Author: Michael S. De Lio

A Management Consultant with over 35 years experience in the CRM, CX and MDM space. Working across multiple disciplines, domains and industries. Currently leveraging the advantages, and disadvantages of artificial intelligence (AI) in everyday life.

Isolation (Let's See How This Goes)

Winter to Spring – During this time of mandated self / social distancing, when you are formally asked to not “physically” interact with individuals, unfortunately many alternatives will lead to social media…fortunately, this is where you can choose to be the consumer, or the publisher of the messaging.

During these undetermined and apprehensive times ahead, I’m choosing to be the publisher.

But Mike, why so optimistic, things seem to be going from bad-to-worse? Well, the following are items that I hope to accomplish, or at a bare minimum attempt during this period: (keeping focused, keeps me calm)

  • Self instruction via e-learning and audio books
  • Develop a deeper understanding of technology (AI, RPA, DevOps, SaaS)
  • Healthier Habits
  • Organize my environment
  • Better my photography skills
  • More creativity on Instagram and YouTube

We are going to take this one day at a time and see how things shake-out. But in the meantime, here’s hoping for a quick start to Spring, more blogging ahead and a quick end to COVID-19.

Daily Image Seen on TV – March 2020

Guys Being Guys…

Thought I’d share a funny call I had today:

We have been working together for a few weeks to deploy a new “tool” for the Practice that helps to identify people within the practice that can ultimately work on projects, or answer questions related to a specific technology or skills. The team is worldwide, one fella is in Amsterdam, one in India, one in the Philippines and me in the US…the guys were awesome with English (always sad that I have no other language).

As we started to wrap up the meetings today, we were talking about size and weight of “men” across the world (something I assume women would be sensitive about, but guys can care less). The guy in India says he is 5’10” and 200 in India and is considered pretty large for out there, then the other from the Philippines says “I’m 5’8″ and 150 and considered overweight and pretty tall, the guy in Amsterdam says he is 5’7” 150 and feels pretty average (my gut says he is small based on guys I met in the Nordic region of the world).

They now ask me for measurements…do I go low, or do I produce actual measurements and get a response that I either expect, or feel a bit out-of-place? I decide to go actual and tell them I’m 6’5″ and about 280…they start mentioning wrestlers, actors and other large individuals that they have seen over time that were about the same size and can’t imagine what it would be like to be my size. In my mind, I’m laughing thinking that Tre, Coltrane and Miles are all bigger than them and what would they think about this group of big-guys meeting them in a dark alley. Ultimately, I remember they live in their own little worlds and get used to seeing what they see each day. Just guys talking about guys.

At the end of the call we wish we could all meet each other someday and more importantly, I wish they could meet my huge family!! The whole reason I write this is I could never imagine four women talking about their size and weight of each other (including family members) and at the end of the call laughing at the differences we all have!!

Why WiFi is so Frustrating…

Something to consider as we increase our Alexa, Google, Siri, Bixby and other digital assistants at home – Especially my parents with their new Hotwire setup.

As my family knows, I have a ton of devices (about 50) on my home’s wifi and I was trying to figure out the best way to allocate the speed and coverage within my house. I decided to experiment with assigning the devices best suited for 2.4GHz to that SSID and the others to the 5GHz band. I noticed that all of my Wyze cameras, Ring doorbell, Nest smoke detectors, Printers, Vector robot and wifi outlets could only use 2.4GHz…so that was easy, I just gave that band a new SSID and password and forced them all to log into that address. The others, like laptops, desktops, Xbox, Phones, Google Chromecast, were better suited for faster speeds on 5GHz, so I left them as-is and they seem to be a lot happier with the extra bandwidth. What I don’t know yet is the Alexa / Google devices seem to prefer 5GHz, but not sure why they would need the faster speeds (expect for Amazon FireTV since it’s pushing my TV content), so I may force them to 2.4GHz also at some point.

Items to keep in mind:
2.4GHz is slower but has a longer range
5GHz is faster but has a shorter range
Your router must support sending out two bands (2.4GHz / 5GHz) simultaneously

Bottomline for me was that I appeared to be overfeeding some devices with 5GHz, when they didn’t really need it and underfeeding the guys with 2.4GHz who could use the faster speeds.

Oh yeah, you may say “But Mike, what about all the Sonos speakers?” – They actually create their own network and the “hub” is wired to the router. This is also true with the Phillips Hue lights – Hub is wired and they are on their own network.

Good luck getting you wifi under control and please seek guidance from the numerous sites out there providing support: