My morning seemed to be happening all at once. I had slept in until 8ish, knowing I had lunch with Scott (and I invited Joan S to join us, but a scheduling error with another appointment meant she missed us this time). I found the kitchen (it had not moved) and the coffee waiting for me. I also put in a mixed load of clothing into The New Laundry. PGE, my local utility, asked us on the volunteer list to reduce our power consumption on Thursday morning, and I did not use the dryer in the New Laundry until the afternoon. I unplugged various devices and did not use my desk lamp. Not much, but something. It is not all kindness; PGE pays me a small refund for helping.
I started the blog. I included my interest in exploring ancient texts and history, and I discussed it. I did more and more digging to better form my thoughts. I was also doomscrolling the news and reading Facebook items. I caught up on late-night comedians, who are also one of my news sources now (one of them said it is not that the comedians invaded the news, but that the news has become comedy and forced on them—an interesting observation). I was writing, reading, and composing, and soon another hour was gone, and I was late.
I did not have time to shower, but instead washed my face, brushed my mop of thin gray hair, and threw on clothes. I boarded Air VW the Gray and tried not to take it as a personal affront when Oregonians brake for green lights when I am running late!
Late by almost twenty minutes, Scott is only 1/4 through his beer, meaning not that late. We talked about my difficulty being an old, reasonably well-off white guy talking about discrimination that I did not experience. My difficulty with the information I received on the South Church Trip. This contrasted with my desire to have Courageous Conversations (the United Methodist Church’s term) about issues and politics. We talked about travel and my discoveries in coding AI solutions for a Kaggle challenge (Kaggle.com is a website that manages cutting-edge contests for solving AI problems).
Aside: As I discussed with Scott, I am finding that the higher-scoring submissions are scoring under 40 when orchestrating some existing models, and my weak solution using almost no technology scores 6.7. Google and others are supplying Open Source Large Language Model handling engines for general use. I am wondering now if the challenge is really understanding these models, picking one that best works on the crazy language selection (Akkadian to English), understanding the data, learning how to align the data to get better results, and then getting the run using Jupyter Notebooks (A sort of runtime environment for Python) subnitted and in completed in a reasonable amount of time. I am less interested in orchestration problems.
Mariah and I arranged an early dinner at Hopworks, off Southeast Powell in Portland, at 4ish.
Next, I return home in the EV, move the clothing from the washer to the dryer, and, in less than an hour, I am hanging up very dry, clean-smelling clothing. I do wonder if the previous machine left some funk on the clothing. Hmmmm.
I finally get into the shower after finishing the blog. My new OTC anti-fungal (skin rash is not getting better) product arrives, and it helps. By the time I am organized enough, it is time to drive to Portland. I take Highway 5, not 26, into Portland, as it was about the same time according to Nav, and is not a route I usually take. I like the view of Mount Hood. The view was great, and traffic was light, with only some stop-and-go due to an accident (another rear-end wreck). I made it in the VW about 4:15.
Mariah arrived before, and we soon talked about anything except Mariah’s work. We talked about travel and the edge of politics. We talked about money, houses, and laundry. We talked about my belief that data also contains information about itself that we miss. Avoiding the SciFi that there is a ghost-in-the-machine in the data we are missing. I am interested in what Akkadian texts, information from ancient shipwrecks, and ground-penetrating radar and scans can tell, and how to provide this information so AI can find that ghost. There are things to learn.
After some drinks for Mariah (I had one beer), a piece of cheesecake for me with coffee, we headed out. The return was the usual 26 path, as the outbound traffic from Portland was light. I returned home, watched The Two Popes on Netflix (here), and loved the show. It is a story based on events, but is all composed. It reminded me of the Cold War play, A Walk In The Woods (here). The story of two men, with opposing visions of the future of the Catholic Church, learning from each other. I thought it was touching, and I suggest watching the credits, as there are a few messages there.
With Thursday seemingly over before it started, I found my bed (it had not moved) and pulled up the covers and soon, after reading for a while and finding more errors in the book I am reading (the SciFi is self-published), I closed my eyes and was soon asleep. I have no memory of rising at night or having dreams. I woke just after 7 before sunrise.
Thanks for reading.
Alohawild (Michael Wild's) Website 