Author: alohawild

I remember years ago talking to my first boss back in Michigan, Chris, in Bath in the 1980s. He said that the plan for him and the other owner of SysDaComp, Roger, was “55 and out.” He told me with a glint of slight greed in his eyes about something new called a 401K that would make this work–events happened and I know that they worked into their sixties. But I always remembered that discussion with Chris and his suggestion that I, then twenty-two years old, should plan to make “55 and out.” Well, I am now that age and I will not stop working tomorrow.

My family store

Roger and my dad were good friends and they are fishing together in Heaven. In Heaven the fishing is always good, but who gets the best fish is what it is all about. I imagine there in Heaven they chat about how they had to work into their sixties to support their families and of course to pay for their fishing boats. Bob’s is called The Blue Streak, my sister uses it now. Roger’s was unchristened, and Bob called it Rock Finder when Roger was not around–last I heard it sank (Dad loved a good story and most were true). I believe they both would talk about how they could not stop working at 55, but at least they got to fish most weekends and many nights in Michigan’s Summers and Fall.

Dad

For me it is not the money, I think I could make it work having worked for a well-known shoe company for more than twenty years. Our family would have to cut back and not eat out and would have to travel by car for holidays and find cheap hotels, but I could make it work. Unlike Chris, Roger, and Dad, I am working for health insurance at 55. At $2000 a month for my wife and me and that without Dental, it just too costly to retire.

Of course, if the stock market goes up, and the shoe company keeps doing well and they don’t suddenly notice the over-50 reasonable-compensated computer guy that could be replaced by two or three young folks or many many out-sourced folks (I am still pretty good), and I stay well, I could retire at 58. Yes, Susie–the wife–would be 59 1/2 then, and we could use the IRA for health insurance cost and… I can and will make this work. And maybe the president will do something about the costs…

Yes, I am hoping to stop before something stops me. Bob and Roger did not get real old. They left for the happy fishing grounds too early, and they are missed. I think I would like to see more before I join the fishing. So yes I will try to stop at about 58. I am cutting the sugar. Getting the late on-set diabetes under control. Lost 25+ pounds. Yes–I want to get real old. I have all those robots to build. There is that AI thing. And all those models I bought and not put together yet.

So not “55 and out,” but working on staying so long that 55 will be well like 25. I am just getting started!

I plan to write a story each week and post it here. I have no subjects other than what I sort of learned that week that has me thinking.

Susie, wife, and I are traveling to Florida in the first week of May. There we will join some friends, the Smith Family, to see their daughter graduate from Ringling College with a degree in animation. We will then travel to Orlando and see Micky Mouse and then fly back. It is a Tuesday night through Sunday trip. A rushed trip. It is an experiment if my wife can still travel. It is a chance to see Disney World in Florida again We live on the West Coast and Disneyland is even a drivable and thus is our usual Disney choice.

What has me writing is the way I set-up the trip. I did it all myself online using two websites. I purchased the flights, car, and first hotel on Expedia. I used Disney’s site for Micky. In the past, I would contact AAA of Oregon and have them do it. I do not want to get a date wrong or spell a name wrong or miss out on some great deal so I would use travel agents. I have paid $100 at least once to untangle a flight and even had Susie and I flying to the same place but somehow on different planes (the flights left at almost the same time from the same airport from the same airlines!). Now it costs an additional $50 or more per reservation to have a travel agent set-up the flights. And the nice voice on the phone, the calmness of the process, and the certainty that a mistake would just be fixed without comment or cost I sorely miss now. But I am a computer guy–I can do this!

The next step was to find something at The Mouse. First, all the parks websites are different. So I had to do Disney World which is the Florida Disney resort and parks. Once I did that I had to find where one orders hotels and all that stuff. Then I had to find a room at the correct hotel, the Smiths already had their reservations. Wilderness Lodge had a room on the courtyard. I selected that and added in for almost again the same amount of money, no small amount, for three-day park-hopper pass.

I did not log on. Need to log on. Reset password. Start over? Everything is in my cart. Good, buy.

Not good. I have no passes. Call The Mouse. Have to spell my name. The computer voice keeps spelling it with an “e” until it gives up and sends me to a human. No passes, but we can fix that. Takes forty-five minutes on the phone to fix it. Raelle, the cast member who helped me, informs me of my passes number by spelling out all the letters by using Disney characters, “‘G’ like Goofy.” And she points out that they are installing new magic in the online system and she might have to restart. We get it all together. I have to use the recently magic-revised online software to link my passes. Raelle gives me her direct line and wishes me a “magical day.” I get an email from her that also has the information. Nice!

So on to the magically improved online experience. I have learned that the website for Disney World has an experience section and that is where we do this magic. I attempt to link the passes to the icons with mine and Susie’s name. There are four Susie’s! I pick the first one. Now I have two different Susie’s. One gets to use the room. The other Susie gets a pass.

Call back. Raelle is not available so I leave her a message. I miss the callback. I get a message from Raelle. She tells me to have a magical day after telling me I need the Experience Internet helpdesk. She keeps in character and is excited that Susie can be so many people at once. Very magical. I call her back and get someone else and they route me to Melissa in Internet support who I thought called herself Maleficent. I misheard. She merges all the Susies. Melissa forgets to wish me a magical day. Finally, it is all done and magical.

So I think I have everything done. This doing it yourself is not that fun and as I have seen, not only do you have to deal with your mistakes, there are times when magic is being applied and things get more Maleficent than you would like. There are Raelle’s and Melissa’s out there to help you and they are nice to meet on the phone. Still nervous that I have something wrong, but it seems done.

I have decided to write about something every week for this blog. The subjects will be something I have been doing or am interested in.

I am a computer guy for a local shoe company. Despite all of the interesting changes I see in the world of massive systems that run large multi-national corporations (and I get paid to make work), I am still very interested in what you can pick-up for a few bucks or moderate amount of bucks and what interesting things you can do with it. Of late many of these things can be coded in Python or even graphical programming tools. The breaking out of really good and well-maintained open technology into the mainstream means that it is free or cheap and you can even get help and it lets you do cool things.

Looking back, this is my first computer:

(ZX-80 Image)

It was not what we call Open. It was a kit you bought from a magazine. My father said to my mother, “he might like this,” and got me one. I was surprised. It was cheap and amazing for its time. I loved it and began my journey coding on a ZX-80.

Returning to today, a good example of the changes I am seeing was my recent chess program. One of my first desires when I first learned to write code (back in 1980 on a Sinclar, yes back then) was to write game programs and the one that always comes to mind is chess. The amount of code to encapsulate all the rules and processes of chess has stopped me (not to mention the level of technology was much different back then). It is just not worth the work and the results will be bug filled and at the limits of what is possible, until now. Please see my code at Python Chess for my chess playing Python program. I discovered a library that covered all of the code needed to play a game. I just had to write the controls and the algorithms. The library is being actively maintained and at last count, it was on version 25! The world has changed and now I can write a chess-playing program in about 400 lines of Python. I am also able to explore, with again just a few lines of code, how to use some very basic Artifical Intelligence, to make decisions for the chess engine!

To continue the story of my chess program, I had an problem with the code and I put in an issue, using the issues that is part of open development of GitHub, on the library and the author contacted me from Germany and pointed out that I needed the new version for the code to work. I closed the problem after I checked that the update would fix the issue and included the fix (how to run an update) when I closed the issue.  This will allow the next person to avoid the same issue.

On open, I have some new hardware coming from SparkFun that is a small package but contains Tensor Flow.  Tensor Flow is one of the computer words like Bitcoin that make computer people become like a bunch of Justin Beaver fans at a concert. Ok, maybe computer nerds will not quite be like that–but they will be trembling with excitement. For a few bucks, I could put an artificial intelligence (AI) process in a small DIY robot; Tensor Flow can be described as a machine learning process for AI. The world is changing and it is exciting, see Edge Board. All available by using Sparkfun’s online order system, pay by PayPal or credit card and have it delivered in your mailbox in under a week.

All the comments about how social media creates trolls and how social media becomes platforms for the crazy are true, but what you can do with a dedicated open community is unexpectedly nice and can lead to many cool things. Free and cheap but open and functional. I get that Justin Beaver fan feeling all over now!