We Learned A Lot in 2020

A lot of people are really down on the year 2020 because of COVID-19 and all of the problems that it created for the world. I'd like to take a different point of view and say that it is a year we learned a lot. Furthermore we also progressed significantly in our technology and ability to work from home. Instead of complaining about 2020, I'd like to point out what we learned.

Most importantly we learned that global pandemics happen and we need to be prepared for them. Nobody complained when the Obama administration depleted our nation's pandemic supplies because we didn't think there was even a remote possibility it would be something we needed to be concerned about. Now we all know that while our healthcare system is significantly better than 100 years ago, it is not foolproof and we do need to worry about overloading it.

We learned that we don't need to be in the office to work. This one is my favorites as I have not had to go into my office since March. I find that I am actually more productive working from home. I also discovered that I don't get nearly as much done around the home as I thought I would when I traveled between Utah and California each week. I do appreciate the extra 6 hours a week I am not commuting by plane though. We have seen video conferencing technology rise to the occasion and get significantly better over the past year. I am thankful for that as I believe that we won't have to spend as much time in the office as we used to.

Some people have been very negatively effected by COVID-19 as they have lost their form of income. With every loss, there has also been a gain. A large number of people have learned how to cook instead of going out every night. Other people have turned to the great outdoors and exercise instead of sedentary forms of recreation. There have also been a number of new job opportunities created because of COVID-19. My neighbor that works in the movie industry has a job monitoring COVID-19 protocols on the movie sets, a job that didn't exist in 2019. Amazon cannot keep pace with the hiring they need to do for all of the online shopping being done. While some think that would be a lousy job, I have a neighbor who is thriving at Amazon and loves working there. Let's also not forget the huge number of people entering the healthcare field because it is now front and center in all of our lives. Always remember that when one door closes, another opens.

Yes, this has been a tough year for us all, but it is something we all have in common. On my way up to the ski hill this morning I heard the radio announcer say that normally a person will suffer through a trial alone. Perhaps family and friends may be there with the person. In 2020, we all suffered together. The entire world did and that has brought us all closer together . . . figuratively of course as we still need to social distance.

Time to Clean my Home Office

It is the end of 2020 and a lot has changed in the world. If you had told me that I would spend from March until now working from home instead of going into the office, I would not have believed you. It looks like I will continue to do so until July and maybe even longer. That has me doing some cleaning of my home office as old electronic equipment has a tendency to accumulate in it. Unfortunately it is not as easy as just throwing old computers in the trash and letting the garbage man deal with it.

The catalyst for my post today is that I have an old ham radio and linear amplifier that is just taking up space in my office. While I could set it up and play with it, I have newer radios that are easier to use and work significantly better. In one of my ham radio magazines, I found an add for a group that wants old radio donations and so I contacted them today. They will take the radio equipment and give me a tax donation receipt. The only catch is that they cannot pay for me to ship it to them. I will have to pay that but they will give me a second receipt equal to the shipping costs as a cash donation. I don't mind helping out an organization that uses my old equipment to help kids learn. So that is where I will be sending the radio. What else can I get rid of?

I have some really old televisions from before the flat-panel days. You shouldn't just dump those in the garbage no matter how tempting it may be. I also have a number of old desktop computers that I want to get rid of. Ultimately I would like to put everything in the back of my truck and take it to one place that will accept it all. The local Best Buy will accept most old electronics, including old television sets. A quick Internet search let me to Earth911.com that has a link at the top of the page titled, "Where to Recycle." Just tell it what you want to recycle and put in your zip code. I found a place near me that accepts all sorts of hazardous and electronic waste. It is managed by the local government and free for all residents of the county where I live.

Yes it would be nice to donate a bunch of worthless computer equipment and get a hefty tax write-off. Unfortunately your donation needs to be of value to someone in order to get a tax deduction. My old ham radio still can be used even though it was manufactured in 1965. The only use for a computer that old is in a museum.

One word of caution about old mobile phones and computers: you want to be sure to clean all of your information from them. For mobile phones it is easy, just beat the screen with a hammer and drop the thing in salt water for a day or so. It will corrode all of the electronics so they are unusable. For computers, be sure to remove the hard drive and destroy that. Rotating disks are a bit tougher to destroy and so pull all the screws out and tear the enclosure apart. Then rub your fingers all over the platters as that will make it almost impossible for anyone to pull data off the disk.

If destruction is not your method of choice for destroying old hard drives, you can always find a utility that allows you to write all 1's or 0's across the entire drive. That is probably a little more elegant but not nearly as much fun.

30 Years of Marriage

This week marks my wife and my 30th year of marriage. That is a significant milestone. No it doesn't have anything to do with technology or computers but I figured it is worth noting. In honor of my wife I figure it is only fair to share some of the comments she has made about technology and my career choice in the past.

When my wife and I first got married, she would tell people that, "While nerd may be a 4-letter word in high-school, it is an excellent career choice for a husband." Technology has generally done fairly well in keeping our bills paid and she recognized that early on. That being said, there have been several years in our married life where that wasn't the case. That can be said of quite a few career choices though.

My brothers also chose computers for their careers and we used to talk a lot about technologies when we would get together at family events. Often we would talk about the latest advances or our latest toys. My older brother's wife would make some comment about boring shop talk and my wife would quickly respond, "It's fine to talk about as it pays our bills." Yes, computers and technology can be a bit of a conversation bore for those not in the industry but I appreciate my wife putting up with and seeming interested in countless discussions we have had. 

Now for those thinking that Christmas is a great time to get married, I would say that it is. The only downside is that it is an awful time for your anniversary. We always wait until February to celebrate because trying to take a trip at Christmas is expensive and interferes with a lot of other things. Should you be considering a Christmas wedding, I suggest waiting until at least January. What a great way to start the new year.

An Evening Without Internet

Last night I lost my Internet service at the house. I first noticed it when my wife tried to look up an address on her smartphone so she could go get us a Christmas ham. Her phone had been having problems all day and so she thought it related to the mobile device. Fortunately my daughter mentioned that she also had connection problems on her laptop. I suggested that my wife turn WiFi off on her phone and see if she could get directions. Sure enough it worked and we now have a massive ham to celebrate the birth of someone that wouldn't have eaten ham. Anyways . . .

Spending an evening without Internet service is a bit tough in today's day and age. It really surprised me at how much I rely on my computers being able to connect to many others out there. I started with my PlayStation 5. I finished all of the tasks in Astro's Playroom and wanted to see what trophies I still needed to complete. PlayStation's trophy service requires being able to access the Internet.

Next I wanted to look up some potential investments. I have decided that it is time for me to get back into the stock market. For the past decade or so, I have relied on the expert of others to manage my investments. Back in my 30's I really enjoyed following individual companies and have opened an online trading account. I'll keep you posted if I do well or not but ultimately I couldn't do any research last night because of the lack of Internet. Too bad I don't get a copy the Wall Street Journal as I could have looked through that.

I thought about watching a Christmas movie but this year I have already seen the ones I have on DVD and Blu-ray. No Internet means no streaming video services and so I looked for other ways to kick off the first evening of my Holiday break. As the night wore on, I pulled out my guitar and Rocksmith only to be reminded that all of the extra songs I have purchased are not playable without a connection to the Internet to verify that I have the paid to play them. Sure Rocksmith comes with 60 songs but I wanted to rock out to all my Christmas ones. Instead I ended up playing my acoustic guitar with my songbook full of Christmas music.

Eventually my service provider got the Internet working again. I checked my e-mail and during the time that the Internet was down, I only received 2 messages which goes to show it wasn't down that long. However it still felt like an eternity.

To show how important the Internet is in our daily lives, I have the day off and here I am back on the Internet. Sure I got up and went skiing this morning at Snowbird. We got 16-inches of new snow last night and I had one spectacular run in untracked snow before the crowds destroyed any hopes of a repeat. When I got home, I did a few chores but have spent the past 2 hours utilizing my home Internet connection. I am done though and will be heading off to do things that don't require a computer . . . oh wait, I may continue one of my video games. Scratch that.

Outdated Instructions and Why Dates Matter

Recently I have experienced several problem with software updates on my various computers. It is easy to search the Internet and look for solutions. Unfortunately I find myself reading outdated instructions and it is only after going through the first several lines that I discover the solution is for a previous version of the software I am trying to fix. It makes me wish that every post on the Internet is required to have a date associated with it.

One would think that the problem could be solved by including software versions in the search string but that doesn't help. Search engines are amazing but they don't know the difference between version 6.1 and 6.1.3. At least with a posting date you have some idea of how recent the solution appeared online. If it is a new piece of software that released the day before, seeing a date of last year indicates you might want to keep looking.

I appreciate this blog and how it assigns a date to every post. If I give advice, you know when it was given. This is really helpful when you see two posts that disagree with each other. I may favor a particular laptop one year and a completely different one the next. This is because of constant change and in the evolution of products. My only hope is that products continue to get better and technology continues to advance.

I Miss My Sunday Newspaper

I know that for most people the daily newspaper disappeared quite a few years ago. I still subscribed to the Sunday paper as I enjoy spending one day a week browsing through a physical copy of the newspaper. Let's be honest, I browse the paper but read every word of the comics. Yesterday marked the first Sunday in many years that I didn't receive a newspaper.

Last week I cancelled my subscription to the Sunday newspaper because the company is changing how they deliver the paper. Instead of a daily newspaper or just the Sunday one, they are using the postal service to deliver a magazine once a week. If you want the daily news, you can get online access to it. As that doesn't interest me, I cancelled.

Yesterday I woke up and hoped the paperboy had made a mistake and delivered me a newspaper on accident. Unfortunately that didn't happen and so I headed to the breakfast table and tried to figure out something else to do while eating my Sunday morning meal. A quick Internet search revealed that I can get all of my comics online for free. I tried a number of different sites but eventually settled on one that had all of my usual reads.

Interestingly enough, as I stopped reading the daily paper years ago, I didn't realize that a number of the daily comics are actually in color. Now that I have found comics site I like, I may start reading them every day or at least when I have the time.

Units are Important

The amount of new snow is always important to skiers as it helps decide if it is worth it calling in sick for the day because of new snow. It also helps to know how cold it is at the ski resort. Both measurements require units of measure. If I say it is 22 degrees outside, that is a bit ambiguous. Is the unit of measure Fahrenheit or Celsius? If it is 22 degrees Fahrenheit, that is cold. In Celsius, it is downright pleasant.

This year we have had a skimpy snow year and so I have decided to list all new snow measurements in millimeters. Why? Because the numbers sound much better. Instead of saying we have about half an inch of new snow, the same amount can be described by 12 millimeters. The number 12 is much bigger than one half. Yes, they mean the same thing because of units but the larger number makes me feel like there is more snow in the mountains.

There are a lot of areas in our lives where we leave off units because it is implied. If I stand on the scale, I can tell my wife that I am down to 159 and she knows that my weight is in pounds and not kilograms. Sure I could throw her for a loop and say that I am down to 72 but she is not familiar with kilograms and would tell me we need to fix the scale.

Miles per hour is another such measurement. If you want to impress your friends, you could say that your GPS watch clocked you skiing at 91. After all, that is my highest speed yesterday skiing but the units of measure are in kilometers per hour and everyone in the United States would assume I meant miles per hour. In reality I hit 57 miles per hour yesterday which is normal for a given day of skiing.

As one of those people that went through high school and college learning both imperial measurements as well as the metric system, I think I am going to leave off units in my stories and use numbers that are the most impressive. I will convert all skiing speeds to kilometers per hour and just leave off the units.

You do have to be careful when you leave off the units of measure as it could cause some people to panic. Make the numbers look too good and people will think you are sick or just a chronic liar. If you tell someone you like going to the beach when it is 30 degrees outside and they might think you are a polar bear if you mean degrees Celsius but everyone else is thinking in degrees Fahrenheit. Now I know why I would get my homework problems wrong when I left off the units of measure in the answer.