Monday, June 20, 2011
fourteenth day, upon awaking
I didn't sleep very much last night, but for once I feel pretty rested upon awaking. Due to unexpectedly increased demand, I've switched over to a new work project for a while, one I didn't mention in the initial post about them, and by the end of yesterday was working very excitedly on it.
Friday, June 17, 2011
dog adventures of the eleventh day
Spent all day yesterday pretty tiered, and that was before the dog got loose.
I returned home from work on campus , and the dog was naturally very excited to see me after being shut in for five hours or so. With severe thunderstorms predicted on the way, I decided we'd go out for a walk right away. In the haste to satisfy the poor, put-upon canine, I didn't get her attached tho the leash before we stepped out the door.
She took off right away across the street, into a neighbor's deep yard (the neighborhood across the street C—'s house faces on is decidedly upscale in architecture and land use). I quite lost track of her, getting separated by a strip of trees and underbrush, and, as I found out, by the fence around the property. Once I realized she was surrounded on several sides by fence, I was able to chase her around, kind of cornered, till the neighbor herself emerged to see what was up.
A new human and candidate friend to go meet instantly shot to the top of the dog's priorities, so instead of running from me, suddenly she was running toward the neighbor on the latter's back porch. I found myself terrifically grateful for the help and understanding of the neighbor, who both commiserated regarding the challenges of containing beagles (her own beagle could be seen watching us through the window) and knew C— and her dog and all about why I was there caring for the same.
After getting the leash back on the dog, we continued the walk through the neighborhood across the street, where we actually did a bit of proper squirrel-chasing. Chasing small game is pretty well this beagle's reason for existence, but I've felt it best not done on other people's lawns, which constitute all the land in the places we usually go walking. In the neighborhood across the street, though, are a few islands of open space with no houses in them in the middle of intersections, even large enough to support a few trees. On such ground I hardly minded trying my hardest to keep up as she hauled me along on the fully-extended leash, pursuing her life's work.
The severe storms never did show up. A short walk was undertaken after dark, too, just for good measure, and under much better control. At that time I made use of a little LED headlamp I won at auction at a church event last week. I think I may leave the lamp here for C— when she returns; having the hand free that would otherwise hang on to a flashlight was confirmed quite convenient. She'd probably get very good use out of it.
I returned home from work on campus , and the dog was naturally very excited to see me after being shut in for five hours or so. With severe thunderstorms predicted on the way, I decided we'd go out for a walk right away. In the haste to satisfy the poor, put-upon canine, I didn't get her attached tho the leash before we stepped out the door.
She took off right away across the street, into a neighbor's deep yard (the neighborhood across the street C—'s house faces on is decidedly upscale in architecture and land use). I quite lost track of her, getting separated by a strip of trees and underbrush, and, as I found out, by the fence around the property. Once I realized she was surrounded on several sides by fence, I was able to chase her around, kind of cornered, till the neighbor herself emerged to see what was up.
A new human and candidate friend to go meet instantly shot to the top of the dog's priorities, so instead of running from me, suddenly she was running toward the neighbor on the latter's back porch. I found myself terrifically grateful for the help and understanding of the neighbor, who both commiserated regarding the challenges of containing beagles (her own beagle could be seen watching us through the window) and knew C— and her dog and all about why I was there caring for the same.
After getting the leash back on the dog, we continued the walk through the neighborhood across the street, where we actually did a bit of proper squirrel-chasing. Chasing small game is pretty well this beagle's reason for existence, but I've felt it best not done on other people's lawns, which constitute all the land in the places we usually go walking. In the neighborhood across the street, though, are a few islands of open space with no houses in them in the middle of intersections, even large enough to support a few trees. On such ground I hardly minded trying my hardest to keep up as she hauled me along on the fully-extended leash, pursuing her life's work.
The severe storms never did show up. A short walk was undertaken after dark, too, just for good measure, and under much better control. At that time I made use of a little LED headlamp I won at auction at a church event last week. I think I may leave the lamp here for C— when she returns; having the hand free that would otherwise hang on to a flashlight was confirmed quite convenient. She'd probably get very good use out of it.
eleventh night, dreamage
Dreamt about Google-mapping parks in London to find out what to do together with someone from church (someone a generation older than me; by the time of writing this I've figured out who). We zeroed in on one specifically, only to find out it was going to suck.
Another dream was about some kind of performance-art or museum space where I was finding out about a short poem in Norwegian and its translation to English. My old college roommate might have been in that one.
Another dream was about some kind of performance-art or museum space where I was finding out about a short poem in Norwegian and its translation to English. My old college roommate might have been in that one.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Tenth day, evening
I've made a scheduled, routine activity out of each of several things since I've been here: prayer; dog walking and feeding; academic work, at least for as long as I could. I have not put blogging on a schedule, and I've lapsed in doing it at all for a while now. What didn't help was the complete expiration of my old faithful laptop, eyegor.
Nearly all day Saturday and Sunday, I plugged away at data manipulation for the project arising from the conference paper. The paper is in a line of studies using a survey data set available online. Previous authors had a working version that reduced the immense data set's size to only those respondents and variables treated in the series of studies. I want to introduce a variable they never had, which meant constructing the working data set all over again from the original, since a unique case identifier wasn't one of the variables retained in the working version. Picking out which rows had been used, though, was itself a bit of a challenge; the language about case selection in the original paper was only mostly right, or, rather, not fully specific. The upshot was that just pulling that off took me till Sunday afternoon.
It was as if eyegor were holding out for me to get that chunk of work finished and saved. Not long after, eyegor lost power unexpectedly. It could not be turned back on. The power system had worn out. While I figured some possibility existed of opening up the beaten, separating case and looking for anything fixable in the power system, the likelihood of success didn't seem to justify the effort needed. A moment I'd been actively hoping for months and months to put off for months and months had arrived: I was without a working laptop.
Pretty quickly, I shifted gears. My whole life was now directed toward getting a new laptop on which I could continue my work. I had known for a long time what I would shop for would be very different from my last computer: not a desktop replacement like eyegor; rather, a very lightweight, inexpensive machine from which remotely to log in to my office server, frankenstein, and do my serious computing there. Not only do I have a proper desktop everywhere I really want to use one for crunching numbers, watching video, or, eventually, gaming again, I really haven't got the money for a new laptop at all, so I'd better be going pretty cheap if I'm stuck buying one. Using C—'s own computer, so helpfully left behind, I went online to price the least expensive netbooks I could find as early as Sunday night. Monday morning I went out and bought one.
I ought to have been back up and running right away then, but, in fact, I spent a good two days fixing and backing up things to get the new laptop in the shape in which I want to use it. Much of that down time was spent pestering various friends to figure out who had an external hard drive I could use. Some, specifically all yesterday afternoon, was spent in the kitchen, preparing from scratch some pierogi and golabki that, in the end, went grossly pear-shaped.
Now, however, it's Wednesday night, and I've watched the last NHL game of the year, and the netbook is up and running for real. This, then, is your opportunity to say hi to inga. Tomorrow afternoon, Inga and I will return to work on the conference paper (from campus, since I'll be on duty in the computer lab in the early afternoon). Tomorrow morning, I may take myself to the municipal Theater Guild just down the street, to meet and talk to anyone there if it happens to be open. It's been far too long since I've been on the stage, you see -- more than four whole years -- and their suburban group seem to me the people to know for getting back onto it.
Last, I'll also write a blog entry tomorrow, at 9:00 in the morning. I don't know what I shall have to write about except perhaps a stray thought or two on realignment of Major League Baseball.
Nearly all day Saturday and Sunday, I plugged away at data manipulation for the project arising from the conference paper. The paper is in a line of studies using a survey data set available online. Previous authors had a working version that reduced the immense data set's size to only those respondents and variables treated in the series of studies. I want to introduce a variable they never had, which meant constructing the working data set all over again from the original, since a unique case identifier wasn't one of the variables retained in the working version. Picking out which rows had been used, though, was itself a bit of a challenge; the language about case selection in the original paper was only mostly right, or, rather, not fully specific. The upshot was that just pulling that off took me till Sunday afternoon.
It was as if eyegor were holding out for me to get that chunk of work finished and saved. Not long after, eyegor lost power unexpectedly. It could not be turned back on. The power system had worn out. While I figured some possibility existed of opening up the beaten, separating case and looking for anything fixable in the power system, the likelihood of success didn't seem to justify the effort needed. A moment I'd been actively hoping for months and months to put off for months and months had arrived: I was without a working laptop.
Pretty quickly, I shifted gears. My whole life was now directed toward getting a new laptop on which I could continue my work. I had known for a long time what I would shop for would be very different from my last computer: not a desktop replacement like eyegor; rather, a very lightweight, inexpensive machine from which remotely to log in to my office server, frankenstein, and do my serious computing there. Not only do I have a proper desktop everywhere I really want to use one for crunching numbers, watching video, or, eventually, gaming again, I really haven't got the money for a new laptop at all, so I'd better be going pretty cheap if I'm stuck buying one. Using C—'s own computer, so helpfully left behind, I went online to price the least expensive netbooks I could find as early as Sunday night. Monday morning I went out and bought one.
I ought to have been back up and running right away then, but, in fact, I spent a good two days fixing and backing up things to get the new laptop in the shape in which I want to use it. Much of that down time was spent pestering various friends to figure out who had an external hard drive I could use. Some, specifically all yesterday afternoon, was spent in the kitchen, preparing from scratch some pierogi and golabki that, in the end, went grossly pear-shaped.
Now, however, it's Wednesday night, and I've watched the last NHL game of the year, and the netbook is up and running for real. This, then, is your opportunity to say hi to inga. Tomorrow afternoon, Inga and I will return to work on the conference paper (from campus, since I'll be on duty in the computer lab in the early afternoon). Tomorrow morning, I may take myself to the municipal Theater Guild just down the street, to meet and talk to anyone there if it happens to be open. It's been far too long since I've been on the stage, you see -- more than four whole years -- and their suburban group seem to me the people to know for getting back onto it.
Last, I'll also write a blog entry tomorrow, at 9:00 in the morning. I don't know what I shall have to write about except perhaps a stray thought or two on realignment of Major League Baseball.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
sixth day, evening
Today I set out to do another large chunk of work on the data set for my conference paper, but ended up with nothing to show for the whole day.
There's a working version of the data set I'm studying that has been handed down by previous authors, and an original data set published by the Federal government. Today what I set out to do was get a couple columns from the original and add them to the working version, just to give me some more independent variables. Sadly, there are no columns in the working version that uniquely identify rows and take the same values in the original — none at all. A straightforward merge operation is out of the question, and it took me all day to establish that, or at least enough of the day that my will to start anything else was broken by the time I got done.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll be looking over every column in the working version, figuring out whether I need it for the study being done, then either finding the corresponding column of the original and copying it into my own working subset or doing the appropriate transformation of one I've already got out of the original to produce the desired values. Can I follow the directions well enough to faithfully reproduce the data set the previous authors had? We shall see.
Tomorrow I'll be back at church for the first time in three weeks, having been on the road the past two Sundays.
Naia's been less cooperative yesterday and today than the previous few. I admit I've been out at what may seem like some weird times to her, but I've tried to be back quickly. Today I was gone twice, hitting up a yard sale in the morning after bringing her back from her walk, and later getting dinner from a local pizza place that I've missed since its location in my own neighborhood closed a year or two ago.
There's a working version of the data set I'm studying that has been handed down by previous authors, and an original data set published by the Federal government. Today what I set out to do was get a couple columns from the original and add them to the working version, just to give me some more independent variables. Sadly, there are no columns in the working version that uniquely identify rows and take the same values in the original — none at all. A straightforward merge operation is out of the question, and it took me all day to establish that, or at least enough of the day that my will to start anything else was broken by the time I got done.
Tomorrow afternoon I'll be looking over every column in the working version, figuring out whether I need it for the study being done, then either finding the corresponding column of the original and copying it into my own working subset or doing the appropriate transformation of one I've already got out of the original to produce the desired values. Can I follow the directions well enough to faithfully reproduce the data set the previous authors had? We shall see.
Tomorrow I'll be back at church for the first time in three weeks, having been on the road the past two Sundays.
Naia's been less cooperative yesterday and today than the previous few. I admit I've been out at what may seem like some weird times to her, but I've tried to be back quickly. Today I was gone twice, hitting up a yard sale in the morning after bringing her back from her walk, and later getting dinner from a local pizza place that I've missed since its location in my own neighborhood closed a year or two ago.
Thursday, June 9, 2011
fourth day, evening: addenda
Bonnie has been much more vocal here in the suburbs than I've ever known her to be. Back at home (a term I use comfortably loosely), Finch is a talker and Bonnie pretty silent. I don't know if it's the influence of the dog or what, but she's meowed at me much more often since we moved in here.
There's a special event going on tomorrow evening at the Episcopal church down the street; it's drawing folks from the Cathedral and several other places in the diocese. I've been reluctant to go out in the evenings and leave the dog behind any more than really necessary, but for this church gathering that's so close by I'll certainly make an exception. I remember having a good time at the same event last year, at a time when I was hardly predisposed to. I look forward to this year's.
There's a special event going on tomorrow evening at the Episcopal church down the street; it's drawing folks from the Cathedral and several other places in the diocese. I've been reluctant to go out in the evenings and leave the dog behind any more than really necessary, but for this church gathering that's so close by I'll certainly make an exception. I remember having a good time at the same event last year, at a time when I was hardly predisposed to. I look forward to this year's.
fourth day, evening
I'm settling in to a rhythm for Naia's trips out of doors as well, about once every hour and a half including two proper walks through the neighborhood. The goal of teaching myself more routine is getting a little better achieved again and again. I'm having more trouble getting Naia to go #2 on her evening walks than in the morning, which always worries me just a tad.
Today I got round to adding the easier part of the new variables to the models in the conference paper, and took the first steps toward joining the harder part as well. While I was at it, I snuck some parallelism into the old code I've been recycling; now I get my 60 models at a time in 40 minutes as opposed to two hours. There's a big econometrics conference going on on campus, and it was supposed to demand a great deal of us the computer lab consultants, but it fizzled out in that regard — I had one phone call about it all day.
I've been cooking reasonably well — today some simple chicken lo mein. As in my computing work, I've been trying to implement parallel processing everywhere I can in the kitchen. This has meant, for instance, two teakettles and a big saucepan all going at once, each heating up a small amount of water to boil noodles in once ready. Hey, might as well add heat energy to the water at triple speed. This has meant separate frying pans with chicken and vegetables stir-frying in them independently, which was really useful given a lack of one skillet or wok big enough to handle all the ingredients together.
Man, having a dishwasher really is all it's cracked up to be.
Tomorrow I'll bake some bread, since I'm about out of it, and I'll do what more of this side project I can accomplish.
Early in the day, after Naia's walk, I took another trip to the bagel shop; I've indulged in a whole dozen of them. I don't usually keep them on hand, and then end up buying them individually when I am out late in the morning and don't have time for a bowl of cereal or don't feel like it. All this is in the name of being more deliberate, more directed.
Today I got round to adding the easier part of the new variables to the models in the conference paper, and took the first steps toward joining the harder part as well. While I was at it, I snuck some parallelism into the old code I've been recycling; now I get my 60 models at a time in 40 minutes as opposed to two hours. There's a big econometrics conference going on on campus, and it was supposed to demand a great deal of us the computer lab consultants, but it fizzled out in that regard — I had one phone call about it all day.
I've been cooking reasonably well — today some simple chicken lo mein. As in my computing work, I've been trying to implement parallel processing everywhere I can in the kitchen. This has meant, for instance, two teakettles and a big saucepan all going at once, each heating up a small amount of water to boil noodles in once ready. Hey, might as well add heat energy to the water at triple speed. This has meant separate frying pans with chicken and vegetables stir-frying in them independently, which was really useful given a lack of one skillet or wok big enough to handle all the ingredients together.
Man, having a dishwasher really is all it's cracked up to be.
Tomorrow I'll bake some bread, since I'm about out of it, and I'll do what more of this side project I can accomplish.
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