Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Month: September 2020

  • Thinking about backup internet

    Last night I watched the entire presidential debate from start to finish. Even that could not shake me from the disappointment of a 13 hour internet outage previously in the day. It was listed as a planned outage, but it lasted past lunchtime on Tuesday. The interesting part was that you could tell the cellar network was getting heavy usage from all the people switching to hotspots in the area to keep working. It was one of those days where I had to move to my backup internet access plan. I’m glad that we have a backup internet strategy, but I was a little surprised it had to be utilized for so long. Using the hotspot on a smartphone creates the possibility of connecting to the internet for the most critical devices in the house, but I do not have one of those backup devices that connect to the actual internet network in the house. Some of these devices exist where you plug into the network and the device just waits until the internet goes out then it takes over at a much slower speed. Yesterday was one of those days where I really did contemplating getting some type of backup internet appliance. Using a smartphone to connect a laptop or computer via wireless internet is probably the right way to manage things, but it is not the only way that is possible. With more people working from home I’m wondering if backup internet options are growing in the marketplace based on demand.

  • Oh that planned outage

    It appears sometime around 00:07 hours my internet providers decided to start a planned outage. That was six hours ago and things are not back online. Strangely enough I’m not sure I got any notice of the planned outage. A quick search of my email inbox via the power of the cellar network shows that no such notice arrived. I’m now curious how planned the planned outage actually was and what the policy is for notice to customers. I’m sure they are busy working on fixing whatever it was that needed to be fixed, but this seems like a very long outage for a Tuesday.  I’d show you a screenshot of that outage notice on my Google Pixel 4 XL smartphone, but the application prevents screenshots. I’m sure it does that for my protection, but it is rather annoying. It means that any details has to be fully communicated to others outside the power of a simplistic screenshot. Right now the only kids television shows we have this early in the morning are from PBS over the air (OTA) broadcasts on regular PBS and the PBS kids channel. That works out well enough. For some reason everybody was up bright and early before 06:00 hours this morning.

  • A lack of focus

    This week my focus will not be on attempting to buy any graphics cards. Something positive has to be hidden within that nugget. At the moment, I’m really sort of wondering about the day. It is a Monday. The dogs are extra feisty today for some reason. Maybe they know something about the weather or the day in general that I do not know.  

    Interrupted.

  • Technical leveling up adventures

    Recently I have been thinking about just how much free technical training is available online. Between things like Microsoft Learn and the Trailhead from SFDC you could spend a ton of time on technical leveling up adventures. I spent a lot of time in the world of higher education finishing up advanced degrees. It is an entirely different type of learning to spend time on small incremental sessions that earn badges or just points. That is a way to engage in a sort of leveling up that is very possible to do. You can spend time working on these things a little bit at a time. I’m sure all that training can be used along the way to earning certifications. That is not really my aim at the moment. Generally I just do the training for the express purpose of keeping my mind active and busy on complex tasks.

  • More reading and writing

    Today could have started off with a review of my notes. A few observations have been squirreled away for coverage at a late time. Right now is not a time for notes or for thinking about things from the past. It is a time for being present right now in the moment. At the moment, I have a cookie and two shots of espresso. That should be enough to produce a solid page of prose. This functional journal is going to need to become a little more observation driven for the next few months. While I’m not going to by any means become a live journal type of writer where my every thought and feeling get put down on paper more things could be written. Throughout the last 132 days I have been trying to write a page of prose at the start of the day. Those words have been targeted from a stream of consciousness that sometimes yields to the production of prose and sometimes does not allow that simple task to be completed. Writing a single page of prose should be relatively easy to achieve. It should be even easier given that any topic could be covered. Maybe that is the underlying problem the totality of the scope being covered makes it harder to sustain. Perhaps focusing on one topic and going for extreme depth of coverage instead of the ongoing breath of coverage would be the best way to go about the daily production of prose. 

    It seems like the best path forward toward that perfect possible future is to engage in more reading and writing on a daily basis. My bookshelves contain hundreds of books that could be consumed again from a slightly different perspective. My views on things are more refined and probably a little less interesting than 20 years ago when a lot of the books behind me were purchased from university bookstores. It would be pretty easy to just start reading from one side of a shelf and just enjoy the intellectual ride across a ton of different authors and subjects. 

    I jotted down 3 book titles that should be on my shelf, but have not been written:

    1. Observing civility in America: Being a citizen of history
    2. The American Citizen: Civil society and being a citizen of history
    3. Community in America: Understanding place, interest, and circumstance

    At the moment, I’m in one of those modes where I could probably write down 25 titles of books that should be written. Some of that energy should be used to write the outline and maybe a chapter or two of one of them, but that seems unlikely to happen at the moment. Something tells me interruptions are about to abound this morning. Having the time to simply sit and write in my office is a luxury beyond the time that I have today.

  • Still pondering graphics cards

    For two consecutive weeks I have tried to order one of the new NVIDIA 30 series graphics cards. First, the RTX 3080 sold out in seconds last week. Second, the RTX 3090 sold out almost instantly this week. At this point, NVIDIA would have been better off just listing the tiny supply of graphics cards they have on eBay and allowing the market to take care of things. Whatever they did as a course of business failed miserably. I still do not understand why they did not just set up a method for preorder that accepted payment and put people on a waiting list for delivery. The people that really wanted one of the first graphics cards in this new series would have just waited in line to get the card. Demand was that strong on this one. That would have been the best and most fair way to share this graphics card with the world. At this point, I can say the launch process has been rotten. On October 15, 2020 the last NVIDIA 30 series card will go on sale. I’m not expecting the sale process for the RTX 370 to go any better based on the previous two examples. 

  • Trying to buy the RTX 3090

    6:00 AM (Denver, Colorado): Here in about 55 minutes I’m going to try to buy one of the NVIDIA RTX 3090 graphics cards when they go on sale. What might be a concerning sign about that is that NVIDIA has already apologized for the online sale that happens in 55 minutes. Apparently, they have a very small supply and things are not going to go well…

    7:00 AM (Denver, Colorado): I tried to buy one of these cards using the website this morning. At just after 7:00 AM mountain time it looked like the website changed and then went almost directly to an “OUT OF STOCK” message in all extremely disappointing capital letters.

  • Those stuck words

    Waking up seems to be going very slowly today. In a few minutes the sun will come up and the day will start, but my efforts to write are not that predictable. At the moment my Warren Zevon Pandora station is playing a lot of Bruce Spingsteen. Sometimes that happens in major spurts. Algorithmically some similarity must exist I guess. Nobody really wrote music and lyrics like Warren did for decades. You can tell that the writing process has not kickstarted yet this morning. I’m writing about my surroundings and not reacting to anything that is kicking up a strong emotion or thought about anything particular. That is generally a bad sign for the start or sustainment of an early morning writing effort. This whole page is not going to auto populate. I’m going to need to start writing something more substantial. Maybe at this very moment the right thing to do would be to shift gears and start writing a short story or maybe just dig into some type of fiction related effort. It does not feel like that is going to happen either. At the moment all of the good words appear to be stuck and those stuck words are not making an appearance on the weblog this morning.

  • Oh that new GPU sale

    The team over at NVIDIA will put the brand new GeForce RTX 3090 aka the “BFGPU” on sale in the morning on Thursday September 24, 2020. Apparently, the team over at NVIDIA has publicly apologized for the frustration caused by the 3080 launch last week. It was a terrible online product sale launch. Simply terrible. The attention of people worldwide was focused on it and things did not go well. Even thinking back on it is frustrating and disappointing. I’m probably going to try to buy the 3090 this week during the launch window. My bet is that I won’t actually be able to buy one and it will be an exercise in trying to do something that should be simple and failing miserably at it while knowing the entire time that is the most likely outcome. I’m not sure an exact word exists to express that emotion, but if the team over at NVIDIA is not careful it is entirely plausible that their brand name will become synonymous with that feeling. It has to be a word that conveys a certain type of exasperated emotion that is somehow worse than futility.    

    My Corsair Air 740 cube computer case is already ready for the installation of the new graphics card that has not even been purchased at this time. I have the special 8-pin Corsair cables on my desk and a special support bracket for GPUs that came with the ASUS TUF X299 Mark 1 motherboard. None of that will help one of these new 30 series graphics cards show up. I’m not entirely sure exactly what I want to do with this new graphics card. That is one of those things that need to be considered. I’m probably going to spin up some type of TensorFlow instance on this computer and do some things with it. Generally, I could just use the Google Colab notebooks to do that type of thing and it would be a lot less expensive, but at the same time it is a lot less fun. That second part cannot be understood when it comes to buying a new GPU. The excitement part of the whole thing has a certain appeal. Being ready for the inevitable 8K monitor that I’m going to buy is also a big plus, but the 3090 is probably overkill for that type of effort alone.

  • Maxed out creativity

    Some weblog design changes had to be made yesterday. First, the very top header image had to be set back to active on the site. Something that has not happened very often occurred and it was aesthetically awkward. The plugin that allows advertisements to be placed pretty much anywhere on the page was causing trouble. That was easy enough to fix, but it took me a few minutes of starting at the half empty page to figure it out. Traffic has been coming into this weblog in spurts this year. Generally speaking my writing is here mostly just for my own amusement. I sit down and write for the express purpose of creating prose. The output is the point in this case. Sure the process of creating the prose helps me think and put my ideas in order for the day. Most of the time when I sit down to write in the back of my mind I can hear my voice saying the words that are about to be written out on the page. Sometimes when I really get into the groove the words are appearing on the screen at a fast enough rate that it is like I’m reading them instead of hearing them spoken out loud. That is generally a sign of a good day where creativity is going to be maxed out. In some ways that is the goal of this whole endeavor to max out creativity on a daily basis. Mixed into that effort is solving problems and working toward a perfect possible future. 

    Interrupted. Shenanigans.