Hump o Rama

Wednesday the 13th. Just doesn't have that ring to it.

They notified us more than a week ago that this morning at 8 the water might be turned off till 5, but I forgot. Until I brushed my teeth and there was only a dixie cup's worth of water out the spout. So no shower. There's some irony because I did wake up early enought to have that shower, but didn't make it out of bed till 9.

Breakfast didn't require running water. Banana and blueberries.

Plan A commenced. Got compost, went to Lowe's and found some wet sulpher solution (from Bayer!) and failing to find catmints, bought some catnip seeds.

Home, lunch didn't need running water - defrosted some beer battered wings and heated up frozen mixed veggies. Ginger Ale from SodaStream (diet) with slices of fresh ginger (from the New Yuan Market last week).

Sprayed the tomatoes, which turned out to be tedious because the sprayer lever kept sticking.

Hauled the tub of compost out of the car, dollied it to the end of the carport. Took the dolly inside.

Next stop, Peet's/Specialty's down the block. Captured something on Pokemon Go at my table. Thee are no Ingress portals in the area.

Had a sticky bun and diet Coke and did some job hunting on the laptop. There was email from an LA recruiter with an Indian name which sounded a lot like a contractor version of what my old company has been advertising a full time position for after someone they didn't lay off decided he would be happier elsewhere. Specialty's wi-fi was blocking my reply, I had to invoke SSL and a not-well-known port number to get through. And then their wi-fi went down completely so I went home.

Moved a couple of not-doing-so-well plants closer to the rosemary and dumped the compost into a wide section between two salvia plants, and smoothed it out. Left the washing up and watering to when there was water.

Downloaded the class slides, and was happy to see that 7 weeks in we are finally getting file operations. I figured how to do that in week 2.

Delivered was the replacement copter, which came with a controller (the original one woks fine) and a battery & SD card to replace the lost ones. Also delivered was the 1/2 gallon jug I needed to store the used corn oil. Poured the oil from a pitcher to the jug via a funnel with paper towel filter. It took a while, but came out clear and usable.

Went to class, got there half an hour early. Teach sent email about 10 minutes before class time that he would be no more than 15 minutes late. When people started trying the door, I used my STAGE VOICE to let them know he sent email.

There was a lot of good stuff in class. Everyone who was there last week looked to be there this week. I may be wrong about dropouts - I had not noticed that 5 people are sitting at a table on the far side of the room using their own laptops, instead of the class PCs.

And teach has been listening, he pointed out right at the start that this week's homework included some practical exercises. Real World stuff. AFT, as they say. As usual he didn't get much class participation at the end of the night when he went over last week's homework. Because none of it had any practical application. And most of them his code wasn't as efficient as mine (so I'll assume many others' as well).

Plan A+ included a stop at Denny's. Originally I was going to just have a shake of a sundae, but was hungry so had a senior meal. When I ordered, I asked the waiter to come back when I was done because I was going to want dessert. He waved me off saying he won't forget.

He forgot.

Not only did he not return, he took orders from two nearby tables, not looking in my direction at all, 10 minutes after I was done. So I went to the register to get my bill, and told him he blew it. Minimum (for me)  tip. Far too generous.

Took a detour into the Booger King drive-thru for a chocolate shake. Sadly, they are the same as Carl's. Maybe tomorrow I'll got to new Boardwalk for one.

Home, watered all the carport plants, especially the new patch. Didn't have enough light to plant the vines or put up the string trellis.

In the park mail slot was an official announcement from the owners that there will be an annual inspection July 19. A few days ago we got one from the local manager saying there was on the week of July 27. WTF? I'll call to find out if there are two of them. If that's the case I will be seriously looking to move. As if I can afford it. As if I want to go through escrow again.

Plans for tomorrow:
Find out about the inspection(s)
Try to remember to call about painting/fixup/landscaping.
Fly the copter. Try not to lose it
Plant the vines, put up the string trellis
El Capitan rehearsal

I almost got the hang of this Thursday

Woken up by a call from Automation Guy on his way to work. He's on my favorites list so his calls get through my "do not disturb" settings. Good to talk to him, we need to have lunch and I need to see his new house. We talked all the way to his cubicle, which was a challenge for the cell phone signal, but Sprint did much better than Verizon. He was complaining that he has to use his key card to go to the restroom. The restroom isn't carded, but the hallway leading to it is.

Went to brush my teeth and there was no water. That wasn't supposed to happen again, but it didn't surprise me. It did make me grumble because that's two days in a row without a shower.

So I did some gardening. I transplanted the climbing things from the kitchen table to the newly composted garden patch, and strung up a string trellis, but the plants do not seem to want to bend in that direction. Also planted about 6 peat pots of garlic chives in a row between the mint and the oregano, but they went int too deep, so I have to wait and see if the sprouts make it through to the surface again.

Back inside, wanted to wash my hands and lo, there was water. So I got undressed and took a shower.

So, Plan A. I drove down to Baylands and flew the replacement copter. The battery which came installed in it did not have a full charge, but I did get a good 5 minutes out of it. The second battery did better. I figured out that banking into the wind also pushes the copter lower, which helped me keep it from getting too far away. But I think I'll find someplace less windy to fly it, maybe Fair Oaks park. I'll check it out tomorrow. When school is out there may be too many people playing soccer, baseball & frisbee.

Went downtown from there, captured a bunch of neutral Ingress portals. Deleted Pokemon Go from my phone, unlinked it from my Google account, and sent a request to delete my avatar from Niantic. Their canned reply says it may take 10 weeks.

Got a call from a recruiter about an interesting job. I expect to hear from his manager tomorrow.

So that's two contract jobs pending the Next Step. Three if you count GoPro, which I don't - it has been too long. Ditto MLB.

Even the NOVA job center is having hard times - they canceled tomorrow's class on Generating Job Leads. :-(

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I'm sipping on water as I write this. Stopped taking Metformin as of this morning, because it can react in evil ways with the iodine-based dye they will be feeding into my arm during tomorrow afternoon's CT scan. This is a repeat of one a few months ago, because there was a spot on a kidney they were not sure about. Probably benign, but there wasn't enough resolution on the image to rule out something nasty. Not a kidney stone - it showed three tiny ones. Anywho, part of the protocol is drink as much water as possible leading up to the scan. And hold it in for the last hour. Which I was not able to do last time,  which may have caused the anomaly.

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Where was I? Oh yeah, downtown everywhere I went portal hunting there were Pokers. It's easy to tell them because they pause and swipe up. Most were in pairs or small (3-5) groups. I think that's cool.

Got to Starbucks and it was half empty. Odd for 1:30 - I guess people were out poking. The eye candy quota took a couple of hours to be met. I played with Python, used something we learned in class plus a hint from an online search to open the browser of my choice to the URL of my choice. And found another method which lets me load up tabs with more URLs. Also figured out that the teacher FAILed to correctly explain one feature. There's something called "pickle" which lets you grab a binary file and save it in a way Python can recover it. But that's not quite what it does. I tried to do it with a JPEG and it created something unusable. Bought a bottle of water instead of tea of mocha. And an egg salad sandwich.

Home, did not plug in the car because it dawned on me that I should use some gas. The tank has been full for the last 500 miles, and I bet I get more miles per charge if I'm not hauling all that liquid in the tank.

Took an hour's lie-down. That was a good idea, what with being up till 2 not able to fall asleep.

Got to rehearsals a minute or two late, but they were still getting organized. It was a productive evening, I learned all he silly gestures the director has added to the chorus numbers. There are too many, and they are not very visible from the audience, but he's having fun. He let the men's chorus out early, so I went to the next-nearest Denny's, had a grand slam to see if their new buttermilk pancakes were all that (they were excellent as usual, I tasted no difference) and this time the waitress was all perky and customer oriented and came back to see if I wanted dessert. I wanted ice cream but she talked me into a shake because the weather zapped their freezer and the ice cream was soft. It was an excellent shake, very chocolaty, unlike the bland ones at Karl's and Booger.

Home, plugged in the car (habit), watered the plants, especially what I planted this morning.

Delivered was a set of 5 copter batteries and a 5-gang charger. Those are all charging now. One of the batteries is either already charged or dead.

Plans for tomorrow:
Scope out a less breezy park for the copter
Call about an estimate to get the house fixed/painted
Drink lots of water.
CT scan, get there early because parking is a PIA
Maybe do some homework