Pattern recognition

Someday, my newsfeed will realize that the pattern in the sites I ask it to not show me is that they are all sites from Threads. (I do NOT get my news from social media). It will be a wonderful day.

Someday, the streaming services will realize that I am NEVER looking for or going to watch an R-rated movie, and will either let me filter my search without that rating or stop suggesting shows with that rating. (I believe Netflix does let you set a filter for rating. Bless them).

I think I am just disillusioned with algorithms and AI because they are supposed to be good at pattern recognition, but honestly, so far they kind of stink at it. Maybe that's not what algorithms do? But it does seem to be the whole premise: You are interested in x, maybe you are also interested in this thing which is x-ish. But why can't they figure out "Of the last 30 things you said you didn't want, they all had this thing in common: Threads. Maybe that's the thing you don't want." 

Truthfully, I think the algorithms and AI could do it, I'm just not sure it's in the company's interest to stop driving me insane. It should be--an insane customer isn't much of a customer. They aren't functional enough to be a customer, because their brain has been blown up by the sanity terrorists that are their algorithms. Brain dead people aren't known for doing a lot of news reading and TV viewing. Or shopping, which also uses a lot of algorithms and does so very poorly. And they aren't known for paying their bills, I would think.

Anyway, here's hoping someday comes. One can always dream.

Nope. Never that.

Dear phone,

I know I switch between English and Spanish keyboards and that can get confusing. But, phone. Mobday* is not a word in either language (or a mix of the two). You are supposed to be smart, I would have thought you could have figured out that I meant Monday, or at least offered it as an option for a correction. 

Just a bit of friendly feedback.

Owner

*Turns out Mobday is the name of a band, but if my phone thinks that is what I'm talking about, it only makes the situation worse. I do think there is some potential for a holiday called Mobday--flash mobs, mobs of people, etc. Or something with The Mob, although I don't think you want to celebrate them, so much as the Eliot Nesses of the world, maybe? I don't know. But there are definitely weirder holidays out there. 

Who asked for this?

On Monday, I got a text from "Ashley Brooks." Who is Ashley Brooks, you ask, that I should mention her? (I guess it could be a him, although then I would seriously question whether it was 1926 instead of 2026). 

Ashley is a virtual assistant at the dealership where I bought my car. Now, I actually appreciate that someone from the dealership texts to remind me of my routine maintenance. Very helpful. And usually an actual person.

Ashley, though? Do we not all have our hands full trying to deal with actual people, without also being hounded by fake ones? Do we really need the virtual Ashley's trying to sell us stuff, to spam our inboxes? WHO ASKED FOR THIS????

Answer: No one. No one asked for this. At least, no normal person. I don't know a single person (and like all people, I know some very odd ducks. And am surely the odd duck in someone's world) who was walking around saying, "You know, the junk mail from the Post Office, that was alright. But not quite enough. And spam emails, those are great. They have definitely improved my quality of life. Social media spam has also kicked it up a notch. But I still feel like there's more life has to offer. I need more. I am not living my best spam life."

Anyway. Here we are. Silver lining? I don't have to feel bad about ignoring fictional people. 

Can someone explain this?

I know I just complained about tech stuff, so I'm starting to sound like a crank*. But can someone explain to me why Amazon Prime will give me the option to continue watching shows that I haven't touched for months, and even then only watched five minutes of the first episode half the time by accident, but won't give me the option to continue the show I've been binge-watching for the last week? Anyone? Any explanation at all?

And this friends, is the great and beautiful grandeur of the 21st century.

*I think I am definitely entering a "Get off my lawn" stage when it comes to tech and software, etc. I own it and don't apologize.

Beta

My institution is developing a new tool for doing cataloging work. Which, it is what it is, but we are literally reinventing the wheel (there are reasons for this, I know, but still. Super annoying). And after years, we have finally reached the user acceptance testing, or beta testing, stage. And I've discovered a fatal flaw in the whole process: By the time there is something to user test and give feedback on, it's almost too late to fix things. (We launch in 3 weeks). 

I'm not sure how to fix this problem. There must be a way, because we had one piece of the tool that we got to use and test and we've had a year and a half to make it better. But with this piece, we sat in meetings and they talked about what it would do but until about a month ago, there was nothing to actually see. And maybe some archivists would have been able to visualize, but not me. I can't give feedback on a theoretical tool that I can't actually test out yet. And now that I can test the tool, I can find LOADS of things that need fixed or improved, but again, there's only 3 weeks before launch (and yes, it's not like we can't keep updating it afterwards, but that all relies on an attention span and budget that keep that possible. Neither of which are guaranteed).

I don't mind the testing part, and finding things that would make it better. And I do think I am doing pretty good at pinpointing when something is annoying because it is different from what I'm used to or when it's just bad or wrong. The part I don't like is that there's no guarantee that any of this will make a difference and for some things, it really matters that they get changed.

And this, friends, is why I will never be an early adopter. I want in on something after the bugs are worked out. 

I'm definitely not a bug person.

Mic drop

This week at work, I've had some mic problems. I hadn't been in a Teams meeting for about 2 weeks, so who knows when it actually started but for sure on Wednesday (maybe Tuesday? Time also seems to be malfunctioning) my team couldn't hear me very well. I tried to troubleshoot myself, which somehow led to my laptop eliminating the mic program altogether. Good news, the tech team was able to fix it and I proceeded to have a call with someone. Yay! Until Wednesday morning, when my mic wasn't working anymore. So, another visit to the tech team and they managed to fix it--again. And it seems to have stayed fixed, because it worked for a training I did today. 

The only downside is that now that my mic works, I don't have an excuse to not say anything in meetings, or cancel them. My team still has to listen to me talk too much, and alas, I don't have an excuse to hand off the interviews for our internship position to someone else. 

But, you know, my mic works. Yay!

It's artificial, but I'm not convinced it is intelligent

Well, friends, I made my first foray into using AI and can now report with authority that it doesn't know how to spell.

I admit, I am a little surprised by the whole spelling thing, because it seems like that would be the sure fire thing. I type in an instruction saying "Make a logo for XYZ brand", you'd think it would get the XYZ right, but nope. Out of maybe 25 tries, it spelled it right 4 or 5 times? I mean, AI is not passing kindergarten with those grades! And it's also a liar, because every time I corrected it on the spelling, it promised it was going to fix it and get it exactly right. (AI put the italics in, not me). 

Also, it would generate a design I liked, but then couldn't edit the design. So, any tweaks and it basically started over. Which, you can imagine. I finally get it spelled right, need to change something else, and nope. Back to square one, on the spelling, the art, everything. And the design I liked? Gone to me forever, because a graphic designer I am not. 

I think I'm less surprised at how poorly it does at reading the instructions. I specified "don't add any fruit to the design" and it kept adding fruit. I'm less surprised, because this is a thing that happens all the time at work. I say to people, "Do xyz" and somehow, the opposite of that seems to happen. However, they at least only had verbal instructions and maybe I was speaking a foreign language at the time, which actually does happen a lot on my team. And even in writing it is sometimes in a foreign language. I also know that I don't always read to the end of emails and stuff, or I skim to get the gist and sometimes miss some details. 

But here's the thing. Isn't AI supposed to be better than me? Admittedly, it far surpasses me in graphic design, but then the design is always wrong, so...??? I'll tell you so--so even though it took 25-30 tries to give me 4-5 correctly spelled designs (and 2-3 that met the artistic specifications, but to be fair, that was a process of me figuring out what I actually wanted, so you can't blame AI), It still only took 15 minutes or so. And if I'd had to do it myself, well, let's just say the peak of my artistic achievement is a stick dinosaur.

Overall conclusions, it's about what I expected it to be and we shouldn't go turning the world over to it any time soon. (Or ever in my opinion, I don't care how good it gets). But the spelling thing. That's just embarrassing.

Ad-gorithms

Maybe I have the wrong end of the stick but my understanding is that streaming services use algorithms to place targeted ads for viewers. If so, I'm really concerned about what the algorithms think about me.

First, they seem to think I have a lot of health problems and need lots of meds. I don't. I don't have lots of health problems and if I needed medications, I definitely wouldn't consult television. I'd talk to a doctor.

Second, they seem to think I am way richer than I am, because they try to sell me a lot of high end cars and trucks. If they want to give me the paycheck to match, sure, I'll consider it.

Perhaps it is just sheer "Sam-I-Am-ness" that leads the algorithms to continue running Burger King ads for me. The last time I ate at Burger King was in Mexico City in 2022 (It was good. Eating at American fast food chains in other countries is always a fun experience. Different menus, different vibe, different perception). Before that, I don't even know. 

The ads did get me to eat Popeye's chicken, and it really wasn't the experience the commercial hyped. It was good, though, and solved the dinner problem. Now they've moved onto Johnsonville sausage, which if I ever need sausage, I'll consider.

So, I'm a sick rich person who eats a lot of fast food and sausage? Ummmm, not so much. Try again, algorithms.

Not enough memory

On my most recent trip, I encountered the fun problem of not being able to scan anymore because I had filled up my computer memory. So, I had to copy files over to a hard drive, which led to the fun problem of not being able to copy the files because there wasn't enough memory for the operation*. This is not as surprising when you realize that the scans were uncompressed tifs, about 42 MB per image, and I had scanned thousands of images. Also, moving images that size takes a minute, they don't copy over quickly. So, lots of fun, but it worked out. (Now I get to transfer them again so that hopefully I can free up my computer hard drive, because I don't think I can save anything to it!)

Anyway, in the future, just be warned that when I malfunction, I will be blaming it on memory problems. "Not enough memory to perform that operation." Not enough memory to get out of bed. Not enough memory to clean the kitchen. Not enough memory to remember my grocery list. Not enough memory!

*good news: I could find some smaller folders, copy those, delete them, free up more memory, copy over more files, etc. 

Fare thee well?

How did your global tech outage Friday go? 

Mine was okay. I had an early morning meeting (like, before-I-even-drag-myself-out-of-bed-usually early) and so I was trying to get my laptop going while walking to my office, and no dice. I was part of the lucky blue screen of death contingent. I kind of knew that it was maybe bigger than just me, because I saw another computer (unattended) with the blue screen of death, which, oddly was a little hopeful because it meant it was maybe not just my computer that was going to be a nightmare.

Which was later confirmed by a conversation from the other side of the cubicles, so a good news bad news situation. And also, my day wasn't nearly as bad as the people who worked at the place responsible for the glitch.

And, for me I lucked out because it was on a Friday and no one comes into the office on Friday, so when I went to get help in person from the tech guys, there was no wait. Seriously, it took like 3 minutes! The phone? I hadn't even gotten through after 20. Lo, the perks of working in the office.

Sadly, I never really recovered from the first 4 hours of not really being able to get much done. I rallied a bit at the end of the day, but just lost momentum early on. But it has been a fairly successful week so it will work out. And, I had a chance to clean my office a bit, which I've been needing to do for ages--another bit of silver lining. 

I hope your outage day was as smooth as mine, but also that in years to come, you will do at least a little bit of embellishing when, in twenty years, you tell your kids or grandkids or whatever youngster is around where you were when the world's tech shut down.

Error

The other day when I was getting my laptop up and running at work, I got an error message that said, "System error: Invalid argument."

Now, I know I'm definitely not the first one to see this error, and also definitely not the first one to think that maybe we could use that warning in our day-to-day interactions. No lie, I am definitely considering putting it on a t-shirt. Especially in our current state of, well, civil insanity. 

And I'm not saying I'm exempt. As I have mentioned before, my motto should be, "Talk less, smile more." I have invalid arguments all the time. And, sometimes it would just be nice to have something pop up in the moment telling me, "Hey. Maybe take 5 and get your head together?" 

But I think that might require me to wear some kind of VR or AR headset, and I'm just not into that, so I guess I'll do what our ancestors have done for millions of years and just keep trying to be a better person without any computer assistance. 

Smart stuff

 Everything is smart these days--refrigerators, dryers, toilets, vacuums. But there is one thing that is not smart that should be: elevators.

At work, if I push the button to go down, and the elevator is going up and has to stop on my floor anyway, (because someone is getting off, for example), it will still stop on my floor on the way back down. So I've got two options. I can stand there like a dummy and let the elevator go up and catch it on the way down. Or, I can get on, wait for more people to get on going down, and we all stop at my floor where the elevator doors open and no one is there. And I get to make the tiresome joke: "And this is the elevator picking me up...". (Or another popular quip people like to make is that it is the Holy Ghost. We do work in a religious institution). 

And every time, EVERY time, I think, "Why is it the elevator can't get information that no one is there because they got on when it stopped going up?" And I'm sure someone could argue that it actually makes sense in some weird elevator traffic logic, but it's hard to see how stopping at empty floors is efficient. 

So, if anyone knows anyone in elevator programming, could you see if they could make a smart elevator? Thanks.

Different kinds of smart

I just survived buying a new car, an accomplishment on par with climbing Everest. It was seriously a process, and I feel like I had to navigate the 3 dangers of the car dealership*.The final stage was having a concierge walk me through all the bells and whistles--aka buttons and tech--on the vehicle. And I just have to say that I miss the good old days of when a car was neither smart nor dumb. It was just a car. 

My new vehicle is essentially a bunch of computer chips held together by a frame and wheels. Given that the basic function of a vehicle is to move a person from point A to point B, it really seems like overkill. For example, it has a 'smart glass' windshield. Why does my windshield need to be 'smart'? It's a windshield, not a rocket scientist. And that's just the tip of the iceberg, really.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how we define smart. In the society I live in, smart is understood in a fairly one-dimensional, non-inclusive way (primarily defined by a gpa). And I think now that same society is applying a one-dimensional understanding to objects, too. Like "smart cars" and other smart appliances. Yep, I guess it's one kind of smart. But there's also a kind of smart where you have a windshield that is just a piece of glass and doesn't require a computer technician and deep pockets to repair or replace. Or the smart that is a washing machine that does what you tell it instead of it sassing you and doing whatever the heck it wants. 

Technology does a lot of good things, and I always enjoy finding the ways it can intelligently improve my life. I really like my car, perhaps in spite of the tech (although there are a couple of  features hat make a lot of sense and I will enjoy using).

But maybe there's more than one way an object can be smart. 

*akin to the dangers of the Fire Swamp in Princess Bride, in case the reference didn't make sense.

When is a party not a party

I received an email from Microsoft with the subject heading "5 easy steps to turn your holiday party into a PowerPoint party." And the only appropriate response is, "WHAT?", said in the Marianno style, where what is legit a 4-letter word. 

I don't want to undersell PowerPoint. It is pretty handy. But in what version of reality is there a group of people planning a party--work, family, neighborhood, I don't know--saying, "This party is okay. But what would REALLY make it the party of all parties is a PowerPoint." And throw out party of all parties. I don't think there is even anyone saying, "A PowerPoint would add a nice element to our party." Yet, Microsoft sells it as making your party extraordinary. 

And yes, it would definitely make your party unusual or remarkable (see definition of 'extraordinary'), but I think not in the way you want. 

But a PowerPoint party isn't just a party with a PowerPoint. It's like a Pampered Chef party, but with tech. Per my email, "At a PowerPoint party, each person creates and shares their unique presentation to the group. Add a theme or keep it random. Then let your friends and family show off their creativity at this event they won’t soon forget."

If you are really my friend, if you really care about me, do me a favor: never invite me to this event. And I will do the same. Happy holidays. 

With great power comes...

...a massive amount of emails. 

I shifted to a supervisory role at work a while ago which I never really wanted to do. I would have been content not being in management, but what can you do. And there are several things I don't love, but one of the things that is a definite drawback to being a supervisor is the number of emails I get. I don't love it.

In my previous role, I could get away with cleaning out my inbox once a month (or less!!!). It was brilliant! And I didn't get the back and forth on things as much. One or two emails, problem solved, moving on. Now, I send out one email and get a dozen in response (and the email tool we use doesn't group them together, annoyingly). I got my inbox down to 60 earlier this week, and I'm already back at 120. 

Which may not sound horrible to some people but it is mildly panic inducing for me. A few, I can handle, but a flood of emails is too much. 

So all in all, I'll take less power. And fewer emails.

Technical difficulties

I showed up to work on Monday, very excited for my team to make a big push to finish up a lot of our collections. And then, Monday actually happened. 

Turns out, there are some ongoing technical difficulties, and all the systems we need to do our work are down. And have been all week, and may be into next week. 

Ordinarily, this would be no biggie. My last job, there was a day when the internet went down for several hours. Me? I just kept on working with my paper stuff. No web required. For a lot of it, no computer required.

But not so much in my current institution, which has made this week a bit of a challenge. Not because I don't have plenty to work on. The real challenge has been finding work for 2 interns and 2 FTEs under me to work on. 

Most of us agree that, under the circumstances, it really doesn't make a ton of sense for us to be going to work at all. Couldn't at least some of us just have an unexpected paid vacation? Honestly, after the pandemic, we could all use a bit of a break, and we'd come back in a better state of mind, which long-term, would benefit everyone. 

However, I do understand the difficulties of paying employees to do nothing. Really, I do. At best, one or two days might be okay, but after that, I would start to feel a little...well, I'd start to feel a bit guilty. And honestly, the situation feels vaguely familiar--the pandemic started out this way too (although we had a bit of lead time to strategize. And access to the tools). Encouragingly, that is a good indication that we'll figure out how to navigate this time. And it will be much shorter than the pandemic, at least. 

Anyway. It does make work a weird and kind of dull experience. I think I'll try to enjoy it while it lasts.

What time is it?

Every now and then, my tendency to delay actually works in my favor. Like this morning. When I forgot that it was daylight savings (why is this still a thing?) and so didn't change my clock last night. And, slept in a bit late. Which I should regret, but honestly, it was lovely and this is possibly part of why I am not making much progress towards having a more regular sleep schedule because seriously, it is always so much nicer to stay in bed than to get out of it. Anyway, it ended up working out because it means I didn't show up at church an hour early and very confused. 

Also, I just want to say that the google newsfeed failed big time. Why on earth are they showing me articles about daylight savings time AFTER it happens? And this is why I question the intelligence of artificial intelligence. 

Bad PowerPoints

I was talking to a coworker this week about the worst presentations I've ever seen and realized that I very weirdly* have a top 3 worst PowerPoint presentations I've ever seen, hands down. So, not that anyone will ever care, but here they are:

The third worst PowerPoint presentation I've ever sat through:

To be fair to the presenter, this was back when I was in college, which was the early days of PowerPoint, so no one really knew what they were doing. And it was before all the tools like blackboard or what have you, where professors could post stuff online for their class. That is why it is only the third worst and I feel quite forgiving.

The PowerPoint was the history lecture for a class on Chinese history in the thousands BC. And the professor was really trying hard to adopt this cool new technology. But the slides--yikes! Crammed with text! I mean, forget margins, every pixel was covered in text. And then, the professor read the slides to us. Which, as a literate college student was quite agonizing. I just wanted to say, "Email the slides to me and I'll study them at home in my pjs." Which would have been great, because the slides would have been phenomenal for studying for the exams. 

Second worst PowerPoint presentation:

This was a presentation on customer service, based on the Disney customer service training. And, again, I will caveat this with the fact that I already had a chip on my shoulder because I don't work at a theme park, so doing theme park customer service seemed absurd. I mean, I work in archives, which are about as far as you can get from a theme park.** But, my real frustration with the presentation was that every slide was a pithy little quote that when you really thought about it critically... well, let's just say that rarely have so many words come together to create so little meaning. Outside of bills passed in congress, which I don't know that bills lack meaning so much as they require an interpreter, but I digress. 

These were quotes that you would find on kitschy signs and pillows and stuff, and I just read them and kept breaking them down and they were just absurd. And didn't necessarily have a lot to do with customer service or what the presenter was discussing, so much as just trying to be cutesie sayings in a presentation. 

But the worst PowerPoint presentation, hands down, was a presentation at a professional conference. Now, the presenter was young, so maybe that was part of it. And maybe they were nervous being brand new in the field and presenting to more experienced people. Or maybe that is just how they learned to do presentations (it wouldn't surprise me). 

Anyway, the presenter built the presentation by describing the archival process/project she was discussing in terms of Saved by the Bell. And there were about 75 slides that were all just images from pop culture. About 10 slides in, the entire audience was busy googling the references they didn't get on their phones, which is not the desired outcome for a presenter. But, even worse, the presentation involved a lot of details that really would have benefitted from diagrams and flowcharts and that sort of thing. It was just a mess. 

So, I don't know that there's a takeaway, other than I'm really judgy about PowerPoint presentations, but now I'm super curious to know what can beat my worst presentations (I know there's something out there). And that's all, really.

*I think it's weird? Maybe not? 

**I guess being a warlord or a serial killer might actually be the farthest, but you know what I mean. I don't work at a place where people come for recreation. Unless they are way into records. Which, some people are and there is nothing wrong with that at all! 

Updates

In the past two weeks, it seems like all my tech has updated to new operating systems. And, I do not like it, Sam-I-Am!!!

The biggest change--and the one I'm most annoyed at--is that I can no longer close selected apps. It's all or nothing, baby. Not being (ever) an all-or-nothing kind of girl, this chafes my personality. But also, it's legitimately a pain. Sometimes, I want to close one or two apps, but keep a third open because it's something I'm going to come back to. And, having to close all or nothing seems massively inefficient and/or battery draining to my non-science-y-teched-out-but-still-pretty-rational brain. And I just really want to know who it was that was griping about this problem. Who is it that was getting super annoyed by having the option to close individual apps OR all of them? It seems like a problem that didn't really need a fix.

And this is why people hate change. Well, one of the reasons. So often updates seem to fix problems that didn't exist and exacerbate problems that did, or create problems that didn't exist. Is this some kind of job security strategy on the part of software engineers? Because it's really not working out for me so well, and I'd like to figure out a new plan. 

Don't get me wrong. I know that change is important. Change helps us become better people, it helps us do better things for each other and the planet. And it is definitely part of life. Spend 5 minutes on this planet, and you are going to deal with change that just happens because it does. (Sorry, dear little new babies). 

But, we really don't need to go creating change just to have change and for no other reason (hear that, CEOs, execs, and managers?). And, can we really try not to make change that makes things worse? I promise--there WILL be jobs in the future, it's going to be okay. And, if you are just someone with a short "change attention span" who needs to switch things up constantly, move your furniture around. Or dye your hair. Paint your nails! Sit on the floor at work!!! There are so many ways without making me have to learn my device again practically from scratch for no apparent reason other than someone somewhere got bored. (Boredom--a definite nemesis).

And now, my rant is over. At least for you. I make no promises for anywhere else. 

Too much

Do you know what there has been too much of during this pandemic? I mean, besides the pandemic and unemployment and economic havoc, and conspiracy theories and people being mad at each other, and dying and loss and fear and uncertainty and all of that. You know, besides the actually important things. No clue? Well, it's me.

There is too much of me, specifically in virtual meetings. And not too much of me talking. Just too much of me on camera. Initially, I wasn't using my camera but I realized that it was creating a detachment that wasn't helpful. So I've been turning it on the last couple of months. Taking one for the team, sure, but definitely not doing myself any favors. I've become self-conscious about certain physical characteristics that I always knew existed, but not seeing them constantly thrown in my face, didn't bother me.* But, now I see myself on camera half the days of the week and it is hard not to be aware of the gap between my teeth or how sometimes my nose looks huge and sometimes my neck seems too short. Or that I have a big old zit or whatever on my face that makeup just isn't hiding. 

The beautiful thing about how we are designed is that we can't see how we look when we are talking or doing anything. It's a gift, a merciful beautiful gift. And whoever designed Zoom and Skype and Google meet or whatever and every other virtual meeting app has gone and done the thing that nature was smart enough NOT to do: given us a perpetual mirror. Why? Why would you do that? What narcissistic sadist thought that would be a favor to the world? 

And yes, I can turn off my camera, but then I am basically not a part of the group. That's just how it is, guys. It happens in family meetings and in group meetings. When it's a question of a person who is on video and a letter representing a person on the call, the letter loses, big time. It's just the reality. Part of it is just how our brains work, and I think part of it is there is a subtle message that you don't want to be more than a fly on the wall (which sometimes is the best way to get through a meeting, I admit). So, it's a choice--be all in, or avoid seeing myself.

I just don't understand why there isn't an option for my camera to be on and everyone else to see me without me seeing me. We've sent people to the moon. We're shooting for Mars. We carry around miniature computers in our pockets. Why can we not have a one-way online camera? Come on people! Work with me here!

Anyway, I know that given the scale of problems in the world, this isn't really even in the top thousand, but in terms of fixable, it certainly makes the top 500 at least, right? And, since we aren't all qualified to cure COVID, those of us who can might as well fix this problem. 

Please. Save me from myself. 

*I'm pretty sure they don't bother anyone else, I'd be surprised if they spent that much time thinking about me. Most people don't.