Tuesday through Thursday are some boring days. I certainly get out cycling and/or running/walking on each of these days, but I've come to an end for the recent convolutional neural network project. And the Olympics events on the television are not interesting as its mostly beach volleyball and gymnastics and swimming. I never understood why they compress all of the track and field events into the last week rather than starting at the Olympics opening and giving the competitiors an occasional day off or so. On Thursday, after the old yacht club ride, I go and give some blood to my physician so that we can monitor my lipid and liver profile.
The CatBlaster? After soldering things together in tight quarters I find some electrical shorts, so I realize, though I knew it before, that my soldering skills are not top notch. Thus I pivot and will just have to wire sensors and actuators off the processor pins itself.
Friday is just a lousy day. Oh I start it with a good hour long walk/run and trimming the roses and touching up some tree branches. But then emaisl come in with undersireable results. Though I've worked diligently to bring my cholesterol down (since it was elevated from Covid bordeom) by 50 points and it is below the "bad" threshold, the docttor's assistant wants to put me on Crestor and recheck my blood in six weeks. I'm not doing it. I'm going to work diligently again for the next six weeks to get the numbers even better and recheck. No Crestor - I don't want to be taking dreugs for the rest of my life if I can do it by myself. And then an email comes in from the contractor to replace the attic fan - its a simple sawp-out with no roof work. And the written estimate is a one line pdf saying, "The estimate to remove the old unit, install the new one, and verify operations is $690". No breakdown of parts and labor no mention of the brand of attic fan to be installed and the estimate was about twice what I expected. So I just feel bad about both of these emails and they weigh on me throughout the day. There's one way to cure it - I decide to try and make my birthday bicycle ride tomorrow (on Saturday) instead of waiting until closer to my actual birthday. I know the ride will take a lot out of me and relieve the stress.
On Saturday I'm out the door at 6:20 am and riding north on the Los ANgeles river trail. I go beyond the Whittier narrows dam to the Santa Fe dam and stop to rest a bit and have an energy gel. Then I start back towards home and only in the last five miles on this leg do I start to tire. So I stop in at Libery park and eat a couple of cookies I've brought with me (for brain glucose and muscle glycogen) and refill my water bottles. And I continue down the San Gabriel river trail to the bridge where I can turn around and go home. A total of 64 miles ofr my upcoming 64th birthday. I'm certainly tired and work out and missing brain glucose, so after a shower I drink a bit of Coke to get sugar to the brain and do some grocery shopping. From there I watch F1 qualifying from Hungary and lot of Olympics events related to track. I'm too tred to be stressed out about yesterday's emails so life is good.
After Saturday's long (early) birthday ride, I expect my legs and entire organism to be tired on Sunday morning. But I start on a recovery mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home and don't feel tired at all. At home I trim teh roses, bring some blooms inside the house, and the I do some quick motorcycle maintenance before getting a shower. The F1 race from Hungary is just bizarre: It had just rained and now the sun is out for the start, there's a red flag on the first lap, and at the restart, all of the cars accept the pole sitter dive into the pits to fit dry tires. Meaning the race starts with only a single car on the grid and all of the other cars starting from pitlane. Everything gets jumbled up and its a shock winner and podium. I love F1! And the rest of the day is slow with the Olympics.
Monday and Tuesday are a bit slow. I get in a decent session with thew weights on Monday and a 65 kilometer ride on the road bicycle on Tuesday morning. From there I take care of some small errands and cleaning around the house. And then watch some of the track and field and distance running events from the Olympics. I'm a bit stalled out on any algorithm development since potentail customers or funding agencies are stalled out. Both Smart Cities efforts, one related to police reporting and one related to homeless services, have both been "decided we will not pursue at this time but look for future announcements". Which means they don't know what the f*$k they're looking for and can't see past the end of their noses. So I just take the days and relax during the warm days and think about other efforts that I can work on.
I get out walk/running on Wednesday morning for an hour, trim the roses, and mow the lawn. After a shower I do some grocery shopping and have a slow day since its farily hot out and I have nothing on the agenda. I just have a bad on Thursday. I sleep in late and don't get out cycling and don't really accomplish much.
I try to make up for my bad Thursday by cycling on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then doing a number of hores around the house and watching the women's and men's marathon from the Tokyo Olympics. I spend a lot of time on Friday coding a web scraper and make great progress and just have one last step to finish. And, of course, there's MotoGP qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday from Austria. This is a race that I toyed with treying to get to back before the Delta variant of the Covid-19 virus started running rampant. If I had made it to Austria for the races, would I have been able to make it back home?
I start Sunday with the third bicycle ride in three days and though I feel tired to start, I finish strong. I've replaced with my regular pedals with a spare set of pedals and the "clicking" noise is completely gone. Thus I'll have to rebuild/repack the old pedals with grease again or buy a new set. But I'm happy to have silence from the bicycle when riding and not have to replace the main bearing. After a shower I call the neighbor and just say, "Your new telelvision is great but you don't have full clarity yet. Let me come over and see what we can do." Thus I take my laptop and some HDMI cables over and we work on her system setup. I show her how clear and high definition the picture SHOULD be and then show her the picture she is receiving. So we move around some cables and use some HDMI cables and get the system to work but it is not clear eanough yet. She's happy with the picture, but it is not right. So we call her cable provider and they agree to bring her a new cable box tomorrow morning and admit that the the technician will be able to get her a super picture. I eventually take leave and watch a wild Asutrain MotoGP race where the rain stays away, there's a new race winner (a rookie), my least favorite riders either crash or finish way way down, and I enjoy the race. Later I watch the IndyCar race from Nashville just to kill time. I've started reading the new books that I got from the library. One book, entitled "Endure", which Ive had on reserve/hold for more than a year, is going to change my life. I can just feel it when reading the first chapter. So I force myself to read it slowly and absorb everything that I can.
I start out Monday on the mountain bicycle for the fourth ride in four days. I just get to the end of the ocean trail and turn back for home. After a shower I run an errand and then watch a fun Moto3 race from Austria where the track is wet bu drying and the riders have to choose their tirees accordingly. And the rest of the day is slow as most Mondays are.
Late on Monday I go back to working on the web scraper and have it running well by about 8:15 at night. A few tweaks to re-order some columns, but the data is being scraped and in a good format. The neighbor lady calls and needsa help with her new television again so I go on over. She shows me the picture, which results from a new telelvision and a new cable box, and its a super HD picture. I had told her a day or so ago that her picture was not good HD and that led to a new cable box. But sh'es confused on operating the remote so I walk her through that for playing television channels and a DVD player. Just as we're finishing I start to feel digestive tract illness and it soon becomes and emergency so I give a fairly abrupt (but hopefully not rude) goodbye and run on home. I don't quite make it and have a bit of an accident in the bathrooms that I clean up. I can only think that the frozen pizza that I had today was somehow bad and gave me the runs.