[The last two weeks I’ve missed my Saturday morning long run. Last week I didn’t run Saturday at all!. But I’ve gotten in a 3+ mile run on Monday and then my track workout on Wednesday. I’m putting in enough effort at the track that I can feel it for a few days. The track meet is in mid-November and maybe I’ll be back to my old schedule after that.]
Yesterday I took a big chunk of the day to drive with my wife up to Memphis for a doctor’s appointment. As you probably know, she is an ultra-marathoner. She usually has a marathon or an ultra lined up and is in training. Over the course of the summer her training effort was strong but actual performance was getting worse and worse. Eventually we clued in to the idea that there was something wrong with the way her body was responding to the training. The focus has become her cardio-vascular system and more specifically some unusual heart rhythm issues. So yesterday was to talk to a heart specialist about doing an ablation procedure. If things go well, she can have this done and go back to training and doing the things she enjoys.
If you are out there training and things aren’t going right, it may be dehydration or poor nutrition. It may be a stress fracture. It may be over training. Maybe you have a lingering virus. Or it could be that you have some long term serious thing. Rest a bit. If it lasts longer than a week or two, take your training charts and graphs and go see the doctor.
When we arrived at home after our long day driving, the youngest son of the neighbor came running up asking for help. His car was on fire!
I don’t know if he had just pulled in from travelling, or had just started it up to go somewhere or what. But the thing was parked in their driveway and smoke was pouring out from under the hood.
I grabbed a fire extinguisher and unloaded without much effect. Later I clued in that the engine compartment is a closed box and most of my attempt was wasted on the outside of that box. On the other hand, I think we were past the point of safety to try to open the hood.
His mom was wielding the garden hose, which had some leaks. But she was keeping it in check to some degree. 911 had been called.
Eventually the garden hose just wasn’t cutting it and there were some pops and bangs so we all stood back and just watched.
The local volunteer fire crew did eventually show up and hose it down. (They have some pretty nice fire trucks and gear!) And that is where I walked on home. This morning I may walk over and see the ashes.
Nobody was hurt. The nearby PVC fence took it hard, but the fire didn’t spread.
Poor kid was really broken up about the loss of the car and of some of his stuff.
Wood floor – Our new wood floor is all in, has been for a few weeks. I am slowly getting the baseboards installed.
I think it looks great. It looks amazing.
We bought this house, it was a HUD repossessed house and it has been good to us. But it has been obvious from the beginning that it was cheaply built with low-end materials. The floor plan is good and the general structure is OK. But the finish is somewhat lackadaisical, to put it nicely, and the materials were from the local Lowes store, off the rack so to speak. If Lowes sent crooked studs, then crooked studs were used.
Putting in this wood flooring has improved the interior 500% in my opinion. Of course wood is what I grew up with so it feels like home to me.
I don’t know if it actually is a “pay back” investment, that the cost would be recovered by increase in selling price. But I do know that it has improved our attitude and living enjoyment substantially.
I have at least another weekend of baseboard installation to do, and some more caulking and painting.
Work is going OK. I’m in a group doing
production software development, which means it is code that is supposed to eventually be shipped out to customers interior to the controllers that run the equipment. This is stuff on a display panel, so there are menus and icons and stuff like that.
I’m still trying to figure out how it all sticks together.
I’ve been suffering from my lack of sophistication with modern C++ and the pace of the operation. We are on a two week “sprint” schedule. Each sprint has a bunch of programming tasks that need to be accomplished and there is a list of defects that can be worked on also. Each person grabs an item off of the list and we work that item. We can ask our co-workers for help or call outside resources for advice or clarification of the desired results or whatever.
I worked on one item and got it mostly working. But then later I kind of changed my mind about the way I did it. And we also made a change to the code library I used. So now it will have to be revisited, which is fine with me. I think I contributed at least in finding a technique that would let us move forward. But I’m not completely sure I’m going to be able to ramp up to be as productive as I would like.
On the other hand… I’m not the leader or the manager and I’m not the highest paid in the bunch. They’re advertising for more people and have unfilled positions… So maybe having an old guy who isn’t maybe as quick on his feet isn’t that much of a handicap. I don’t have to be a star, just some guy who knows how to type and when to ask for help.
One thing that will help me be more productive is to get this Kenosha Christmas Parade trial over with. I’ve been too interested in Darrell Brook’s attempt to highjack the american court system and escape responsibility for running over and bumping into 60+ people (with 6 fatalities).
From what I can tell Brooks wants to be able to employ the same self-excuse systems that have presumably worked for him in the past, deploy those directly to the jury and see if that will keep him from a life sentence.
I don’t know if the guy deserves life, but I’d be inclined for a good long stretch. As one of the policeman witnesses said this week, all he had to do to stop the carnage was hit the brakes.
I’m seriously wondering if he will call for jury nullification directly in his closing statement. It wouldn’t surprise me.
And if they give him 10 years for each fatality and call it manslaughter or felony reckless driving, I’d probably be ok with that.
So I’ve learned a bit about the “sovereign citizen” movement and having him deploy the whole SC arsenal of arguments on a televised trial will maybe put that to rest.
Lawyers are expensive. People who have a lot of money get into trouble and they deploy expensive lawyers. The SC movement, from what I can tell, is kind of like the criminal-law version of those depression-era tactics used to rescue the family farm from the auction block: a grab bag of not much. Maybe the penny auction helped the farmer for a little while. But the big money guys have long ago found every loop hole and, alternatively, stuffed each loop hole to keep the other big money guy from winning.
Brooks wants to face his accuser, the State of Wisconsin. That’s not working. He wants to object that the court doesn’t have jurisdiction over him. That’s not working. He denies that the paperwork is really referring to him.. Dude, you’re living in their jail. I think that proves who is in charge.
My wife said he sounds like John Belushi making excuses to Carrie Fisher in The Blues Brothers.
The witnesses have been questioned by the prosecution then cross examined by the guy who ran over them with his car. And most of them have held up very well. It is amazing how polite people can be. In general they are refusing to overthrow the system the way he wants to do it. Maybe he doesn’t know that the polite judicial system is what kept them from dragging him out of his car and stringing him up to the nearest lamp post on the fateful night. But they were patient and I hope their faith in the system is rewarded with a reasonable outcome.