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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!

The main event of my day was helping get the second speaker for the Beaverton Lecture Series: An Evening with Nicholas Kristof off. We resolved a few last-minute challenges: a goofy mic and the obvious need for a QR code so people could donate. I helped put together a backdrop, played usher, as usual, and walked the late folks to their seats.

Nicholas Kristof (here) covered many topics. I wished I had brought a notebook to take some notes. I remember him saying that someday, after the current Chinese government fell, a monument would be placed at Tiananmen Square (he and his wife won a Pulitzer for their report on the 1989 protests there). He looks forward to visiting it. He also said that he is a liberal and grew up in Oregon, but that Oregon ranks near the worst in education, housing, and mental health assistance. We may spend more money than many states, but Nicholas says that with careful, evidence-based execution, these dollars make no difference. Liberal good intentions are not enough.

In his reporting, again, from my memory while ushering, he visited many states in the USA South that scored higher or even at the top. Mississippi, a state he says has huge problems with race and poverty issues, is near the top with high school graduation rates. He told us he didn’t believe the numbers the state was telling him, but when he investigated, he found the schools were focused and making a difference. Students could read by 3rd grade; glasses were provided to kids (an issue I didn’t even know about); absenteeism was followed up; dropouts were identified, and actions were taken to help and find solutions to get kids back to school and graduate. This, he says, is true in many southern states, all with other issues not resolved, but not here in progressive Oregon.

Nicholas Kristof then points out that the blue states will not take advice from red states. And he also says red states never promote their success because the politics of school vouchers (which he says do not improve schools, according to his research) make it impossible to show solutions working in public, run-of-the-mill schools. He repeated over and over (having once run for governor of Oregon) that Oregon still hasn’t found the focus of the southern states to apply what works and get results. Again, he claims the solutions are out there, and we just need to get past intentions.

I cannot cover everything Nicholas covered, as I was busy at the time and didn’t have notes to help me remember. Dondrea told me on Friday morning that she has some video and notes. She will incorporate some of this in her sermon on Sunday.

I was tired after standing for hours and helping. Dondrea told me to head home (she said I looked exhausted), and I complied. I then took Air VW the Gray back to the house; it has a 94% charge, and I was happy again that the car reminded me it was still plugged in when I left earlier on Thursday!

I sat in my chair, removed my tie, and then watched the latest episode of Slow Horses. It was the sit-on-the-edge-of-my-seat spy thriller. First Desk is somehow compromised, and the viewer is unsure why, and things are going pear-shaped all over. This means the story keeps veering in unexpected directions. I was sorry when the episode ended, and I have to wait another week for the next.

Time was running fast again, and I was in bed at 10:30, reading about the American Civil War in Erik Larson’s book, The Demon of Unrest. The book’s short chapter structure makes it easy to pick up and put down. I like how Erik tells the story, freely mixing short quotes within his narrative, and I like his short-chapter design. When I return to writing my book someday, I may have to incorporate some of this style.

I soon fell asleep and dreamed of running more lecture series in a dream version of Beaverton. It was a busy process. I woke tired.

Before all of this, I started the day closer to 8 than 7. I woke up, as I had been lately, around 4, having trouble sleeping, then woke to discover I had slept. I think I dream I am awake.

The last of the chocolate croissants joins reheated coffee and a banana for breakfast while I write the blog and check my transactions in Quicken. I read (mostly delete) my email. I read some news and read about the President dancing for the press, with his steps somehow helping China and Russia. The loss of freedom of the press, personal rights, and information as this President swings and conforts on the press state, following some internal tune only he hears. I find tunes that please me, create a new playlist of new and older songs, and ignore the news.

I am not rushing; time moves normally, and I finish writing before I need to get dressed. Instead, I chat with Deborah, and we start talking about the upcoming trip. We are so excited to be together again; it has been months. It is Deborah’s birthday. I stay at my usual IHG hotel near Deborah’s home and rent a car from Hertz to avoid the Budget disasters that have sent my travels into a tailspin. I am surprised that Hertz is the same price as Budget. I add nothing to my rental, and the cost is not too high for the long weekend. Excellent. A leftover from Nike, I have Gold Plus status and can walk out and find a car instead of the usual mess of lines and missing cars.

I transfer some cash from my IRA to pay bills and all my excellent travel. I am still not into the principal, and I draw smaller amounts each month to let the investments keep growing. I am pleased with US Bank Wealth Management.

I showered, dressed, and all that, and headed to meet Scott, still running a bit early, at McMenamins Cedar Hills for lunch and our weekly meeting. This tradition goes back to when we did various projects together and had different viewpoints on our work at Nike. Now we talk about travel, investments, and planning for more travel. Scott has a substantial garden and plants, and this keeps him busy. “The lawn waste container is empty again; time to refill it,” he told me.

We talked about politics, and while I am skeptical of the reports I read, most suggest a blue wave is coming. To me, it looks like the Democrats will keep their Senate seats and maybe win a few, but Susan Collins in Maine is the hinge. The flub on the blue side in the Maine primaries means only low Republican turnout or a shift of centrists to blue could defeat her. Looking at the details, Senator Collins has started to poll lower than in previous months. Gas, food, and war are obviously impacting her chances. Scott W, a fellow liberal, seemed heartened by the shift in my thinking about a possible blue wave. As with what happened to Biden, Obama, and Bush Sr., “it is the economy, stupid.” Also, war sells poorly, even when won, to the electorate.

With lunch and one beer, we break up and head in separate directions. Scott W back to his lawn, and me to the church. Wendy is there waiting for me. I arrive at the church and soon carry the trays of cards for a mass mailing, the heart of our campaign to re-invite Beaverton to our church, and the 10,000 cards need to get out. I have the first 2,450 and need to get them to the post office, stand in line, and then turn it all over to be processed. Done. Excellent.

Dondrea appears before this, and we do the SPRC Zoom meeting on my laptop in the Pastor’s office. My phone connection is weak, and we switch to the church internet. I manage, as does Dondrea, to avoid any to-do’s.

With the cards out and SPRC done, time for an early dinner for me or a late lunch for Dondrea. Ava Roasteria has a two-person lunch special: two sandwiches, a coffee drink, and a slice of cake to share for $40. That works, and we have a marvelous lunch there.

With that, folks started arriving to help, and we began assembling the remaining items for the speaker event. And that takes me full circle.

 

Let’s start with the more embarrassing issue. My colon is 25 cm shorter because of cancer surgery that removed my descending colon and then reconnected everything. No plastic bag for me (so far). With this replumbing, things sometimes back up, and I suddenly need to be close to a bathroom. It, hmmm, passes quickly and soon I am better. I also got some Liquid I.V., and that helped when mixed with water. And while it’s embarrassing, I prefer this to the other options and just accept it as the price of being alive. I spent the afternoon enjoying this process.

To clarify, dear reader, I have one more scan to be declared cured (yay!), but still get to enjoy colonoscopies every three years (can you buy them in a six-pack? Can we mix the prep in a margarita?). The previous scans and blood tests were good, with no signs of colon cancer. Almost there!

I woke up around 7, and the sky was gray and then got lighter. Later, the clouds burned off, and we got a hot sun and blue skies. The last day of September in 2026 was wonderful. I made coffee and found a chocolate croissant I made a few days ago (it’s going stale, but still so good), plus a banana. I wrote the blog while I ate and drank my breakfast.

The morning was filled with words, writing, and watching the hummingbirds and other birds. The squirrels are storing their winter supplies in the backyard lawn. I did see one squirrel wedge a small apple in a tree. Something for later, likely when it ferments a bit. The birds and squirrels never seem to want the apples when they are fresh. It rained overnight, and the roses were happy to get the water and the sun. More blooms are opening. A few more before it is too wet and dark for the roses to do anything but rot.

I finished the blog and microwaved a potato. It was looking a bit green, so I peeled it, and that worked well. I also mashed it with a fork and a masher. I sliced off some more sourboten from Costco, heated it in the gravy, and put it on the potato. If not for the colon issue, it would have been excellent (but it made things worse). I watched more of season 3 of For All Mankind, and the show is going deeper into personalities and sci-fi alternative history. Not sure I am liking this season.

I wanted to read more of the book Quantum Computing, and take Air VW the Gray, fully charged, to the coffee house. Insomnia Coffee, where I can focus more, and it feels like studying again, but wtih coffee. But nausea gets worse, and instead I rush home, don’t throw up, and spend some time reading in the bathroom instead.

I am learning that even measuring a qubit uses matrix operations, but these matrices don’t correspond to the rules of quantum gates, as they are used for measurement and thus collapse the rules to make the measurement. The author uses IBM’s free access to simulated qubits to run examples repeatedly and show error issues in the systems (some simulator implementations, including QuTip, have noise-simulation levels).

I learned that, though I remembered it, I did not understand the implication: an H gate creates a superpositional state, a random, unknowable state until measured, but, unlike shaking a box full of dice twice, if you apply the gate twice, you remove the superposition and return the qubit to a known state. These processes and meanings are anti-intuitive and follow their own rules.

I rested, but rose without a nap and headed to the pharmacy, picked up a prescription and the Liquid I.V. I needed. It is cheaper at Costco, but that was a longer trip and walk than I should risk then.

At home, I found my way and soon was feeling better. I heard from Mariah and Emma that we would meet at BJ’s Brewhouse at 6:45. I agreed, as I was feeling much better.

I was there ten minutes before them, and Eric was our waiter again at the bar tables. I did not have my usual beer, thinking it might be too much at once, and picked an Old Fashioned with Buffalo Trace. Emma had the red ale, and Mariah had a few Old Fashioneds, but with the house whiskey. I had the flatbread and a house salad. Mariah had the tri-tips while Emma went for some Italian-style.

We had a nice chat, and I talked about my trip to Nashville and New Orleans. I had coffee with dinner. We talked about travel, school, and work. Emma and Mariah were headed out to a show with more friends. It was good to catch up.

I headed home while they headed to a show. At home, I read more about quantum computing and the start of the American Civil War in The Demon of Unrest. The kitchen had dishes piled up, and I sorted them and washed some. I turned off the light at 11:30 to sleep. I slept through the night until 4 and could not sleep for an hour; I had just decided to get up when I slipped into a waking dream (now forgotten about traveling).

Going with my usual format, I rose early-ish as I again had leg cramps and had to rise to take in some water to stop the pain and clenched muscles. I heard my 6:30 alarm go off after I entered my office, started my usual tasks, and watched the dark gray turn light gray. Overcast days are back, but with sun breaks, for now. We have a few lovely days left until the unrelenting rains start. Though with the change in weather patterns, we often have sunny days in winter. But these are overwhelmed with “rivers of rain,” which are impressive, even for someone like me with 30 years here. I liked the rain all the time in the Fall-Winter-Spring better.

While writing that, I realized that I moved to Oregon in September thirty years ago and stayed at the Lakes Apartments for a few months until I secured 20625 SW Clarion Street; Oct. 31st is the start of the 30th year in the house. I vowed, and still do, that I will stay here. It has always felt like the place I belonged.

Also, my oldest Dungeons & Dragons email is from 2010, but I know we played for ten more years than that, so I have also been playing D&D for over twenty years here and have hosted an online game through the pandemic.

Returning to the narrative, I wrote the blog and finished it a few minutes over. I dilly-dallied for a bit, saw the clock, jumped in the shower, did the usual, and soon was in Air VW the Gray ten to 9 for a 9:30 game. I was ten minutes late. It was the ISS Vanguard cooperative board game with a role-playing and app-driven experience. I play the Engineering section. Our last play, over a month ago, involved a special set of rules, an invasion of our spaceship, and us fighting to take back our ship. I lost one crew member, as did Richard. That left us with a strange restart, and then a month later, we picked it up again.

Richard and James, both board gamers and not RPG players, had forgotten much of the story and rules. I am used to returning to a campaign after a month and doing lots of RPG-style play. Also, Richard wants to min-max, while James is always interested in exploring every corner of the material he has bought. I am interested in the story and figuring out what we are supposed to do while avoiding any video-game-style mining and so forth (can’t stand that; it is a time sink). It takes us from 9:30 to 11:15 to set up for the next away mission. We play until about 3, with my new engineer promoted but off to sickbay, lightly wounded on the mission. We manage to connect, in the story, with friendly, if not unusual, aliens who help us repair the ship. Lastly, a surprise storyline and a secret envelope get opened. We had a choice: military or diplomatic; as usual, Richard wanted military. His characters are set up for this. We picked diplomatic, and this became a permanent change to the game; new items were added and some removed. We had reached a major turning point in the game. All interesting.

I left as Richard and James finished up “saving” the game. I took photos in case we needed to return to the same planet. I headed home in heavy traffic and never enjoy a traffic jam on the bridge. The number of heavy trucks always surprises me. I think it is a waste, since most of this freight should be moved more efficiently with less wear on roads and air pollution, but that would require a group to invest heavily in infrastructure, and billionaires prefer easy money like AI and Social Media.

I arrived home, reheated the pasta I made yesterday for an early dinner or late lunch, and watched season 3 of For All Mankind. I was disappointed that the giant spinning-wheel hotel in orbit has issues (I have always dreamed of one of those), but it’s still fun to imagine as a real thing. It is also interesting to see everyone aged and the styles updated to the 1990s. The story is now in full alternate history.

After that, I decided The 649 was a good choice and headed there; I had a smaller beer, read, and then skimmed the endless math in the book, Quantum Computing. It is interesting to me that my earlier confusion was that there is no reason to apply multiple gates to qubits, since each is a matrix and the whole process falls under the tenets of linear algebra. Instead, you multiply the matrices (fixed values) and apply the result to the qubits once. I also learned that this is true for multiple qubits in the same circuit (I hadn’t thought that far ahead, but it became obvious once the text brought it up) and that you can also entangle the qubits, effectively collapsing them into one value. Hmmm.

I have to admit, my head is overflowing with details, and some of it is getting confused. I need some practical use, but there are another fifty pages on measurement, which I understand is also weird and linear too. I also was not surprised by the no-cloning rule, which says a qubit cannot be copied. Certain processes (i.e., entanglement and CX gates) can create some known changes, but again it is limited; until a measurement is taken and the qubit wave function collapses, it cannot be known and thus cloned. More to come.

I got sleepy and stopped reading for the night. This is more a morning topic for me. I watched a video on the history of the Old Fashioned and talked to my bartender, Matt, and we agreed to try it. Rye with no lemon or cherries, just fresh nutmeg. Maybe with a little water too. Ice stays. Next time we will experiment!

Instead, I had a coffee with a side shot of amaretto, my late-night stay-awake drink. I looked at coding examples in Python and began to understand more about how this must be implemented. Python has matrix and tensor multiplication available in its super-fast libraries (implemented in C and even lower-level ops). Also, the reality of quantum means that these processes would be instantaneous, outside of time. Interesting.

I returned home, and it was still early, but I was tired again. Something I have noticed of late. I got out the Civil War book, did no more math tonight, and read a few chapters of Eric Lawson’s book, The Demon of Unrest. It is a physical book, as it has excellent footnotes. I slept and dreamed I was back at work; I was quite happy, working in RPG, COBOL, and maybe some FORTRAN. I enjoy being paid again, working on old stuff, and being around my co-workers. Yes, sometimes I miss it. I do have a foot cramp, but that works into my dream, as I used to have that problem when coding, as I would push my foot down while I thought and coded. I wake up, it fades, and I return to work/sleep. This time, some Python and AI stuff. I woke up rested on Wednesday.

An interesting dream. Thank you for reading.

 

 

 

 

Need something interesting to do on Thursday?

Beaverton First United Methodist Church is excited to host the Beaverton Lecture Series on Thursday, Oct. 1 at 7 p.m., featuring Nicholas Kristof, two-time Pulitzer Prize Winner and New York Times columnist. 

A Yamhill, Oregon farm boy turned Harvard graduate and Rhodes Scholar, and a New York Times columnist since 2001, Kristof has reported from six continents and more than 140 countries, won two Pulitzer Prizes, and co-authored the No. 1 best-seller “Half the Sky.”

THE TALK 
“A Pulitzer Prize Winner’s Thoughts on Fixing the World’s — and Oregon’s — Problems”
From Tiananmen Square to Darfur to the main street of his Oregon hometown, Kristof has spent four decades chronicling human struggle — and the stubborn hope that outlasts it. A candid evening on what a lifetime of reporting has taught him: how we find hope, and how we build it. This event is free and open to the public.  No tickets needed — a suggested donation is welcome at the door.

An Evening With Nicholas Kristof

All through the day, I talked to Deborah and plan to see her in about two weeks for her birthday. I also watched For All Mankind and completed the third season. I lost control of Monday, and it seemed to disappear; I felt I didn’t get enough out of the day.

Last night (I am writing this Tuesday morning), I had more leg cramps, two nights in a row. I will get some packets of Liquid I.V. (no sugar) and see if that helps. Water helped to slow it, but it came back in the morning. I know Dad had terrible issues with leg cramps. Ugh!

I was planning to play Dungeons & Dragons in October and realized that Thursday is Friday! I am revising my 4E D&D version to the current 5E-ish version. I returned to that work for a while. I did not make much progress, but I need to focus on getting the house ready to host D&D again and trying to assemble some players. I am excited to get back to DM-ing, but it takes years of effort to establish a strong gaming group. We will see if I can get a group playing over and over and enjoying a campaign. Most gaming groups do not survive the first three to four plays.

The day ended early. I was very tired, made the bed, and read a new book (The Demon of Unrest on the start of the American Civil War that I purchased last year), but I soon started to nod off, put the book aside, turned off the light, and slept. Before that, as I said above, I finished Season 3 of For All Mankind, washed some pans, and put the other dishes in the washing machine. I also reached into the new garbage disposal, always a worrying task, and removed a ball bearing that somehow got in there, and now it is back to sounding normal–a growl–and not a screaming horror of stops and starts. The ball bearing is larger than the ones I add to paint bottles to make them easier to stir by shaking. I wonder if it was there from the start, or if it came from a paint bottle that popped off its end cover and covered me in paint. I washed off the paint, and maybe there was a ball bearing in the mess that I didn’t notice. Better now.

Before that, Corwin stopped by and grabbed some dinner. I made a lot of pasta, sauce from a jar, and fried ground beef, then baked it. I had some bowls, with another bowl of peach slices, also from a jar. Corwin had his first day at his new job selling used cars, and while he liked it, unless he can sell a car soon, he will have to find something else. He likes his coworkers. He stopped by to get his packages; he still has them delivered to the house.

At 6:30, before Corwin stopped by, I attended a short Outreach/Missions church meeting on Zoom. He covered many topics, and it is always interesting to see how busy we are even with only about 40 people attending on Sunday.

My books arrived today from Crescent Books in New Orleans. Jeff, who remembered me from my previous purchases, threw in a Gram Greene book to try, since we had discussed his writing and I had never read his stuff. I had passed on a set of his works because I was not sure I would like him. Jeff said he would pick a copy and toss it in for free. Very kind. The Heart of the Matter is now on my short read list.

I spent the mid-afternoon drinking a London Fog while reading Quantum Computer and various related math and quantum information online. I am beginning to see how matrix operations and complex numbers correspond to this process, and the author again reminded the reader that the structure of the qubits is based on reality and this math; it has been proven to represent the actual physics. This is not made up or a convenience but is representational. I am having trouble remembering everything and will need some practical work to make this stick. I already have a simulation running in Python, and I need to try it more. I have another 100 pages to reach the algorithms in the book. More to follow.

Before this, I heated up the sourbrot from Costco for lunch. I made spatzel to go with it (I still had some dried from Mount Angel, Oregon). It was an extravagant lunch. I have another meal or two left. I did this as I finished the laundry. Monday is my laundry day. Sheets, towels, and anything that has accumulated get washed. I made another mess in the kitchen.

Before that, I got up around 7 after multiple leg cramps and made coffee. I had chocolate croissants I made the night before. I made coffee and had a banana to go with it. Then I sat down, watched the squirrels and hummingbirds from my office window, wrote the blog, and did my usual updates.

Thanks for reading.