Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, November 4, 2019 8:02 PM

New Beginning


I start Thursday a bit late but get in a good road bicycle ride. Today there are Santa An conditions so there's a decent headwind that has to be pushed against all of the way up the San Gabriel river trail. Back at home I change into my "painting clothes" and get on the ladder and paint two windows. Today I'm early enough so that most of my painting is in the shade and it is before the heat comes up. After a shower I run some errands inclduing sending off certified mailings for my brother's estate. By noon, as the heat is coming up to an expected high of 96F, I'm relaxing in my house which tends to stay very cool at this time of year with no need to run the air conditioning. I try to gather all of the things that I need for tomorrow's Climathon and spend time relaxing.

I get in a good almost hour walk on Friday morning and get cleaned up to go to the Climathon hackathon at CSULB. This year's event is related to food insecurity. I meet up with a team member from last year and two new French foreign exchange students and we form a team. We realize that my original plan has already been done, so we brainstrom a bit and come up with a new idea that has support from various outside observers. So we start coding away but by 10 pm I'm the only one left. So I finish up the application, put together the 5 minute briefing charts for the judges, fill out the team's participant paperwork, and stay awake with some Red Bull along with a refreshing midnight yoga session out in the chilly air. I struggle through the 5am until 6 am hour as I'm still finishing up the website, but breakfast comes along and I get a decent resurgence. I'm hoping that my team members will return for the final presentation, but they don't. I go ahead and pitch the best that I can given the circumstances. I can see that the judges have fallen in love with some other idea, which is okay. But our team still receives a $200 prize for the effort. AFter the event I stop in at the brand new Long Beach Public Library to get two books and I run into a participant from the Long Beach Human Trafficking Task Force. And then on my way home I stop in at a different Long Beach library branch where they are holding a book for me. I do manage to doze off for maybe an hour, otherwise I've been awake for 36 consecutive hours.

I start Sunday with a road bicycle ride in the dark and I turn on my lights to try and be safe. Today it is very windy so there are parts of the ride where I struggle and other parts where I just have to be dilignet because these carbon fiber wheels are very prone to crosswind gusts. Close to home a road is shut down and I ride around a bit and check with a police officer on site. I can see a California Highway Patrol motorcycle on the pavement, so this is not good. The 65 kilometers took a lot out of me but I relax with the Australian MotoGP race with some decent action. Later, after catching up on small tasks around the house, I watch the recorded Formula One race from Mexico City which I was thinking I might be able to catch in person on the way back from the Philippines (if that trip had worked out). And then I do some reading and watch a bit of the afternoon football game.

I wake up on Monday morning with a headache. I take some Aleve and start working on learning how to integrate Python with a mySQL database. It's been done many many times before, but I don't know how to do it and I realized at the Climathon that it is another step that I need to take. I make decent progress and stop to clean off three external window frames and then paint them. I only have one large living room window frame and two external door frames to complete before I can turn to the interior side. (Well, and the two front shutters that need a new coat of paint.) I go back to work on the Python/mySQL work and take a break to watch the MotoGP race from Australia. Later I trim the roses and watch a part of the football game and do some reading.

I sleep poorly on Monday night into Tuesday. When I wake up before 6 am it is still dark and now cold. I wait a bit and walk to the store and continue my learning quest by downloading a suggested "more modern" editor and start feeling comfortable with the Python/mySQL work. Right near 9 am I get out for a good two hour mountain bicycle ride and get cleaned up and watch the Moto3 race from Australia. There's no painting of windows today - I'll pick that back up tomorrow. But after a few weeks of feeling blah I'm feeling excited today. Near 5pm I ride the motorcycle to downtown Long Beach to meet up with Eren (the engineer husband of one of the Fair Trade Ladies) who I hit it off with when we met quite a while ago. I've also invited the two new French CSULB students because they're just recently in town and I might as well show them around. Eren, Magda, And their 7 month old son Julian and I have a great dinner and conversation. I had not seen them for more than a year so it was great to catch up. And the two Frnech students got confused on the date and we'll try and hang out soon.

I am wildly out of control on Wednesday. I start the day early and get the Python to mySQL database interface working in the most general sense for future projects. So general, in fact, that I convert the recent Climathon process over from csv files to the mySQL database. At mid morning I get in a workout with the weights and I feel strong and have no shoulder pain. I then mow the lawn and while I'm sweaty, I pull out the headlight polishing compound and polish the headlights to like-new on the World Rally Car (not that they were in that bad a shape). After a shower and a break for lunch and relaxing, I get back outside and paint the frame of the very large living room window. ALl of the windows are done (except for maybe some touch-up) and I can turn my attention to external door frames and doors before turning to the inside of the house. There's a pile of junk in a corner of the garage so I sort through it and get ready to give away a number of items. By now it is after 5pm and I can just relax for the evening.

I have very deep sleep for two periods of time on Wednesday night into Thursday morning until 3am. At that point I canot fall back asleep and finally get out of bed at 4am to start my Halloween Thursday. I work on a Python/SQL process for a recent trauma website that I'm working on and after I discover a silly mistake that I'm making (perhaps due to lack of sleep) things work well. I start my errands by laying out a box of Christmas decorations on a busy corner with a giant FREE sign on them, dropping off some books at the library, getting the car washed, and doing some grocery shopping. As I'm driving home, less than an hour after putting the decorations out, they are gone. Hopefully somebody who will use them picked them up and not a neighbor who will throw them in the trash as junk. I jump on the mountain bicycle expecting to have a relatively short and easy ride today since I'm lacking sleep, it's windy, and smoky from the fires. But as I ride I feel better and get in a decent ride with a strong upwind leg on the Los Angeles river where I stay with and then pass a road bicycle rider near the end of my ride. At home after a shower I continue adding to a vegetable soup that I've had going for almost a week and try to work on paperwork for another hiccup that has entered my brother's estate.

I start Friday with an almost one hour brisk walk and then getting cleaned up to ride up to CSULA. At CSULA I meet briefly with the senior design professor and then walk over to the meeting with my team. The team is making good progress but also realize that they are behind schedule. And I try to notify them that by realizing tha they are behind schedule they are halfway to solving the problems. Some teams will not realize that they are behind schedule until April at which it is too late. I think that this meeting is very productive! I ride on home and hang out with Person Ch_C who is done working for the week and comes to visit. We have a long visit and later I catch up on some financial projections.

On Saturday morning I cannot answer the alarm. I turn back around and wake up occassionally but remain in bed until 8 am. I never stay in bed until 8 am unless I am sick. When I get up I drive over to the stores and pick up theraputic creme for my shoulders as well as groceries. Back at home I continue cleaning the garage from the last time, have a great workout with the weights where I realize that I need to increase them for the next workout, trim the roses, do some leaf raking, and add some hooks for hanging cleaning supplies that I've moved from the garage into the house. I've been awake fo three hours and grab a shower and watch MotoGP and Moto2 qualifying from Malaysia. In the afternoon I cook some vegetable soup and have lunch while relaxing. If I've come down with something this weekend, I'll rest today and try to push a long, hard bicycle ride on Sunday.

I start Sunday with a good 65 kilometer road bicycle ride in the chilly morning (since we moved our clocks back an hour to go back to standard time). I have a slow day the rest of the day since I had cleared my schedule for visitors and they never showed up. THough there was a good MotoGP race from Malaysia and just the start of the F1 race. I'll watch the rest of it on Monday.

On Monday I wake up and I'm all ready to go cycling and then I don't. Instead I get up and work on the Python/SQL database process some more. At mid morning I take the motorcycle to pick up future lunch and then to Home Depot for new paint and a hobby supply. This paint os for the window shutters and external doors, so I pick a shocking neon blue even though I know it will require two coats of paint on each because I'm covering over a satid, dark blue. For the hobby supply I find the perfect size tubing to go with a small pump that I recently bought on Amazon for a little brain cooling experiment that I'll be working on. When I get home I'm climbing up and down the ladder between the house and front shrubs to paint the frame of the shutters. I do't even get a first coat of paint on the slats of the shutters. But I keep walking out to the street to look at the color and I like it! I don't really care if anybody else does, but I like it! After a shower I work on the Python/SQL database process a bit more and finally sit down to watch the last two thirds of the F1 race.