Experimenting With The Heat

Posted on August 25, 2021 by SusanG
drawing of a leaf

One of the side effects of feeling better is that there are some things that, though I cared about them before, now, I care about doing something, or what I can, about them. Some of them are environmental, as in climate, pollution, energy usage, among other things, and some of them are more personal.

One of the things I’ve begun to take notice of and try to do my part on is my energy consumption, or at least the heat generation in my home office. The room that I use for my home office, is also the room I use for my art. It has always been the warmest room in my home, but I’ve never thought that much about it. Until this summer. I started noticing that it would get quite warm by mid-morning to the early afternoon. It would be very noticeable. You could walk into the room and feel the heat difference, and you could walk out of the room and feel the temperature drop as you moved into the rest of the home. This became really important to address after I decided to increase the temperature on my a/c one degree warmer.

In this room is my work laptop, with two monitors, and its port replicator. The room also houses my personal desktop computer with a monitor and a Wacom Cintiq. When I started on this project, I would have all these items on during the day. And sometimes well into the evening. The room also sticks out from the building a little so that it is more exposed to the sun than many of the other rooms. I had already been trying to keep the blinds and curtains closed during the day to keep that heat down. And while it made a difference, the issue persisted.

So where did I start? I started by turning off the Cintiq on the personal computer and trying to work with just one monitor again. It made the most sense because I am not usually using the touch screen function of it, and I can turn it on if I need it. That didn’t make a significant difference. Next, I tried turning down the brightness on the work monitors. That helped some. So, I turned down the brightness on the personal monitor. I was working along like this for a week or two when I discovered something that turned out to be particularly interesting.

I noticed that if I had a lot of applications open on my personal computer, and especially something with heavy graphics, the fan on my computer would spin up and run quite hard. I’ve since learned something else interesting about this, I’ll get to that in a moment. Anyway, with that heavy fan usage I realized the computer was working pretty hot. I decided to try to limit the applications that I had open at the same time. I didn’t stick with that for long. Instead, I decided to update my personal laptop and try using it in place of the desktop to find out if that would make a difference. It does.

I discussed this with a colleague who has built a few machines and done some gaming and things like that that are in line with the type of desktop computer I have. He made the point that with a desktop graphics card geared towards gaming, as mine is because that type of graphics card is also good for rendering graphics for art and 3D art, these type of graphics cards have fans built in and the desktop computers have more fans in the cases so there is little concern for heat mitigation. And as I started the testing with the laptop, which also has a gaming style graphics card, though it is a few years older, I have noticed that it doesn’t run near as hot. Until…

I was working with two browsers open on the laptop, Chrome because it works well with my Gmail, and Edge because it works well with my Microsoft account and training. I had the CNN site open in Edge and Gmail in Chrome. I had not been on the CNN site for long when I noticed the fan on the laptop starting to spin up to cool it off. I closed Edge and the fan quieted. I tried the same site again and it started up again. I did some testing back and forth between the sites and browser combinations and what I found is that CNN in Edge causes some strain on the graphics card, it doesn’t do it in Firefox. And I haven’t noticed any other sites that do that, at least not yet.

There has been discussion as to how the different browser makers implement the different code bases that are being used or made standard. This seems to be a good example of how there is a difference and why, even today, people who create websites need to test them in a variety of browsers, particularly all the most popular ones. That allows them to understand if their site is going be consistent in appearance regardless of the browser being used. For the most part. And, it would seem that they also need to test their site for the performance impact the site has in the different browsers. Though, to be fair, one thing they might not be able to test is the impact any advertisements that might run on the site will have.

And that is a whole other topic. For years there have been issues with the behavior of ads on web sites. I’m not going to go into that here. I just know it has been a problem. So maybe that contributes.

Here are a few more tidbits to keep you thinking.

I received some sort of communication from my power company that included ways to save energy. One of the things they suggested was turning down the brightness on the TV to cut power consumption. Sounds like what I did with my monitors.

Several years ago, Google did an experiment with their website. They made their website with a black background for a day in solidarity with some event or cause. What we found out from that is that it takes more energy to display a black website than their white one.

A coder discovered that the way many websites are coded actually increases the power necessary to run or display said websites. He set out to clean up his code and cut the amount of energy that was needed to run the sites and code he developed.

Here’s where I’m at with this interesting heat and power issue now. I’ve been working from the personal laptop for about a week, maybe a little more and I have noticed a big improvement in the temperature in my office. I have a little more information regarding things to keep an eye on when I decide to move back to the desktop. And I still keep the blinds and curtains closed as much as possible. I have learned several interesting things along the way and remembered a few things as well.

I know a lot of this may seem small and irrelevant to many. What impact can it really have. In my case it has an impact on my comfort for working. It will also have an impact on my electricity bill. In light of the recent climate report from the IPCC, I think these things are worth thinking about. I may be one person, making just a few small changes that are a very small drop in the bucket to fix the problem we are facing on the planet, but my very small drop added to many more very small drops can eventually be a flood. To be sure, it will take political and economic will to do the big stuff that will really make a difference, that doesn’t mean I can’t do my part.

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Feeling Better

Posted on August 12, 2021 by SusanG

I didn’t know I didn’t feel good. Yes, I put on a few pounds during the COVID lock downs and stay home orders during 2020. I have heard that a lot of people did. I have finally gotten rid of that weight. It was in the process of starting to shed that weight that I figured out, I hadn’t realized I didn’t feel good until I started to feel so much better.

The process of shedding the weight has been multifaceted, as it should be. What I discovered, and to be fair the process of gaining the weight started well before 2020. What I discovered, or, realized was that I had slipped into bad habits in several areas of my life. For this story the reasons don’t really matter. What matters is that I had let my habits regarding feeding myself become convenience, not what was nourishing. While I continued my Taekwondo, it really was my primary exercise and just not enough for what my body needs. But I didn’t start to make progress in dropping the weight and getting things straightened out on my own, though I tried.

Earlier this year I got an email to join a program that was being funded by my insurance. (I guess insurance companies have finally figured out it is more profitable to keep us healthy than to pay for all the chronic illnesses that come with being sedentary.) I ended up signing up before I realized what I had done. And then, because I felt I’d been duped, I resented signing up for a while. But I got a new scale which was incredibly helpful as I was soon to discover, the one I had was no longer working right.

I will say two things regards the program and working with it. Like some other programs, the biggest part is accountability. When I record what I ate, do I really want to say I had a whole bag of cookies or M&Ms for lunch. And having a “coach” to help look for patterns has helped. I/we figured out I wasn’t feeding myself properly, I wasn’t staying properly hydrated, and I wasn’t getting near the movement my body needed. That high hamstring issue is from sitting too much and was a clue I was missing.

So I’ve been getting much more activity, staying better hydrated, and eating better for a few months now. And one day I was marveling in my head about how much better I feel. And that’s when it hit me that I had so slowly fallen into not feeling that good that I didn’t even know I didn’t feel good. It’s like the story of the frog in the pot of water. If you raise the heat gradually it doesn’t register it is in danger of boiling to death.

It turns out there are side effects of feeling better. Not the ones you might expect. Yes, I have clothes I can wear again and some things aren’t as hard as they once seemed. Those side effects I expected, or at least hoped for. There are things that I didn’t expect to be impacted. I’ll try to share some of that in a future post. And I’ll work on getting a picture or two for the next post.

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News From the Day Job

Posted on July 8, 2021 by SusanG

This week I am on vacation, or vacancies as my home office colleagues say, from the day job. Since I am not traveling it doesn’t look much different than when I am working with a couple of minor exceptions. I don’t get up as early, and I don’t spend the bulk of my day at my work computer trying to keep systems running.

I have been in the fortunate position over the last sixteen, seventeen months to be able to work from home for my day job. My company went into remote work mode as a test in March of last year and doesn’t plan a return to the office until September. And then, they are expecting a more hybrid approach to how people work.

Personally, I have loved working from home. For so many reasons. So much so that I have struggled to find things I don’t like about working from home. What I have come up with, and it’s not really a dislike it’s more of an unforeseen disadvantage, is that I don’t get near as much natural movement in during the day. Where in the office, I had the walk from my car to the office and back again, I don’t have that at home. Another thing I had in the office was the 300 or so steps to the nearest bathroom. At home that walk is less than 50 steps, and if I go to the nearest one to my desk it’s about 10 steps. This has contributed to the increase in girth and weight over the year. Which I’m happy to say I have managed to remove, but that’s for a different post.

All through the year, we, particularly in my office, have been regularly polled on our desire to return to the office and in what capacity. I have consistently expressed my desire to continue to work from home. Note, I live 5 miles from my office, but it can take 20 minutes to get there at 6:30 in the morning and 30 minutes to get home at 4:00 in the afternoon. With this desire to continue to work from home, I have been a bit anxious as news of the discussions of planning for the return to the office have been happening.

A few weeks ago, the official announcement was made for my office. The lease for our office space ends at the end of this year. Even without the pandemic, we were going to need to do something. As it turns out, with all of that polling less than half of our office wanted to return to the office and for those who did, most didn’t want to be in the office full time. So, my office, is going virtual. We will be the trailblazers for our organization, and we will see how it works.

I am thrilled. I’m excited to get to continue to work from home and relieved to have that all settled.

There will, I don’t doubt, be hiccups and issues. Even though we have been doing this for over a year out of need, it will be different as the restrictions that made it necessary are lifted. As the world opens back up, there will be temptations for some to maybe flex those hours in a way that isn’t really appropriate. And, as there has no doubt been, there will be the struggle to draw the line of when we are working and when we get to call off for the day. Something that I deal with due to the nature of what I do.

Even with the struggle to draw the line between work time and off time, I look forward to being able to continue some of the good habits I have finally started to develop while being able to work from home. They have made a significant difference in my well-being. And while I am looking forward to adding back some out of home activities, such as Taekwondo in the studio instead of my living room, I know there will be some relearning of how to work that schedule that has been so up-ended this last year plus, and now is a little different because of the lack of commute. You would think that would make it easier. I sure hope it does.

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About That Guitar Course

Posted on June 21, 2021 by SusanG

As you can tell I haven’t been very good at keeping up with writing again this year. Even when I have an idea or topic to write about. I have been finding it a little frustrating. However, I just realized some of why I haven’t been getting as much written and I may have a solution, or at least one I’m going to try.

With being home so much and not getting out and about as well as not getting a lot of art, of any kind done lately, I don’t usually have a lot of new pictures to include with my post. I like to include the pictures to break things up. However, there is the prep work for the pictures that I don’t always like to do. The pictures are a thing for me, especially when they aren’t specific to the topic of the post. My solution involves less pictures unless relevant. That does mean you may see posts without pictures. I’ll try to keep those shorter since reading all text on a screen isn’t always ideal.

And as with today’s topic, sometimes there really aren’t pictures to share without making something up.

What I wanted to share was how much fun I had working on the songs for a Children’s Songs for Guitar course through Udemy. No really, it was a blast. It sounds like it’s really simple and basically it is. The key to the course that made me want to do it to begin with is that all of the songs are in G major and they are all played within the G major scale. When I first started the course, my first thought was ‘Crap, I don’t know the major scale’. Yeah, so off I go to find a diagram of the G major scale. And lucky me, I was able to find one with all the different positions, much like the pentatonic scales I have dealt with. Cool!

The great thing about learning these songs in the G major scale is that I now also know better how to change their key. Just like changing the key for a blues song. What I found even more interesting, and fun was playing the songs in a different key and hearing how it changed the feel of the song. Like ‘Amazing Grace’. Playing it in G sounds ok but it doesn’t have a lot of life. Move it up to B or B-flat and you have a whole different story.

I have finished the course and intend to use what I learned about the G major scale to practice moving the scale patterns to the different keys and getting some comfort with that. It should enhance my soloing skills as well as my playing overall. As part of that I expect to be playing many of those songs in the different keys, just for exercise. At least, that is and was the plan.

And then my plan got knocked off its rails. I was merrily going along practicing my new scales and songs and I started another course, that I tried to work on last year, Christmas songs, I also started a beginning piano course. You might think this is what knocked my plan off its rails. It isn’t. It was two things that killed the momentum. First was a long and stressful week at work that left me little energy for much at the end of the day. And, more significantly, I added both the Christmas songs course and the piano course to my ‘To Do’ list and completely lost interest in doing either.

Yes, I know that is pretty messed up. I think what happens is when I see them on the list, I then see them as either I ‘have to do them’, or they are the only things I can be working on. It really takes all the fun and joy out of them when I put them on the list because, now they are chores.

I am a fan of the list in general for helping me to not forget things I want to do but that are not pressing and allowing me to then clear them out of my head so that I have space for what I really need to think about. However, it seems that, for me, it is not always helpful.

This is the first week I have taken the guitar and piano off the ‘To Do’ list. It will be interesting to see if that helps and how soon I make the time again for one, or both, of the courses.

And now that I have a different approach to my posts, I might get posts up a little more frequently again. I already have an idea for at least the next post. That’s always a good start.

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Projects, and More

Posted on May 23, 2021 by SusanG

As I noted in my last post, I had some time off from the day job and was using it to finish up some projects around my home. I swapped some furniture already, the couch, some lamps, and the tv stand. I still have a few pieces to be delivered. There are some new side tables coming and new accent chairs. I will be excited to get them I’m also excited to have finished up some of the projects that I have been working on.

Meet Phil the Pothos

One of the things I have been working on for about two years is changing out most of the light fixtures in my place and replacing the ceiling fans in the two bedrooms. I have had the light fixtures for two years. Finally, a couple of months ago I ordered the ceiling fans. Once they arrived I put in a call to an electrician to come out and install them all. I will do a lot of things myself, electrics are not one of them. I scheduled with the electrician to do it during the week I was going to be off work from the day job. I wasn’t going anywhere so I might as well do it then. It took them about half a day to change out four lights, a chandelier, and two ceiling fans. And it looks awesome. I’m so happy. Not only does it look awesome the lights solved a problem I was having, especially in my kitchen, it was too dark. Now I have light again.

I shared the picture of the new tv stand in the last post. I actually finished that up while on vacation. That took a little longer than I expected to put together. I like it so much better than what I had.

The bedroom painting finished!

My other big project that I worked on was painting my bedroom. You have probably heard, or read, my rant about this tan color that was on all my walls and I could no longer stand. Just to make it clear, that color was on the walls when I bought the place, I didn’t put it there. The bedroom was the last room with that color and I have finally finished painting the bedroom. Unfortunately, that color of tan is really hard to cover. It has to be neutralized first. That meant a total of 3 coats of paint for each wall. And as I don’t have a spare sleeping place, I decided to work on it a bit at a time. I spread it out over the month and worked on it at the weekends. I’m glad I did it that way as there were days that when I finished my joints then spent the next day or two screaming at me in protest. I’m really happy with the color, and now the new ceiling fan. It’s nice and peaceful in there and I generally think I rest better.

I did get someone to come and pick up most of the old furniture and the boxes of donations. That was nice to see. They didn’t take the couch though so I’m still working on how to get it out of my garage. Now, I also have some light fixtures to go with the couch. I have one more possibility I’m going to try before I give up and just have someone haul it off to wherever.

Music gear to be traded in

There was one more ‘clean out’ project to do. One I’ve been working on mentally for a year or more. I had a bunch of music gear that I was ready to trade in. One day, I thought, ‘I’ll take that in while I’m on vacation’. I was going to do it on Wednesday. But the Wednesday before, on my lunch hour, I suddenly had the urge to clear out the stuff in the music room that was going to get traded in. I put it all in a pile in the dining room. I then called to find out, with the social distancing and such, if I needed an appointment. A few more questions and I was able to find out that the gentleman I had worked with in the past was still working there and would be in on that Friday and Saturday.

So, Friday, after work I loaded the car with all the things to trade in and made my way to my local Sam Ash music store. I got some help with hauling it all in and then while they assessed the value of everything I got a chance to try out the Fender Jaguar.

A cleaned up music room

You may remember from some of my posts last year, that I was having trouble with my fretting hand and arm and wanted to try out a guitar with a shorter scale neck. The Fender Jaguar and Fender Mustang, from what I found have the shortest scale neck on a standard size commercial guitar, 24 inches. I do like the shorter scale. It was quite comfortable and easy to play. I found all the switches, and location of some of them, not as friendly. I know there are lots of people who like all the switches. I’m not really one of them. So, I passed on the Jaguar.

There was one other thing I wanted to look at, a steel string acoustic guitar. I was trading in a Takamine Dreadnaught that was really too big for me to play comfortably. I couldn’t play it sitting down for very long so I would play it standing up. I had also come to not care for the tone of the instrument. Because of that, I wanted to replace it with something that fit my body better and had a tone I like. And that was what I looked at after the Jaguar.

The gentleman at Sam Ash, knows his stuff and was able to help me find several options that filled my needs. Even with limited stock he found several guitars that were more my size, not dreadnaughts, and had good tone. It ultimately came down to sound because the one other request I had for it, having a cut away, turned out to not be a deciding factor. I bought one without a cut away, that fits me really well, sounds great, and I can comfortably play for way longer than I should. It’s a great quality guitar and will likely be the last acoustic I purchase. Oh, and just for those in the know that want to know, I got a Martin.

Phil, starting to get friendly with a guitar case

And with that the last of my guitar and music quest has been completed. I have some great, good quality instruments that I enjoy playing and expect them to keep me happy for a long time.

And you all were worried after the last post that you wouldn’t get to read about the fun music and art stuff anymore.

Now with those projects complete, I’ll be moving on to the less exciting and more grown-up project of replacing appliances. Though I will also be starting another fun project.

I have that 24 move poomse I have to design. What is that about? The Master where I take Taekwondo, as part of the third-degree black belt or third Dan test requires you to demonstrate the knowledge you have gained by creating what some call a creative poomse, or form. You create your own form using the knowledge you have acquired over your time studying Taekwondo doing the formal poomse as well as hand techniques and other drills. It must utilize more advanced skills and be of a degree of difficulty fitting a black belt. As I understand it, I will need to do another one in five years when I test for fourth degree. To put this requirement in perspective, fourth degree (fourth Dan) is Master level. So, by achieving third degree, I will be one step below Master. I have about a year before I am eligible to test for third Dan. I want to work on creating the poomse starting now so I have time to refine it in design, and then to refine my execution of it.

The new look of the living room. Almost done.

I’m still working on the PowerShell for work. I had plenty to do while on vacation and didn’t make that my focus. Though before I started vacation, I was finally getting into the main part of the course I bought on the subject. And, in the book I have been reading, I am past all the basics section and moving into the more advanced, and possibly more useful section. I’ll be getting back to that really soon. I won’t have a lot of excuse not to. The upgrade project I have been working on at work is just about complete, at least this phase of it. That means, I’ll be expected to get back to my PowerShell and scripting studies. I’m good with that.

That is the excitement for now. Next time I’ll tell you about the guitar course I’m working on. And who knows what else I’ll have to share.

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