I wake up on Tuesday at 4 am and cannot sleep. After laying in bed for almost an hour, I get up at 5am to work on Thursday's programming effort. When the light has come out I go for a good road bicycle ride. Because I've felt a few drops of drizzle, I wear a rain jacket and it was the right choice since I stay warm during the ride. After a shower I do more backing up of data. Risking missing the new computer delivery, I rush to the library to get a book being held for me and stop in at the drugstore for supplies. When I get home I see that I have not missed the delivery. I put on old clothes and finish cleaning the rest of the external parts of the windows. They look bright and shiny and brand new! I do some final backup and finally the delivery man comes with my new desktop computer and monitor. I quickly remove the old computer and clean up the area and install the new computer with two monitors. The Windows 10 operating system is new to me and I think I mess up the setup of the monitors, so after about 30 minutes I take a break and watch two hour long documentaries on the television. When I go back to continue the new computer setup it wants to restore the operating system to its original configuration, so I let it do that. And then I easily get the two monitor setup running and start in on installing all of the software that I need to do my activities.
I get up on Wednesday and the pavement is wet. I regret that I will not ride this morning but more important I'm worried that all of my clean, shiny windows will be water-spotted. But the drizzle is light and vertical enough that the windows are still bright and shiny. I finish transferring files to the new computer and installing most of the needed software. I run some test cases and I'm ready to produce with a new super fast computer. I have just enough time to squeeze in a workout with the weights before I meet a former co-worker who retired two years before me for lunch. We end up spending three hours at lunch talking about all sorts of things. And then I go on home and install more required software (for my efforts) and then watch the ice hockey playoff game.
Thursday is two years from my last day at work - so is today my two year annivesary of retirement or is tomorrow? Nonetheless I sleep a bit late and get out for a mid-morning ride on the mountain bicycle. After a shower, I go have my blood pressure checked (110/74), have blood drawn for a research project, get a tetanus shot (since the last one I had was just before I built the school in Thailand/Myanmar in 2008), buy a bottle of wine, and buy the delicious and decadent chocolate fudge iced cake from a bakery down on Second Street. I ride on home and open the bottle of wine and start cleaning the bathrooms, doing laundry, and tidying up the kitchen (as well as continuing to play with the new computer before I get excessively productive with its speed).
I spend most of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday working on the new computer and getting in workouts. I'm working on an n-dimensional elipsoidal representation of data. I get this part programmed and then I sit back and ponder what to do with this. Do I break the data into quintiles or use typical mean/standard deviations or do something different with the n-dimensional elipsoids? On Saturday's bicycle ride on the mountain bicycle I start off a bit slow ad really start cranking along at the midpoint and end up with very tired legs by the end of the ride. Thus Sunday is a fairly lazy day where I just go out for a short walk and mow the lawn and watch the MotoGP race from Mugelo, Italy and occupy myself with some other trivial things. Late on Sunday I speak with Person T_U on the phone (Recall that Person T_U decided back in December that we shouldn't be friend anymore) and we have a pleasant conversation.
I start Monday with a good road bicycle ride where it takes me a while to get going and then I can crank along nicely. I trim the roses and grab a shower and run some errands and then sit back for an exciting and fun Moto3 race (where a rabbit runs on the track just in front of the leaders and is fortunately spared it's life. Unlike the seagull back in Australia in 2016 that was struck by a motorcycle and was obviously instantly dead). I exchange some text messages with a friend who is working on a web-based project for Lady Gaga and I give her what she needs and I also encourage her to go beyond a web-based tool (for bullied and disillusioned youth) and think about providing a chatbot (which I just happen to have ready to go). The afternoon is a bit slow as I still ponder how to handle the n-dimensional elipsoidal data and I catch up on some trivial software projects as I continue to think about n-dimensional elipsoids, quintiles, standard deviations, and k-nearest neighbors and try to decide what might fit best. It's experimental so I expect it to take some time to try some new ideas and see where they lead.
I have a fairly slow Tuesday and Wednesday. I get in good long walks on both days and on Tuesday I have a good session lifting weights. Throughout the day I make good progress on the n-dimensonal ellipsoid and have it running. I have to run through the statistics now and see what makes sense and what doesn't. Maybe I'm way off base on this n-dimensional ellipsoid work, but I'm going to pursue it a bit until I find the dead end. I wake up on Wednesday with the old shoulder pain, so I get up and take two of the glucosamine chondrotin pills and go back to sleep. When I get up on Wednesday I take two more pills and continue to work on shoulder pain for the next couple of days including tennis-ball massage and extra glucosamine chondroitin.
On Thursday I start the day with a 30 mile loop road bicycle ride. After a shower I run off to the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force meeting and hand out contact information to some people who could use my geek skills. Afterwards the Fair Trade Long Beach organization meets at a set of restaurants near my house and we discuss future organizational, planning, and web plans. (Recall that I got dragged into this with my Web skills.) Nonetheless these are very nice people and I continue to work with them to design and deploy their website as well as to get the required number of Fair Trade businesses required in order to declare the city of Long Beach a certified Fair Trade city. Later on Thursday I watch the ice hockey playoffs and continue to watch as the team that wins has their first Stanley Cup in many years of existence. And I start crying, along with a crying player being interviewed, who is describing what it means to him as his father doesn't remember anything due to Alzheimer's disease.
I wake up on Friday and read the news and check out the stock market before going for a bicycle ride. I currently have no shoulder pain and will continue to be diligent about the glucosamine chondrotin and tennis ball massage to alleviate the shoulder arthritis pain. It strikes home that Kate Spade (age 55) and Anthony Bourdain (age 61) are both near my age, are both fairly successful as I have been, and yet have commited suicide. (I've had some of my photos from travel compared with those of an Anthony Bourdain television show.) I walk out into the backyard and take a deep breath and make sure that I have no suicidial tendencies or intentions or plans. After some moments of reflection, I do make note that I know how to find help if I need it. And I continue with the Fair Trade Long Beach website work until just before 10 am where I take the mountain bicycle for a decent ride down to the pier and back. After trimming the roses I get a cooling shower, walk to the CVS pharmacy and speak Thai with the Thai cashier, and then get back home to finish my weekly tasks for this website. I get a call from one of the Fair Trade Long Beach principals and, though I cannot speak Khmer, I throw in a few Khmer words and tell her my Khmer nickname. We talk about Khmer pronunciation and other Cambodian topics as we discuss the Fair Trade business at hand. In addition I continue to finish up the city of Long Beach non-profit grant application and start in on a US government grant application for the non-profit. In addition, I make contact with another non-profit agency that is looking for a consultant and I send out an email indicating that we can probably be a great technology consultant, but I'm not sure that we cannot be a great overall agency consultant. We'll have a Monday 2:30 phone call though I think that the overalll task is above our capabilities, the technology development is right inline with what we do.
I start Saturday with a good road bicycle ride and I seem to keep a good pace whether there is a headwind, a crosswind, or a tailwind. When I get home I trim a small bush that is starting to block my driveway, grab a cooling shower, relax for a bit, and then run errrands that includes a trip to the library for more books as well as the grocery store for supplies. The Canadian F1 qualifying is exciting and the three top teams split the first 6 poisitions and aligns things for an interesting Grand Prix on Sunday. I spend Saturday afternoon alternating between writing non-profit grants, updating websites, and doing minor cleaning around the house. I like breaking up my days like this before I get too stale on one task.
On Sunday I get out for a recovery mountain bicycle ride and smile at a couple (who are running/walking) on the way out and then smile at them on the way back home. I stop and ask, "Where do I know you from?" But it turns out they are just visiting from Texas and we have a 5 minute conversation as they run/walk along the sidetrail and cruise slowly along the bicycle trail. But I welcome them to Long Beach and I am happt that they have enjoyed their stay. After a shower I watch a somewhat strategic, but also somewhat boring, F1 race where my favorite driver leads from the line and controls the race from there. I go back on Sunday to working on the n-dimensional elipsoid and continue making good progress.
I'm very hungover on Monday morning, so I go out walking and I stop in at the rocery store for supplies on the way home. I do some programming and then get out to work the abdomnas and lower back. After a shower I have a conversation with a non-profit agency in San Gabriel looking for a technology consultant, so then I put together a Statement of Qualifications to send to her.