[Regular runs two week days each week, and something on Saturday; Yesterday 3.2 on Watson road]
We are back doing our Monday evening hill run. I am the informal race director and I sit and cheer people on as they do it. This is the one we started last summer that involves buckets and painted clothes-pins.
We did it last Monday and two people came, two of the ones who were pretty regular last summer.
Father-in-Law is in the Hospital, hopefully a short stay. He had some blockage issue in his digestive tract and needed surgery. I hope he gets well soon.
I don’t know if I mentioned it on here: I got warning in mid-March that my current position was going to dry up. My end date was extended from late April into May because our team is working on the finishing touches of some software. That is pretty much done now. But I’ve been told I am good until the end of May.
And I am kind of stupidly annoyed that they extended me probably past my justified utility and into a point of decreasing interest on my part. But like I said, that is stupid. If they want to keep paying me and I can be useful, there’s nothing wrong with that. I just don’t like the uncertainty.
That being said, I’m looking for another job.
I had an interview this past Friday over at the University and I think it went well. This would be a return to “operations” mostly… maybe a little bit of programming. That’s just going by what we discussed in the interview. They did say they have some things, some projects that are being held up because of a lack of resources, so maybe some programming in that.
It is something I’m sure I could do. I don’t know how many candidates they are looking at.
So maybe I’ll have something lined up before they push me out. I have a few other nibbles but no other interviews scheduled.
I’ve continued to do an almost-daily Youtube live stream. I’ve missed a few days but not many. The guy who was my inspiration has taken a well-earned break. It was my intention to fill in on the days he does not stream and now that is every day.
I am still enjoying it. We will see how long before I run out of things to talk about.
I finished getting my short tower built outside my office window. My 2m/70cm antenna is up on that, and my GPS antenna. I dug out my GPS disciplined oscillator (GPSDO) that I built years ago and I’ve got that hooked up. It was in sync state for awhile but we had a rainstorm and it’s been a bit goofy since then. I think maybe I have water in my feedline coax connection.
I acquired a little board called an Ezurio Veda SL917 which is like an arduino with a wifi/bluetooth chip on board. I’m not sure what I’m going to use that for. But it was a cheap introductory price and I wanted one so I bought it. The wifi/bluetooth is integrated with an ARM Cortex-M for the IoT world. You can have a little controller in your refrigerator or somewhere and have it talk to the home wifi. I know there are already things doing that but this is all on a single chip (mine is on a “discovery” board with extra parts so you can program it and have a button or two and a blinky light)
I’ve been thinking a little bit more about my WWVB receiver. I think I should do a simple bucket accumulation of my decoded elements (0,1,M) and use that to shift my phase within the one minute message. The 0 and M constants are set up for 10 second intervals. So I should have a largest bucket for M and a largest bucket for 0 over each 10-second window and I could even accumulate multiple iterations. That would help me get the phase lined up at least to the data-item level and I could then do the same thing with some data-item that is mostly constant, like the year, to find my position in the 1-minute message.
I have not implemented anything like that yet.
I seemed to have turned a corner on my c-pap machine, although I still find it inconvenient. I did some exploration of different sized face masks and found a combination that usually doesn’t leak. Also I wipe off the mask and my face with an alcohol wipe before putting it on in the evening. And I’ve gone to almost no pillow elevation. All of those things together and I have been able to sleep nearly 8 hours. But my normal is still about 6.
I guess that’s enough for now. Life has been moving kind of fast over the last 6-9 months with loss of mother-in-law, then an uncle, then father and the job thing still looming. I can’t afford to slow down yet. Maybe if I get an offer and accept it I can quit the current gig and take a break for a week or two.