Archive: Granddaughter catch-up photos from this past week
Posted By RichC on April 3, 2021
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Tech Friday: A now rare Internet connectivity issue & speedtest
Posted By RichC on April 2, 2021
We have not had many Internet connectivity issues since switching to Cincinnati Bell Fioptic fiber and then added a mesh network instead of traditional router (although the Netgear Nighthawk was pretty good – we move it to the condo). 
Perhaps a lot has to do with companies building out the infrastructure with fewer buggy devices – but knock-on-wood – our current set-up has been pretty reliable.
This past week was an exception in that something happened on 3/29 that made the morning connection sluggish. I suspected something on my end (it wasn’t) but by the time I started the diagnosing, all was back to normal … and since it has been a while between speed tests, I was curious. It’s amazing what a couple decades can do in technology … although 50/20Mbps today connected through my home network is not 162/124Mbps as it was in 2019 or 267/116Mbps in 2018 (I blame smarthome and IOT devices)?
An Akron/Canton CAK photo from my Palm Treo in 2006 #TBT
Posted By RichC on April 1, 2021
While cleaning up one of my old Flickr accounts where my Palm Treo 700p photos were backed up, 
I stumbled across one of the first photos with it I took and posted to this blog – June 2006.
Even though the camera was lacking by today’s cellphone standards, I still think the Palm PDA turned Treo cellphone did a pretty decent job with this Akron-Canton Airport (CAK) evening photo and a few others as I traveled around Ohio … and so decided to include it now, 15 years later for Throwback Thursday #TBT.
By the way … have a prank-free April Fools Day… curiosity of the EV company, Voltswagen! (the clip below is from last week … and I’m still unsure if it was intended as a joke???)
An etymology share: “What Time Is ‘Noon?”
Posted By RichC on March 31, 2021
When was ‘noon’ a time that was later in the day … 
like 3PM? Let’s check with merriam-webster.com:
There’s something aesthetically pleasing about the word noon. Its palindromic spelling feels appropriate for the middle of the day, when the sun is directly overhead and the hands on the clock are pointed upward in a straight line. It’s even spelled with letters found more or less in the middle of the alphabet.
But there was once a time when noon referred to a different time of day—and that fact is reflected in the word’s etymology.
Noon takes a path through Middle and Old English, where nōn denoted the ninth hour from sunrise. That word derives from the Latin nonus, meaning “ninth,” related to novem, the word for the number nine. If you mark sunrise at approximately 6:00 in the morning, that puts noon at around what we would now call 3:00 P.M. Romans called what we now call noon meridiem, literally the “middle of the day”; hence our designations A.M. (for ante meridiem) and P.M. (post meridiem) for the hours before and after the noon hour.
After 6 days, the Ever Given is moving and the Suez Canal is open
Posted By RichC on March 30, 2021
The news that has captured much of the of the world’s interest this week was the very large Ever Given container ship lodged sideways in the Suez Canal by 
40+ mph winds (and perhaps some mechanical issues?). The “Empire State Building” size ship snarled traffic for 6 days surprising most people as to just how difficult it was to refloat and move back into the channel. Thankfully on Monday it was finally freed.
It wasn’t until I saw the navigable channel illustration (right), did I understand how the ship was wedged in so tight. It was still shocking that even the largest tugs struggled to pull it loose and only after days of dredging and waiting on tides. It was also eye-opening to see just how much of the world economy in our JIT (Just In Time) manufacturing, inventories and supply culture we all depend on, especially now that businesses are starting to open after nearly o year of COVID19 shutdowns.
Music Monday: The Band and Kodachrome photography
Posted By RichC on March 29, 2021
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Worked on some spring yard clean-up over the weekend
Posted By RichC on March 28, 2021
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Business change, server updates, an idiom & a friend’s new toy
Posted By RichC on March 27, 2021
This past week was an on and off work week. I’ve been struggling to update software and the latest Linux flavor on an old 
server while telling myself “I’m getting too old for this.” Right or wrong attitude, I think keeping up with fast-paced technology change is a young person’s game.
On the plus side, a client that I thought left, came back and wanted me to recover their account, emails and old website … but in the same week, another long time customer has decided they were ready for a redesign of their website and asked me to transfer their data. Over the years I knew that I should have been recommending a CMS platform, but when customers are happy, why rock the boat?
Interesting fact
The origin of the idiom ‘rock the boat’ is attributed to American statesman, lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan, who was famously quoted “The man who rocks the boat ought to be stoned when he gets back on shore.” In this 1914 quote, it is evident that Bryan was referring to those who stir up trouble.
Tech Friday: What is the best smartphone for 2021?
Posted By RichC on March 26, 2021
The current opinion by many who review technology (and Consumer Reports) is that the best smartphone for 2021 is the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max … although might be a bit larger than many are comfortable putting in 
their pockets.
Personally I’ve shifted from wanting something small, like my old Samsung SPH-i500 aluminum bodied flipphone (stlll a favorite) to an iPhone 5 (loved it) to my current much larger aging iPhone 7 Plus (photo right). If you are following along … the size I’ve been willing to stuff into my front pants pocket has grown and is often annoying. If I can’t get an Apple flip—iPhone in the near future, I’ll probably consider the smaller format iPhone 12 Pro.
For those in the Android OS world, the choices are probably more challenging as there are a lot of options … but Consumer Reports does a little heavy lifting and suggested the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G at the top end and the OnePlus Nord N10 5G as a budget “best phone” and OnePlus Nord N100 for Best Phone for All-Day Battery Life.
Consumer Reports’ battery champ, the OnePlus N100, slightly exceeded two days of power with a single charge. However, the handset featured some of the lowest rated cameras that the magazine has ever tested. Other phones scoring well with battery life included the Samsung Galaxy A71 (43 hours) and the iPhone 12 Pro Max (41 hours).
Investing: Buying Vertex $VRTX for 2021 and hopefully beyond
Posted By RichC on March 25, 2021
For the most part, I’m a conservative investor, although a regular channel trader, and I rarely speculates on risky upstarts, IPOs, zero-profit tech stocks, 
pharmaceutical long-shots or the latest crazy … cryptocurrency trend. Since most “risk” involves speculation, I see it more akin to gambling than eyes-open informed value or growth investing … both which are subject to up’s and down’s in our economy. Do I often wish I had an “all or none” Bitcoin-trader personality? “Yes,” but early investing and living through company bankruptcies, buyouts, margin leverage positions, futures market trades and regular options losses … it taught me the comfort of a good night sleep and a “steady as she goes” slower growing diversified investment 
portfolio. One thing that never seems to be easy, is predicting market sell-offs and gyrations — 1987, 2001, 2008 and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic come to mind. Timing is never easy.
I also recognized there are some established companies that can provide steady income and growth which become more attractively priced on occasion (usually in hindsight). For example, Pfizer $PFE was one of the first out of the gate with a COVID19 vaccine and so I bought in early expecting a little more upside movement on top of a nice quarterly dividend. To my surprise, it didn’t happen … which I’m saying so that you take my next stock mention in the pharmaceutical sector with a proverbial “grain of salt.”
Having watched Vertex Pharmaceuticals $VRTX get hammered last fall when its alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency lung-and-liver drug failed a trial and they announced it would be discontinued, the stock fell out of favor. The company still has a lot to offer, but a lot of investors turned away. Vertex is still profitable with patents in place until the 2030s on their cystic-fibrosis franchise of drugs and is still working on another alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency drug which is currently in phase 2 trials.
So like a few pharmaceutical analysis that I read, I’m thinking $VRTX might be undervalued and worth buying on market weakness (buying under $210)? Early this month, the Cowen analyst Phil Nadeau called Vertex a top large cap pick for 2021 saying, "we expect Vertex to recover in 2021 and would use the recent weakness to build a position in this premier biotech."
Desultory - des-uhl-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee
- lacking in consistency, constancy, or visible order, disconnected; fitful: desultory conversation.
- digressing from or unconnected with the main subject; random: a desultory remark.