Saturday with Smoke

I rose before 7. The sun was out, and the light was the slickly yellow of smoke-filled skies. I stayed inside today as the smoke was moderate. I had multiple attacks of sneezing from something in the air that had leaked into the Volvo Cave. The house was cold, as the pro-orchid 64F AC setting continued to freeze me in the morning. I changed it to 68. Next week, the orchids will have to suffer a week without misting as I will be in Chicago.

As usual, I made liberal coffee using my French press and my newly delivered restock of Equal Exchange Organic French Roast from, and there is no surprise here, their Portland warehouse. I wrote the blog most of the morning; this time, I remembered to post it on Facebook and email. I had a slice of pumpkin spice bread with a banana. I added dried fruit from King Author Flour to the box mix and used melted butter instead of oil. It is pretty nice.

I feel my weight has increased as I have been walking in the smoke a little. It is untrue, but I feel strange not getting at least 3,000 steps. I did add Apple+ to my cable offerings (free for three months), and on Saturday, I binge-watched the first season of Slow Horses. This is an excellent British action spy show. It is like Smiley spy story that is over-caffeinated, drunk, and apologizes for too much action.  I love it. Recommended, but it is hard to not binge!

Besides being a binge-supporting activity, lunch was reheated pasta from a few days ago. It is still good, and I had a single bowl warmed in the large measuring cup and then, just because, to a bowl. I finished the nectarines from the 185th and TV Highway fruit and veggie stand. I was nervous all day and ate often. I now see that walking fills multiple needs as it puts a framework for my day and gets me away from food.

I decided that I was enjoying model building. It feels like a struggle, and the tiny parts are not fun. I put SMS Derfflinger 1916 in its box and returned all the special brass bending tools to their boxes. I seem happier without the self-inflicted pressure to make progress on the model.

I am returning to my Python coding. I am behind on versions and have forgotten much of my cool AI coding. But first, I need a place to code. I could do the work on my Apple and pay monthly for the full version of PyCharm on my MacBook Air 2023 with 24G memory and an M2, but instead, I want to use cloud-based development.

First, I have to find access to Amazon for my servers. I have an account at a lower level but the same as that of major multinationals. I pay about $2 a month for my current storage and instances. I get access to the same classes, tools, and much of the same tooling as a corporation. It takes me a while to find an MS Word document with my account information on my growing pile of documents on my Apple. After two tries, I get to my administrator account (my root account is seldom used) and feel the return of mental muscle memory.

An aside: Amazon is not just an online store but also a cloud computing supplier, unimaginatively called AWS. I have two accounts, one for stuff and another for extraordinary unlimited processing power in AWS if I pay for it. I don’t need to buy a giant desktop stuffed full of graphic cards to break certain cryptological items; I just start one, build my LINUX environment, run my stuff, collect my answer, and then shut down. I only pay for storage and run time (all my servers shut down after 30 minutes of no use). It will run about $20 to break something usually impossible. Imagine what a sovereign could do!

Amazon supplies tooling for developers, with each developer getting their own server. Next, I have a new Cloud9-style tooling running. I also use the free level; it is free. An existing server is broken (soon to be deleted). I began to recall the updates I needed to make, disconnect the storage from my server, increase it to 40G, and restart the server. The tooling adjusted the file system to include the extra storage, saving me from having to perform that task in my mostly forgotten LINUX commands. My rebooted server is happy, and soon I run Python3 and find the 3.9 version there. This is behind the cutting-edge (bleeding-edge?) 3.12 version of Python, but it is stable and supports most versions. The usual Amazon Linux choice of the most conservative starting points.

There is a smile while I am doing what some would consider work. Six years ago, I discovered an excellent library for building chess programs that use all the logic, like valid move lists, and I am delighted to see that it has moved to be generally supported. It is called, without the usual Python letters, ‘chess.’ I installed it in my Cloud9 with the typical ‘pip install chess‘ command, which is much easier than the last time I installed this!

I took part of the dated PyCharm project code on my Apple, copied it in part to the IDE in Cloud9, and started running it. It ran! I am smiling more and almost unable to focus, as it was much easier than expected. But Cloud9 repeatedly warned me that I was running my server out of memory. Well, f**k.

I am back to AWS screens and trying to find instructions to revise my instance type to something with enough memory. It takes me a while to remember that I must disable the server, and then I can replace the instance type with something more useful. Small is suitable for 2 cents an hour. I am no longer free, but Cloud9 images, like mine, automatically shut down after thirty minutes of no use (or now a penny).

I’m back to coding now with my much nicer server. It’s shiny with 2G memory and 40G storage but runs at 1/10 of my Apple’s power. As this is a single-threaded process running on a bare-bones LINUX box with no connections (no email, texting, or other processes), it is fast. Soon, I have a chessboard running in my code in Cloud9. I am doing my highly commended code and usual start-up code. I remember my Python and am happy with 3.9. I am delighted.

I returned to reheating leftovers, the last ribs that needed to be eaten soon, and some store-bought potato salad. I had two large helpings of the potato salad and about four ribs left. I completed the first season of Slow Horses, except for the last ten minutes. I noticed it was later than I thought and rushed to Air Volvo.

I arrive twenty minutes late to Richard’s place after suffering heavy Saturday night traffic inbound to Portland from Beaverton (!?). It’s a fifty-minute trip, and I cut through SE to get off the highways. Lauren is getting the teach from Kathleen, an expert on the board game Terraforming Mars, and Richard helps with the setup. We include the prelude cards (Richard has every add-on and box and board in neoprene) and play on the basic (paper!) board. This is a learning game for Lauren, and I have not played it in years. Kathleen and Richard play it online.

This is a tableau card game with a theme of terraforming the planet Mars for human life. It enables engine building, resource management, and investing. Working placement is not part of the game. It is longish (even the base game), and we take until 11:30 to complete with stops and start to remember a few things and to cover details for Lauren. I play too conservatively, remembering stalling and being bored when I could not do anything for an hour, but I generally enjoy the play. It is mostly about playing your own stuff and being efficient in winning. Richard lands all the milestones (a first for him) and wins by twenty points. I am behind Kathleen by twenty points, but it was an excellent showing, with Lauren almost catching me. I ate pretzels the whole time, something I don’t usually do.

It is late; this is the latest I have driven home in almost a year. I got Kathleen home and crossed over Portland and Beaverton in Air Volvo without events. I finish Slow Horses, even after midnight, and have carrot sticks and veggies while I do that. I took a shower and hit the bed, falling immediately to sleep and not waking until my alarm at 7:30, which rang for ten minutes until I woke.

I noticed that my hearing was off again. There is a hiss on my left side, which is hard to ignore and permanent. I need to concentrate on understanding people and likely miss some words. I expect a hearing aid in my future, but I need to let things settle before heading down that road.

Thanks for reading!