Notes

I am starting to bounce back 😁

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When it’s been years since you’ve had a wicked cold, it’s easy to forget how much a cold can throw one for a loop. But today, unlike the other sick days I took from work, I’ve been really laying back, trying to get as much sleep and recovery as possible, as I want to be as close to my peak come Sunday into Monday.

I really would like to be over the cold 🤒 before Sunday so come Monday I’m in good shape to get back and be pounding the pavement hard with my data work. I actually want to be healthy enough to go to the library on Sunday to run some lists, 📜 get caught up on the things I didn’t get done when I was sick as a dog 🐕‍🦺 on Thursday and Friday. I did end up doing work those days, but everything was slower as I was in a bit of brain fog, hacking up mucus left and right. And it really is the busiest part of the campaign season, and I’m running lists and writing code left and right.

I am feeling like I am 80% back by this afternoon, 🚴‍♂️ and really almost want to get out for a bike ride this afternoon or at least get some fresh air. It’s such a beautiful day, and while the nose running 👃 and congestion 😤 have let up a lot, but I feel like if I overexhert myself today I am going to just end up collapsing. You know, I feel like I have so much energy ✊ but I really don’t as I recover form the cold. Maybe I will go down to the park for a bit later on the bike. I was trying to find the chain lube, ⛓️ but I’m not having much luck on that. Tomorrow, I plan to go to Walmart as many pantry is getting bare, and whole wheat pancakes, fried onions, brussel sprouts, eggs, and mixed vegetables gets tiresome after a while. I finished off the last of bananas I had yesterday, 🍌and you know what I’m really craving — grape fruit. 🍊 At the same time I kind of don’t want to rush out to public places, lest I spread this nasty cold around.

It is what is is. 🌞 I don’t have a fever, my temperature this morning was only 97.1 F. 🌡️ I came back on the COVID test. I do need to schedule my COVID and flu booster. A completely beautiful autumn day and I’ve spent half the day in bed, just playing with my phone, 📳 trying to get back over this cold so I can move forward again with life come tomorrow. Going rain and cold tomorrow, but if I’m feeling fine, I’ll head to the library 📚️ and I’ll work down there, after going to the Walmart to get bike grease and all that other stuff I need. I was originally planning to go shopping on Thursday evening before heading out to Madison County early on Friday, but as it seems with the weather and the sickness, that was not to be. 🐮

Took apart my laptop this morning, and got the fan unstuck 💻️ and checked out replacing the power port. Doesn’t look as easy as I thought, but I would have been good I think if I had gotten a big enough power supply to replace the one that broke. I think I have to pull the motherboard to get access to it, and I don’t want to do that. I bought the 45-watt power block, which will charge things when the laptop is off — abit slowly — but nothing when it’s running it’s not enough power. I goofed but it was only a $10 mistake, and I should be getting the new one delivered from Amazon tomorrow morning, so I should be back in business. 🔌 I’ll keep the slow charge one for at home, as a backup, as it works to charge the laptop but only slowly when it’s off.

I’m glad the fan was just stuck and I was able to free it up but I doesn’t look like that is particularly diffiicult to replace. ☢️ With the fan running again, the laptop is running much cooler — around 30 to 35 C compared to 60 to 80 C. I should have opened it up and fixed it sooner as the high temperatures are really bad for solder joints and capacitors, though the laptop is 8 years old now, and I’ve been talking about replacing it for some time now — though it’s more then sufficent for my needs with a 1 GB SSD plus a 1 GB HD and 12 GB of RAM. I don’t care about processor speed as most of my GIS and data stuff is more disk IO and memory intensive then processor intensive. And hopefully it won’t feel so hot on my lap. 💻️

Yesterday I worked the bulk of the day at Five Rivers. 🦅🐞 Beautiful day for sure for working out there, and I went for a lunch time walk, but boy did I feel sick. I was blowing my runny nose non-stop. 👃Kept it together and worked until around quarter of six, came home and collapsed. I was just so tired, though sleep hasn’t come easy when I’m constantly coughing my brains out. 🧟 It’s just been no fun. But at least once I get the proper power charger 🔌 with the fan working on my laptop, hopefully things should be good for some time into the future at this point. And next weekend I can get out camping and riding, or so I hope. 🥾 🏕️ I just got to take it easy one more day, do some reading and looking out the window 🪟 at the blue skies all will be good when my charger comes tomorrow and I stock up on groceries. 🛒 I probably will skip the whole-wheat homemade pancakes and all the onions for a while. 🧅 Although, what to eat?

Why I am trying to get away from R

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I really like R, I find it a useful tool for both my personal data work and mapping along with the things I do professionally as the Data Services director for Assembly. RStudio is a nice simple IDE, it works and works well. But I have this nagging suspicion that R is not a real programming language, that it has no future, and only people who really use R for much of anything useful are academics.

I know that’s a lie, mostly told by fan boys of Python. There are tons of packages for R and new ones keep being written, and it’s a widely used language for data science. I’ve used Python, sometimes that’s the only tool for the job, but it’s really not my favorite language. I just don’t like the use of spaces and line breaks for flow control. I would much rather have more freedom to lay out my code as I see as readable and logical, how I see things and matches my work flow. I learned Python originally for writing QGIS plugins to supplement making maps for the blog, and then I learned PANDAS 1.0 which was an awesome tool for processing data, until I discovered R and the tidyverse.

I am trying to do more coding with C and Rust. And learning a bit of Java and other languages. I want to be fluent in as many programming languages and pick up skills that I can quickly transfer to whatever is the fashionable language of the day. As many of the newer programming concepts make programming faster and better. Plus I want to have marketable skills, which I am not sure if the R programming language really counts as a marketable skill. Yes, I do awesome data work with it, filtering and processing millions of records each day with it, but I hardly find it to be professional solution that is used by leading tech people for such purposes.

Still sick 🤒

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I am doing somewhat better this morning but not really. By the end of the day, I don’t know how I made it through it besides just being busy and working hard. Going to call in sick again today, but alas campaign data lists can’t wait so I’ll be putting in as many hours as I can while being at least somewhat conscious of data I’m processing.

I totally know it’s my fault that I got so sick. 🧼If I had only washed my hands good after going to the supermarket on Sunday night at camp, I’m sure I would have avoided the sickness. I don’t know where else I could have been exposed to the cold virus, 😵 I was wilderness camping Friday through Sunday and then riding trail alone at Partridge Run. The previous Thursday I had meetings downtown and also Tuesday, and while I got very sick starting Tuesday night, I can’t imagine it was from the lunch meeting so quickly, if it wasn’t food poisoning. 🥪I do need be careful about taking home “free” left-overs from work that have been sitting out on the table all day, especially if they are getting a bit slimy.

Going to work at Five Rivers for the bulk of the day. 💻️ They have free library wi-fi there, and it’s a beautiful day. Work from inside my truck, where I have power from the solar. 🔌If I work there, and need to take a pee, I can just find a tree, so I don’t have to worry about getting others sick with my cold. 🤒 I figure when the group by %>% summarize command is running on my laptop, I could do some bird watching. 🐦️Plus maybe enjoy some of the scenery and do a nice stroll during lunch time. 🚶‍♂️ Next cycle, I will re-write the code using POLARS and maybe rust so I don’t have to wait for the sometimes sluggish tidyverse to process data.

Truth is while today and tomorrow looks nice, 🌞 the almost certain rain come Sunday into Monday would have made the Columbus Day Weekend not a good one to get away. Plus the color is still somewhat limited in lower elevations. 🍁 I do want to try to do something fun on Saturday if the weather is decent – maybe riding trail and enjoying the scenery at Thacher Park – but Sunday I’ll probably stay home and read. 📚️ I also need to get shopping, probably Saturday as I had planned to shop on Thursday night before I got so sick, in preparation for the Columbus Day Weekend trip.🛒 Also want to work on my laptop on Sunday — I want to see if I can get the fan working on it or how difficult it is to replace, likewise checking the power port which also needs replacing. 💻️With those repairs, maybe I can get a few more years out of my laptop.

Next weekend, I’m thinking of doing Charles Baker. 🏕️🚴🚣 You know the Friday through Monday. Work both of those weekdays from camp, get set up before 9 AM on Friday. Probably less crowded at that point. Right now next weekend looks stunning beautiful and warmer — and there should still be good color I expect out in Madison County. 😎 At least that’s what I hope and are telling myself. At least I should be over my cold by then.

Got my latest pay stub and I can officially say I’m now paying more in monthly payroll taxes 💸then I am in rent for my apartment. I really bumped up my state and federal deductions as I’m worried with all the dividends and interest payments, plus the blog revenue, I will be chronically underpaying my taxes, and I don’t want to get fined this year, nor do I want to owe a ton of money come April like I did last year. 📈It’s been a great year in the markets so far, although I would have done better had I not decided to spend so much of the year keeping money in the high-interest savings rather then investing it, as I was thinking of buying a house. 🏠️

He’s one sick puppy 🐕️

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I could work remote today, but I have a pretty bad cold with a running nose and a sore throat, so it’s best to rest up as much as possible. Still have campaign committee work to do, but the state work is going to have to wait while I try to get in some rest and isolate from others. Truth is if hadn’t been for the pandemic, I would soldier on and be at work, but you just don’t work when your sick anymore in these days after the pandemic, especially when you have paid sick leave.

Yesterday I so wanted to believe I had anything but a cold. 🤒I don’t fully understand why I feared having a cold, it’s not it was the worse thing ever. Had to be food poisoning or the bad air in my apartment. Maybe because it’s the first actual cold I’ve had since the pandemic. So it’s been years. And like usual, the days when I’m sick are the most beautiful, sun filled days of the year, though cold. Colds are werid — at times I have tons of energy and feel like I could just suck it up and go to work — but other times I’m ready to collapse in bed. That said, I will probably spend some time working, isolated, in my truck down at the library where I have Wi-Fi and don’t have to worry about using too much bandwidth on my phone. 📱 They’re also detailing a car outside of my apartment, and the noise of the vacuums is annoying me. But so far no banging on the unit next door. I think they’re too busy doing dairy stuff 🐮 to work on that unit. It’s starting to look very swanky, I wonder when I’ll finally get new neighbors.

Today is the first day I’ve had all the windows closed in my apartment 🪟which is an admission on my part that maybe the colder weather is coming. Tuesday was actually so cold riding in I wish I had worn the insulated gloves, as🧤 my fingers were cold while I was riding in. Truth is come November, I’m going to have to decide if I keep riding in each day. The problem is with he time time change it will be dark, 🌃 which means I can’t ride home 🚳via the rail trail, though I have a light on the bike so I could ride to old train station and get the bus there, but I don’t love the idea of riding after dark in the city each day. But on the other hand, I’ll miss otherwise riding to work. 🤷‍♂️

Between the cold and the rain coming Sunday into Monday, 🏠️ I plan to stick close to home this Columbus Day Weekend. That’s not quite true — I might go up to Thacher Park or ride somewhere locally on Saturday but Sunday into Monday I’ll probably stay home and get caught up on reading the books I got out of the library on Hoopla before they all expire. 📚️Next weekend though I might do Charles Baker Friday through Monday, remote working those two weekdays, getting to the state horse camp by 9 AM next Friday. Assuming the weather is nice! Then Saturday or Sunday — one of those days — paddle on Nine Mile Swamp 🚣checking out the new boat launch and maybe riding around Hamilton and the Old Chenango Canal Trail and the other day riding trail and roads at Charles Baker. 💻️ The bulk of the work days will be remote work though, as I’m so busy — and probably they’ll be some of that in the morning and evenings during the weekend too.