Six Aspects of Measuring the Quality of Software

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This is a post I wrote a long time ago when I first read “Espresso Coffee, The Science of Quality.”  I am finally getting around to posting it here because I just now noticed I never posted it here, it was just a thing I passed around on the Internet.

Lately, I have found myself curious about what quality means, and how I can better control it in what I do. As I researched quality, there grew in me an even greater confusion about quality, and what it means, how it is interpreted and understood,  and the implementation of it. That is, whether or not I can always  hold to the same standard of promised quality as the highest uncommon factor – the value of my product/output.

This pertains to working with clients, with other departments, with myself, and the expectations people have had regarding the deliverable, and the effective quality of the interaction they have with my output.

Value is in the eye of the beholder, quality is perceived. There is an interesting story I once read about an appraiser who was asked to appraise two antique secretaries which appeared to be identical. He was told that one of them was a forgery. He appraised them both at the same value, stating that he could not detect the forgery. When the maker revealed which one was the fake, the appraiser inquired as to how he had made it so perfectly. The cabinet maker said that he found several 200 year old pieces that were damaged and used the wood from them. He used  adhesives which he made himself from raw materials accurate to the period and heated them to accelerate the aging.  He built his own circular saw to cut the planks to size using an antique saw blade, and he discovered a process whereby he could age the cuts perfectly (he wrapped in layers of burlap and buried them in a swamp for 20 years). It took him 30 years to build the secretary, and was his life’s work.  Upon hearing this, the appraiser certified the piece as an original. He said that, for all intents and purposes, the piece was in fact 200 years old. The lesson: If one thing is indistinguishable from another, they have the same value whether you like it or not.

Software has three perceptible areas of quality…(three that I am going to talk about)

  1. The quality of the product.
  2. The quality of our responses to our clients which includes traits that are  perceptive, substantive and literal.
  3. The quality of service the product delivers.

A software company, as a whole, can be said to be in the business of producing quality.  For a software firm involved in the litigation industry, for example, total quality delivered is the offering of products and services.  This cascades outward and downward from their internal total quality approach in their service vertical, through to their customers, out to the industries they serve (their corporate and private clients), to the courts, and ultimately to the consumers who buy the products and services offered by the litigants. Essentially, a software firm in the legal industry provides a core utility that services the national infrastructure.

As such, the requirement for quality is not only essential, it is fundamental to national interests. When we neglect even one small part of the quality of our processes, it is not only detrimental to our business, but it has a much wider, and deeper impact than perhaps many realize (or care to think about).

From the point of view of a customer, then, it becomes necessary that we really think about what quality means, and how it can be measured.  We need to think about the  different states of quality, and how to develop them progressively.  Customer satisfaction, after all, is a dividend of perceived quality and expected quality. If the expected quality is high, and the perceived quality is low, the satisfaction of the customer suffers. If the perception of quality is high, and the expected quality is low, then we have exceeded expectations. Exceeding expectations is not a quality. If, in the end, the expectation is that quality will be very high, then it can’t be very well higher than itself.  In the end, “quality” is the measurement of the product against the expectation of our clients, ourselves, and each other. It measures how well we meet the expectation. Such is the expectation that we have, that it is one that cannot be exceeded.

The expectation is this – that we will do everything within our means to achieve  as near to real time excellence as is humanly possible without risking life, limb, personal society, damaging our health, or creating permanent insanity. What this means is that we care for our families, we care for our health, and we care for our clients with every available ounce of our being. Our measurement of our ability to do this then becomes not a measurement of gradient expectation, but rather one of quality, which in our work means time to resolution. Our mean time to resolution, across the board, must be faster than everyone else’s. To be the leader, and to stay out in front (or to get there), you must deliver this level of speed on a continuous basis.  The word “quality,” then, is not an aspect in and of itself.  It is a unit of measurement, not unlike an inch on a ruler stick.  To say something is “quality” is not unlike saying something is “inches” when asked “how long is that stick?”

How we use quality as a tool of measurement, then, both internally and externally, become a necessary area of focus.

Firstly, we look at the different states of quality. For this exercise, I’ve picked six different qualitative attributes.

1. Promised quality. Briefly stated, this is the expectation that a person has of a particular product delivered by a particular entity.  Externally, customers have this about the kCura product, and internally this manifests as an internal/external unified attribute, with cause and effect vectors that must be appreciated.

Externally, the promise of quality is high, both in the product and in the service. Since the two are so closely intertwined, that is, the service delivered is part and parcel of the software, I am referring to both collectively as “the service.”  There are some areas of the product where the quality of it is dissonant with the promise, but these are likely caused more by technological and human limitations than by willful oversight.

At times, this causes customers to pigeonhole the product as one that delivers a few, very strong, core competencies, but falls short on other offerings.  This requires kCura clients to do things like hire DBA’s, outsource certain aspects of IT, and purchase other software bundles which they then integrate with the Product.

Internally, at many organizations, there are few promises of quality (but the expectation and implied promise is there, it just isn’t well defined, cross departmentally). When you don’t promise anything, you don’t have to worry about not being able to execute on it.  Where the promise of quality does exist, it does not always mesh well with other, external facing promises.

At times, this causes a disconnect when those who face the customers must interact with those who typically don’t. It may even cause a blatant contradiction that results in conflict.

2. Industry (expected) quality.
These are the standards that govern the very minimum expectation that must be met. Consumers that use discovery products are accustomed to certain features working in a certain way, and a certain guarantee of accuracy. Companies that create food products, likewise, must ensure certain standards are met.  Across the board, in areas of comparability, a quality focused company typically meets or exceeds expectations, with a corrective “roadmap” in place to address shortcomings. Ultimately, there are many, many standards in the industry. Some of them are driven by legal (forensic) requirements, others are aesthetic or purely usability driven.

3. Effective Quality
These are the actual objective and subjective metrics of an organization. What are the promises made by the product, and how does it hold up against them?  The items that comprise your “effective quality” are real, tangible metrics that can be measured, discussed and improved.  Examples of these things include usability, scalability, processing speed, error handling, recovery, precision and accuracy, traceability, and most importantly, reliability.

4. Relative experiential quality
This quality refers to the differential experience created by the actual implementation of the product by the purchaser.  A more experienced team that delivers the product, on better equipment, will deliver a user experience that can have substantially varying degrees of experiential quality.
relative experiential quality = expected quality / experienced quality

5. Perceived quality
Satisfaction = (perceived quality / expected quality) * relative quality

6.  Potential quality

The degree to which a product or service can be measurably improved. This is measured and communicated by an organization’s roadmap, and should be readily available to it’s consumers.

Conclusions

All six of these are qualities that are assessed by consumers of a product one by one.  To be considered a quality, that is, a quantifiable entity that can be measured, each quality must map to a tangible, perceivable action that can be consumed, viewed, experienced, or understood to have intensity, duration, and frequency.  To whatever extent possible, then, quality is something that is measured against the whole.

Without the whole, without an accounting of the sum of all parts of a thing, it follows then that a measurement of quality is purely a subjective, out of context measurement that is rendered meaningless against the overall impact and perception of the qualities of a product.  Those that actually interface with the product or service in its entirety are the best at explaining its level of quality.   To measure quality requires, then, a broad range of measurements that must be painstakingly derived and executed against the subject as a whole. This is no small task, to be certain, but one that will reward the quality analyst with a rich array of tools that can be used to improve the product and services offered.

 

 

Getting it right, every time : F-QMAASS

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I shoot in manual mode, and the only thing I ever float is my ISO.  However, sometimes while shooting, I diverge and start changing settings to accommodate for the conditions of the scene. Now, as an extreme hobbyist nature photographer.  I say ‘extreme’ because I make a small amount of money doing this, but mostly I do it as an altruistic pursuit, a vocation.  Ok, enough about me….sometimes when I am shooting I forget to check my settings and then I blow an entire set or even an entire location.

I developed QMAASS as a way for me to always do a sanity check whenever I am shooting. I run through this checklist every time I change “sets”.  A “set” is a group of photos from a locational scene. So, when I am in a particular location, and am shooting a particular scene, I may take three or four sets. When I change scenes, the set needs to be checked, and that is where QMAASS comes into play.

By “set”, I mean settings, which has everything to do with how I have my camera configured. It’s a paradigm that I use to help me make sure that my camera is properly configured for the scene I am shooting, which includes considerations for the lens I am using, for the lighting, the subject matter, and whatever effect I am trying to achieve.

I shoot in manual mode almost always, and sometimes, between scenes, some time passes. As a nature photographer, I shoot in some very diverse conditions, and so my sets are wildly divergent at times.

Camera settings during a particular grouping of photos  of a particular subject matter applied to a different set can destroy my photos.

For example, last weekend I was shooting a Great Horned Owl sitting on her nest. I was shooting through lots of twigs and had the camera in manual focus mode.  I left the scene, and as we were driving into a new scene, a Harrier was playing around not 50 feet from us. I stopped my car, jumped out, started shooting, and blew the entire set except for one shot – I was in manual focus, and a coincidence of distance focused one shot out of the whole set. I learned that I need to have the camera in a neutral QMAASS, which is a balance of settings that will work in most situations. While I was shooting the Harrier, I was able to run through QMAASS and get the shutter speed up, but QMAASS has no “F” for focus.

So now I’ve added the F, and it is F-QMAASS. below, I list what each setting is, and what I use for each when I am between sets. So, every set I ever do will start with these settings, which may ( will ) change during the set.

  • F- = focus mode and drive (this include manual/auto, AI servo/single drive, and the auto focus points.)  — AI servo
  • Q = quality (jpg, raw. Etc)  — RAW (captures far more information than jpg and can be used to recover massively under or overexposed photos
  • M = mode (manual, Tv, Av, Custom. My camera goes not not have an Auto mode ). –Manual
  • A = Aperture –8 – 11 for birds. 8 for birds far away, up to 14 for close ones and if you have enough light.
  • A = Auto ISO –Auto, though sometimes I set it to 1000 to force the camera to a different exposure. For example, shooting the moon is best at 200 ISO
  • SS = Shutter Speed – 1/f  or 1/(f – 1) if the subject matter is relatively stable, 1/(f – n)  if the subject is absolutely still and I am on a tripod.  1/(f + n) for stop motion, adding n until stop motion is achieved or I am at my fastest shutter speed. f = focal length of my lens, so for example, if I am shooting at 800mm I would not want to drop my shutter speed slower than 1/800 unless I am confident I can hand hold it steady or if I am tracking on a moving subject.

F-QMAASS needs to be checked twice. First: before a set starts. Second: when a set finishes. Why both before and after? Well, for me, when I am walking around with my camera dangling at my side, there is no end to the number of buttons I can accidentally hit. Sometimes, I even bump the AE lock button. I don’t have a letter for that in my acronym because it’s an icon in my viewer and it has high visibility, so I can just kill it when I see it.

So, that’s the story behind F-QMAASS. I needed a way to make certain that I could quickly check, and reset as needed, all of the settings that may he changed intentionally during a set, and accidental between sets.

Let me know if you have any questions, and I am always happy to answer any questions you may have in the future.

You can read tips on composition and lighting there:
https://scorellis.com/?cat=3

Learning to Kayak

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As a lifelong paddler of canoes, with the occasional kayak outing here and there, I recently began to think that kayaking is the life for me.  Within 10 minutes of arriving at this decision, I had purchased a couple of kayaks and drained all the cash out of my bank account.  (Unfortunately, I happened to be at an outdoor outfitter when I experienced this epiphany)

NOTE to kayak purchasers:  If you are getting ready to purchase a kayak, definitely work through this blog post.  While putting this together, I discovered that there are two important things that the sales person failed to mention to me:  Kayak skirt (a must-have) and sealed bulk-heads.  I bought my son a kayak that doesn’t have sealed bulkheads, and on mine there is only one.  So, I will be buying the right kind of three-inch foam and doing it myself.  The tricky part for that will be making a template, but I have a trick for that that you will like to see.  I will make a video for that later this summer (2014).

Kayaking has a lot of the same mechanics to it that you’ll find in canoeing, but it pleased me to no end to watch a series of videos and learn that kayaking embraced another discipline that I have had many thousands of hours of experience with as a child and an adult : swimming.  As a child I swam every day – my parents forced me to do it.  I actually kind of hated it, but because my mom had me in the pool when I was two, I was better at it than all the other kids (I had more practice than they did.) So, my parents made the same mistake that many parents make – they thought I was “gifted” at it and so they forced me into it.

OK, back on topic:  Kayaking has a number of paddling strokes that are very similar to swimming.  – think of the kayak like the swimmers body, and the paddle is his arms.  I suppose you could even split the paddles and do a butterfly stroke and a breast stroke, but I don’t recommend trying to do that as a serious paddle.

This morning I embarked on a mission to learn more about paddling, and I am so excited about all the things I learned that I wanted to share them, along with some GREAT videos from paddle TV that really get to the point (better than i am doing here…).  I’m hoping that you will read through this and watch these videos, which will make your next kayaking outing both safer and more enjoyable.

Propelling yourself forward using the Forward stroke

Here is a nice blog post about an efficient stroke: http://www.usawildwater.com/training/fwdstroke.html and here is a great video that you should definitely watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvi7rIlsNRY

 

There are three parts to this:

  1. Catch – stick your paddle in the water.  Some videos show the paddler stuffing his entire paddle under water – I think that how much of your paddle you stick in is entirely related to how fast you want to go and how much maneuvering power you need, but you should develop your own style and methods.  Don’t think that you have to do it exactly like the pros.
  2. Stroke – rotation – While holding your paddle with a firm but easy grip, use your entire upper body. “Wind up” your body, and plant entire blade. Use your body rotation to power the forward stroke. Real power comes from core and body rotation. If you use just your arms, you will end up with sore shoulders.  Your stomach and sides and back have big muscles on them that can work hard for a long time, once they are conditioned.  One thing I noticed in the videos I watched is that the professional paddlers had a stroke line that followed the wakes of their kayaks.  I look forward to trying that out – my suspicion is that if you follow the wake line with your paddle, you will be far less likely to waddle or fishtail your kayak a lot.  By keeping your kayak tracking in a straight line, you can take longer strokes and get more speed.  This will conserve your energy by delivering more power to your forward motion.
  3. Exit – it looks like the kayakers in these videos are twisting their paddle right before they pull it out.  This will reduce splashing, but it will also reduce the suction effect you get when you pull the paddle out of the water.  Try it both ways and see what I mean.

Exercise: Tilt the boat and paddle forward to turn in the opposite direction you are tilted.  Experiment with this as I saw people doing some things with their kayaks that were pretty impressive.

Turning around using Sweep Strokes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ctw1acMafug

  1. Tilt kayak away from the direction you want to turn (tilt with hips!), brace yourself using the pedals.
  2. Take long, far reaching, sweeping stroke, with paddle completely in water.
  3. Combine alternating forward and reverse sweeps into a “spin turn.”

Sideways with Draw Strokes and Sculling Draws

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyrY9SfYt3g

  1. Reach out, insert paddle, and pull it toward your hipS
  2. Slice or “T” out before you hit the kayak!
  3. sculling is like fish tailing the paddle out to the side to push you – you should watch the video for this and try it out and experiment.

Stabilizing the kayak in a wobbly situation: Getting upright

Low brace, high brace, and sculling brace are techniques for getting your kayak back into an upright position if you have tilted too far over and can help prevent a tip.  They involve reaching out in the direction that you are tipping, reaching out with the flat of your paddle, and pushing down ward and toward the underside of your kayak, drawing the paddle in toward your hip.  As you do this, your head should stay down, and your hip should snap up and toward the upright position.  If you’ve ever seen anyone do that dance move where his arms make a wave as he steps to one side, it kind of is like this.  Again, watch the video from these Paddle TV guys!

Again, another fantastic video from these paddle TV guys:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_ZxLDtiAGc

  1. High brace – hands in a pull-up position..  You can pull weigh more weight with your back than you can push with your shoulders.  First, remember to keep your hands low, even in a high brace.  A high brace is probably better for rougher situations, whereas a low brace is something for calmer situations. Not that any situation is ever a calm one…
  2. Low Brace – hands in push-up position.  In both of these, you are essential using the paddle as a lever.  THe further away from you the paddle is, the more leverage you will get, but it will also be harder to do (it’s a physics thing, which I am actually sort of qualified to talk about, unlike most of this post)

According to this video, the high and low brace moves are kind of a one shot deal.  If it fails, you need to switch into another technique called a sculling brace.  I am not sure if it is wise to attempt consecutive low/high braces.  I’m also not sure which has more power, the high brace or sculling; I suggest you experiment and see what works best for your center of mass, strength, and your own body mass.

Sculling brace

the sculling brace you just sort of have to see to get.  It’s just like sculling when you are upright, only you are using it now in a more powerful way, with the paddle deep in the water, and you combine it with the hip pivot and head roll to get back into an upright position.

Oops!  You aren’t in your kayak any more.

Well, now you know why you should never kayak alone.  This technique requires two people and a second kayak.

re-entering the kayak
Three things that need to be accomplished:

  1. get in the boat
  2. get the water out
  3. get full control

You really need to watch the video on this one, and then practice it on your lawn.  Then, once you have it mastered, try it in the water.  Make sure you don’t forget your pump, and do it only on the nicest, warmest day when you were planning on swimming anyway!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDqjye955e0

Here are some key takeaways:

  • Never kayak alone – when buying a kayak, if you buy a tandem, it doesn’t count!
  • Sealed rear and forward bulkheads – without them, the kayak can sink
  • Keep a hold of gear (paddles) when you fall in.
  • Kayaks should be positioned upside down kayak bow to rescuer in a ‘T’ configuration during recovery
  • man in water – pushes on stern
  • man in kayak – lifts and rolls bow to empty water.
  • position kayaks kayaks together in parallel, bow to stern, with cockpits offset so that the rescuer can stabilize the bow during reentry
  • There are three reentry techniques:
  1. feet first, using the two kayaks like parallel bars
  2. pull body on deck
  3. Scoop final option – leave kayak in, slide in and then rotate it up. pump out.

 

Be sure to read training materials and watch lots of videos before you go out onto the water.  Other safety tips include things like wearing a helmet, wearing a wet or semi-dry suit when the water is really cold.  One rul of thumb i ran across in my research is if the air + water temp is less than 100 degrees = trouble, fast.  You literally have minutes to live if you are wearing cotton.  Kayaking can be one of the safest sports, but if you don’t know what you are doing you can easily get yourself into trouble.

That’s it, and don’t forget rule number one:  When in doubt, STAY OUT.  That goes double for river kayaking.  If you hear or see something and it looks like it might be trouble, get your kayak out of the water ASAP and walk up to the trouble site.  Examine it, and if you think it could be trouble, portage around it.

 

Why self-schooling is the ultimate, and only true school

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There is no such thing as public schooling, private schooling, institutionalized schooling, or home-schooling. These are all just artificial realities that we wrap around our children, and serve only as vehicles for blame when we fail to teach our children what the true meaning of school is. There is only self-schooling. Everything I’ve learned that I use in life now I learned because I wanted to learn it. At the core of all my knowledge, at its center, lay just one person: Me.

The self has to take the responsibility to “school” its intellect. Once one accepts this responsibility, there is no obstacle to great, and no atmosphere to restrictive. A child who sits through all his years of institutionalized education, who challenges every thought, every notion, every aspect of it all, this is the child who can learn anywhere. Teach a child to question, and demand and search for answers, and to scientifically test those answers, and you teach a child to learn.

If a child won’t learn this, or refuses to learn it, then all you can do is read to him and wait for him to catch on, and hopefully become a productive member of society. As a parent, teaching my children to question is my responsibility.

I know what you don’t know that you don’t know.

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I wrote this in response to a post at this site,  which tries to defend Jimmy John Liautaud’s behavior and habit of hunting and killing big game.  That tagline for this bloggers blog is “You don’t what know what you don’t know.”  I guess he thinks he knows what I don’t know that I don’t know.  It’s always interesting how that sort of thing can backfire on you….

To the author of this post:

In an effort to show exactly what it is that you apparently don’t know that you don’t know, I would like you to answer a few questions:

1. What benefit to the world ecology does having billions of chickens in cages have?

2. If all gulls went extinct, but we had millions of them in captivity, what would happen to the world ecology?

3. Think about the world as an ecosystem that depends upon the ability of animals to migrate and allow each to tend to its own discipline. If this collapses, do you think humanity would survive? Or do you refute that the ecosystem of the world is a highly complex, diverse system with interdependencies that we are only just beginning to fathom?

4. Do we need or require biodiversity in order for the planet to survive and produce oxygen at acceptable levels for human survival?

I  am very curious to see your answers to each of these questions, as each of them, if answered correctly and scientifically, should serve to refute the foundation of your argument – which seems to be that hunting animals that are kept in cages (however large or small) is somehow ok, and somehow contributes to the efforts of conservation. Furthermore, the keeping of animals in cages so that they may be hunted for sport exploits these animals, and inflicts and encourages further damage to an already heavily disrupted, world ecology.

Primarily, I think that before anyone, on either side of the fence, begins to argue in this space, they should be thoroughly educated as to the impact animals play in the world ecology. You don’t know what you don’t know – and we don’t know or fully understand the impact of each extinction that occurs. All we know is that every extinction is a warning sign from nature, and we need to listen. We might not be anywhere close to being next, but we are standing in the same line.

How to run a database: some ground rules

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So you think you want to be a database engineer/architect/maintainer/worker? Notice, I didn’t say “DBA.” THis is mostly because I have met so many that are not….Database engineers and architects that are good at what they do get paid well, but the term “DBA” has little meaning because there are many people who have minimal understanding of SQL who claim that title. Don’t claim that title unless you are at least MCSE. For an entry level application/database engineer of a big platform sitting on SQL, the expectation is that your pay may deviate from those who work on the front end of the application.

Depending on the industry and the application, you may expect to get paid slightly more than the people on the front side.  This is because it is expected that you will have the same skills as them, but also have knowledge of infrastructure systems, and also be somewhat more willing to receive calls at strange times of day. For example, someone who has five years experience may get paid $77,000.  Someone with the exact same certifications and industry experience, but who can solve real problems and find and fix a root cause that has dropped the entire system to its knees, may get paid anywhere from $80k to $180k, with $80k being entry level into the database/infrastructure work.

Ok, enough about that.  Here are a few ground rules for good database etiquette:
  1. There are very few, select problems that  necessitate a reboot or restart of SQL server to fix a problem. Don’t do it if you don’t know why you’re doing it.
  2. Know your backup strategy, know that it works, and make sure management knows it, too.
  3. Know your disk IO, and test and retest and have a history of tests of it.
  4. Know what your users are doing and why they are doing it.
  5. Database queries should be fast.
  6. Understand the difference between poor disk I/O and poor file I/O
  7. There are a few blogs that are good, plus a lot of misinformation. Know which ones are best. (Ask around).
  8. Read a book, take notes, make lists, have checklists,blog about your experience.
  9. Never test code in a production environment. Especially never test UPDATE, DELETE, or INSERT SQL.
  10. Key lookups, table valued functions, table scans, and clustered index scans are red flags that a query is not well designed. Understand how to fix them PROPERLY.

That’s all I have on this subject, folks.  Let me know if you have any questions!

 

How to Care for a Hedgehog Named Sodium

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I have a hedgehog.  I have had her for about 3 months. She is an albino.  This means that her body simply does not produce pigment, as opposed to leucism, which is like albinism, only it produces pigment, but lacks the receptors to retain it.  Sodium, much like the element, is very nearly white.

NOTE:  I am not an expert on hedgehogs. I just have one and it seems pretty healthy, so people sometimes ask me about her.   If you see something in here that is factually incorrect, please feel free to let me know.
Why did we get a hedgehog? I’ve always wanted one, and it was a happy compromise for my son and I. He wanted a tiger salamander. Yuck.
Hedgehogs are Mammals. They are members of the subfamily Erinaceomorpha. There are seventeen species of hedgehog in five genera, found through parts of Europe, Asia, Africa and New Zealand (by introduction).
Where
You can find hedgehogs for sale at reptile expos and probably some pet stores too.  Reptile expos are held  all over the place, there are usually several a month in the Chicago area. You may also find them at bird expos.  If you google “bird expo” you will find it. Let me know if you don’t.
Price
The expo  we attended took place in Wheaton, cost about $10 to get in, and was held at a county fair grounds I think. They  had several hedgehog dealers hawking their prickly pets for $100 – $150.
Demeanor
I seem to recall that the seller told us the female hedgehogs were nicer than the males, but you can just google that and find out if it’s true or not.  check with each vendor, and see who has the softest, nicest hedgehog.  The younger hedgehogs will have softer spines anyway, but my understanding is that, through selective breeding, some fancier ones have softer spines, even as adults.
So, you bought a hedgehog
In the beginning, owning a hedgehog was a challenge. it was difficult for a few reasons, both care and owner related. Our first hedgehog, named Yttrium, died very young, and we only had her for a week. It was very sad, because she was very nice and enjoyed being held and was very comfortable with people.
At any rate, what our experience with Yttrium taught us is that a personable, friendly hedgehog can be a very engaging pet. We aren’t certain we know why Yttrium died, we fed her and she ate and played in her cage, and drank from her bottle, but one day she just became listless and unresponsive and passed away shortly after that; we thought she had gone into hibernation because when we warmed her up and heated up the up the house, her condition improved.  The following day she became listless again and died within 2 hours.  The lesson we learned is that if your hedgie becomes listless and unresponsive, it might not be hibernation, and you should get hedgie to a vet immediately. I have another blog post about that experience.
After Yttrium died, I contacted the man who sold her to us. I just wanted him to know. I wasn’t looking for a refund but he seemed like a nice guy and I just thought he would want to know.  He insisted on providing a replacement. Nothing could (or as time would reveal, would) replace Yttrium. She was feisty, full of energy, curious, and just plain fun. Our working theory is that she burned out her entire life in one short burst of everything.
Ok, enough of my lamenting, but I wanted you to understand that perhaps part of our difficulties with Sodium may be related to our mindset.  We really, really missed Yttrium, and still do.
Sodium seemed to be perfectly friendly, very outgoing, and wonderful – at the show. But then I had to go pay, and they held onto her as I paid. She looked identical to three other hedgehogs they had, but we picked her because she was the friendliest. When. Got her home, it was like we had a different hedgehog. This one refused to uncurl.  Eventually, after much holding and coaxing
(Insert how to pet a hedgehog video here)
I got her to come out. This video shows how to do it. Once I got her to come out, it became easier to do it. So, maybe they pulled a bait and switch, it was a different guy at the counter, maybe he was attached to the one we wanted. Maybe we had a different hedgehog, maybe she just needed to get to know us.
Either way, the bond that we formed with Yttrium just didn’t magically appear with Sodium. Perhaps some things just aren’t meant to be, and we just have to accept that the pets we bring into our homes may not be what we expected.  We have to love and care for them anyway. It’s a commitment and a bond that, if you aren’t prepared to make it, then you shouldn’t buy a hedgehog. A) they are expensive and B) they require a lot of care.
What’s that, you ask? Why do they require more care than any other rodent?  Well, for starters, a hedgehog is NOT a rodent. If you look in a hedgehog’s mouth, you will notice immediately one huge difference is their teeth. A hedgie’s mouth is almost exclusively designed for eating bugs. They seem to have a mouthful of molars.  This means that they are not strictly vegetarians, they are bug eaters and have powerful jaws designed for crushing bugs (I’m spitballing here).  We feed Sodium the same food we feed our cats. Hedgies are, essentially, omnivorous.  This means they will eat just about anything. Mostly (in the wild) they like to eat bugs.
Feeding and Water
Meat eaters (omnivores in general) are considerably more difficult to care for than herbivores for pretty much only one reason: their poop is way, way smellier. You know how true this is if you have ever cared for a human toddler when he transitions from milk to meat.
 Some hedgehogs can be trained to use a litterbox, which you could then change nightly (believe me, you will feel deeply motivated to do this job).  Sodium likes to poop and pee in her wheel. Therefore, her wheel needs to be cleaned every morning, WITHOUT FAIL. Otherwise, the poop gets really hard and it is difficult to clean.  I use an old toilet brush and very hot water, with no soap.parts of the wheel are held together with electrical tape to reinforce it.
[place picture of wheel with tape here.]
Yttrium had a lot of trouble with getting water out of her water bottle. We think this may have contributed to her demise, but since I was not the primary care giver, I wasn’t monitoring her water levels so I don’t know.  I am the primary caretaker for Sodium, and as such she lives in my bedroom, and I keep a close eye on her health.  I noticed then, fairly quickly, that her water levels in her bottle did not decrease as fast as it should, and she was going 10 rounds with the bottle every night.  I switched her immediately to a stone water bowl—something heavy enough that she wouldn’t be able to use it as a toy, and bang it around the cage all through the night.  At first she liked to poop in it, but she seems now to have settled for happily shoving litter into it every night.
Handling
Handling a hedgehog is fairly easy, once you get them to uncurl. They are fairly smart,  I think she recognizes different people by their scent, so be careful how much hand lotion and soap you use before you hold yours. They don’t like strange new smells and will react by curling up very tightly.
They are easy to redirect, they aren’t fast, and generally have a head for heights. They may nip, but their teeth aren’t sharp. If one bites you, your reaction will be to jerk away which could potentially hurt the hedgehog.  Make certain your hedgie isn’t a biter by asking the seller to hold his fingers up to her nose. Yttrium would bite fingers if encouraged, but not as a matter of general behavior, and she would let go after just a moment and it wouldn’t draw blood. The potential is there, I suppose, but having been bitten HARD I don’t think it is likely.  Children have thinner skin, though. Yttrium only bit me two or three times and Ethan says I probably deserved it. With Sodium, if I am laying down and holding her, she will eventually wander up toward my face, grab a hold of my beard with her teeth, and gently tug at it.  I think she might think my chin is another hedgehog, and she is trying to get it to show its face.  Or, this could be a prelude to a behavior called anointing.
I have never seen Sodium anoint, and I never saw Yttrium do it, either.  It is a very strange behavior, it would be interesting to see. Possibly a sodium would do it, if I let her have her y with my beard, but I usually only let her give it a couple of tugs.  I am of course worried about having the small pair of pliers that is her mouth get a hold of some skin.
Exercise
A hedgehog will use an exercise wheel. I have been meaning to make a video about how to convert a “silent” running wheel into one that is actually silent, but the bottom line is that you need to construct your own wheel if the sound bothers you.  I built mine out of a large running wheel by drilling out the center axle and replacing it with one I made myself out of bearings and steel pipe. It weighs about a pound and it outlasted our Chilean mountain rat, Selenium, who used the heck out of it for almost 8 years. Sodium uses hers every night, and the only reason it ever makes any noise is if I forgot to clean the wheel and a piece of dried poop has dislodged and is rattling around the wheel. She isot a fast runner, and so the wheel doesn’t have the turbine sound we would hear when Selenium used it.
Bathing
There are some videos and some instructions on line about how to bathe a hedgehog.  One of them says to use tearless shampoo.  Please don’t do that. Never use human shampoo on animals as their skin is far more sensitive and even baby shampoo will bother them.  Use a very mild cat shampoo, but don’t trust me – contact your veterinarian or ask the seller what he uses. Remember, however, that not all sellers will be certified in animal care and they may not know any better, either.
Night time
There is one more thing about hedgehogs: they are nocturnal.  Sodium actually waits until everyone in the house is in bed, then she gets up and starts to do her thing.  She usually respects others, and keeps to her wheel, but sometimes she figures out how to make some noise, or gets into a situation.  Generally speaking, Sodium likes the quiet, she enjoys midnight runs, and loves to nuzzle my beard. She is a fine little friend, though a little prickly, so be sure to keep a glove around for picking her up.  They are not necessarily difficult to care for, they are just higher maintenance, which is probably the lion’s share of “difficulty” whenever people refer to an animal as difficult. They are smelly, so you need to clean their cage frequently. We use the shredded, recycled paper bedding and she seems to like it just fine.
I hope this helps you in making your decision…frankly, I miss our first hedgehog still.  For a family experience, I think a Degu makes a superior, lower maintenance pet than a hedgehog, and it is about equally priced and lives about as long.  Degu’s are diurnal and herbivorous, and enjoy weeing people and being seen.  However, they require more handling to train and they can get away from you and chase your cats around.

Review of some Canon 1D X Features

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I spent this afternoon reviewing some of the problem that people are having with the 1DX.  These problems mostly centered around auto-focus.  I through on my most challenging auto-focus lens, the EF 400mm diffraction optics (DO) image stabilization (IS) lens. I have admittedly had some trouble getting focus lock, but only in situations where I would expect even more difficulty with a less advanced camera.  Ultimately, there are three factors that you need to weigh before purchasing this camera.

1: do you really need 12 fps, and the ability to retain focus throughout continuous shooting?  On the 1D X, with a fast enough CF card (1000X), you can get almost 35 frames – continuous – in RAW mode before the buffer to disk ratio collapses your frame rate. With its second Digic dedicated to metering and AF, you can shoot and maintain focus continuously. In JPG, you can get a lot, lot more (I don’t know how many before it slows down or even if it does ever slow down).  I am reluctant to push this to its upper limit – if you need to shoot more than 100 low quality jpgs in a row, then you should be shooting in video.

2: Do you need the better weather seal?  If you have to shoot the bride and groom running through the rain to the limo, and your 5D gets soaked and you can’t shoot the reception with your best tool … uh oh, sux to be you, right? Or maybe you just stay out of the weather, and you miss what could have been some great, fun shots, you’ll wish you had the 1D X.

3:  The 1D is sturdy,and handles great, but does require some strength to sling with precision. I handhold with the 2X and 400 DO, and have been sore the next day after a 6 hour shoot.

If these three requirements are not important to you, then don’t buy this camera.  It’s not for you.

How to Refinish a Stubborn, Painted, Pine Floor

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Years ago, when I was in the military, I had a furniture repair and refinishing sideline.  I grew up in a Victorian home and we rehabbed it, so I had about ten years of refurbishing experience when I graduated High School!

One of the best techniques I ever used to get ALL of the paint off of a piece was a wash.  I would actually take a hose to a piece, and use a softish nylon brush on it.  It raises the grain slightly, but a light sanding with 250 grit takes care of that. My advice to you would be to do the technique I mentioned with the plastic tarp and the remover, covering it for 30 minutes to 2 hours.  (Too long could damage the wood, my recollection it that I would test a piece first to see how much punishment it could bear.  Pine is softer, so tread carefully here.)

After that, squeegee it all up, suck it up with a wet vac, and then hit it with a carpet shampooer. Use a good one, industrial strength, no soap or anything, just the hot eater.  The whole process should go very quickly and not involve being on your hands and knees at all.

At the end of it, if you still have some colored tint left to the wood, I would suggest using a wood dye treatment that matches it.  Wood dye (not stain) will give it a uniform look, it will show off the grain, and it will last forever, and can be done in  a myriad of colors.  It should look really cool.

Woodcraft has an excellent search page that shows off the coloring capabilities of dye : http://www.woodcraft.com/search2/search.aspx?query=dye