Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Wednesday, October 23, 2019 8:02 PM

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Tuesday sees a good one hour run/walk where the run again dominates. After a shower I run some errands and do some maintenance on the motorcycle and then continue working on the robotics simulation. Near noon I watch the Moto3 race. I've finished watching the three motorcycle races from Buri Ram that I should have been at and can now work on getting over my disappointment of not being allowed to attend. In the afternoon I trim and water the roses and just stay out of trouble.

I get up a bit late on Wednesday and work on some websites. I then start working on the robot simulation and continue to discover some limitations in the architecture for what I want it to do. Thus I sit down with pencil and paper and start deriving the equations of motion by hand specifically for my purpose. This effort brings back some memories of me doing similar work on my Masters degree in Michigan and as I helped out some kinesioligists at UCLA. These aare good memories though the work is very meticulous and needs extreme care. (Otherwise one will be chasing their tail debugging later.) Near noon I get out and clean up the gears and chain of the mountain bicycle and these gears and chain look brand new when I am done. Thus I put it on my calendar to clean the bicycle gears every three months. Later I watch the Dodgers' game.

I sleep a bit late on THursday and check the news and the markets. And then get out for a two hour mountain bicycle ride. After the ride I trim the roses and then watch some television and play around with some code. I don't have much motivation.

I start Friday with a 50 minute walk in the chilly weather and get cleaned up to go to CSULA. When I get to CSULA there is a lot of oil on the left side of the motorcycle and I wonder if maybe I overfilled the oil the other day. We have a good team meeting with a plan forward. I ride on home in the hot, dry Santa Ana weather and lurbicate the chain. I notice that the left side oil is no worse than up at CSULA, so I probably just overfilled a bit. I have a good, heavy workout with the weights with very little shoulder pain. Soon I can think about increasing the weights again. But too be cautious, I certainly ice both shoulders after lifting. Back to work after a cooling shower, I send an email to the CSULA team outlining the path forward (for reinforcement) and provide some answers to questions that I had to look up the answers to. Originally I was thinking that I might go out clubbing tonight, but I'm losing motivation and will probably stay in and get to sleep early for a long Saturday morning bicycle ride.

I stay in bed a bit late on Saturday and work on the CSULA navigation process for a couple of hours. I haven't solved my little update problem, but I get on the mountain bicycle for a ride. But just as I am heading out the door, I figure out a way to make the update work, so I write a note to myself to try later. Today it's a good ride though a lot of traffic since I'm later than usual. After a shower I get to the library for two more books, pick up lunch, and pick up another supply of vitamins. I notice that Trader Joe's has the "over 50" vitamins again that have been missing for a year or so. So that's what I buy. When I get home I relax and read for a while and then rather quickly solve my CSULA navigation update problem with the note that I had written to myself earlier.

On Sunday I wait until the light comes up and then head north on the Los Angeles river on the mountain bicycle - I'm avoiding all of the road closures associated with today's Long Beach Marathon. I get to a good turn around point and head for home. Near Hollydale park I notice the bicycle has become mushy and wobbly and after a mile I see that the front tire is going down. I stop at the park where the cyclists enter the trial (in case I need help) and immediately find a burr that has caused the slow flat. But I get the tube changed and pump up the tire with CO2 and I'm on my way a ten minute delay. (I usually take my time fixing the flats on te road to make sure I remove all possible harmful debris and to make sure that I don't accidentally pinch the new tube.) At home I watch an interesting F1 race from Suzuka Japan and then watch a bit of football before reading and laying out my list of tasks for the coming week. Near 4pm Person Ch_C comes to vist and we hang out and then go eat Japanese food at a nearby restaurant. I end up walking home, just to get some more exercise, and stop in at the grocery store to buy supplies for the beginning of the week.

I sleep horribly on Sunday into Monday but still get up a bit after 6am to go run/walk. Once warmed up, I start trying to run but the left sciatic egion is hurting. I don't want to push things, so I just do a 33 minute walk and warm up with a shower. I play around with some mapping capabilities for upcoming Climathon and then go lift weights with an extra repettion thrown in. Since my left shoulders hurts a bit during the lifts, I ice the shoulder after lifting and then re-ice it again about 30 minutes later after I've trimmed roses and tidied up a few other things and rinsed with my second shower of the day. I go back to work on the Climathon mapping process and I'm really close to where I want it to be by noon. Thus I take a break to watch an episode of Breaking Bad. The city has marked off some "chewed up" sidewalk areas on our street. It's funny - every house on my side of the block has a bad bump in the pavement at the western edge of each property. This is a hazard to walkers, runners, skaters, strollers and the elderly. After 32 years of living here, the city is going to fix the bumps/dropoffs in the sidewalk pavement. I'm interested to see if the city does a decent smoothing job or a half-assed job. I take a quick mental survey and I'm getting close to being the longest resident on the street. Not quite, but getting close.

I start Tuesday at 6:15 and work on the maping for the Climathon. Within a couple of hours I have everything ready to go and there isn't much else to do before the Climathon on the 25th. Near 9 am I get out for a good two hour mountain bicycle ride where I feel strong throughout and crank along nicely. I get in a nice warm shower and lay out some groundwork for two interesting little ideas: one regarding recycling soap and another for a dancing skeleton as a little Halloween decoration. Some strange ideas to work on, yes?

I start Wednesday being lazy. I do make great progress on the robotics simulation as I've decided to reformulate the simulation to avoid some of the limitations of the previous one. At mid morning I get out and work the abdominals and lower back and core muscles with a decent workout. After a shower I continue on with the robotics simulation and with a final touch on the Climathon script that I left dangling from Monday. Near noon I start the scripted derivation of the final robotic configuration system simulation. I keep watching it throughout the day, and it is taking forever. I reset my computer to run overnight and not go to sleep.

When I wake up on Thursday morning the scripted derivation is still running. I check out the news and the markets and then go for a very good two hour mountain bicycle ride. Today I feel very strong throughout the ride. After a shower I run someerrands and when I return home, the scripted derivation is still running - approaching twelce hours of run time. I kill it - this can't be right. I put in some debugging statements to see where it is spending all of its time. It passes through the initial stages very quickly and then takes forever on a simplify step. (This is a symbolic maniulation derivation and the simplify function must not be working well.) BuT I can use the matrices prior to simplification to run a time domain simulation (with a bit of hand editing of the symbolic equations). Within an hour I have this final configuration simulation running on the raw, prior-to-simplification matrices. What a waste of 11 hours! With the disappointment that I had for the last 12 hours now turned into enthusiasm and excitement, I'm on my way and I can tell that I'll make good progress from here on out. I've got time histories and trajectories plotted and they look super!

The CSULA meeting today is cancelled and so I work around the house. I wash and paint a door frame, a window frame, and a door step with some existing paint in the garage. And when it drisI realize that it is not as bright a white as I want. I get in a good workout with the weights to work off stress and to keep moving. And I'm not sure where the rest of the day goes.

I start Saturday with a good road bicycle ride. After a shower I go buy a quart of bright white paint to make sure it is the desired shade and I stop in at the library for two more new books to read. Back at home I watch qualifying for the MotoGP race in Motegi, Japan and d some reading and again lose where the day goes. In he mail I get a claim against the estate of my brother but my nme is spelled wrong. So I put it in a file and ignore it. I still have not received word that my name has been corrected in the Rhode Island courts naming me as the executor of my brother's estate. (I have a notion to return the claim to the sender indicating the incorrectly spelled named person does not live here, but I decide to let it go and just file it away.) I want to go run errands but the motorcycle won't start. Thus I wheel is back into the garage and run the errands in te car. Whe I get home I pull the batter out of the Yamaha YZF-R1 again and put it on the charger. And watch an exciting Moto2 race from Japan though my favorite rider crashes on the siting lap, gets his bike fixed in time for the race, and crashes on the second turn f the first lap.

I start Monday with a good road bicycle ride. I drag a rider along and he sees a big pile of glass and stop stop clean it up so that other cyclists don't get flat tires. So I stop and help him brush the glass off the path with our gloves. And then we both continue on - him to meet other riders and me to get to my turn-around point. At home I lightly scrap and sand two windows and hose them down. Today will be hot, so they should dry quickly and I can paint them this afternoon. After a shower I work on a couple of websites before Person M_Fl comes over to visit. I only get one double window painted in the afternoon. Later I re-install the batery in the motorcycle and it starts right up.

I have a pretty good day on the 23rd of October - the day that I should be returning from Philippines. I get out for a two hour mountain bicycle ride and feel strong throughout. After a shower I ride the motorcycle to Cerritos to have Chinese lunch with a former co-worker. We always have great conversations about finances, health, former co-workers, politics, travels, and other things. On the way home I stop in at the grocery store for some supplies and watch a fun Moto3 race from Japan. I get out and paint two south-facing windows and I'm sweating like crazy because it is a very hot day and there is no shade - but at least I'm making pogress. Later in the evening I get a phonecall from the lady who is running for the 6th district Cty Counil in Long Beach and who I calculated a lot of demographics and maps for. We talk about the next steps and I tell her we should go off and try to gather some data and then talk again next week after my Climathon.