Tralfaz

Category: blog

  • Hawaii Five-O Observations

    I have mentioned in the past about watching classic TV on Netflix and singled out Hawaii Five O as endlessly entertaining.

    jack-lord-4Lately, I have swung back into that series, and I have a few observations:

    • 12 seasons – how on earth did that show last for 12 seasons? Seriously, by the 4th season it was becoming tiring to watch, and the plots have become super predictable.
    • Rain in Hawaii – Knowing that the islands get a pretty consistent amount of rain, it is remarkable that there are almost no scenes where they are prancing around policing in the rain. But every trip McGarrett takes to the mainland? You guessed it, he is under an umbrella. (it takes until season 8 before they are chasing a suspect and it is raining.)
    • Tourism Promotion – I get it, the show is a thinly veiled tourism promotion vehicle (as well as a way for Jack Lord to get paid to live in a garden paradise). But all that crime? Oy vey, according to Five-O, the islands are awash in gangs, prostitution, gambling, and Chinese spies. Not a very inviting place to vacation, eh?
    • Gunplay – The quantity of shootouts is truly staggering. I believe every episode has gun battles with bad guys being gunned down by the righteous agents of Five-O. In the real world, far fewer police actions involve firing their weapons. I get that it is the late 1960’s in the show, but holy hell, do they shoot a lot of people.
    • Drugs – One persistent theme is the scourge that is illicit drugs. In many of the episodes, there is the specter of LSD, marijuana, and even methamphetamines awash in the island. I know it is a sign of the times, but the portrayal of the strung out dopers is hilarious.

    I know my parents looked forward to the weekly exploits of McGarrett and Danny Williams. 30 years on, meh. Give me the Rockford Files any day of the week.

  • Weekend Trivialities

    I have gotten out of the habit of updating things here lately. Work has become super busy. Homelife has been busy, and frankly the blogging has suffered.

    A bunch of things today.

    1) Apparently my car is dripping oil. If it was s late 1960’s British car, this wouldn’t be an issue, as they leak oil until they are bone dry. However, being a Honda S2000, it is disturbing. I had it serviced a couple weeks ago, so it is back to the jugheads at the dealer to figure out what they fucked up.

    2) Having a broken toe sucks. I was just getting back into the biking groove, and then BAM, I break a toe. It hurst like hell, it is purple and swollen, and it will take a few weeks to heal. Whenever I hear about how one of the tip tier MotoGP riders flogging their bikes with a broken finger, rib or ankle. I think back to this pain, and am amazed by their intestinal fortitude.

    3) WordPress is really beginning to bug the shit out of me. Yep, it works, and it is #1, but damn, I spend more time messing with it, updating shit, and the like than actually writing. On the lookout for something different.  Not immediate, but it is coming.

    4) While I am on the topic of blogging, I am surprised that far and away, the top draw of searches to my blog is people looking for information on the Specialized Crave Expert 2015 I own and write about (and that reminds me, 9 months of ownership, and I have some new things to write about).

    5) Still grooving on the XBox One, and Forza Motorsports Racing 5. I wonder if they will continue the tie in to Top Gear now that the lustre has faded on Jeremy Clarkson. Still it is great fun, and I am now on the Grand Touring circuit, with the Lexus LFA, a ridiculouly difficult car to drive (I ‘bought’ an Audi R8 to trade off with, as the AWD is easier to control).

    6) I think the end is near for my ancient iPad 2. I bought it in 2011, and it is struggling with the latest iOS. Sadly, you can’t “not” upgrade the iOS as applications like the NY Times (probably the most used app I have) crash constantly unless you are up to date. However 4 years is an awesome run. I suspect an iPad Mini 3 will be in the cards.

    7) 15″ laptops suck. Yep, I was a bit of a snob, insisting on a big fast, tons of memory and disk MacBook Pro. But almost 2 years ago I on a whim bought an Mac Book Air, and I love it. 12 – 14 hours of battery life, super light, and a good performer. I still have my vintage MacBook Pro, and it is almost painful to use.

    Well, that’s enough for now.

  • DoublePlus Suck – Seizure AND broken Toe

    Grab bag here, and a quickie post…

    Yesterday was our anniversary, 15 years! Woot. Great dinner, and life is good.

    Then at 10:10PM, Tate has a seizure. I was not really sleeping so apart from the panic it wasn’t too disruptive. Apart from the trauma of the seizure.

    Then, as I was bolting down the hall to address the seizure, my left corner finder ahem I meant little toe catches the corner of the wall.

    Net Result: Broken little toe, and a shitload of pain, a couple weeks of hobbling around are in my future.

    And the weekend bicycling? Fuhgeddaboutit

  • Moving, the last frontier

    Moving, the last frontier

    Yesterday I groused about some of the last dregs of moving. While the majority of the unpacking has been done, there was still a clot of boxes in the middle of the garage. Annoying, yet stubborn.

    This morning I was determined to do something about the clot of boxes. It was about 3/4’s of Barbara’s stuff. From her old office and from her folks house. Once I got determined, I was on a mission.

    garageFirst up was the boxes. With Barbara’s help, I was able to find three boxes she wanted to rifle through in her office. Cool. There were 4 more that went to the over-garage storage area. Bam, middle of garage floor clean.

    Second, like most techies, I have a box of cables, power supplies and other detritus of 25 years of tech goodies that I could never part with. I sorted them into three piles:

    • Power cords and adaptors. It is amazing how many of them piled up.
    • USB, Firewire, and network cables. The astounding collection is extensive.
    • AV and video cables. About 10#’s of them.

    shoesThird, all the bikes were hung except the Mountain Bike. It didn’t fit well on the wall hangers, so it got hung from the rafters.

    Lastly, I built a pile of donation boxes. More good fortune for the charities.

    As I was putting items on the side wall, I noticed that there was something rattling inside a cooler. My missing cycling shoe. Yay!

  • Moving Notes

    Moving Notes

    Well, we are mostly unpacked, and all is mostly well. 95% of the boxes are unpacked, and the house is well organized. The boys are settled in (and too comfortable).

    However there are a few wrinkles.

    Before we moved from Chandler, I bought a new pair of cycling shoes. My old ones were 13 years old, and hurting my feet, so $225 later some new wide Sidi shoes were there.

    Unpacking, I have found only one of them. Damn. Of course my old shoes made the move so I am using them again. But I really miss my new shoes.

    On the plus side, before we moved I had bought a print from an artist in the UK. It arrived before we moved, but I couldn’t get it framed, so I left it wrapped up. It turns out that it was a limited edition of 200 prints, and I have 1 of 200. Way cool (the print came from almostanangel66 on Etsy.

  • Marking a Half Century…

    Marking a Half Century…

    Today, May 10, I turn 50. Like many milestones it was both looked forward to and dreaded at the same time.

    I was working on a long, sappy, post, but screw that.

    I kind of remember turning 30. I was working at Read Rite as a process engineer, having fun, but still felt young. Life was simpler then, but living in Silicon Valley meant that I wasn’t going to be buying a house anytime soon.

    40 was much more of a struggle. Your metabolism changes, and it is difficult to adjust. It became really difficult to control my weight.  That was a struggle. Of course, by then I had:

    • Gotten married (to my wonderful wife and best friend, Barbara)
    • Become a “marketing” person in product management
    • Moved to Arizona, with the snakes, desert and blistering hot heat.
    • Became a huge proponent of Greyhound rescue.

    The most ominous time though came at the age of 44, where I had a heart attack. An eye opener, and really the first glimpse of my own mortality, and the limitations of my body.

    Today I mark the 50th year, and I am seeing a lot of changes. First, post heart attack I get to take a not-so wonderful array of medications. Statins, beta blockers, ACE inhibitors, and anticoagulants. These all mess with my metabolism, and are by no means “fun”. But it is better than the alternative.

    I no longer ride motorcycles. I gave them up in 2008 when a few close calls on the streets of Tucson reminded me that my reflexes were beginning to suck. That was a hard hard thing to give up, having ridden since my pre-teen years, it was a big part of who I was.

    My sense of invincibility is now gone. I used to think nothing of heading out for long hikes on isolated trails, or bicycle rides with no particular route chosen. Heck, in the 1990’s I used to load up my truck with my dirt bike, head out on a weekday to one of the riding areas and ride alone, oblivious to how bad it would be to get hurt when you were in a 20,000 acre riding park alone.

    I am quickly getting to the point were I can’t play guitar anymore. A few years ago I was struggling with pain in the base of my left thumb, and instead of it being some transitory ailment, it is osteoarthritis, and the cartilage in the joints is virtually gone. Hence, my ability to play is evaporating. A cortisone shot provided remarkably little relief, and the surgical options, well, let’s just say that the doctor said we don’t do them on people as young as you, as the downsides are drastic.

    It is this which I am lamenting the most. I am at a point in my life when I can afford the fine instruments that I have long desired, and I can’t possibly enjoy them.

    Wrapping up…

    As I enter my 6th decade, I am recognizing my limitations, and accepting the future as it comes. It is sobering, but it is also hopeful. I still bicycle, I still hike, I still enjoy listening to music, I still enjoy exploring technology, and the advent of social media like Facebook has allowed me to reconnect with many people from my past that I had lost touch with.

    I am back in the San Jose area, where I grew up, and enjoying that (although, I really loved living in Tucson), regardless how the demographics have changed.

    For those who have read this far, thank you for the time you spent. I remain amazed that anybody reads the dribble I write.

     

  • WordPress musings

    My first flirtation with WordPress was in 2009, and I have been a regular user since. It has mostly been an enjoyable experience. Initially, I created a free site on wordpress.com, and quickly dove into the self hosted solution.

    Early on (pre 2.0 era) I got hacked. Entirely because I used sketchy plugins from authors who were only a little more sophisticated than myself.

    As time has gone on, and I have become (ever so slightly) more sophisticated and diligent, I have had good success with WordPress.

    However, recently, an incident that was a throwback to an earlier era threw me for a loop. On the installation for my wife’s page wordsbybarbara there was an included plugin, the Revolution Slider (a slideshow plugin), that I installed, but never used. Sure enough, it got a driveby sideload of a series of malware exploits.

    After spending far too many hours cleansing, scanning, cleansing, scanning, and then recreating content, I am getting fed up.

    WordPress is a great platform, and the creativity of the community and the team that maintains it has matured greatly. If you stick to using plugins from the WordPress.org repository, and are diligent about doing updates, you will be fine. The theme selection is fantastic, and with some modest CSS and HTML skills, even a duffer like myself can put together a decent looking and functioning site.

    But I am beginning to move my main properties away. I just have far less “fun“maintaining it then I used to, and my time is valuable. I have moved my product management blog to the new Ghost platform (with their hosting solution, so I no longer have to futz with the back end), and I am beginning to curate my content here for a similar migration.

    I am not sure when Tralfaz will make the switch, as my, uh, discipline with using tags and categories has left something to desire.

    I should be cautious. WordPress doesn’t suck. Far from it, it is solid, reliable, well supported with a fabulous community of support, and so many themes/plugins/modifications that you can do pretty much anything you might want. But because of this complexity, it has become a hassle to manage on the back end.

  • Passing of the torch – EA Sports Pro Tour

    I have an Xbox 360, I play only two games with any regularity, Forza Motorsports, and the Tiger Woods Golf franchise (actually, I play that with my wife, and we enjoy it).

    I haven’t kept up with the franchise lately, because the 2012 edition was pretty good, and we really didn’t feel the need to shell out money for the latest version.

    Tonight, I got an email announcing the next one. However, it does appear that Tiger Woods’ douchiness has finally caught up to him, as he is no longer the standard bearer of the game.

    Welcome to Rory McIlroy’s PGA Tour.

    rory-mcilroy
    GOLF WITHOUT LIMITS

    Usher in the next generation of golf with the power of the Frostbite engine and play the most beautiful sports game to date with no load times, enabling you to explore authentic tournament courses or unique fantasy environments.

    I guess banging family restaurant hostesses, and crippling back pain have finally caught up to ol’ Tiger Woods’ marketability.

    Bummer

  • Saying goodbye to a friend – Braun Oral B 3D

    In 2003, shortly after moving to Tucson, we got a pair of Oral B 3D electric toothbrushes. I was hesitant of this new fangled technology, but since we had them I used it. Then a strange thing happened …

    The Braun Oral B 3D
    The Braun Oral B 3D

    I liked it. At first it had just the standard brush heads, the round ones. As time went on, there were other heads, ones that wiggled, rotated, gyrated, and the like Some had rubber gum massagers. But the standard round heads were the best.

    It had two speeds, fast and slow. But I always just used the faster speed.

    It had a timer. Yes, you’re supposed to brush for two minutes. Using a regular brush, and your time instincts are way optimistic. So using a toothbrush with a timer is a great thing.

    Fast forward to today.

    After 12 years, its battery is about dead (recharging it 2 – 3 times a week), and it is getting weak. Time to replace it.

    Of course, the new dentist I selected in San Jose recommended the Phillips Sonicare. So I ordered one up.

    The Phillips Sonicare
    The Phillips Sonicare

    Instead of the mechanical rotating brush of the Braun, it is a piezo ultrasonic system.

    Some observations:

    • The best way to use it is to put a small amount of toothpaste on the bristles, and to keep it almost stationary at the gum line. Not scrub or move the brush in an exaggerated manner.
    • It has a built in “quadrant timer” that gently alerts you to move from quadrant to quadrant. Nice touch, as you often get distracted and don’t move.
    • Less “foaming” of the toothpaste. One of the drawbacks of the Braun unit was the rotating head, it would churn the toothpaste, and it would drip down the brush onto your hand, and make a mess of the counter. The Sonicare id much less like this. There is not a hollow core to the brush part, and thus no tendency for the spit/paste slurry to migrate.
    • Cleaning the brush head. As there are no moving parts, and no hollow tube to capture the spit/paste slurry. Thus cleaning the brush head is trivial, and like regular toothbrushes.

    I haven’t had it long enough to figure out whether the brush heads last a long time, but the recommendation is to swap them at 3 months, about the same as the Braun.

    One note: Several years ago, the patent on the Oral B 3D brushes expired, and there became available generic brush heads. One would think that would be awesome, but they sucked so bad, I only bought one package of 3, and only used one of them before switching back to the branded ones. Not worth the cost savings…

    It is different, but so far I like it. I wonder if it will last 12 years like the Braun.

  • Innumeracy and the cult of anti-vax

    The last post was about an innate understanding of scale and scope, and how this lead to a general understanding of magnitudes.

    A real world example, and one that is top of the news lately is the whole “anti-vaccine” movement. This is the increasing tendency to choose to not vaccinate your children due to the faulty belief that vaccines are worse than the disease. Leaving that argument aside, lets apply this “scale” thing to the antivaccine argument:

    Measles, a once common childhood disease, has several bad results, with the death rate being on the order of 3 per 1,000 infections. (I will admit that I am horrified by how high this is.) That means that if 1000 children contract the measles virus, 3 will die. Let that sink in. That is a 0.3% fatality rate. Seems pretty low, until …

    The MMR (Measles, Mumps, and Rubella) vaccine has pretty much eradicated the disease. In 2000 there were virtually no cases reported in the USA.

    Of course, the vaccine is not risk free. The major risk is an allergic reaction to an ingredient, usually the albumin (protein from the white of an egg), causing an anaphylactic reaction. This is somewhat on the order of less than one event per million doses. That is almost three orders of magnitude lower than the risk of death. (1/1000 the risk). And guess what, when you get a vaccine, the healthcare provider has an epi pen ready for the vanishingly rare anaphylaxis, so even if you do have such a reaction, you will get immediate treatment for it. There is also a more common reaction, of a fever, a rash, and other symptoms, all of which are far less risky than the disease. None of these are considered life threatening.

    So, the risk of a vaccine adverse reaction is 1/1000th the risk of DYING from the disease itself.

    The truly horrifying statistic is the rate of death in immunocompromised victims of measles. That mortality rate is a staggering 30%. That means that if your child is immunocompromised, and contracts the disease, they have a nearly 1 in 3 chance of dying.

    Summary

    The general population is poorly prepared to weigh risks, and scale. Clearly, the benefits of vaccinating your children vastly outweighs the risks with vaccination, but the specious arguments bantered about highlight how little
    the general populace understands the scope and scale of the risks.