Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, May 20, 2019 8:02 PM

Visitors


There is fairly wet pavement on Tuesday morning, so I walk to the store and pick up supplies and start working on both the demographic effort for the Long Beach 6th district City Council candidate as well as a fun mutual fund selection criteria project. I mix the morning up with fixing two sprinkler heads that have become clogged and only need cleaning to work well again. And I do the laundry, wash dishes, and prepare more fresh cut vegetables as I mix up demographic and financial coding with other tasks around the house. Soon it is after the noon hour and I get out and trim the roses again - they are just growing wildly and I have a hard time staying up to speed with them. It's already Tuesday and I haven't watched the Spanish Moto3 race yet, so near 3 pm I watch the race. Today the neighbors have got a new 9 week old puppy and it is yelping away because nobody is home. But it's okay. It's a cute doggie and it just needs some time to transition to its new surroundings. And later watch a 7th game f the ice hockey playoffs.

I'm awakened early on Wednesday, near 5am, with the notice that Person T_U has passed away. For the last year he had fairly successfully battled some illnesses but in the end it apears that his heart probably gave out. I get out cycling on the road bicycle because there is nothing else to do and later run some errands including the download of the contents of my brother's two laptops. Near noon I watch a fun Moto2 race from Spain and then continue to trim the roses. In the afternoon I browse through the contents of my brother's laptop harddrives but it doesn't seem like it is going to bear much fruit. I get out and trim the roses and they are getting close to where they should be at this time of year. And later I work on the mutual fund tracker to see if there are mutual funds that consistently beat an index fund in terms of average annual returns and volatility over a given period.

I start Thursday early and have some ideas for the mutual fund tracker, so I work on that first thing in the morning. Just after 9am I get on the mountain bicycle and ride down past the aquarium and back home for about 70 minutes of riding. On the way I home I run into some road bicycle riders and I hang on to them and they're a bit surprised that I stay with them on the mountain bicycle frame and hybrid pressure tires. At home I edge and mow the lawn and get things cleaned up for my visitors. After a shower I continue to work on the mutual fund tracker and have all of the data captured and processed, I just need to figure out a good way to display it so that it tells the correct story.

I'm up early on Friday though tired. I have a couple of last good ideas for the mutual fund tracker and I go ahead and implement those. I still need to figure out the best way to display the results, but I have some ideas. I write a comment note to myself in the Python file to implement these ideas. I trim the roses and generically have a slow day before I go to the airport late at night to pick Person Ha_KY up.

On Saturday through Tuesday Person Ha_KY and I do our usual activities: a lot of cycling, visiting restaurants, visiting friends, watching weird film/television, and catching up on things in our lives. During breaks I get some demographic programming in and I've sent out a draft report of typical results to the 6th district cty council candidate in Long Beach that I've promised results for. I've found convenient ways to display the data but till trying to make the text simpler. I also read the CSULA team's draft Final Report and its looking pretty good.

I start Wednesday with a long walk since my legs are still tired from the past four days of cycling. And then I run a number of errands including getting the car washed since I picked up a lot of bird poop in some of my recent travels. Since Person Ha_KY has been around, it isn't until Wednesday that I finally sit down and watch the Spanish Formula One race. It's a bit of a disappointing race in terms of action and the results. At mid afternoon I ride the bicycle over to a local coffeeshop to work on a few things on my laptop and to meet with a CSULA professor who happens to live in Long beach. We talk about how the past year has gone and try to decide on how to change the senior design course to make it go a bit quicker so that there isn't the last minute rush to build and test the projects. When I ride home I relax and watch some of the ice hockey game.

On Thursday morning there is rain. There is a fair amount of rain in May in Long Beach - this is a rare occurrence. Thus I do not go cycling in the morning and instead try to gather more demographic statisics to use in my study and I mix that up with cleaning all of the floors in the house for my upcoming visitors. Before noon I go for a long walk to drop mail off at the post office and continue on around the neighborhood. I also convert my demographic Python script to be able to handle as many demographics statistics as are sent to it rather than the limited set that I was testing on. And just as I'm heading for reading and sleep I realize that the structure of this problem would fit well into a principal coordinate analysis (PCA) that I used previously. So that will be on the list of things to try.

I get out the door at 6:35 am for a good road bicycle ride. It's an uneventfull ride. After a shower I go have my blood drawn since my doctor thinks that we should check out my liver enzymes and kideny functions. And I also take the time to stop in at a library and pick up a couple of books to read. When I get home I trim and mow the lawn and do some other tidying up before trimming the roses. It's 11:40 am and I've already had two showers today. But I get relaxation time now before thinking about the PCA effort. Late on Friday night I receive word that only Joe will be making the trip to Long Beach - Tony and Elliott deciding that they have been running around too much on recent weekends and want to stay home.

I start Saturday slowly working on the OCA effort. At mid morning I get on the mountain bicycle and ride down and around the aquarium and get back home. Near noon I ride the motorcycle to the El Dorado tennis center and meet up with Joe where his company is sponsoring a tennis tournament. I hang out for about 90 minutes and then ride on home. I try to work on the PCA effort but I'm having difficulty understanding the results. So I'll let it sink in for a bit.

I have a horrible Sunday. It starts with me waking up at 2 am and not being able to sleep until 4 am. I get some reading done and enjoy listening to a rare May rainfall, but the interrupted sleep is certainly not good. It is raining when I finally wake up and do some demographic work to add more demographic indicators to the analysis and walk to the store in the rain to buy some wine. I watch a good, but nt neceesarily exciting, MotoGP race rom France and then watch a fair amount of the PGA gold tournament. I'm drinking wine and realizing that I've been drinking too much of anything. Later at ight when I can stay awake no longer, I get to bed to read and fall asleep.

I start Monday with about an hour long walk and start feeling better. I get cleaned up and ride the motorcycle to CSULA for a meeting in the Social Work department to try and put together an effort relaed to child abuse. Here's another meeting where it appears to all of the aprticipants that there is a clear direction forward, I don't see it. I see vastly diverging paths forward. After the ride home I watch a fun Moto3 race and mess around with tidying up the demographic study which now has almost 600 demographic indicators available for use.