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WEEK 22 2018

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Saturday 2 June 2018

Saturday - Getting warmer again, into the high 90's, and it's supposed to be 100+ for the next couple of days.

Doing various small chores about the house. I moved the led strip lights in the garage over to where the benches were going to be. This caused one to fail, alas. I think they are old Walmart lights.

The neighbor boys came by and helped move the benches and radial arm saw to the new locations. Unfortunately the saw doesn't fit between them the way I'd hoped - I' hadn't realized that the way the sill sticks out from the wall interferes with the caster bases on the saw. Bah. It's probably fixable, but more work.

The boys were surprised by the weight of these benches, so I feel a bit less old and weak for having strained my back moving them by myself! The next garage task is to put up some shelves.

I took R&S to lunch at the Indian place in Palmdale, then we made a pass by Trader Joe's.

I ordered some RAM (a 16GB kit) for the MacBook and it arrived, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. When running Xcode, and the Simulator, and Safari with two or three tabs I can see the memory load is 7GB+ out of the 8GB that I have in there now, so this should help.

Friday 1 June 2018 Friday - Warm again.

Working on the app again. Kind of struggling with GIT again. Apple has "improved" the integration - it could hardly get worse - and I am trying to merge and prune the branches in the old local repository (and if that sounds like gibberish to you, join the club!).

Book #20 was China Sea, by David Poyer, 6th in internal order. Lenson is ashore, but jumps the the chance to get his first (temporary) command of an old destroyer being prepped for turnover to the Pakistani government. There are various issues as they travel across the Atlantic and Mediterranean seas with the bad Pakistani captain. Upon arrival the turnover is halted, due to the Pakistani nuclear bomb test of that time, and Lenson gets command again. The ship is assigned to be part of an anti-piracy international task force off of China, and various things happen.

Thursday 31 May 2018 Thursday - Warm.

Working away on the app most of the day. I don't know if it is improvements by Apple to Xcode or the new SSD in the Macbook Pro, but I was actually able to compile the old version of the app from last year. And even put it on the old iOS9 iPad! Since S uses the old one this is useful - she doesn't browse the web or anything with it, so the out of date OS isn't a big deal.

Apple improved Xcode and the Simulator I say, but I should note that the simulator now crashes when trying to run the audio...sigh. I'm glad that it works on the tablet, but things are going to be slow if I can't use the simulator.

Book #19 was Tomahawk, by Dave Poyer, 4th in internal order. Lenson is assigned to the Pentagon during the development of the Tomahawk cruise missile. Not bad. For once he doesn't get sunk or shot at, at sea, but he does get lost in a blizzard ashore in Canada...

Wednesday 30 May 2018

Wednesday - Temperate, low 80's, average winds.

The film seems to keep the office cooler, but it's hard to say how much, because the sun and wind are so variable. Still, the room was usable until evening, hitting about 75F. I have enough film left to do the master bedroom windows, so tomorrow when it's cooler I'll cover those as well.

Working away on the app and various things.

Reading up on iMessage - Apple claims that it is secure on my end. Which suggests that it's my brother's android. I'm pretty sure it is stock, so they are adding another layer of creepiness - they (probably Google) are researching and targeting me from spying on his phone...

I sent the link for Signal to four people, only one (not my brother) bothered to download it.

Tuesday 29 May 2018

Tuesday - Hot: 102F about 2pm, as measured on my front porch. But high clouds were coming in by then, and it dropped into the 80's by nightfall.

The back is still sore, but much better.

Worked a bit on the app, and a bunch of bills and paperwork. Cleaning up the house and the office as well - the office is so cluttered that it's hard to work right now.

M returned last night, and stopped by and picked up Sparta in the afternoon.

Started watching Sherlock, the BBC series with B. Cumberbatch. I've actually seen the first few episodes before, but it's been so long that I'd forgotten most of the plot and action.

Did a bit of research: Signal seems a good encrypted text messaging app (and free). Originally I was considering WhatsApp, but it's owned and operated by Facebook. The cofounder to WhatsApp suggests using Signal himself...

The downside is that both parties have to have Signal - since it's encrypted in the sending phone and decrypted on the receiving phone. I believe it's the same for any transit-encrypted app.

Monday 28 May 2018

Monday - Memorial Day.

Warm, into the high nineties.

Went next door for a BBQ with A and family. Had a good time.

G came by and we finished putting the 'Gila' film on the office windows in the late morning. It was late enough and warm enough that we had trouble applying the film, even though the windows weren't in direct sun.

We had to redo one window when the film moved and wrinkled, but it mostly looks good. I am tempted to do the master bedroom windows as well now.

Creepiness.

My brother had sent me a picture of the Grand Canyon taken with his cell phone about 2pm, without identifying it, and I'd replied - again without replying. In the evening, after the BBQ, I checked the weather on my tablet...and was already getting ads for hotels and recreation at the Grand Canyon!

I knew they spied on webmail and used tracking cookies, but I guess now they are tapping into text messages, and using techniques to infer where and what you might be doing... Creepy.

Sunday 27 May 2018

Sunday - Warm, but not horrible. I did go grocery shopping in the morning with S, and picked up some steaks for Monday. The crowds were very light - the first of the month is in a few days and I guess a lot of people are short of cash about now...

Saw another car run a red light on the way home - I see this pretty much every trip now.

The light changed a few hundred feet ahead of me, I slowed down and stopped, the guy next to me sped up, and the light turned red when he was 75-100' short and he blew through doing I would say about 70mph in a 45mph zone, a second or two after it had changed.

My brother is making progress driving back from the east coast.

I put up some reflective film in the office windows. This is the 50% reflective stuff that is supposedly safe for older double pane windows.

We only got about half installed before direct sunlight made us stop, about 1pm. Interestingly I could feel the difference with my hands, easily, of the warmth coming through the panes with and without the film. I've put the film on before, but have always had a sneaking suspicion that it was a waste of money, but apparently not.

Picture of the Week

Jim eating the grass

Jim chowing down on the wheat grass.
Longhairs are notorious for hairballs, and he's no exception!

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