I retract everything about this being helpful technology Sorry about that should have waited to praise the tech until it had proven itself. I need to learn patience. But I was so happy I had found something to solve my issuesâŚ
Today I reactivated my original docking station and removed the gadget to send it back. Not only does it get really hot. It does not work with the work computer that it needs to work with. There is a linux on there that is running windows in a VM. And something about that does not work. When switching between computers the work computer locked itself and I had to reboot the machine.
Also my mouse had connectivity issues.
Hdmi had black screens while gaming.
When switching to the other computer the one that isnât getting the big display still thinks itâs there and behaves as if there was an extended display. That last one was what broke the camelâs back.
I donât have the time to debug those issues further. Itâs just not working as it should. The heat issue alone is reason to send it back.
I will maybe switch to the solution of using an usb switcher for mouse and keyboard and use the fact that my monitor has 2 hdmi outs and connect whatever active computers I have to the monitor directly. Itâs a setup I donât like because itâs barely less effort than just moving around the laptops. But for now there is nothing to be done âŚ
I may have mentioned it before, but I have one main monitor, one keyboard, one mouse, and I find it pretty convenient switching between work and home computer by clicking a button on my table for the mouse and keyboard, and using the weird joystick(!) control on the back of my monitor to switch inputs. Sounds awful, I know, but it really only takes 2 seconds and is easy to reach. And because I have another monitor off to the side that is permanently the home computer, and the laptop has its own screen, I find I can often get what I want done without switching the main monitor anyway.
The main thing is that thereâs absolutely nothing fancy going on, so nothing to go wrong.
and at the same time i am thinking about giving a talk about Fehlerkultur (mistake culture) after talking to a colleague yesterday and realizing that how I learned that teams should deal with mistakes is not selbstverständlich. (self evident?)
Iâve certainly worked at places where being the first person to mention a problem meant that you were the person who got blamed for that problem.
And places where if your commit stopped the automatic build cycle you had to wear an âI broke the buildâ hat.
In both cases theyâre teaching people to hide mistakes and look for someone else to blame, not deliberately but thatâs the behaviour thatâs rewarded.
When shit happens, I have learned to say: âHumans make mistakes, now letâs deal with it.â The best thing that I ever had happen in that regard was when we spotted a really bad issue with the build and the team knew the last time this had happened someone had a very bad time fixing it and so we âswarmedâ the issue together and solved in comfortably and laughing together on a Thursday afternoon as opposed to someone having a bad time late on a Friday by themselves. We even figured out why it happened and how to prevent it in the future.
(As an aside this seems to work better for me in a work context where fewer emotions are involved than when shit happens at home.)
The topic came up when I talked to someone at work (not a techie) and mentioned that I told the people I am working with for my project âplease donât be afraid to make mistakes, theyâll happen and weâll work through those, Iâd rather we move forward than for you to do nothing out of fear to do the wrong thing.â of course this is just about writing stories for the scrum process but it applies to many situations.
My colleague did a very surprised pikachu at that. Apparently, their team is more of the finger-pointing and blame-game type. It is not easy to change that. But Iâd always start with âPeople make mistakes.â
It is normal and expected that mistakes happen. None of us are perfect. There is no code without errors. Itâs just a question of how we deal with those once they have happened. Thatâs what robustness means to me: to be prepared for shit to happen. I am lifting this straight from how I want to develop software. And obviously, once the immdiate consequences are dealt with, weâre allowed to analyze and figure out to prevent future mistakes. But even then the finger pointy types tend to not look very deeply either when they assign the blame. Thereâs always a reason beyond the reason which is why you ask why 5 times at least.
âI donât care about assigning blame. Maybe I screwed up, maybe you did, doesnât matter. But our process should be resilient against one of us screwing up, and thatâs what I want to fix.â
(I tend to want to say this again whenever thereâs an article about âsome guy left the AWS data store world readableâ or whatever - sure, they shouldnât have done that, but also management shouldnât have put them in a position where they could! Itâs very tempting to blame a single human face, but it solves the wrong problem.)
I know have a 30⏠gizmo that does exactly that. Itâs still using old-usb connectors and I needed lots of adapters to fit with my laptops and keyboard (all my usb-cables are now usb-c).
Itâs really not awful: by far the best solution Iâve found after thorough search: two button clicks: gizmo and monitor output quickselectâwhich is at the front easily reachable.
My private laptop is still on the docking station. The work laptop I use most now has 3 connected cables: hdmi, usb gizmo and power. I could get it down to 2 by using my hdmi adapter which I will need to if I use my other work laptop which has no hdmi port.
It should be easier. But itâs not.
This is the best that is possible right now and itâs working and inexpensive.
Our Civil Defence service activated their national cell-phone-based warning alarm system yesterday afternoon, on the expectation of dangerous waters following the big quake near Russia and Japan (I hope everyone is ok!). It was the first time theyâd used the system in a non-test scenario, and their spokesperson on the evening news said it wasnât a decision they made lightly.
At 0630 this morning, a full hour before sunrise, with no small number of folks still fast asleep, they blasted us with it again to âwarnâ us that⌠nothing had changed.
There was absolutely no meaningful difference to the previous message.
Iâm pretty sure that everyone who habitually spends time at/on/in the water was already going to be checking on the latest information before going out, less than 24 hours after a tsunami warning.
For the rest of us, the main message was âdonât go sightseeingâ, to which I again say: a full hour before sunrise.
I know itâs a no-win situation for them, and it makes sense that they would err on the side of caution, and there probably are some people who hadnât gotten the first message⌠but I was late getting to bed last night and absolutely didnât need an early wake-up call to recommend against sightseeing or ocean swimming in the dark.
Fingers crossed that tomorrow morning does not bring the same helpful alert.
I often feel that the UKâs Met. Office, in institutional trauma after the great storm of 1987, has determined never to miss a possible warning again. Which means that they average about one âyellow warningâ a week, and all it means it âitâs going to rain and/or be a bit windyâ, and of course one learns to ignore them.
Similarly with (UK) motorway warning signs: the authorities are so ready to say âobstruction in road - slowâ or âcongestion aheadâ that everyone knows thereâs a 90% chance itâs nothing. So they carry on at full speed until thereâs an actual queue visible ahead, then panic-brake.
For what itâs worth, those yellow warnings (in the summer especially) tend to boil down to âif you are directly under a thunderstorm, there will be a lot of rain. Possibly enough to cause problemsâ but said thunderstorm could develop anywhere in the south of England, so the likelihood of any particular person being affected is low.
I could go into tedious detail about why thunderstorms are difficult to forecast, but I will restrain myself
(I used to be a scientist at the Met Office, although my research was mainly on fog, which is also a pain in the to forecast)
I have a lot of time for the Met. Office (and Iâm glad to see the BBC are switching back to them from the terrible, but cheaper, commercial provider theyâve been using).
Looking at a weather map makes it very clear why itâs hard to say whether or not it will rain later: hereâs a patch of rain being blown across England, and if the wind deviates five degrees north itâll cross us, otherwise it wonât.
I do think âyellow warning of thunderstorm for the entirety of Englandâ is a bit silly.
In the us, the nws publishes a thing called theâforecast discussionâ, which is where the human who produced the forecast (from the computer generated versions) talks about it. They typically explain what adjustments they made, and what the uncertainties are. So instead of â50% chance of frogsâ, you get told âfrogs may falll, or they might notâ or âthey will fall somewhere, but the location and timing depends on xâ. Generally a much more useful product.
If the met do a similar thing, itâs worth seeking out. (And learning the rather specialized vocabulary used. )
I called the pharmacy to renew a prescription. Dealt with the robot and the voice recognition. Worked fine until the end. It said it would be ready next week. âDoes that work for you?.â âNo.â âGreat! Weâll see you next week.â
Talked to a human , after a long wait. Can get it sooner, and they made it sound like a great inconvenience. They have stopped filling many prescriptions at the store, and have a centralized location, that adds days of delay.
Sorry about that should have waited to praise the tech until it had proven itself. I need to learn patience. But I was so happy I had found something to solve my issuesâŚ
to forecast)