Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday April 18, 2016 8:02 PM

Disappointment


On Thursay I go back to work and I discover that many of the test activities that should be happening are delayed again. I try to work on documentation of some of my previous results and finally I go home. Today is a lazy day and I get out walking for a bit and call it quits.

Friday is another blah day of non-value-added work. I try to stay productive, but what can I do when tests are delayed? After work I mow the lawn and relax a bit. Near 8:30 pm I go out and lift weights, grab a shower, and go pick up Person T_U to go out clubbing. We hit three different clubs and Person T_U runs into a number of friends and acquaintances. I just go along for the meetings and introductions but I notice that the music at each of the clubs is off today and it is no the most fun that I've have clubbing. Nonetheless I drive us back home, drop off Person T_U, and get down for sleep at 3:15 am on Saturday morning.

I'm up after 7 am on Saturday morning and out the door on the mountain bicycle before 8 am. I have a good ride to the old yacht club and crank along nicely with and against the wind on various legs of the ride. After the ride I take a shower, run errands, get books from the library, and then get a ride to the bicycle store where my new carbin fibre Enve wheels have been installed on my road bicycle. Person Ti_Ca takes ym old aluminum Mavic wheels home and I ride the road bike back home and look forward to Sunday's first real ride with the new wheels. After qualifying for the Bahrain F1 race and the AGentinian MotoGP race, I cannot recall what hapens on Saturday since I am so obsessed with Sunday's bicycle ride.

I start north on the Los Angeles river with the road bicycle and new, carbon fibre wheels. I very quickly catch Ted and tell him to follow me because I'm going pretty fast to push these wheels and se what hey can do. We get to the Whittier Narrows dam and I can see that Ted is sweating produsely and has been working hard, but he thanks me for the good ride and we part ways. Ted heads back south for home and I head north a bit to see the oxen north of the Whittier Narrows dam before heading wouth on the san Gabriel river trail. I'm cranking along quite nicely and liking these new wheels. When I finish the ride I know that my legs are going to be sore for the next few days. I catch the exciting F1 race from Bahrain and the the fun MotoGP race from Agenrtina before the Sunday ends.

After so much fun it is a pain to go back to work on Monday morning. But I'm at my offie at 6:15 on Monday morning and trying to be proudctive over the next few days as more tests get delayed. I manage to squeeze in workouts when I can and watch fun combined wet/dry Moto3 and Moto2 races from Agentina.

I've been told that I have to visit a Northrop Grumman facility on Wednesday, so my boss drives and I ride with her up to Santa Barbara and have a morning meeting with our subsidiary. We come to some technical agreements but the manager says that the work is out of scope of the contract and that they should get more money for the effort. In reality, if one digs deep in their moral conscience, they are right. After the meeting my boss and I head to the Lucky Lllama cafe. We had heard about this cafe on a previous trip and vowed to go there just because of the name. We arrive and grab some tea and muffins and sit back and relax. At one point I'm taking a picture of the Lucky Llama cafe with my phone and drop my phone in a recycling bin. So I go dumpster-hopping into the bin to retrieve my phone and get a good picture. And then we drive back to our home facility. I've been at work since 5:30 in the morning, so I leave work early and trim the roses and trim a tree which is threatening to go across the fence to the neighbors yard. And then I relax with some work that will benefit the CSULA senior design team that I am helping out.

I take Thursday off from work and get out on the road bicycle. I run into Ted just as I am entering the Los Angeles river trail so we ride together to the Whittier Narrows dam. I cross over the dam and start flying down the San Gabriel river trail. I keep finding another gear and as I approach by exit at Del Amo, I'm pulling various riders along at a fast speed. I guess that extra speed came from a slightly slower than usual ride up the Los Angeles river with Ted. After a shower I go towards downtown Long Beach for the monthly Human Trafficking Task Force meeting. We focus on the shelter and resource finding application and after the discussions I realize that it needs to be optimized for mobile devices. So back to work. Late on Thursday Person Ti_Ca trim the front bush - by working together we're done in less than 15 minutes.

Friday is threatening rain so I take the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back home. There are periods of dry and periods of drizzle and periods of slightly heavier rain. When I get home I wipe the bicycle down before putting it away. I grab a shower and mae the fateful decision to ride the motorcycle up to Cal State University in Los Angeles to help the senior design team out. I'm mostly dry when I get to the meeting. Today we just keep hammering away at getting a microporcessor board to talk to an Iridium satellite for remote data acquisition. We try quite a few different things and we finally get everything to talk together and get the Iridium satellite to forward an email to a user. This communication link was the biggest threat to the project and it looks like hammering away on it for three hours got the basic communication link working. When it is time to go home it is raining pretty hard so I take my time getting home - with crazy drivers, slippery roads, and a fogging helemet visor there is no reason to rush. When I get home I put all of the wet clothes in the laundry and then catch up on indoor tasks for the rest of the day.

There is more rain on Saturday so I get out for a 56 minute run. It has been a while since I ran so it takes a mile or so for the legs to get going and then I enjoy the remainder of the run. With a break in the action I go out to the garage and wipe down the dirty motorcycle and wax the rims after the rainy ride home. After noon Person Ti_Ca and I drive to Santa Monica to see the movie "Sold" about human trafficking/slavery in Nepal.

There is a threat of rain on Sunday morning...and I'm lazy...so I take the mountain bicycle out for a ride down to the old yacht club and and some extra, extra miles at the end. I feel very strong today and regret that I did not take the road bicycle out. When I get home I edge and mow the lawn and get a shower and grab food for lunch a bit later. The Moto3 race from Texas is disappointing because my favorites crash or have mechanical problems when running 4th and 7th. Early in the afternoon I have the Master's golf tournament playing in the background as I work on some web programming and non-profit paperwork. This work is never done! There's also the processional MotoGP race where my favrite also crashes out.

I find my self being unproducitve at work and very productive outside of work. My Boss sits down with me for goals for the year (and beyond) and I tell him that we don't have to worry about the distant future because I won't be here. He talks about a 5 year plan for the department and I tell him that I am going to edit the verbage to talk about a 5 week plan. WHen I get home I lube the motorcycle chain, workout with the weights, watch an exciting Moto2 race where my favorite rider wins flawlessly, work on mobile optimization for the human trafficking and domestic violence application, check out some investnments, and work on scheduling cron jobs (which I've never done before).

I have a slow day at work on Tuesday until the end of the day. I'm asked to go help out some younger people run a test and they are in over their heads. I offer some suggestions and since it is late in the day, I tell everyone to go home and think about the problem rather than proceed and make a stupid decision that might break some flight hardware. On the way home I stop in and vote for my city councilperson and stop and buy a bottle of wine. The bottle of wine is finished by the end of the evening though I've used some of it to cook with, and made a lot of progress on other websites. Though the work website will still not accept my retirement selections.

Wednesday through Friday are blah days at work. I'm not necessarilt productive unless I am required to be. And my workouts are blah except for a very good, strong windy bicycle ride after work on Thursday.

Life comes alive on Saturday! I get the road bicycle out past the Whittier Narrows dam and turn south to head for home. I keep grabbing riders along the way and I keep saying to myself, "You have another gear". So I go up a gear and push some more for a few miles and then I repeat, "You have another gear left in your legs". So I go up another gear and push some more. By the Del AMo turn off there is nobody left with me. And yet my legs don't feel tired. After a shower I watch a weird qualifying for the F1 race from China and the grid for he race is somewhat jumbled up. Before 11 am I get on the motorcycle and ride up to the Wilshire are to participate in a Basic Income Create-A-Thon that Ruby has invited me to. I'mm going to contribute but also to meet people. I'm given, what I think, is a fairly basic webpage and Perl script task. So I proceed with the task with many interruptions of people that Ruby wants me to meet. I get the job finished and hand it over to some other people. All the while there is a head honcho of a funding agency watching me and seeing what I am doing and is surprised that I can finish the specific effort in just a few hours. As I'm getting ready to go home near 6 pm, Ruby pulls me aside and tells me that I hit a home run because the honcho will now want to work with us. I hope this is true. Saturday night is a relaxing night with a Los ANgles Kings' game.

I start Sunday north on the Los Angeles river towards the Whittier Narrows dam. I go past the dam to the same turn-around point as yesterday. And I start back south towards home on the San Gabriel river trail. I've followed a rider from 100 meters back for a long time and finally surge to get ahead and drag some other riders with me. I play the "one more gear uP' game again today but on the final upchange I realize I cannot hold this gear. Nonetheless when I exit the trail the riders following me thank me for the pull and though I wish I could have done more, I know that it isn't in my organism today. On the ride along Del Amo home I realize that I have a lot of strength and speed in my legs, but I think that I need to have better nutrition and other lifestyle habits if I'm going to go any further. At home I watch a wild Chinese F1 race with many different strategies and different number of pit stops. In the end, my favorite driver gets second after some first lap damage (and damage on another lap that he doesn't admit to feeling) and it was fine entertainment. I clean up the roses and cut some roses for the inside of the house and relax for a bit before the Long Beach Grand Prix comes on. And later after doing some minor house cleaning, I help Person Ti_Ca with homework. I'm mentally burned out and do not do any of the web programming that I should be doing.

On Monday at work we have a productive day running a test though the results are looking a bit fishy. We continue on and all agree to gather the data now and try to make sense of the data tomorrow. When I get home I have a high repetition, low weight workout and feel good afterwards. Through the rest of the evening I look at test data from work, work on making various websites mobile compatible, and continue to burn myself out. I get to sleep at a reasonable hour and start in on a new book before dropping off to sleep. However I am awakened at 1:30 am by people talking somewhere and I cannot fall back asleep. Eventually I get up and continue to process and look at test data and start raising red flags that the test was not what we desired and we need to re-evaluate what to do next. I send out work emails at 3:30 am and go back to sleep until my alarm jolts me awake at 5:15 am.