Happy Birthday 2014 Analysis

Today (9/30) is my birthday. I thought I would break down the various birthday wishes and make some graphs, cause I love me some graphs.

Some numbers

• Total of 41 Happy Birthdays (HBDs) received
• Earliest Bday wish received 9/29/2014 @ 8:12AM by my friend Wendy. Classic Wendy wishing me a happy bday on the wrong day. Better way early than never.
• HBDs started at 5:30AM on 9/30. First HBD received on Facebook.
• Royals playing first Postseason game in 29 years tonight. What a game...just had to mention that.

Hour of Day Break down

• Huge spike in HBDs during the 11:00AM hour.
• People eating dinner around 5:00PM this evening, no HBDs received.

Who Wished

Most HBDs were received by Facebook Friends denoted by FFriends. Facebook Friends are those folks that you only interact with via Facebook. These could be friends from days past, acquaintances, or just straight up Facebook Friends.

Friends here are people I consider closer than FFriends. These are friends that I maintain close contact with, the type of people that would help you hide the body if needed. Of course there is only one wife in this category.

• Most common family member wishing HBDs was cousin with 3 HBDs wished.
• Most popular name Matt with 3
• Names beginning with M come in first with 6 HBDs

Method Received

• 72% of all HBDs were received via Facebook. Friends and FFriends alike use the common social media platform. 
• My parents used the good ol fashioned phone method. It was good to talk to them, they are out of town traveling around. 
• Coop and Val wished me a happy birthday with their voice.
• I received 5 cards in the mail

Trash Tracker

Was walking around the park on one of my speed walks when a bolt of inspiration hit me. It was Monday and Monday is trash day at Westwood. One thought led to another and I started thinking why am I not tracking my trash yet.

Over lunch break I mocked up TrashTracker v 1.0. I just needed something simple, something easy to use from the mobile, with plans to use it Thursday mornings as I am taking out the trash. 

I first decided to track the bag count and quickly realized this is not the most optimal. We always have 2 bags of trash. So then I added the following attributes for 2 bags of trash:

• Weight - I am using a simple bathroom scale at the moment with plans to find a better way to weigh the trash
• Smell - purely subjective rating from 1 - 10 on smell. 10 being the most putrid bag of trash you have ever come in contact with.
• Garbage water - A simple yes or no question to determine if the bag busted and leaked garbage water on the floor or worse on your socks and shoes.

I also added a notes section for various notes, and of course we track the date and time of the record.

I used jQuery mobile for the site. Here is a screen shot. Again I just needed something simple to collect the data, I am more interested in the data.

So I recorded the first night worth of trash. Here is the breakdown.

Bag 1

• Weight: 35 Pounds
• Smell: 9/10
• Garbage Water: No

Bag 2

• Weight: 18 pounds
• Smell: 3/10
• Garbage Water: No

What a great night to start the data collection. Bag 1 was horrible. We had to put it outside 3 days ago. The smell was so putrid it permeated into the house from the garage. The house started smelling like garbage. I had to take the bag out to the back porch and leave the garage door open today to air it out.

So there you have it. Another data set to collect and analyze. I would like to capture data for a year. We’ll see how long it goes.