Friday: Solving problems, making other ones.

Plus I keep having tests fail, so I'm going to half-heartedly try to diagnose them this weekend.  In addition to writing other stuff.  And planning a talk for a week and a half from now.  And unpacking.  And cleaning.  I probably should not plan as much for weekends.

And the problem? A stupid missing ")".

No image, because I couldn't find one.

• You can spread pork now.  Spreadable pork.
• Neil Gaiman has more books than I do.

Thursday: Sprint planning.

I'm not sure if I like it, because it's kind of like a performance review and a meeting rolled into one, and I don't really like either.  At least I largely accomplished most of my August tasks, even though the expectation was that they'd take longer than a month.  And I signed up to present a talk at a future Wednesday meeting, because I'm bad at saying no.

Also today I discovered that my new doctor is really far away, but I think if I had ignored the google maps directions and went with the highway, it wouldn't have been that bad.  I've also officially not lost as much weight as I had thought, which is a bit annoying.

And I could have gotten Qdoba for lunch, but that would have involved turning around and turning around again, so I stopped at the similar place instead.

I think my more direct comparison is "Chipotle is spicier, and has nicer cuts of lettuce, but isn't as good in overall flavor.  Also too much cilantro."

Finally, I spent an hour putting together the start of a snek program that will do all of the FITS interaction that I want and had before scattered in a half dozen programs.  The snek interface is nicer than C, but I know it has speed and memory issues.  Still nice to go from blah to working version in such a short time.

Similarly, using snek to spam my RSS onto tumblr means I'm having trouble finding links each day.

• The snek interface.
• Never trust AI.
• Some big old puppers.

Wednesday: So that works.

It seems to do all the things it's supposed to, but I know that at least one of the three changes is ugly and hacked together.  I'll sort out a proper set of changes tomorrow, but it's nice to be at a point where things make sufficient sense that I can get this close to a solution.

To be fair, I don't fully understand why it works, but I was tired and hungry and wanted to go home.

• This is horrifying.
• It's not that great of a burger.
• Amethyst.
• This is cool art.

Tuesday: It makes more sense now.

The thing was pulling information from elsewhere, and using that to define the key translations.  Which, fine, great, whatever, but it's not very intuitive.  But I found it, so tomorrow I can do more tests and hopefully get a working version finished.  It couldn't be today, because using the other stuff means loading a bunch of new packages into my environment.  Ugh.

The buzzy bee says ugh too.

I also went out to my car this morning to discover a "we're going to tow your car" warning on it.  Either I messed up something when I moved in, or they've changed the rules, or something, but now I need to do something to get a parking pass.  It's dumb, I've bothered them, and I have a kind of solution, but it's still a pain in the ass.

• Why?  None of these people are irreplaceable, which is why when they were shunned, life pretty much went on as it did before.  I have no interest in any of them.
• If you didn't know WCA was going to be great, then you weren't paying attention.
• I pushed a project to github today, but I didn't want to have it completely out of my local tree.  It turns out git already thought of that, so I can happily have the github version in a directory with other not-github projects.

Monday: That doesn't make sense.

I was able to get it to partially work, but the thing I've been avoiding at work while reading up on the code still isn't finished.  I can't figure out how it's doing a mapping, and I don't see any place that's defining the mappings it is getting right.

Tonight was also board game night, which I came out of with a pretty decent 50/50 split.  I could have won one of the games of Sabotage if I'd waited slightly longer to betray everyone else.

It's muggy and hot, but I should probably make this again once it gets cold.  I think some sort of pork would help flesh it out into more than just a side.

• This was my local grocery store.
• Yeah.
• So Baylor is just the absolute worst.
• Am I sufficiently not lazy to do the math for this?
• From this data, you can assume that this is reasonably described by a three-component mixture model (using Gaussians because I'm lazy and they're good enough).
• Feeding the individual values to my GMM code yields all modes with approximately sigma = 1, and means and mode fractions:
• F: m = (1.89, 6.74, 9.12); P = (0.04, 0.49, 0.46)
• M: m = (1.36, 6.28, 8.85); P = (0.23, 0.56, 0.21)
• The bias for males is then something like a half point.  It's smaller for the highest ranked mode, but that might just be because of the fact that the range and sampling is limited.

Sunday: Another lazy day.

I guess that's my weekend plan at the moment: be lazy and sleep in because I have to get up early during the week.  Ugh.

Eight years ago on Haleakala.

• This is what not keeping up with maintenance gets you.  Also the parking there was always impossible.
• I did spend part of the day looking up recipes, because I suspect some things I can only get here if I make them.
• Bulgogi.
• The yummy spicy pork belly.

Saturday: Forced housekeeping.

Because the internet died.  Stupid crappy internet.  My NAS also went wonky when that happened, so that's not a good sign.  If it happens again, I'll have to figure out what's up with that.  In any case, I was able to take out the trash and recycling, and clean the bathroom and kitchen.

But I had pizza beforehand.

I also bought Overwatch because it seems to be the big popular game, and it's pretty fun. Having a bunch of different people to try out is a good idea.

• Tesla.
• This is dumb.

Friday: Debugging rabbit holes.

At least I learned a lot about how this thing works.  I'm still not completely sure how to add the stuff I need to, but I can kind of see where it will go.  I also learned that pdb stole a lot of stuff from gdb, but decided that typing "b" to add a break point at the current location was too useful, and so they skipped that in favor of forcing you to type full locations.  Super nice to discover that when the program continues until the end instead of stopping at the break point like you thought it would.

Fifteen years ago I saw balloons.

• So the French Open is racist?  Good to know.
• One of the major reasons I'm reading comics again is because there are not-white, not-male, not-straight writers/artists/etc.
• I confirmed it tonight when I left Wegmans.  From east to west, you can see Mars, Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus, with the Moon bumbling along in the middle.

Thursday: Today I got a package I didn't order.

It's again for the guy I keep getting mail for.  How do you order things to the wrong address?  Plus pay for three-day shipping.  Now what am I supposed to do with this?

Six years ago I had bacon chips.

• Lifehacker says I can just keep the package.  Ugh.
• It looks like Honolulu may actually get a real hurricane.  Good thing I moved.
• They're rearranging and changing the lunch place on campus.  I'm guessing it'll be an improvement when it's finished, but there were fewer options today, and I ended up going with something that took way longer to prepare than other people had, and I was generally dissatisfied.

Wednesday: So the worst ideas aren't common. Good.

Have I found this color jerk?

Yeah.  "On the sidewalk, over by the stairs" is totally a secure location, Amazon.

• The crossover is December 9th, but it doesn't matter much, because the Legends aren't invited.
• How do you get to be a principal if you're this bad at it?

Tuesday: Still so sleepy.

It doesn't help that I've had nightmares since coming back home from the conference.  Always fun to wake up at 4am because my brain has come up with an unsolvable math problem that's somehow coupled to the state of the universe.  Thanks for coming up with a thing that you can't just wake up from, because it doesn't make enough sense in the first place.

Making rice and then stuffing it and chili into a tortilla?  That makes perfect sense.

Deliciously perfect sense.

• This would be a bigger deal if I was convinced people would take it seriously.
• What?
• Heists.
• Dress codes are dumb, and as shown by this, inherently sexist.
• A year ago I saw an eclipse.

Monday: So sleepy.

I've been sleepy all day.  So sleepy.

Look at this jerk.

• Maybe this is the NFS issue?  The simple solution didn't seem to fix anything, so maybe I need to do something else.
• Grown up memes.

Sunday: I go away for a week, and I guess summer ended.

Probably not really, but it was definitely "windows open" instead of "A/C" weather today.  That was a good reason for me to cook a long simmer meal for dinner.  Plus, cooking long meals during the week isn't that easy, so I thought it'd be good to get it done today.

But I needed lunch first.  I haven't had Qdoba's brisket before.  It's good.

 Cooking brisket would take a long time.  Maybe next weekend.  I also got groceries, which only went to twice my nominal budget.  I also got a new toothbrush and a couch pillow at Target.  Pillows are good.

In any case, chili:

Chili.

I used my own recipe as the base, although I skipped the stew meat and the bacon.  This batch is really good.  There's no major heat, but by the end of my bowl I was sweating a crazy amount.  It also doesn't stick around, which is good.  It's hot while you eat it, but it's fine ten minutes after you finish.  I had thought about taking it for lunch this week, but I don't think I will, given the amount of sweat involved.

Tomorrow I want to have it with rice, since I finally found decent rice.

I guess this trip put me into the "two free bottles of water" class.  Look upon my works, ye mighty.

• I had planned on connecting my old main computer today, so I could transfer data off of it.  Unfortunately, when they packed it, they didn't include the power cable, so I couldn't do that.  Instead, I popped out the main data hard drive and put it into an external drive case.  Somehow it had this issue, with the reported size being one byte larger than physical.  `resize2fs` did fix the problem.
• The other problem I've been having is that my rsyncs were running slow.  It looks like the problem is something to do with NFS.  I'm doing direct network runs now, and that's going much faster.
• This show sounds better and better.
• Today I learned that doesthedogdie.com has other kinds of information about content.

Saturday: Saturday? I guess so.

Too much travel.

Then yelp lied to me that the close by McD would be open until midnight.  It closes at 10.  There are really no good late night places here.  That's terrible.

I loaded up AC:PC.  I feel like I abandoned them. :(

Breakfast was ok.  The sweet potato fries were cold.  So that's not great.  Also: no hot sauce? WTF?

A travel pillow.

The important thing is that I made it home, and I need to check that I have clothes for tomorrow, and then tomorrow I need to go buy groceries.  That means I probably shouldn't sleep until 4pm.

Friday: The end of the conference.

It was a good conference.  I learned a lot, and I have a pile of questions for next week when everyone is back in the office.  Now all I need to do is get home tomorrow.  That should be easy.

Since the conference ended around lunch time, I spent the afternoon catching up on news and internet stuff I've been missing.  I also discovered that my tumblr queue was empty, so after some git dancing, and some refactoring and testing for an updated system, I now have a functional RSS-to-tumblr queue snek script.  I have to do a bit more work on it for it to be completely finished.  I'm abusing a few things because I was lazy, so those should get fixed up.  As it is, though, it correctly goes through the RSS archive (by increasing date), determines if the link is to tumblr, and if it is, likes and reblogs.  Finally, the RSS entry is unflagged, removing it from the archive for the future.  Running the script now takes about a minute, compared to much longer to manually spawn the link in a tab and click through to queue it.  Yay increasing my internet reading efficiency.

It was a fairly nice day.

 I didn't like lunch, so I planned to get a big dinner.

I think this was cilantro butter.  I could never live here.  The soap flavor would kill me.

A big steak.  I would have preferred better veggies, less cilantro sauce, and a "prickly pear steak sauce" that emphasized tart over sweet.  Still, it was a good steak, cooked to a great level.

I've realized that I'm going to need to go out and get groceries tomorrow night when I get home.  Ugh.

• F the P.
• "We’re not in the crossover this year". UGH.
• I should read this article more fully.  It seems interesting.

Thursday: I don't think I've won a single board game game yet.

But I won a raid.

Dumped a Mareep into a gym.

 Learned a bunch about a major system at work, even if I'm not 100% on board with the new changes, because I'm not sure they go far enough for me.

I then watched an excellent talk. Oh, then more board games.

Today's dinosaur was more abstract.

Tomorrow is the last conference day.  Then another travel day.  Ugh.

Wednesday: I...I'm lost on conference land.

It didn't help that I spent like five hours playing board games this evening.

Put my rainbow sludge in the gym.

This is always what's here, in the board game room.

Board game quesadilla.  I should make chorizo quesadillas at home.

I tried very hard, but didn't come in last.  Taking all the "unique" blue bones for my dinosaur, and then converting them into a petrified halo was a saving grace.  My strategy of "one creepy long arm" wasn't as successful.

WTF, Arizona?

Oh yeah, also I learned a good amount about ML methods for deblending, and some interesting optics discussion about PSFs.  And I didn't break the git repo, so that's always good news.

• What the absolute fuck is wrong with these people?
• I finally switched my webserver over to https.  Yay, super secure crap password!
• There's a board game PAX now?

Tuesday: Ugh so sleepy

Breakfast had bacon.  The sessions had science stuff.  Lunch had pasta.  More science.  Dinner had tasty ribs.  Then board games.  SO sleepy now.

This is a good place to put people in the gym.

Desert sky.

With lightning, as it's been doing that since I got back to my room after board games.

Gifts.

Shiny muk is pretty awesome.

 I should have used an egg/

Fire chicken.

Questionable Character Design.

That Looks Painful.

Death Hug McSpines.

• I was able to help my team win Codewars by remembering Churchill's speech.

Monday: Tomorrow starts even earlier

At least tomorrow I won't be confused about what time it is, because I will remember that my phone is correct, and my laptop (along with all the computers I connect to (that aren't in Hawaii)) are three hours ahead, not two.  Arizona doesn't do DST, but not because they're in the middle of the ocean by themselves where it doesn't matter (like Hawaii), but because of reasons.  I guess.

The mountains are cool here.

 I spent a good chunk of the day doing cleanup work on three tickets that I want to finish this week.  Tomorrow I should ruin people's weeks by asking for code reviews.

Mexican Coke?  In the better Medio Litro version?  Yes, please!

 And then conference stuff, and then there was board game stuff, along with a lot of meeting people who I will likely have trouble remembering names.   I am bad with names.

Finally caught this jerk.

As I was returning to my room after board games,  I saw this thing in the outside hallway:

No.  Unacceptable.

No thank you.

• Wakanda forever.
• This was one of the games, and I couldn't remember if I'd played it somewhere or if I'd just watched Wil Wheaton play it.  Turns out to be the second one.

Sunday: But at least it all went well.

I was, in order:

1. Not murdered by the stranger I paid to drive me to the train station.
2. Able to buy the correct train ticket without trouble.
3. Step onto the platform at exactly the right time to greet the train going my way.
4. Slip through security with only minor "how do people with this little sense of how to do things get pre-check" problems.
5. Ate a egg/ham/cheese croissant that wasn't sulfurous and bad.
6. Fly to Houston.
7. Eat a salmon BLT with avocado, even if I had to convince the incredulous waitress that I in fact, wanted zero mayo, no matter what variety they had.
8. Fly to Tucson, and due to the wonders of "packing light," didn't have to gate check my bag.

Part of that last one is the fact that flying to SFO for so long that I eventually just bought an alternate wardrobe made me hate flying with bags.  The fact that the Honolulu gate agents were super strict with the carryon policy didn't hurt either.

Aforementioned BLT.  A nice herby focaccia as well. 

I have never been to Tucson until now.

 It's the desert.

Except it's monsoon season, I guess.

Which means cool sunsets.

 And then dinner, which I didn't take pictures of because I didn't want to look crazy.

But then to my room, which looked like spies had tried to find where I'd hidden the diamonds.

Except I hadn't been to the room yet, I don't have any diamonds, and it's probably just that the cleaning staff forgot to finish cleaning it.  A quick phone call, and I'm in a different room that's all clean.

• Based on the SFO tag, I was there for 148 posts/days.  Between the first date and now, there are 1357 days, meaning I've spent almost 11% of the last four years visiting California.
• I am grumpy how this book made the series I've been reading since I left Hawaii.   I think I have two more books already bought, and the eighth in the series comes out later this year.
• I don't know, a tumblr thing.

Saturday: I don't like travel

Although it's getting increasingly simple to pack for things, probably in part because I need to bring fewer things.  It's too soon for me to have a fully working private cloud system running, but all the parts are there.  I'm even tempted to not bother with a laptop next time I visit someplace for not-work.

Well, maybe not quite yet.

Also I cleared out another four boxes of books.

I think.  Something like that.  These two shelves are now full, and the two I shipped from Hawaii have a few shelves full.  One of those is dedicated for oversize books, and the other I've been loading with personal notebooks.  In any case, I need at least two more of these shelves, which also implies that I'm going to have to shuffle a bunch of those books to the new shelves.

Tomorrow will be a big day, since I have to get up early to catch my ride to the train station, where I'll have to catch a train to the airport, then two flights, then another car ride to the conference hotel.

• I'm curious who will win.
• Good.
• Train schedule.

Friday: I need to start packing.

And figure out the best way to get to the airport.  It's not quite the same, since I no longer live close enough to see it.  Ugh.  At least I'm reasonably sure all the food that will go bad is gone.

I usually don't capture new Pokemon.

• This kind of looks good.