I had planned a very long road bicycle ride for Tuesday, but instead I just do the extended loop ride. I crank along like a madman for 65 kilometers and feel it was worth the effort. I grab a quick shower, do some grocery shopping where I buy supplies to cok Thai food, work on the Cat Blaster, and prepare Thai food for Wednesday. I watch an exciting and unpredictable Moto3 race frm Portugal, work a bit more on the Cat Blaster, and then continue to organize the garage and just relax. The Cat Blaster electronics are comletely finished and packaged and now I just have to integrate the water pump and tank and it will be ready for deploymet. This verson of the Cat Blaster, Version 1.0, is a static version in the neighbor's discarded baby stroller, but Version 2 should be mobile (but also utilizing the neighbor's baby stroller as a platform).
Wednesday, after six days of riding or running, I get a leg day off. I walk to the grocery store at 6:10am to pick up supplies and then go back home to finish up the electronics of the Cat Blaster. I wanted to re-solder and shrink wrap some joints for more robustness. Later I put together the pump components and vow to test them later. After reading the news and markets for a bit I get in a good session with the weights with very little joint pain - the Aleve taken from a day or so ago still having a positive affect on me. After lifting I mow and edge the lawn - today I rush through it and it's not my premier effort, but its done for the week. After a shower I watch the Moto2 race from Portugal and eat the Thai food thaty I started preparing yesterday. This is perhaps the best yellow curry I've had in my life and I have two medium sized helpings during the race. After the race I dust and oil two pieces of furniture and finally test the pump. The pump works, but the voltage may be too high and so I'll keep running out of water to blast the cats with. I can fix this. Later n Wednesday I watch an ice hockey game from the east coast and just relax.
I inetend to ride long on Thursday, but I'm still worn out. Looking at my caledar for 2024, I've had one day off of working out all year - probably because it rained heavily. Thus n Thursday I warm up somewhat slowly on the mountain bicycle but then, despite whatever direction the wind is blwoing, I crankalong along up on egear from usual to finish a good ride. At hme I pull out the hedge trimmers and trim a side bush and the open up the bushes borderng my porch - making my porch less scary and more inviting to visitors. After a shower I run a quick errand and look for places to take old medicines and destroy them responsibly - rather than just duming them down a drain where they can cause problem for fish and wildlife. At home I sharpen up the hedge trimmer and do some gluing of the Cat Blaster water lines to prevent leaks. Ad then read the news and markets.
I start Friday, the day before it is supposed to rain for two days, north on the Los Angees river trail. I get to the El Monte dam and continue to the Santa Fe dam. Today I stop for a gel and then continue on. It is a cold and windy day and I expected a tailwind down the San Gabriel river trail, but it is not to be. Instead I just crank along and pass other riders and consider whether to turn off on Del Amo and go home for eighty kilometers. But no - I'm feeling good - so I continue down to the ocean, ride along the ocean, and then go home for 125 kilometers (about 75 miles). I've felt strong throughout the entire ride, even against the wind, until the last three or four kilometers. I take a nice warming shower, dress in warm sweat pants and shirts, and have a double helping of Thai food. After relaxing I get out and trim the roses - this year being extra diligent about removing lower runners, center-crossing branches, and sharpening the rose trimmers after each use. And later I integrate the Cat Blaster water tank and pump with the electronics and make a few runs. OMG - the Cat Blaster blasts the water twelve feet. I'll have to cut back the voltage to shorten the distance and to save some battery. But the system is ready to be mechanically integrated with the baby stroller. And even later I get a hankering for picking up some of my old rigid body dynamics and I quickly make a list of good mechanical/control/learning problems that I can code and try and solve for a while.
My legs are hungover from Friday's long and windy bicycle ride. But I've enjoyed waking up in the morning after midnight and hearing the rain come down. I can enjoy this because I have a roof over my house that is less tahn ten years old. I stagger around the house for bit and open a very old textbook on Kane's Dynamics and start reading it - wanting to pick this subject back up. (Along with Monte Carloe Tree Searches which will happen in the afternoon). Before mid morning I go work the abdominals and biceps and throw in an extra set. From there I get new books from the library and pick up supplies at the grocery store. At the store I also buy a new notebook to take note from the Kane's Dynamics book, the Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithms, and other advanced ideas that I want to study. Back at home I find a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm that has been implemeneted in Tic-Tac-Toe, so I download it and cope it and study it and run it to get a feel for how I can put it into some of my other ideas. It is now 1:20pm and I haven't eaten anything yet, so I take a break and have steamed vegetables and garlic bread for lunch.
Rain throughout the night. I stay in bed for almost an extra two hours as I listen to the world class rain come down and drop off to sleep and wake back up to listen again. After clearing my head I have a good session lifting weights and then re-do some weakpoints in the Cat Blaster electronics. Now it is ready for full integration with the baby stroller. After a shower I turn on the hea tbecause I'm cold - was it the long ride on Friday or the cold and wet tday or both. I relax with sme golf and ice hockey and do some reading and notetaking of a new book from the library. Thus I'm re-reading Kane's Dynamics book and taking moted and reading The Art of the Impossible by Steve Kostler which I full identify with and I'm taking notes. I thin Kostler's book is going to give me some direction and purpose in life.
Just short of twenty kilometer run, talk with neighbor, grab a shower, bring rose blooms into the house, work on Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm with no luck, change passwords on two accounts that may have been compromised, grab lunch and watch the news and markets. Later watch the Kings' ice hockey game as they've started falling back and threatening to lose a playoff spot.
I start Tuesday a bit late with a good mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. I push the entire second half and it feels good. Today I work on a number of small projects which take a long time: the Cat Blaster takes time to cut out metal pieces and drill holes and align things and the Dremel tool overheats and dies, the paper shredder dies and I spend an hour fixing it. The Dremel tool must have been about 40 years old, so I order another one on Amazon. But I'm going to fix the paper shredder. (I received a bill from the hospital and the last time I sent them a check, they returned it and said they didn't need it. So today I just shred the bill and jammed the paper shredder - my bad.) There's a self-help, self-motivation book that I've started reading and one of the exercises involves list of things you want to do. So I start laying out just how much a Moto3 racing team would cost to run or to partially sponsor. These are early days in reading the book and in deciding my future.
I have a lazy Wednesday and this is only the second day where I haven't had an intense exercise workout for the year. Instead I've got my mind set on web scraping and I try four different methods of web scraping - some have worked and some have failed in the past - and though I work continuously from 7am until 2pm, none are working yet.. I go off to mow the lawn and trim the roses in advance of possible rain soon. And I integrate the Cat Blaster electronics with water pump/tank and it works! The Cat Blaster detects an object nearby and then blasts it with water. There are some small leaks and I should re-orient the water tank mount, but I'll get to those this weekend. The Cat Blaster 1.0 is almost ready to be deployed into the yard. As I'm watching some of the Kings' ice hockey game and another game, I have an idea about the web scraping. So I sit back down and finally get the basic web scraping finished for the day. No parsing or convenient formatting yet, but I can capture the data from websites where they've specifically employed concepts to prevent people from web scraping. I'm excited about the web scraping and the Cat Blaster and go back to watching some of the Kings' game before getting down for reading and sleep.
I wake up near midnight and have trouble sleeping - first time in a long time. I read for an hour. I start Thursday with a storming road bicycle ride on the extended loop. There's a nasty headwind all of the way down south on the San Gabriel river trail but I make up for it by cranking like a madman up the Los Angeles river trail. At home I degrease the road bicycle chain and give it a good wipedown so that it looks brand new. And then I weedwack the rosebeds in advance of possible Friday rain. After a warming shower I run errands to the grocery stores and then continue making good progress on yesterday's web scaping effort. I really just tidy up some thing and don't yet parse out the data into a convenenient format. On Thursday afternoon I tidy up and organize the garage a bit more and collect a big box of old/expired/unneeded medicines that I hear Walgreens will dispose of during Friday's errands. Late on Thursday I catch some of the Kings' ice hockey game and hope for good sleep.
It's supposed to rain on Friday morning but isn't raining when I get out of bed. I put on my runing clothes and by the time I've shaved and gone to the bathroom and prepared a post-run prtein shake, it is raining. Thus I put on warm sweats and hope to wait out the rain. By about 8:30am the rain has abated and I get in a good 65 minute run - not wanting to run too far after last Monday's very long run and (hopefully) Saturday's long bicycle ride. I have a warming shower go run errands to drop off expired medicines at a responsible drpop-off point, shop at CVS, and shop at Home Depot. At Home Depot I buy more robust parts for the Cat Blaster to prevent water leaks. After a relaxation period I go visit my eye doctor and he says that my eyes are about the same as last year and we delay making a decision on future action since I'm right on the borderline now of legal driving vision - 21 years after Lasik eye surgery, 2 years after a bicycle accident, and 1 year after cancer, etc. At home I watch the FP1 session from Japan for F1 cars since FP2 was washed out due to rain. Later I just put everything in order to finalize the Cat Blaster build and to finalize the web scraper.
I start Saturday on a chilly morning with three layers on and against a nast headwind as I go north on the Los Angeles river trail. I don't have a real plan today, but when I get to the El Monte dam I turn and head for home. I',. again, cranking like a madman with a tailwind and have a great eighty kilometer ride - only getting tired in the last two or three kilometers. After a warming shower I trim the roses and bring beaitifull blooms into the house, watch an intriguing F1 qualifying session from Suzuka Japan - with the rabid fans - and then watch some ice hockey and atch up on phone calls. Today is the fifth anniversary of my brother's death, so I'm drinking heavily and taking other substances and manage to get through the day. Except that after buying brand new dishes, I drop one bowl and break it. And this weighs on my mind throughtout the evening and a time or two during sleep as I wake up.
Sunday is a cold recovery ride with three more layers and I'm still cold. The warm shower feels great and I do some shopping, start drinking to finish off my borther's death, watch a confusing and thought-provoking F1 race from Suzuka Japan, do some more laundry, make a BIG spill on the kitchen floor which requires the a mopping of the entire floor, and then some Dodgers' game. I'm ready to finish off the web scraping on Monday which I figured out on Friday and I'm ready to re-integrate the Cat Blaster 1.0 which works well but needs to have some water leaks tightened up and some cable runs made smoother.
Monday 75 minute run and I feel good. After a shower I finish up part one of the web scraping and now have to work on scraping pdf files. This ends up taking the rest of the day (along with other activities to be mentioned here). But I feel good about making this progress. I stop for lunch near 2pm and get out and trim the roses and take the Cat Blaster apart to re-plumb some water lines and get better alignment with the squirt mechanism. ANd though I don't watch it, I start the first few minutes of an interesting Thai series on Netflix that I'll be checking out.