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WEEK 10 2016

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Oxnard Weather Underground

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Saturday 5 March 2016

Saturday - Since they were predicting so much rain I made a quick trip down to Oxnard. There were some brief flurries of rain, enough to make the roads and boat wet, but not enough to make so much as a puddle.

I put the snubbers on all the mooring lines - there was actually quite a bit of surge going on and a brisk wind that made it a bit of work, but it should make things easier on the stanchions and bollards. I also made sure that the drains were all working well: getting all the dirt and leaves out of them. A couple were pretty well plugged up.

I was going to put a little spare battery - the jump starter actually - in as a temporary battery, but decided not to. Essentially the maze of wiring defeated me - it would take more time than I had available to do since the jump starter didn't really have the cables I needed. I think it will be OK, the problem has been the deck and cockpit seating that drains to the companion way locker, and that has drains that plug up, and I've cleaned them out.

I used the iPhone's camera and took some pictures of the charger (reaching waaaay around to the side of the engine compartment to make a video of the barely visible unit), and its a Xantec 20A unit, and does indeed have a (thankfully front panel) switch for AGM batteries, so I'll swap out the flooded lead acid batteries and pick up a couple of those.

I always put AGM in the old Coronado 25. There was never a well attached battery box and the bilges were always flooding due to deck and overhead issues, just like the NorSea.

Then it was back to the house (through surprisingly heavy traffic on the 14 for a Saturday afternoon) where I .... did nothing. Bah.

Friday 4 March 2016

Friday - Kept busy, with taxes, the inspection wrap up, the app, and other stuff.

I haven't, in fact, opened even one of the new books I picked up at the library. So, for books read this year we have:

#1 Madness in Solidar, (Imager Portfolio #9) #2 Solar Express #3 The Aeronaut's Windlass #4 A Call To Arms #5 Proven Guilty (Dresden Files, Book #8)	#6 Turn Coat (Dresden Files, Book 11) #7 White Night (Dresden Files #9) #8 Small Favor (Dresden Files #10) #9 Changes (Dresden Files #12) #10 Ghost Story (Dresden Files #13)
#11 Cold Days (Dresden Files #14) #12 Furies of Calderon

Somehow Turn Coat got in the pages there twice (I read these out of order), so I'm really just up to 12 books. I'm too lazy to go back and redo the numbering before this page, but #6 and #9 are the same.

Thursday 3 March 2016 Thursday - Another warm day, albeit with high clouds.

I took a few hours in the morning to walk a bit, I've been neglectful of that lately, for some reason. It was cool enough - low 80's - that I drank less than a liter of water on a seven mile walk.

I tried using the iPhone's camera in the time-lapse mode, recording most of three miles. It works ok-ish, a bit too fast to be considered a good time lapse, compressing an hour or so of walking into less than half a minute of video.

They are suggesting rain over the weekend, which has me worried, as I don't have the batteries hooked up in the boat. We'd need a LOT to be an issue, but it makes me nervous.

I've been plugging away at odd intervals on the as-builts review, but I need to really knuckle down and get it done and back to the draftsman.

To my horror I realized my tax appointment is Monday. I just got around to flipping over my kitchen calendar, which has all the dates on it.... I am completely unprepared. Sigh.

It just seems that the universe is lining up obstacles to keep me from working on the app lately...

Wednesday 2 March 2016

Wednesday - Warm and sunny, kind of ridiculous for early March. But that's the high desert.

I was reviewing the app, and so I went by S's place with questions on the new levels. My own notes were unclear, but once she reminded me they all made sense.

Five new levels is trouble though. Essentially I was using a bunch of case statements to control things, but it's getting complicated enough that maybe I need a more robust "state machine" approach. I've done similar things before, but I'm not sure how to approach it with Objective-C.

Amusingly enough, John D. Cook over at The Endeavour mentions it in a recent post as being one of the things that continually being re-invented, similar to the re-invention of LISP:

"A number of projects have grown until they contained an ad hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of state machines."

Heh. But things grow, and three or four levels (states) is one thing, ten another. Mostly people don't want to mess with elaborate data stuctures and process until they absolutely have to, and I'm no different...

S was having also some issues with data transfer. It turns out that After Effects does not, by default, compress it's rendered output file, so she was attempting to send a nearly 1GB files to the sound guy. He re-rendered it down to less than 10MB, and added most of the sound effects, sent it back and it looks good.

S mentioned she was going to the library after lunch, so I went with her and picked up a couple of Harry Dresden books, the last in the series currently:Skin Game, and another that is apparently short stories featuring him, Side Jobs. And also the latest David Weber Safehold tome.

Tuesday 1 March 2016

Tuesday - Another nice day, though there are a few high clouds. They are predicting rain this coming weekend.

I wanted to use the big 28" monitor to view the CAD as-built's, but the office was a disaster. So I spent several hours going through stuff and discarding/putting things away. About the time I finished with this I received a call from Tim to do a quick review of the soils test results.

So I spent about an hour doing that, just taking a quick pass through it, a couple of stations per reach, as a sanity check and reporting my conclusions back to Tim. It's really for the permitting agreement between the county and the contractor. You have to go back and forth between the tabulated data and the modified drawings and my hand written notes, so it's kind of a pain, even on the big monitor.

The good part is that things are cleaned up at least to the point I can find most of my app notes. And I found some of the new art work, so that's good too.

I also set up several public folders on the Google Drive, so S can transfer some video to outsource audio stuff that needs leveling and syncing.

Book #13 #12 was Furies of Calderon, by Jim Butcher. This, it turns out, is not the next Dresden Files book (there's one left, and one I think I missed in that series), but the beginning of an entirely new "sword and sorcery" series. About halfway through I figured out that it was a parallel world that a Roman Legion had somehow been transferred to, a thousand years or so ago in their timeline.

Actually it was pretty well done, I'll be reading the others. For free btw, from the library, I'm not paying for 'mind candy' as S puts it.

Monday 29 February 2016

Monday - It's a leap day.

Doing this and that.

I had a couple of tasks for the inspection job to complete - namely doing a final pass through the materials register and another through accounting for the extra work stuff, so I polished that off with about six hours work. Not much different from before, a couple of minor errors and additions. My notes and the tickets agree about as good as one has a right to expect, so that's good.

I still need to

digitize some reports stuff
look through the soils report
review the CAD as-built's from the draftsman.

Mostly I just want to finish this and move on.

I'm trying to get more into the programming mode, starting to think about the app again. It's been a while since I worked on it seriously, and as I recalled I was battling "git" branching on OSX, and other stuff related to adding more levels. I see in my work journal that I was apparently thinking of creating a "dictionary of dictionaries" for some reason. What the heck?

I can't find the imagery for the new levels, S re-arranged things a while back on the Google Drive we share (and, admittedly, it was pretty messed up before that and needed it).

The office is a disaster. Sigh.

S apparently visited the office whilst cat sitting the other day, and left some encouragement on the white boards:

Heh.

Sunday 28 January 2016

Sunday - Suffering still from the hands, but they aren't as swollen as yesterday.

I went shopping with S, picked up a bunch of stuff at Winco and the 99 Cent store, also some nice shaved roast beef from Albertson's.

I never got around to it, but I meant to take those books from last week back to the library. I did renew them so they aren't costing me money, but I dislike the clutter.

I haven't done any manual labor again, just waiting a bit. I want to get back to the app, but it's best to wait on it.

I did a bit of research into preventing Windows 10 from spying on me. Turns out it's very nearly impossible, without massive continual effort and vigilance. Well, I didn't plan to use the new laptop for anything but work anyway.

I finished Book #12 #11, Cold Days (Dresden Files #14), by Jim Butcher. It turns out that Dresden wasn't completely dead (only mostly), and Mab, the Queen of Air and Darkness, has no compunction about bringing him back to life - because he'd agreed to serve her after she gave him enough power to save his daughter from the Vampires - and it seems that Fairies take promises very seriously.

I did call IA about that lot in Antelope Acres, I'll have to touch base with him and see what's up.

Picture of the Week

Mt. Baden Powell trail.

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