It's Late Again

Blame the Python class.

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Last night I think I sept fine. I can't remember. I was in the shower by 8, I think. A couple of times Spook ran across the bed to get from one window to the other. There's nothing to see out there, but the windows are open 2" so she can smell stuff. But it's really annoying that she won't stay on the bed.

Did all the plans. Almost. Applied for a job at GoPro which I don't think I'll get considered for. Had a voicemail from a recruiter in Boston, called back and left her voicemail to send me a job description and call me back.

Drove to the VTA office, they had to call someone to come to the ticket desk and issue me a senior clipper card. It was painless once the person showed up.

From there I was heading toward home when I remembered there was a Target if I just went straight instead of turning left. Found a CVS first, bought a pack of q-tips which took me forever to find. Finally had to ask.

Back toward home, with a stop for a manicure. While en route the Boston recruiter called. Turns out she is a newbie who had no idea what the job description meant. I told her to email me the job description. I figured on firing up the laptop and looking at it at Peet's after the manicure.

But it was a 10-minute wait for the nails lady, so I checked email on my phone. The description didn't match me much at all, they wanted a shirtsleeve manager with programming skills. It was lunchtime, not a good time to be in Peet's, so I drove home, made a sandwich, had some chips & dip & lactaid.

Didn't want to fire up the big PC, figured I could kill many birds by answering the email on my laptop in the Starbucks most of the way to where Python class was going to be. We had been warned that there was a high school graduation there at 6, and we should park on the street, but I wanted to check that out for myself. Anyhow, got a mocha, fired up the laptop, and couldn't get my email either via Outlook or web direct. Google had effed up their re-direct in a way that made Chrome and the PC think I was being hacked.

So Plan B, there were two massage places nearby in which I could spend an hour (I had 2) so off I went. First place was gutted. Even ther fixtures were gone. Second place had been taken over by the next door martial arts school, and there were 12,000 kids in Ghi. Sigh.

So next thought was a library, and as luck would have it, the new Santa Clara city library was on the way to the school. They have great wi-fi and also tons of wired PCs. I was able to get all my online stuff done in no time. And there was eye candy as well.

Got to the school at 5:30. There were only about 8 cars in the parking lot. So I picked a spot in the shade and parked. Took out the tablet and started reading some trashy sci-fi. I had been reading Dawn Wells' What Would Mary Anne Do? but it turned out to be an overly preachy monologue warning beautiful young women about the Small Brain with which most teenaged girls and all males think. I am not that demographic, so I bailed after about three chapters.

6 pm came and went, and now there were only about 20 cars. It's a big lot, maybe good for 100 cars. I checked their web site on  my phone and the announcement said grads needed to be in place by 5:30, visitors doors opened at 6, ceremony at 6:30. I got out of the car at 6:45 to go to class, and there were still about half a dozen spots open.

The teacher was late. His excuse was he had to park on the street because the faculty reserved spots were reserved for the high school faculty. Major loss of credibility, since he obviously had not checked the student lot.

Again lots of good stuff in the class, but again he kept getting sidetracked by questions from students who should have been told they have Python on their PCs, they should try what they were asking. Me and the woman next to me were coding what was being shown to us, and were several slides ahead. The sidetracking meant we did not get to the last five or six slides, the homework assignment was given short shrift, and we never did get to last week's homework. I was astounded that there were people in class who had not figured out how to do the assignment.

Home, heated up lasagna and garlic bread. Blueberry muffin for dessert.

Warriors forgot to show up for the game tonight. :-(

No plans for tomorrow. Maybe go to a NOVA class. The weather is turning nasty so may as well.

Mundayne

I posted this on FB for #TBT, and am now surprised how handsome I was back then. I never thought I was. Still don't, for the most part. Anyhow, it's me after a parade in Seattle which ended at the Seattle Center, so it probably was the main Seafair parade (because Torchlight goes the opposite direction, starting at the Seattle Center and ending at what is now CenturyLink Field (used to end at the Kingdome).


I was in Seattle's all-city high school marching band the summers after my 9th-11th grades. That thing in my left hand is a bell-front baritone horn (there are also bell-up horns, and baritone trumpets). It was a huge honor to be accepted, Seattle had 16 high schools, mine was the smallest, and I think there were only three of us from our school in here. What I did for love. I moved to Seattle in the middle of 9th grade, and managed to squeeze band into my class list. It took some doing, because the suburban NY school I had come from required us to take 8 periods of classes a day, Seattle only had 6, and required one of them to be study hall. I remember they let me take WA State History as a self-study. After school sometimes I was in a play, sometimes stage band (I played trumpet in that).

But I digress.

In band there was a clarinet player named Mary. She was Japanese-American. I had a huge crush on her, but she had a huge crush on Ted, the lead trombone player. Ted was engaged to someone else. Maybe some day I'll tell that story. Not now. Anyhow, hanging around Mary after band practice I noticed a couple of small emblems pinned to the lining in her instrument case. I asked what they were for, and she told me they were participation awards for all-city band. toward the end of the school year she let me know how and where to audition, and my band director was more than happy to recommend me.

Mary and I never hooked up during those summers, except one time she invited me to play tennis, knowing I didn't play - "I'll teach you, it's easy" she said. It wasn't.

After we graduated, I sent her a bunch of love letters, and she sent them back, with one of her senior photos, framed and a note that said if I wanted her picture all I had to do was ask. Oh well.

There were girls from all over the city, and it was an excellent group of musicians and a lot of fun. I had one other date, a petite snare drummer whose figure was accented by the drum straps across her chest. But she lived in West Seattle, which was a 3-hour bus ride from my house back then.

The highlight for me each year was our trip to Vancouver, BC to play in the PNE parade which starts that festival. My final year we led the parade, which was a huge honor.  At the end of each PNE parade, we were each handed a little commemorative spoon.

Our main thing was the various Seafair parades, all over the city.

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Not much to do after the morning routine, so I actually did some homework. Figured out 2/3 of the first exercise, but had no problem with the second one. There are about 8 of them.

On the calendar was a NOVA class at 1:30, job hunting for mature people. As usual, the instructor was excellent, the materials were pretty good, and this time I actually got to meet two other QA engineers and talk with them for 20 minutes. The irony here is there really is no point meeting people who are unemployed for the same reasons I am. If they had any contacts which would help, they would have jobs. But the class was very participatory, and there were several well-spoken people who had some light to shed. I did not agree with some of the strategies the instructor suggested, such as not pointing out to an interviewer that it is illegal to ask an applicant's age, but for the most part the class pointed us in good directions.

That was a very fast 2 hours.

Next stop was Target, which was out of SodaStream cartridges so I couldn't do the exchange. :-(

Then on to downtown plaza, where I fired up Ingress and saw that almost everything was green now. I have finally discovered the inventory, and how to use some of the widgets. I went around firing resonators, linking all the things, applying mods (whatever those are), upgrading resonators, and hardly being attacked at all. The only blue on my route was a portal I had captured the last time I was there.

Walked to Starbucks, set up the laptop with a view of some seriously attractive women, and did some more homework. And discovered we had not been taught how to input the type of data our programs were supposed to chew on. Input as in asking the user for data. As in "please enter your four childrens' ages:" and have the program make that into an array. In python those are called lists. In our instructor's accent it took a while to get this, since he pronounces the word "ah-ry" with the accent on the first syllable.

It was 6:30 before I left. On my way back to the car I took a detour, down Murphy Ave, which has a portal every 3 feet. Most were green, but I captured several neautral ones and linked as many as it would let me. When I got back to the plaza there were a couple more neutrals, and when I captured one of them, the game boosted me to level 4. As usual, I have no idea what this all means, and am somewhat perturbed that it's a compulsion. I'm not much of a gamer, but this thing is well done, kind of pretty and gives a false sense of accomplishment.

Traffic was horrible, to the point where it was clear that I wasn't going to be able to get out of the garage any time soon, so I put the laptop in the car and grabbed the tablet, expecting to sit on a bench and read. I sat on the bench, but it was such a nice day and there was a lot of people watching to do.

A little after 7, traffic was back to reasonable, so I drove home.

Turned on the hockey game (it was 3-2 in favor of the Sharks, who had plenty of time to blow it, and lose in overtime). But as soon as I tuned in they scored goal 4, with only a few seconds on the clock. Had they lost this game, they would have lost the tournament, but now they get to come home to San Jose for the next one. Which they will probably lose.

Meanwhile, football is starting up. Training camps, and all the drama that goes with newly drafted college stars meeting the AARP-bound players from last season. The NFL Network channel is transitioning from replaying old games and "life of" documentaries and covering the football news.

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Politics. I cannot vote for Hillary. Not any more than I could have voted for Lurleen Wallace. Maybe I'll vote Green. Jill Stein is a lot like Bernie. She has even invited him to join her ticket.

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Plans for tomorrow:
Try to refuse the Fedex package which was delivered despite my canceling the order. If needed, place a stop payment with the credit card company
It doesn't look like it will be beach or park weather.
Do some more homework
Try out my senior clipper card?