Tuesday, June 3, 2025

Our Future President


This is likely the funniest thing I have read in awhile.  It is from Volume 1 of the Autobiography of Mark Twain, related to him speaking about General Grant in 1881.

"I had been picturing the America of fifty years hence, with a population of two hundred million souls, and was saying that the future President, Admirals and so forth of that great coming time were now lying in their various cradles, scattered abroad over the vast expanse of this country, and then said 'And now in his cradle somewhere under the flag the future illustrious Commander-in-Chief of the American armies is so little burdened with his approaching grandeur and responsibilities as to be giving his whole strategic mind at this moment to trying to find out some way to get his big toe into his mouth  - something, meaning no disrespect to the illustrious guest of this evening, which he turned his entire attention to some fifty-six years ago.'"

Sunday, June 1, 2025

Friday, May 30, 2025

Power BI Terms - Snack 2


Did you get your homework done?  When you accessed Power BI last time, I asked you to poke around.  Did you discover anything interesting?

Before we really dive in, there are a couple of high-level terms you should be familiar with, as they relate to Power BI.

Report - An interactive collection of visualizations enabling analysis and insights, based on a Semantic Model.

Dashboard - A single-page, interactive canvas enabling a high-level overview of your data through single visualizations that live in a Report, or even an entire Report page.

App - A collection of dashboards, reports, datasets, and other Power BI content created and shared through a single access point.

Semantic Model - the logical layer that represents the structure and meaning of the data within a specific context. It captures the relationships, transformations, and calculations needed to create reports and dashboards. 

Workspace - A collaborative space where a group of folks can work together on dashboards, reports, datasets, and other content.

Essentially, a Semantic Model defines a Report, whose visualizations may live in a Dashboard, a collection of all may reside within an App.  These reports and models may also live in a collaborative workspace or only in your own individual workspace.

Your homework.  Remember this forever.

Sunday, May 25, 2025

Celery Salad Base


Found this base somewhere and modified it slightly.  Turned out rather nicely.

1/4 Cup of Sweet Onion

1/8 Cup of Lemon Juice

2 tablespoons Olive Oil

1/4 teaspoon of salt

1/2 teaspoon of pepper

1/3 cup of shredded Parmesan

A bunch of celery

  1. Mince the onion.  
  2. Slice celery 1/4 inch.
  3. Except for the celery, mix it all together.  
  4. Toss the celery in the mixture.

Add other veggies for fun.  This time, I added a small zucchini.

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Bad Luck Hills Fort

Among the more remarkable snapshots-in-time sits high on a bluff along the Missouri River on the eastern outskirts of Kansas City in the small town of Sibley.  A good portion of the backstory associated with this site is familiar to nearly everyone, while other parts of its history remain obscured.

These "Bad Luck Hills," as they were once known, look out across the Missouri River valley just above the confluence of Beasley Creek and the Missouri River.  It is a uniquely defensible, yet accessible position offering opportunities in overland and water-born trade from a secure location.

One of the leading explorers associated with The Corps of Volunteers for Northwestern Discovery, otherwise known as the  Lewis & Clark Expedition, landed upon this spot in June of 1804.  William Clark and the band of explorers spent the weekend here plagued by gnats, ticks and mosquitos, as well as being mired in mud a good portion of that time.  It is surprising he held any inclination to return.

Clark held onto memory of the distinctly favorable location more so than the aggravations encountered there, returned to the site with other government appointees, and set about establishing Fort Osage in 1808.  The military garrison and successful government factory served the region for another 20 years before private fur traders finally demanded closure of this competition.

Local settlers salvaged lumber and other parts from the shuttered fort to develop the surrounding community, nearly erasing it from history. Oral tradition, research, and persistent documentation kept the memory alive though, and the 1940's brought it back to life through a massive restoration effort.  

The sixties opened the door to a more detailed history of the area that included recognition of those that had come before.  Excavations uncovered evidence of human habitation by the Osage tribe, as well as the Hopewell culture that populated the region from around 200 BCE to 500 CE.

As more is learned about the site, it continues to demonstrate an interesting display of relatively consistent land use in one location, though by distinctly different cultures.  Thoughtfully arranged specimens and memoirs on display lead one through the time before man into that of the "Sky People," through westward expansion, and into the modern day.  It is a undoubtedly a unique National Historic Landmark worthy of an afternoon of exploration.



...

further reading

Discover Lewis & Clark

Fort Osage
National Park Service

National Landmark Site

Historic Sibley, MO

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