Month: November 2020

My Talk At PostgresBuild2020

The World of Data

I’ve already advertised my talk at PostgresBuild2020, but now I have an official image, so I can advertise it one more time. Also, all the talks are recorded, so my talk is technically done:). I will be still there, listening to myself :), and there will be ten minutes of questions.

To be honest, if I would know in advance that I will need to record my session, most likely I won’t submit a proposal. But when I submitted and it got accepted – there was no way out :).

The conference is virtual, as everything these days, and it will be in the GMT timezone, which means that those of my friends and colleagues who can’ attend Chicago PUG due to the timezone difference, will get a chance to listen to the NORM talks.

The registration is free – click here!

View original post

Glogg!

The biggest food/drink discovery of that visit to Helsinki – glogg! I have no idea why I didn’t try it before; it’s not the first time I am in Helsinki during the season. Perhaps, the previous visits at this time of the year were too brief, and also I could not imagine it is that different from what you can buy at IKEA… 

My only regret is that I didn’t buy any to take with me, although I had checked luggage. For some reason, I thought they might have it in a duty-free at the airport, and they didn’t…

Session Recording – I Do Not Think I Will Ever Do It Again!

If I could only imagine that the preparation for my talk at the PostgresBuild conference would take almost two days, I would never submit my talk proposal! A fun fact is that I invested a lot of time to submit a proposal for my bitemporal short tutorial, which was such a success at October Chicago PUG, and it was my last-minute decision to add one more proposal – for the NORM talk.

Then, just this last-minute-not-so-much-thought proposal got accepted. Only after it was accepted, I learned that it has to be only 30 minutes, and only after that, I learned that should be recorded! 

Do not take me wrong; I understand the organizers. With the tight schedule as it is, nobody wants technical difficulties at the moment of presentation. But imagine what does it take to record a tutorial! 

I had to record screen videos for several slides; I had to adjust their timing several times to make sure the whole presentation fits in 30 minutes. Then I had to come up with the background because they had very specific requirements. It turned out that my Mac Air is not powerful enough to have a custom background for zoom., so I had to move to the work laptop. Then – black sweater and makeup.

During my first full recording, I when six minutes over. When I started to record one more time, ten minutes into the recording, I realized that Boris left one extra field in the picture. (I asked him to re-draw the picture we used for the NORM talk in Cyprus to go with my new training example. Previously, he already re-drawn it for the book, and then one extra field from the airlines example was left. Good thing I had to re-recode! If not these six minutes extra, I won’t re-record, and it will still have an error in the presentation! 

Then I started recording from the updated slide, and then six minutes before the presentation’s end, Boris’s phone rang – with a spam call! 

We spend another hour and a half figuring out how to combine several pieces on QuickTime – this app has its ways of thinking what’s right!

There is one visible gap in the final presentation, but I decided I can’t do it any longer! 

My Very Rare Family Time

I am on my way back to Chicago. It was a strange trip, for sure. After being on that overbooked UA flight, I regretted my decision to go and thought that Boris is right that we should not make too many moves during a pandemic.

In Helsinki, the situation was not the same as when I was there in October. They have way more cases than previously. Although it’s still way less than in Illinois, and the number of deaths, hospitalized patients, and patients in ICU is microscopic compared to our number, more restrictions are still instilled.

That meant that we didn’t go to any concerts, and in general did less outside home. Although this time we were biking together again.

Another factor that influenced how I felt was my panic about the speed with which our book is going and that we are behind all possible deadlines. And finally, the fact that I needed to record my presentation for the conference!

At some point, I asked Boris whether he thought it was the right idea for me to travel. He said that he hoped that I was able to relax. And the surprising thing is that it was true!

When I decided to go, I joked that it was the most expensive way to avoid holiday cooking and cleaning. But the fact is that for the whole week, I didn’t cook a single meal, didn’t wash a single plate, and didn’t do laundry. And I did only fun shopping if anything.

Although Boris had to teach a class this week and had some work meetings and some work in general, he allowed me to concentrate on writing 100%. And I am really thankful for that!
Also, I completely forgot that I wanted to print our logo on a t-shirt. And that Boris also wanted a t-shirt with this logo, and even bought a white t-shirt for that. We did it on Sunday – and that’s what I just posted:) (I wrote it yesterday but forgot to publish)

Biking In Helsinki

There is still almost no snow in Helsinki, and we were biking almost every day. The surrounding is still beautiful, although Boris didn’t give me any chances to stop to take pictures. Except of yesterday, when he lost me :).

My Helsinki bike is a city bike, not very fast, although quite decent. As for Boris, he has a new bike now, which is really fast :). So most of the time he has to slow down, or to stop sometimes to wait fro me. Yesterday, it started funny, but ended up not being so funny. I wanted to stop for a bathroom break; I knew that there were several places along the bike path, and I called Boris to stop when I saw one, and waved that I am crossing the street to the facility. Somehow he didn’t realize what was going on, and when I got out, I saw him biking back. I yelled, but he didn’t hear me. I could still reach him if I would hop on the bike right away, but I was absolutely sure he has his phone on him, so I called… Both of his phones. And when I realized that he has none on him, it was already late – I could not see which way he turned.

I knew how to get home, but I didn’t have a key! And I remember how I stared at my key when I was about to leave the house, and thinking: we are going together, I do not want to risk losing a key! And so that you know, this key opens not only our flat, but also the building entrance and the bike storage. And it was getting cold and dark, and I didn’t have a light on my bike.

It all ended well :). And I didn’t get a cold 🙂

At the Children’s World

The picture below was taken in the Children’s World during the first Month Vlad and Anna were attending; somebody from the staff took it and gave me way later. Vlad and Anna liked it there.

Their teachers’ names were Miss Kelly and Mister Brian; they were very young, fun, and caring and loved the kids. First, I was surprised by the small size of the place and by the fact that they were just pulling out tiny camp beds for nap time and didn’t have a separate room for the “quiet hour” ( “tikhiy chas”). I was also surprised that there were so many unstructured activities. And I was grateful for the meals.

My historical posts are being published in random order. Please refer to the page Hettie’s timeline to find where exactly each post belongs, and what was before and after.