Tralfaz

Author: geoffand

  • Why I hate Microsoft, part 1,392

    I freely admit that I am a Mac user. OS-X just works better for me, and my workflow.  But I will grant that Windows 7 is pretty good, and usable.

    Of course, since I work in the corporate world, I am forced to use Windows (well, in the past I have been a rebel and was a Mac in a PC world, but I stopped beating my head against that wall).  For the most part, Windows is fine. I even like Office 2010 and the ribbon interface that was introduced in Office 2007.

    But, for some strange reason, I have glitches in my email. We use Exchange and Outlook for email and calendaring, and it seems about once a week the OST file (where outlook keeps local data) borks. This leads to not being able to send or receive emails until I repair the OST. Which requires me to quit any applications that access the Outlook API and the OST file. Which means that I really have to reboot to scan and fix the errors. And since I have a PGP Whole Disk Encryption, it takes about 30 minutes for the services that hit the disk to be done after a reboot.

    Sigh, so go through all this, and run the tool (3 x until I no longer get errors in the scan), and then I can get back to work.

    Lost hour of productivity, because Outlook decides to freak out.

    Tobe fair, I have had some data issues on my mac, and keep much larger stores of email locally but they are fewer, and recovery doesn’t require running a program that looks like Windows NT3.51 vintage UI (the scanpst.exe program) to recover.

  • Google All Access versus Spotify Premium

    Recap:  After Google announced their “All Access” plan for their Play service, I jumped on the free week.  The intent was to compare it to Spotify which I had been a premium customer for about a year and a half (I went premium there to get rid of the ads and the “sponsored tunes” which really sucked – being top 40 crap).

    Early on, the reason why I went to spotify was that even with all 18,000+ tracks of my music collection being in my library, it was shitty for streaming. Lots of skips, halts, and “burps”. Spotify, whatever they do, was far more robust in streaming, and unless I was having major network issues, it never got glitchy.

    At the start of my evaluation of the Play All Access service, the issues with shitty streaming were still there. In fact, they were worse than I recall. In the last week though, I have given the All Access another chance (my free month is expiring soon, so I have to decide if I want to pay $7.95 a month for it). I am impressed. Three days this week, not one glitch or streaming issue. You still have to use the damn browser (no dedicated application), but at least it has been solid.

    2 weeks ago, I would have put my money on Spotify, but now for reliability, the Google All Access plan seems pretty good.

    Still to compare is the quality of music matching in the radio.  So far, I think Spotify is ahead there, barely (for the record, Pandora smokes them both, but I have doubts about their long term viability). But Google has my entire music collection, and I listen to much that isn’t licensed to Spotify (Paul Gilbert and Led Zeppelin come to mind)

    Either way I go, I am now confident that my tunes on my work laptop will be fine being streamed.

  • Physics Geek Alert

    In a meeting today, we were talking about models for contact mechanics to measure the indentation of an indenter probe into a surface.  I got to correct someone that the correct term is Hertz-Sneddon.

    Ian Sneddon, referred to as a Mathematician, made significant contributions to many areas of physics.

    Yeah, I am a geek.

  • A good problem

    Life is a series of challenges, but some are more welcome than others. Today I bicycled into the office, showered and changed into street clothes.  I brought in a pair of jeans, a polo shirt and the usual accoutrements. After showering, and dressing I made a stark observation:

    My jeans are almost too big to wear.

    Woo hoo, what a good problem to have.  I don’t yet need to shop for more clothes, because I have sets of clothes that will follow me down to below 190#’s, but it is a good feeling.

  • The joys of daily medications

    Since I have had a bout with coronary artery disease (a mild understatement), I get to daily take a fun regimen of medications. Prior to my “event” I had battled high blood pressure (ironically, my cholesterol was OK), and was on an ace inhibitor to keep it in the “sane” range.

    Post event, my cardiologist has been much more aggressive.  I am still on the ace inhibitor (which really was almost side effect free), and we added anti clotting drugs, as well as both a statin to lower cholesterol (they like to keep it really low, about 80), and a beta blocker.

    Beta blockers are the devil.  It does help lower my blood pressure, but it also lowers both my rest pulse rate, and my metabolism. The heart rate reduction is particularly pernicious, as it makes it difficult to get into a good aerobic zone for exercising. I can work my ass off, and never get above a pule rate of 130BPM.

    The bad of this is that while I am certainly burning the calories of the exercise, my heart rate monitor sees me as not exerting as much as I am, and thus it tries to adjust my statistics accordingly.

    Alas, there is no hope for change. Every year when I go for my stress test, I have to stop taking the beta blocker for 2 days prior. And my blood pressure goes through the roof. Like 150/99.

  • Diet and fitness update

    Last week was a challenge. With the holiday (grilled some yummy steaks), and our anniversary (tried another local Mexican place that is now our favorite), and two days of training a new sales engineer put a crimp on the diet. But all told, I came out of the week down a pound, and once the over abundance of salt worked its way out, my blood pressure recovered nicely.

    This weekend, I got into the spandex, on the bike, and put almost 54 miles on. It is getting challenging, as even leaving at 7:00AM, it is already 85F, and rising to mid 90’s before I get back at 9:00AM. Next week, I will need to pull the Camelback out of its hidey-hole, and load it up.  The water bottles are no longer enough to keep me hydrated.

    I am down to 215#, 25#’s to go to get to my target of 190.

    (This afternoon, it is almost 112F.  It is safe to say that the ice broke on the Salt River.)

  • Oops, I did it again – The Facebook game

    Lately I have seen people in my friends list tell me to change some setting to prevent their life events leaking into the facebook social graph. Sigh.

    It seems like every few months, there is some new way that Facebook abuses your personal information, making it harder for you to control who sees what that you post.

    First, for those who expect me to change some setting to help you, or you are going to have to unfriend me, you better just unfriend me now, because I am not going to continually mess with settings in facebook.

    Next, if you post anything to Facebook that you don’t want used to target you for ads, spam your inbox, or to determine how you behave to improve targeting, then you are an idiot. Facebook has consistently shit on your efforts to contain the information you share via Facebook. They are always ignoring their own settings for privacy, and who sees what. That isn’t ever going to change. Now that they are public, Facebook is trying to monetize their service. But the only real value that they offer is what you share, and what they can glean from that.

    So, if you don’t want your “life events” (whatever the f*ck they are) spreading to the social graph, DON’T post them. But don’t expect your connections and friends to alter their settings to suit your paranoia. In fact, I have an even better piece of advice. Close and delete your facebook account (you can do it here). Because if you can’t grasp the concept of not sharing anything you aren’t happy for the whole friggin’ world to see, then you have no business messing around with Social Media (of any sort).

    For the record.  I don’t post anything super personal, and make a point of being as sarcastic of an asshole as I can be. And I am not going to jump through hoops to help you in your quest to control what you share with Facebook.

    Had to get that off my chest.

  • Fun with Dentistry

    I had a cleaning and “new patient” visit a couple weeks ago.  My first visit since I moved to Chandler from Tucson.  All was good, but they did tell me that my amalgam fillings were beginning to age, and probably should be replaced. I was not surprised by this, as I had some major work done after my orthodontic work was removed. Some big cavities were filled, and this was 30-ish years ago (before I graduated high scho0l for sure). Since two upper right molars have crumpled, and been crowned, I am not surprised that it was recommended to replace the amalgam fillings with some new composite fillings.  It also turns out that silver-mercury amalgams are becoming rare, as the modern composite materials are in many ways vastly superior.

    Fast forward to today.  I had half the at risk amalgams replaced (the left side). Ugh, I forgot how much I hate dental work. Of course, on the lowers, there was a place where they had to drill deep to remove the amalgam, and it is likely to be cold sensitive for a  while. I got a view of the “holes” and yikeys, it was a lot removed.  I guess I never realized how much repair I had in the way back time. Of course they did a brilliant job of numbing me up, I had 4 shots of Novocaine, and am drooling like an invalid.  I guess my plans to go to dinner with my visiting sales engineer are off.

    The good news is that the new fillings are going to last longer and hopefully will not need any more crowns.

    In 2 weeks, I do the 4 on the right side of my mouth.  Oh joy.

     

  • The search for good Mexican food

    When we moved from Tucson to Chandler last year, the last thing I thought I would have trouble with would be finding a decent, authentic Mexican restaurant. I mean, it wasn’t like we were moving to Seattle, we were still in the southwest, and there are plenty of authentic people of Mexican heritage here. But it has been trouble.

    Some background. Our first night in Tucson in 2003, we walked from the hotel about a block and into Casa Molina. It was Sonoran style Mexican food, and we loved it (they also made kick-ass house margaritas). We dined there all the time, and greatly enjoyed the cuisine. Not quite a hole in the wall, it was a family owned establishment, and had been a fixture on the east side of Tucson since 1947.

    When we moved to Chandler, we started looking for our new Mexican restaurant. I tried Diegos (when I was commuting) in Mesa, and wasn’t impressed.  There was a little place not far from our house called Cafe Posada, that was passable (but not great. Anyone who puts carrots and peas in their spanish rice is meh). But they went belly up, and we had do hunt.

    There are some great places that sell “street taco” style food.  Order and wait for it to come up, but that never really scratched the itch.

    The problem isn’t that there aren’t Mexican restaurants, it is just that most of them are chains, and are too slick, too polished, and have so so food.

    Last night, for our anniversary, we tried another place. Yelp! had it rated good (3.5 stars) and the reviews were good.  It is a local franchise, called Nando’s. The food was good, tasty, well cooked, and almost authentic. They have great margaritas, and we really enjoyed the decor.

    We will certainly go back, often. But I am still looking for my “hole in the wall” Mexican restaurant. My latest theory is that the part of the valley that we live in 20 years ago was pretty much all farmland. There aren’t many places that have been here 20+ years, to acquire that homey feel.

    I am not giving up though.

  • My, how risk averse we have become

    On my bike ride today, I was pondering the changes that have happened over the last 20 something years. When I first got seriously into cycling in my mid 20’s, I thought nothing about climbing on, and doing 30, 40 or even 50 mile loops, barely taking a couple of bottles of water with me. Living in the south SF Bay Area, there were abundant great roads (and trails) to explore and enjoy. And enjoy them I did. One day, I rode over highway 9, through Davenport, out to the coast, up highway 1, and back through Bonny Doon to the bay area again. Probably 65 miles or so. Never thought twice about it.

    To be fair, I had some mishaps. One day, I had a major tire failure (sidewall blew out) at the top of Pierce road in Saratoga.  I had to hike about 6 miles back to civilization to make a phone call for a pick up. Or the time that I had a spill in Los Altos.  Ran straight into a block post. Bent my crank arm, and had to ride 12 miles home on a wobbling crank (that really messed up my ankle).

    Today, I think twice about going out, particularly when my wife isn’t around to rescue me. Granted, I am approaching 50, and have had some cardiac troubles, but the caution that I think about is really insane. I have my phone, I carry a first aid kit, I carry a lot more water (partly because I live in a desert and it is triple digits in heat), and I carry more emergency repair tools and parts than I ever did.

    Back in the late 1980’s, when I rode a heavy, low tech Specialized Allez, did all my own maintenance, I just rode. Suited up and away I went, 6 days a week (I worked the 1-9 shift, so I had ample time in the AM to ride). Now I do a lot more planning, I have my cell phone (which doubles as my heart rate monitor, and my exercise tracking), CO2 cartridges for fixing flats, and a fair assortment of tools to fix what ails me on the ride.

    Ah well, progress.