Sidetracked Summer

How is your summer going? Are you getting business things done, or taking it easy? I had a few projects planned for my Contextures business, but this has turned into a sidetracked summer. And that’s probably a good thing!

R Course Dropout

One casualty of my sidetracked summer was the online R Course that started July 23rd. I did the pre-course work, and that was interesting, except for the Excel misconceptions.

The first week, I was busy with other things (see below), and only had a bit of time to spend on coursework. I watched a video that covered some of the material, and did a bit of reading.

The next week, I had more time, but was frustrated by the material in the first lesson. There were links to reading material, but no clear outline on what to do. The quiz was confusing, and the student forum was filled with complaints, and “fixed it” replies from the instructor. It’s a brand news course, so there are obviously some bugs to work out.

Anyway, my patience ran out, and I un-enrolled from the course. Maybe I’ll find a different way to learn the basics of R, later in the year. Or not.

Switch to HTTPS

The big distraction at the end of July was switching my Contextures site (static HTML) to HTTPS. If you visit now, you’ll see a reassuring “Secure” notice in Chrome.

Am I the only person who still uses Firefox? There’s a lovely green lock icon in that browser.

My site has been running since late 2000, and I resisted the switch to HTTPS as long as possible. There aren’t any financial transaction done on the site, or personal information collected.

At the end of July, Google started to show a “Not Secure” warning in the Chrome browser, for all sites that are HTTP.  So, I made the switch, with help from Steve Friedl. He’s a former Microsoft MVP, and Linux expert with 30+ years experience.

Despite the horror stories that I’d read about switching to HTTPS, things went quite smoothly. There were lots of links to fix, of course, but Dreamweaver’s Find and Replace made that easy.

After getting things set up, and testing the HTTPS site, the scary part was finding the correct code to redirect to the HTTPS site, and adding it to the htaccess file. I listened for an explosion after hitting the Save button, but there wasn’t one, fortunately!

Away From My Desk

I’ve also spent more time than usual away from my desk this summer. Our 8-year-old granddaughter has come to visit a couple of times, and our 11-year-old grandson just spent a week here. And who wants to work when there is fun to be had?

Usually, I work on my laptop, with a pen and pencil carefully lined up beside me. If anything is out of place, it’s hard to concentrate. Right?

But when the grandkids are here, we spend lots of time at the art table, which is the opposite of my office setup! And no, I don’t have an art supply obsession. Well, maybe a little one.

It is nice to get away from Excel for a while though, and it’s fun spending time with our grandkids. They have wonderful imaginations, and tons of great ideas!

I hope you’re having a sidetracked summer too, and spending lots of time away from Excel.

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