Saturday - Feeling a bit slow for some
reason. Met up with friends for dinner, their daughter was visiting
from SF and we all had a nice evening.
Friday7 February2014
Friday
- Not much to say. Cool and windy.
Working away on the app. I find the hardest part is starting
in the morning. I use the small bedroom upstairs as an office, and make
a point of not web surfing or anything else distracting in there. Even
this blog is done on the downstairs computer! And I've been avoiding
working on the house during the week - it's too easy to get wrapped up
in yard/'house work and not make any progress.
I'm reasonably
happy with progress - it's slower than I had hoped, but the hours are
producing some results. To the point where the vagueness in the
specifications is coming back to roost, I need to get together with S
and get a better idea of what is wanted in certain areas. But using the
NSUserDefaults and a separate model object is making the code a bit
more straightforward, though also a little more verbose.
In general, the fixation on avoiding global variables is a pain in the butt. The weenies that develop iOS are apparently terrified
of the idea. You have to wonder if they've every developed anything for
the real world themselves. I suspect not. It would be interesting to
find just how many apps the developers themselves have written that are
rated in the top 100, or even top 1,000? Zero would be my guess...
Thursday6 February2014
Thursday
- I ran a few errands in the morning, then headed back to Lancaster.
Since apparently they had closed the 23 north I took the 101 all the
way to the 405 - which meant I sat in traffic for about half an hour,
because of a wreck at the 405 backing up traffic on the 101. I really
do hate driving in LA, it's always something.
It was cold and windy in Lancaster, and it even rained a bit.
Wednesday 5 February2014
Wednesday -
I went down to Oxnard Tuesday evening. The boat was tight and
dry. Of course, with the drought there hasn't been much rain to leak
in.... It was cold at night - about 45F, and I ended up getting the
sleeping bag out and kicking the little electric heater on once or
twice.
I
also brought down a little refrigerator that friends had found at a
yard sale. It looked tiny in the house, and huge in the boat.
Perspective is everything I guess. I put the beer and soda in it.
We'll see what it does to the electric bill this month.
Down
to San Diego on the train. It was nice - the last train I was on was
the San Joaquin line, some years ago, and this was a much nicer train.
It took about four hours to make the trip, east from Oxnard to Union
Station, then Union Station southerly to the coast somewhere south of
Long Beach.
The platform at Union Station. Kind of rundown, actually.
From there it was mostly down along the coast to San Diego proper, Santa Fe station at the end of the line.
Inside Santa Fe station.
We
then walked down to Seaport Village and had lunch, then up to the
Embarcadero, past the Star of India and the Midway. Very nice, the
weather was glorious, probably 68F with just a nice breeze.
We
saw a couple of boats out doing some tacking duels on the water, with
the America's Cup insignia on their sails. I knew that one had to be Stars and Stripes, but wasn't sure of the other. It was, it turns out, the Abracadabra, another 12-meter boat.
Dave
had bought the tickets, finding that a ten pack was cheaper than a six
pack, so I rode for free - always a pleasant experience. I didn't bring
my camera along, as CB was originally going to come and he's a better
photographer, but he came down with the flu and didn't come along. So
all the photo's are cell phone pics.
We only had about three
hours in SD, before having to head back to Santa Fe station. We had a
good time, but it wasn't time enough to justify the cost of
getting tickets to the Maritime Museum, for four people.
And
again, the trip north was fine. A bunch of people in Chicago colors
kept getting on: it turns out that the Blackhawks were playing the
Ducks in Anaheim, where the train stops at the stadium. But they were a
pleasant well behaved bunch, so no harm done.
Dave and I
passed some of the time by discussing the upcoming job. It's a two or
three step process, to satisfy the County and the Army Core of
Engineers, so it's maybe a bit more paperwork that the usual inspection
would be.
Everyone seemed to be on a cell
phone, laptop or tablet. Kind of amusing, but what did people do
before 3G and the Internet? Read the papers, and books I guess. I
didn't see anyone reading an actual dead tree newspaper, but at least
on person was using their ereader. My friends had iPhones, I had my
Droid, but mostly we talked and looked out the window.
Back in
Oxnard I took everyone to dinner at BJ's. We were concerned that it'd
be crammed with the ice hockey game going on, but the game was over by
the time we arrived - after 9pm - and it was nice. I was practically
falling asleep, but a nice burger picked me up enough to get back to
the boat and crash...
Tuesday 4 February2014
Tuesday
- Spent the day working on the app - the "Settings" page is pretty much finished. Also cleaning up around the house.
I'm
off to Ventura tomorrow and that always starts me on a frenzy of
cleaning. Since not much got done in that vein on Saturday and Sunday I
ended up doing a lot of dishes, laundry, trash, and general pickup.
Also a boatload of bills...
Monday 3 February 2014
Monday
- A full day's work on the app. Getting into the flow of things again.
Unfortunately it's been so long - August, really - since I did any real
deep programming that I've forgotten things that I did and figured out.
But that's mostly behind me (again) and I'm proceeding forward. Things
are really starting to take shape.
Jimmy
was running down the stairs the other day, and as usual, just went
through the bars on the railing at the bottom. Or tried to - he's grown
a lot and there is one set of bars that is closer together than the
others. There was this loud "CLUNK" and a rather stunned cat. It
doesn't seem to have caused any injury, but it was quite a loud "bonk
bonk on the head"!
Suzy's surgery has healed nicely. We just
finished the course of antibiotics - about the time she grew resigned
to the eyedropper.
Sunday 2 February2014
Sunday
- Cold, mixed clouds and sun. Doing various household chores - my back
is still pretty stiff and sore. Probably from the weed pulling, and
maybe a bit from the shoveling. Bah.
Last
week was the 10th anniversary of Tim and I getting laid off at NASA.
Time really flies... Financially kind of difficult, but maybe the best
thing for me, anyway.
We went out for a quick lunch at the Thai Cafe', next to the local
Target. My friends' boy needs a new laptop, so we thought we'd look in
Target for one. His old machine died a final death Saturday, after
being on life support all of the last few months. Indeed, it lasted
until the day after his intersession classes ended! Sadly the Target
selection was minimal, just a few low end machines (5).
He is interested in getting a Windows 8 Surface Tablet/Laptop combination, so
that he can download textbooks with Windows DRM, take the machine as a tablet to
school, but also have a decent laptop experience at home.
We decided to go check CostCo laptops out. Best Buy would have the
biggest selection in the valley, but no one wanted to drive down to
Palmdale again - we were there yesterday and it was a zoo.
Somehow this segued into my friends deciding they needed a new
TV. I'm not sure how, perhaps because I've been bugging them
and mentioning how inexpensive they were at CostCo, but in any case we
trooped off to the warehouse. They didn't have any of the Surface
machines (sorry Kirk!) but they did have a few 60" flat screens left,
so we picked one up, took it back to their place, hooked it up, and had
it running in time to almost catch the beginning of the Superbowl.
Only 17 seconds missed,
and the SeaHawks had already scored. And continued to
score. I'm glad the Bronco's got a least one score, it was humiliating
enough as it was. I was wearing Bronco colors - orange t-shirt with a
blue vest - but it didn't help. Colorado was just completely flat and
uninspired. Bah.
Picture of
the Week Photo Notes:
Overcast skies in Lancaster.
