I expect to ride the road bicycle long again today, but I'm not up to it. I get on the mountain bicycle and go for a very windy ride to the old yacht club and back to home. At least the wind was against me earlier in the ride and could help push me home as I got tired. I grab a quick shower and start errands. I put money into the non-profit's account, buy a backup system for the non-profit, get to the grocery store for supplies, get to my regular bank to make a large withdrawl, go to a clothing store to buy some black dress pants that actually fit my current size, and drop a letter off to the gastroenterologist. At home I unload and backup everything from the non-profit to the brand new memory stick and empty some other memory sticks of content and music unto a single external hard drive to make my life easier at finding things. I read the news and, based upon the recent week, I'm scared to read the markets. When the mail carrier comes I run to the front door and thank him adn wish him to get out and enjoy the bright sunshine (as I regularly try to do). And then, with all of the stars aligned, the planets aligned, and every molecule in the universe aligned, I finally receive my check from the IRS for LAST YEAR's return of $8000 that had been stolen in the mail and that I had to go through many earth-based and universe-based hoops to convince the IRS that it was a forged signature and that they owe me $8000. Today is a great day! I watch a fun and exciting Moto2 race from Thailand and then relax for the rest of the day. My body temperature was up about 0.5 degrees this morning and I wonder if I'm coming down with something.
With tired legs and expected rain today, I get out for a 65 minute run/walk. At home I grab a shower, get on the mountain bicycle, and stop at the ATM to deposit my (finally received) 2023 tax return check after beating the fraud claim, and stop at the store for some supplies. My favorite checkout person warns me that I need to finish my errands on the bicycle because rain is expected by 1pm. Not a problem. At home I start work on the multi-start modal curve fitting function and make great progress. I've also gone and helped the retired schoolteacher acrost the street and she is degrading rapidly. Right near 1 pm the rain starts to fall and I wonder if my favorite cashier is a weatherman or completely believed some weather websites, or is psychic. Finally just before 1:30 pm I start the stream of the MotoGP race from Thailand (this past Sunday) and get some bean and cheese and veggie burritos ready for lunch. By now there have been tears flowing out of my eyes twice today. During today's morning run, the tears are flowing and my nose is running in the chilly weather - as a result of the radiation I'm guessing. And during the pre-race interviews, the lead up to the race, and the race itself, there are tears flowing down my eyes from the excitement and passion that I have for MotoGP/2/3 racing. After the exciting MotoGP race and I am getting good results from the V4 version of the time history matching, I advance to the V5 version with an undeterminstic set of extra modes. This may take some time to work on, but its fun!
I'm feeling blah on Thursday and Friday. But I get in another 65 minute run/walk (about 12 kilometers), grab a shower, and buy some heavy groceries with the car. Later I work on the multi-modal algorithm and it works now! On Friday I take the mountain bicycle to the old yacht club and back to home with the 10 kilometer Home Depot extension thrown in. I mow both the front and back yards and grab a shower. The mountain bicycle rear hub is making that screeching noise that seems to happen about once a year, so I put that on my list of things to fix this coming week on one of the days that it rains. And I put together my list of stores to stop at and things to buy for a Saturday day of errands after road bicycle cycling. Later I chop up vegetables and prepare to make my red sauce vegetable mdeley to with some rice for the next few days.
I start Saturday out the door on the road bicycle against a persistent headwind all of the way to the El Monte dam and even across to the San Gabriel river trail. I should get a tailwind going home, but I don't feel much. Today a number of triathlon racers engaged in a race pass me by, but I don't mind those guys and women. But I note that no "non racer" has passed me for the duration of this 100 kilometer ride and I feel pretty decent at the end. After a quick shower I grab a bananana and some milk and then start errands. I get close to the eRcycling center, for household electrical and chemical waste recycling, hoping there is not a long line. There's nobody in line! The attendants don't make me drive through the zigzag course and just tell me to turn left and park as the attendants grab stuff out of my trunk. I then drive to Target to pick up supplies, find a Moneygram to transfer money to another country, and drive to the grocery store where there is no line. What kind of luck am I having today? At home I take the mountain bicycle out into the garage and remove the rear wheel and bring the rear wheel unto the kitchen floor (with a towel laid down) to work on the bearings. Simultaneously, the rice and red sauce vegetable medley is simmering. After eating lunch/dinner, I go check the mountain bicycle wheels. The rear wheel, even with all of the gear and chain friction, seems to spin as long as the front wheel. So it seems like after three repacks in three years, four repacks in four years, or five repacks in five years, I've got this down. We'll see how it feels on a Sunday recovery ride. By 5pm I've re-set the clocks on times that don't reset automatically, namely the house thermostat, the car, my cheapo alarm clock, and the oven. None of these are critical, but it's good to be consistent for tomorrow.
It's dark and chilly when I wake up, so I reset the alarm for 30 more minutes. It's still dark and chilly, when I wake up, but I get dressed and take the mountain bicycle down to the old yacht club and back for a good recovery ride. When I coast along to check out the newly packed rear wheel bearings, I cannot hear a thing and the rear wheel spins very freely. So I guess with practice over the last few years I'm getting better at repacking bearings and getting the tightening tension almost perfect. At home I trim the roses, grab a shower, make a quick trip to the grocery store, and then settle in with warm clothes for a relatively slow day of laundry, some golf and ice hockey on television, and consolidating my digital and written calendar/to-do lists so thatthey are in one place and I can check items off as they are completed. Also do a once-per-hour set of bicept curls from 11am until 7pm as I want to make sure a slight pain I was feeling in the left bicept gets repaired.
I start Mnday with another mountain bicycle ride because I want to hear the silence of the rear bearings again and feelthe smoothness and I'm tired from a 4th ride in four days. At home I deweed the rosebeds, grab a shower, ride the bicycle to the grocery store for some supplies, and return home. (I seem to be going to the grocery store almost every day now dependng upon what I'm craving after the morning bicycle ride or morning run.) I finally decide to pay the $250 non-transport ambulance bill to the City of Long Beach after trying five times to get Medicare or MediGap to pay for it. I had better luck with the lab work where Medicare refused to pay and we went back and forth for almost a year before the lab said it disappeared and they drew my blood without question. I update a website for new events and then just have a slow day.
Today I run long. There are spits of rain as I start, but nothing to stop me. And near the 16 kilometer mark there is some moderate rain and nasty wind to chill me down, but I finish near 20 kilometers and have felt good throughout. I get in a warming shower and work on a new alternative Excel idea that I have. I get very consumed with this project and except for the one workout per hour for the abdominals, I'm glued to the project. By the end of the day the new Excel is working and there's maybe some fine tuning to do. I have bean and cheese and veggies burritos at lunch near 3pm and go help the retired schoolteacher who cannot even turn her televisionon now. And keeps saying, "Oh you know the name of the television program that I watch and the channel number". I don't and I'm not on her cable provider as I have DirecTV, so how could I know the channel number. And she hasn't even set her clocks an hour forward so she's probably missed the telelvision show anyway. I'm getting frustrated. Later I watch a bit of the Kings' game and then go to bed early to read and sleep. Except that it turns out DirecTV has changed my programming without telling me and I cannot get the Kings' games anymore. Time to look for some other provider.
It is supposed top rain all day on Wednesday, but I don't care. I get started a bit early today and except for a couple of short burts of rain, I manage to get in a 65 minute recovery run/walk after yesterday's long run. I grab a quick shower and walk to the store with an umbrella and pick up supplies and start some laundry for everything that is wet. The retired schoolteacher has a doctor's appointment today for which she got perturbed at me over the last few days when I said, "It isn't going to happen". I start the Long Beach Human Traffcking Task Force zoom meeting and there's a call from the retired scholteacher when she can't turn on her television and her doctor's appointment did not happen. When I get a chance I fix her television and tell her that she has three choices 1) Stay with the same the doctor and hope that she finally gets a real face-to-face apointment; 2) Look for another doctor of which my primary care physician takes her insurance; or 3) Change her Medicare plan in October and find a new doctor. She's worried that her current doctor will be mad at her. Who cares? If her current doctor does not keep her appointments, then why should she show any loyalty or faithfullness to her doctor? She can't get past this and says she has an amended appoinment in two weeks. I just let her make her own decisions even if they do not serve her health in any way. In the afternoon I drink wine heavily to forget about all of these problems but do get an appoinemnt with a dishwasher repairman since my dishwasher has decided to just flash a whole mess of lights and do nothing. And not allow me to turn lights off or on. Even pulling the plug on the electricity and letting the dishasher set for a day or so without power does not reset the controller. Another expensive repair but I must admit that the dishwasher has served me well for 15 years. Later I flip through television and Netflix channels in my state of stupor and then go to bed to read and sleep.
It is supposed to rain heavily all day on Thursday and I've heard rain throughout the night. But when I wake up I hear no rain and the weather app on my phone shows an hour of no rain. So on go the running clothes and I barely feela few drops of rain throughout the 65 minute run/walk. After a warming shower I straighten everything out for the diswasher repairman/woman so that has room to operate and I walk to the store for supplies (again a craving). At home I work on the Excel replacement program and I'm getting very happy with how it operates. The dishwasher repairman comes and, as I expected, he says that the touch screen button pad does not work anymore and needs to be relaced. But, of course, since the dishwasher is fifteen years old, they don't make the part anymore. So it's probably like $1000 to completely remove this dishwasher, take off the face, put on the old face, and replace the dishwasher. I guess I will do without a dishwasher for a while. I work away on my newer and better looking Excel workbook for a certain task and don't think about the dishwasher. And finally before I exand the design space for the specific problem that I am working on, I want to try two other data sets that I have. These should be just simple cut/paste data and run the optimizer for each dataset and view the results. Maybe later tonight or maybe tomorrow when it is supposed to rain a lot. Except I keep thinking about the dishwasher and I find that if I start and stop and start the dishwasher over the course of about one minute, it runs all of the way through to completion, uses the soap up, and even runs the heat cycle. I don't know what's going on, but I'm stuck with a one hour clean and heat dry because none of the other buttons work. Weird!
I wake up at 5:40am before the alarm and see that there is a break in the rain. I rest for five more minutes and then put on my running kit to go for a good, strong 75 minute run/walk workout. I grab a quick warming shower and drop off two books at the library, drive to the grocery store for heavier items, and pick up a surge protetor at Home Depot for a cleaner garage charging center. At home I put the the World Rally car in the garage as soon as I can and wipe it down from any rain/dew/mist/water that it may have picked up during today's errands. I perform some garage maintentance and visit the retired school teacher. Though I present very clear options, she cannot comprehend or perform them. When it comes to "I cannot miss the Beethoven concert" after I've asked her how many time she has heard it, I realize I am dealing with a mentality that I cannot deal with. "So what if you miss the Beethoven concert for the first thirty minutes for the one-hundreth time?" I ask her and she will not miss the concert. Really? How many times have you heard it? You can't miss the first thirty minutes? So I refuse to run her errands until she becomes more logical. I do some garage maintenance, chop and cook an entire mess of vegetables and rice, and then watch FP2 for Formula One from Astralia. Later I finish cooking rice and vegetables for the week and watch FP2 for Moto2 from Argentina. And for this final Excel test case, I continue to make incremental gains in the algorithm. Why does this third set of data always presenta difficulty for my optimization algorithm?
I have a good Satirday. I hit the snooze button twice on my mobile phone but get out for a mountain bicycle ride to the old yacht club and back to home. I did not ride the road bicycle because I did not know what bike path conditions that I would encounter after a few days of rain. At home I warm up with a shower (with the tankless water heater deciding to turn-off before I get started and I realize that I have to reset it). I grab a few items at the grocery store, work on some financial updates, and watch an a good qualifying session for F1 in Australia with many new drivers and many drivers who have switched teams. For a while I relax and grab lunch and then watch Moto2/2/GP qualifying from Argentina where, again, many riders have switched teams - more so than usual. Later in the day I just relax and think that I need a hobby and think about various things to give an experimental try at.
I start Sunday on a very cold road bicycle ride up the San Gabriel river trail to my convenient turn-around point. I wonder why I am struggling and look down and see that I am up one gear. I turn back down to the ocean and start cranking. Yes, some very fast groups of riders pass me, but I'm doing well. Eventually I fight the wind back to home for about 70 kilometers. After a quick shower I ride the mountain bicycle to the store because I am craving salt and I buy some salty potato chips. Back at home I watch yesterday's Moto3/2 qualifying from Argentina and then set back for swapping between the golf and a wet/dry/wet/dry Australian F1 race where nobody knows what tires they should be on. I cannot sit still today and I keep switching between stretching leg muscles, watching the golf tournament, and watching a wild F1 race from Australia with wet/dry/wet/dry coniditions throughout. A wild way to start the season though I feel very bad for a Raging Bulls rookie who crashes on the warmup lap and doesn't even complete a lap. Later I use my new leaf blower to clean up my driveway and then relax and finally, early in the afternoon, watch Saturday's Tissot Sprint MotoGP race from Argentina. Then I start and re=start the dishwasher a number of times and it seems to get through a one hour wash cycle and a heat rinse cycle. It seems like I am stuck with this arrangement with this dishwasher. No coding or technical work today though I've opened up my files and IDEs but never quite do any work.
Monday morning is cold but I get out for a recovery ride to the old yacht club and back to home. I grab all of the cleaning materials from the garage to tidy up the house for upcoming visitors. I grab a shower, ride the bicycle to the grocery store, help the retired schoolteacher work the remote on her television (Yes - it's come to this), read some news and markets and sit back for the Moto3 race from Argentina. I do the once-per-hour set of exercises for the biceps tday and actually get in 14 reps for this weight on each set. Time for a bit more weight. Then I do some tidying up of the house and though I don't clean the hardwood floors, they will have to be clean enough. And later I double up on the racing and watch the Moto2 race from Argentina. Later I have some weird idea that a Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm could be used to predict the NCAA basketball brackets - not that I care about the outcome. So I spend multiple hours trying to scrape data for the teams that are in the NCAA tournament to use with the MCTS idea.