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WEEK 29 2015

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Saturday 18 July 2015

Saturday - Yard sales in the morning. I was expecting hot, and wore shorts and a straw hat; what we got by late morning was clouds, thunder, and torrential downpours!

Which is excellent, my lawns and tomatoes could use the free water.

We spent a good half hour, just standing under the eaves, watching it fill up my friends pool.

Then we trooped off to Kathy's Korean BBQ for lunch.

In the afternoon I did a bit of app work, but when the lightning started getting close I turned off the computers and disconnected everything, and just watched nature's show. Riley could care less, Suzy was interested, and Jimmy was quite concerned.

We probably got an inch of rain before midnight, pretty impressive.

Book #39 was Impulse, by Steven Gould. This was pretty good, a sequel to Jumper (1992) and Reflex(2004), and picks up the story where the teenaged daughter of the protagonists of the first two books learns to teleport herself. Though she's more excited about boys and getting a cell phone...

Friday 17 July 2015

Friday - An average day. Not particularly hot.

I took my Explorer over to Scott's for an oil change and tire rotation. I also had him check the battery & cable. His checker said it was a bad batter - dropping well below 12V on starting and taking quite a while to recover. I mentioned that I'd had Sears and Pep Boys both check it, and both claimed it was OK, and he said he'd had that happen a couple of times fairly recently - probably the help there screwed up the test, or their gear was wrong. Anyway, I had him put a new battery in, an Interstate instead of a DieHard.

Roger was there, overseeing getting the tie rods replaced on his old Mercedes, so his wife dropped me off. When, at noon, she took me back to pick up the vehicle I suggested she get her oil changed, after the overheat episode of last week. And Scott & Russ were able to fit her in and get it done.

Other than that, just working on the app, trying to get a background prompt to work. I showed S the app as-is, and she had some changes she wanted, so I'm working on those. I'd like to get this thing to beta and out the door for testing before I start inspection work in a few weeks.

Thursday 16 July 2015

Thursday - Kind of an average-to-hot day.

I did the longer walk, 7.5 miles, starting at 8am to avoid the heat. I got back at 11am, and I'd gone through a liter of water, it was getting warm.

So I didn't start until late on the app. This was investigating a case of UIButtons not disappearing, although their properties were set to *.hidden=YES. It turns out to be my fault, I hadn't set them as "outlets" again. Since I'd cut and pasted the *.h file, the declarations of them as outlets were present, just not...implemented. There is a tiny little round circle in the gutter to the left, and it was present, but the smaller-than-a-pinhead-on-a-27"-monitor dot inside the circle was missing...silly me. Then I did some work on a graphical overlay for things.

I made an appointment to have the work done on the Explorer tomorrow.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Wednesday - Warm again.

Just a long day of working on the app.

I did get a break in the afternoon, when a friend called and asked if I wanted to go see Spaceballs at the theater! I asked if it was a remake, but he said it was a 70mm re-issue for the TCM channel, and they had a season pass. It was enjoyable - I don't think I've seen it in it's entirety, let alone on the big screen, since it came out in the late 1980's. They show twice a week, but the Sunday showing had been sold out...

I talked to Tim, he says work might start on August 6th. April, August, whatever I guess... I should get the oil changed and the tires rotated on the Explorer. And I should have that battery cable looked at I suppose. And maybe even wash it:-)

This would have been my Dad's 92nd birthday. As kids he told us that he was born on the 4th of July, I think I was a teenager before I figured out it was a joke.

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Tuesday - Warming up. I did the standard five mile walk, then worked on the app more.

The app is coming along. Slower than I'd like, but so it goes.

Monday 13 July 2015

Monday - Mild temperatures. I turned on the a/c late, and off fairly early.

Did some minor chores, then back to work on the app for most of the day. Rebuilding it, and documenting as I go...

More Apple goodies. I'm recreating a "prefs" file, used to hold a bunch of static variables, and all these error messages start popping up. I'm puzzled, because I've been doing this for a while and had no problems with defining a CGRect in an NSObject before. So I open an old project with a similar file...and it's fine. I can't find any errors so I actually do a cut and paste from the old to the new - and the errors pop up again! WTH? Eventually I figured out that Apple removed the automatic inclusion of UIKit in the pre-compiled header (because, after all, what are the odds that someone would ever want User Interface functions in an iOS project?). Since the header is generated at project start anything that I started before the update two weeks ago automatically has this, new stuff doesn't.

I've been trying to figure out why this nonsense keeps happening. I'm guessing that at Apple part of your performance evaluation is partially scored on "number of lines changed" and "updated legacy modules". So if you want that bonus you need to churn, churn, churn that code...

S called, late afternoon, and we went over about 5:30pm to pick up her Volvo from the mechanic. She had had it towed there earlier in the day. He said it was a bad computer unit, that messed up the sensors and the timing and vacuum advance and who know what else. It runs fine now.

Sunday 12 July 2015

Sunday - Warm again, in the 90's. The swamp cooler easily kept up with it, on low.

My friend, driving back from San Diego, had overheating problems, and drove the whole way with the heater on, windows open. Sounds pretty brutal - I used to have to do that in the Probe on long hot grades...

I did my walk, just a shorter one, about 5.3 miles. My ice water had turned to coolish water by the time I got home. My feet still had 'hot spots'. Hmmm. They should be tougher by now, I'm not sure what's going on. Maybe the heat is making my feet sweat more?

Other than that, not much going on. Read a bit, watched some TV, did a few household chores.

Book #38 was Warbound (Grimnoir #3), by Larry Correia, last in the series.

Picture of the Week

The downtown beach in Cayucos, with the pier re-construction under way.

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