Bad Shoes, Hippies and Bears

A few years ago, I ran into an old friend in Florence while standing in the queue at a local service station.  It had been quite a pleasant surprise and we made plans to connect for breakfast on this particular journey.  There was not much time for anything else on this round, so we enjoyed the little we had with some good food at Fat Joe's Cafe and generally catching up on the enterprise of one another and his forging new acquaintance with our host.

We spent the rest of the morning stumbling about various efforts. An attempt to locate an old stagecoach hotel met with failure, lacking proper clearance on the vehicle we commanded. Hoping to defray that cost, we set out on foot to traverse the last mile. Unfortunately, the slacker shoes that had been well-suited to breakfast were not built for that sort of adventuring, so we abandoned the task for a future visit. Wandering back into town, we paused for a moment to capture Historic Florence High School, which was surprisingly not yet included in my ever-growing map of schoolhouses in Google Earth.

Back at the ranch again, the last effort of the morning, now afternoon, turned towards mapping. Our host had created a map for some young explorers and wanted a little feedback towards suitability.  We pondered the situation over a little axe throwing, ultimately deciding that it a very good fit for evaluating the young apprentices.  The real test will come when they apply themselves to considering the map.  

The day was fading quickly though, and as much as we hated to leave again, we needed to reach basecamp before the sun fell too far down.  It was notched up in a canyon between two massive peaks and evening would come much sooner than anywhere else.  Saying our goodbyes, looking forward to connecting again later in the week, we followed the sage advice of our host and filled our reserves prior to departure.  The cost had already exceeded the original payment price at home by $0.60 per gallon.  Our host promised it would double that in the northern end of the Arkansas River valley.

While it was not a long drive, we still had 160 km to cover that would take a couple of hours or more, depending upon the number of distractions.  Breaking into the river valley flatlands at Salida, we discovered a new favorite station through  KWUZ-FM, Hippie Radio, which would keep us entertained with blast-after-blast from the past for the next handful of days.

It took very little for Mt Princeton to appear looming in the windshield under skies that had only begun to clutter with afternoon clouds.  It was an ominous sign that things would very likely be rather unpleasant the following day, as forecasts had predicted.  We clung to optimism though, hoping the weather-guessing guys would be as inaccurate as they usually were.

Our new host greeted our landing at the cabin and introduced us to our home for the next few days.  It seems we had missed the real fun though.  The proprietor shared with us a photo from the property camera showing a black bear that had come knocking the night before, looking to offer his own personal greeting.  It was all the coercion needed for us to ensure anything that even resembled a crumb of food was properly evacuated from our vehicle.  We even went so far as to store all food items inside the refrigerator, regardless of whether they needed to be or not.

The sun was fading quickly, and satisfied with the level of precautions taken with provisions, I ambled a short piece down the road to look in on Love Meadow.  I was pleasantly surprised to find a small herd of deer indulging themselves in a late evening snack.  A few glanced up, though generally they paid no attention to my arrival or departure.  The scene instilled a certain calm, and with deep twilight setting in, I returned to spend the remainder of the evening with my comrade in the quiet solitude of slumber that only a mountainside cabin can offer.

Colorado Road Trip Part 3 of 9

Dirt Road Derailment West of Great Bend

A good breakfast and a bit of coffee set things in the right perspective for a day on the road taking in the decaying and dismantled. Our primary goal was to reach our retreat in the high desert at the base of the Wet Mountains by early afternoon.  The drive west out of Kansas and into Colorado under mostly clear skies enabled solid progress.  Familiar places rolled by without much to mention until pausing for a moment in Dighton to observe a seemingly abandoned bus in an equally abandoned service station. 

One of the quests for the day was to visit an old Missouri Pacific Railroad Depot in Horace.  The structure was reported abandoned and collapsing and we wanted to make a few observations before all that transpired. The depot and many other similar sites were deserted in the 1990s and left to rot, as railroad through-traffic shifted.  Our observations found it exactly as described, and the associated town attempting to follow the same general path.

A little further down the line, we stumbled on a derailment resting quietly in the sun near Chivington, alone and forgotten in this relative wasteland that borders Kansas. More than a year ago, these 124 cars loaded full of thousands of bushels of wheat rolled happily along the Colorado Pacific Railroad Line, then suddenly and unexpectedly gave up and rolled over.

This is not entirely a wasteland though, when one takes a little closer look, which is how we ended up at the intersection of County Road U & County Road 30 in Kiowa County.  It can be a place of intense beauty that only the local biota could appreciate, or those seeking to remove themselves entirely from civilization.  Blue skies tower over dirt roads and crops as far as the eye can see and not a sound from the human element, generally speaking.

Returning to two-lane asphalt, a harsh reality of rural travel began to set in. Rest stops are often few and far between out here, and we were beginning to feel the need for such a diversion. Haswell seemed like the first opportunity for such matters, though we quickly discovered Google Maps was lying about the existence of such an opportunity through a Service Station. However, the "Nation's Smallest Jail" captured our attention momentarily, resulting in the discovery of a suitable portable relief station as well. While it would have qualified as one of the smallest, I have suspicions someone is making themselves out to be bigger than they are. The Prospect Heights Jail is definitely a contender, and the little cage jail at Parkville Nature Sanctuary is much smaller. If Haswell loses that title, they can still claim fame with an Intel chip and a Radio Telescope. There are lots of things to see in this big little town!

More familiar places passed by without much of interest to draw us in, enabling a soft landing when and where we expected.  After a long day on the road, we were glad to once again looking north across the plains at Pikes Peak and the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains.  

In honor of our triumphant return, our host hoisted the blue line stars and stripes.  We followed that surprising welcome refamiliarizing ourselves with the compound grounds, then settled in for good food and even better conversation.  With the sun well in retreat by then, we topped off the evening with a few more hours of quiet discussion, while staring off into that beautiful night sky that blankets the prairie.  Some folks are truly blessed beyond our imagination.

Colorado Road Trip Part 2 of 9

Surviving a Smoky Hill River Squall

Escaping on our latest adventure out to Colorado found us traveling along the least preferred yet most expedient path possible, westbound on I-70.  Heavy cloud cover lacking rain made for easy progress on this dreaded route.  However, things would turn from this level of tolerably mundane to downright unnerving on the final leg.

The situation deteriorated dramatically after departing I-70 and settling into a southwesterly heading on KS-156, crossing the Smoky Hill River.  Darkening skies were not just sign of sundown.  A few brief sprinkles were the only warning just seconds before a deluge haunted us nearly all the way to the Great Bend in the Arkansas River.  

Traversing that diagonal out of Ellsworth should have taken less than an hour. A harrowing experience of more than 90 minutes passed in typhoon-like conditions that reduced visibility to under 10 meters in a blinding wall of water.  The torrent of rain, mist, and wash from oncoming traffic left us guessing at lane position with faded, sometimes non-existent markings.

We eventually arrived safely at our layover for evening, later than anticipated, though none the worse for wear with our formerly bug-splattered transport completely and utterly insect free.

Colorado Road Trip Part 1 of 9

A Fifty Million Dollar College Scandal

Academics remain sidelined as an elite athletic payroll dominates the field.

I heard a story on the radio that made my jaw drop this morning.  Some universities are now allocating upwards of $50 million to pay student-athletes. It is a striking snapshot of completely misaligned priorities in higher education and I am shocked at the absence of objection.

Meanwhile, in the lecture halls and laboratories, students are paying tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars just for the privilege of pursuing a degree. In many cases, these same people are funneled into decades of often predatory and crushing debt long before their professional lives begin.

How did we arrive at a place where this feels normal?

When did higher education completely abandon its purpose in favor of becoming an entertainment business that operates as a school on the side?

Having watched this rise to power over the last several decades, the shift is staggering. What was once a localized or even regional weekend tradition has ballooned into a multi-billion-dollar corporate juggernaut that completely dominates institutional priorities.

Imagine if that $50 million was directed where it actually belongs: lowering tuition costs, funding grants for the economically or situationally disadvantaged, supporting essential research, retaining and recruiting academic faculty, as well as modernizing labs and classrooms. 

At a time when national test scores and academic proficiency are in a well-documented slide, our institutions should be doubling down on real education. Instead, tens of millions of dollars are funneled into an athletic arms race while the core academic engine rusts on the sidelines.

When a university’s multi-million-dollar investments favor stadium lights over academic access, the fundamental mission of higher education is lost. 

Much like professional sports franchises that demand public bond initiatives and taxpayer-funded stadiums while pricing out local fans, universities are running the exact same playbook. Even when athletic departments claim to be self-sustaining, they leverage non-profit status, tax advantages, and campus infrastructure while general student fees often quietly subsidize non-revenue sports.

We are quite literally witnessing a system designed around sports entertainment while ordinary students often carry a heavy financial anchor long after graduation.

If a university can assemble $50 million for athletic talent, it surely has the resources to ensure an affordable education for remainder of the student body, without leaving them indebted for life. It is well past time that we start demanding academic institutions re-center their true mission: making education accessible, affordable, and valued above all else.

What can be done?

• Vote with Enrollment:  Parents and prospective students should choose institutions that align with these values. Prioritize universities that invest heavily in academic programs, faculty support, and student affordability over those that divert massive resources into hyper-commercialized athletic budgets.
• Pressure Campus Leadership: Write directly to university boards of trustees, university presidents, and alumni associations. Withhold institutional donations and explicitly cite the hyper-commercialization of athletics and skyrocketing academic tuition as the reason.
• Demand Legislative Accountability: Contact your federal and state representatives. Demand that any legislative frameworks governing college athletics include strict caps on athletic spending, mandate tuition freezes, and require transparency for how student fee money is allocated toward athletic programs.
• Hit them in the Ledger: Boycott the machine. Stop buying game tickets, turn off the television broadcasts, unfollow the team accounts, and refuse to purchase official university merchandise. Until we stop bankrolling their multi-million-dollar athletic arms race, nothing will change.
  

Until the public, alumni, and lawmakers begin to hold these non-profit institutions accountable, they will continue prioritizing stadium lights over classroom access.  The consumer public should demand that higher education return to its actual mandate: delivering accessible, affordable, quality education above all else.

The Real Problem is not always the Breach

An aspect of data breaches that doesn't receive enough attention is timing.

When a company discovers personal information may have been exposed, the clock should start immediately! Unfortunately, many organizations focus on investigating, validating, assessing scope, consulting with attorneys, insurers and forensic firms, all while preparing public statements, yet before informing the very people whose information is at risk.

Identity thieves don't wait for investigations to conclude.

If there is any possibility that highly sensitive data were exposed, affected individuals should be notified as soon as practical.  This should be done even if all of the facts are not yet known. Additional updates can always follow as more information becomes available.

Organizations justify delays by citing the complexity of investigations. While important, people deserve the chance to immediately take action and protect themselves through actions such as freezing credit files, examining their accounts, changing passwords, and generally increasing their awareness of fraud attempts.

These steps are far more effective early rather than months, or even years, later.

There is also a broader issue of accountability.

When organizations collect and store personal information, they assume responsibility for protecting it. That responsibility should not end when a breach occurs. In many cases, the consequences of identity theft lasts for years, while the protections offered to affected individuals last only months.

Transparency builds trust. Delayed notification erodes it.

Perhaps it is time for legislators to strengthen breach notification requirements.

A few ideas worth considering:

• Mandatory disclosure within a defined timeframe once potential exposure of sensitive personal information is identified, rather than allowing indefinite delays while investigations continue.
• Multi-year identity monitoring requirements when Social Security numbers, dates of birth, financial information, or medical information are involved.
• Executive certification that affected individuals were notified promptly and completely.
• Personal liability for knowingly withholding information from affected individuals when there is evidence their information may have been compromised. 
• Meaningful financial penalties for unreasonable notification delays.

The standard should never be "What is the minimum we are legally required to do?"

The standard should be "What would we expect if it were our own information at risk?"

Until laws begin emphasizing transparency and accountability as much as data protection itself, organizations will continue to treat notification as a legal compliance exercise rather than an obligation to the people they serve and those they expect to serve them.

We are past due for equitable accountability measures, especially in this era of "AI."

Reach out to your representatives at all levels, if you agree with any part of this.

Give them your opinion.

Expect a response.

Tao Verse 19

See with Original Purity

Google Finance UX/UI Fail

Google recently upgraded its Finance App to offer a better experience to users. The new desktop interface offers a more expansive layout than the previous look and now includes AI support. However, it fails miserably when considered from a UI/UX perspective. Let's take a look at a few of the problems in each of the three panels in the new format.

The Left Panel

In this left panel, a summary of portfolios displays along with every single item in a watchlist and a section entitled "Equity Sectors."

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise closed. Why? Screen real estate is a valuable commodity.

Also, why only Equity Sectors?  Where are the equally important asset classes: Fixed Income, Commodities, Real Estate, Foreign Exchange, and Cash Equivalents? This one piece adds unnecessary noise to the view. It can be collapsed, but only temporarily.

The Center Panel

The default display shows announcements, major indices, the US Market Summary, latest news, dates for upcoming earnings reports, most active stocks, and daily gainers and losers.

Selecting items from a watchlist displays more detailed information about a particular stock in this panel.  Choosing a watchlist expands the left panel, overriding this center panel.  That works nicely.

Portfolio selection does not work the same.  Choosing a portfolio displays the contents of the portfolio and certain details in this center panel.  These detail columns can be customized to add more data to the view as well.  It should probably work the same as watchlist selection though.

When viewing a portfolio with more than 10 market items, it is impossible to view the associated data without continually scrolling back and forth and up and down, while struggling to remember the position of a specific item in a grid with no reference points. A side-to-side scroll bar is available at the bottom, but it is an empty and useless gesture for large portfolios.

The Right Panel

Welcome to the new "Research" Panel, or more accurately described as the introduction and intrusion of AI into your portfolio. 

This panel cannot be resized, minimized, or otherwise pushed out of sight.

The default view is a welcome message encouraging you to ask questions, of which a few random examples are provided. One can also ask it to perform analysis on what is visible in the middle panel or query markets in general. 

In Chrome, with Gemini already available, it is redundant at best.

Tasks can be executed from this panel too. In fact, Google now forces the user to use this panel for any updates to their portfolios. There is no other choice. If the intent is to use this platform to track an investment portfolio, one is stuck using AI.

It is a helpless and useless AI too.  

Most tasks associated with a watchlist are more easily performed from buttons already on screen.

Managing a portfolio using this Research Panel AI offers a new level of frustration. 

One can no longer simply add information to a portfolio as they did before. Google now forces the user to request that AI complete the task, taking the simplest process and pushing it down the path of unnecessary complexity.  What once only took a few keystrokes has been transformed into an argument over trade dates, pricing, and true transaction amounts. 

Who has time for this?

If I have to enter everything into a box, just give me all the fields required and segregated to do that.   At least give me a means of manually editing what Research Panel AI incorrectly positioned so I do not have spend an excessing amount of time arguing with it.

Beyond simple trades that it failed to execute properly, testing uncovered things the Research Panel refused to recognize that standard Gemini identified easily. In one instance, prior to Google pushing the major enhancement enabling users to sort by Ticker, the Research Panel was requested to take the columns from a portfolio presented in the center panel and redisplay the list with only the columns for Ticker and Total Gain/Loss, sorted in Ticker alphabetical order. The Research Panel insisted that the data did not exist. Gemini quickly displayed the requested information without argument.

Additionally, in the conversion to this new build, developers failed to ensure that data migrated correctly.  A lot of users report that daily tracking of their portfolio is lost forever.  Google simply dropped the transaction dates of many portfolio items.  As a consolation, the Research Panel AI recommends that you simply add those back for each and every stock.  It obviously is completely clueless as to the time that could take for large portfolios that have been in place for an extended period, with multiple transactions.

Thanks, Google.  Again, who has time for this?

Final Thoughts

I wish I could say I that I do not understand why Google refuses to enable manually entry as an option.

The answer is all too clear though.

They have spent a lot of money on this, and you will use it, you will like it, and you will work for free helping to train it up.

AI should be an additive tool for deep research or complex queries.  It should not be a mandatory gatekeeper for simple 2-second data entry forms.

Additionally, I will remain forever confused by those who continue to insist that Google is some sort of UI/UX expert.  They are anything but that, and this is one of many glaring examples.

Google did do one thing extremely valuable in this rebuild.  They helped me realize the usefulness of my personal brokerage platform.  Those guys spent serious time and money understanding UX.  The worst thing I encounter there is a login with two-factor authentication every time.

Empty Your Outlook Inbox

Another helpful tech tip for keeping the old Outlook inbox slim and trim, for those that may not know.

Are you using your mailbox as a To-Do List and have 4,563,231 emails and growing?

Stop it now and end your day with an empty inbox, or at least nearly empty.

I do.

All you have to do is flag your email and then archive it out of your sight.

It will still be searchable, and you can assign a due date to it, to remind you that it needs to be done.

What?

Yes.  Just flag them and get rid of them.

Here’s what you do …

In your inbox on each message, you should have the option to “Flag this message.”

It looks like a little flag and turns red when you click it.

Click that flag!

Now, click the little blue checkmark on the left toolbar.  

It says “To Do” when you hover over it.

In the left panel of the new screen, you will see “Flagged email.”

Click it!

When you get a lot of things in here, it will say “Earlier, Today, Tomorrow, A date range, Later, etc…”

Most importantly, you will say a section that says, “No Date.”

Expand it if you need to, using the little “ > “to the left of that title.

Hover over the Item Title and you will see a little “i” that is circled.

Click it!

A panel opens on the right the details of that item and usually shows only the subject of the email and a link to open it.

Here you can add a Due Date, a Reminder, Color Tags, Attachments and your own notes.

Follow this process and each time you flag an email, and you can just archive it out of sight or move it off to a folder.  Do NOT delete the email.  That will delete to To Do.  Archive is in your right-click menu and looks like a little file box.

Hope this helps make your inbox less frightening!  Good Luck!

Now, if only Google offered anything as reasonable integrated.

Google Scrapes the Barrel

Image borrowed from Quartz

Today, the notification below arrived, and immediately thought to myself, "Wow, Google.  You are really scraping the barrel."

---

We are reaching out to notify you of an upcoming update to our storage policies, along with new controls designed to give you more control over your Android backups.

The Policy Update: Effective in 45 days, all data included in your Android device backups will begin counting toward your Google Account storage limit. Photos and videos in Google Photos and MMS data already count toward your Google Account storage today. With this change all other backed-up data such as SMS messages, call history, device settings, and app settings will also count toward your Google Account storage. The storage used by your device backup may increase once this policy takes effect. If your Google Account exceeds its storage limit, your automatic backups will pause until you free up space or upgrade your plan.

New Controls for You: With this change, we are also introducing granular app backup toggles in your Android backup settings. If you are on Android 9 or higher, you can now select exactly which data types and individual apps you want to back up, ensuring you only use storage for what matters most to you.

Your current storage status:

Your estimated increase in Android device backup will be 0.05 GB after this change. 

---

Is all this really necessary? I guess they have to somehow recoup all those billions they are throwing at their AI somehow.

When they actually begin to charge a fair price for cloud storage, perhaps I will change my mind.. Local storage is cheaper and folks should turn away from this nonsense.

Google is just a like a drug dealer.  They give you services for free for years, then about-face and start charging you.  They were not always that way.  The internet was not always this way.

A Hot Weekend in Arkansas

Heading south into Arkansas again, the weather was clear and extremely hot, with a level of humidity that left things a bit disgusting.  Rain was promised for the entire weekend.  We knew better though.  At this time of the year, it was just as much of a lie and guess as it is in Kansas City.

Crossing Bull Shoals Lake on the Ferry, temperatures hovered around 34°C.  There was not a breath of wind to be found for a little relief, even in the crossing itself, causing us to finally give in to air conditioning for the remainder of the trip.  Pausing in Yellville for an bit of art, we decided to pursue a coarse towards US-65 so that we might intercept sustenance at one of our favorite locations.

Saturday temperatures and humidity were not much different from the day before, encouraging the world to seek shelter indoors or in the lake. A morning hike at Mossy Bluff left me soaked enough that I decided I might as well be in the lake, and subsequently threw myself in as much.  A follow-up detour down to Cabot left everyone in Heber dealing with the promised rain in a fierce little storm we did not have the opportunity to make as much as a passing acquaintance with, beyond the backwash.

It did cool things down, making Sunday a bit more presentable, though only for a little while.  A relatively early jaunt down to wander the perimeter of Woolly Hollow Lake ended in disappointment.  Usually, that hike ends with a dip in the lake to cool things down.  Said water body lacked in the usual depth, showcasing bathtub temperatures, and weird green things floating in the unusually murky depths.  It stood in stark contrast with the previous day at Greers Ferry, where one could easily 2 meters down, and so that is where I returned to quench my thirst for floating about.

Satisfied with good company and good food, we turned our thoughts and vehicle homeward on Monday.  We diverted through the Bluffton Preserve on the Archey Fork on whim, as a previous visit to the location found it partially closed for hunting.  Suspecting that nobody was much interested in chasing beasts through the burning rainforest, we found it perfect for a little off road adventuring, puddle-jumping and rock-skipping.  

Very likely the most satisfying part of the journey turned out to be discovery that a local community had joined forces to take over the land and maintenance of South Mountain Scenic Overlook, thereby thwarting future commercial development next to our favorite little coffee shop and scenic overlook.

Tao Verse 18

"If you need rules to be kind and just ... virtue is absent."

 

CORI, my new App

Completely and accidentally, I named my own Power BI application today.  It started with me trying to give it a title that emphasized exactly what it is, a "Consolidated Organizational Reporting Interface."

It is a word salad of sorts, but after staring it for a moment, I realized it had a name.  "CORI."  Now it just needs representation.

I could have designed something but that would have taken weeks.  AI to the rescue.  Gemini failed and I was truly disappointed, after having considered it much more creative than my other alternative.

Copilot offered up the following results, which were much better than I anticipated. The header image on this post is what Gemini came up with, and could do no better with additional prompts.

Copilot response (above):  Generated.

When asked, "What if it looked like a person?"

Copilot Response (image above):  I generated a personified version of CORI as a professional reporting and analytics ambassador.

I prompted further, "Can you make it race neutral?"

Copilot Response (image above):  I've generated a more neutral, stylized corporate mascot version of CORI that avoids strongly emphasizing any specific demographic characteristics while keeping the professional analytics-focused branding.

I further prompted, "Is is possible to go more gender neutral?"

Copilot Response (image above):  Yes. A better approach for a corporate reporting platform mascot is often to move away from a human altogether and use a branded character.  I generated a version where CORI is represented as a neutral data-avatar/mascot built from the brand colors and analytics theme. This avoids drawing attention to gender, race, age, or other personal characteristics and tends to work better for organization-wide branding.

A Return to Vegas

A return to Las Vegas found it much the same as I had left it two years ago on my first journey into Sin City.  The only remarkable difference proved to be the absence of grandstands for the Grand Prix and the temperature; the latter ensured those not eager to gamble stayed close to the pool only to venture out after the sun fell out of the sky.  October is undoubtedly a better time to visit than June.

For me, conference activities kept me busy through most of the daylight hours.  This engagement carried through to a little pool time in the early evening, before venturing out into the night.  It also prevented much wandering about out of a need to be fresh for more conference activities in the morning hours.  A lack of grandstands offered a better view of The Fountains of the Bellagio and I lingered about that area, primarily.

The hosts of the event offered a bit of sustained entertainment on the final evening there, though not outside of that quarter.  A brief walk through the casino and across the bridge spanning the strip setup an evening of good music, food and beverages under the desert sky.

Very likely, the most interesting part of the journey was as it always is; the view from just behind the wing, high above the earth.  This one activity continually offers the most intriguing sights to be witnessed anywhere and never looks the same twice.

Extortion at Kansas City International Airport

Prices at the airport border have gone from ridiculous to utterly absurd.  The above photograph is very real, taken at Kansas City International Airport on June 8, 2026.

Once passengers pass through TSA security, traditional market competition completely vanishes.  Why  do these stores feel the need to gouge consumers at this level; more so, why does the City, who very much manages these establishments, and in some cases owns them, permit this sort of highway robbery and extortion!

The next time one considers buying something this basic from those thieves, consider the following, offered by Google Gemini, when asked about the cost of producing a single Snickers bar:

While Mars Inc. keeps its exact proprietary cost sheets closely guarded, food industry cost models and manufacturing breakdowns give a very clear picture.

For a mega-manufacturer utilizing massive economies of scale, the total cost to manufacture, package, and ship a standard, regular-sized (1.86 oz / 52.7 g) Snickers bar is roughly 20 to 30 cents.

When you buy a Snickers at a convenience store checkout for $2.00, you aren't paying for the physical candy; you are paying for the massive supply chain, marketing, and retail markup that got it there.

Where Does the Rest of Your $2.00 Go?

If Mars manufactures it for roughly a quarter, the rest of the price tag is eaten up by the "food value chain." Mars sells the bar to a distributor or wholesaler, who sells it to a retailer. By the time it hits a grocery or gas station shelf, the retailer applies a healthy markup (often 40% to 50%) to cover their own rent, labor, and profit margins.   

What is that Markup in this Instance? 

The airport is hitting consumers with a staggering markup of over 2,000% over base production cost.

Do we also need to discuss how the City is also charging vendors astronomical rents, as well as taking a percentage of their sales?  

Isn't that the way "The Mafia" used to do it?

This is nothing but a racket.

Perhaps it is time for Kansas City to follow the lead of other major airports across the country (like Portland International or Minneapolis-St. Paul), who have enacted strict "Street Pricing" regulations. These rules legally mandate that airport concessionaires cannot charge more than 10% to 15% above what the same item costs at a standard brick-and-mortar location outside the airport. 

Copilot Notebook Enhancement Annoyance

Today, I discovered what a few others have begun to uncover. Microsoft has made yet another UI change to Copilot that has left users guessing.  Notebooks have mysteriously disappeared.  

When this feature first rolled out, I had no idea what to with it and turned to Copilot to explain it.

Recognizing the advantage of this feature, I rolled through a few projects using it and relying upon it as my place to compile all of my project notes.

They have yanked this feature apparently.  Though it still exists, just not where it is supposed to live, in the menu!

<rant> Do they not understand that nobody wants to play that game, hunting for what was previously right up front and is now nowhere to be found, except through discussion with their Artificial Imbecile. Google was slow to figure this out too.  Nobody wants to start using something only to have it yanked out from under them. It is not helpful.  It is not useful.  We will find something more reliable.  We will find a better way and without you.  That is all. </rant>

fabric vs snowflake

Why Ventra Health Chose Snowflake to Power Its Next Generation of Data and Analytics | by Kevin Crittendon | Snowflake Builders Blog: Data Engineers, App Developers, AI, & Data Science | Medium

Asked to take a look at the above article and offer some thoughts, here are few insights I have gathered from my own experience, other discussions and conferences.

This is an interesting case study highlighting Snowflake’s strength as a high-performance data warehouse, but I feel that the evaluation is limited to a lens that overlooks broader platform considerations.

For organizations heavily invested in the Microsoft stack and Power BI, Fabric represents a more strategic long-term platform due to its integrated architecture and reduced operational overhead.

Fabric is not intended to compete solely as a warehouse. It is designed to be an end-to-end data platform that minimizes data movement, reduces dependency on ETL pipelines, and eliminates duplication across systems.

The comparison largely measures how efficiently data is moved, where the value in Fabric lies in reducing or eliminating that movement altogether.

Findings also suggest a pipeline-heavy implementation (e.g., Data Factory-driven ETL), which reflects design choices rather than platform limitations. Fabric is optimized around OneLake and Direct Lake, enabling native access patterns that avoid replication and reduce latency.

The reported cost pressures align with a pipeline-centric architecture. In my opinion, Fabric offers a more predictable, capacity-based cost model when used as designed, with centralized storage, Direct Lake BI workloads, and minimal data movement.

Snowflake does simplify data warehousing and very efficiently, but introduces another level of complexity, and another point of failure.

Fabric simplifies the entire analytics ecosystem, using native integration with Power BI, Entra ID, and Microsoft 365, eliminating the need for additional tools, connectors, and duplicated semantic layers.

Fabric represents a different category altogether: a unified data and analytics platform designed to consolidate data engineering, warehousing, business intelligence, and governance into a single, integrated solution.

Tao Verse 17

 

If one doesn't trust himself how can he trust anyone else?

Overtime Reallocation

Executive Summary

The Overtime Reallocation report helps executive leadership understand where overtime is occurring, how overtime hours are distributed across locations, and which employees, positions, and programs are driving overtime utilization. Unlike a traditional overtime report, the model reallocates regular and overtime hours by employee, week, and location to provide a more accurate representation of where overtime actually occurred. The report is owned by the COO, CPO, and CFO and is intended to support workforce planning, operational oversight, and labor cost management.

This effort was a little different than most, hence the "Reallocation" identifier in the title.

What does that mean?

Regular hours are allocated primary‑location first up to 40 hours/week, with any remaining regular time spread proportionally across secondary locations. Overtime (hours >40) stays at the location worked. This preserves where work actually occurred while ensuring consistent weekly rules and accurate cost allocation across locations.

Trend to Goal

The Trend to Goal page provides an executive view of staffing performance against authorized hours. This page is intended to quickly identify which homes are meeting authorized staffing targets and which require attention.

It highlights:

• Actual % of Authorized Hours
• Scheduled % of Authorized Hours
• Current variance performance
• Top-performing and bottom-performing homes
• Performance trends over the last 13 months

Executive Summary

The Executive Summary page serves as the primary leadership dashboard and provides a high-level overview of overtime activity across Community Living operations. It is the report's primary monitoring and decision-support page. Key metrics and visualizations include:

• Total Hours Worked
• Total Regular Hours
• Total Overtime Hours
• Overtime Percentage
• Overtime by Location
• Overtime by Position Code
• Overtime by Employee
• Weekly Overtime Trend

This page is designed to answer executive questions such as:

• How much overtime are we using?
• Is overtime increasing or decreasing?
• Which locations are generating the most overtime?
• Which positions contribute the most overtime?
• Which employees have the highest overtime utilization?

Location Detail

The Location Detail page analyzes overtime allocation at the location level and helps operational leadership identify locations that consistently generate overtime and understand how hours are being allocated within those locations.

Users can review:

• Regular hours by location
• Overtime hours by location
• Overtime percentage by location
• Primary versus secondary work location allocations
• Location hours distribution trends

Employee Detail

The Employee Detail page provides employee-level overtime analysis and validation. The page is intended for auditing and explaining overtime distribution for individual employees and validating allocation calculations.

Users can review:

• Employee work locations
• Weekly allocated hours
• Regular hours by location
• Overtime hours by location
• Total allocated hours
• Employee overtime percentages

Version Notes

The Version Notes page contains the technical documentation for the report. The documentation emphasizes that row-level values are the authoritative source and that report grand totals should be interpreted carefully because Power BI does not recalculate allocation logic at higher aggregation levels.  It includes:

• Overtime allocation methodology
• Power Query calculations
• DAX measures
• Weekly classification rules
• Primary and secondary location assignment logic
• Data source assumptions
• Report revision history
• Known limitations regarding totals and aggregations

NOTE:  This is the very first report produced solely upon the support of Microsoft Copilot and proved quite a challenge keeping the AI on track and focused.