Fall, but it doesn't feel like it

 We had a great time today on our annual visit to P-6 Farms. We have enjoyed this place for many years, and it has really grown into something larger than we ever would have expected.

 

A photo of my family.
Sony a6000 | 85mm | f/5.6 | 1/160 sec | ISO 100 | EXP 0

 

I don't know if it was added this year, or if it's been there and Hope just hasn't been tall enough to ride... but they added a small roller coaster. As rough as it was, it was a very fun ride for her, so we went on and on and on. It's nothing major, a simple loop with three small hills/drops. Extremely loud and jolt-y, but a good time. It definitely fit the fall-festival theme.

There was a large slide with 3 humps in it. We got good speed going down it. Hope was having a blast, I ended up getting tired making the hike to get to the top. The Ferris wheel offered us a nice relaxing breeze in the 90 degree Texas heat. All in all, we had a phenomenal time - Hope picked out "the perfect pumpkin" for carving tomorrow evening. Can't wait. See you then.

 

 

The Autovacuum Daemon

 I'm pretty happy with the outcome of today. We had some great success at work getting some performance issues worked out with a pesky, large dataset. We did some EXPLAIN ANALYZE analysis on a few queries, and determined where indexes needed to be installed.

After installing an index we were sure would clear up performance issues - we reloaded the page and viola! - it worked. We re-ran EXPLAIN ANALYZE only to find out.. hang on.. a different index was being used. What's even weirder is - the index that was being used was different from the index that was being used yesterday when we checked, even though it already existed.

But wait, we didn't run ANALYZE <table_name>;... how did the query planner just.. sort this out? Turns out there's this fancy thing called the AUTOVACUUM Daemon.  The AUTOVACUUM daemon is enabled in the default configuration, and what it does is it automatically vacuums the database so that you don't have to manually run the VACUUM statement. So, the table was clearly vacuumed in between our two EXPLAIN ANALYZE runs. Pretty neat!

Re-running ANALYZE <table_name>; did end up causing the query planner to find our new index much more valuable, but this was still a neat find for me, as I don't typically do much Postgres work.

I'm pretty excited for tomorrow. I've got a Kodak PIXPRO FZ55-BK being shipped to the house sometime hopefully in the morning. If it gets here early enough, I'll have it to take pictures of our time at the fall festival we're going to that afternoon. We go every year, and normally I take our Sony A600, which is an obviously better camera, I just want something a little more compact for tomorrow.

Amazon AutoRip, where have you been?

I've made another discovery today - and boy, howdy, am I late to the party!

After my whole "maybe spending money to own music rather than spending money to merely listen to music might be better" spiel I gave yesterday - I went to download some MP3 files from Amazon & buy a CD or two for my truck.

When I went to buy the CDs, I noticed a little icon that said "AutoRip"... Turns out, if you buy certain physical media on Amazon, like CDs and certain vinyl records and cassettes, you get automatic rights to the MP3 files! Who knew?

Apparently this has been around since 2013 - boy have I wasted the years...

Try as I might, I've been unable to find cassette tapes that I would enjoy for sale on Amazon, which is a real shame, as I'd love to give my cassette tape player a workout. Colter Wall's upcoming Memories and Empties record will be available on tape, but buying it through his Shopify store grants me no AutoRip, although I assume there's some cassette-mp3 conversion interface.. 

 

The "convenience" trap

 We have been watching All Creatures Great & Small on PBS, and cannot speak highly of it enough. We are now set to watch episode 6 this evening. There's something to be said about a feel-good show. They don't seem to be as in-vogue as a drama, comedy, or smut-reality, but there is an undeniable charm in public broadcast.

 A realization I made has me sick to my stomach. Now that I no longer have a smartphone, I am listening to music either via FM radio or MP3 files purchased on Amazon and placed on a 32 GB PNY USB 3.0 stick. This actually works surprisingly well in my car! In my truck, I just have some Waylon Jennings, George Jones, and Colter Wall CDs to get my by (car has no disk drive).

In just the last two years of being a smartphone user, I have maintained a ~$37/month Apple One subscription for my family. This means I have spend roughly $888 to listen to music and I own nothing. The worst part of this is that I basically listen to the same songs on repeat! If I would have just purchased the MP3 files, I could have bought and owned 688 songs! ($1.29/p on Amazon).

 Why, oh, why have I been living in the "convenience" trap?!?! 

Redrive from failure

 Today ended up not so bad, after all.

 Brooklyn and the girls drove me to work, we popped off at Goodwoods British Market so we could get some bangers for bangers and mash for dinner tonight (turned out fantastic). We got a few other goodies we can never resist when we make a trip to Goodwoods (party rings, bourbon creams, etc.).

 

 I got many troubles that were on my mind for work sorted out, so I'm ready to face the day tomorrow with whatever comes our way. We did, however, come across a few issues with our AWS Step Functions. We're fairly new to the step functions scene, and I'm really impressed with the ability to "redrive from failure". Essentially, you can just pick up execution wherever your state machine failed. This is great - it doesn't mean the issues are resolved, but because we can redrive analysis, it buys us time to actually fix the issue while still delivering results.