Thursday Coughing and Theology Pub

Dear readers, another day of coughing and trying to make myself better. It is boring. It is frustrating. But it is necessary. I slept in until 8-ish, missing the sunrise, but I did spend a few moments near sunset, hydrating with all the water and tea I have been consuming. Dreams did not stay with me. And I soon rose, but the coughing was quite unpleasant, the wheezing familiar. This is my usual mix of seasonal allergies and a cold that slides in.

Also, from past experience, nothing is in my lungs; they stay clear, and I just have the drip-drip of a head cold mixed with allergies. Unpleasant but not a threat. I also know the supreme court of treatment, steroids, will not finish it. Just something I need to pass through.

I write the blog with freshly made coffee and toast with peanut butter, my current favorite breakfast. Yes, I have no bananas. I do not dress until mid-afternoon, and that keeps me home and going slow. As boring as it is, it is not time to be galavanting through the Greater Portland Area.

I switch my playlist to “Too Fast,” and that helps me focus on writing and doing everything I need to do. Music like “Joy to the World,” “Diablo Rojo,” and “The Time Warp,” plus songs like “You Can Leave Your Hat On” and “She Blinded Me With Science,” pumps me up as I write. I manage to assemble a narrative before the morning ends, do my usual reading of the NY Times, update transactions for my credit cards and cash accounts, and post the blog to Facebook and email it.

Lunch is noodles in broth. I open the too-large Costco slicing ham (I will have to freeze it or give it away), slice off some bits, and heat them in a pan to brown them slightly and reduce the water content. I also select three uneven-sized eggs from 185 Veggie Market and boil them for hard-boiled eggs. The ramen has a matching broth that goes with them (eschewing the flavor pack), and I microwave it for four minutes. I combine a split egg (overcooked for this process) and ham, and then use a peeler to add some carrot peels, more as a garnish to get the two colors than for flavor. It is not as good as what you get at a noodle place, but it worked. I only used some of the broth, and I will have to get more noodles!

I watched more of For All Mankind season 2 and found myself reliving the forgotten Korean Air Lines flight downing by the Soviets. It was awful the first time, and seeing it again was just terrible. I completed the episode and can see where this is going. Not sure I want more.

I am feeling less bad, but I know it is the meds and going slow, and I decided to limit myself to just my chair until the Theology Pub meeting after 6. I read more about quantum computers and QuTiP, an open-source Python simulation library. My frustration is growing because I cannot understand how to code this or how it can produce the incredible results promised by this technology. Not the theory, which I understand (see below), but actually coding. I wander the Internet for more thoughts and code, find something for another version, and discover programming languages with how-to blogs and public access to run your program on their hardware.

With more digging, I learned that QuTip has an extension that installs separately to do the programming or circuits for quantum computer simulations. The AIs that provide the answer — the AIs are impossible to avoid now —are based on out-of-date material, and I found the updated versions, read that I need a separate install for QuTip quantum circuits, installed them, and started running code closer to what I expected. My notebook (my Jupyter Notebook) disconnects, and I lose my updates and references. I redo the work and save it this time. Yikes!

I also learned that the code in the documentation example is out of date and throws a deprecation warning. I made an adjustment, and it now runs without a warning. Yes, moving closer to the leading (bleeding?) edge. As a responsible coder, I may flag the documentation for an update. I need to check that I am reading the correct version before doing that.

Aside: All conventional computers use a clock, and that is one of those selling points of a processor: how fast its clock is. To run digital processes, we need a pulse that says, “do the next thing”: the clock. And while we can add more parallel processors and hardware, we cannot escape the space and heat limits and, oddly, the speed-of-light issues. Synchronizing this pulse across long wires and laser pulses becomes problematic even across a country. A quantum computer (QC) operates without this pulse and sort of works outside of time and space, running a probabilistic circuit, as these programs are called, not a strict 0-or-1 process of pulse-driven digital circuits. The theory is that they can solve problems without the restraints of time and space. Some believe 2030 is the year we will have the first working QC.

More aside: I am thinking of learning to code them and building a decision-tree process so they can instantly do AI calculations, then expanding it to a random forest of decision trees.

With that, I decided it was best to shower and let the steam help; I did the usual, got dressed, shaved, and so on, then went back to my chair in the living room. I rented Conan the Barbarian from Apple for $3.99 and enjoyed the insane movie that I loved back in 1982, my last summer before college. I cannot remember seeing it, but it was likely with Eric and either Rusty or Tyler. It inspired many catchphrases later in Dungeons & Dragons play. The ending is senseless and more about running out of money and accidentally setting the set on fire, which I learned later in a making-of video.

With that over, the clock was soon closing in on 6, and I took Air VW the Gray to Beaverton and McMenamins Cedar Hills. Soon, Dondrea and Z showed up, along with about eight more (plus one online). The topic was 9/11 and how we remember it and how it changed us and the country. One person had a family member there, and that person escaped a tower before it fell. Everyone was concerned that this was when the surveillance state started and has since expanded. We let it happen after 9/11; security for freedom was the offer we took. We now make the same exchange for schools after all the shootings. The expansion of surveillance and its misuse is now a concern. When is it no longer about safety but about repression and fear, and thus, conversely, making us less safe?

I had the electric tacos again and could still taste and enjoy the wickedly spiced beef, even with my cough and cold. I had one drink: an Old Fashioned. We broke up, and I headed home. I read, did the dishes, and soon was in bed. More cough meds. I fell asleep and didn’t wake until sunrise.

Thanks for reading.