Author: alohawild

The day started with me being allowed to sleep in until 7ish. It was Friday, a work-from-home day, and usually when I did all the stretching and exercises recommended by my physical therapy people. Unfortunately, my legs were stiff to the point of wondering if I should use a cane–I skipped today. I found myself able to make coffee, a liberal-style Equal Trade brand, and located and selected a banana for breakfast.

I then spent hours in my office, the back bedroom, and formally Corwin’s room, and used my excellent 1G connection to attend hours of Zoom status and to work from home on various items. Sadly, the shoe company experienced an outage mid-morning that appeared to be a problem in the cloud and was likely present on the Internet. This slowed the work and communication. I tested my connection and was still at near 1G, but all the Intenet-based tools at Nike were unreachable. This reminds us how much we rely on fast and easy Internet in a modern business setting in the USA (and the rest of the world).

Aside: Artificial Intelligence (AI) could be described as our phone and Internet making us more than we are in our physical selves. A library then could be considered AI, a very slow AI. While these tools make us more interconnected and have more information, they do not guarantee truth (less like a sound library). Instead, they can become an echo chamber reinforcing incorrect information and increasing emotional attachment to a questionable source. Furthermore, as a coder for machine learning, training AI structures to find value is quite tricky. Our new AI needs some work.

I made lunch of the leftovers from the tacos from the previous dinner. I warmed up the meat and tacos, added lettuce, olives, and salad dressing, and enjoyed a homemade taco salad.

I was working on a leftover and now critical-path (ugh) crisis. I had tried some folks that no longer work in certain areas, and they were able to help me find some old information (details cannot be put here), and I was able at 4:45 on Friday (so classic) to provide the results for the critical-path issue. I was busy the whole day. I did follow along into the late evening on the project and was happy that no crises of the moment came to me last night.

I slipped out to see Susie on the cold, damp day (back to our usual weather) around 2PM, and the Friday traffic was light and well-behaved. I did see the off-ramps (Highway 217 is built in a cut that is sometimes quite deep), more like up-ramps, were filled with cars and slow and backing up onto 217. Hall Boulevard, my exit, is not a ramp, so it worked well. It appears that the up-ramps are being rebuilt, and there is much reconstruction going on now for 217–it does not improve the experience so far.

Susie was waiting for me in the shared living room space in her recliner. She had nodded off, and I had to wake her. Everyone else was sleeping. Blue Bloods, one of her favorite re-runs, was playing on the TV. She was delighted to see me and had put-off lunch until after I appeared.

Susie was happy to call her mother, Leta, on my iPhone and see each other on FaceTime. They talked about the usual things, and I let the call go on for a while. But, after thirty minutes, I had to head out. Susie was sad as I had to leave after a short visit (my phone sounded with Slack messages and emails the whole stay), and she thought it was her fault, “I am sorry.” I tried to reassure her that it was just the need for me to work and had nothing to do with her and being at the hummingbird house.

Susie swings from the hummingbird house as her home, and her thinking it is an expensive hotel, and expects to go home. She loves all the attention at hummingbird house and that she is never alone (she was lonely when I worked), but she misses the familiarity of the Volvo Cave and Air Volvo. Susie also misses all the trips to NYC, Europe, North Carolina, and Michigan. Today, Susie was comfy but concerned about the bill (as if it was a hotel) and me having to rush off. Yet, she feels safe and loved there. I reassured her and Jennifer, the live-in nursing aide, then distracted Susie with questions about lunch as I left.

The traffic, as usual, was slower on the way back from Beaverton, and those soccer moms and dads were out getting the kids causing the close-of-school traffic jam in Beaverton. I accepted the slow driving and waiting twice for many traffic lights. The sun appeared, and the skies showed some blue. It is hard not to be a fan of global warming in Oregon (sorry, California)!

I reached the house, took off my shoes (deciding to stay in tonight), and got some offers to Portland (beer and pizza), but settled to make dinner. I sliced up some of the ham from our local Olympic Provisions (recommending the ham to our local readers who can order it delivered in the Greater Portland area), microwaved two potatoes to 80% cook time, sliced (hot!), and added. I a few slices of cheese (I am out of shredded) and stirred them into the hot ham and potatoes. Not waiting for the potatoes to crisp, I added Egg Beaters (my new choice for egg cooking) and made a breakfast scramble. I used a non-stick pan (from Steve W) and skipped spices. The plain food was excellent. I like Egg Beaters for this use, and even when the chicken plague ends, I think I will stick to this for breakfast (or dinner).

Forgoing writing the blog Friday night, drinking beer at various taphouses, and having dinner in Portland, I started on my Python coding (Python is an oldish programming language named for Monty Python, and I used it in the 1990s). Python runs more like the old BASIC interpreter-based language than unforgiving compiled languages like C (and all its versions) and has found its place as the best AI tool available.

Very Aside: Python coding has developed a culture. Some of the cultural norms would be good in any work:

• Beautiful is better than ugly.
• Explicit is better than implicit.
• Simple is better than complex.
• Complex is better than complicated.
• Readability counts

I continued working on the Kaggle website until I could not see straight (a new problem limiting me to four hours of coding) and managed to create a program to extract five points for each data set (an event in the data set for ICE) and even got the 3D line approximated using SVD. But, Eigen matrix manipulation and calculus (usually called calc III in the USA college courses) were last done by me in the 1980s at Central Michigan University. So, while I did graduate in the honors club for math (my only claim to fame), I am struggling with the process.

Thus I turned back to my AI engine, Google, and soon found good how-to articles that were light on the math and heavy on execution. I was able to create, shocking me that this worked in less than ten lines of code, two points on the 3D fit line using Python and numpy (an open-source math library that makes Python extremely useful). Wow!

As I often do, I fought with Python syntax, getting data frames to work as I wanted and making everything work. I use the trick of having a Verbose variable and creating a print statement controlled by (uses the code ‘If verbose == True:’) to trace as I run. I often love how data frames let me search but then fight to get the results set into a processing loop (switching to Pythonic dictionary processing). I am always impressed by how much you can get done in a few lines of Python.

I spent the evening working on code, and finally, my brain burned, and unable to see straight, I went to bed. I stopped drinking tea (I made a pot for the coding adventure) at 7PM to allow for sleep. I managed to get a good rest.

Thanks for reading.

I started the day with me, as often happens, falling to sleep after waking up just before my alarm, a deep, comfortable sleep, and then blasting awake to my iPhone alarm–I was laughing this time. I did not even know I had fallen asleep at 5:55. It took a moment to reconfigure to Thursday, and then I checked there were no incidents at the shoe company or with Susie. All clear. I headed into the kitchen, started the water heating, identified a banana, and took my pills. Next, in the living room, I ordered the lights on via Alexa (called ‘Echo’ in my house for all the obvious reasons) and Paul Simon music while I ran through the light day stretches and exercises. Thursday is a light day with full scope done on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and one more day. This takes twenty minutes, and then I make coffee, liberal Exqual Exchange in my French Press, and take a cup and the banana to the office. I am starting to reduce my food intake as my body begins to react (gain weight) instead of using the food to recover from cancer and chemotherapy (I am better).

I reviewed the emails (both mine and those from Nike) and the endless, so it seemed, traffic on Slack for all the work done in the previous two shifts. I read more news on CNN, BBC, and New York Times. So depressing as the death count from the earthquake in the near East has risen to over 20,000 people killed. I saw some Fox News complaints that the China balloon was not shot down and crashed into people in Montana. I will just continue with the eye-rolling. I am waiting for Weird Al to redo China Doll by David Bowie.

Soon it was time to get ready, 7ish, and I showered, dressed, and boarded Air Volo with my Nike laptop. It is a tradition to stick stickers on your laptop like an old backpack. I have a Pride sticker, a few project stickers, a special sticker for our building (Clubhouse–yes, we have a brand), and one that says, “Third Party Data is Nike data that needs a hug,”  with a pair of teddy bears hugging. With my sticker-bearing laptop, I reached Clubhouse before 8 and began my hours of meetings. I worked on various crises of the moment and carry-over crises while listening to the status meetings. The progress was good last night, and while there were many issues, none required my attention or even to speak for the status meetings.

I did have one meeting that I had to contribute to, and then more carry-over crises kept me busy most of the morning. I also found my lunch bookended and canceled my lunch with Scott on the Nike WHQ. I did not have the time to travel and make my meetings.

I could slip out at 10:30 and make my Physical Therapy appointment in Bethany. Michael from PT went over things, and I did another set of workouts with more folks. About 45 minutes of talking and working out. No new items, and they were happy with how I was doing. Slow and sure and painless (except for some muscle use). Next, I stopped by Bethany Public House and had a quick bowl of chili with a Diet Coke, sitting in the sun at the bar.

Why yes, I wrote ‘sun.’ It was sunny with blue skies and 62F (16.7C) today. Dry. Unexpected, dare we say unprecedented.

Next, I met with my boss Brad for the mid-year review. This one does not count towards your final rating; more of a dry-run for your annual review. From what I heard, I seem to be the warm blanket for the new folks, and they were pleased to have me work with them and help where I could provide expertise. Nike hired some of the world’s experts (one wrote the book on the software), so I can only give some direction. It is a great team to work with.

After that, I was finally free to head out to see Susie. Thursday traffic for Beaverton was lighter than I expected, and I believe the sun and blue skies caused the local drivers to put away their suicidal driving styles and actually try to make it home safely so they could enjoy the nice weather. Soon I was at the hummingbird house.

Jennifer informed me that Susie was still in her chair, holding out from taking a nap; she was waiting for me. Jennifer got Susie in the wheelchair, and I tried to help with getting Susie a coat, but it mostly made things worse. Finally, we were out the door in fine weather. Susie was as amazed as I was to be enjoying a spring day in February in the Greater Portland Area.

We were not alone. Metzger Park, next to the hummingbird house, was full of kids, dogs, and folks enjoying the park. The benches were dry, and even the grass was not wet. The ground was still muddy. Susie let me push her to the end of the park and back. It is still colder than Susie likes, but we found a sunny spot and a bench, going across the grass to get there, and we called Leta, Susie’s mother. We talked for a while, but Susie kept pulling up the blankets to get warm. The sun helped a bit, but Susie was cold. Soon I got Susie back inside after ringing off and said goodbye with a kiss. It was a short visit as I had to return to work (online).

I found more traffic on the way back to the Volvo Cave. I was soon home and on the next Zoom status meeting. This time I put on the video and did spins in my chair to Queen–the project testing cycle has a theme song. This was my last meeting, and I also continued working on crises that carried over. I sent out updates and then decided to stop.

I made tacos by browning some ground beef from the freezer and items from the pantry. It was so good. I use the standard packet (low salt) and a can of flame-roasted tomatoes. Maybe a bit too sweet for some, but I like it.

I watched Nova (I bought the season) and how they built the new subway under London. It took 14 years, 25 Billion dollars (in today’s dollars), and put 70,000 people to work, and they expect it to last at least 125 years. It always amazes me how little things cost compared to the nearly trillion-dollar defense bill for the USA (all borrowed money) every year. The USA farm support budget is $600 billion (all borrowed). It hurts me to see what can be done considering long horizons.

Next, we had a Theology Pub Zoom meeting which left me disquieted. However, I will not dwell on that here.

I started the blog before the Theology Pub meeting and finished it after the meeting.

The morning starts at 6AM with my alarm and this time I woke a few times at night and was a bit tired when I started. But I was not exhausted like a few days ago; I just thought 6AM was f**king early. I started the coffee water and then did all my exercises (after checking that there was no emergency at work) and stretches. I was reading emails (mine and the shoe company’s), Slack messages, and the news. The loss of life in Turkey is beyond imagination–7,000+ killed and uncounted folks homeless in the winter (due to poor adherence to construction standards despite having revised them after the last disastrous earthquake). I mostly ignored the love/hate news about President Biden’s speech. I soon was out of time and showered and dressed. I had coffee and a banana for breakfast and took the rest of the coffee to work in my thermal mug.

I left at 7:30AM in Air Volvo but still managed to play connect the school bus a few times. So I did arrive before eight and started my ninety minutes of status and update meetings. During the meetings, I would multi-task, read emails and Slack messages, and make updates. It is a hectic time.

I managed to slip near 11 to see Susie. Susie was delighted to see me after a short trip on the highway. The exit before mine on 217 was blocked by an unmoving truck. Folks were trapped in their cars on the off-ramp that was more a bridge than a road. I was happy to reach Susie without incident as I had a meeting with my boss at 1PM. We managed to call Susie’s mother, Leta, and talk to her for a while. We also reached Dr. Peter Koper, our former English professor from CMU, and had a lovely brief chat with him. Soon, I needed to leave. Susie did not want me to go but understood it was a workday, and I had appointments to keep. I stopped at Chipotle and had a rice bowl. It tasted fresh, and I enjoyed it. I think I would rather have lettuce than rice. I had chips and a Diet Coke.

I rushed back, and my boss was ready for me; not my planned meeting, but a crisis to resolve. I spent the afternoon communicating with folks and trying to find resolutions for the various issues. I was busy all afternoon on this issue. I had to also keep covering the other crises that were popping up. So I was going non-stop all afternoon.

I left near 5PM and enjoyed slow rush-hour Beaverton traffic. I stopped at Dave’s Hot Chicken as it was on my way, and wanted to try it. The portions are enormous, and the medium is a fried chicken strip of white meat encased in a tar-like spice crust which was interesting. I can’t say I did not like it. It was more than I wanted to eat, and I had to throw some out. I had a chocolate shake with it, and that was quite good. So I am unsure about the place; mild is on for next time, and just one chicken strip. I can’t decide if I hate it or if it is unique and I should like it.

After the dinner experiment with spice-encased fried chicken strips, I headed to First United Methodist Church in Beaverton, just beyond Old Town. I met Zophia to play games while her mother, Dondrea, practiced in the church band. Tonight Zophia first struggled to learn Wingspan, a new game. It takes about three plays to get it all down, as there are a lot of concepts to take in. Wingspan is an elegant competitive game where each player builds a bird sanctuary. Birds, represented by cards, are collected and assigned a place in the player board (the sanctuary) by providing food. The sanctuary is executed and brings in new resources with bird cards providing superpowers when played, activated as part of an action, or tripped by events. Unlike my favorite types of board games with easy turns, Wingspan (and Terraforming Mars) have complex turns that run engines built by the players. Therefore, you need to plan your turns out to be efficient.

Aside: On Facebook Dave’s Hot Chicken is not an allowed place name. I was trying to post a pic of my food and could not place it at Dave’s. Unexpected. I then tried to create a place and got a message that the name was not allowed–weird. No post from me.

Wingspan plays fast, and we managed to play two games even with all the stops and starts. Zophia started to get it in the second game and was only a few points behind me. The game comes with little plastic eggs, and Zophia’s cards (birds) were covered with eggs (each a point at the end of the game). She said she liked it and was happy to learn a new game.

We played cut-throat Azul after that until it was time to leave. We split, with me winning one and Zophia winning one. We score differently than most, giving one point for a pair, zero for a single tile, and the rest as usual. We don’t score easy stuff. We would often also play one extra round.

With the games done for tonight, Zophia is tasked with picking a game for her birthday:

Architects of the West Kingdom (with subsequent holidays and events to get the various add-ons).

Brass: Lancashire (gaming chips to follow at another event)

Windspan

Vindication (it should be on shelves again soon)

Scythe (base game with holidays for add-ons)

Terraforming Mars (base game with a few add-ons to improve the base game, which is too cheap to play) **Not played yet**

Concordia (with more maps and add-ons available for more events and holidays)

Chess set

War of Whispers

The day started at 6AM, with me waking with my alarm. I had fallen asleep from exhaustion the night before and had to get up at 1:30AM to finish getting ready for bed. I was happy that I was not dragging when I started on Tuesday morning. The lack of sleep seems to be causing my breathing issues.

I did my stretches and exercises, excluding those not done daily, and then read emails and Slack channel updates. I was busy until 7ish, when I showered and got dressed. I boarded Air Volvo and arrived before 8AM at the Clubhouse office building for the shoe company and home of our project.

The project was finishing important critical path tasks, and at 1PM was the determination to move to the next step. I was voting this time as I was filling in for my co-worker Rajani who was doing family things in India–we wish them all well and a great time in India (wish we were there to help and enjoy the events).

I had multiple crises of the moment and some vendor patches that did not work, and I had to send a message to the vendor to fix their stuff (SAP Incident on SAP notes, for you who speak SAP). I received some suggestions from the vendor, applied more patches, and then returned the message as that, too, failed. We also had a severe break and other issues. I was busy.

Everything quieted for a moment, and I headed out to see Susie. I arrived at the hummingbird house in Air Volvo without incident or enjoying imaginative driving from my fellow drivers. The grey wet seemed to slow everyone and drain them of any imagination. But I love it–it is an Oregon thing. “Look at that grey; wow, it is dark!” is something only an Oregonian would say with a smile.

Susie was still eating when I arrived at 11. I stood by and read a letter from Eva to Susie while she ate–Thank you, Eva. Susie ate until 11:15, finishing her Ensure, strawberry flavor. Susie and I then headed to the social activity room and called Leta, her mother. Leta called us back when she was in her house; she was returning from Bible Study when we called. For St. Valentine’s Day, I ordered fruitcake and fudge from the monks for Leta–she loved it. Leta and Susie chatted for a while. I stayed longer than my usual short stay on a work day. I thought Susie need a bit more time and she seemed relieved when I stayed a bit longer. But I had issues showing on my iPhone from the project and questions I needed to answer. So I left Susie with a kiss and she was OK with me leaving today. No tears for me today.

Work went on with a few more crises and then suddenly slowed, the usual afternoon change of shift slowdown. I stay past my shift and start before it so I can prevent any botched handovers. I am not sure I can keep that up, but for the moment it works.

I did the pre-sale of Expeditions from Stonemaier Games picking the maxed-out version, of course. This is the same company that made the board game Scythe and this new game is based on the same steampunk themes. I have a totally bling’d version of Scythe and there was no thought of not buying this new game.

I also read that Vindication, another fav game, is finally delivering the last Kickstarter in the USA. I also read that there is a fix package, free, for all the corrections (like the last time) that have been discovered. A special Penitence card pack is also being provided for free as a special for us supporters. Yes, the game was designed here in the Greater Portland Area, overly polite, and over-caffeinated.

Well, it will be a short blog. Not much to share–just lots of work at work. I did order through the app from Olive Garden and picked up dinner. Spaghetti with meatballs, two breadsticks (they changed to only two breadsticks years ago), and a great salad. I ate that and watched the Vox Machina episodes I missed these last few weeks. This is a profane animated series based on a Dungeons and Dragon campaign–I am liking the second season.

Thanks for reading.

It being Monday, a work-from-home day, I slept in until after 7:30 but woke up a lot. I have felt like I have breathing issues and have been tired all day. However, there is no coughing or loss of smell or taste, so there is no reason to believe it is Covid-19. I just need a weekend from my weekend!

As I said, I luxuriated in bed until I had to get started. I was online at night with the start of the next testing cycle for the project at the shoe company. While in bed, I checked for any issues and finally got going and made coffee in the kitchen. Breakfast was light; I had a late dinner on Sunday of oven-baked clam strips with tartar sauce and canned peaches. Breakfast was peanut butter toast and some more canned peaches. I wrote the blog last night and was falling asleep as I was writing it–a theme for today too.

I started my day by reading emails from the shoe company and my own, Slack channel updates (lots of these), and CNN to get a handle on what was happening. I was feeling OK but a bit dizzy as the morning went on. I did the first couple hours of meetings and then took a break to do my exercises and stretches. I managed to complete them as a distraction for the re-org meeting.

Yes, time for another re-org, effective immediately. Our director is now moved to the project director and will continue to exist after the project (yes, a concern mostly not spoken of). The legacy systems remain in the old structure for the time being. Thus, I survived another re-org–it is The Way of corporate IT.

Now that that was done, I headed out to see Susie. But I was feeling off, so I had a ham and cheese sandwich before leaving, slicing the ham from an Olympic Provision ham. So good. I sliced a bit more than needed and had a stacked sandwich. I think that made me sleepy and maybe caused some breathing issues, which I believe are primarily mental (I get tired and just want to sleep, and the breathing issues slow me). I know that all checks of my oxygen levels always come back good.

So tired, I headed to Susie’s without issue or any observations of extra-legal driving. I stop by Safeway and get some fresh flowers (Susie’s flowers in her room are fading) and some bananas for breakfast). Susie was delighted to see me; she resting in her recliner in the shared living room, watching the news. It was depressing with an earthquake in Eastern Türkiye (Turkey) that also impacted Syria, thousands dead. The China Ballon crisis continues into absurdity. The reports that the Trump administration let the balloons in, claimed to be fake news by the former president, were actually fake news. Worse, our very expensive military had not noticed them before (ugh). Instead of focusing on that, we called Leta, Susie’s mother, and they chatted for a while. We use my iPhone and FaceTime so Susie and Leta can see each other. Susie gets to practice holding the phone, and this keeps Susie from falling asleep (but today, she seemed very awake).

I was in a rush and feeling off, so I did not stay long; my regular visit is about twenty minutes on a working day (twenty minutes there, stay for 20, and then travel back twenty minutes again). The travel back was easy traffic, but my inhaler was not helping as much as I had hoped, and I felt like I could not breathe. Not a very happy drive. Once back at the house, I felt better.

The afternoon was full of crises of the moment as we headed to the 4:30 status meeting,g where I had to give some updates. Mostly, things were fine. I followed along, getting some rest a few times to improve my breathing. A short 15 min absolves the problem–yes,s it is in my head.

I head to BJ’s around 6 and have appetizers for dinner. Chips and flatbread with the waiter, a new one, suggesting something that I thought was not as good as my usual, but it is good to try things. I finish with coffee and a shot of Amaretto to sip with the coffee.

I am tired and have been watching, on my iPhone, all the events at the shoe company.

That is a wrap! Thanks, for reading!