When I wrote this, the sun was setting on Monday, Easter Monday, a holiday in many Western countries. For Orthodox Christians, Easter is yet to happen on May 5th. I just finished the Hillsboro Python Machine Learning Meetup, which starts at 6PM as a Zoom meeting on the first Monday of the month.
Before the meeting, I made a ham and cheese sandwich with potato salad and chips. I made hot tea as I was sleepy, and the wind, blowing from the desert, was cold.
Ernest, our leader, showed us a data set of compounds and how they impact the reproduction mechanics of a virus, hepatitis C, an exciting and public data set–for data geeks. Ernest showed us the library to turn the compounds into fingerprints using a library and then run a usual classifier using AI models. At first, the more exotic classifiers were shown to do better, but with some prodding from me, Ernest changed the parameters, and my usual choice, Random Forest of Trees, was able to reach 95% in some cases. Ernest will publish the code for us on GitHub, and I may find time to look into this. This gets my math and coding geekiness going.
Before this, I attended the 4PM Nike project status Zoom meeting at my home office. After 3 PM, I drove home in perfect weather. I had done my usual status meetings and decided it was too lovely to stay inside. I was out on the deck a few times and enjoyed opening all the doors in the house. I also washed all the plastic parts on the 1/700 scale (think small) SMS Derfflinger. You must wash all the plastic in soapy water to remove the manufacturing dust and oils. I will clean the brass parts in alcohol later. The plastic needs to air dry for a few hours.
Before this, I had some more change control meetings. Usually, these are boring Zoom meetings, but we had some challenges we needed to resolve today. Of course, the details cannot be found here. I also reviewed and approved some design changes.
Our proof-of-concept on one of my new items actually worked! Mike L is writing it all up. Exciting that we got this to work. Again, details cannot appear here in public. It was a good day.
Lunch was chicken curry, but it was too oily, which is never the case. I had curry in Beaverton and ate it outdoors. It was too nice to sit inside. While not great, the chicken was still good, and I ate it all.
Before lunch, I visited Tammy’s Hobbies and found new paints matching the model instructions. I have most of the paints already, but they are years old. I will be tossing them. I won’t ruin a model with bad paint. I found all I needed.
Starting in the morning, I woke at 5 and tried to sleep until 6:30, but I rolled over a few times, and the alarm went off. I found my slippers and robe and regretted not taking another day off. Who really wants to start on Monday after nine days away? I found the computers in my office connected to work and the internet. I read work emails, Slack updates, and the news. I padded to the kitchen and made coffee. Corwin had overfilled the French Press with Uganda-sourced coffee (thanks, Kramers), and I had trouble making coffee that you did not chew.
I was rushing after that and had just toast with reduced-sugar jam and a banana. Next, I cleaned up and dressed. I was soon in Air Volvo and dogging school buses on my way to Nike WHQ and the Swift building (named for the Shift Suit, not a famous singer, but we get called Swiftees).
I then had some status meetings and learned my official boss is now Rajani. All good.
Thanks for reading!
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