fruit during the cold winter months.

Time for a New Adventure

After 11 and a half years at Sony PlayStation it is time to move to a new adventure. Monday, November 1st will be my last day. It has been a great ride and I have enjoyed my time there a lot. When I first started, I thought it would only be a 3-month job. I originally started as a contractor working in the Research and Development group. The guy that hired me needed someone to take over so he could go back to his native South Africa to watch the 2010 World Cup. When he got back, I kept waiting to be let go. That never happened.

During my time at Sony Interactive Entertainment, I got to see the launch of the PlayStation 4. Employees were given the chance to buy the new consoles and receive them 2 days before the general public. The PS4s came in on Thursday and I had my new console in hand as I headed to the airport to fly home. Some people in the shuttle bus were so excited to see the new device before its release date that they took pictures with it on the way to the airport.

Not long after the release of the PS4, I had a bunch of friends ask if I would join their new company. I went into the office on Monday prepared to resign from Sony. On the way to talk with my boss, I got pulled into someone's office and asked to start working on the PS5. I couldn't say no to that and so I ended up turning down my friends and staying at PlayStation for a few more years.

With the release of the PS5 and my latest project moving into production with the next update of the console software, it is time to move on. Unfortunately my career has stagnated for the past couple of years at SIE and it will be good to jump start it at a new company. First I plan to take a few weeks off and get ready for my next adventure. I will be sure to post where I land.

Online Research for Fun

Today I got an e-mail from Alaska Airlines letting me know about a one-day sale where they have great deals on flights but you have to buy them today. I have a lot of credit on the airline and so I surfed over to their site and started entering destinations. The first question is where to go. I thought about it for a second and looked at what it would take to go see my son in Ohio. Unfortunately Alaska does not have an optimized route between Salt Lake and Columbus. I'm not a fan of connections and the trip would require several of them. Next I checked about going to Orlando. After all, doesn't that sound like a fun destination? While the flights only required a single connection, all of the layovers seemed way too long. My final destination to check was Hawaii. Who doesn't want to spend part of December in Hawaii? Alaska Airlines has some great flights between Salt Lake and Hawaii for about $450 round trip on the dates I selected.

While I am tempted to book the flights to Hawaii, I have other things I need to do and ended my research there. I am asking myself if there could have been a perfect situation that would have me booking flights tonight. What about $200 round trip? That seems tough to pass up but I still would not have done it.

The Internet is a great tool that constantly amazes me. Tonight I did a bunch of research that would have required me to waste someone's time on the phone before the Internet. Now I can play around with a number of parameters without inconveniencing anyone. I wondered if I wasted my time this evening but got some entertainment out of the exercise. I wasted my time no more than if I watched a YouTube video or an old movie. Yes, doing online research can be entertaining and fun even if you don't buy anything.

Where's Grandma?

We have recently had a death in my wife's family and it has caused a huge disruption. Grandpa passed away and so the family needs to take extra care in providing for Grandma. Fortunately a lot of plans were in the works before the death as it was somewhat expected. After the funeral, the family had an event where everyone could share their memories of Grandpa. Everyone expected Grandma to let them know when she was leaving. Instead she snuck out and didn't tell anyone.

Grandma's departure didn't raise any red flags until she didn't show up at her daughter's house in a timely manner. Grandma was lost. Unfortunately she has a horrible habit of not charging her phone and everyone assumed it was dead. It was only mostly dead and wouldn't take a call. The family was able to access her credit card statement and see where she last purchased gas. Then one of Grandma's sons called the carrier of her mobile phone and was able to get a faint ping location. I have to admit that I didn't even know that was possible. They found her 7 hours away from home. Let's just say she got really lost. Needless to say, it was a rather sleepless night for everyone in the family as they worried about Grandma. Everyone could finally go to sleep when they could see the credit-card charge for a motel in the middle of nowhere. The next morning, Grandma's daughter drove to meet her and caravan home.

Last week the family got together and worked on solving some of the problems that led to Grandma getting lost. First, they got her a new phone with a long-lasting battery. Second they got her a wireless charger so she just has to put the phone on the charger next to her bed. Finally, they installed a tracking device in her car. I understand you can get them for your teenage drivers so you know where your kids have your car at all times. Guess what? It also works with Grandmas. Grandma saw that they were fiddling with her car and asked if it would help diagnose car problems. It does that too, so they responded in the affirmative not wanting her to know they were lo-jacking her car.

A couple of days ago, Grandma got caught eating a brownie before dinner. The daughter reminded Grandma that she was making dinner and a brownie would spoil the meal. Instead of a pithy response like, "I'm old and may not live until dessert," she stormed out of the house and drove away. Naturally she left her phone at home and nobody could track her. You would think that they could just look at the tracker information from the car. Funny story, nobody installed the software and that wasn't possible. That problem is now rectified. Fortunately Grandma cooled off a little bit and eventually came home.

The moral of the story is to be sure you finish installing all of the software for your tracking devices before you need it. Otherwise it won't be worth a thing.

The Right Tool for the Job

Recently I wrote about diagnosing a bad diagnostic tool and would like to expand on the proper use of tools. Last week I flew out to my boat to clean it up a bit and work on the engine. I needed to replace the impeller on the water pump which required removing a pin on the water pump housing. The easiest way to do that is with a hole-punch and a hammer. Unfortunately I didn't have a hammer on my boat and so I tried a number of other tools. I did have a hole punch and so I lightly hit it with a wrench, a screwdriver, and even a piece of wood. While I made some progress, none of what I tried was a good substitute for a hammer. Ultimately I drove to a local store and bought a small picture-hanging hammer. Only 3 whacks later and the pin came out nicely.

The whole time I was working on the engine, I kept thinking of the phrase, "When the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to treat all your problems like nails." So what is the opposite of that phrase, when you have a bunch of other tools, but not a hammer? I'm not sure, but if you come up with something let me know.

This experience reminded me again of the importance of having the right tool for the job. With computers, this is very important. Anyone that has ever tried to work on Macintosh computers from the 1990's knows that the most important tool was a #8 Torx screwdriver. At the time you had to special order them but now you can find them at almost any store that sells tools.

While we all know the importance of hardware tools, there are a number of software tools that can make your life significantly easier as well. I remember one night trying to rebuild a corrupted database. It didn't have much data in it but the information it had was very important. To get the everything back, I looked at the raw data files using a hex editor. It allowed me to see the original data and write an extraction script to pull the information out in a human-readable format. Then I could rebuild the database and populate it with the correct information. Your typical editor or word processing software would have made the job significantly more difficult, if not impossible.

So how do you know if a better tool exists? Simple, just do a search on your favorite internet search engine and see if others have had similar problems. They will generally provide some ideas on what tools to use to solve them. That is how I solve car problems, boat problems, electrical problems, and even computer problems. Hopefully it works for you too.