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Today started slow and remained there. I was up at 8ish and was going slow all morning. I use to play Dungeons and Dragons on Boxing Day or meet some folks at a movie or bar and just hangout. There was usually some blockbuster movie to watch. This morning I started working on my Python programs and making room for the possible board game with Evan tonight. I was sort of without direction this morning.

Then, Dan Gray called, and I was told the Gay Pride flag on the church was gone. I got dressed, collected my new flag, a flag pole (my used one from my house), and headed to First United Methodist Church by Air Volvo. “I was on a mission from God!” At least that is the line I remember from the Blues Brothers movie. I put on my hat and sunglasses while I drove Air Volvo.

Getting to the scene of the disappearance, I found no damage and no hint of what happened to the previous flag. The screw that holds in the flag was still in place. I had to move the screw out to put in my old used flag poll. I got out the new flag, commercial-grade and made of sewn different colored nylon stips, not flammable, and clipped it in place to the pole.  I put it in the undamaged flag holder and used plyers to tighten the screw so the pole will resist the wind.

The flag usually disappears around Christmas and Easter and when folks are on vacation. I believe some people find it provocative to have a Gay Pride Flag on a church in the heart of Beaverton. I am always surprised when someone believes they can just take it, but I have decided that God needed them to have it. I just buy more. I have two more flags on the way, commercial-grade, and two more poles.

After I replaced the flag, I stopped by Einstien’s Bagels in Beaverton and picked up my order. I had sat in the car in the church parking lot and used their app to put in an order. I paid for it on my phone.

I felt a bit sad when I stepped inside of Einstien’s Bagels in Beaverton. I had not been there since last year. I am used to it being a loud, busy place. Now, the tables and chairs are stacked together–there is no seating. While friendly, the crew is very young–not the older folks I remember, there is no barista, the counter is empty—no piles of bagels, and no long line of rushed but friendly customers. It is quiet now. There is a feeling of desperation in the air–the last try to keep going and outlast the disaster of Covid-19.

I drove home with my bagels, having completed my mission. I had my Nova Lox bagel and headed out again. I stopped by Ace Hardware to get some new power socket replacements that include USB. Time to modern-up our plugs in a few places. Susie was up when I got home; not the time to be killing the power! I will install them on Sunday morning before anyone notices!

Susie had 1/2 of a danish and a cheese potato cake that Einstein’s Bagels added to my order.

Evan texted me that he would be free, and he came over for a board game. We played two games of Architects of the West Kingdom, including the Artisan Add-on. This is a newer style game and one we play often. It is an efficiency game of resources management and worker placement. It also allows your fellow players to suddenly grab all your workers and have you ransom them back. So there is some interaction. We tied with Evan and me, both winning a game.

The Smith family delivered a present for Susie, a warm Disney blanket. I sent them with my “care package” of strange things I found for 2020 for folks.

Evan, Susie, and I then watched the Blazer game. I am not usually a fan, but Evan is, and Portland Trailblazers often play well, so why not? It was a close game with the Houston Rockets not able to tie the game again in overtime in the last seconds.

One thousand four-hundred eight people in the USA died from Covid-19 today, Boxing Day 2020.

I found our own George Fox University, Joy to the World version.

 

Today started about 8ish with me making breakfast of scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and crisp bacon. Susie’s fav. I made myself toast with Orange Marmalade, my fav, but I do not have a low sugar version, so this is a once in a great while treat.

Susie was up in time to talk to her sister’s family and mother for Christmas. We then found all the presents and opened them. All the gifts this year were well thought out and useful. Thanks!

I made Christmas dinner while Susie watched a musical. Mariah came over, and we put on masks, and she helped me make dinner. We had an early-ish dinner of ham, mashed potatoes, steamed carrots, and that green bean-soup-onion topping side.

We watched Wonder Women 1984 while having dinner. I will not say anything about the movie as others will want to watch it today. The Doctor Who special is New Years’ this year.

Susie was feeling better today. I am tired as I have slept poorly these couple of days. Mostly staying up too late reading or talking.

Scrooge is playing now, out third movie today! I also received a book for Christmas, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by a fav author from the Smith family and I started. I find these books hard to put down.

Susie is watching James Bond movies. One of the channels is running them without commercials.

The day is already fading, and like all Christmas, it disappears fast. I have not much to say other than…

Merry Christmas from here in lockdown in Oregon!

2,835 people died this Christmas day in the USA from Covid-19. The terrible surge in deaths and new cases in Oregon is now on the way down.

Silent Night, played by John Nilsen, is the music for Christmas.

 

Everyone is resting. I am in the living room sitting in front of the TV playing a DVD of a fire burning in a fireplace while jazzy carols play. It is Christmas Eve 2020. The Belgium Beer has made me a bit tired, and I have a slight headache for it too, I believe.

Dinner was just crackers and sausages and cheese. We watched the movie Frozen and Frozen 2. I had just seen Frozen a few days ago and wanted to watch them again.

Work started with me working from home at 6ish. I also was making No-Knead bread that I let to rise all-night. I then took out the dutch oven baking dish and oiled it, and sprinkled it with cornmeal. I know that later the bread was stuck, so I did not do enough oil or cornmeal. The cornmeal seemed to use absorb the oil and fall down the sides. Not sure what to do next time but use lots of oil.

I stirred the mixture once in the bowl and then poured it into the dutch oven backing dish and then let it rise for another two hours. You then make it at 450 for 45 minutes with the cover on. You remove the cover for 5-10 more minutes. Then pop it out of the dish (or, in my case, beat it loose) and let cool.

The bread was good, and the crackle real good. The extra salt was not noticeable. I put in 1/4 teaspoon too much salt.

Work was a few emails, but mostly it was quiet and waiting for our big go-live this Sunday. I was done about 3ish.

I slipped out for laundry supplies at Safeway.

I took a nap and then got a call from Wayne Weld-Martin that he had goodies for us. He delivered them, and I added the chips to our plans for tonight.

We had, as I said above, goodies for dinner. I cut up everything and delivered them to Susie. Corwin and I helped ourselves.

I put on the DVD of the fire in the fireplace with Christmas music and fell asleep in the chair after Susie decided she was tired and went to rest. We removed Susie’s bandages today from her Tuesday Mohs surgery. She has little pain today.

Not a bad Christmas Eve for 2020.

Today Christmas Eve, we lost another 2,835 people in the USA to the virus.

I picked our friend John Nilsen’s First Noel for our song today.

Today was to be the break after Susie’s Mohs surgery yesterday. I woke about 5ish and thought I can sleep in a bit. I have a meeting that I have to do at nine that needs me, but I can sleep to 730ish.

Susie was ill. At 6ish she needed help and I had to help her walk and do some caregiving things. It was a difficult start. I also got Susie some Tylenol and ice packs for her face and back. So no sleeping-in today.

Susie rested until late morning. I managed my morning meetings and getting Susie breakfast and me my lunch. It was a bit chaotic, but all was well by 1ish.

I put on the animated movie Snow White, the original, on Disney+ for Susie. I fell asleep in the chair. Susie thought it funny to look over at her caregiver asleep in the chair. I just closed my eyes and before I know it Snow White is saved by Prince Charming!

Once I got going again, I headed out to Wholefoods. I wanted some snacks for Christmas Eve and I forgot milk and eggs last time (I remembered this time). I picked up some beers for the holiday: Duvel and Pilsner Urquell. I brought a case of Duvel back from Belgium years ago; it is a fav. I also was told years ago that the official glass for Urquell was often stolen and so you have to give a shoe to the bartender in some bars in Europe to order it. This prevents you from leaving with the expensive glass. I suspect it is a story told to Americans–but I always think about the story when I have a Urquell.

Wholefoods had 50% off of the price of Oregon Blue Cheese from the Rogue Creamery. In 2019 the world said that these folks made the best cheese in the world. We will celebrate Christmas Eve with a bit of their best. I bought the gouda imported from Holland. This is to remember Amsterdam. We spent last Christmas there. Then some locally made sausages and we are ready for the holiday evening!

I spent the afternoon doing laundry, dishes, making a small dinner (Chicken Cordon Blu from frozen with canned excellent peaches), and then getting out more cookies, chocolates, and all the other stuff. Susie’s mom, Leta, sent a box of cookies that Susie is into. I have Dondrea’s Christmas collection of goodies to consume.

Susie is back to her normal self this evening.

Moving to the next challenge, I also tried a no-knead recipe for bread from King Arthur Flour Company. I put in a tiny bit extra salt by accident, but I think that will not harm it. I have seen a lot of press on the no-knead bread. I thought it would be good to try it tonight. I will be up at 6ish to do the next steps.

I also started reworking my python chess program today. The original version was just more of a demo program than a usable game. Now I want to have it play a not-stupid game. That will require a bit of restructuring. I also want to use a genetic algorithm to help me find the best weighting factors. I need to save all the values for each move to have something to feed to a genetic process.

For this challenge, I need a few more hours of coding to get it cleaned-up and beyond a demo. I truly enjoy coding AI in Python. I always wanted to do genetic programming too. Maybe not your idea of fun, but for me, it is wonderful to play in AI.

Laundry stopped as, as usual, I ran out of laundry products on the same day I went shopping! I need some Bounce Sheets and the detergent is running low. I will try to slip-out between meetings. I checked my schedule and every last meeting has canceled for tomorrow. Hmmm.

3,401 deaths are reported from Covid-19 in the USA today. One of the worst days on record.

I found this really fun version of There’s a Song in the Air. I hope you like it.

 

 

 

 

Today we got up a bit late and drove to Portland without issue to the dermatology folks to perform the second batch of Mohs surgery on Susie’s cancerous and precancerous skin issues on her back and nose. There is no waiting room in the world of Covid-19, so I drop Susie off and wait in the car in the parking lot.

This is a repeat of last week, and after 2021 starts, we have one more treatment on Susie’s legs. The surgery removes a minimum of skin. The margins are then checked there in the office, and if there is no cancer on the margins, then the surgery is finished, and careful stitches are done. Otherwise, another cut is made to widen the excision, and the margins are rechecked. Susie had a good day as the first excision had clear margins.

I drove Susie home, stopping by Burger King for burgers, Whopper Jr with just cheese for Susie with a shake, and a regular Whopper with cheese for me. Susie was exhausted, and so was I. We slept the afternoon away.

I got up and let Susie rest. I watched the movie Frozen 2 while Susie slept a while until the pain started-up. More Tylenol helped a bit. We did get out some frozen green beans as an ice pack for her. That helped her stop the pain, and she slept some more.

As an aside, while waiting in the car, I got out my Apple computer and worked on my chess program. I changed how the matrix that controls pawns again makes the pawns move more towards the center and the board’s end. I then played a few games against the program.

I had two hours waiting in the car, so I fixed a few issues with the looping control and an uncaught exception. The chess program played long enough without an exception that I got to try a castle. It worked! The program is finally moving some pawns. I did take the computer’s queen. There is a failure in the next move evaluation that undervalues taking a piece for an exchange. I will try to fix that.

The code that actually picks the move is about twenty lines long. I think it plays good chess for so few lines of code. It is using a simple evaluation function.

RISK_FACTOR: Loss of piece value
BOARD_FACTOR: Place on board value
PIECE_FACTOR: Value of pieces for exchange
BOARD_KING: Place on board value for King move
SUPPORT_FACTOR: Value of interlocking support
HOLD_FACTOR: Value of hold attack loss

These values are added together to make a score, and each is multiplied by a weighting factor. The move that has the highest value is selected, ties go to pawns.

To check that the move is not a disaster, a new board is dynamically created, and the move actually played and then checked not to trip the end of the game or other terrible loss, and it is scored. The dynamic board is then thrown away, and the game continues on the original board. The chessboard handling routines are all from the library Python-Chess! So easy!

The factors need to be tuned to make the gameplay better chess. The calculation is so fast that I may build a tree of possible plays and look for a better move over a few moves ahead.

It is relaxing to again be coding Artificial Intelligence. I have missed working on Python and AI.

Returning to the story, I ordered from Nonna Emilia Ristorante Italiano using DoorDash this evening. This is an old school American-Italian style food joint that has been in Beaverton forever. Corwin and I were a year ago with Susie in Amsterdam having dinner. We ordered dinner delivered here at the house and wished each other a happy holiday as we did in Amsterdam in 2019. We would have preferred another trip, but we are happy that all of us made it to tonight.

The food is too much and quite good for American-Italian. Salad, soup, garlic bread, and pasta mains. All good. Susie was not up to it; I will make her something when she is ready.

Susie was up a bit late, and I made her a late snack of some peanut butter toast with banana slices. The pain is gone tonight. She is so much better. I am off from Nike tomorrow and will do all the house chores that always slip. I will try to get some rest. These things are very stressful for the caregiver too.

3,376 people died from Covid-19 today in the USA.

Today’s song is a departure from hymns, The Dutch National Anthem. A thank you for Amsterdam 2019, and I hope to be back soon.