Content-type: text/html Ray Manning

Thursday, December 31, 2020 8:02 PM

Fianlly The End of This Year


I get started a bit late on Tuesday, but get out for a good ride to the old yacht club ad back home. During the ride there's a road bike rider who goes past me and I call out "Great day for cycling" as I do sometimes. He slows down and we have a little chat. Today is his birthday and he plans on riding a century and I share with him that I do the "one mile for every year old" ride on my birthday. When I ask him about his route, it seems kinda short. Like very short. And he just says he'll keep adding miles at the end to get to 100 miles. I don't say anything, but his route only seems like half of the century. Anyway, after our little chat he rides off as I finish my ride. After getting cleaned up I take the Yamaha YZF-R1 for a nice ride to keep the battery charged and the lubricants moving around. And then I work on the California assembly district demographics and voter records. This is taking me a bit longer than I expected, but its okay. And I also view some news and television and Netflix.

I'm lazy on Wednesday and start finishing up the demographic programming. Near mid morning I run errands to the grocery store and library. When I get home I go for a 62 minute walk and get cleaned up to watch some television. Despite a lazy day, I still got a few things accomplished.

On Thursday I sleep fairly late and work on the demographics analysis. Near noon I get in a workout for the abdominals, lower back, and core muscles before raking some leaves. Later I make more progress on the demographics and I'm as far as I can go. I've implemented the algorithms and not quite getting the results and story that I wanted. So time to step back and think about it a bit.

I start Christmas day with a 45F bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back for home. There are very few cyclists, runners, or pedestrains out during today's ride. After a shower I clean up just a couple of things with the demographics program and, thnking that maybe I need more iterations for convergence, increase the iteration limit and let the program run. Let's see what we get.

Saturday starts with another 45F bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back again. I start the demographics program with many itrations as I watch my Detroit Lions get slaughtered in their game. Granted the Lions have had many recent injuries, Covid-19 positive tests, and coaching changes. When the demographic program finishes I still have no better results than before. So this will need some more thought. Late at night there's a Zoom video conference with an effort geared towards the California Youth Council (CYC) as well as other agencies. I don't see anything coming of this, but I say that I will contribute where I can.

Though I wanted to go cycling on Sunday morning, I go walking instead. After a good 65 minute walk I get cleaned up and pick some supplies at the grocery store and then watch football. I resurrect some old code to process JSON format files for the CYC effort just in case it goes somewhere. And then convert it to Python for future use. I haven't run my dishwasher for months, so I run it (even though it is cantankerous and doesn't want to sart at first). It takes a number of start attempts to get it to run. But in the end the dishes are very clean and I should probably run the dishwasher more often.

I'm awake for about an hour in the middle of Sunday night into Monday morning. The rain has started and it is nice to listen to. But then I can't get back to sleep when I try. Since it's raining on Monday morning when I get out of bed, there is no bicycle ride or wwalk/run today. Instead I grab a can of Red Bull and start coding a web-based data viewer for a friend. I keep working away, learning as I go, and making mistakes and figuring out how to fix them. I'll look up at the clock and vow to fix "one more thing" before taking a break, but this goes on until almost 3pm. Finally the web-based viewer is good enough to send away for a review and I get a chance to go lift weights. It's the first lifting session in three weeks - kind of a typical December break from lifting that I usually get because I'm off traveling. I try a new outine today called myo-reps. I enjoy it and get in a great workout for the muscles with less stress on the joints than usual. After a shower I finally eat something today and relax.

Since it rained so much on Monday and there is no cloud cover at night, Tuesday morning has a low of 40F. Thus I work on a few things around the house before getting out for a bicycle ride to the end of the beach trail and back. When I get home I adjust the fence gate (which needs to be adjusted once for the dry season and once for the wet season) and get the motorcycle ready to ride. After a shower I get on the Yamaha YZF-R1 and it won't start. It cranks over okay but it exhibits the weird behavior with the display that indicates it isn't going to start today. It might or might not start tomorrow, but today it gets wheeled back into the garage. The rest of the day is a slow day as I take the afternoon/evening off from coding.

It's 40 degrees F on Wednesday morning, so I do not go out cycling. I work on a few things and then go run errands. I drop off books at the library, get the World Rally Car washed, and pick up supplies for new year's eve. Back at home I go out walking for more than an hour and then go back to working on the web-based data viewer and make good progress. Though I'm stuck on two things for now.

New Year's eve starts with cold weather near 41 degrees F. I relax a bit and read the news and the markets and then get out cycling near 8:30 am. It's still cold to start with but I crank along nicely. I get to the old yacht club and turn around and head for home against a steady headwind the entire way home. It's a good ride! After a shower I water some carnations and take a one hour training class required for CSULA. By 1pm I start answering some emails and phone calls and now it's approaching 2 pm and I haven't eaten anything yet today. So a frozen pizza with added vegetables is going in the oven and I can start a relaxation period for a while. Web-viewers and other tasks can wait for later today or even tomorrow.