Tag Archives: goals

Today I choose to keep my son home in September (TIC00023c)

The PolyBlog
August 12 2020

Most of my posts in this series are about “my” choices, things that are mostly within my span of control. Things I do with my computer, for instance. I don’t have to consult anyone, it’s not a “joint” decision, it is just me.

But with schools in Ottawa re-opening, the question comes from the school board as to whether we intend to send our son back in September or not and that is not a decision that “I” can make on my own, it’s a joint decision of mainly Andrea and I, but Jacob is involved too. We wanted to know what he is comfortable with, what his concerns are, etc. And it helps that all three of us independently came to the same decision in this case. Jacob will do remote learning in September rather than return to school.

During a broader discussion with family during our vacation, when we were still mildly “on the fence” while hanging very firmly to the “stay home” side, I was asked, “What would I need to see to feel comfortable sending Jacob back?”.

A great question, and perhaps not a fair one to answer, as I’m not sure even with all of the best scenarios in place that I would choose to send him back. But I want to work through it, even just as a mental exercise.

I had thought about looking at the variables more holistically in terms of what makes sense for safety for teachers too, but I haven’t. I don’t need to, that’s not my responsibility to decide. I don’t mean that harshly, I just mean that I don’t have to imagine a full solution, just my part of it. And my part is just my kid. School boards and teachers are in far better places to gauge what they need to do for their own safety. I don’t need to figure out their risks for their families, budgeting for the school board, rules around opening and closing with individuals, or even if they need to check for a kid’s temperature every morning. I could, but that really doesn’t affect much of my own decision, and since the local schools aren’t doing it anyway, it’s kind of all been decided.

I didn’t need to frame the decision for EVERYONE, just for us. And here’s how I saw it for my part of the joint decision.

Understanding risk

I confess that I have a bit different understanding of risk than most people, partly as I have managed corporate planning in government for a number of years, including risk. This means that my view of risk is a bit more nuanced.

Most people fall into one of two categories for understanding risk:

  • Those that think risk is primarily about probability i.e. what are the chances of something happening?
  • Those that think risk is primarily about outcome i.e. if something does happen, what impact will it have?

So for COVID-19, the first group wants to talk about low infection rates, incident rates, flattening the curve. The second group wants to talk about the potential for death if they do get it and the differentiated impact on various groups such as by age.

But, to me, the risk around COVID-19 is a lot more complicated when applied to an individual situation like my household, and more specifically, my son returning to school, than a general population risk.

For us, there are a number of specific variables:

  1. P/E: This is the probability of being exposed to the virus. If you’re in quarantine, the risk is low, since you’re not coming into contact with anyone. If you’re hanging out at a bar with all your friends, the chance of coming into contact with someone with the virus goes to high. In a school environment, I think we can safely say that the appropriate rating is probably medium (possibly high for SOMEONE in the school to be exposed, not necessarily high for an INDIVIDUAL in the school to be exposed directly). Not guaranteed, but not zero either. There is no way to keep it to zero, you’re dealing with other people. Of course, if you take into account the number of families involved, and that many of them have younger kids who will not social distance (variable 4), the likelihood of spread is almost guaranteed, but that doesn’t mean a higher grade like Jacob’s (Gr. 6) will see definite exposure. On the other hand, if the schools were checking temperatures every morning, that would be a pretty big way to reduce the P/E from the population rate to a specific school rate.
  2. SoG: The next variable is the size of the group. Obviously, the scale is linear. If you are exposed to 0 people, you’d be low, just like P/E. But whereas P/E is more about macro indicators, this one is more about cohort size. If you have 0 kids in your classroom, you are low; if you have 15 (a common recommended size by medical people), you would be medium; and if you have 30 kids, it goes to high.
  3. T: T is for time. The duration of possible exposure increases the risk. Coming in contact with someone briefly is unlikely to result in infection, it isn’t airborne in the normal sense. So, let’s say minimal contact is low, sustained exposure is high, and anything over probably 20 minutes up to an hour is probably a medium.
  4. SD: This is the social distancing variable, but because it is a mitigating technique, the scale seems almost reversed. If you are fully socially distanced, the rating would be high (fully mitigated); if you’re not socially distancing, it would be low (no mitigation); and in the middle is medium mitigation. For a school environment, I think this completely varies by grade. Up to grade 3, I think most teachers, parents, social media, everyone except the die-hard “school must open!” fanatics would agree that kids up to grade 3 are unlikely to fully respect social distancing. They’ll do their best, both the kids and the teachers, and inside of a week or two, it will be a complete failure. They just don’t have the mental discipline or judgement to overcome basic social instincts. But how kindergarten kids handle social distancing is not particularly relevant to my decision, as Jacob is going into Grade 6. There’s still the contagion effect from members of his cohort having family members in other grades, but that in and of itself is not directly relevant. Within Gr. 6, I think there will be enough peer pressure to relatively enforce social distancing. I have less confidence when the kids are in the bathroom or at recess, but Jacob is not a highly social animal.
  5. M: M is for the masks. Any barrier to the transmission is part of mitigation, same as SD, and I think we’re talking the same scale…no masks / no mitigation = low; full PPEs / full mitigation = high; anything else is in the middle at medium, even using non-medical masks. For Grade 6, I think we’re in the middle.
  6. S: In addition to social distance, and masks, your other mitigation is regular sanitization of not only the space but also simply washing your hands. If you can wash regularly, HIGH mitigation; if not, LOW mitigation.
  7. RII: This is the risk of individual infection. There are lots of macro details about how likely a kid is to get sick, blah blah blah, but that is a population estimate. I don’t need to know that, I need to know what the risk is of my son getting sick. Is he more prone to illness? Are there behaviours or conditions that increase his individual risk of infection? Since we’re back to the main variables, not mitigations, this scale is normal (low for low, medium for medium, high for high risk, completely straightforward).
  8. ROI: This is the risk of specific outcomes for the individual. Separate from the risk of infection, if the person is in frail health or has a compromised immune system that might let the disease run rampant quickly through their system, then they have a much higher risk. Another way to think about it is directly related to long-term care facilities with the elderly. They might not individually be at higher risk of infection, even with some of their health concerns, BUT they are at much higher risk of experiencing the worst outcomes of the disease i.e. death, if they do get sick. They won’t simply get bad flu, they’ll die. And so it makes no difference if there is a macro indicator that says the survival rate is blah; the only thing that matters is whether that specific individual will be at risk. Obviously, low/medium/high is the simple scale again.
  9. RIG: This is one of two variables that gets closest to “high-risk” households, separate from any risk to Jacob himself. In short, what is the risk of infection within the group i.e. our family unit? If Jacob is perfectly healthy, but I’m really prone to infection, then the contagion effect for him to me is really high. If we’re all super healthy, it’s low.
  10. ROG: The second part of that “high-risk” household is what is the risk of specific outcomes for the group Jacob is part of…even if we can generally fight off infections, BUT once infected, if we’re prone to things going through our body fast, then we’re high risk.

A formula for comprehension

While I’m not talking about doing any real math here, there is a way to quantify those risks:

Risk of school = [Probability of Infection {P/E, SoG, T} – Mitigation {SD, M, S}] X Impact {RII,ROI,RIG,ROG}

So what does that mean for the option to send Jacob back, taking into account what they have in place?

On the probability of infection, we start with the probability of exposure, and I think we’re talking MEDIUM risk of direct exposure. It won’t be 100%, won’t be zero, and there’s not much you’re going to do on it outside of macro indicators for the neighbourhood or city. It is, in short, what it will be. Unless, again, they were to test temperatures at the door every morning. In effect, screening out high risk cases on a daily basis before they even enter the classrooms. Without it, it’s just the population estimates.

For the size of the group, the province has done nothing to cap class sizes. Which means up to 30 kids. That is a HIGH risk by my evaluation. It isn’t entirely clear to me if they will be truly cohorted either, and by that, I mean with a single teacher. Or if instead, the teachers will still rotate. If it does, it’s kind of like the warnings about sexually transmitted diseases…you are having sex with every person that your partner has ever had sex with before. So, your kid might be in a class of 15 (great!) but if their teacher is rotating to other classes, the exposure vector isn’t really for a 15-person class anymore. They are exposed to every kid that your teacher has taught in the last two weeks. Lots of comments were received in the consultations where parents were concerned about options for “family cohorting” i.e., if they had a kid in grade 2, 4, and 6, could they all be in one class (like a one-room schoolhouse of old) so that they would only be exposed to the same kids, not three classes. Nope, no such mitigation. But since it is already HIGH, and family cohorting only exacerbates the problem overall, I don’t have to worry about “extra” risk.

Time is a crapshoot. Literally, anything over an hour is problematic, and probably 20 minutes. There is virtually (no pun intended) no way to avoid that risk, and so it has to be HIGH in my view.

So our PoI = MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH. Of course, that is assuming no mitigation in place. If you send the kids back with no mitigation, large numbers of people in close contact for long periods of time, yep, you’re going to get infections. You don’t need math to understand that situation, you just have to watch the news.

But the main thing that allows people to send their kids back to school is mitigation.

For social distancing, this is going to be related to a bunch of things. If there was a cap at 15 kids, you’d be able to space out in a classroom. At Grade 6, I think J would be able to show enough discipline to be able to maintain that space. Would it be pleasant? Nope. But he could do it. Except that is NOT what they gave for mitigation in the schools. No cap on sizes, so social distancing can’t be done in the classroom. There just isn’t the space for it. If it was 15 kids, great. But without that ability, the mitigation is LOW.

On a related note, the options for buses are a giant mess. Great that they are on the bus for, on average, less than 20 minutes. So exposure is limited. But the buses have multiple age groups so not all will be wearing masks, social distancing will be impossible without extra busing being available, and enforcement may be non-existent since the driver has to actually drive the bus. There was NEVER a chance I would let Jacob take the bus, I don’t think. I just couldn’t see ANY mitigation that would compensate for the intense risk of exposure during the commute. It’s the same thing for my wife…she doesn’t drive, but she will NOT be taking public transit, I will drive her wherever she needs to go. If she isn’t taking public transit, Jacob is not taking a school bus full of kids.

Of course, the second option in the mitigation is about masks. And their intent is for the students to wear masks. Generally speaking. Great. Except Jacob is struggling with his mask. As most informed people know, “Just Do It” is great for a Nike slogan, not so good when you’re dealing with anxiety-based disorders or asthma-like symptoms. It isn’t just a question of mind over matter if you can’t control your mind. He feels like he can’t breathe in the double-layer cloth masks; he’s relatively okay in the disposable surgical-style masks. But Andrea and I can go about an hour before we’re dying. And Jacob is going to wear it for most of 6 hours? Yeah, that ain’t likely. So while masks are great, when it comes to Jacob individually, I would say that the mitigation will be LOW for him.

Sanitizing everything sounds awesome. Even with the likelihood of it being done the way most schools are done now which is as cheaply as possible. And I read a stupid math attempt by a teacher who thought all her kids would line up to go to the bathroom at the same time six times per day and wait while each one washed their hands so it would take literally hours per day. Except that is the stupid math that prevented people from doing assembly lines. You don’t have everyone go at once, you have one person go and do it while everyone else keeps working. They don’t spend 15 minutes in line each time while other people are washing their hands and they don’t wait until everyone is done to go back to their studies. Maybe in younger grades you have no choice. But I can trust my son to go wash his hands and come back. But more importantly? Why would that be the model anyway?

When I go to my local computer store, and I walk in the door, they have a portable sink right there. It has water in it, I can wash my hands, good to go. Portable toilets have options for sinks with water in them. I don’t need my kid going down the hall to a common washroom for 300 kids and touching everything in there. If he has to go to the washroom, sure, there’s not much choice. I don’t see them coming up with mitigation where every classroom has its own portable toilet somewhere (although, if you were in a portable classroom only used by that cohort). But washing your hands regularly? You don’t need to leave the classroom to make that possible.

Would Jacob’s classroom have that? Nope. So I have to again give it a LOW mitigation rating.

So at this point, we have MEDIUM, MEDIUM, HIGH probability less LOW, LOW, LOW mitigation. If I was exceedingly generous, I could say that comes out to a MEDIUM risk overall. But when dealing with probability, you go to the highest rating and the lowest mitigation which is almost non-existent in some cases. I think, in all honesty, Jacob’s risk goes to MEDIUM-HIGH.

The impact on the household

This section is a bit more challenging to write as some of the details are not mine to share. So let’s sum it up as the risk of infection for the individual is probably LOW, risk of outcomes for the individual is MEDIUM, risk of infection for the group is MEDIUM, and the risk of outcomes for the group is HIGH. As an example, I have aspects of diabetes (I bop around the near-to diabetic group and pre-diabetic group, but not formally in the diabetic group), family history of heart disease, and blood pressure issues. There’s other stuff going on, but those are the main factors. That likely puts me in the MEDIUM-HIGH category just for me, before I even take into account some respiratory issues.

That means the overall impact on the household, if Jacob gets infected and likely infects us, comes out HIGH.

An almost no-brainer for our family

So HIGH risk and HIGH impact? Yeah, that was almost a no-brainer for us. But here’s the thing. It is also devastating for social interactions. And Jacob already has some isolation factors to deal with, with COVID exacerbating them. We WANT him to be back in school, but we simply can’t take the risk. And we are fortunate enough that we’re working from home, but that doesn’t mean it is easy by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely added work to keep him on task, even as he enters grade 6.

Other parents will have different interpretations of risk, different factors, and truly “your mileage my vary”.

But today I choose not to send my son back to school in September and instead do virtual learning. It helps that both he and my wife were of the same view, I can’t imagine households where they differ and how you resolve something so fundamental. As one popular mean put it, there are no good options.

Will that be my decision until a vaccine? Possibly. Or maybe something will change. To go back to the earliest question, for me to even have considered it more actively now, I think I would have needed to see:

  1. No busing. The risk of transmission is just way too high, and not just for those using it.
  2. Temperature checks on every student entering the building. A parent saying “Oh, I’m sure they’re fine” as they drop them off is NOT sufficient. And to be honest, I think the parent should have to wait until the kid is “approved” to enter. The school can’t be responsible for tracking down a parent who has left for work and can’t come get the kid. And if the kid has a temperature, they should be gone for 3 days minimum before they return, assuming no other symptoms. If that’s not feasible for a family to manage that level of uncertainty, they need to find another solution rather than transfer their risk to everyone else.
  3. True cohorting limited to 15 students with a single teacher for the day. The cap on the student size allows good social distancing and a single teacher protects everyone.
  4. Sanitation solutions in the classroom. Ideally, this would be a portable sink, but barring that, some sort of formal hand sanitizer option could be sufficient, I suppose.
  5. Mandatory masks. This would likely be a deal-breaker for Jacob, but I don’t see much way around it. Certainly, if they are out of their desks, the masks should be on…for going to a washroom, or a sanitation stand, travelling anywhere in the school, they need masks. If, while at their socially-distanced desk, they want to remove, I think that would have to be allowed.
  6. Desk-based resources. If you are using equipment or reference materials, everyone needs their own copy somehow. You can’t be sharing resources.
  7. Time-based outdoor breaks or vastly improved ventilation. I don’t know if it will help, but I think fresh air every 45 minutes would be helpful. No idea how that works when raining or when the snow comes. Maybe it’s a large covered area outside that stays dry and snow-free. Maybe it makes no difference. Maybe improved ventilation would be sufficient so they aren’t trapped in a bubble of exhalations, like getting off an airplane.

And yet, with all of that, it wouldn’t change our high-risk household. And that might be the only factor that matters in the end. Even if it is “low-risk” in the forefront, like going grocery shopping, it would still be an “optional” risk. I still need groceries, but Jacob has a perfectly safe virtual option to learn from home. It’s not a good choice, it’s just a safe choice.

As I said, today I choose to keep Jacob home.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to treat myself for dinner (TIC00021c)

The PolyBlog
August 10 2020

When most people say they’re going to treat themself for dinner, the immediate thought is likely eating out somewhere. But, to be honest, we eat out a lot anyway. There are even times where it feels less a treat than simply just time and energy management.

But that isn’t what I’m talking about for today. When I was growing up, we had several treats throughout the year. January, February and March were pretty much a wash. In April, the local DQ would open up for the season (it was a simple building with walk-up windows, no in-store seating). I remember going to B.C. and being surprised they had actual “walk-in” stores that were open year-round and had full Brazier offerings. My local B.C. friend mocked me for the fact that I asked, “Is it open yet?”. 🙂

May was the month for setting up at the lake, and that would usually mean the start of BBQ season too. Maybe a bit earlier at home once we had full propane systems, but not before that. Hamburgers were common, but a decent steak was “special”.

June was the start of strawberry season, and we would often stop at the farmer’s field en route to camp as soon as they were open. We did u-pick sometimes, but not that often when I was young (the siblings did it more frequently when they were younger, I think). That season would stretch into July too.

I’ll jump ahead a bit, with September being generally nothing special. October was Thanksgiving, which meant pumpkin pie, turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, and my mom’s version of Yorkshire pudding. November was a yawner, and December was a bit of a repeat of October.

But August? That was the stuff of legends. My dad liked hosting parties, although not parties at home or anything. No, he wanted people to come out to the lake, sit around, have a beer, stay for supper, and the options were pre-set. Hamburgers and hot dogs were staples, although I skipped those tonight.

Instead, I went with a really nice steak. Andrea bought me a big “box of meat” for my birthday in June, and it came with some chicken breasts, pork chops, steaks, bacon, and shrimp. Plus some sausages, I think. I forget. It was a LOT of meat. 🙂 So since Jacob doesn’t like beef as much (harder to chew for him), Andrea and I each enjoyed a nice steak tonight.

But the main draw?

Corn on the cob for a corn roast. We had some corn about two weeks ago, early corn as my mother would say, and I never expect much with the early corn. But honestly, it was the best “early” corn I’ve ever had. Really good. Again, we had some at the cottage a week later, and it was still in the top 5 for early corn. A really good year, it seemed.

But now we are into “real corn” time, as my mother would have said. And I have to say, tonight’s corn was damn near perfect. Yellow from end to end, perfect uniformity, moist, absolutely awesome. No word of a lie, I think it may be the best corn I’ve ever had in my life. Definitely in the top 5. And we only bought two ears this week. I want to rush out and buy a bunch more.

And just for fun? We had strawberries in chocolate pudding for dessert with a cranberry beverage to wash it all down, while eating on the deck under our gazebo with the screen around it to keep the bugs out.

Today I choose to treat myself for dinner.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to reorganize all my data files (TIC00020c)

The PolyBlog
August 10 2020

A new computer, a fresh install of Windows, all the software (or almost all of it) back up and running. And now it’s time for my data to be in the right places after the upgrade.

Cleaning my C Drive

I was low on space with my previous setup, and when I moved to using Mylio as my photo management software, the only place I had available to create a “vault” of photos was my C Drive. It was a 500GB hard disk drive, and software was eating up about 100GB. The Mylio vault of 20K photos (captured so far) ate up another 40GB or so, but there’s another 100GB+ to go when all my photos finally make it into the vault. I don’t like putting data on my main Windows drive, I prefer to keep it as just my “installed software” drive, if only to avoid having to dig too deep to do backups. Mixing data and software is a really good way to miss something in a backup. And since those drives also get the heaviest use, they’re also the most likely to fail.

My new setup has a 1TB solid state drive, and I had them partition it to 350GB for the software part of the equation. I had about 250GB used before with various things, and I over-estimated my new needs — I have 344GB of space with only 56GB in use and 288GB available! And that’s with almost EVERYTHING installed. I’ve been considering adding some astro software that has some pretty big databases, and was wondering if I would have room. Apparently I do!

Making a Fast F Drive

The other part of my new SSD drive is set up for a working drive where I can put all my working files when I’m doing heavy processing or opening. The real size is about 585GB after rounding, and at the moment, I’m only using 20GB, mostly temporary files that I just haven’t deleted yet. I’m looking forward to creating some working directories for active projects.

However, those temporary files are part of my huge “oops” when getting ready for the upgrade. I did a full backup, all great, right? Yeah, not quite. I did the backup, sure, but I forgot the new system would be a completely fresh install, so I wouldn’t be just copying everything back. I use FireFox so I have all my bookmarks synched with my online account, I still have all of that. But I use a plugin called OneTab where I had a TON of bookmarks stored. I was basically using it over the last few months in lieu of the bookmark manager, and I *really* like it. Except it isn’t saved as part of the Firefox synch. I’ve reached out to the company by email to see where the data is saved in the drive — with Windows? with User Application Data? Under Mozilla? No clue, I went through all of it and can’t see an obvious page that would be the page of bookmarks. I just don’t know how it saves the data. It may be gone, but that’s just part of the stupidity of doing a backup without thinking about how I was returning non-normal files. If I can’t get them back, no harm done, just a “nice to have” if I can find the original files.

I also have some files saved in there which were templates from various things. Like my DYMO label printer, for instance…I have some custom-saved labels. I didn’t back those up in the normal way, so putting them back might be a challenge. Easy enough to recreate though, just faster if I can just copy the old ones.

Putting the I in Drive

I wanted to create a drive called D for documents, but D is already taken with my CD ROM, and I don’t want to change that one, it makes sense to be close to my C setup. I considered M for MY DOCUMENTS but you’ll see why I didn’t use M for this in a second. In the end, I thought it was kind of like “I will save it here…”. I have directories for:

  • Astronomy — lots of planning, writing, reference materials, stuff to and from RASC, etc. And my astrolog, of course.
  • Documents — this is the default My Documents directory, but honestly, I rarely save things there. Too many software installs use that directory by default and it’s hard to change some of it to elsewhere. So I just let the tech software use it for ASCOM, Custom Office Templates, and two ebook saving directories (for Kindle and Adobe Digital Editions).
  • Email — I have a ton of old emails that at one time I had in Eudora. While I still have some of the Eudora install files, it was easier to just export some of them and dump them in their own directory. I also have some from work that need to be copied over to here as well, but they’re hiding elsewhere for now.
  • Organize — this is a huge directory that I’ve used for a long time to keep templates, updated to do lists, stuff for our house, and even old templates for CD jewelcases from back in the day. Could probably delete those now, to free up a couple of K of space. 🙂
  • Personal — This is my REAL “my documents” directory, with sub categories for Andrea, computers, correspondence, my mother’s estate, family, finances, games, health, HR, Jacob, my schooling, trivia, and our wedding planning (there’s more than just planning in there though so it ISN’T in with the organizing stuff). Most of it is not that current, so I tend to leave it one level down.
  • Work — This is a very big set of directories, some of it just stuff I should probably delete but since I have plans to write some stuff when I retire, I’ve tended to keep it for now. It’s all unclassified, nothing there, but things that I saved over the years. Key reports I wrote, for instance. All grouped by the job going all the way back to Foreign Affairs in ’93.
  • Writing — Pretty much all my fiction and non-fiction writing going back a little over 20 years. My current “projects” will end up on the FAST drive, but this is more my ongoing archive.

I also have a TEMP folder of files that were sitting in the wrong places previously, but go into the above sub-directories. Rather than spend too much time fighting with it for now, I dumped it on the drive for now and I’ll re-direct it to the above directories later.

In total? 38GB out of a whopping 1.9TB of space. There are some huge files that I have stored in the cloud that will eventually end up here, but for now, I just have the above files.

M is for Media

Remember I mentioned above that I copied files but didn’t quite plan properly for a “new install”? This is the drive where that becomes VERY painful. Well, sort of, I guess. The drive has a bunch of file types that can get quite large:

  • ebooks — 41GB;
  • french learning materials – 17GB;
  • music — 150GB saved twice = 300GB (see below);
  • ROMs for games — 13GB;
  • videos — 20GB;
  • temp — 17GB to sort and file above;

So let’s start with ebooks. I run Calibre as my library software, have done so for years, have multiple libraries saved under it representing my workflow for reading and reviewing. TBR piles in digital form, read but not reviewed, etc. All good, I love the layout and setup, and while I tweak it from time to time if/when I change my workflow, it meets my needs. But the kicker is that my Calibre setup was NOT the vanilla default setup. No, I had tweaked all the layouts and toolbars. And installed extra plugins with lots of bells and whistles, often requiring serial numbers or ID numbers from elsewhere. All good.

Except I didn’t EXPORT all those settings when I did the backup. I just backed them up. But of course those setup files also include the locations of where the files are saved and stored. Which no longer apply since I moved them to totally different drives. So, installing Calibre from scratch involved redoing all the tweaks and additions I did previously. Not insurmountable, just a bit of work I didn’t anticipate having to do. And of course, I run Calibre, but I also run Amazon Kindle for PC which requires tweaking and set up, as does Adobe Digital Editions and Cloud Library. Oops.

For the music, there are two sets of files…one for iTunes to do whatever it wants with, which is terrible things to do to a nicely organized library. Think of a giant directory with thousands of entries for artists, rather than by album. Sigh. iTunes also likes to replace files with ones from its own service when they’re smaller, and people have had horror stories losing things they had in lossless originals only to be replaced by a crappy MP3 from Apple Music. So I don’t let iTunes read my music library directly. It has its own area. With 150GB of music in both, some 38K songs.

I run multiple music systems simultaneously, so the directory goes a bit crazy. I uploaded all the music to Apple, even if it is in terrible shape for a library. It’s all there. Google Play Music used to let you upload 50K songs for free, but it is going the way of the dodo bird, being replaced by YouTube Music, which requires a bit of work to figure out they’ll let you have 100K songs or 3TB of free space while spamming the crap out of you to sign up for the premium edition on every single page. Their upload was taking a lot of time, so I think I only ended up with about 6000 of the songs uploaded. I’ll add the rest sometime later. Amazon Music has a free space area for Prime members, which I am, so I started uploading to that which was EVEN slower. Over the course of about 24 hours, it uploaded about 17K songs out of 38K. Then I gave up.

My MAIN player on my desktop is Media Monkey, and if it came with an iOS app, I’d probably not bother uploading ANYTHING to Apple Music/iTunes. But it doesn’t, and I don’t want all 38K songs on my phone. Even at 150GB on my desktop, and assuming it goes for lower quality on my phone, it would still likely top 50GB. I have the room, but no good player to use. It’s on my list to figure out, but the other glitch is that Media Monkey will ONLY transfer if I do it through a cloud service OR through physically connecting the phone to my computer, which I never do. Oh, and I didn’t save the Media Monkey settings either. Easy enough to reinstall, just annoying.

I have a bunch of video game ROMS, and I knew I was failing to export the settings for RetroArch before I did the transfer, as I want to do a fresh install of it with proper USB drivers for the remote gamepad. Still, work left to do.

I have some videos, a measly 20GB, but I have a LOT more sitting on my laptop that I haven’t transferred over. Not sure where I’m going to put them.

But with all of it together, I know this group of files is going to grow exponentially, so I have put it on my biggest drive. I’m using 403GB so far, but there’s 3TB of space available. I should be good for some time yet. 🙂

P is for Photos

As I mentioned above, I use Mylio for my photo manager, and it uses a “vault” system to distinguish between general photos on a drive and those that are “under” Mylio control. While I was never under any risk of losing my photos, I screwed up my migration. All the settings in Mylio can be exported, but since they are easy enough to tweak, I didn’t really think about it. I had my original, and my backup on a separate drive, all good. Right?

Well, not quite. Mylio’s primary vault was on my original C: Drive with its secondary mirror vault on my external backup drive. Totally synched, all the time, double-checked. It was my biggest worry. Making sure a full set was “elsewhere” of the vault as well as separate photos that I haven’t integrated into the vault yet. What I didn’t realize was that unlike Calibre, which generally opens a library/vault in whatever directory it is stored, Mylio wants all the technical info exported and then imported. Which I didn’t do.

So when I reinstalled Mylio and told it to open the primary location, it started to import all the photos. But not everything was going back into the right folders, and even some of the resolutions seemed off — like it was showing me the low-res version instead of the high-res version. I dug deep into the Mylio support site, and found diddly-squat for migrating a drive. It basically kept telling me I should export everything first. Great, but what if I had “crashed”? What would I do then? I reached out to the support group, after all I am a paid member, but it’s the weekend so no joy in Mudville. Eventually I found a help file dealing with something quite different but buried within it was a paragraph or two about what to do if you installed a whole new operating system. Well, yes I had. Let’s go with THAT option. I deleted a bunch of stuff, deregistered the link, opened the software, logged in as if it was the first time AGAIN, and it said, “Hey, I found a vault over on your backup drive, shall I use it? Oh, never mind, I’ll just do that.” Yeah, it doesn’t wait, it just finds vaults and starts reading them in. THAT vault it read just fine. No issues at all. The whole 20K+ photos with all the right settings, resolutions, and set up. Perfect. A rigamarole to get there, but it’s “done”.

I’m paranoid about the backups of the other photo directories, so I’m checking those a bit manually to make sure nothing went wayward in a file copy anyway. Due diligence, and I can use overall size and number of files to tell me if everything is where it is supposed to be, but that’s just grunt work.

Since I use Mylio, I have a separate Mylio directory for its vault, leaving “Pictures” to be like My Documents. I let other apps use it, and keep my stuff relatively separate. However, when I transfer photos from my phone, they get dumped into that directory, so easy to find.

The drive also has my “creative” ventures on it, memes and website images, or even badges for my reading challenge. And a big collection of clip art.

It total, I have 717GB so far, and the photos are going to grow, particularly for astrophotography. The drive might not be big enough in the end, but I have 1.25TB still available. I have time.

V is for Virtual Archives

I have all my application installers saved here, including old ones. It’s about 17GB in total, not that much space.

I have a temporary copy of my music backups here for now, and that’s the 150GB version. I’ll likely ditch it once I get everything organized on my main drive. I don’t need three copies on my main computer!

And while I have online options for backups of my website, I occasionally download complete backups of everything, just in case. That’s another 40GB.

Which leaves me with 250GB used and 675GB in free space. Still lots of room, so I’ll likely make a photo backup here at some point, after I ditch the music.

Wrapping up

I would love to say I’m “done”, but I know that’s not true. I have multiple small hard drives with files hiding on them. Some are a whopping 40GB (remember when that was a LOT?), and once I copy off anything worth having, I’ll wipe them securely and then recycle them.

But that’s a longer-term problem, no rush. In the meantime, I’m “sorted” enough that I did a new backup to my external drive today. I still have to reattach the Network Attached Storage (NAS) and figure out cloud storage for Jacob and Andrea’s computers too, but for now, it’s under control.

Today I choose to organize my data properly so that there is a place for everything and everything is in its place. More or less, anyway.

What choices are you making today?

Today I choose to upgrade and update my software (TIC00019c)

The PolyBlog
August 9 2020

As I mentioned yesterday, I have an almost-new computer setup — not a new computer, just a lot of upgraded components, including more memory, more storage, new Windows install, new ports, etc. Faster and more efficient, and a cleaned-up install. But that clean install comes at a price. I have to rebuild everything that sits on it. Today’s focus was mainly about the apps.

I had the techies install Windows fresh and clean, with no caffeine, but everything after that is on me. They could have migrated my old install but that would have defeated the purpose of the upgrade. Too much old bloat. Going through some of the old files, I found remnants of programs that I removed over three years ago! Pass.

I tend to think of my software as grouped by headings:

  • Systems — This is basically technical apps, like the NVIDIA controller for the graphics card, and I also threw in my drivers for my colour printer. I have two other printers available to me, a Brother LaserJet upstairs in the office and my old HP LaserJet 4L next to my computer, but I haven’t tested that part yet.
  • Security — At the moment, I have two main security tools, namely Bitdefender for all the firewall and antivirus stuff, and while it comes with a crappy VPN too, I prefer Private Internet Access for my VPN system. Everything reinstalled, tested, and the VPN upgraded to having the KillSwitch activated.
  • Internet — I have only three programs in my Internet category, which is down considerably. Normally I have FTP programs, multiple browsers, maybe some P2P stuff, and an email program. Most of that is part of my old life and not really a feature I need right now. Instead, I installed my browser (Firefox), and that was pretty much the first thing I installed — I needed it so I could install all the updated installation files for everything else. I do a bit of Torrenting, so BitTorrent is also there, and it gets the job done. I tend NOT to let it run unmonitored so it meets my needs along with the VPN. And last but not least? MIRC. That’s a weird one, I’ll grant you. It’s an Internet Relay Chat app, and it works pretty well. I’ve used variations of it going back all the way to the late 1990s. It serves a similar function to BitTorrent, and while I don’t use it often, it’s frequent enough to install the latest version along with some extra scripts. From time to time, I also use it to play in a couple of online trivia groups.
  • File Management — While most Windows users rely on the simple File Explorer for most things they do, I hate it with a passion. Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, I used a program called PowerDesk and it was my favorite replacement. Then they changed the layout and user interface, and it tanked. I hunted around for a replacement, and after a few iterations, I tripped over a program called xplorer2. It’s not big, it’s not flashy, but it works GREAT for me. Multiple columns, tabs, views, layouts, previews, everything I need and a lot of stuff I don’t, but I can hide the stuff I don’t (not something I can do with a lot of the flashier apps). If it ever stops working in Windows, I’m going to cry. I use it for EVERY file movement I can. After that, I use some things for some niche tasks — a special RAR extractor that has a few bells and whistles called FreeRarExtractFrog (I might just use it for the Frog motif); a 7Zip extractor and compressor; VeraCrypt to encrypt some financial files; and then a small suite called XN (i.e. XNViewMP, XNConvert, and XNShell) that do a bit more with graphics than my default xplorer2 can do. Two things that are missing from this list are a backup program as I’m currently transitioning to a new tool that I haven’t bought yet (in the meantime, I’m relying mainly on full file copies with multiple redundancies) and online storage (related).
  • Office — While I mean that term generically, MS Office 365 is the big install. On top of that, I have MS Teams for work and Zoom. I used to have a lot more installed and I just never use much of it anymore. Open office replacements, mind mappers, organizers, portable apps, a few other bells and whistles. I still need to install drivers and software for my label printer and my scanner, although I’m not sure if they go under Office here or under Systems above.
  • Photos — Right up front, I have Mylio as my photo manager. I’ll come back to this one tomorrow, as it is not a simple “install and go” option. It’s a bit more complicated than that. In addition, I have Affinity Photo, GIMP, Paint.Net, and Photo Pos. Plus I restore the default Windows Photo viewer; it works well for simple edits and viewing. Interestingly, I didn’t need to reinstall a bunch of other niche apps — bulk image converters, duplicate photo finders, image resizers, online gallery uploaders, etc. They’re not really part of my workflow anymore even though I have the apps if I need them. I still need to install a PhotoSync app that copies my iPhone photos over to my desktop without using iTunes or connecting a wire, just links through my LAN.
  • Video — With my growing interest in astrophotography, some of which is done with video rather than images, my video software has expanded. For editing, I have VideoPadEditor; for viewing, I use VLC or Kodi, depending on the media; for conversion, I have AnyVideoConverter Pro or even DVD Shrink with AnyDVD, which can handle mostly old stuff at this point. Skype was already installed, and while I have a webcam, it was plug and play, so no extra cam software was needed. Nor did I need any of the other editors and converters that I’ve tried over the years.
  • Music — This is where things got interesting. Sure, I have iTunes since I subscribe to Apple Music for the family. I love their radio stations with no ads. I’m almost incapable of listening to normal radio stations now. But I also have Amazon Music and YouTube Music for uploading. But for day-to-day file management, I use Media Monkey. I just wish they had an IOS app. What I find most interesting is my archives for software in this area — old MP3 player file managers, Real Player, WinAMP, all of which would still run. I just don’t need it right now. But I am loathe to delete them as they do READ a lot of old files if I ever need to convert stuff. I don’t install them, but it’s almost like time travel to see all the various apps.
  • Ebooks — Getting everything installed today was a bit of a pain in the butt, to be honest. I’ll talk about it more tomorrow, but I kind of screwed up my preps for the upgrade, and while a fresh install is great, I should have planned a bit better to make the transition a bit more seamless. Ah, live and learn. I have Calibre installed with a bunch of plugins, Amazon’s Kindle for PC reader, Adobe’s Digital Editions (to read books from the library) and Cloud Library (ditto). I didn’t install the Kobo reader, I never use it.
  • Astronomy — This was more extensive than I expected. For planning, I have Best Pair, Select Astro Stars, and AstroPlanner; for navigation, I have Starry Night 8 and Stellarium; and for processing, I have PIPP, AutoStakkert, Deep Sky Stacker, Nebulosity and Registax. I considered playing with PixInSight but the price is too exorbitant for my blood. I didn’t install the Canon software for point and shoot cameras or any of the software for controlling your telescope since I don’t do any of that from my desktop.
  • Programming — I really only have programming stuff for Jacob at this point, and since it is on his computer, I didn’t feel the need to also install it on mine. So, for now, I have nothing installed. I want to do some app development in a year or so, so will need to find a solution or two, but nothing right now.
  • Games — I have a bunch of one-off games here and there, mostly card games (like Bridge or Solitaire, etc.), and I installed none of them. They’re all pretty old now. I also have RetroArch which I *will* install, but not yet. I also tend to play MS Solitaire, but that comes preinstalled.

And that’s it. About 16GB of install files, and about 60GB of installed programs with Windows. I have a few more to add here and there, but the bulk of the rebuild is done. Whew. It was a long day.

Today I choose to prioritize, reinstall and update all my software on my computer with a fresh install.

What choices are you making?

Today I choose to upgrade my computer (TIC00018c)

The PolyBlog
August 7 2020

In my last post, I noted that I had broken my chain at 9 days, deliberately so but still a break. So I’m starting “series C” for my TIC posts. I also noted in the last post that one of the things I did before heading off on vacation was to drop my computer off for an upgrade.

A history of out of date hardware

I have a strange history with my computers, particularly given how much time I spend on them. I started messing with computers in high school, Commodore PETs at school and a simple VIC-20 at home. The C64 was out but I limped along with a simple V20. And my journey with “2nd or 3rd generation back” computers had started.

In university, I started using a PC at work, and while I was writing essays and stuff, I settled for a simple electric typewriter that had delusions of being a wordprocessor. The memory functions were rudimentary so I mostly just used it as a typewriter.

Decent, but hardly the latest and greatest version. In between first and second year, I upgraded to an IBM XT clone; the ATs were out, with the faster 80286 chips, but I settled for an 8088. I even ran DOS for awhile, programming my own BATCH menu that incorporated some elements from Lotus 1-2-3 menus and a shell system I saw on a BBS system. I could make it get up and dance, and I used the computer well past the arrival of WINDOWS 3.0.

I eventually upgraded to a Windows 3.0-capable machine, but barely capable. I could get it to do just about anything I wanted it to, albeit not necessarily the fastest or most efficient system. Windows 95 and even 98 arrived, but I kept running my old system. Eventually, it died and I had to upgrade, but I went for something that was WIN NT capable just as other, later versions of Windows were current. Again, a couple of years behind the curve, but functional.

Then about 4 years ago, I decided I needed a new computer and something with a bit of power. I had played with basic laptops and netbooks, but nothing super powerful, and I didn’t want to spend over $1000 if I could avoid it. It has been a constant theme with me. I generally get the most bang for my buck at a given price point — $1000-$1200. Almost every time I have bought a “new” system, I’ve gone in at that price.

This last time, I decided to go for refurbished. The bells and whistles I wanted were just too expensive to buy new, and if I did my REAL desired system, I’d be in the $2000 range. Nope, there’s a store in Bell’s Corners called The Trailing Edge and they specialize in tech that is NOT the bleeding/cutting edge, but a season or two back. Tested, functional, and cheaper. I splurged on an i7 chip and motherboard, semi-decent graphics card, some basic memory, and I was away to the races. I subsequently added two more hard drives — it came with 500GB, and I added another 500GB and then a 1 TB. But of late, with 2TB available, I was down to about 200GB of free space spread across the three drives. And running a mite slow.

I played with the idea of upgrading and going full laptop this time. We bought Jacob a laptop back in March for his “home schooling” options so he wouldn’t be confined to our office, and it is pretty sweet. We got a good deal on it at the time, large screen, gaming speeds, a definite option, but to be honest, I already had a laptop and a functional desktop. Why go to having TWO laptops, even if one of them is semi-permanently connected to my downstairs TV? Plus, J’s computer doesn’t have a ton of onboard storage at that price point, and with another bell or whistle, I’d be pushing the $2K mark again for what I wanted.

No, I like having my desktop, and I like having the power that goes with it. I just want a bit more speed and power. And this time I figured I would go for the gusto, even if I’m choosing to upgrade rather than buy new.

Configuring the upgrade

So my motherboard and chip set gives me an i7 setup with quad-core processing, and that is still more than plenty powerful enough for what I want to do.

I’m getting a bit more into video, but it’s not like I’m Spielberg or Lucas doing high-end special effects, most of the time I’m editing a video to remove some segments. An iPad can do most of that, to be candid. I considered upgrading from my 1050 graphics card (which is considered basic gaming capable) to the 1650 card, which comes with 4GB onboard instead of 2GB in my current card, but NONE of the video software that I’m using takes advantage of the onboard video, it all works its magic through the main processor. I could have added it for $220, but to what end? No, my money was directed elsewhere.

First and foremost, I wanted to switch from a hard disk drive (HDD) to an actual solid state drive (SDD). It’s like a hard drive made out of RAM, and they’re super fast. You basically put all your software on it so it loads super fast and it does … Firefox used to take 3-5 seconds to load when it wanted to load that is, and now it’s less than a second. Booting up from scratch requires the BIOS to load and then Windows to load, and while I can’t do anything about the speed of the BIOS really, Windows now loads in about 30 seconds instead of 3 minutes previously. I considered a simple 240GB drive which would have just held all my software or 500GB which would give me apps + some storage space for active files (like videos that I’m editing). I considered going all-in on a big 2TB SDD, but that was pushing the $300+ mark, and final pricing and availability couldn’t be confirmed. I settled for a 1TB drive, $190 or so, partitioned as 350GB for apps and configuration files with a bit of extra room, and 585GB for active files (most likely for anything video related, but I have some other projects I might want to store in there too). They open like lightning from that drive.

Second, I wanted more memory. I had 6GB installed, and there were times I was pushing that limit with some of the processing I’m doing for astrophotography. I upgraded it to 16GB for $60. It’s hard to benchmark the performance boost from that without doing a hard-core processing request, and that will take some time to get back setup and going because of step three.

Third, I had them completely do a fresh install of Windows 10. I’ve tried a lot of software over the years, and some of it just does not uninstall gracefully. Plus there are all the updates to Windows itself, blah blah blah. It was running slow before and I didn’t want them migrating it. I got them to install the new drive, move the other one out, and reinstall Windows from scratch. Crisp and clean and no caffeine. It was hard to believe that when I booted, I had NOTHING loading. Not my security software, not my internet setup, not my VPN, nada. Heck, I didn’t even have Office installed. A completely fresh install. Of course, that means a bunch of tweaks I did here and there were gone, but I can fix that as time goes on.

Fourth, the SDD drive is nice, but only 1TB, and once you put all the software in, not much more than 600MB left. With my other 1TB drive, I was only boosting my space by about 500MB, since I had to take a 500MB drive out to make room for the SDD. Instead, I had them take out the second 500MB drive, throw them in external enclosures so I can use them as backup drives / portable HDDs, and then fill that empty bay with a large internal HDD. Namely, I went for a full 6TB of space! It was about $300. I had the tech partition it for 2TB+2TB+ whatever was left, which is actually larger than expected. It comes out to almost 7TB by the time I’m done. So, I have:

  • My main SD drive, 350GB with 300GB still free before I start installing all my apps;
  • A second SD drive (partition), with 585GB free;
  • A 1TB drive, which at the moment has stuff still on it but I’ll move it around;
  • A 1.95TB drive;
  • Another 1.95TB drive; and,
  • A 3.37TB drive.

It seems crazy I know, until you realize that most of my high-end astrophotography uses either RAW format or large TIFF formats. It doesn’t take long before processing jacks the storage requirements for even a single night of imaging. A guy in our club did a huge mural, way more than I ever did, and the final picture file was almost 500GB in size. Crazy time. And to be honest? I seriously considered an 8TB drive. They have 12TB drives available, but that seemed like overkill.

But with great power comes great responsibility, namely to do backups regularly, and while I will do a lot of incremental backups, I wanted more speed. So I had them throw in a port for USB 3.0, something seriously lacking in the original system since it wasn’t available when this system first hit the market. I don’t need that speed all the time, but for about $50 I think, I had them add it.

They also did some other work under the hood, but that was the big breakdown. Oh, and I’ve been thinking of getting a new printer for my basement office, but I had them reconfigure my old HP laser printer that I bought back in 1995 — yes, you read that right — and they were able to get it working under Windows 10. Sweet.

There was also a bit of a crapfest story around dropping it off just before I left (waiting for a quote, confusion in communication about their hours of operation, rushing in at the last minute so they could upgrade it while I was away, picking it up today surrounded by some idiotic customers who had no clue what social distancing meant, etc.) but it isn’t worth relating. The important thing?

Today I choose to have an upgraded system that gives me enough power that I don’t have to simply limp along on some of the projects I’m doing. I actually have the power to do it fast and efficiently. No more workarounds. Well, at least not for a few years anyway.

What choices are you making with your day?