Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, March 25, 2019 8:02 PM

Pre-Spring


I get out cycling on Tuesday morning and then continue to practice the business pitch for tonight's classroom setting and for the actual Wednesday pitch. The team assembles early in the afternoon at CSULB and we practice and help each other out. Then we drive to CSUDH to meet our mentor to pitch in front of his Startup Management class. We get some good feedback from our mentor and students, but realize that we have to reconfigure our pitch. We return to where everyone has parked at CSULB to go home. And then the fun begins.

I was at CSULB for an event and left my backpack sitting on the side of the road. I didn't realize this until I got home. Panic time: The backpack had my mobile phone, laptop, and wallets with credit cards in it. I got back on the motorcycle to return to the scene and look for the backpack and in the surrounding bushes. But it wasn't there. So I rushed on home and used Skype to start canceling credit cards. Shortly thereafter I get an email saying, "I found your backpack by the side of the road and want to get it back to you". After a short email exchange, I rush back to the CSULB area for the 3rd time in two hours. A young LBCC student came out and gave me the backpack unharmed. We spoke a bit and he's a sincere and honest young man. Working and going to LBCC. I shove money in his hand for his good deed. This entire senile Ray incident was a So don't give up on people yet! moment.

I have a good session with the weights though it does continue to hurt my left shoulder as I lift. I ice the shoulder afterwards and it feels good. Today I take Uber to CSULB because it will work out better and I have a conversation for the whole trip with a lady from Japan as we talk about Japanese culture and food and her studies. She has a daughter that graduated from CSULB and now she is studying there. Our team meets up with the CSULB faculty to get feedback from our business plan and then we drive over to WeWorks - a co-working space in downtown Long Beach - for the semifinal pitch. Our team goes next to last in the random selection of eight teams and my teammate and I nail it. We do great! We hang out and talk with each other and other teams and then I Uber home to relax from the stress of the last few days.

I'm awake early on THursday and wait for the light to come up to start riding. I get near the pier and ride with two riders who are visiting - one from Belgium and one from Poland. They are here on business but take any opportunity they can to ride too. After a shower I run errands and get home after noon. I eat lunch with the IndyCar race from this past Sunday playing. It's not Formula One! In the bright sunshine I do some gardening and cleaning up after all of the rains. Late in the afternoon I have two telecons and then relax on Thursday evening with peace and quiet.

I lift weights on Friday morning and both shoulders hurt. Even after icing both shoulders hurt. I ride up to CSULA and have a decent meeting with my team (and related teams). We are behind and I keep pushing the team to order material and parts now. When I get home I walk over to the bicycle store and pick up my road bicycle which has a new chain, new chainrings, and new gears. On Friday night the famous child fatality doctor calls me and suggests a first step would be to use Excel rather than a Web-based application to track child abuse cases. This is pretty basic and a huge step backward. But after the call I go work on the user interface and forms in Excel.

On Saturday I'm physically lazy but mentally productive. I get to a point where I have a basic Excel model with user forms ready and I email it off to the famous child fatality doctor. And then I go walk for almos an hour. During this walk I run into two Cambodian people and we walk together for a while as we talk about my various trips and their lives. I stop in at the new brick and mortar Fair Trade store and greet my friends and make some new friends. One is a mental health professional and we talk a bit and I give him my contact information because he might want to do a datascience or artificial intelligence project that I can do. After the visit I stop in at the library and grocery store and gas station on the way home. And I keep revising the Excel child abuse reporting tool so that it is fairly well developed except for some specific data elements that they might want to capture.

I get out a bit early on Sunday for a good road bicycle ride and the new drivetrain feels great. After a shower I sit back for the first F1 race of the year (and first since the one I attended in Abu Dhabi. There are new rules but the three dominant teams dominate again. But the midfield fight is very close. I'm not sure where the rest of the day goes, but it involved some house cleaning and some reading.

I'm lazy on Monday morning and don't get out cycling. Instead I have a Red Bull and Mountain Dew (mixed together) and start working on many small things. These include the Climathon team's business plan which is due today at 5pm, the Excel workbook for child abuse (which actually sends data over the Web to an awaiting server), the Long Beach city demographics, and the Fair Trade website. I take a break near midday to work the abdominals and lower back and I walk to the grocery store for a few supplies. Otherwise it is a productive day on a host of small tasks. It's already to the point that I have to re-do my to-do list even though I just re-did it last Thursday.

Tuesday morning is very foggy, so I get up and work on the demographics effort for almost three hours before getting on the mountain bicycle to go for a ride. The demographics effort has progressed nicely and now I just have to do the correlations between outcomes, such as total crime rate, and demographic indicators. I get out riding and run into Terry and his cyclng partner. So I turn around and ride with them to their truck and then we have a good conversation. Finally I start down towards the aquarium again and end up calling it quits riding near 70 minutes - a short ride. Afterwards I run some errands and then fertilize the lawn, trim the roses, and deweed the carnations. I watch a harsh, weird youtube film about East Harlem and when it is finished I'm not sure what the intent or point of the film was. Later I go back to the demographics and keep inching closer. Just one more thing...just one more.

I'm up early for a 7:30 appointment with my physical therapist to work on my shoulders. He gives me more exercises to do and corrects my form on my current exercises. The shoulders are getting better, but it's not a linear improvement. Afterwards I try to get the second shot of a shingles vaccine, but the vaccine station won't open for a while. So I go on home and eventually get in a decent session with the weights. And ice both shoulders afterwards. In the middle of the afternoon there is a major league thunderstorm with hail that hovers over the Long Beach area for 90 minutes. I see some of my neighbors, especially the ones across the street from the Phillipines, coming out on to their porches and taking pictures of the white lawns. About an hour later the pavement is dry and the sun is shining. Later I hear that the people near the shore in Long Beach had bright sunny skies the entire day - it was a very localized cell near my house and north that produced the thunder, lightning, heavy rain, and hail.

It's supposed to rain later on Thursday morning, so I get out the door at 7:30 am to ride the mountain bicycle. And, of course, the rain comes early. And here's another time where I'm fairly well soaked by the time I finish the ride. I wipe down the bicycle and promise to lube the chain later today. I run a quick errand and then start checking out the news and my list of things to do. Person M_Fl calls in a panic because his paper is due in ten days and he's having trouble getting the right references. So I help him find some references that we would have to pay for, but I tell him, "I bet the university library has subscriptions to these sites and you can get them for free there". And I agree to read his paper early next week. The afternoon is sunny so I sweep up the debris in te driveway and make some progress on my list of things to do.

I'm a bit lazy on Friday and just do some web programming, get up to CSULA for two meetings, and then get home to read. Lack of motivation.

I get out for a good roaad bicycle ride on Saturday morning. After getting cleaned up I pull the car out and buy some more carnations to plant and do some grocery shopping. Late in the morning Karl calls and says people like the web inerface that I put together and are going to expand it with more work for me. I get out to the library to return a book and check two more out. After a bit of rest, I get out and mow and trim the lawn. And then I finish the gardening by planting the six carnation plants that I just bought. So I'm finished with impatiens for a while and I'm all in for roses and carnations. In the afternoon I look at some data that Karl has sent me and try to make some sense of it and send him some thoughts.

I start Sunday with a good road bicycle ride. After an hour or so of work I watch the Indy car race just because there is no other racing on the schedule for this weekend. I have a slow afternoon, but then receive some feedback from Karl. So I update the website for the feedback. And then I get another email later with more changes to the website. It looks ugly after the changes and I say so, but if that's what he wants... I guess they are finally really serious about releasing the new website and testing it so Karl and a collegue down in Mexico reviewed it. But if they keep changing their minds, then it will never get released for testing and customer feedback.

I'm up early on Monday to walk to the grocery store and finish off Karl's website (for now). After 10 am I get out and trim the roses, dweed the roses, and check out the carnations. I'm trying to spend more time in the garden after I saw a report that gardening makes people live longer. (Due to physical activity and the thrill of growing things and the pride of producing something beautiful.) Then I go for a long walk to return a library book and to buy a Powerball lottery ticket. The Powerball jackpot is up to $750M - what the heck. In the afternoon I lose my way because I have a couple of things that I need to finish but I want them to "simmer" a bit as I mull them over in my head. So I start a "template" for another project and figure I'll just plug away on it as I can. Late on Monday I finish off the last of the annual paperwork flurry required for a nonprofit organization.