On Monday night (really Tuesday morning) at 3 am I wake up with a great idea for the non-profit website. So I climb out of bed and go code html, Javascript, and Perl for about 90 minutes until the majority of the new idea is operating. And then I go back to bed for an hour until my alarm goes off.
On Tuesday I'm fairly productive, but there is a lull in work and my final day is coming soon. These two factors are dragging some of enthusiasm for work down a bit. I rush on home and jump on the mountain bicycle for a brutal, windy ride with some good intervals. I just go down past the aquarium and turn around and keep surging into the wind for an extra intense workout. I'm spaced out after the intervals, but a warm shower and some sauceless pasta help me get going again. And I finish up the programming of the website. I stillhave Wednesday night to make final bug checks before Thursday's big meeting.
On Wednesday I have periods of good productivity and lulls at work. While we are at another building I see some pieces of flight hardware that were used in a previous test. So I grab a pair of calipers and take some measurements to compare with what is present in the models. When I get back to my office I find that the models have under-valued parameters (compared to my caliper measurements) and that my optimization routine was trying to increase these model parameters to match the hardware. Now I am very satisfied with my results and can document the model/simulation tuning and move on. (I had been deliberating why the optimization had increased these parameters so much and now I have the concrete evidence.) When I get home on Wednesday I go for a long walk (because I'm still physically hungover from Tuesday's intervals), buy powerball tickets, and then make last minute checks of the website for Thursday's meeting.
On Thursday I get up and check the website again for any bugs or hiccups and then ride the motorcycle to the city of San Gabriel for the meeting. On the way to the meeting place I see some beautiful Spanish architecture on building and churches near the San gabriel mission and make a note to someday go walk around the area and explore. The meeting starts well and I show the IT team some of my work and they are impressed. I continue on with some extensions that we have in the pipeline and they seem very enthused about being able to work together. It is only in the last ten minutes of the meeting, when the IT team has left, that the executive director starts talking about licenses, partnerships, and fees that my balloon is heading back down to earth. But we'll have to figure things out to proceed. When I get home just after noon I have a good workout with the weights, mow the lawn, and trim a handfull of tree branches that are drooping low enough to trim. I'm still a bit hungover from Tuesday's interval workout that I take two Alleve to help recover. (Make a note: Interval training should now be conducted weekly for the great benefits of the brutal workouts.) In the afternoon I finally have some lunch and clean up some paperwork that I have ignored for the last few weeks. And I anxiously await the results of a simultaneous presentation of the website to the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force (which I couldn't attend because I was up in San Gabriel).
I'm 10 minutes late getting out of bed on Friday even though I went to bed early. I've heard raindrops throughout the night so I take the mountain bicycle out for the loop ride. A quarter of the way in the rain is coming down moderately and there are puddles of stading water everywhere. For less than one second I think about turning around and going home. Instead, I brave the moderate rain anc ontinue down towards the ocean where it is dry. As I come up the San Gabriel trail there is a bit of rain and spitting of moisture, but nothing serious. I find a couple of areas to put in some sprints and surges and make it back home wet but unscathed. After a warmshower I go see the acupuncturist to work on my lower back, upper back, and left calf that prevents me from running. Some acupunture and electro-stim makes the left calf feel great. But I agree to come back once a week for the next three weeks to work on the left calf and get me running again. On Friday afternoon I relax, send out some non-profit emails, and clean up some paperwork. When I retire from work on 1 June, there will be another influx of paperwork at home that will have to be sorted ad sifted through. I'm temporarily burned out from html/Javascript/Perl, so I don't do a thing with websites. Later on Friday I walk over to the First Fridays event on Atlantic avenue just to get out of the house and do some walking. I run into a co-worker who lives in the area and I run into some people from Las Vegas who are working on anti-human trafficking. Otherwise I amtired and am back home after about 90 minutes.
Saturday brings morning rain and no bicycle ride. The rian dissipates but the roads are still wet, so I go lift weights instead. After a shower I drive down to the main Long Beach library in downtown for a bigger selection of new books to grab hold of and do some errands as I work my way back home. Afterwards I continue to work through paperwork and catalog the technical papers that I want to keep and toss some out that I don't want to keep (or have been overcome by new research). There will be a big inlfux of new papers when I drive to work and start bringing personal stuff home from work, so I'm trying to gradually make progress on cleaning up what is already at home.
I start out on the road bicycle north on the Los Angeles river. Just as I'm getting on the trail I see two runners and say Hi to them and note that one looks like Joe (who's party I went to a few months ago for his adopted baby's one year birthday). But I ignore it and get in a good 48 mile ride. After the ride I eventually send a text to Joe and it was him. He was back in town visiting friends. There are exciting MotoGP and Moto3 races to watch and I prepare some food for the upcoming week. Otherwise it is a slow Sunday.
Monday and Tuesday are pretty productive days at work. I'm starting to feel the crunch of my impending last day and I need to clean up a number of things before I go. There's another test we're setting up for. And a transition plan to give my models, test data, and simulations over to another employee isn't quite working out yet. I work off stress on both Monday and Tuesday with good workouts with the weights where I finally increase the weights and reduce the repetitions again. On Monday night I see my favorite Moto2 rider win the race from France in convincing fashion and jump to the top of the world championship standings.
After work on Wednesday I get out for another brutal interval and surge riding session. I do intervals down the Los Angeles river trail to the aquarium, recover around the aquarium, and then surge into a nasty headwind the entire way back up the Los Angeles river trail. It's only a 70 minute ride, but it's brutal. And on Thursday after work I attend the City of Long Beach's Human Righs Commission program related to human trafficking. I'm there to learn and also to try and make contacts. There are very informative presentations tonight. Unfortunately there are two ladies at the back of the room who have to add a comment to every statement made by each speaker: "Yep - that's right", "Wow - I didn't know that", "Does your brother know about this?". They don't shut up for the entire set of presentations. I look back at them and ask them to be quiet and others in the audience do also. But they don't. Later, when I am speaking personally with the Long Beach city prosecutor, these two ladies recognize me and interrupt our conversation (of course) to say, "We didn't mean to be rude. But we were talking with each other". I don't point out that by talking during someone else's presentation to a group of 50 people that they are being rude and inconsiderate to 50 other people. I just ignore them because a famous Islamic imam once said, "Silence is the best response to a fool". Nonetheless I acost a number of commissioners and one of the speakers and talk to them about some of my technology ideas. Since this startup does not have official non-profit status yet, I don't have business cards and have to just show them the website on my phone so that they can copy down the address and get hold of me that way.
I have a good Friday at work with some good productivity for the next test as well as the two upcoming tests where I will probably already be retired. The transition plan to bring a co-worker up to speed is not happening so I just have to get the pretest analysis done and be able to point to it when the tests are run next month. After work I take my time getting home and have a good workout with the weights. I'm tired today and get into bed early for some extra long reading and hopefully some deep sleep.
I start a loop mountain bicycle ride a bit early today because I can't sleep and because I want to get out of the way of the Tour de Long Beach which runs today. I have a good ride and manage to not run into any yahoos or inconsiderate riders because I blow past there starting area before they start their rides. After my ride I do some grocery shopping and have another visit with the acupuncturist. And then I watch a decent Formula One qualifying session. Later I do little house tasks and relax.
On Sunday I start north on the Los Angeles river on the road bicycle. There is a bit of a tailwind so I am pretty fast. I go past the Whittier Narrows dam and all the way to the Santa Fe dam before turning back home. Though there is a persistent headwind, I crank along quite nicely. And find that I am passing a lot of riders and none are passing me. Nonetheless it is a good 55 mile ride. I watch an exciting F1 race from Spain where the first two qualifyers, teammates, take themselves out on the first lap via collision. The rest of the day is a slow day with small things done around the house.
I have a decent day on Monday as we set up for the big test and make sure that everyone is onboard with the test configuration, the pretest predictions, and the procedures. After work on Monday Ihave a good session with the weights as I increase the weights just a bit and feel the difference. And then later work on web programming.