My bio overlaps with those sponsoring anti-LGBTQ bills
One of the things that struck me in reading bios of Missouri lawmakers sponsoring bills targeted against LGBTQ people is how neatly my own biography could fit among theirs.
Anti-LGBTQ bills in Missouri express the beliefs of conservative Christians
As of March 17, 2024: 16 lawmakers have sponsored 26 anti-LGBTQ bills in the Missouri legislature. 94% (15/16) of the sponsoring lawmakers are men. All sponsoring lawmakers are Christian and Republican. Most are evangelical Christian but 2 are explicitly Catholic. Half (8/16) have active leadership roles in their church: pastor, deacon, chaplain, lay minister, etc.
Open letter to Ambassador Allan Katz and the Board of American Public Square
I am concerned about the increase in violence against LGBTQ persons— as well as the rise in hostile rhetoric and laws targeted at making life more difficult, or even impossible for them. With such hostility on the rise, it makes sense to evaluate which events will contribute to reasoned discourse and greater understanding and acceptance, and which events are likely to deepen polarization and make public life less safe for people.
What to watch for when evaluating a town hall about trans issues
As a community organization, APS may feel that it’s in their rights to put on a panel discussing transgender issues, but until they take the responsibility of putting in the work to get to know LGBTQ people and issues, it will be difficult for people in LGBTQ circles to trust them.
Poetry about work: Information Desk by Robyn Schiff
Last week, a video popped up in my YouTube feed, from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. I’ve long been interested in poetry about work, so I ordered it right after watching the video. I’m also familiar with the Met from living in and visiting NYC. I loved the fact that the Met invited her back to her old workspace to read from her book. …
Some stories of trans life
My father read books when he wanted to understand things, and I do as well. Also, life has presented me with some stories as well.
Oracle Analytics Cloud (OAC): invalid identifier error with mixed case column names in Snowflake
Problem: ‘invalid identifier’ error when connecting to columns which are named using mixed case in Snowflake database.
Solution: in the Advanced tab of the connection, turn on Quoting Identifiers: Double Quotes (“ “).
A victory for civil dialogue: American Public Square postposes their panel, “Exploring Gender and Identities”
American Public Square (APS) was planning to hold a panel discussion of trans rights. Today, I am glad to see that the event was postponed. While I am glad that it has been postponed, I will be happier when it has been canceled. It was a bad panel and the timing couldn’t be worse, immersed as we are in a moral panic about trans people.
Some context for the upcoming discussion of trans rights, presented by American Public Square
The scope of American Public Square's panel on "Gender and Identity" is balancing rights of trans people with protecting women and children in the context of anti-trans laws in Missouri and Kansas. This scope is bad because it pits trans rights against the needs of women and children. We need to go deeper.
Barbie: let’s not settle for the appearance of happiness
I don’t like knowing too much about a film before seeing it. I crave new stories, new takes, and I dread having to sit through a movie I’ve already seen before, with a different title. When a new movie comes out that looks interesting, I’ll try to find out just enough to see if I want to see it in the theater or not. …
Making work visible with our family Kanban
Our family just started using Kanban in the house. Kanban is a project management tool useful for prioritizing tasks as they come up. It’s typically used in work situations like maintenance, where emerging issues might pop up. I’ve been wanting to try Kanban for our household, and finally got it done. …
Summer Update
Not only did I do the week-long class and test for the Microsoft DP-500, but I also did another class and test for the SAFe Agile Practitioner certification. I’m learning lots about Oracle reporting tools as well. Between that and Tears of the Kingdom, I haven’t had as much time for blogging. I plan to post more soon. […]
The Power BI Synapse DP-500 Exam demonstrates why Microsoft needs Fabric
TL;DR: Power BI has evolved into a complicated feature-rich product. Fabric looks like an attempt to fold some of that complexity into the background, while including more comprehensive governance.
Cloud data warehouses: SCD Type 2 connected directly to the fact table
In the section of Azure Power BI D5-500 training, I was surprised (and delighted) to see that Slowly Changing Dimension (SCD) Type 2 is presumed as the format for dimensions— and that these historical dimensions were connected directly to the fact tables. Up to this point, most data warehouses I have run into have used SCD Type 1 as the default, and then required analysts to do gymnastics to connect to a historical dimension. [I also include a link for what to do if this is not the design of your data warehouse]
Better user interface through DAX: Always show only 4 quarters in Power BI
Simplicity is key to increasing usability. I want to enable report consumers to explore the data without having to think about the process of exploration. With this solution, a consumer can move back in time one quarter in time or jump from the current quarter to to the same quarter last year while keeping as much the same as possible, making it easier to think about comparisons.
Power BI tile error: Couldn't retrieve the data for this visual. Please try again later.
This error, “couldn’t retrieve the data for this visual”, can be a frustrating one. Like other tile errors, it only shows as a broken tile with the message “can’t display the visual” until you click to see details. If we consult the official Power BI documentation on tile errors, the documentation currently says: “This issue is usually transient. If you try again later and still see this message, contact support.” I’ve seen the error in three situations: the most common is that a report consumer lacks build access to a report built on a DirectQuery over Power BI dataset connection.
DAX measure basics in Power BI or Excel data model
I decided to share my tips for learning DAX. 1. Learn about filter context; 2. use variables to debug measures, and 3. understand how CALCULATE works. At the end, I link two of my blog posts: one which applies the concepts of coordinates and values to the different visualizations available in Power; the other is how to troubleshoot the trickiest visual of them all: the table visual.
Analyzing dirty data (literature): narrators in Ernest J. Gaines’s story “Just Like a Tree”; also Power BI on-object formatting
On my About page, I claim that “I studied English Literature because it’s fun to find patterns in the unstructured data of a 1,000-page novel.” Nobody ever challenges me on this statement, so I thought I would give an example from my college years. I first read the short story, “Just Like a Tree,” when I was in community college.
Power Query: fix your data warehouse date table blues with these tips
Date table doldrums: I love getting date tables from data warehouses. I don’t love manually setting data types, renaming columns, and turning off default summarization for these columns. In this post, I use the ribbon and buttons for doing most of these things, and I use some custom M when needed to speed things up.