Author: alohawild

It is hot! It is the Summer Solstice. It is Father’s Day.

I made teriyaki boneless ribeye steaks for dinner on the grill. The deck was so hot that, even in my socks, I had to stand on the part of the deck in the shade. I imagine that we could cook eggs in a black pan today just set on the street in the sun.

Tomorrow will be hotter. We have the AC on, and all the curtains and blinds pulled. No baking or cooking. I even grilled carrots (almost to cinders). The potatoes in foil did better.

To make dinner, I picked up another tank of propane today. Now I have only one that is empty. When it is under 100F in the car, I will get the other one refilled! Today is not the weather to put a possible leaking propane tank in Air Volvo and drive it to the gas station to refill!

Returning to the morning, I spent the morning painting some Scythe figures and managed to finish the basic painting on the Saxony faction (black). I painted everything brighter than before as I liked the look I did for Richard’s Anachrony figures.

Evan spent the night reducing his commute to a pickleball training camp. He was out by 9.

Susie slept in; I headed out to a coffee shop. I first tried Insomnia Coffee. It was jammed, and every spot was taken. Yes, it is 90+, and there are lines for coffee. You must be in the Pacific Northwest! I drove to Starbucks near the Barnes and Noble bookstore–a double hitter for me, and it was busy but not full. I got my old fav of a giant Americano with a shot of caramel syrup (I decided to make an exception to no sugar in coffee today). It was huge and dark and sweet. Usually, I order an extra shot–but I am out of practice and wanted not to have my hands shaking.

I got a small snack too of cheese sausage sliced so thin you could see through it. I ate that with my coffee for lunch. I then managed a few more paragraphs of Howard’s Unlock story and covered Howard’s vaccination.

It was so nice to write and sit in Starbucks again on a stupidly hot day drinking hot coffee drinks. Usually, I have noise-reducing headphones, not today. I wanted to hear the goings-on of fellow humans surviving the pandemic.

I should also note that everyone wore a mask at Starbuck except when seated and enjoying a coffee product or other goodies. When not drinking or eating, my fellow laptop users put back on their masks and continued to work; there was a row of us in the window seats—the usual overly polite Portland behavior. I aligned to the local traditions, of course.

I found Barnes and Noble open and headed for the magazines. I am looking for two UK-based wargaming periodicals. Nope. Apparently, and I remember reading about this some time back, one of the main publishers of magazines went belly-up, and Barnes and Nobles have fewer options. The staff there also informed me that they reduce the issues to 60% of the total before the pandemic. I will have to subscribe. I have multiple-year subscriptions to 2600 The Hacker Quarterly and Strategy and Tactics Quarterly to help keep those alive. I will have to consider the others.

Masks were in use at Barnes and Noble, and social distancing was maintained. Brook, a sales gal, gave me advice on reading SciFi and Fantasy. I will be back to buy something next time. My Kindle is loaded up.

I should add that we return to Roll20 for D&D on Monday. I have prepared for another adventure. It is another book-based mystery story from Candlekeep Mysteries. It is set in a desert, and it will be near 100F on Monday, so it fits.

This is the weekend edition; we stop there. Thanks for reading!

I could not sleep late this morning. My allergies were making it hard to sleep with the pollen all but choking me. I was going by 7:30 and made a simple breakfast of instant grits and coffee. I finished the Norse (blue) faction for the Scythe figures and started on with the Khan (yellow) faction. I worked on them on and off today, and they just need some touch-up to be done. Again, after doing those huge figures, these smaller figures paint so much faster.

Nobody was moving at noonish; after dressing and all that jazz, I headed to BJ’s Brewhouse for lunch in Air Volvo alone. I got my normal, before-Convid-19-normal, that is, table in the bar and ordered what I always ordered, Chicken Peanut Soba Noodles. I also ordered a full rack of ribs to-go for Susie and Corwin. This, too, was a practice I did before the pandemic. It felt better returning to old habits.

I managed to have enough waiting time at BJ’s Brewhouse to write a few paragraphs of Howard’s next adventure: Howard’s Unlock.

Howard has lost track of the number of days, 14 months’ worth. Thinking about how long he has been in the Covid-19 lockdown, he is not surprised that he is unsure of the number of days. Howard is a time traveler, and he understands that our stable view of the universe is really more like standing on a bubble of a boiling pot. We see only the surface and have no idea of how tenuous our reality, let alone human life, is in the chaos that is the truth. “No wonder I have no count,” he says to himself, sitting at his sitting worktable.

Just the start and still rough; the rest I will keep to myself for now.

Aside: Howard is my hero named for H.P. Lovecraft, and I write stories of his adventures that usually echo my own travels and experiences. He lives in the twisted alternative universe of Lovecraftian horrors and pulp fiction that becomes real.

After getting home with my bounty of to-go food, I painted figures and did the dishes and light chores at the house for the afternoon. Susie had her ribs.

I watched more The Game of Thrones and watched the end of season four and was disappointed again. I thought the story got lost again, and there was a lot of grandstanding. I am not in a rush to start the next season.

I went grocery shopping late today. I got home about 7:30ish and brought dinner for Susie and a sandwich for Evan and me. Evan is spending the night. Ash at Whole Foods makes a great The Hammer sandwich. Sort of an Italian grinder on a pretzel bun, grilled in a press, and covered with olive oil from the red peppers in oil from a jar. It is wonderful and spicy.

Susie had a mini quiche Lorraine I heated up in the oven.

Susie watched Burlesque the movie. I spoke to friends on the phone, watching the bats as the sun setting started them on their feasting. On bat barely missed me–there not small. I went in after that.

It is the weekend version. So I will stop there—a lazy Saturday.

I slept in today. My allergies make this difficult, but I managed to hit 9:15ish and only awoke a few times. I also nodded off in the afternoon for a bit. I am feeling more like myself this evening.

I have to admit that I try not to binge a show, but the fourth season of The Game of Thrones is headed that way. I did another three episodes today. Much like the SciFi show, The Expanse, this show is willing to kill off or damage any main character, and the story always moves forward. This means you cannot predict anything. The characters and writing seem to now be working. I am enjoying it now. 

Susie got going, and we hit the movies about 1ish. In The Heights is a movie version of the Broadway show by the same name. It focuses on the lives of the immigrant, mostly from the islands, with song and dance of a modern style you find in a musical like Hamilton. I cried for some of the characters. I also had a tear for how amazing it was a few times. I would recommend In The Heights–bring the popcorn and the tissues.

We stopped at Taco Bell to get something before the movie.

Later that day, I collected Corwin and Susie, and we took Air Volvo to Portland, Oregon.

I made a wrong turn, so we enjoying driving through Portland. While there is a bit of wear on Portland as the tagging is a bit heavy, it looked busy, and there were lines for seats in the Pearl District. There are tents here and there. It does not look that bad to me. Usually, the tagging is quickly painted over, but in a pandemic and with all the riots, it is no time to get out some painting crews. I felt safe.

But, there are those little things that let you know that this city knows what to do for riots.

We parked Air Volvo on the street and then headed into The Broadway Grill. I have not been back in over a year. We ordered a locally made beer—Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, for me, for all the obvious reasons. Corwin and I ordered different sandwiches. We then traded a half. Beef dip and Ruben. Wonderful!

I know I should do something more than dare to drive into Portland and have a beer, but it is what we can do. We showed we are not afraid. It is a start.

We returned home to a wonderful sunset over the Coastal Mountains.

393 people died in the USA from the pandemic today.

I picked the sad Alabenza from In The Heights.

Work started at 7ish again with me rolling over and waking a bit late, so really 7+ish. I had my first meetings, and then endless emails and issues started popping in. I found no break possible; even bio breaks were hard to find today, and I finally got dressed about 10ish!

There was a lecture from Standford on timing within the Internet hosted by Nike leadership. Professor Balaji Prabhakar talked about “Circuit Training: The Role of Time in Distributed Computing.” This, at first, like many academic presentations, appeared to be about well-understood areas–I seldom listen to the whole lecture. However, soon it was clear Professor Prabhakar showed a useful and alternative solution to a complex issue that fascinated me. He created a process to internally correct the speed of computer systems, virtual cloud ones, so their clocks were kept closely align. If you have aligned clocks, you can then know how long something takes and detect bottleneck issues. This is usually impossible as the misaligned clocks make it impossible to compare any timings. Thus delays and bottlenecks issues are impossible to spot as they are indistinguishable from mismatching timings. With closely aligned clocking, performance can be improved by load balancing algorithms as a simple rule to delay adding loads to busy computer instances. Professor Prabhakar’s work was interesting and a fun way to start my morning. It will be interesting to see if his work will become the standard for virtual cloud clocking.

I then was back into the status and alignment meetings all morning. This was interrupted by Susie needs some caregiving and some emergency laundry.

I drove Air Volvo to Chicago Pizza and had lunch of a stromboli and salad and got a pineapple and ham for Susie to-go. I am again trying to get over the fear and eat out at the same places I used before the pandemic.

The afternoon was more alignment meetings and a demo. I had to demo the demonstration scripts and processes I built for installing programs and running them on yet-another-cloud-software-product. I managed to have my demo fail the first time but got it to work the second time. We will see if this helped. The shoe company has hired a vendor to implement a like process from their experience with the yet-another-cloud-software-product.

That was my last meeting for the week.

It was such a nice day out I took pictures of the Volvo Cave and Air Volvo.

I made dinner of Schwann’s Chicken Cordon Blue, beans, and mashed potatoes. Yes, all Schwann’s. A bit of comfort food, and with the temperatures into the 90+ range next week, it is best to get the baked food consumed now.

Susie was still running a bit slow and not dressed. I decided we could catch a movie on Friday instead. So Susie watched some old shows on cable while I started back onto Game of Thrones.

Well, I am impressed now with The Game of Thrones. I have reached past the second season and starting the fourth season. Unlike the first and second seasons, the story moves, and I cannot predict what will happen next. I am starting to spend hours watching it.

291 people in the USA lost their lives today to Covid-19.

Thy Word Is a Lamp is a hymn (#601) that I randomly turned to in the Methodist Hymnal. I did not know it, but it would be fun to sing at church. I think it is a bit fast for my church, and I am not sure about the musical interlude in the middle of this for our group singing. Still, I would like to try it someday.

The morning started at 6ish, and I again, without shame, rolled over and got started at 7ish. I had hours of meetings this morning. I spent most of the meetings trying to fix an upgrade (called SPAU for those who know SAP) while listening and responding a few times. I try to not be that guy who is asked a question and never heard it and has to have it repeated. I worked but also listened.

I also had a few crises of the moment to deal with. Some of the issues exploded into the status meetings and email. I managed to get the fixes done so the emails would stop.

I stopped for lunch and collected Susie, and we took Air Volvo to the Home of the Whopper. We took our lunch to the local park and ate in the car, watching the folks enjoying the part and the sun. I opened all the doors and windows when we were back. It was warmer outside, and the breeze felt good while doing fixes (SPAU).

Work ran beyond 5 as I had little emergencies to deal with.

I had a bagel for dinner and made Susie Beedaroni, a homey fav for Susie.

I then drove to church. I am on the sound system committee, and we went to the church to look over the challenges to make things create for the future and properly stream and record sound. No masks as everyone is vaccinated except Sophia, as she is yet too young for the vaccine. We looked at the options and talked a lot. We also tested some of the equipment, and Howard even played the organ to show us how some of the speakers work for it.

This was the first time I have seen the church folks in person in more than 14 months. I spent the Christmas holiday in Amsterdam in 2019; many folks I have not seen for 16 months! It was strange to see people again and some new faces. There were some hugs, but I am not prepared for that and did elbow bumps instead.

Dan Gray and I left and had a beer at Ickabod’s in downtown Beaverton. We talked about the issues of poverty and tribalism that are troubling our country while enjoying the best fried pickles I have had.

A nice night to see church friends.

434 people are reported lost to the virus today in the USA.

I Love to Tell the Story worked for me today.