Category Archives: Blog

2020..a year to be thankful for

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2020 was a year to be thankful for.

“Oh really?” you might ask. What was possibly so good about this horrible, pandemic year?

I believe that 2020 taught us that the simple bonds are the most important. Bonds between one and their family, between one and their friends, and between one and their spirit. Helping one another out, enjoying simple times together when able.

It was the freedom, rather, “society’s permission” to explore a little out of our comfort zones. To pivot around in our lives which many of us may have been guilty of being complacent in. Each one of us found something new about ourselves to help build us into that person we want to become.

Grace. We know that not all of us have had a smooth go at it. And given these unique times, we’ve found the strength to be more flexible with our fellow man.

On a personal note, I can say that I am thankful for a short recovery from my injury back in June. It is a weakness of mine to not ask for help when sometimes I need it, and to those that offered that help, whether through task or encouragement, I am thankful for you.

2020. This year, we have more to be thankful for than ever.

Return the shopping cart…

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The shopping cart is the ultimate litmus test for whether a person is capable of self-governing.

To return the shopping cart is an easy, convenient task and one which we all recognize as the correct, appropriate thing to do. To return the shopping cart is objectively right. There are no situations other than dire emergencies in which a person is not able to return their cart. Simultaneously, it is not illegal to abandon your shopping cart. Therefore, the shopping cart presents itself as the apex example of whether a person will do what is right without being forced to do it. No one will punish you for not returning the shopping cart. No one will find you or kill you for not returning the shopping cart. You gain nothing by returning the shopping cart. You must return the shopping cart out of the goodness of your own heart. You must return the shopping cart because it is the right thing to do. Because it is correct.

A person who is unable to do this is an example of someone who can only be made to do what is right by threatening them with a law and the force that stands behind it. It is an excellent indicator of an individual’s ethics and moral philosophy.

Be the person who, in your life, does things because they are the right thing to do.

— Unknown Author

The First Computer Bug

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The First Computer Bug…

In 1945, Grace Murray Hopper was working on the Harvard University Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator. On the 9th of September, 1945, when the machine was experiencing problems, an investigation showed that there was a moth trapped between the points of Relay #70, in Panel F. The operators removed the moth and affixed it to the log. The entry reads: “First actual case of bug being found.”

Grace Murray Hopper, who lived from 1906-1992, found the first computer bug while working in a temporary World War I building at Harvard University on the Mark II computer where a moth had been beaten to death in the jaws of a relay. She glued it into the logbook of the computer and thereafter when the machine stops (frequently) they say that they are “debugging” the computer.

The very first bug still exists in the National Museum of American History of the Smithsonian Institution. The word bug and the concept of debugging had been used previously, perhaps by Edison, but this was probably the first verification that the concept applied to computers.

Google’s Role in Social Distancing

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I thought this was interesting! Google is taking anonymized, aggregate data from Google Maps for public health officials to understand responses to social distancing guidance related to COVID-19.

Here is the data I pulled for the state of Minnesota. It looks like in general, 38% less people are travelling to work, 35% less people are travelling to grocery stores and pharmacies, and 58% less people are travelling to restaurants, cafes, and shopping centers. Rice County seems to be doing slightly worse at sheltering-in-place compared to the average in Minnesota, except in the travelling to work and parks categories.

Source: COVID-19 Community Mobility Reports (https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility)

The more you know!

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The more you know!

Does a USB drive get heavier as you store more files on it?
Believe it or not, they get lighter. USB drives use Flash memory, which means the the ones and zeros of your data are stored on transistors. When you save data, a binary zero is set by charging the float gate of the transistor, and a binary one is set by removing the charge. To charge it, we add electrons, and the mass of each electron is 0.00000000000000000000000000091 grams. This means that an empty USB drive (which mostly holds zeros) weighs more than a full USB drive (which has ones and zeros). Add data, reduce the weight. However, you would need to weigh more USB drives than exist on the planet together at once before the difference in weight became easily measurable.

Not All is Doom and Gloom with COVID

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All joking aside for once, if there’s one thing I can say about all this Coronavirus “craziness”, “pandemic”, “panic”, “crisis”, “precaution”, “stupidity” (pick the adjective you most relate to), it is this: People are forced to think out of the box for solutions to problems they never thought they’d encounter, and this is NOT A BAD THING! It shakes up the status quo and forces people out of their comfort zone.

People will have to educate themselves on using technology to get work done, instead of forcing mostly unnecessary (and potentially hazardous right now) in-person meetings.
Businesses owners will have to remain agile and adapt their business models on the fly. Especially now, as bars and restaurants are being forced to close. They have to. Otherwise they have no choice to close and layoff all their workers.

Yes, the stock markets are down. If you are on a long-term plan to retirement, it’s going to recover no problem. This is an opportunity, not a crisis. Make the best of the hand you’re dealt now!

Above all, don’t sweat the small stuff. So, you may need to use a fabric cloth instead of a paper towel. So you may have to meet a new neighbor to borrow a couple of eggs. The world survived many centuries without all the modern conveniences we take for granted now. Use it as a way to learn history, and use it as a way to learn something new.

Nearly nobody has framed this event as a positive one. Yet, with a slight change of mind, there can and will be good things that will come out of this that will help us, and will help the country grow stronger. Get ready for a wild ride guys! This is no doubt a story people will be able to tell their grandkids about. 😃

I’m a New Mac Owner!

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I never thought the time would come, but I have to announce I’m a brand new Mac owner! Mind you, it’s not a new Mac, but I am a new owner! 😂

I received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition!

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Wow! I received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition from our District’s Representative Jim Hagedorn for the “Hidden Gem” award I received from the Faribault Virtues Project. It was an honor to be recognized for some work I’ve done over the years preserving history in Faribault and Rice County. If we all pitched in and helped our community in one or two small ways, what a wonderful place our world could become!

50 Years Ago Today, Man Embarked on a Mission to Set Foot Upon the Moon

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At 8:32 a.m. on July 16th, 50 years ago, 3 American men, strapped into the seats of their Apollo command module, were propelled into space by the tallest and most powerful rocket ever created, the Saturn V. It would take them 3 days to reach their destination. The mission…to land and walk on the moon.

The computer to take them there operated at a 0.002048 GHz clock speed. It had 0.000002 gigabytes of magnetic-core RAM, and 0.000036 gigabytes of hand-woven core rope ROM. It weighed 70 pounds. Today’s computers have millions of times more memory. Yet, in 1969, it performed flawlessly to navigate the men into lunar orbit.

These videos are the best thing I’ve found to help set the scene in your mind on how big of an event this was, and still is, in all of mankind. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did!

Video Credits:
“Apollo 11 liftoff unseen spectators original launch footage”, Youtube, suicidecrew.
“Apollo 11 Launch HD”, Youtube, NasaHD.

DeepFakes are going to be a problem…

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For almost a year, I have been assisting as a Subject Matter Expert for the Electronics Technician Association (International)’s Audio/Video Forensics Analyst examination. One of the reasons I’ve been assisting is because it will become increasingly important to have skilled professionals analyze what is “real” and what is “not real” in regards to created video.

As computers get more and more powerful, it becomes easier to generate complete 3D models of a person’s face, and it becomes easier to create a voice model of a person’s speech with only a few minutes of recorded audio. These two combined together can produce very convincing hoaxes, termed as a “deepfake”. Do you think the average Internet user that shares “everything” on Facebook could tell the difference?

Whether they are used for extortion, election manipulation, or blackmail, “deepfakes” could be the biggest threat to modern society in the years ahead. Now, more than ever, it’s very important to use logic instead of emotion, facts instead of opinions, and multiple sources instead of a single news channel, when forming your own opinion about anything.
Be sure to check out this TechRepublic article and video below on deepfakes, and the importance of skilled experts in the future to assist with the detection of these threats.