I sleep horribly on Monday night into Tuesday morning - even turning on the light to read for an hour or so. I'm out the door at 6:14am for a road bicycle ride. I feel good for the first half of the 65 kilometers and then start to die. I just keep turning the pedals over to get home. After a shower I lie on the bed for a few minutes and can feel my upper body muscles starting to get sore from yesterday's extra weight, extra set workout. And the rest of me is just worn out. Is it the lack of sleep from last night or exposure to something at Saturday's birthday party or Sunday's Songkran festival? Regardless, after I read the news and markets I'm pretty much flat on the couch for the rest of the day (without a fever). I can't fully recall, but it's probably been since before the pandemic started in March 2020 that I've had a bad day like this (with flu-like symptoms but no fever).
Into Wednesday morning it feels like good sleep though my FitBit only gives me a 77 score - well below my typical 84 score. I get out the door at 6:03am for a good one hour run/walk. Though nothing hurts, I cut it a bit short since there is gardening to be done. I cool down a bit and then trim the roses, edge and mow the lawn, and sweep up the trimmings. After a cooling shower I pick up some supplies at the grocery store and then start a different tack for the detailed Long Beach crime scraping exercise. The Long Beach reporting/mapping process uses an Esri/Arcgis program and after a few trials at scraping the data, I'm at an end of ideas. I turn to scraping the baseline data in json format and find that this is looking promising. I've had to do a lot of digging to find the way to execute the proper Web requests from Python, but I'm getting close. They cannot stop the old ox from getting the data that he desires.
I start a hot Thursday with a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. At home I water the roses and get cleaned up. I take some time to read the news and markets before I go back to work on scraping the crime statistics. The latest attempt at directly loading the json format data is showing progress and by the middle of the afternoon I've got it work. I've scraped 9400 crime incidents in the city of Long Beach for the period between 1 March 2022 and 8 August 2022 (the last day of reporting thus far). I now have a reasoanble set of data to geocode, if necessary, and to try and derive predictive algorithms of crime. It's approaching 3pm before I grab lunch. And of course I'm asked to fill in at tomorrows California State Universlity at Los Angeles kickoff meeting for soebody who cannot show up. It's an electrical power microgrid project, so I'll just have to focus on getting the team organized and let the project sponsor from Southern California Edison describe the project itself. Later in the evening I set off a script to geocode the roughly 9400 crime incidents and I'm surprised when it finishes because it was fairly quick and because I did not run up against any limits placed upon geocoding (as I have before). It's been a productive day!
It continues to be brutally hot and I'm out for a run at 6:00 am to beat the heat. I get in a decent run walk of 60 minutes. After trimming the roses, I get in a cooling shower and pack up to go to CSULA to kickoff the new senior design projects. It turns out there's a mix-up and I'm filling in for two missing advisers for projects sponsored by Southern California Edison. Fortunately the SCE sponsor is there and between the two of us, we get the students pointed in the right direction. After our boxed lunches I rush on home though I'm still sweating a lot since it is so hot. The Yamaha YZF-R1 is having a cantankerous afternoon and wants to run rough - as it sometimes does when I let it sit for a few hours and then ride it again. But I get on home and watch FP2 from the Netherlands for F1. Later, after I catch up on some email and paperwork, I watch FP2 for both MotoGP and Moto2 from Italy.
It's very hot throughout the night and each time I wake up for a brief spell, I keep losing motivation for a typical long Saturday morning bicycle ride. Nonetheless I get out at 6:09 am and see another coyote (more of a normal size than last time) in a neighborhood near mine. I have a good ride but I quit at 65 kilometers and though I feel hot and sweaty, I don't feel tremendously worn out. I get a nice cooling shower and get ready to go to he library until I realize that the library is closed today for Labor day. Thus I watch the F1 qualifying from the Netherlands and later in the afternoon I watch the Moto3/2/GP qualifying sessions from Italy where a light drizzle wrecks havoc on all three classes as it comes down and then stops and keeps cycling along. I tidy up the crime statistics that I've successfully scraped and now its time to start figuring out what patterns are in the data.
Sunday is another miserably hot day with the temperature hitting 98F in Long Beach. I get out for an early mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. Today there are many runners/walkers out early so that they can beat the heat. At home I trim the roses and take a cold shower - I don't even touch the hot water tap at all. When I get to the grocery store to top up my supplies it is very crowded - people wanting to shop for cooling refreshments before their hot days at home, in the park, or at the beach. There's a very interesting and strategic F1 race from the Netherlands where tire degradation, pit stop strategies, and a safety car or two make it unclear who is going to win until the last few laps. And from there I just relax and stay cool.
Monday is a pretty slow day. We just recorded the hottest temperature ever in Long Beach yesterday - 108F beating the 107F from 1988. I'm reading the news and markets and see the neighbors going door to door. What's going on? When I look over towards their house I see that one of their vehicles has had the windshield smashed with a large rock (which sits next to the car). I go out and tell the neighbors that I have no video and did not hear anything and that they should call the non-emegrency police number which I recite to them since I have it memorized. It turns out that this specific car has had its windhsield smashed twice. So there must be some connection. At mid-morning I get in a "best effort" session with the weights since both shoulders hurt as I lift. Immediately afterwards both shoulders get ice and then I have another purely cold water shower to cool down. Later I watch a very close MotoGP race from Italy, do some data processing work for a friend, and relax. We expect four more days of hot weather and then a breakdown of the high pressure dome that is making us miserable.
I think about whether to ride or not on Tuesday morning since I'm tired of the heat. But I start out and after a few kilometers I know this was a wise decision. I get in a good strong 65 kilometers. At home I again have a purely cold shower and then run errands. And sit back and watch a hard-fought Moto3 race from Italy. Today is all about staying cool.
Wednesday is another day about staying cool. I get in an hour run/walk to start the day and trim the roses before having another cold shower. I read the news and markets, fill out some CSULA paperwork, do some web work, and "recall" some Python scripts to remind myself how a few things are done in Python. At late morning I watch the fun Moto2 race from Italy and later I watch a relatively boring IndyCar race from Portland.
I'm out the door early on Thursday for a mountain bicycle ride and on Friday for a run. On Friday I start running and end up walking - the legs aren't up to the task today. I think the miserable heat and the lack of nighttime cooling is taking its toll on me. On Thursday I spend time babysitting the city of Long Beach inspector and the AC installers who have to make a quick ten minute repair to get to code. After Friday's walk, I take another cold shower and ride the motorcycle up to CSULA to take care of paperwork and to hold "office hours" in case any of the students need help. It turns out that I'm not needed, but I still spend the time in CSULA's airconditioning (rather than mine at home) to work on the crime algorithm. Though I don't make much progress. At noon I blast on home on the motorcycle in the brutally hot weather. And wait for the possible monsoonal showers that may come tonight and tomorrow.
I have a blah weekend. Oh I certainly enjoy a bit of rain that we get from a monsoonal flow from Mexico. But that eliminates a Saturday bicycle ride. Instead I lift weights and my left shoulder hurts like crazy. So it gets iced immediately after lifting and before I get in a cold shower. I pick up some supplies at the grocery store and go to the ATM and watch a weird qualifying for F1 from Italy. There are so many engine component penalties that the grid will be completely shuffled before the race. And then I feel like I'm sinking into a depression. I start Sunday with a decent mountain bicycle ride and I go check out the sand berms and water overflows from the high tide and monsoonal flow. The F1 race is decent and I enjoy it. And then watch my Detroit Lions lose their opening game as well as watching some of the other football games. I hope thatthe dissipation of the hot weather and some good workouts will help me get over the blah weekend.
I start Monday with a resolution to get over the blahs of the past weekend. It starts with a run/walk at 6:04 am for sixty minutes. I cool down a bit and then perform some routine maintenance on the garage door rails and rollers. And finally get into the shower for another cold shower to cool down. During these cold showers, I don't even turn on the hot water and just rely on the colder water in the house pipes and city supply to cool me down. I start in on a cellular automata model of the recent crime statistics and because I want to try some ne features of Python, I bog down a while as I get to learn them. By late morning I am making progress and the skeleton framework for the cellular automate should be running shortly. I've taken a break to ride the bicycle to the liquor store where they know me well enough to let me ride the bicycle into the liquor store, park it in a safe place, and pick up my supplies. I sip the liquor as I work on the cellular automata and then take time out to watch Sunday's final IndyCar race of the season from a typically processional Laguna Seca raceway.