WEEK 47 2014
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17 March 2002
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Saturday 22 November
2014
Saturday - Feeling a bit under the
weather for some reason. It isn't the flu, although I should probably
go get a shot. A friend stopped by and mentioned that her child's
teacher had been out for five weeks with the flu! Of course the cynic
in me notes that a public school teacher, with full benefits and
medical, might take a bit more time off than the normal worker....
Movie night in the evening (after the birthday party). There was a documentary on Origami, which was interesting, then Ghosts From the Abysss
- which was kind of a yawner but would have been pretty cool in the
original big screen Imax 3D, then about half of a documentary on the
casting for a revival of 'A Chorus Line', mehhh.
Friday
- It was a friend's birthday, and at their request I took them to Crazy
Otto's for breakfast where they had the works - ham, biscuits and
gravy, eggs, toast, etc. Gahhh. But whatever works for them I guess!
Not
much else going on. Worked on the app, positive and negative feedback
graphics and animation. That routine is ballooning again, but I have to
code what's in the spec after all...
Thursday 20 November
2014
Thursday
- High clouds and cool, though not terrible.
Worked
on the app until mid-afternoon, when I just ran out of steam. Not
feeling well for some reason, perhaps the broken tooth (though it's not
painful, yet).
I did finish Book #47, The Magician's Land,
by Lev Grossman. This was the third and last in the series, once again
bought a while ago and unread until recently. Well done. It's sort of a
modern take on C.S. Lewis's Narnia
series, though somewhat less religious. In this book Fillory (Narnia)
is coming (does come) to an end. Look back, I see that The Magician's and The Magician King weres books #116 and #117 in 2011.
Wednesday 19 November
2014
Wednesday -
The weather continues mild, though a bit windy (for non Lancasterites).
Working
on the app. I had a bit of an inspiration and was able to reduce the
complexity of the main routine (method) quite a bit, down from almost
800 lines to a bit over 400 - and half of that is comments and
whitespace, so, not too bad. I needed to do the provisioning, but am
mentally scarred from the last time I did it, and it's changed quite a
bit. I actually had a fairly recent book on iOS7 with a description of
the newer process, but had to return it to the library. Maybe I'll go
check it out again.
While
there I stopped by the Friends of the Library used book store. They had
a couple of Schaums on Mechanics and Lagrangian Mechanics, and a nice
book on Vibrations, and I picked them up and was going to buy them, and
then thought, "???? I'm drowning in books. And the odds that I'll ever
refer to these is slim."
So I put them back. It felt odd.
One of the officers for the Boy Scouts had called, and left a message that my $24 membership was due, and as S
was going to the meeting that evening I asked her to front me, and that
I'd pay her back. She said that she offered, but that the other
officers, happy to have another warm body to help with events, had all
put some $$ in and that I didn't owe anything. Wow. Well, I hope to go camping again - it was fun for everyone.
Tuesday
- Cool weather, with some high clouds. The peach tree and Asian pear
have shed their foliage, but the leaves on apple and fruitless mulberry
are hanging in there, so to speak... Most of the big shade trees in the
neighborhood are turning a brilliant yellow orange.
One
thing I forgot to mention was that I'd brought my good camera down and
took pictures at the track meet and soccer game last weekend. For the
soccer game I let my friends older daughter use the camera to take some
shots and she did pretty good. When Tim downloaded the memory card in
the evening there were about 440 shots totaling 3GB. He was shocked,
but I'd used the camera in the sports 'burst' mode, so there were a
lost of near duplicates, and, as usual, 95+% is junk anyway.
Also
redoing recurring subscription stuff for the new credit cards. Sigh, I
just redid them this summer and now I'm doing them again.
Not
much to say, working on the app, trying to get all the animations to
have the same look and feel. The method for that has ballooned to over
700 lines, so I'm trying to reduce the size and make the logic clearer.
Actually I'm trying to put the logic somewhere else entirely.
I
think I mentioned that went to a presentation last week on apps.
Interesting, although nothing really stood out as a competitor to what
we're doing. Of note was
- trying to upgrade to iOS8 had bricked the presenters good iPad Retina, and she was presenting on an iPad-2 running iOS7.
- only about a quarter of the apps had any switch access for use by the disabled,
- graphics were generally simple - affine transforms, layer animation, CAEmitter stuff
- most would be too hard for our target audience.
Apple had posted another iOS8 upgrade today, BTW - I think I'll wait a bit longer before installing...
Monday
- Class in the morning, the instructor collected projects and went over
the 'practical' we have next week. The final, after that, is simply a
repeat of the midterm it seems.
Then I did some work, some bills, and napped a bit.
Amusing
story: when I opened my wallet at home $20 fell out. I was a bit
puzzled, but decided that I must have not put it back into my wallet
correctly when stopping for dinner at McDonald's at the I-15/CA-138
interchange. But Tim called in the evening and he asked it I'd
gotten it - seems that it was pay for helping with the bed install on
Sunday. He suspected that I would have refused it, and wanted to make
sure that I didn't!
Refuse Money? Hah! My hero is Scrooge McDuck!
Sunday
- OTR. Sunny and warm again. Back in Lancaster in the evening. It was
nice to be in San Diego, part of a family for a while, but class, work
and cats awaited.
We had a good time Saturday, going to a running meet to cheer on a
friends daughter in the morning, then over to a soccer game where Tim's
daughter's team won their division. It was a good game, down to the
overtime, and the kids were great and even the parents on the sideline
were pretty good. A friend made and brought cupcakes, enough for
everyone, which was a treat.
Then we went to a movie, The
Book Of Life,
which at first turned me off, but then
pulled me in. Overall I liked it I think. It ended on a positive note,
and generally was uplifting, though the animation seems a bit odd at
first. It would be
difficult to make a movie about old Mexico, involving life and death,
good and evil, and the afterlife, without mentioning Christianity or
God, but the writers managed...
Dinner was at the Soup
Plantation, and nice. It is a nicer spot than then one in
Palmdale, which is sort of spartan and more like a school cafeteria.
On Sunday Tim had a Murphy Bed to install, so some of his friends and
myself helped. It went quickly enough - we originally though it was
bolted through the floor, but it wasn't, which saved a lot of time that
we would have spent drilling and installing anchors in a concrete slab.
The thing that took the longest was an originally badly installed door,
which we were trying to get straight. We (Tim, really) did a pretty
good job, but the hinges themselves were messed up.
In the afternoon we watched the Chargers defeat the Raiders, in an
uninspiring game. Essentially the Chargers defense enabled a turnover
early which led to a score, and then held the Raiders to field goals.
The San Diego offense was poor, unable to score a touchdown after that
against the winless Raiders.
After that I headed home, since there was a class on Monday. Anddddd,
my battery was dead again in Tim's driveway. Tim put the meter on it,
and it read 11V, which means that it is indeed the battery, probably a
bad cell. I think it also might have a bad positive terminal to battery
cable. We jumped it, and it started, and I was able to make it home
without turning it off, though it probably would have started up if I
had. I'll have to take it into Sears and get it replaced later in the
week.
The check fuel light was flickering as I arrived at Lancaster's east
side.
