On Tuesday I get out for a cold but good road bicycle ride. As I'm cranking along north on the Los Angeles river trail towards home I hit something very hard with my front tire and my first thoughts are "I'm going to have a flat tire and I'm going to have to repair my carbon fiber composite front wheel". Instead I get struck on the left shin with something and the bicycle is okay. There is blood dripping down the left shin, but I'm only 5 miles from home so everything should be okay. When I get home there is a three inch diameter black and blue mark on my shin along with the blood but the bicycle is fine. These Enve composite wheels and Conti Gatorskin Hardshell tires are expensive, but strong! I immediately put ice on the injured spot even before I take a shower. Later I ride the motorcycle to pick up lunch supplies and then sweep the driveway, clean up the sideyard of weeds, and make a lot of progress on a new website. Finally, nearing 2 pm, I eat lunch and notice that my black and blue bruise is almost non-existent now - it must have been the ice. But later in the day I put more ice on that spot just in case.
On Wednesday I get up before 7 am and read websites and check on financial markets before heading out for a mountain bicycle ride just before 9 am. It takes a while to get the legs back but then I start cranking long very well, get to my turnaround point at the old yacht club, and head back for home. Except that I run into Terry, a cyclist I've known for a few years, heading in the opposite direction so I ride with Terry and Kihn to the Long Beach pier. We stop and chat for a bit and both Terry and Kihn admit that they have not been riding as much as usual. I try to encourage them just to get out and ride (though Terry is hampered by his wife's directive that he is not allowed to ride alone since he broke his hip about two years ago). Nonetheless we turn for my home and ride together and I have to slow a bit for Terry and Kihn, but I get in some extra mileage today. After a shower I pick up supplies at the grocery store and, despite wanting to go hang out at a juice/cofeehouse and work from there, I work from home. I work on the genetic algorithm and the latest website but only make small progress due to lack of motivation.
Thursday starts with some web and algorithm work and then I get in a good workout for the abdominals, lower back, and calves/Achilles tendons and then get cleaned up. I ride the motorcycle down to Irvine to meet with Dao. Dao has been struggling but we have a delicious Indian lunch and continue to talk and walk for a long time. Finally I need to get home, but I share with him a book that I like that I've shared with my brother and I hope he goes and gets the book and reads it. (My brother has already got through three chapters and is finding it enlightening.) Through the rest of the day I'm fairly or semi-productive though things do not go as fast as I want them to.
On Friday it is another very foggy day so I stay in bed until 7:30 am. I finally get up, walk to the grocery store for supplies, and start in on making a common thread or line of communication between the various algorithms for a common objective. For example, get the gradient-based minimization, neural networks, k-nearest neighbor, and genetic algorithms all to deal with the same formats and same data so that there is interchangeability between the methods. Just before 11 am I take the mountain bicycle out for about a 70 minute ride that refreshes and energizes me. When I get home I work on some troublesome spots in the yard and clean out a few large weeds from the rosebeds and on the side of the house. After a shower I work on the financial predictions and after doing it the standard way, I think of a new hybrid way and when I implement this it matches the actual data better. Unfortunately it shows financial market crashes in the next few months. I take a break to remove the lower fairing from the motorcycle to clean up and to replace the aluminum tape. This is a messy job now because the 2002 YZF-R1 has 98,000 miles on it and a very slow oil leak - thus last year's aluminum tape is worn and oily. Nonetheless I remove the old tape, clean up the lower fairings, and scuff them up with steel wool for good adhesion, and lay down new aluminum tape on the inside of the fairings. And then let them set overnight.
Saturday is very foggy again, but I get out on the road bicycle and have a decent ride. I seem to be struggling a bit at times, but I push on. When I get home I put the lower fairings back onto the Yamaha YZF-R1 and declare the job finished. But I see a fairing "tab" sticking out where it should not, so I have to partially re-do the installation. It is still not perfect, but close enough for a motorcycle that I keep expecting to trade in any day now. After getting cleaned up I pick up lunch, clean up the roses and carnations and bring many rose blooms and a few carnation blooms inside the house. I LOVE the smell of carnations. And then I go to work on making the various algorithms that I have written "talk to each other" with common data input and output formats. Just as I'm about to go to bed for reading and sleep I finish up the common format among two of the programs that I've been working on.
I sleep late on Sunday and work on the testing of the common format and common database areas. They seem to be working. Just before 11 am I get out on the mountain bicycle and have a good ride. At one point a guy on a motorized skateboard joins the trail and rides at greater than 20 mph. I cannot catch him (since I'm on the mountain bicycle today). But he turns off and I follow him and talk with him a bit about the skateboard, the battery life, and other things. It turns out he is from Thailand (though he has been in this country for 8 years) and so I am able to practice more Thai. I give him my number and he calls my own phone so that we can talk and text. When I get home I watch the recorded CBS special about human trafficking with Thorn and Ashton Kutcher. It's a bit disappointing as it tells stories rather than getting into some of the investigative and prevention details. And late in the afternoon I continue the algorithm work and think of a couple of other things I want to work on in the next couple of weeks.
Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are a blur. I get in a session with the weights, a good road bicycle ride, and a core/abdominal workout on the three days. I also spend time at a juice/cofeehouse in Cerritos as I work along on my algorithms and websites. I get stuck when it comes to confidence levels of predictions based upon the nonlinear algorithms that I've developed. I have some ideas and I run them past a few people before I start programming them in. I work through a number of errands on these days related to money transfers to other countries, fixing sprinkler heads, ordering new (but not yet available) books from the library, and reading the three books that I currently have. It may seem like a boring set of three days, and I do have moments of boredom, but I work through the boredom and try to keep taking care of things on my to-do list and adding to the list as I discover more. I pull roses and carnations (My Absolute favorite!) flowers into the house and enjoy the sweet smell of the carnations. This is the time of year when both the roses and carnations grow wildly and I am happy to constantly sniff the carnations every time that I walk past them in the house.
I get out for a good road bicycle ride on Thursday and then get cleane dup to go to the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting. It's a shorter meeting today than usual since the keynote speaker had an emergency. Nonetheless I run into two friends from a Fair Trade meeting that I went to and that I'm supposed to help them with their website. As we're talking (after the real meeting) a lady approaches me and says, "Aren't you the tech guy who presented the shelter finder application for homeless people". I confirm that it was me almost two years ago. How did she remember me? Nonetheless she says she's been trying to find me for a year now since Long Beach received a large federal grant to help the homeless and thought about my shelter finder application. So I give her my business card and look forward to more work. After the meeting I go home and mow the lawn and then have a slow day. I take the day off from coding since I just need a break to freshen up my thought processes.
I'm a bit lazy and Friday and do not get out cycling or lfiting weights. At mid-morning I get out for about an hour walk and then clean up the roses and do the laundry before riding the motorcycle up to CSULA. It's crunch time at CSULA as the final Expo posters are due soon.
On Saturday I sleep late and then get out cycling. But today, though I keep up a good pace, at least two riders pass me and I cannot stay up with them. I just continue on at my pace and vow to do better next time. After a shower I run errands including more library books, lunch, and grocery shopping. Throughout the afternoon I am barely productive as I work on a website's security, privacy, and terms of service policies. But at least I make some progress. And I spend time watching a good F1 qualifying and the Master's golf tournament.
I'm lazy on Sunday, so I finish off the privacy, security, and terms of service policies for websites and upload them to the server. I take a break to do a high repetition workout with the weights and it feels good to lift without (much) pain in the shoulders. I clean up the yard a bit and then watch a very exciting Bahrain F1 race where the leaders' strategy should not survive the distance of the race, but it does. I'm excited for the result. I delay watching the Argentinian MotoGP/2/3 races for a day seeing that I wanted to go down to the even but found that the hotel prices were jacked up to many hundreds of dollars per night. Later I watch the finish of the Masters golf tournament and then go back to do a few small web programming tasks and hope to be more productive on Monday. Late On Sunday afternoon I cook some vegetables and try to make a curry dish (for future use) with curry powder and regular milk (rather than curry paste and coconut milk) and we'll see on Monday how that turned out.
I get out for a good two hour ride on the mountain bicycle on Monday and work on websites. I notice that my rear tire is starting to show green through the tread so I order a new rear tire online for installation later this week. I wanted to go work at a coffeehouse or other place with Internet connection, but instead I just work from home. I watch both an exciting MotoGP race where half of the field starts way behind the pole sitter because of last minute decisions to change to dry tires and there is an exciting Moto3 race to watch also.