John Levandowski

7-day Cruise to Alaska on NCL Bliss - June/July 2024

Sat, 06 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

I enjoyed Alaska so much last year, so I’m back on a different ship and itinerary. This time I am traveling solo, like on my Caribbean cruise in January. The weather was not as nice as last year, but rain and clouds in Alaska is part of the scenery.

We had a great solo coordinator on this cruise. I enjoyed the company, at dinner and on excursions, of some really friendly solo travelers. I appreciate how Norwegian Cruise Line caters to solo travelers. and that is why I am loyal to them for my cruises.

7-day Cruise to the Caribbean on NCL Epic - January 2024

Sun, 21 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

After returning from my cruise to Alaska, I was hooked. I wasn’t sure about cruising to the Caribbean, but I thought it was a warm place to go and get out of the Idaho winter.

This was my first solo cruise experience with Norweigan Cruise Lines. I stayed in a studio cabin, which has access to an exclusive studio lounge on the ship.

7-day Cruise to Alaska on NCL Encore - June 2023

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In December 2022, I decided to expand my travel options and try taking a cruise. I booked my first 7-day cruise to Alaska on the NCL Encore with my extended family and friends for June 2023. I was hesitant at first because I thought that cruising was for “old” people, and boy was I wrong.

Diablo 3 Seasons | solo leveling guide for new players

Thu, 02 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If you are playing Diablo 3 seasons as a solo player, here is a guide with some tips on how to efficiently level your character from level 1 to 70 in a season. This is for someone who is playing the game solo. Much faster methods are available if you are playing in a group (such as power leveling) but I like the solo challenge of the game better.

Diablo 3 Season First Steps

After creating a new Diablo 3 seasonal hero or rebirth an existing one, go to the Game Settings menu and set the difficulty to Hard, choose Adventure Mode, and start the game. In adventure mode, hire your favorite follower (I normally choose the Templar). Immediately take the weapons from the 3 potential followers, the shield from the Templar and equip the best weapon for yourself, the shield for yourself, and the second best weapon for your chosen follower. You should now salvage at the blacksmith the items you didn’t use and sell the items that you can’t salvage.

Early Retirement Decision

Fri, 29 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Last month I decided to do what most people said couldn’t be done. As an aside, what great motivation proving people wrong is. I decided to retire early. Retirement is an interesting word for me because when I tell people I’m retired I feel the need to explain to them what retirement means to me. Retirement doesn’t mean that I’ll never work again, it means that I don’t have to work for income. It’s a subtle but important distinction because reading about other people who retired extremely early, many of them end up starting some sort of small business or work part-time in retirement. Maybe instead of telling people I’m retired I should say I’m an independent consultant or an endowment manager. Or maybe since I’m writing this on my blog I should tell people I’m a blogger.

How to Configure WorkCenter in PeopleSoft

Mon, 23 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Creating a workcenter in peoplesoft is a pretty easy process. In this post I will teach you a step by step process on how to configure a workcenter in peoplesoft. I completed these steps using PeopleSoft Financials 9.2 with PeopleTools 8.55.15.

PeopleTools > Portal > Portal Utilities > Navigation Collections

Click Add Collection
Enter a name for your navigation collection
Add Links to Menu Items and Folders as needed for your navigation collection

Click Publish Collection Tab
Click Navigation Pagelet Checkbox
Select category for pagelet in the Pagelet Category Dropdown (Common WorkCenter Pagelets is what I selected)
Click Save

2. Configure WorkCenter Dashboards

PeopleTools > Portal > WorkCenter > Manage WorkCenter Dashboards

My Near Fatal Automobile Accident

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 00:00:00 +0000

Today is the 13th anniversary of my near fatal automobile accident.

Automobile Accident

On Saturday, November 23, 2002 at approximately 4pm I was in a near fatal automobile accident. I was driving east bound on interstate 80 in Utah, when at mile marker 57 my truck drifted off to the right side of the highway. I corrected to the left which sent my truck into five horizontal and one vertical rolls. I have no recollection of the accident or what caused the accident, so the account of this accident was given to me by those who saw the accident. Two truck drivers pulled me out through the front windshield before my vehicle was fully engulfed in flames. Airmed was dispatched to transport me to The University Of Utah Hospital for medical care. I do remember being transported off the helicopter because I remember the emergency personnel telling me that the air blowing down on me was just from the helicopter blades. Other than that, I remember very little about the accident or the days after.

How to Maximize iPhone Battery Lifespan

Sat, 17 Oct 2015 00:00:00 +0000

There are many easy things you can do to maximize the battery lifespan of your new iPhone or iPad. Battery lifespan is the length of time before you will need to replace your iPhone or iPad battery.

Here are 3 things you should do to maximize your iPad or iPhone battery lifespan

1. Avoid Excessive Heat

Excessive heat is the number 1 killer of battery lifespan. When you are charging your iPhone or iPad you should take it out of any case you may have so that your device will not become excessively hot. Compared to anything else, excessive heat will affect your battery lifespan the most.

Install Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Mac OS X Yosemite

Sat, 06 Dec 2014 00:00:00 +0000

March 2016 Update

Warcraft 3 patch 1.27 added native support for Mac OS X El Capitan. From the patch notes:

Throw away that old PowerPC Mac in the closet, we’ve created a new installer to support Mac 10.10 and 10.11

The new Warcraft 3 update is at https://www.blizzard.com/en-us/download/?platform=macos

Warcraft 3 Mac OS X Install Guide

Here are the steps to install Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne on Mac OS X Yosemite. This guide assumes you have already installed Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos on your Mac using my youtube guide below:

Early Retirement: How to retire early at age 50

Fri, 16 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

When I tell people that I plan to retire by age 50, they ask me how this will be possible. First you must understand what my definition of retirement is.

Early Retirement is:

having the financial resources so that I don’t have to ever work again

The key is “that I don’t have to” and not that I will stop working. My idea of retirement is that I will be in control of whether I choose to work or not and not be reliant on work to provide monthly income. Here are my 5 key principles that will allow you to retire by age 50.

Dimension Table: 7 Best Practices

Tue, 06 May 2014 00:00:00 +0000

A dimension table is one of the 2 primary building blocks of a dimensional data model. The other primary type of table is the fact table. This post will describe 7 best practices for designing a dimension table.

What is the purpose of a Dimension Table

A dimension table is the primary way to filter and group results from a fact table. A fact table is almost useless by itself, as you need to give some descriptive attributes to provide context to the data. Imagine if your fact table said that you had $1 million in sales. Is this good or bad? What are the sales by year and region? Only with this descriptive data from your dimension tables does the $1 million in sales give actionable meaning. The attributes in a dimension table provide the descriptive elements that appear on a report or dashboard to provide needed context.

Blackjack Basic Strategy - Late Surrender

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 19:10:41 +0000

If you are playing at a blackjack table where late surrender is allowed, you should take advantage of the late surrender rule by slightly changing the blackjack basic strategy rules for when to stand on hard hands. Late surrender allows you to surrender your hand and lose half your bet only after the dealer checks for blackjack. Ask the blackjack dealer at your table if late surrender is allowed. Here are the updated rules for when to surrender.

Blackjack Basic Strategy - Dealer Hits Soft 17

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 23:06:32 +0000

If you are playing at a blackjack table where the dealer hits soft 17, you need to slightly change the blackjack basic strategy rules for when to double down on hard and double down on soft hands. Here are the updated rules for when to double down.

3 blackjack basic strategy rules for doubling down on hard hands when dealer hits soft 17:

Always DOUBLE on 11
DOUBLE 10 vs. dealer 2 thru 9
DOUBLE 9 vs. dealer 3 thru 6

Informatica Mapping Insert Update Delete

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

There are situations where you need to keep a source and target in sync. One method to do this is to truncate and reload. However this method is not that efficient for a table with millions of rows of data. You really only want to:

insert rows from the source that don’t exist in the target
update rows that have changed
delete rows from the target that no longer exist in the source

Can you do this efficiently in a single informatica mapping?

Flattening PeopleSoft Summer Tree

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If you need to denormalize or flatten PeopleSoft summer trees (trees with leaves) in your data warehouse, here is an ETL process for you to follow.

Typical PeopleSoft summer tree structure

SQL to flatten the PeopleSoft summer tree

Substitute TREE_NAME with the name(s) of your summer tree(s) on line 54 below.

SELECT SQ4.SETID,
       SQ4.TREE_NAME,
       SQ4.EFFDT,
       SQ4.RANGE_FROM,
       SQ4.RANGE_TO,
       SQ4.LEVEL1,
       SQ4.LEVEL2,
       SQ4.LEVEL3,
       DECODE(SQ4.LVL4,'',SQ4.LEVEL3,SQ4.LVL4) AS LEVEL4
FROM
  (SELECT SQ3.SETID,
          SQ3.TREE_NAME,
          SQ3.EFFDT,
          SQ3.RANGE_FROM,
          SQ3.RANGE_TO,
          SQ3.LEVEL1,
          SQ3.LEVEL2,
          DECODE(SQ3.LVL3,'',SQ3.LEVEL2,SQ3.LVL3) AS LEVEL3,
          SQ3.LVL4
   FROM
     (SELECT SQ2.SETID,
             SQ2.TREE_NAME,
             SQ2.EFFDT,
             SQ2.RANGE_FROM,
             SQ2.RANGE_TO,
             SQ2.LEVEL1,
             DECODE(SQ2.LVL2,'',SQ2.LEVEL1,SQ2.LVL2) AS LEVEL2,
             SQ2.LVL3,
             SQ2.LVL4
      FROM
        (SELECT SQ1.SETID,
                SQ1.TREE_NAME,
                SQ1.EFFDT,
                SQ1.RANGE_FROM,
                SQ1.RANGE_TO,
                MAX(SQ1.L1) AS LEVEL1,
                MAX(SQ1.L2) AS LVL2,
                MAX(SQ1.L3) AS LVL3,
                MAX(SQ1.L4) AS LVL4
         FROM
           (SELECT A.SETID,
                   A.TREE_NAME,
                   A.EFFDT,
                   C.RANGE_FROM,
                   C.RANGE_TO,
                   DECODE(A.TREE_LEVEL_NUM,1, D.DESCR,'') AS L1,
                   DECODE(A.TREE_LEVEL_NUM,2, D.DESCR,'') AS L2,
                   DECODE(A.TREE_LEVEL_NUM,3, D.DESCR,'') AS L3,
                   DECODE(A.TREE_LEVEL_NUM,4, D.DESCR,'') AS L4
            FROM PSTREENODE A,
                 PSTREENODE B,
                 PSTREELEAF C,
                 PS_TREE_NODE_TBL D
            WHERE A.TREE_NAME IN ('TREE_NAME')
              AND A.SETID = B.SETID
              AND A.TREE_NAME = B.TREE_NAME
              AND B.EFFDT = A.EFFDT
              AND B.TREE_NODE_NUM BETWEEN A.TREE_NODE_NUM AND A.TREE_NODE_NUM_END
              AND B.SETID = C.SETID
              AND B.TREE_NAME = C.TREE_NAME
              AND B.TREE_NODE_NUM = C.TREE_NODE_NUM
              AND C.EFFDT = A.EFFDT
              AND A.SETID = D.SETID
              AND A.TREE_NODE = D.TREE_NODE
              AND D.EFFDT =
                (SELECT MAX(D_ED.EFFDT)
                 FROM PS_TREE_NODE_TBL D_ED
                 WHERE D.SETID = D_ED.SETID
                   AND D.TREE_NODE = D_ED.TREE_NODE
                   AND D_ED.EFFDT <= SYSDATE)) SQ1
         GROUP BY SQ1.SETID,
                  SQ1.TREE_NAME,
                  SQ1.EFFDT,
                  SQ1.RANGE_FROM,
                  SQ1.RANGE_TO) SQ2) SQ3) SQ4
ORDER BY SQ4.RANGE_FROM;

Result of the SQL

RANGE_FROM	RANGE_TO	LEVEL1	LEVEL2	LEVEL3	LEVEL4
10000	19999	All	Assets	Assets	Assets
20000	29999	All	Liabilities	Liabilities	Liabilities
30000	39999	All	Fund Balance	Fund Balance	Fund Balance
40000	47999	All	Revenue	Operating Revenues	Operating Revenues
48000	48999	All	Revenue	Nonoperating Revenues	Nonoperating Revenues
49000	49999	All	Revenue	Operating Revenues	Operating Revenues
50000	58999	All	Expense	Personal Service	Salary and Wage
59000	59999	All	Expense	Personal Service	Benefit
60000	89999	All	Expense	NonPersonal Service	NonPersonal Service

If you don’t know SQL or need to learn more about SQL, I would recommend that you buy Learning SQL by Alan Beaulieu. It will help you better understand the SQL provided above and give you the tools you need to change it for your needs.

Oracle Disable Indexes and Constraints During Insert

Sun, 19 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

If you are attempting to insert millions of rows into an oracle database, you may want to temporarily disable indexes and constraints to improve the speed of the load. Here are 5 steps to follow that will disable constraints and make indexes unusable. You need to substitute the OWNER and TABLE on line 5 and 6 respectively in each statement.

1. Disable Constraints

BEGIN
FOR cur IN
  (SELECT OWNER, CONSTRAINT_NAME , TABLE_NAME
   FROM all_constraints
   WHERE OWNER = 'OWNER'
     AND TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE') LOOP EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER TABLE '||cur.OWNER||'.'||cur.TABLE_NAME||' MODIFY CONSTRAINT "'||cur.CONSTRAINT_NAME||'" DISABLE ';

END LOOP;

END;
/

2. Disable Indexes

BEGIN
FOR cur IN
  (SELECT OWNER,INDEX_NAME
   FROM all_indexes
   WHERE TABLE_OWNER = 'OWNER'
     AND TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE') LOOP EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER INDEX '||cur.OWNER||'.'||cur.INDEX_NAME||' UNUSABLE';

END LOOP;
 
END;
/

3. Insert the process to extract, transform, load your data here

4. Rebuild Indexes

BEGIN
FOR cur IN
  (SELECT OWNER,INDEX_NAME
   FROM all_indexes
   WHERE TABLE_OWNER = 'OWNER'
     AND TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE') LOOP EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER INDEX '||cur.OWNER||'.'||cur.INDEX_NAME||' REBUILD ONLINE';
 
END LOOP;
 
END;
/

5. Enable Constraints

BEGIN
FOR cur IN
  (SELECT OWNER, CONSTRAINT_NAME , TABLE_NAME
   FROM all_constraints
   WHERE OWNER = 'OWNER'
     AND TABLE_NAME = 'TABLE') LOOP EXECUTE IMMEDIATE 'ALTER TABLE '||cur.OWNER||'.'||cur.TABLE_NAME||' MODIFY CONSTRAINT "'||cur.CONSTRAINT_NAME||'" ENABLE ';
 
END LOOP;
 
END;
/

Blackjack Basic Strategy - Double After Split

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:40:29 +0000

If double after split (DAS) is available, you should split pairs more often to take advantage of this rule. Here are updated rules for pair splitting when double after split is available.

7 blackjack basic strategy rules for pair splitting (DAS allowed):

Always SPLIT A’s and 8’s
NEVER split 5’s or T’s
SPLIT 2’s and 3’s vs. dealer 2 thru 7
SPLIT 4’s vs. dealer 5 or 6
SPLIT 6’s vs dealer 6 or less
SPLIT 7’s vs dealer 7 or less
SPLIT 9’s vs dealer 9 or less, except STAND vs dealer 7

Here is the relevant update to the pair splitting section of the basic strategy card for when double after split (DAS) is available.

Blackjack Strategy Card

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Learning how to play blackjack using a basic strategy card is relatively easy given the willingness to do so. Basic strategy is the optimal set of rules to follow for playing blackjack. Using simple basic strategy you will cut the house advantage for blackjack to about 0.50%. A simple blackjack strategy card is often used for memorization and as a reference at the tables when allowed by the casino.

You should use a blackjack strategy card to make decisions on playing each hand in the following order:

Insurance
Pair Splitting
Double Down (look for soft hands first)
Standing (look for soft hands first)

2 rules for insurance:

NEVER take Insurance
NEVER take Even Money when you have a blackjack, it is the same as insurance

6 rules for pair splitting:

Always SPLIT A’s and 8’s
NEVER split 4’s, 5’s, or T’s
SPLIT 2’s and 3’s vs. dealer 4 thru 7
SPLIT 9’s vs dealer 9 or less, except STAND vs dealer 7
SPLIT 7’s vs dealer 7 or less
SPLIT 6’s vs dealer 6 or less, except HIT vs dealer 2

The table below each set of rules is the relevant section of the blackjack strategy card. You read these tables by looking at the column for the dealer upcard and the row for your hand total.

Apple Cider Century 2009

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

In 2009 I purchased my first road bike. 2009 was also the first year I specifically trained for a cycling event. My goal was to complete 100 miles in the Apple Cider Century. As you can see, I came a little short of my goal distance and only finished about 71 miles of the event. However, this was the longest I have ever bicycled in one day.

Amishland and Lakes 2009

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The Amishland and Lakes bike tour is a 2 day cycling tour of Amish countryside and Michigan lakes hosted in Howe, Indiana. In 2009 I participated in this event and completed 97 miles of cycling over a 2 day period. This is the longest (in miles and time) that I have spent on a bicycle over a 2 day period.