I woke up tired, and it seemed gravity was turned up on the earth, at least on my part. It was closer to 8 than 7, and the mix of blue and clouds allowed a few sun rays through. I felt like the whole day ran slow, and I was with it. The previous two days had been busy and full of events and challenges. And today I was paying for that.
I also hit dense math in the Quantum Computer book and felt lost; frankly, I worried I wasn’t up to the task, which was depressing. Interestingly, I did understand the underlying reasons and structures. The book focuses on mathematical processes; I haven’t seen some since the 1980s, and others are new to me. I never took math for quantum mechanics in college. My cough also started back. Ugh!
It was not a very exciting day of lounging and reading. Sorry, dear reader.
I transferred money and paid my AMEX cards, which were full of past and some new travel expenses. Some hotels are pay now, cancel until two days before, and save. I also booked a trip to Seattle next weekend, alone, and picked the State Hotel for too much money. I am riding the new train for Amtrak. I plan to later take it for an overnight in Eugene.
The morning started with me making coffee from Equal Exchange. It is already ground and missing a few flavors, but it works and is easier than grinding (though honestly, it takes no time to grind beans). With this, I had a bowl of a nut-filled crunch cereal with no-fat milk (from a shelf-stable container in the fridge after opening). I remembered to slice the banana into the cereal this time. It is better with fresh fruit.
I did the usual steps of uploading all my transactions into Quicken and making sure nothing was going astray with my money. I have to make this last for the rest of my life. So far, I am living off my investments. It is part of the discipline, or Kung-fu, of being retired; I check my transactions every day.
I read my email, again mostly deleting things I won’t read and have not taken the time to remove yet. I read the news, and today I watched many of the late-night takes on the news on YouTube. I get the blog started and realize I have an eye check in Tualatin. I need to rush and stop. I get into Air VW the Gray with my laptop and head south. I am only one minute late, with Nav timing it perfectly.
Beaverton driving was slow, and I was careful around those photo lights, having already paid over $170 for a self-portrait from the City of Beaverton at 160th and TV Highway. I watch the light turn green, count to seven, and then a car moves when I am five or so cars back from the light. Hmmm. I tried to wave my arms like a spell and use words, not profane (this time), involving requests and pleas to my fellow users of TV Highway to drive when the light is green.
The eye exam, an annual $250 cost (without insurance), showed that my diabetes, controlled, has not impacted my eyes. My right eye prescription has slightly changed, but not enough to replace my glasses. My cataracts do not need surgery and seem unchanged, and if I am not having trouble at night (which I admit seems slightly darker now, but to a point where I am worried), then it is best to wait another year. Excellent.
After that, I tried Famous Dave’s BBQ across the street, but the $27 plate of two types of meat just didn’t do it for me. It seemed almost boiled. No browning or smoky flavors. Now I have been to St. Louis, Nashville, and Detroit for BBQ, and my standards are high. This was awful. I ate it, and I enjoyed the sides and the cornbread. I had a Blue Moon beer with it. I finished my blog and left my usual 20% tip. I will not be back.
I returned home, did more For All Mankind, and found the focus on personal relationships distracting from the storyline, but the point, I think, is that science and exploration are human endeavors and must include those elements. The use of solar sails almost had me cheering, as few things inspire my imagination more than sailing a ship in the stars.
I read more about quantum computing in the last section, Measurement, before the second half of the book on algorithms. I am not surprised by this; after some very dense mathematics — even the author says it’s dense — it shows that a matrix operation makes Measurement possible. Thus, the gates and measurements are just matrices that combine with the initial state to produce a result that is outside of time.
And I wondered what could be in the other twenty pages, and soon learned–more like read, as my head is now exploding with matrix operations–there is a less-than-wave-collapsing measurement, a projection, that lets you get a handle on the probability of states and thus allows for some decisions, but to do these decisions inside of the no-time of quantum, it would need to be done by gates. Hmmm. Still, this would be interesting.
I also worry that there is a percentage of failure from noise, and not getting to 100% on some values would accumulate and make the solution useless. I have read in less technical sources that an error-correction process uses multiple qubits to produce a reliable answer. It has been my experience (Nike processed a billion updates in an hour) that even a small error chance, when exposed to real-world workloads, can happen and happen often.
I spent part of the rest of the evening in Python, writing code using a quantum computing simulator via QuTip. I read the documentation and managed to add measurement and display my circuit design. I tried to run it, but creating an initial state left me confused. Hmmm.
I went to bed and read more of Erik Larson’s excellent American Civil War book, The Demon of Unrest. From what I read at the beginning, it seems the author tries to understand how people could imagine going to war against each other. What emotions, fears, and events drove this war? I read a few of his short chapters and soon fell asleep.
I had trouble sleeping and kept waking up after wandering a dream airport trying to find my flight and check my bag. After walking around for a while and getting lost, I would find out my flight had been called, and I couldn’t catch it. This dream repeated over and over: I’d wake up somewhere else, fall asleep again, and still be lost in another part of the dream airport. I never caught my flight. I remember thinking I needed to remove any items that wouldn’t go through security now that I had to take my bag with me as a carry-on.
Thanks for reading!
