Tuesday Busy Busy with Lighting

I rose early, at 6:30, and the day was overcast and gray. Winter has come as usual, all at once. We had some sprinkles throughout the day. Back to the Oregon Mist. The wind was still as the marine weather started to flow into the valley. Smoke was back, but our numbers were still under 100, and soon the mist would take the smoke to the ground. September started wtih the return of the rains, and we long-term residents of the Pacific Northwest all but danced in the rains!

I cannot recall whether I finished the blog then or somewhere in between things. I brought the new game Vestige with me to Richards. Today we played a board game as James is out, and we will bring the ISS Vanguard cooperative board game forward when James is back in a few weeks. Robin joined us; I have played with her once before.

Richard stayed with his plan to own the board and added the acquisition of Chopbots to his actions. He scored over 100 while I was below 70, trying to run the various colors. I also misplayed my Special Op cards, losing the points and benefits associated with them. Robin was chasing me, but could not catch me. Richard is trying to decide whether he needs his own copy; if he goes for it, he would not buy the wretched version but the full version. For $49, I have no objection to my lesser copy.

The game is a reworking of Vindication with more choices, I feel, and seems to be less driven by luck and more by planning and interacting with the board and other players. I think it is a much more interesting game. Robin struggled to get the rules in her head, as this is not a usual Euro or American design. We all enjoyed our two-hour+ game. We hope to get play time down to an hour. That is part of the magic of Vindications: you get a whole gaming experience, and it completes in an hour. More to come on that subject. We did not play the Nemesis system yet.

I had to leave early to check in at church about Jeff and the upgrades he is installing. New EXIT signs, some with Emergency lights, are getting installed. I need to make a down payment to cover materials for the church (I have yet to decide whether to make that a donation). I arrived at the church without issue and discovered that one of the new signs was damaged. I then drove to the house and back to get the last set of EXIT signs I had in the garage (there for over a decade) and returned them. I forgot to put them in Air VW the Gray when I left Tuesday morning.

I talked to Jeff and Jack about possible projects involving the bell tower. I will put that on the back burner for now. The cross needs a fresh coat of paint, and the speakers next to it are showing some deterioration. It would be nice to light it at night too.

With that done, I stopped by 185th Veggies to pick up something for dinner. I had put out a steak and a pork chop to defrost. I watched more For All Mankind while putting together my lunch/dinner. I fried the pork chop and microwaved a potato. I also steamed fresh green beans. It was a lot of food. I had some crackers and avocado toast before I cooked, as I was famished. I get the little one-serving avocado packs from Trader Joe’s. I finished two episodes.

Next, I took my quantum computing book to read more linear algebra in The 649. I brought my laptop to play music. This is covered in this book, which has the same name, to enable the reader to start developing programs for quantum computers. Crystal was the bartender, and I ordered a beer and found a quiet seat by the window, put in my AirPods, and read. It is always strange when you are studying how quickly time goes by. I looked up, and it was dark. Crystal shared that she was slammed, as they were dead earlier, and it was just her and the cook now. We both agreed that the patterns have changed in both the bar and traffic. This year, back-to-school is not the same as before. I continued to read and think. I got a bit lost in some of it. I am also having trouble retaining all of it, as I do not have a photographic memory like many, but I think I have the application down. I am better at execution than at reciting text (as evidenced by my grades in Math, though I was in honors math).

I can clearly see how complex vectors will resolve into a model that matches the collapse of a wave function. I also see how operators can rotate, and the interesting pulsing that imaginary numbers create. I am familiar with this from coding fractal graphics (which I did back in the 1980s in BASIC on a Commodore 64, displaying the Mandelbrot set). I also got a hint (while seeking clarification on vector calculations) that complex vectors are related to ellipses. Ellipse calculations are part of present-day encryption that is under threat from quantum computers. Interesting.

I ended my night at the bar reading with a cup of coffee and a shot of Amaretto to sip while I read. I got further into the math. I am twenty pages from starting the coding section, and it is slow going. I will look at some cheap linear algebra textbooks at Powell’s or take classes (MIT has a free lecture that covers this, too).

I returned home, tried to do some figure painting, and read more Nero Wolfe, but soon was nodding off. I had shoved enough into my mind and had enough running around for the church work. The world soon disappeared in snuggly blankets and darkness.

Thanks for reading.