Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday June 26, 2017 8:02 PM

Start of Summer


I start Saturday with a two hour mountain bicycle ride around the loop. Down the near the ocean there is a bit of drizzle dropping from the sky but nothing to make the ride dangerous. After getting cleaned up I do some grocery shopping and grab some food for today's lunch. When I get back home I update some finances and call around for long-stem carnation plants, check on qualifying for the MotoGP race from Catalunya (for which there was a slight possibility that I could have been in attendance), and then watch qualifying for the Canadian F1 race. This is a rare weekend when both MotoGP and F1 are racing on the same weekend. I review some of my stock market prediction algorithm work and decide that I need to step back and take a think about it. Most of the predictions for 12 months out are in the realm of believability though a few leave me puzzled.

On Sunday I'm lazy. I watch an exciting MotoGP race from Barcelona even though my favorites do not do well in the race. And then I start in programming a facebook messenger chatbot. I keep making good progress, but keep getting symied. Thus I drop the froort, have a good session with the weights, and get down on my ands and knees and clean the kitchen floor. After a shower i watch an exciting F1 frace from Canada though, again, my favorites do not do well. Later I am back to the chatbot and it seems to be working except for one communication link and the final passage of arguments to a server script. It's great progress for one day!

I get out for a two hour ride on the mountain bicycle on Monday morning. After a shower I work on both the stock market algorithm and the chatbot. I make good progress on both. Before 1pm I meet up with Person D_V from many years ago. We walk to a nice restaurant and have a three hour lunch as we catch up on many different things. By 4 pm it is time for me to go home. I watch an exciting Moto3 race from Barcelona and then continue on with website work, the stock market algorithm, and the chatbot. The chatbot is complete enough such that I send it off to Joseph and Ruby to play with (but also letting them know that there are a couple of things that I still want to fix). I get down for reading in bed by 9:30 pm and the lights go off for sleep at 10:30 pm.

But I wake up and cannot sleep. I lie in bed for a while and then get up and work on websites and the adding more capability to the stock market algorithm. Finally near 4 am I go back to bed and get a couple hours of sleep.

On Tuesday morning I am tired so I go walking for 45 minutes, but some things at the grocery store, and then clean the inside of every window in the house. I take a break to eat some breakfast and have some caffeine and make more progress on the stock market algorithm. Before 10 am I am going on outside to wash the outside of the windows of the house. This entails a ladder, hose, bucket of soap and water, sponge, drying towel, and final wipedown with glass cleaner (for each and every window). It takes almost three hours to complete this but the win dows look STUNNING from both the inside and the outside of the house. After a shower I watch a semi-strategic Moto2 race from Barcelona where track temperatures are at 50C. It is now 3:000 in the afternoon and I havent' really eaten anything yet today today so I sit down for some vegetables and rice. It is supposed to be pretty warm over the next few days so late in the afternoon I get some water to the roses and carnations.

I'm lazy again on Wedesday! I'm a bit tired from the up and down and moving from the few hours indoor/outdoor window washing on Tuesday, so I start Wednesday slow. Later at mid-morning I grab a book and walk all the way to the library to return it and then pickup a few small items and a lottery ticket on the way home. It's more than an hour walk but today is warm, so it's a good workout. After a cooling shower I answer some emails and then continue on with the chatbot. The stock market algorithm is doing well but I've come to a standstill as to what to do next. So I'll let it simmer around (hopefully during a long Thursday bicycle ride). In addition to the initial resource provision chatbot, I start working on a statistics chatbot. I might as well follow the trend of social media playing a role in our lives and have my processes interact with social media (as opposed to the past where you had to specifically go to a website).

I get in 48 miles on the road bicycle. There are very few riders out on a Thursday morning. And this ride wears me out more than usual. I keep trying to re-hydrate and moderate my blood suagr with little success. I call the motorcycle dealer and the bike is ready, so I take an Uber ride and get the bike back. It turns out that the throttle position sensor had lost lock or something and they re-calibrated it and the stumble is gone. But they also told me that at higher rpms, if you open the throttle WFO (wide effing open), then the clutch will slip. I try to duplicate this twice on the way home but run out of room as I'm up to 120 mph and haven't quite felt the clutch slip yet. But the Yamaha YZF-R1 should now be good to get to 100,000 miles in a year or so. On the way home I stop in at the library to return a book and get two new ones. And then I lay down on the couch to read. Before I know it, it is 3:00 and I am late for my dentist appointment. I'm riding like a madman - 70 mph in 30 mph zones to get to the dentist. But she's running a shade late anyway and she's happy with the way my teeth look and it is a very quick and easy cleaning. On the way home I stop in at Chipotle for dinner and then relax in the evening - still trying to re-hydrate more.

I start Friday with a 52 minute run (with some short duration walking thrown in to try and protect the calves from injury). When I get home I trim the roses and bring in two dozen fresh cut roses to liven up the living room. And then I grab a shower. Today is supposed to be very hot so after checking up on the news, emails, and the stock market, I walk to the grocery store for supplies and then pull out equipment to work on the lawn. Over the next 90 minutes I edge, mow, and trim the lawn and get it looking nice for the weekend. I'm sweating up a storm - as expected - so I have a nice cooling shower afterwards. Because today is supposed to be the start of a series of hot days, everytime that I pass the refrigerator I stop and take a gulp of cold water. I also receive response emails from the University of Riverside and the Earthwatch Institute regarding possibly installing a weather/pollution monitoring station in my backyard and also making sure that the data obtained is open source. Though I have no definite plans for the summer such as classes or otherwise, I'm starting to pick up activities that could be interesting to participate in including having a NASA/UCR/Earthwatch weather and pollution monitoring station installed in my backyard, open sourcing that data, an ocean cleanup vessel (to remove plastic debris from the ocean gyres), and some other activities. I send the child abuse project executive summary off to the team on Friday night - I haven't been given a deadline for it, but I get it out the door as a draft for everyone else to start with.

I start Saturday with a road bicycle ride up to the Santa Fe dam and back home for 56 miles. I feel pretty strong throughout and consider continuing down to the ocean and around the city, but that might be too much for today (considering it is supposed to be pretty warm). I have a refreshing cool shower but then I am fairly useless the rest of the data. I catch up on a few financial matters, but none of the (growing) list of projects gets worked on.

On Sunday I ride the mountain bicycle for two hours to the old yacht club and back home with some extra miles thrown in. The first few miles were a struggle after yesterday's ride, but then I start cranking quite nicely and I'm disappointed in myself for not taking the road bicycle out again for a longer ride. On Sunday I relax and in the afternoon the team's child abuse executive summary comes back to me and it is completely different. I read through it once and even if I liked the format and flow and structure, the English needs work. (What the heck is an aerospace engineer doing finding grammatical and wording errors?) I just close the file down because I can't see a single word or sentence that I wrote. And I turn to other topics for a while. Late on Sunday night I get a text indicating that the executive summary is due today. WTF - there was never a deadline given, the draft was completely changed, and it's due today? I just respond with words similar to "nobody ever told me when the deadline was, the executive summary needs work, and I'll get to it on Monday morning". I'm starting to get upset.

On Monday I finally feel the full effects of three bicycle rides and one run over the last four days. I walk to the grocery store for supplies and edit the executive summary (though I just follow the updated flow and structure though I don't believe for one second that it is an appropriate executive summary) and send my revisions back to the team. I have a discussion with my new insurance agent - my previous one retired a year ago or so after I was with him for 29 years - and it looks like they can save me some money. But I also add in three expensive items in the house that I want them to be aware of, namely, my diamond ring made from my Mom's engagement diamond, three antique clocks spanning 90 to 130 years old, and a bicycle. The new insurance agent, who sounds somewhat young on the phone, has to be revived and picked up off the floor when I tell her the value of the bicycle. "BUt it is ALWAYS in my bedroom or underneath me and I never let it out of my sight", I respond. Nonetheless I will be getting new quotes for home, auto, and motorcycle rates from her in the next few days. I get in a good workout for the abdominals and lower back and cool down with a shower. And then go to work on websites and chatbots and things.

On Monday there is the news that Nabra Hassanen, a Muslim 17 year old teenager, has been found dead in a pond after some sort of incident with somebody else as she was finishing the holiday of Ramadan. At first I seem to be immune to this news. Then a student from LBCC texts me and I continue to ponder the thought and I cannot stop crying. A 17 year old girl has lost her life because she is Muslim. I cannot stop crying. The rest of the day is taken up with people calling to see if I am okay. Yes, I am okay. No, I am not. It is 2017 and this is what the world has come to?

Tuesday starts with the loop ride on the mountain bicycle. I catch up to some guys who admittedly are going slow on their road bicycles and I ride and socialize with them for a while. As we approach PCH, two members say they are going to ride hard and I, of course, chase them. But they caught me off guard and I cannot quite get their slipstream and on a mountain bicycle with softer tires - I'm stuck in no-mans land. I ride hard and don't catch up to the first two riders but completely lose the other riders. I make my turn for the loop and have an uneventful ride home. I cleanup the roses as soon as I get home since it will be hot today. And then I take a shower to cool down. I run a few errands involving returning books to the library, buying more vitamins, and buying more grocery supplies and then I settle in for a warm day at home. I have trouble getting started on some of the projects that I wanted to make progress on but make a little progress anyway.

On Wednesday through Friday and beyond I have the blahs. I usually get this in early July but maybe the recent very hot spell has made it come early. I get in some good workouts including another 50 miler on the road bicycle on Thursday, but on Friday morning, while running, I pull up lame with the left calf "going" again. I limp on home. On each day I sit down and do a lot of coding as I'm completely changing the look of the non-profit website to be more modern. On Friday, to change things up, I go work in the DRNK coffeehouse and run into Nicholas. We have a brief conversation and I'm sure he's excited about the end of the summer when he will be moving to NYU to start into theatre. Throughout these days, in addition to coding, I keep rinsing my ears out with ear wax removal drops, alcohol, and/or white vinegar since my left ear seems block and I have some ringing. By Friday night the blockage is probably alleviated since a whole mess of ear wax came out and the hearing is better and the ringing seems down. We'll see what Saturday brings.

On Saturday I wake up at 5:30 am, turn off the alarm, and sleep until 7:40 am. I don't think I've slept this late since I was in Thailand. Maybe the blahs are more tham just an emotional thing. I get out a bit after 8 am for a good loop ride on the mountain bicycle including a couple of stretches where I try to keep up with riders on their high-pressure road bicycles. After a shower I ride the motorcycle to the main Long Beach library and get two new books (to go with the one that I am halfway through) and then ride on home. When I get home I adjust the motorcycle idle speed up a bit since the technicians set it a bit low. And then I watch qualifying in F1 from a boring track in Baku, Azerbaijan. And then I go check the MotoGP qualifying results with surprising results as a result of wet/dry/mixed coniditions. But my favorite Moto3 rider will start from fourth on Sunday (whereas he usually starts from 25th).

On Sunday I have no idea where i stand. I start the day on the road bicycle thinking it might be a shorter day because the entire organism is tired. I keep cranking away and when I get past the Whitteier Narrows dam a few miles two riders pass me. I stick with them for a while and then surge ahead and look over at the lead rider and ask him, "Isn't your friend going to help you?" I don't hear or understand the response so I pull the two other riders a few miles towards the Santa Fe dam. Maybe one mile away from the dam the leading rider says something and then it seems it is an all-out sprint for the last mile to the dam. Seeing that I'm way beyond what I thought that I was going to do today, they are gone and I finish up to the dam 20 or 30 seconds behind them. When I get up to the dam I turn around, tip my water bottle to the lead rider who smiles back at me, and then I turn back towards home. I am still feeling the blahs and possibly having my traditional early summer "semi-illness", but I keep cranking along and do well to finish with a reasonable time for almost 60 miles (though the last 1.5 miles were a struggle). After a shower and an erwash I watch the F1 race from Baku, Azerbaijan with a wild race of incidents, penalties, and yellow/red flags. I;m happy to see a rookie Canadian driver on the podium but disappointed with some of the other driving. I take a break and then later in the afternoon watch the Dutch TT (MotoP) race from Assen. The MotoGp race is also pretty wild with the top five finsihers within a second or so of each other - the best racing on the planet. I'm not of much use for the rest of the day but get some reading done and planning out the next week's activities.

I get up early on Monday and go trim the roses and bring freshly-cut roses into the house. As I'm walking out to the trash to put the roses clippings into the trash for today's pickup, my left calf "really goes". After Friday's run when I had to limp home, it has progressively gotten better and did not bother me at all on Sunday. And this morning, just walkign to the trash, it "goes". This is a bad one, so I imeediately take two Aleve and ice it. At mid-mornign I do manage to get in a weight lifting session though the lifts for the upper body are hampered by how much my left calf hurts. Throughout the day I keep icing it and I take two more Aleve in the afternoon. I mkae progress on some matching/prediction algorithms and watch a very close and exciting Moto2 race from Assen. Otherwise it is a fairly slow day.