Software and stuff rant

Those that have been following along know I un-retired (again) mid 2020. I was pitched (and I wouldn't have taken a pitch meeting with just anyone) a very attractive contract. The main attraction was working with a team of people that were not strangers. I'd worked with almost all of them before. The idea was to work about half to three quarter time, from home, on an extremely flexible schedule.

So why haven't I been blogging? Let's just say that a combination of difficult data in a not well understood database structure, plus periodic hissy fits by Citrix and VPN, have led to much longer hours and a complete draining of the creativity wells. Earlier this week I babysat a load of about 19000 rows of data over several hours, only to find that many thousands of rows had been eaten by internet trolls. The loading program cheerfully reported a string of OK results on each row, but it was talking to itself. 

There have been lots of conversations like, 'ok, we didn't expect this, how do we interpret the business requirements for it, or change them, or make up a new rule?' There are many perils in migrating data from an obsolete database, and some of them are just so unnecessary. Like Excel, for example.

Oh Excel, how I used to love you, and how I loathe the 365 version. I remember being introduced to Excel in 1992, as desktop computers were being added to that work place. Yes, really, I know some of my readers weren't even born then, but let's go with the flow. Now that I think of it, one of my readers was essentially retired then.

Over the years Excel grew and expanded, offering new "features" that were not only unnecessary, but began to interfere with the actual use of the program. Somewhere along the way they added the ability to filter the data, which was a key element in the work that I often do. But.

But, but, but. They kept adding fluff, and when they expanded the number rows Excel could deal with, from many to a bazillion, they screwed users right where it counted. The filter did not keep up. Anything beyond a mere 10,000 rows started getting dodgy for filter use. If they expanded the number of rows, they should have put some work into making the filter keep up.

And then there were the various places Excel tries to be "helpful". If there was one thing I could add to Excel, it would be to turn off the "helpful" features. I don't want it converting numbers to text or scientific notation. I don't want it thinking anything that might possibly be a date should be converted to a date, especially non-ISO date formats. 

As an aside, there are only two ways of presenting a date in a data setting. Today is either "20210306" or "2021-03-06" and let's not talk about time. If you want to format the date into some perversion like "03-03-21" or "3-Mar-21" then you can damn well make up a custom format tool and do it yourself, and don't complain when users misinterpret your data. And no, 1900 was not a leap year. 

Where was I? Oh yes, the many faults of Excel being helpful. The latest thing they did, marking where Excel has well and truly jumped the shark, is changing how formulas like INDEX MATCH work. If you know what a SPILL error is, you know why I've been swearing at Excel lately, and you probably have been as well. Those are bread and butter, and the latest version renders them unusable. Excel makes assumptions about how to treat the data that are not true, and doesn't give you any choice about it. Even XLOOKUP does it, and I have to admit I prefer it over INDEX MATCH, and let's not even talk about the primitive VLOOKUP that should be banished to the wilderness to be eaten by goats.

Many of the problems with Excel come from worshiping the god of backwards compatibility. Hardware restrictions from years gone by are still driving software now, and it makes some of us cry. Every now and then, we should draw the line and start over. Apple has done it many times. The first that I noticed was when they removed the 1.44 MB floppy disc mechanism. People screamed. I can't remember the last time I worked on a serious spreadsheet that would fit on one of those. 

There are so many fluffy formatting features built into Excel it's hard to find the thing I actually want to use. They are buried in the ribbon. Yes, I know, one can customize the ribbon, but who has the time? Contractors get paid to get in, produce a result, and get out. One can spend hours customizing software.

Next up, Word. That jumped the shark so long ago I don't even know when. I no longer use it unless forced to. For many database things Notepad, or it's grownup buddy Notepad++, is the tool of choice. I've spent much time in this contract editing SQL and Excel formulas in Notepad because the native environment is so brutal. Wordpad has become my go-to for most work document needs. It gives me the features I need, and none of the fluff.

Which is entirely aside from personal writing needs. For that I use Scrivener. I sometimes even write the blog in Scrivener, and copy it into Blogger. For a while it was being pissy about text. I mean, you'd think we would have figured out text by now, but no, software tries to treat text like it's setting print. So many options I don't want.

And then we have what appears to be the most popular Microsoft product, one that has probably been the number one productivity killer since the dawn of time. Power Point. I've often called it the work of the devil. One of the major benefits of being retired is that I never have to sit through another Power Point presentation. I've told people I'll walk out of a meeting if someone starts reading a slide to me. And I've done it. Hands up, how many of you have dozed off during such a presentation? Yes, all of you, I thought so.

And then we have MS Access, and MS Project. Two products on the opposite ends of the software usability scale. Database pros roll their eyes (at best) at Access, and most of the people using it. I've made lots of money over the years migrating data out of bad spreadsheets and worse Access 'databases'. I have never understood Project. I watch people managing projects in it, and can't help but think they have a major fetish about schedules and dates. It's one of the reasons I never wanted to be a project manager.

Then there is software in general. We can't escape it. The operating systems on all our devices from a phone to the TV to our car. Most of them are terrible, and they keep changing while not getting better. The change to 'refresh' the look of it is just of the things that annoys me. Change the actual functionality and I get that could drive changes to the look. 

Did any of you use Evernote? The idea was simple, create and edit small text notes across all your devices. I used it a lot when I was looking for work 2009 or so. It was a great way to keep a file that tracked what the job ad said, what I said when I applied, discussions with the recruiter, interview prep and results. I liked getting to the interview early, and could get a coffee while reviewing the file so I'd be consistent. It was great to be able to say to a random job phone call, yes, I remember, you were looking for someone to do x,  I have experience doing that from y. This showed that you were on top of the process, and could give them an individual reply. There were features around tags that made it easy to mark things as new, closed, active, or whatever was desired. I probably put more than 100 job applications through it, but only had a few hot ones on the go at a time, and it was easy to track them.

And then they got the refresh disease. They kept changing it. Then one day I was looking at it, trying to create a new note, and I couldn't figure out how to do it. When I had a few minutes I reviewed all the data in it, copied what was necessary to another product, and deleted Evernote from my life. I didn't want to deal with the changes.

That's just one example. Many times I've looked at what used to be familiar software in baffled fury, wondering how to make it do something that used to be easy. Or manipulate the familiar icons that now behave differently. 

I absolutely dread device software updates. Your devices (Apple especially) want to update themselves to a newer version of itself, one with unknown bugs. You'll pick up your phone one day to do something, and the software has changed. Of course you'll be in a rush, or doing something else at the time, unable to spare the processing cycles to figure it out. 

There's an old joke you've probably heard. Whats the definition of a feature? A bug with seniority. Badabump! Thing is, we learn to live with the bugs. I mean features. Given a chance, I can usually figure out how to get something done in spite of the software, and I can live with it, work around it. And then they change something and I have to do it all over again.

All that is within one piece of software. Except now it's almost never one piece of software. There is the operating system of your computer, and a product that does something, let's say Lightroom. Those two have to get along. Every now and then an upgrade to one breaks the other and it doesn't work any more. The older your computer is, the more likely this happens. 

When upgrades happen because you permit them, you can plan for this. Say your research indicates the new version of Lightroom has a feature you want, but requires a certain level of OS software that you don't have, or maybe even a hardware upgrade. You can do the migration in an orderly way, saving your work, doing back ups, installing things in the right order, maybe doing other upgrades along the way. This can happen at a time of your choosing, which can be important for your blood pressure.

I know people that have woken up one day, planning to do something in Lightroom, and it didn't work because of such an upgrade. Then they are in software upgrade hell until they figure it out and get going again. If you're a pro, getting paid to produce something in Lightroom that morning to meet a deadline (and there is always a deadline) this is a major cause of stress. Even if you're not a pro, you're likely to already have other things on the go, and didn't want to fool around with software upgrades today.

Maybe there's a program that lives on top of the operating system, one that knows the version information and requirements for all the software on your computer. It would tell you that upgrading the OS will break programs x, y, and z. Maybe you don't care and say go ahead. It manages the upgrade and removes those obsolete programs. Or maybe you do care, and don't do the upgrades. Or you want to wait beyond the first and notoriously buggy version of a software upgrade. The program would tell you when it's available. In my dreams, I guess. 

The Apple OS tries to do a bit of that, tracking OS versions, and Apple software. I've got a nagging reminder to restart and install something. I can't get rid of it, and the furthest out it lets me defer the notice is tomorrow. I want next month. I've got a sneaking suspicion my Lightroom is a version or two behind, and the new version requires an OS upgrade. Or vice versa. I don't want to think about it.

A reminder that if you would like to receive an email notification of when I blog, so you don't miss one, just ask me to add you to the blog notification email list. An email to keith at nucleus dot com will do it. Or a Facebook message; I'm still not visiting Facebook much but it will tell me when I get a message. I look at Instagram every day or two, though I don't update that often any more. If you know my cell number you can text me. Whatever works for you.

Some reflection photos from earlier this week, when I had to get out of the house and away from the work computer. You could be forgiven for thinking that we're all getting around by boat, but most of these puddles are only a few mm deep.

No, this isn't a New Zealand beach, more's the pity. 

Of the Day

Driftwood

Michelle, during the dog walk.

Celina snoozing

A featured tree

Flower

The amaryllis is blooming again today, but there are some faded blooms from a few days ago.

February Image of the Month

 Zoom! No, not a video call, it's another month. The year is 1/6 gone already. There wasn't as much time as I'd like for photo rambles, so I ended up with only a few really nice photos. Thus you only get Image of the Month and a comparison shot. No runner up this month.

This one takes me back to my roots, when I first started using a real camera. I liked doing landscapes, mainly because they mostly held still. I've branched out. If you scroll through my recent image of the month page, you won't see many landscapes.

But this panorama of Dry Island Buffalo Jump was just about the only thing to shoot, and we didn't want to stand around in a cold wind looking for other subjects. We came, ate lunch, shot, and drove off.

This is 10625 x 4016 px or about 36" x 14" at high print quality. It was shot with the big 150 to 600 mm lens. Trying to hold it steady in a stiff cross wind was a bit of a challenge. 

Here's a summer view of the same place, shot from about the same location, only with a wider lens.

The 90 bottle followup

It's been another quite a week. I mean month. I can't remember the last time I worked so many hours in a month. There's something about being retired that's sort of burbling along under the surface but I'm so tired I can't bring it to mind. I'm sure it will come to me.

Here's the first three kits I picked up last weekend during a photo ramble.

This morning was a chance to wake up slowly, and you can bet I enjoyed it. I was warm and snuggled into the blankets, thinking about various things in a languid way. It's good to let your brain run in neutral when you get the chance.

Coffee, of course. Eventually shovelling the driveway before the neighbour's snow service blew more snow onto it. Some photos, even. Some of them were some experiments with light and glass bottles that didn't come out quite right. I'll play with them more.

The last time I was doing wine was June 2019 or so. We skipped last year, knowing we'd be in New Zealand, and at ordering time it looked like I'd be coming back to a work contract. It was nice getting back into the routine of getting set up and starting another kit. It's the Nerello, the first one on the left. By the time these 3 are done and I have a carboy free, it will be time to go back to Red Deer and get the other three on order. There might be another photo ramble along the way.

This season's faded rose is still with us. There's been some extreme cold, and some strong wind, but it's still there. You have to admire it.

There's lots of snow in the yard, but there's still some roses poking up from the snow.

Of the Day

Driftwood. This was taken almost exactly a year ago today on Taieri Mouth beach. I've been dreaming a bit about New Zealand lately, wondering if I'll ever get back there. When it's cold out it's easy to dream of walking on a beach in shorts and t shirt, listening to the waves and wind.

Michelle and one of the dogs.

Celina

The 90 wine bottles photo ramble

No, I didn't drink 90 bottles before the photo ramble. I got what will become 90 bottles of wine, plus or minus a few, plus 6 weeks or so. Driving to Red Deer for the wine kits saved us $120. Well worth a few dollars of gas money and a bit of driving.

Between COVID and some recalcitrant work SQL (I blame the data), I've been pretty much a shut-in for much of this year. I wanted to take the scenic route and see if I could find any nice photos. It so happened a buddy had suggested a walk in Fish Creek, but was happy to change plans. Being of a similar age and mostly in the same business, we talked of many things during the drive.

I'd been to Dry Island Buffalo Jump Provincial Park (Kenney hasn't sold it, yet) in the summer a year ago with Neil Zeller, and had wanted to go again. What with winter and COVID, I wasn't sure of whether the park would be open, but I knew the view point would be open, and there's some lovely rolling foothills territory between there and home. The plan was to zoom up to Red Deer, get the wine,  head out to the park,  eat lunch, see what the photo situation was and make the appropriate decisions.

I'd sort of thought that even if the road to the river was closed we might choose to walk down. Several other empty cars were parked at the top, and I'm guessing the people in them had done just that. It turned out to be pretty cold, with a raw wind. We didn't hang around all that long up top. Both of us still want to go back in better weather, and explore the river valley. If you are thinking of going, choose a day when it hasn't rained in a while. The kind of clay there makes the road impassable when wet.

We stopped several times along the way to explore potential photos. Some of the scenery fits in well with some of the themes that Sean is working with. I'm not liking any of the big hay bale shots I took along the way.

Even though the light was really flat, and we were thinking that all the photos would be converted to B&W, I was surprised the colour showed up as well as it did in this panorama of part of the river valley.

Some more shots of the day. You can see why we thought B&W, but that looks even more dull. I liked the lines of trees.

We had seen this shed, and another nearby on the way in and made a point of stopping on the way out. There's another version of this I'm working on where it looks like the trees are disappearing into the mist.

We had to stop near Torrington to let emergency crews finish cleaning up what looked like a head on collision. The road was covered with blowing snow there and it was really slippery. Shortly after we got started again we watched a little red car driving way too fast lose it on another patch of snow and disappear into the ditch in a cloud of snow. While stopped I admired the wind farm. I hadn't known there was one there.

The big sky. There's lots of places in Alberta where you can look out from the road and see nothing but fields and sky.

Of the Day

Driftwood

First dog photos, I think

Yesterday was a first, I'm pretty sure. In all the many photos I've taken, dogs are only an incidental feature. I'm not going to scroll back and check, but I don't think a dog has ever been the actual subject of the photo. Many cats, including big wild cats. Foxes, various deer-like creatures, a bear, a snake, lots of dragon flies (and a great many photos that are almost of dragon flies) and many other animals, even though I don't think of myself as a wild life photographer. But no dogs. I'm not really a dog person.

I've seen lots of dogs and dog owners out for a walk, and my main hope was that they wouldn't react badly to my running past them. Even when I was walking, the humans say hi, the dogs tend to be a little more enthusiastic as they greet anyone around them, but then everyone would go about their business.

It's different when you're walking with a dog. Or rather a pair of cute dogs. I was invited to meet Ruby and Midas, a pair of 5 month old Rotties. They are even cuter in person than in the photos, but then, this wasn't a photo session. This was a stroll with friends. It took the camera, mainly because it's been jealous about the attention paid to the work computer. It gets more of an outing later today.

I needed the airing out. For a guy that's supposed to be retired, this particular data migration is taking a lot longer than anyone expected. I won't get into a complicated table structure, a non-existent primary key, and really poor foreign key, nulls where there should be data and SQL operations that have to account for nulls, all in MS Access. Oh, and don't forget, this is all in a Citrix window. Yeah, I know, only a couple of my readers feel my pain. I chant to myself, I get paid by the minute. 

Back to the dogs, which is why you are here. 

Lots of other people walking dogs slowed or stopped to chat. The dogs are pretty well behaved, but they're young and still learning. I don't know if it was because I was with dogs, or it was just the right time of day, but there were a lot of dogs and people. The two parking lots were almost full, and the paths were busy. Maybe I'm not the only person with cabin fever.

Other than edit the photos, the rest of the day I did nothing. I needed a day of nothing. 

Of the day

Driftwood

Artsy

Celina

A semi-domestic coyote in South Glenmore park. It was just trotting along, not far from the main path, not bothered by all the people around. 

Macro Monday 44, Frosty

Yes, it's still really cold here. They say it's supposed to break any time, but that's the whole point of the Rick Mercer 1 C sketch. To give us hope.

There are advantages to the cold, if you're willing to dress for it. I've been a real weenie about that just lately, sometimes you don't have to go out in the cold, to get photos of cold. These are in the the seeing beauty where you find it department. 

All shot at about 4x mag, hand held in natural light. The first one has a bit of extra processing to bring up some of the colour. The hardest part wasn't finding the focus. There's a trick to a fast shutter speed and a gentle back and forth motion, and being willing to reject a great many out of focus shots. These 4 are the best of about 160 shots.

The hardest part was going through the dark areas to remove spots. They really distracted from the dark background, and there was no way I'd be able to convince anyone they were snowflakes. I suppose if I were a real pro I'd have dropped them into Photoshop and created a black background, but I'm not there yet.

The ongoing message about being notified so you don't miss any blogs. I'll be repeating this bit of text for a while. Scrolling through Facebook is making me unhappy, so I want to do less of it, and see how that feels. It's all too easy to start scrolling after putting a up a notice I've blogged. I will drop in on a photo group I like, but anything after that is uncertain.

So if you want to be sure you don't miss a blog, send an email to keith at nucleus dot com and ask to be put on my blog notification list. You'll get an email with a link whenever I blog. Plus there may be some extra goodies for those on the list. If you find the blog through another means, that's fine too, I'm happy to have you read however that works.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Celina

Frost from an earlier series, different lens.

Barrier thoughts

Do you think this is happening to you?

Is there something between you and what you want? Does it prevent you from getting there, or even seeing your goal clearly? 

That's not unusual. In fact it's pretty darned common. But it isn't what you think.

It might look and act like a barrier, and that's what it will be if you let it. But what it will do is encourage you to look harder at your goals, and from different angles, maybe using different tools, maybe even using the barrier itself as a vantage point. It will help you prove to yourself how much you actually want that goal. 

There's a saying, "if you are told something, you merely have been told, but if you learn it for yourself then you know it." That barrier is what helps you know something about your goal and about yourself.

The barrier probably isn't a brick wall, but even those can be dealt with. Typically you wouldn't try to smash through unless you had tools for that. You'd go over, or go around, or go under, or persuade someone to take the wall away, or you create a door. There's any number of solutions. You'll find them if you want to badly enough.

More likely the barrier isn't as sturdy or obvious as brick. Maybe the barrier is disguised as something else, perhaps even a goal in and of itself. What most people think of as a job falls into that category. You persuade someone to pay you money in exchange for you doing what they tell you to do. Then you fall into the consumer trap of wanting things, and a job looks like the way to pay for those things.

Except what you are really paying is your life's blood. Your time, your creativity, the spark that makes you, you. The wealthy and powerful have set up this current system to use you like a battery, to drain you dry for their benefit. It will go on as long as you let it. You need to harness that for what you want, not what they want. Like a buddy of mine told his kids, "the bank and credit card companies are not your friends."

You have to peer through or around that barrier to see a path towards something better. Then you have to scramble through the thorns and find your way along the twisty and turny path. Ignore the big obvious direction signs leading to the highway that will take you behind the barrier again. There's likely to be some bushwhacking through the weeds. There might well be come creatures in the ditch or under the bridge that want to do unspeakable things with your bones, or maybe they are helpers in disguise. Press on. This is how you show how badly you want that goal. 

Often you'll find new goals along the way, and adventures more fulfilling than the original goal. There might be times you're the only one on that part of the path and you'll feel lonely, but keep in mind that others have been there, since there is a path. Or maybe you aren't sure there's a path at all. That means means is that so few people have been this way they didn't leave a trace, and this is an opportunity to let your creativity leave a trace for others.

Take it. Make it.

The ongoing message about being notified so you don't miss any blogs. I'll be repeating this bit of text for a while. Scrolling through Facebook is making me unhappy, so I want to do less of it, and see how that feels. It's all too easy to start scrolling after putting a up a notice I've blogged. I will drop in on a photo group I like, but anything after that is uncertain.

So if you want to be sure you don't miss a blog, send an email to keith at nucleus dot com and ask to be put on my blog notification list. You'll get an email with a link whenever I blog. Plus there may be some extra goodies for those on the list. If you find the blog through another means, that's fine too, I'm happy to have you read however that works.

Of the Day

Driftwood