Monday night into Tuesday morning is very chilly with a low at 51F. I get out walking for 80 minutes on Tuesday morning. There is still a lot of smoke and dust and ash in the air. After warming up with a shower, I take the motorcycle for a ride to keep the lubricants moving around and the battery charged. This has become the standard now as opposed to the old days where I was riding it every day. Back at home I read the news and check on the markets, work on the voting writeup, and then catch a fun Moto3 race from Aragon, Spain. The afternoon slips away with cleaning of the kitchen and bathroom floors and then I peek in and out of the Dodgers' game. Since it is a one run game, I pretty much stay glued to the television after the fifth inning. And cannot beging to comprehend the stupid move of the Rays' manager to remove the starting pitcher who has absolutely dominated the Dodgers. But as soon as the move is made, the Dodgers get some runs, take the lead, and hold on for the World Series title. And now, let the illegal fireworks in Long Beach begin. As many people are setting off fireworks to celebrate.
Wednesday and Thursday are slow days though I get in a good workout with the weights on Wednesdy and a good bicycle ride on Thursday morning. I also manage to put the finishing touches on the graph coonvolutional neural network used to analyze voting patterns and get it published online. And I manage to update some websites before a CSULA Zoom meeting late on Thursday afternoon.
Friday morning is very foggy - so foggy that I can barely see the houses across the street. Thus I do not go cycling and do not go running/walking. Instead I catch up on some emails and aggregate newly-released crime statistics for processing throughout today. I have two CSULA Zoom meetings throughout the day and they go well. And I manage to squeeze in a workout for the abdominals, core, and lower back.
Foggy or not, I go cycling on Saturday and Monday and get all wet and muddy and sandy. So I wipe the bicycle down after each ride and lubraicate the chain for future use. Being lazy on Sunday morning, I go walking in the fog for 82 minutes and then later in the day have a good session with the weights. Which is followed by ice on the left tricep which is becoming problemmatic. The F1 qualifying and race from Italy produce expected results. And I have slow days leading up to the mad rush for the election.
Tuesday, election day, is a weird day. I get out for a good ride to start the day and then do some cooking and laundry and cleaning around the house. Early in the afternoon the day just seems weird - like the anticipation to watching the election returns is lost on everyone (including myself). What does this mean? But I relax and turn on election coverage at 4pm and have a bottle of wine to go with the hours of coverage.
Wednesday was a preplanned day off from cycling or walking/running to give the legs a rest. So I get up and check out the election results, the news, and the markets. Before 9 am I run errands with six stops: gasoline, the ATM, Target, Home Depot, the Thai grocery store, and the library. I always think ahead for a few minutes to make these errands a big loop with no re-traced paths. By 10:30 am I finished with the errands and everything put away in its place. I get in a super workout with the weights where the lifts are easier and there is very little tricep pain (probably due to the pre-emptive Aleve that I took an hour before the workout). But I still ice both triceps as that is good practice whetehr they hurt or not. After a shower I chop up a lot of vegetables for an upcoming spicy Thai curry, trim the roses, and then just relax. Wednesday's for whatever reason, tend to be my slowest day. I take some time to watch election returns as various states continue to count ballots.
I start Thursday with a very good road bicycle ride. It takes a few miles to get warmed up, but then I start cranking along and even have a good segment all of the way up the Sa Gabriel river trail against today's Santa Ana winds. And then I turn for home and finish feeling strong. After getting cleaned up I check the election returns, the markets, and the news. And make some phone calls to get some CSULA software installed so that I can provide a more "hands-on" effort wit this year's senior design team. Near noon I start getting restless, so hot and dry weather or not, I get out and mow the front and back yards and then drop some special winter fertilizer on the front. It might rain this weekend so the rain will help soak the fertilizer down into the ground. I grab a cooling, rinse shower and finally consider lunch near 1pm (since I haven't eaten anything yet today).
It's supposed to rain on Saturday, so I get out riding on Friday morning down to the old yacht club and back home. Today I take two breaks; first to talk with the couple who always greet me with Czech language when I ride by (The lady I met before and the husband is Belgian but knows a few words of Czech and we have a nice conversation); and second to talk with two Japanese guys who are fishing (One is fishing and one is videoing him for re-sale to Hollywood production companies). I end up giving my phone number to Person Ka_J because he has all of the politeness and sincerity that you would expect from a Japanese person and he has an infectious smile. Back at home, as the precursor weather to rain approaches, I trim the roses and have a CSULA Zoom meeting. In the afternoon I have some phone conversations and watch wet but drying FP1 and FP2 for the MotoGP race in Spain.
I briefly wake up on Saturday morning at 4:50 am. I hear the rain start to come down and am surprised because the forecast said the rain would start at 5:00 am and it is very accurate. I go back to sleep for a while and the pavement is wet and there is rain coming down so there is no bicycle ride this morning. Instead, I read the news and start working on an idea I had last night related to evaluating the risk of child abuse and the convolutional neural networks. But now the graphs related to the convolutional networks operate on people rather tahn geographic locations. At mid morning I drive to the grocery store for supplies and then have a super session with the weights where I realize I need to increase the weights for the next workout. The afternoon is fairly slow but with exciting MotoGP qualifying and Moto2 qualifying in semi-wet conditions from Spain. And I waste a few hours in the afternoon with college football games because I temporarily have no motivation.
It is cold on Saturday night into Sunday morning. But I do not complain. I think back to some of the nasty hot weather that we had this past summer and am thankfull for the colder weather. Unfortunately it is very windy and a bit wet, so instead of cycling I go walking for 82 minutes. After a shower I make a trip to the grocery store for items that I forgot yesterday and then watch the MotoGP race from Spain. If I had five favorite riders, they all place in the top five in the race with my favorite two riders taking 1st and 2nd. For the last eight laps I'm standing up and cheering them on and trading between watching intently and closing my eyes fearing a disaster. But there is no disaster and there are tears of joy streaming down my cheeks as the checkered flag falls. This is what F1 and MotoGP/2/3 racing does to me! The rest of the day is a slow day since it is chilly and windy and I just stay warm inside the house lookng forward to a Monday morning bicycle ride.
It's cold on Sunday night into Monday with a low of 42F. Thus I wake up and stay in bed and don't get out cyclng for about an hour later than usual. I get in a good 60 kilometer road bicycle ride once I'm warmed up with very little other cycling traffic. After geting cleaned up I take the Yamaha YZF-R1 out for its weekly ride and stop in at a CVS for bandages (for blisters) and an elastic ace bandage (to hold an ice pack). There's a very fun Moto3 race from Spain where there's a new winner and the championnship tightens up for the last two races of the year. I spend the afternoon watching some Netflix shows - giving any coding a few days off.
On Monday night into Tuesday the temperature drops down to 42F again. Nonetheless I get out on the mountain bicycle for a ride to the old yacht club and back home. I get cleaned up and run some errands and ice my triceps and read the news and markets. I also update the Fair Trade Long Beach website for an article that just came out in the local business press. In the early afternoon I watch a fairly subdued Moto2 race from Spain until about halfway through the race. At that point, the championship leader and a rider that I don't care for, crashes out of 2nd place and eventually hands over his championship lead to another rider. And then I pick up the graph convolutional neural networks as applied to child abuse. Can we predict child abuse based upon indicators of people within the sphere of influence of a child?
I have a pre-planned day off from working the legs and spend a lot of the day working on an n-dimensional child abuse predictive tool. Besides doing the coding of the tool I also spend a lot of time reading where other child abuse predictive methods have failed. Before noon I increase the weights and have a great workout. The left tricep still hurts a lot and requires post-workout icing, but the lifts went well. And then I spend time deep cleaning the roses, raking up leaves and grass blown about from our recent windstorm, and also rake up a few leaves from under the large tree in the backyard which is just starting to drop leaves for the winter. After a shower I watch the recent NEXT episode (about artifial intelligence going out of control) and then go back to the child abuse tool. I've made a lot of progress today but still have work to do.
On Thursday and Friday I have blah mental days but great physical days. On the Thursday bicycle ride I do a few intervals and really beat myself up. When I get hom the fitbit (which I don't trust) says I hit 187 beats per minute heart rate. This cannot be right since a typical maximum for my age should be near 160 bpm. Nonetheless it shows me in the red zone for a lot of the ride. On Friday I walk for 90 minutes in the morning and have aa great session with the weights in the afternoon (and post-workout icing of various joints). In between I'm on the phone with CSULA and software vendors trying to get my install to work. And I make good progress on the child abuse predictive tool and I wonder if I can take the analytics one level deeper and start programming that story. In the early afternoon on Friday I run some errands, perform maintenance on the garage door, and trim the roses. Late in the day I watch the FP1 and FP2 sessions from Spain for the MotoGP race. And today I receive word that since Viet Nam is NOT on the provisional 2021 F1 calendar, I can get a refund for my April 2020 seats which were eliminated due to Covid-19. Just before bedtime I sit at the computer looking at the child abuse predictive tool and it dawns on me how I can put it into a neural network, train the neural network, and get the next level of analytics that I was looking for. I don't do any of the coding, but I sketch out the framework on a piece of paper and can work on it over the next few days.
I've had a good week of working out and so on Saturday morning I cannot answer any alarms to get out of bed - every bodypart is hungover (in a good way). So I turn over and sleep more than an hour past my alarm and get up and start working on the child abuse tool with a neural network attached. I take a break to go pick up library books on hold for me and then I watch a wild F1 qualifying session in the wet but drying conditions from Turkey. And then go back to the neural networks. I'm not sure I'll get in any workout today.
I get out on Sunday for a decent bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back home. I'm still a bit physically hungover, but the ride will aid in the recovery. Late in the morning I watch the MotoGP race from Spain and have to stand up and yell and scream at the television during the last half of the race - I'm that excited. My second favorite rider does just enough to clinch his first world championship in his second year in MotoGP. And my favorite rider, who I've cheered for for six years, does enough to take over second place in the standings. The rest of the day is a letdown and I don't even get to the (potentially wet) F1 race from Turkey.
And on Monday I work the abdominals, lower back, and core muscles and do more work on the child abuse neural network. And finally watch a wet but drying F1 race from Turkey with plenty of action throughout.