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Freelove != Free Love

Got an email from Academia.edu saying,

Dear Ezra,

Alessandra Carneiro uploaded a PDF that mentions the name “Ezra Freelove”.

They have a premium service where you can buy access to mentions of your name. I know of only one mention in a VSU paper as a thank you for my work there in IT in helping them. So, I was curious about a second. I wasn’t going to spend $99 for it, so I looked up the name of the author. Only one person with that name has papers uploaded, so it was easy to just browse them.

Searching for “freelove” in all 8 led to no results. Then, I noticed “free love” one title. It was also the most recent. My actual last name is nowhere in the article. This website’s search must be ignoring the spaces in the four mentions.

Not the first nor the last time people conflate my surname with the term.

Check the date

TL;DR: If you see a story that compels you to share it in outrage, then check to see if this really is still an issue. It might be from years ago and no longer an issue.

Longer:

A few friends posted a news story about how the current Federal administration decided to pay $6 million of the almost $1 billion requested by North Carolina related to damage caused by Hurricane Matthew. Hurricane Michael hit Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina last week. So, I am sure this story is more noticeable because the two storms both start with M and are boy names unlike Maria last year. The story was published in 2017. It also wasn’t clear about the NC request and best I can tell, FEMA has allocated $500 million that is being very slowly spent, HUD $168M, SNAP $70M. There probably is other money like small business loans from Federal agencies, but I did not really find a clear single number.

Another story I noticed over the weekend that became popular was the governor of Maine claiming almost all the drug problem was Blacks and Latinos from out of state going there to deal. (And impregnate White women.) This one was from 2016 when LePage was attempting to support the Republican presidential candidate. It was disheartening to see people calling for a recall of someone term-limited and ineligible to run in the election next month, so he is going out the door anyway.

 

Wellness Allergy

Work has a wellness program. One component involves a website that purports to educate users about healthy eating. The funny thing to me is that I was not going to participate at all until I found out that had potentially an allergy issue. So, I thought, why not try it? Maybe it can provide some ideas on things I can eat that are healthy?

Well, apparently healthy foods are allergy foods. It recommends eating more fish, nuts, soy, eggs, cheese*, whole wheat instead of unhealthy foods. Exactly the things that are likely allergens.

Yes, I know it is cow’s milk that is a possible allergen, so goat’s or sheep’s milk likely is fine.

Why does Microsoft hate Edge?

I have the default browser set to Chrome in the Windows OS. So, when I click a link in Outlook, it opens in Chrome. So, any time an application opens Internet Explorer, it is obviously something weird.

Okay, confession time, it makes me wonder if I am computer illiterate every time IE opens.

Since Edge will be three years old this coming July, I kind of expected the switch by now. Why are Microsoft applications opening links in anything other than the default browser? And why are they picking IE instead of Edge?

I thought I would fix the issue by uninstalling IE. In Control Panel > Programs > Turn features on and off, one can choose whether IE is installed. Unfortunately, that seems to have broken the ability of programs to use the default browser. Reinstalling IE fixed that.

Why Trump should counter Russian meddling in 2018 elections

A common complaint the PotUS has is that Democrats should agree with him. He rails on Twitter about this lack of support.

The Russian meddling in the 2016 elections was designed to target certain groups of people to discourage them from voting. We were already divided. The meddling exacerbated it. So, Democrats would hate Trump even more because of it.

If he wants a real chance at getting Democratic voters to agree with him, then he needs to reverse the effects of the Russian Effect.

How many records are there?

On the surface, it may seem like an easy question. Data Owners typically think this has an easy answer.

If their data followed a very simplistic model, then it would have an easy answer. Just “select count(*) from table;” and report the value.

Unfortunately for Data Custodians, the data is often organized in relational data structures. In my case, we almost always buy a product and are not provided or not allowed to see schema documentation. So, this question requires making judgment calls.

  1. What kinds of data do I have? Hopefully, the tables have decent names that are meaningful. Learn how to use the product and the basic concepts of what things are will come with it. Assuming the tables are meaningful, then a review of the table names will suggest where the likely important data is stored.
  2. Research elsewhere if necessary. People blog about what they know. They ask questions in forums.
  3. Experiment. Change the value in the application and look to see whether it shows in the table.
  4. Count. Get the number of records for the relevant tables.

 

Cognitive dissonance of UGA and Falcons fans

It is funny to me how many rivalries UGA football has:

  1. Clean, Old-Fashioned Hate
  2. World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party
  3. Deep South’s Oldest Rivalry
  4. “Grown Man Football” with Missouri
  5. with South Carolina
  6. with Tennessee
  7. fans talk about hating Clemson
  8. fans talk about hating Alabama

Since Atlanta is the closest metropolitan area to UGA, there is a strong crossover of fandom with the Atlanta Falcons NFL team. The funny thing is that all those rival teams have quality talent, so some of the players are going to end up drafted into the NFL. So, the odds are a player UGA fans hated for hurting them as a college player could become a beloved player for the Falcons.

That is how the NFL draft cookies crumble.