My Stats from 2022

Posted on December 26, 2022 by way0utwest

I wrote last week about my travel, 23 trips in 2022. However, I’ve been gathering some other stats about my life and what I do, so I wanted to share a few of them here.

Music

I mostly listen to music on Spotify these days. One thing I loved are the Spotify wrapped updates at the end of the year. For 2022, I had these stats:

Writing and Speaking

It’s my job. A few stats:

  • Editorials written – 151
  • Coping Tips – 257
  • Speaking sessions delivered: 34 talks
  • Events: 19 events
  • Blog views – 74,000+
  • Visitors: 55k+

Workouts

Taking care of my health is important to me. I’ve always exercised regularly, and at one point I ran every day of the year for a few years. I’ve relaxed a bit, and settled into more of a routine. I miss a few days and I don’t stress about it, but I make my best effort to work by body a bit most days.

Stats from 2022. I might have missed some, but these are the gross totals. This adds up to more than 365 since I do two things some days. A lot of weight days have cycline or walking or something as a warm-up

  • Yoga: 89
  • Cycling (indoor and outdoor): 84
  • Weights 63
  • Walking 22
  • Elliptical: 22
  • Swimming: 14
  • Cardio classes: 2
  • Rowing: 2

Total workout days: 232

The total days is low for me, 232, which is 63% of the year. My aim is 75% of the days, but I had ankle surgery this year, which threw me off for a month, and I spent way too much time on the road with travel and missed working out some of those days.

Driving

I don’t know exactly how much I drove, but the Tesla give me some stats and I’ve been tracking a few. For the Tesla,  show about 17k miles this year, which is mostly me. For all the times my wife might drive (or the kids), likely I put miles on the X5 or Suburban (or a few in the Ram 3500), so this is not a bad set of mileage for me.

I also got to drive in two countries and a few states. Rough stats:

  • Miles driven 17,000
  • Countries: 2 (US and Portugal)
  • States: 5 (Colorado, New York, California, Florida, Nevada)
  • Top driving locations from the Tesla: Lifetime Fitness (135), Safeway (98), and a local gas station (89). Yes, I have a diet soda addiction.

Reading

I spend a lot of time reading books. They are an escape for me from life, and a way to improve myself. In 2022, I finished

  • 101 books
  • 35000+ pages
  • Avg. screen time on Kindle app for Dec: 10 hours/week
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Republish: The Multilingual Programmer

Posted on December 26, 2022 by way0utwest

A day off after Christmas, so I’m re-running The Multilingual Programmer

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Daily Coping 26 Dec 2022

Posted on December 26, 2022 by way0utwest

Today’s coping tip is to see how many people you can smile at today.

Easy one for me. I find this makes me happier and my day better when I smile at people.

Wave, too. Even in big cities as I travel the world, a smile, a wave, and often I get the same in return.

Try it.

I started to add a daily coping tip to the SQL Server Central newsletter and to the Community Circle, which is helping me deal with the issues in the world. I’m adding my responses for each day here. All my coping tips are under this tag.

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Killing IE

Posted on December 24, 2022 by way0utwest

Sort of. Apparently, Microsoft will kill off IE in Feb 2023 in Windows 10. The lifecycle page notes that IE will be permanently disabled with an Edge update. For earlier OSes, it isn’t quite clear what will happen. However, extended support ends this month, Jan 2023, for Windows 7 and 8.

Does anyone use Windows 8?

I have used IE many times in my career, but the last decade of so I’ve shuddered every time I need to run it on a server or remote machine. It’s ancient technology that feels cumbersome, much like trying to get something done on a Palm Pilot instead of a modern smartphone.

I know there are lots of websites and apps that use technology that works in IE, and Microsoft is adding an IE Mode to Edge for those cases.  Microsoft has a “what you need to know” article you can read, but it seems more like an advertisement for Edge than an informative article.

I could care less about IE, and I mostly don’t think I’ve needed it in years, but I do encounter that technology in a few places. Outlook is the main one where some sort of IE-based control is still being loaded for some authentication mechanisms. I think removing IE is one thing, but getting rid of embedded controls based on IE is going to be a much harder and longer-term issue.

I know so many developers that used various versions of the browser control in their apps, and I suspect there is no shortage of places that IE tech will continue to be a problem. I’m sure it works most of the time, but probably not always.

Hopefully, most of you out there use a modern browser for your work, and if you need one inside an application, you use something besides an embedded IE-era control. If you need an alternative, there’s an older Stack answer that might help. Please, use anything by an IE control. It’s time we let that technology retire gracefully in a museum somewhere.

Steve Jones

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