Monday morning bootstrap...

We all have memories of our past - good and bad.  One series of memories for me are tied to a smell that I'd have when I was really ill: hot dogs.  In particular the scent of hotdog water - in the land before microwaves (being common), we would cook hotdogs in the winter by boiling them in water.  Yay.  When I would have really high fevers and in the midst of a cold, I could smell hotdog water.

I don't smell hotdog water today - the past few days I have had the smell of my step-father's parent's cottage in my mind.  His Mother was a wonderful cook and the whole cottage would smell like whatever was being cooked.  On weekend mornings, there was no escaping the smell of bacon.  Endless bacon.  And that is what I have been smelling and yet there is no bacon that has been cooked.

This smell reminds me of times that really weren't great.  In many ways, I'd almost prefer to smell the hotdog water.  At least I would know that I was seriously ill but that I would feel better soon.

With this, it drags up unpleasant memories, annoyances, and a seemingly lack of control of my own destiny.

This is all despite a weekend of working hard to study, learn, do stuff, try to reach out, chores, and keep myself physically active.

I bring this all up on a Monday morning as it's the reboot of the week: back to work, try to give a shit about what I'm doing, try to ignore the things that I'd rather be doing, and just soldier on.

I'm tired.

Friday morning - wrapping it all up...

 Arg.

So today has sucked - walked but didn't do yoga, weights, and waited on a friend for a noon zoom call only to hear "nothing".  So my noon walk was cancelled for nothing. 

I am taking the Docker course seriously - applying it already to work.  I should have taken this ages ago.

No aura today so that's good.  The other day was too freaky for words for me.

My motors, wheels, and drivers arrived as well as new 3d print heads.  Yay!  Another project that will have to wait until I'm done with the other projects.  I really need to outline the projects - epics, stories, tasks, etc...  I really need to organise the fuck out of my life right now.  Is it bad that I count the hours down on a Friday afternoon hoping that it will just suddenly end so I'm freed up to do the things I want?

I will do an hour's worth of work on the Tensorflow course tonight.

A trip to Lowe's might be needed to facilitate the acquisition of the threaded rods, nuts, and washers - Home Hardware failed me.

I also need to knock the workout spreadsheet out of the park tonight.  We'll see...

Strangeness

 I have been pushing myself hard lately - stress from work, life, exercise, learning, building, etc...

Today I just freaked out - I had this crescent-shaped shimmering light follow the edge of my peripheral vision and it is exactly what I have been described as an aura.  I have been fortunate to have never been hit with migraines but I know so many people who have and this aura can sometimes be a pre-cursor for them.  It doesn't always have to be but can be.

I am still kind of freaked by it - it's kind of gone but kind of not gone.

My learning is coming along - I just wish I had a tonne of money to only learn for the rest of my very long life. 

Yesterday had its moments of joy and annoyances...

 The annoyances were pretty straight-forward: work.

The joys: accomplished cleaning that I had planned on doing, levelled the bed on the printer, printed out the parts I had planned on printing last week but gave up because I thought I had a clogged nozzle.  Nope.  Again, always: clean the bed, level the bed.

True Level...

I have given up all hope for this: BuildOne 3d Printer.  What an unmitigated piece of crap.  When I first saw the campaign, I thought: "Yeah this could work - he's basically slapping together a working 3d printer from a pile of equipment that I can't be arsed to get myself."  3 years now?  Sigh...  3 years is nuts.

Focus on things that are under your control/influence. 

The new exercise routine is in full-swing - just have to wait and see if  I get the results I hope for.

The courses are going well - I'm exhausted after being up late to wrap up the one section on Activation Functions.  Today I'm tackling Back Propagation and Keras and Tensor Flow, and then possibly back to the Docker one.

Perhaps more graphs or pictures later today...

New Day New Stuff

 There are a lot of things that you forget over the years if you don't use them.  In my case this morning, it was all about remembering how to insert a CR/LF or Return in an OpenOffice spreadsheet Cell.  CTRL-Enter.  Done.  Now the sheet fits the page.

Lovely.  New week, new part of the plan to re-introduce routine, different exercise and see what happens after a month.

Time to Science the Shit out of this...

 So the weight loss thing has been good - I'm down 43-45 pounds depending on the day as of the plateau period.  I feel good, I look much better, I have clothes that fit again but I'm still not where I should have been.

Yeah - weight loss is not linear.  We all know that.  There's the rush of loss that comes close to linear but then it fails out.

I have been taking courses on udemy and I decided to apply some of that to my real life data.

I opened up a new Jupyter notebook, did some data cleaning and then plotted out a few graphs that seem to confirm my hypothesis that a change in my daily routine has resulted in the "plateau of doom".

I gain a significant gain (or so I think) by walking - it's cardio.  I know it's a huge component to anybody's health.  So with all things being equalish, I ran my Mass and Step count through Spearman's Correlation and plotted the results:

Something magical changed around Day 63 or so... What happened was that I shifted my exercise routine from a mix of yoga, weights, and cardio to only cardio really.

The effects on my Mass could be seen in the change in this graph:

Really though, I started to deviate from around day 50 as I was challenged to keep up with a demand to use more cardio as bang-for-the-buck.  Because we wall know that cardio is king...  :(

There's a green line that shows the linear track that I was on for success.

The red is the matching polynomial for the reality that I live with.

The deviation shows up again around day #63...

My food intake has been about the same - although I'm not calorie-counting, I haven't changed much.  I have however stopped doing morning and night yoga as well as the first thing in the morning weights.

Now that I have *some* maths, a hypothesis (gut instinct really), and a chance to course correct, I will do so.  Time to turn that polynomial into something new and get that slope downward again a bit faster.

Monday morning singsong blues...

 Stupid morning:

1) rain - a little bit more than my threshold.  I am not made of sugar but it was more than I wanted to deal with this morning;

2) I went for a walk on the treadmill to finish up the daily walk and my projector bulb is giving me problems again which diminished the pleasurable experience of walking.  Yeah - should have shrugged it off but that annoying fan sound and the blinking red lights set off my trap card;

3) the 3d printer bed needs levelling again, and some cleaning.  I hope that I don't have a blocked nozzle;

4) just not feeling it...

Oh well, time to recover, get back on my way...

This however is starting to work:

#assistivetechnology #machinevision #hackaday

Friday rush to close off the week...

 Yes, Friday is insane:

A mix of Land Of Infinite Fun (https://www.reenigne.org/blog/the-land-of-infinite-fun/) and deadlines.

Playing with cascading decorators and **kwargs for a cool test configuration tool...

The weekend is going to be a mix of walking, coding, printing, testing, and perhaps a bit of fun if I can convince one of my bubble buddies to go out.

Results

 Got my results this morning:

Not Detected.

Woohoo!


That was terrific turnaround!  I'm happy.  Whew.  I'm on my second coffee and buzzing through the day!

The process.

So as a continuation, the process is simple:

1) find a nearby testing site, go, etc...;

2) get tested;

3) wait;

4) get results.

Here's how it works:

1) found a nearby testing site that is being run from a school (good use of a currently unused building). I had to find parking as the lineup was pretty long already.  The posted estimated time was 2 hours (which is better than a few weeks ago when my friend had her child tested (4 hours then)).  I got in line and we all physically distanced ourselves.  Everybody was wearing a mask, and there was even 5 porta-potties before entering a covered section of the line - 1 wheelchair access, 1 men's, 3 ladies'.  At different times, people from security would come out and ask if we were all feeling okay, etc...  This took about 45 minutes.

2) once you are in the building, you line up for registration/screening.  This was simply a matter of waiting about 10 minutes, then being directed to a window, showing your health card, answering a few questions about symptoms, etc...  I was asked why I was showing up today - I mentioned that the COVID Alert app had informed me that I may have been exposed.  I was her first APP person!!!  Yay!!!  Then you are directed to the gym and given a seat to sit down in.  At all times, there are people whisking about, cleaning even the kiosk glass, surfaces, etc...  When your name is called, you approach a new kiosk, sanitize your hands, confirm who you are, and then you are given a bracelet and instructed to sit down again.  All of the chairs are spaced out away from each other, but there are some family group chairs clustered to keep people together.  Everything is sanitized the moment that someone gets up.

3) wait - not too long - I was occupied by writing notes on a current project - during that time I registered for the portal so I could check later and get my results.  Since it was at the school, we were able to use the widely advertised wifi access for guests.  That was a pleasant gesture.

4) your name gets called and you are directed to a closed off stall with a doctor.  Mine was good - he was friendly, explained that I had to remove my mask, I did, then he inserted a swab to the back of my throat, wiped about (that wasn't bad at all).   Then he took the swab and swabbed the back of my nose through my right nostril.  That felt strange.  Not a bad strange, not a good strange.  It wasn't quite like getting water down your nose but instead felt like the edge of a sneeze trigger.  He swirled it around in circles, and that was the strangest part.  It felt like the back of my nose was like sensitive shag carpeting and he was going to pull it all out - but then the feeling subsided.  The left nostril was the same sensation.  Not good, not bad, just strange.

5) we talked about the app, where I thought I might have been exposed, etc...  I was his second app person.  I use google maps everywhere so it is not uncommon for me to have a complete history of my trips everywhere.  Then I left.  I knew that in a day or two I would get the results.

It was a good experience.  I took the day off just to adjust and decompress.

First thing in the morning fun!

 So there's this COVID-19 thing going on.  

As of recent, a lot of people have been working from home, isolating as best as they can, going to work when need be, shopping when need be, etc...  Things have been "okay" thus far here in Kanata, Ontario Canada.  Things have opened up again - and that's good.  People are returning to work, there's still a mask policy which is going on and that too is exciting.

There's this cool app for contact tracing - COVID Alert.  I installed it as things have opened up a bit more and I wanted to just keep data going into the government to help with health decision making.  It's good stuff.  If you're worried about being traced/monitored, go off the grid and have a nice life making up recipes that include cooked squirrels.

This morning, I received notice that I had been exposed - within the past 14 days, someone with the same application running was diagnosed with COVID-19 and I was in close proximity to them for a duration of > 15 minutes.  Cold dread.