Breakfast was with coffee that I reheated from the previous day. I had left most of it from Friday, and I could not throw out a nearly full pot. I sliced a nearly fresh croissant and had it with my coffee while I returned to the office (formerly a bedroom) and started my usual process. Deborah was free in the morning, and we talked here and there throughout most of it. I had no plans for most of Saturday, and it was Deborah’s day off (she still teaches).
I have started rising before sunrise, remembering my father always waking for them, “There are only so many left, and I want to see them.”
I am waiting for the check from Allstate to replace the printer and UV hardening machine. I purchased the laundry from Costco, and it will appear on Wednesday. I am waiting for the final settlement and a check from LG for The Machine, and, sadly, it will be hauled away. The potential ease and simplicity of The Machine are not lost on me. I was tempted to try again, and LG offered me an additional 20% off my next LG machine. But I am not ready to return to the fold, so to speak. GE Profile brand offers a more usual laundry, with a mid-range-priced version from Costco as a bundle, which was the more sane choice. I cannot afford the time and money to experiment with something so mundane. I bought the stands too, but not stacked. I need this to go away.
While I am covering this, Air VW the Gray lease is approaching its first year and 1/2 point soon. VW leasing would like me to buy some mileage, as I have 9K with a 7.5K annual rate expected driving. The trip to LA and back is showing in the total. I have mixed feelings about this. I will see how cheap the miles are now versus later. I would rather use their money than use my own. This is my first leased vehicle.
Air VW the Gray is back to the mothership in two Mondays. There is the year 1 check (leased), a safety recall, with an expected 2+ day repair. I will use public transit for a few days. Always exciting.
The blog was done about 10:30, then I did some dishes, and I watched some YouTube videos from ShipHappens and LinerDesigns about the design for the Bismarck. I reviewed Drachinifel’s redesign of the armor and secondary battery, and added triple guns (though he admits the four-double-turret design was not bad). Making it almost an Iowa copy. I think the crazy mixed secondary and weak-to-non-existent anti-aircraft defenses on battleships were de rigueur for 1930s designs, and would have been replaced had the ship lasted longer, though her sister did not get these updates. For example, Yamato looked quite different in 1945, having been updated.
I had the last of the leftover Chinese-style food while watching the videos and chatting with Deborah. I then decided to code more in Python for AI and try some of my ideas. It was a lovely but code day, and I enjoyed looking at the bright day while I tried to translate Akkadian to English using my regular tools.
I believe I need to define a class for translations and use it to generate data to feed an engine or a matching algorithm. I will likely split the training data set and use it to evaluate my work. I have never done language processing, and I see references to AI inference engines and canned models everywhere. But their examples are still scoring low, and I think the data needs an intermediate form to achieve better results.
Instead, I just try to get more Python working for me and look online for Pythonic solutions (instead of coding loops or other structures). I use the token processing (turning a text into a list of words) and then use the set operation to create an intersection, just one line of code (!). It is why we use Python. It is so overloaded with cool functions to process messy data.
I managed to make two slow-matching processes, doubling my runtime (no surprise to me), and I submitted it with new logic to use the best-rated match (with little logic to decide that) and scored worse, but at least different. I looked at the provided dictionary file and am trying to figure out how to use it. I also see that I can download files to my space. I might get the English parsing files and upload them. There is also more reference material, and I may assemble even more information into my structures (very little, I think, will help with the matching, but it is interesting), as well as some new ideas. It looks like the challenge hosts are trying to help with the Assyriologist part (we are coders, not ancient language experts).
It is my almost birthday. I have reached 61 and ten months. That means I can apply for Social Security Benefits. I visited their website (I have had an account for years and strongly urge folks in the USA to get one and check their balances) and submitted my application. The surprise was the information on deceased spouses. You need the location of death (I checked it on Susie’s Death Certificate). It was also good that I knew my last employment dates, as I could answer the questions without concern. With that all done, I submitted my electronically signed application. I printed the required materials and have them on my desk.
I headed to Richard’s in Portland after that in Air VW the Gray. The traffic was light, and it was about forty minutes to get there from the house. We have a new gamer joining us, Anthony, and we returned to Darwin’s Journey, so we had to remember how to play. Richard soon lapped us in points, but the rest of us were only a few points apart. Anthony got 2nd with one point on me. Chris was only back ten points. I had played it a few times many years ago, but I remembered some of the rules. I missed getting an extra worker, and Richard was sure that if I’d done that, I would have been a distant 2nd, chasing him. Interesting.
(Yes, there is a lot going on)
Darwin’s Journey is an excellent, well-themed worker-placement and resource-management game (87th overall on BoardGameGeek). It flows well, and the turns can stall with so many options (so many choices), and players seldom interact with each other. The first play is hard, as you finally start to get it by the third round, and then we are past the 1/2 point, and now it is a race for points.
It is a Kickstarter game with too many fancy pieces, ways to vary play, and endless add-ons. The way it plays makes it different than most and an excellent game. But like many games like this, the next big thing on Kickstarter (which this once was) will send it to the back of the game collection. It was great to get it out again, and at less than $60 on Amazon, it’s not a stupidly expensive game. But to get all the bling, it can quickly add up to 200 € on the publisher’s website bundle.
While I was playing, I got a goodnight text from Deborah. It is always good, when separated, to start and end our days together in some way. I sent a picture of the game and a ‘good night.’
My return home was without incident, no ICE folks to shoot me down in Portland or Beverton and then arrest me for getting shot, and soon I was sleeping. I dreamed of being chased by tornadoes and running, and nobody but me seeing the risk. Yes, the robbers, laundry, repairs, and AI stuff have my mind in a tizzy; I have not dreamed like this since I retired. I woke at 4 and after a bio moment, went back to bed and dozed until 7 when my alarm rang.
Thanks for reading.
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