Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Monday, November 18, 2019 8:02 PM

Pre-Thanksgiving


On Tuesday it is very foggy but I get out for a 65 kilometer road bicycle ride. Today I struggle almost from the very first pedal stroke until the finish. I get cleaned up and have some brunch and then I go out to paint the shutters. The interior slats of the shutters are a super ain and it takes me three hours up and down the ladder to get the first coat on. But I keep stepping out to the sidewalk and checking out the bright neon blue that I've chosen and I like it! I finally sit down and watch some television and get some blood sugar.

I start Wednesday slow but then get out for a 35 or 40 kilometer bicycle ride on the mountain bicycle. As I'm starting to clean two external doors to paint the neon blue, Person M_Fl comes over (about 40 minutes earlier than expected). We work together to paint the two external doors. They are looking good but they will need a second coat of paint before the shutters will get done. After painting Person M_Fl and I watch a stupid movie called "Rattlesnakes" and then I relax for the day - the bicycle ride and painting having taken a lot out of me.

I have the blahs on Thursday and work on some demographics for te city council candidate, watch a Moto3 race, watch an episode of shameless, and intersperse other tasks along the way. I work on the brain cooler and start gluing together pieces for the system buildup. Late at night I continue working on the city council demographics and get excited because I envision a great format to present the results in - a format that is directed towards a common voter as opposed to an algorithm/demographics/mapping/etc geek like me.

I expected to sleep poorly on Thursday night into Friday morning since I didn't really have any exercise, but I sleep well with periods of deep sleep insterpersed with periods of REM sleep. The FitBit shows that I had plenty of time in both of these phases of sleep to help the body and mind recover. I start the day with a 55 minute walk and run into the lady with the two golden retrievers. And I just love playing with them for a few minutes as the lasy and I talk about out neighborhoods and doggies. And at the end of the walk I run into the Mexicana/Salvadorena mixed lady with her dog and we stop and talk briefly. This doggie does not know me yet, but he'll get there. Aftr getting cleaned up I ride the motorcycle to CSULA and the team, shortened by two today due an illness and a conference, and I have a good meeting prior to their upcoming presentation. Back at home I put up new street numbers for my house in neon blue, trim the roses, and then work on the brain cooler. I have the complete mechanical system strung together with water reservoir, tubing, and an electric motor and it looks like it is going to pump the water at a good pace. Now I need to work on a little test stand and the electrical side before trying it out for real on myself. After a break I continue working on the city council candidate demographics and I realize that my "common voter format" can be very good and powerful so I start to put it together for this candidate.

I've just finished a book by former Navy Seals who talk about discipline. They write, "Discipline starts with getting out of bed when the alarm goes off and not hitting snooze and going back to sleep." So for the last two days I've taken this message to heart. I get up and get out for a 65 kilometer road bicycle ride. Today there are Santa Ana winds which I have to fight the entire way up the San Gabriel river trail, but I do well and hit a turn-around point and ride for home. After getting cleaned up I take a cold water bottle for rehydration with me to run errands to Home Depot, the library, and the grocery store. The library is a mess because only one library is closed today for a Veteran's Day parade, so I have to divert and go to a different library branch to return three books and get two new books. As I'm doing the automated checkout there is a 5 year old kid trying to do the automated checkout. So I try to help him along but he can't remember his password. So we cancel his transaction and I show him how it works when you remember his password. He understands, but he keeps saying, "I don't know my password". His Mother has been watching us from afar as we interact and I finally say that "Maybe your Mother remembers yor password" and can help you check out the books. He's a cute kid and I want to take him home and teach him about math and science and ice hockey and algorithms and Formula One racing and motorcycle racing. But Mom will have to keep him for now. On the way home I stop in at the grocery store for supplies. Back at home I give a second coat of bright neon blue paint to two external doors and they look great! I spend time putting two new bicycle tires on old wheels laying in the garage in order to stretch them out since these tires are known for being puncture-resistant but also a bit small on size and difficult to put on. Afterwards I take another shower to cool off and sit back and watch a college football game. Really - a college football game? Yes, I'm ashamed to admit it and though it is a marquee matchup, I find it boring and disinteresting. Later I start to put together a proposal for different city council candidate in Long Beach (in a different city council district) who will be running soon. I'm offerring the demographic and statistical services that I can help them with. By about 3 pm I realize that I haven't eaten anything except a pre-cycling tangerine, so I finally sit down with the second half of the college football game and eat some healthy food to restore my energy level. But there isn't much progress made on any front for the remainder of Saturday.

I start Sunday with a foggy two hour mountain bicycle ride up the Los Angeles river ad retrun to home. Today I'm tired and just keep the pedals spinning. After a shower I turn on the football games as I finish installing door hardware on the two newly painted doors. During my effort I have a phone call from the city council candidate that I'm helping out and she likes the format of data that I've proposed. She makes a few suggestions and I agree to update the template. She has a big gathering coming up in about ten days and she wants to introduce the statistics and stories at that point. After 4pm I ride the motorcycle down to down Long Beach and meet up with the French foreign exchange CSULB students that I had on my Climathon team. I give them the share of the winnings though they both, at first, don't want to take the money. But I insist. We have a nice light dinner until the restaurant is clsoing down and we talk about differencs in USA and French laws and cultures. We agree to meet up again soon when I've volunteered to take them on the blue line train (now named the A-line) to downtown Los Angeles to walk around and have lunch.

I start Monday with a walk to the grocery store, trimming the roses, and trimming the neighbor's violet bush that always wants to climb over our fence. I only keep trimming it because I want to make sure that the branches don't eventually damage my garage roof. Back inside the house I see that a CSULA student has asked for a letter of recommendation for a fellowship (after she attended a Society of Women Engineers event this past week). So I spend an hour writing the letter and sending it off before I get to the city council demographic charts. I continue work on the city council demographics and when I've had enough, I go out and lift weights heavy. I've increased the weights a little bit more and I only feel pain in the shoulders during bench presses. I ice the shoulders afterwards and feel happy that I can slowly increase he weights without any etbacks on the shoulders. Then I get down on my hands and knees and quickly wax and buff the gold rims on the World Rally Car. I nice shower refreshes me and I'm back to work incorporating an entirely new set of census data into the process for the city council candidate. This data is a bit of a pin but I keep persisting until it is close.

I'm out the door at 6:20 on Tuesday morning for a decent road bicycle ride. It takes me a while to get the legs going and there's a constant headwind all of the way up the San Gabriel river trail again, but it's a good ride. I get cleaned up and eat some food and then get out to paint the frame around the front door. This goes fairly smoothly and I have both the external door and screen door wide open (off the freshly-painted stops) to let them dry for a while. Near 2 pm I'm bored, so I go out to the garage and assemble all of the components for the experimental brain cooler and get it to run in dumb mode (i.e., stupid mode - the user has to pull a plug to stop it from pumping cool water). I've routed the water tubing around my head and it feels like it is cooling the sruface. I realize that I need more tubing to cover more of the surface area of the head. I'm thinking that this looks promising. I lose the rest of the day to various little things but I stay away from coding to keep myself refreshed and enthusiastic to get back to it tomorrow.

I sleep an extra hour on Wednesday and get up and plan out the things that I need to do. I do some longterm planning also including events for 2020. I start to do some coding but can't get into the modd, so I go out and mow the lawn. In addition to mowing the lawn, I trim the roses and then trim a sidebush that is infringing on the main gate to the backyard. Then I do a bit of mainteance on the garage door before getting cleaned up, buying lunch for later, and buying some additional supplies for the brain cooling device. I streatch out the tubing for the brain cooling device and let it set in the garage stretched out so that it will be easier to shape into the proper form later. Becoming frustrated, I finally dial a few numbers and get hold of somebody in the probate court of Rhode Island who tells me that the spelling of my name has just been corrected in the last week or so. Really? It took two months to issue the certificate with the incorrect spelling and it took aother five months to correct a single letter in my name? Really? Nonetheless, the probate is supposed to close in December and that's not going to happen. And I don't really care. I want to do the right thing based upon my brother's wishes, but I'm not going to meet some artificial date because it takes somebody seven months to spell a name correctly.

I start Thursday with a two hour mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back home. I feel strong throughout and I'm glad that the legs got rested yesterday. After a shower I continue piecing together the brain cooler as well as making a couple of websites more secure (for future knowledge). Near noon I get out and throw a coat of paint on the non-functional side door of the garage frame. The side door has been beaten up badly by the sun and I should replace it, but then I would have to clear the area inside the garage by this side door so that you can use it. So I may just paint over the badly beaten wood and leave it non-functional. After taking a break I clean the kitchen floor and vow to wash the hardwood floors in the next couple of days.

I zoom out of bed at 5:44 on Friday morning and go for a 55 minute walk. After a shower I finally figure out some Javascript that I needed to build more robust websites. I get on the motorcycle and ride to CSULA and we have a team meeting in advance of the design review presentation on Tuesday. On the way back home I continue to the main branch of the LongBeach public library to return two books and pick up three more to read. Back at home I work on fixing a mistake in the brain cooler piping that I made on Thursday and we'll let that set up for 24 hours. I finally get word that I am announced as the executor of my brother's estate, with the correct spelling of my name, so I work on some of the paperwork and other activities related to his estate. I take a break to watch another episode of Shameless and late in the afternoon I lose track of activities.

I sleep late on Saturday and do not go cycling. I watch an exciting MotoGP qualifying session from Aragon, Spain and then lift weights. Each lift is off today, but I struggle through the workout. Afterwards I trim the roses and then trim the front bush which tends to grow wildly at this time of the year. I tidy up some other bushes, grab a shower, and watch a very close qualifying for the F1 race in Brasil. I have a break to grab lunch and I have college football games on which don't mean anything to me, but I just laugh at the immature level of play. Throughout the warm afternoon there is no painting today but I do continue to assemble the brain cooler experiment and get ready to test it out again.

Sunday is a slow day. I watch the final MotoGP race of the year from Valencia, Spain and have the Detroit Lions' game on in the background as I work away n a website. Late in the day I watch the F1 race from Brasil adnd enjoy the action and the results.

On Monday I get out for a good mountain bicycle ride. After getting cleaned up I go buy cupcakes for my friends at the bank and visit them to make an investment change and to finally open an estate bank account for my brother. Unfortunately, because the court of Rhode Island took so long to name me as executor, my brother's apartment deposit refund check is out of date (and was never signed). So I get the estate account opene d but there's no money in it. There's a bottle of wine purchased on the way home but I get out and give the shutter frames and garage side door a second coat of bright neon blue paint and they look great (despite the garage side door being all rotted out). Afterwards the bottle of wine gets opened and I watch the final Moto2 race of the year and do some reading.