My wife and son are struggling with my sudden obsession of turntables and vinyl records. I'm slightly confused of their surprise but I understand.

They didn't know that optimistic teenager that spent hours listening to LPs and additional time recording them on cassette tape for my Sony Walkman. They didn't know that me in college while living in a KU dorm where every room on 6th Floor in Ellsworth Hall set the volume on their stereo to Level 11.

The Ramones, Beatles, Grateful Dead, Journey, Kansas, Rush, Johnny Cash, Guns n Roses, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and Pink Floyd. They knew me back then.

Since 2008, I've been collecting weather observations in my backyard with a Davis Instruments Vantage Pro2 Wireless Weather Station. Beyond routine maintenance and an occasional replacement or addition of parts, the weather station has been rock solid.

With snow on the ground and long stretches of subzero temperatures, I wasn't sure I was going to get in a motorcycle ride for the month of February. Then on the second to last day of this short month, the temperatures rose to the lower-mid 40s and the roads were mainly dry. That was good enough for me as I took my 2017 Spyder RT out for a 20 mile ride from home to downtown Sioux Falls. 

So my 15 minutes of fame for 2021 has already happened. I was interviewed by Dakota News Now at the end of 2020 which aired on KSFY and KDLT the first day of this year. 

My son asked me why the local news was doing the interview. The short answer, I'm getting old.

During this month of September, I am taking part in the Great Cycle Challenge to fight kids' cancer!

Why? Because right now, cancer is the biggest killer of children from disease in the United States. Over 15,700 children are diagnosed every year, and sadly, 38 children die of cancer every week. Kids should be living life, not fighting for it.

I was asked to join my office's bike team, the SuperCells, and help in in the effort to raise money through a ride challenge intended to support the Children's Cancer Research Fund. The fund and research dollars allow research to continue their work to develop lifesaving treatments and find a cure for childhood cancer. 

A few months ago, I reviewed six different vinyl record turntables due my renewed interest in listening to music pressed on vinyl records. Despite all six vinyl turntables being good choices to consider, I still needed to select the turntable I would bring into my home. In the end, it was the Fluance RT82 Reference High Fidelity Vinyl Turntable that I chose as my latest stereo component. 

When I entered college just after graduating high school in 1986, there was a new band from my neck of the woods that just spoke to me. The band was call The Rainmakers and they were from Missouri.

I'm a big believer that it is the small positive things we do in our day that have the biggest impact on our own well being. From here through the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, I've decided to just blog about the small things I'm doing to escape from the anxiety producing headlines in our news. I recognize that not everything I'm writing is of interest to others, so while some of my work will continue to be posted at socPub, all of my work can be viewed on my personal blog, bryanruby.com.

Virtual assistants have been incorporated into customer service applications and web pages, including technical support, product sales, or while receiving assistance during a purchase process. We currently experience virtual assistants without knowing it when we communicate with airlines, banks, social networks, insurance, or tourism companies.

Machines (software) are able to incorporate user interaction into their functions and learn about their needs on the fly. They achieve this by recognizing the same user, along with their emotions (joy, frustration, anger, disappointment, doubt) even better than many people by studying not only the tone of their voice but also the posture and gestures.

Surprisingly, I recently sought out and purchased a vinyl record turntable. This is a surprise to me because I've spent the last three decades moving from the opposite direction as my music collection evolved from vinyl and cassette tape to compact discs and then finally to digital music stored as MP3 files on my computer and mobile devices. In this century, I don't even know if you can call it collecting music because I now subscribe monthly to an endless library of artists and songs through various music streaming services.