I was very proud of my plumbing achievements this weekend. First, I successfully replaced my garbage disposal.
My previous garbage disposal was getting a bit old, needed frequent resets and I suspect early stages of leaking too. I went with an identical model, as it seemed to be an easier replacement.
All in all it took me probably a half hour to complete. If did require wiring, so bonus electrical work for me.
I know it’s not much, if I was impressed and proud to of done it myself without any left over parts or wads of duct tape used.
My second plumbing task was replacing a sink drain. This was a little bit tricky, I was having a hard time reaching a couple of the necessary parts.
After a bit of sleuthing, was able to get to everything and with way too much plumbers putty, no leaks!
The ball rod was of bit of a puzzle, but I do think I figured it out. Future attempts should be much easier now.
I noticed a little lump around my temple a couple of years ago, and made an appointment with my doctor to take a look. He set me up with a CT skull scan and they scotch taped a tums to my lump and ran the scan (apparently a 5 cent calcium taped to my head helps a very expensive machine give a more accurate result).
The scans at the time said the lump was a lipoma. A lipoma is just a growth of fatty tissue (guess I had a fat head), and are almost always benign. Which was a relief to hear.
The next step was to go to a plastic surgeon to have him take a look at it. For some reason going to a plastic surgeon spooked me a bit. Not sure exactly why, but I think I was just afraid I’d leave looking like Michael Jackson or something like that.
I nervously went to my appointment, and he confirmed he suspected it to be a lipoma and said he could easily remove it. I opted at the time to just leave it alone, nobody had yet to notice it beside myself and keep an eye on it in case it continued to grow or change.
A year later I’m pretty sure it grew a little bit and got it checked out again, but again opted to just leave it alone. I wanted to get rid of it, but was just too chickened out at to have it removed. I still feared looking like Michael Jackson.
Two years later I finally made up my mind to get this guy removed. I think it’d grow quite a bit more, though still nobody ever mentions it to me. But once I’d point it out to someone, they then saw it. I just didn’t want to wait until it got much bigger. It’s around my temple and the larger it got then the trickier the procedure could be to remove it.
I made my appointment with Dr. Rayfield (who was great) and got my jitters out of my system before going over. I was fine once I got there. I didn’t have to go to sleep for the procedure and it probably took a half hour total.
It was interesting in that I couldn’t feel anything being cut, etc. but being around my temple I could hear every cut, tug, etc. very loudly as it was so close to my skull.
Once he was in there, I knew pretty soon that it was giving a bit more trouble than was originally expected. When the doc asked for the cauterizer, I knew it must be in there pretty good (I watched a lot if not all YouTube videos on the procedure beforehand as if it would make a difference). He said it was in pretty deep and likely in there for over ten years.
He finally got it out and stitched me up. It wasn’t too many stitches and he did a great job in making the incision in an area where any possible scarring wouldn’t be too bad (around my hairline). He showed the lipoma to me when we were all done. I didn’t bring my camera with me, but it was a fairly gross yet smooth yellowish mass.
I went to work the next day, I think only 2 people bothered to notice the excision and stitches the following week. Either they are blind or don’t pay attention to me, or felt uncomfortable to ask what had happened. It probably just looked like I got into a little fight or hit my head on something, it wasn’t too bad considering how much came out.
Stitches came out a week later, and they were happy with how it was healing up. Results came up benign, which again was great as there is a tiny percentage where they can come up to be bad.
So now I’m just waiting for my little scar to fade away and my head to finish healing up. Outside it looks fine, but inside I can tell that it’s still healing up a bit. Should be all good in another week or 2.
Dr. Rayfield did an amazing job and made the process as easy and relaxing as could be. I’m finally glad I got that stupid bump/lump removed and am glad it wasn’t anything too dangerous.
Always was more of a Marvel guy than a DC guy growing up, but I can’t not check out a movie about a villain. The villains were always the coolest part of comics.
I read some pretty great reviews of Joker, so my expectations were pretty high going in. I have to say, it lived up to the hype. It’s not too often that a movie makes you think so much any more, but this one really did that for me.
It was darker and more disturbing than anything I’ve seen in a while. It really does a great job to get you inside the head of an unstable guy, or at least I though I was in his head most of the time. But frankly, by the end I’m not sure how much we were in his head or in reality. Well done.
Very well done. One of the more interesting movies I’ve seen in a while.
Growing up I was big into comics, especially the Marvel titles. My favorite comic was probably Infinity Gauntlet #4. That’s the issue, where the hero’s team up with Dr. Doom to lose in a fight with Thanos wielding the Infinity Gauntlet. My buddy Wes and I read and would draw pages from that comic on many occasions, it was great.
So when the Marvel movie machine started 11 years ago, I was excited but also skeptical. Up to that point, Hollywood always seemed to fine a way to ruin years and years of great comic stories and plots.
The 11 year run has been pretty great. I’ll never forget how excited I was when they revealed Thanos at the end of the Avengers film in the post credits. I instantly knew what was in store, just didn’t know how many films and years it would take to get to the end.
Avengers: Infinity War was pretty great. If focused on Thanos and ended with the snap. An iconic moment that any fan of the 90’s comics knew was inevitable.
The conclusion to 11 years of Avengers: Endgame was great. I had a couple of theories going for how it would turn out, and I have to admit they surprised me quite a bit. It made 3 hours and 1 minute go by in a breeze.
While the quality of the films and storytelling has been excellent and exceeding my expectations, I can never get over at how the films have gone so mainstream. Growing up, only a few of us were hooked on this amazing world.
Last night I couldn’t even begin to count how many people were there to share the end of this story. People of all different ages and backgrounds, sharing a common interest. It was pretty awesome to be a part of.
Attended the OUTC conference in Anaheim, CA again this year. Presented again on Using Google Lighthouse to Find a Faster Website.
The trip out there was a little rocky with a decent amount of turbulence. While I typically do not travel very well, I was happy to not feel super lousy when arriving at LAX! Usually I’m in bad shape for the first day after a flight.
I was able to check in super early at the hotel, and took a much needed shower. I do think that was a key factor in me not feeling too poorly that day.
Arriving early on Sunday, we headed out to Irvine Regional Park. This place was awesome! The mountains, openness, so many cool things to do. Though I probably only saw 1% of the park, it was pretty awesome to take in all the differences that I would not find in New Jersey. A great experience.
Getting back to the hotel, we were served In-N-Out Burger from a food truck. The Double Double really it the spot, I was starved. It was great to meetup with earlier OUTC friends Caleb and Mark. They’re good guys.
Later that night, with a little bit of hard work was able to get HBO Go to stream on the large TV in the hotel room. On the west coast there was the option to watch it a t 9:00 pm or stream it at 6:00 pm EST. I had to present the next day and flew in that morning, so getting it to stream and watch the early time was a great success.
On Monday the sessions kicked off. I presented at 2:00 pm, and while I think I got off to a shaky start overall I think it went well. It wasn’t a very talkative crowd, but I could tell most everyone was following along and testing their site out using Google Lighthouse. It was fun.
The OU Campus 11 demo was pretty cool. I am excited at the direction the interface is going in. I think our content managers will be very happy with the coming updates.
I always look forward to hearing about their Product Roadmap, and that took place on Tuesday. The mentioned the following:
WCAG 2.1 (April 25)
Web Hooks (June) – Trigger actions outside of OUCampus. Can be assigned on folder.
Image Size Sets (July) – Set size (crop or not), group to set, assign to folder
File Uploads for LDP Forms (September)
Feed Manager (Winter) – easier feed management
OUCampus 11 (Winter)
Phase 1 – look and feel
Later phases to workflow
Formstack – available in Marketplace
Looking Further Forward
OU Calendar
Layout Builder
Accessibility Check/Insights Improvements
V11 Phase 2+
We’re exciting to see exactly how Web Hooks will work. There is some decent potential there.
I attended the Gadgets workshop again on Wednesday. It was a different take on that workshop, and I did find it to be useful. I’m always looking to improve my javascript game.
Later that night was the Hackaton. While I’ve been lucky enough to of been on the winning team in the last two events, I wanted to try a different role this year. I partnered up with Aaron, Soe, Fernando, and Nick in that order based solely on seating position when the Hackaton begun.
Aaron really wanted to develop a command line interface for OU. Fernando was all in with the idea, and quite frankly I was a little on the fence. In the past I’m leaned on user driven ideas, not so much admin. But Soe and Nick were all in, and I really wanted to try to enter with someone else’s idea this year.
I can’t say this enough, but we really worked so well as a team. Fernando was a command line genius and Aaron and Soe were great coders as well. They did such a great job, and far exceeded what I thought would get done in that timeframe.
Nick and I decided to focus on the presentation and marketing aspect of our team. We came up with talking points and images to be used. We even used the official presentation template (since I was a presenter) and got some big chuckles from the audience. Presentation can be a big factor in hackathons and we had a lot of fun with that.
It was a good thing that we worked so well as a team as there was some very stiff competition this year. Translation tools, image compression gadgets, XSLT data parsing, so many great entrants. In the end we did win, and I somehow would wound with with three in a row. Insane.
The last days workshops were very cool too, but there was so much going on in them I will have to revisit my sandbox and review the code before I forget too much. I’m very interested in learning more about PCF data outputs, especially outputting to JSON.
The flight home was smooth and a great way to end a great conference. While I’m not learning quite as much as I used to, it is fun to be in the role of the veteran who is now sharing knowledge with the newer folks to the platform. Glad I was able to attend again and looking forward to working in all the new ideas that were shared!
Finally back home from the OUTC18 conference which took place in Anaheim this year. This is now the third OUTC that I have attended and I continue to come back impressed. Getting to meet and discuss not only colleagues from other schools, but also the development and support staff is very beneficial.
The flight over wasn’t too bad. I did feel quite lousy for a good part of Sunday after the flight which unfortunately is the norm for me with travel. But, I was able to get close to normal after a In-N-Out Burger courtesty of OmniUpdate at their welcoming/registration. So within a few hours I did check off a big to-do from my California list within the first few hours. Not too shabby.
Monday had some solid sessions. The opening keynote and panel discussion were interesting. Learned about some new offerings from OmniUpdate and also got some insights as to where some folk think things are going.
I also took part in a Feedback meeting with members of the OmniUpdate development team and a colleague from Dartmouth. It was nice that the OmniUpdate folks took the time to learn about our longterm goals and how they may be able to address them in the future. I did appreciate their time.
Later that evening OmniUpdate had invited us to dinner in Disney California Adventure and we had a few hours to walk around the park. I didn’t go on any rides as there really wasn’t much time, but walking around and taking everything in was pretty interesting. Radiator Springs from the Cars movie really stood out as well as A Bug’s Life were interesting too.
Day two I presented early in the morning. I felt pretty tired and lousy as I just hadn’t adjusted to the travel, time zone shift and the lack of sleep. I don’t feel as though my presentation went very well, and was through my slides in about 15 minutes (for a 45 minute presentation). However, we went over the allotted time with some excellent questions and answers. It was great to be able to give advice to other schools looking to successfully migrate in a similar manner as we did recently.
The Tackling Quality Control with XSL had some excellent suggestions that we will certainly look into, and Turn OU Campus into a Marketing Machine really got me excited to try out Google Optimize. Both those sessions really stood out to me as something we could certainly benefit from.
I did enjoy the workshops more this year than in years past. I’m not sure if they were better or if I was just better prepared with a couple years under my belt. I certainly learned a lot and am eager to share with the team.
Wednesday night was the Hackathon. Even though I was on the winning team last year, none of my teammates were to be found as this year’s OUTC. So I asked a random guy who was sitting alone if we wanted to team up with me. Our team was formed.
We bounced around a few ideas, but thought that leveraging the Google Vision API (which is amazingly powerful) to suggest or apply alt tags to images would be pretty amazing. If you feed the Google Vision API and image it will analyze it and suggest what it thinks the image is. We testing a dog photo out. Not only did it respond that is was a dog, but it also responded that it was a golden retriever. We were sold.
With only a few hours to work with, we split up the tasks and went right to work. Ryan was developing the Gadget that we would use within OU Campus and I went to work on the Google Vision API portion.
While we realized that we weren’t going to be able to complete the task by the deadline, we did focus on getting the core functionality done, so that we could demo the power of what we thought we were only by leveraging that particular API.
The 7 or 8 teams gave their short presentation then the judges left the room to pick a winner. While they were gone, I was pretty sure that the team that developed the file lock would win, with maybe the Insights project.
The judges returned and after a group drumroll announced that the Google Vision team had won. Both my partner and I sat there looking around for several seconds. We both assumed that they had announced another team as we winner. We were truly shocked and not prepared for that. It was an extremely fun time and felt pretty great to be able to win the Hackathon again.
All in all it was a very beneficial conference, and one that I was very glad to attend. While I wasn’t as impressed with Anaheim as I have been with San Diego or LA, it was still a pretty amazing adventure and the weather was perfect (even though I was indoors for almost all of it). Great and very useful time.
