Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, June 17, 2002 7:41 AM

No Summer Sand


I leave work early on Wednesday to pick Person J_VKPI up at the train station and to go rollerblading. We don't quite make it to the rollerblading part of the planned events, but we do go shopping for hair dye and have dinner. We have long discussions about school, family, break-ups, exes, jealousy, parties, and life. We are having dinner at a mall - just finishing up - when a nearby dining person and his family get up to leave. As they pass out of the door I can hear the father cowardly mutter under his breath "f%#*@&$ f#&@". Yes, this really makes the world a better place for everyone.

Person Roy interrupts our trip back to Person J_VKPI's apartment with a telephone call. Like the friend of Person J_VKPI who recently apologized for being upset that Person J_VKPI went out with someone off his waiting list, perhaps Person Roy realizes that it was really his choice.

And I interrupt our trip back to K-Town to drive around downtown Los Angeles, skid row, and the King Eddy. I explain to Person J_VKPI that I like to come over here to reinforce how lucky I have been in my life. Person J_VKPI is scared and doesn't quite understand how so many people would have to live in cardboard boxes, but we talk about it and things are okay again.

Thursday is a blah day. Besides not feeling well, having made three trips to the bathroom in the first two hours of the day, I don't want to move GRIDs at work, I don't want to run old versions of NASTRAN, and I don't want to attend the upcoming EOS celebration party. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, I have a doctor's appointment and a business meeting scheduled between 4:30 pm and 9:30 pm when the EOS celebration is to occur. I must decline the invitation.

Thursday night I try to save the day from being a blah day by getting out for a bicycle ride and mowing the lawn. It works, more or less. I miss two of Person T*'s telephone calls before going to bed just after 9:15pm.

Friday night, after a visit with Dr. L, a session lifting weights, and a long walk with Nopester, I geek-out. There is a little video processing dilemma that someone presents me with. It involves reading, frame by frame, a digital video format file, identifying specific targets within the frame, determining the position of the target, and storing the position for later processing. A few hours later I call the friend back and tell him/her, "I think I finished it".

This is met with the astonished, "I've been trying to get that done for the last year. What did you do to pick the targets out from the background?"

My answer, "I used a two-cell adjacent-neighbor digital polarizer to help distinguish the target from the background and then I applied a multi-valued logic function to account for uncertainty in the reflectivity of the targets across frames", is met with silence. So I try, "I wrote a program to do it using a video processor and fuzzy logic". I have to go on to explain the difference between fuzzy logic and neural networks, but he/she is happy with the results and wants to get together with me and discuss the marketing and sales of the algorithms.

Saturday's activities are hampered by the debilitating effects of Dr. L's pretreatment from the night before. I still manage to do the laundry, get out for a bicycle ride, buy more antibiotics, wash and wax the new motorcycle ("Fastest production bike on the planet"), spot fertilize the backyard, and lift weights. In the middle of the day, tired from the activities and the pretreatment, I speak in rapid succession with Person G, Person J_VKPI (for an hour), and Person Roy. Now I'm tired and I happen to see that "Wall Street" is playing on the television. So I watch that until the famous "Greed is good" speech. Then I start getting ready for the night's activities.

Person J_VKPI and I head for a different club in West Hollywood. We arrive there at 10:30pm - the trip from K-Town being embedded with good discussions about where we are. Peron M_K is at the club and makes eyes at me as well as "accidentally" brushing up against me a few different times. I have to explain to Person J_VKPI who Person M_K is. The first club closes, so we pass over to the next one. It has a cool light show with laser lights, messages, and images projected all over the place. Just as I am pulling up to my driveway I see that there is a car with a person parked in front of my house. And as I turn into the driveway the car starts up, makes a U-turn, and drives off. (I wonder what that is all about.) I make it home safely and am in bed (alone) at 3:30 am.

On Sunday, somewhat feeling the effects of Dr. L's pretreatment as well as only 4 hours of sleep, I lift weights, paint a window, go for a bicycle ride, read the newspaper, walk the dog, and watch a number of races on television. I am collapsed in bed by 9pm.