Some counties are more relaxed about the end of life on earth than others. Alameda, where I live, has a population of about 1.7 million people and we have about 1500 cases of the virus. Let's see what that is in percent... it's about 0.09%. So if you engage with 100 people, no one will have the virus. If you meet 1000 people, still 0, let's see at what point does the pobability approach 1? Well, maybe 10,000 people... Seems like more than usually shake hands with in my life time. And Alameda county wants to make sure we are all safe, as the first priority of any government is to protect the residents from any possible harm.
But I'm not here to talk about the attitudes of the power structure of Alameda, as their view is, blessed be the lord, not universal.
I scampered off to Stockton today. It's in San Joaquin county. Where the Weltanschauung is a bit different. They, properly in my point of view, see that providing golf access to the populous is not a bad thing.
Oh they have precautions. You are separated by plexiglass from the pro taking green fees and you have to swipe your own credit card -- how vulgar! And the range balls are free! Well, I'm sure it's included in there somewhere. Everyone has their own cart! No water on the course or snacks, but one can bring one's own.
I got there an hour early and probably hit a full bucket of balls. Then I met the others and off we went to play. It was a nice course, well kept, nice water holes, generous fairways, lengthy, but not too lengthy.
The downside is that the course is about an hour away and the rough was longish and I was not good around the greens. The greens were bent grass and not very fast. I had a couple of three putts, but made a couple longish ones. I hit some nice shots and only one bad drive. It did find the lake on 18, but my reload split the fairway and went 265, a highlight of the day.
I got home and suddenly realized that I was out of gas. The body was not up to a long day of golf and I took a cart! I've been limping around all evening, my neck is a bit sore and I'm hoping that I'll sleep the sleep of the just.
But it was great to see the buds and get out into society again. I'm happy to have put my life on the line a bit for those fine feelings. Come on you powers that be, make us all once again free!
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Thursday Week 4 or 5
We've lost track of time and we're not sure where we are in this experiment of social distance and biological imperative.
Twenty pounds so far, I think. Without the stay at home stuff I would have expected another 5 or so off. Clothes are getting looser. I've gone the keto route and hopefully the resting blood sugar is down where it belongs. I found the bathroom scale, so I can take some measurements.
On the 15th I paid my taxes and send the government a fairly large check. Then on the 16th, they sent me a stimulus check, sadly not quite large enough to cover the taxes. But I guess I can't complain unless it all gets inflated away. I'm wondering how well the economy will ramp back up. I expect that it might go smoothly for the following reasons. One is that almost all sectors of the economy are equally hit and a lot of businesses had to take time out. There were ongoing expenses, but the folks who were collecting for the expenses seemed to be taking that time off too. So I'm hoping that every one and businesses can fire back up without too many having gone over the edge into ruin.
We are doing fine. Barb has continued to work from home. I think there are a lot of others who managed to do that. Maybe on the ramp up a lot of companies will find that having employees not in the office worked quite well and they allow more of that. Less commutes, less gas, emptier streets, etc., all are nice benefits from that.
When we have gone to the store, it has not been very crowded. Strangely flour seems to be the item no longer on the shelves. Everything else was there.
The chaise lounge chairs showed up today. I've been trying to get some sun bath time in and the patio chairs we had were not comfortable. I found some that allow comfortable postures, but they don't go flat, but they have drink rests and built in pillows. Reading and napping should be well received with the chairs. Not expensive so if they get us through the dark times, it will be worth it. Now all I need are some sunny days...
What is left is to get through until California eases back to a more normal state. It's a crazy state, so normal wouldn't happen in any case, but maybe we can get back to where we were.
Ha, funny story. One of my pet peeves is the dumb plastic bag rules here. You have to bring your own or they charge you ten cents for a bag. This is to protect the environment. What you are not supposed to notice is that half of what you buy is wrapped in more plastic than any number of the single use plastic bags -- it is just another law that allows some politician and some ignorant activists to feel good. Of course as that started a couple of years ago, scientists pointed out that the reusable bags are a great way to spread germs and disease. Also the environmental impact of a reusable bag is thousands of times worse than the single use bags. And now, with the virus running the state, we are no longer allowed to use reusable bags and, of course, the plastic bags you still have to buy. Wonderful. I smile so wide tears come to my eyes. Ok, it's just so sad and you'd think that grown men who have the jobs to look after us and the environment could see the truth and not do obviously stupid things. You can put plastic straw bans in that category too.
Bottom line, all is good here. I hope you are all doing well out there too.
Twenty pounds so far, I think. Without the stay at home stuff I would have expected another 5 or so off. Clothes are getting looser. I've gone the keto route and hopefully the resting blood sugar is down where it belongs. I found the bathroom scale, so I can take some measurements.
On the 15th I paid my taxes and send the government a fairly large check. Then on the 16th, they sent me a stimulus check, sadly not quite large enough to cover the taxes. But I guess I can't complain unless it all gets inflated away. I'm wondering how well the economy will ramp back up. I expect that it might go smoothly for the following reasons. One is that almost all sectors of the economy are equally hit and a lot of businesses had to take time out. There were ongoing expenses, but the folks who were collecting for the expenses seemed to be taking that time off too. So I'm hoping that every one and businesses can fire back up without too many having gone over the edge into ruin.
We are doing fine. Barb has continued to work from home. I think there are a lot of others who managed to do that. Maybe on the ramp up a lot of companies will find that having employees not in the office worked quite well and they allow more of that. Less commutes, less gas, emptier streets, etc., all are nice benefits from that.
When we have gone to the store, it has not been very crowded. Strangely flour seems to be the item no longer on the shelves. Everything else was there.
The chaise lounge chairs showed up today. I've been trying to get some sun bath time in and the patio chairs we had were not comfortable. I found some that allow comfortable postures, but they don't go flat, but they have drink rests and built in pillows. Reading and napping should be well received with the chairs. Not expensive so if they get us through the dark times, it will be worth it. Now all I need are some sunny days...
What is left is to get through until California eases back to a more normal state. It's a crazy state, so normal wouldn't happen in any case, but maybe we can get back to where we were.
Ha, funny story. One of my pet peeves is the dumb plastic bag rules here. You have to bring your own or they charge you ten cents for a bag. This is to protect the environment. What you are not supposed to notice is that half of what you buy is wrapped in more plastic than any number of the single use plastic bags -- it is just another law that allows some politician and some ignorant activists to feel good. Of course as that started a couple of years ago, scientists pointed out that the reusable bags are a great way to spread germs and disease. Also the environmental impact of a reusable bag is thousands of times worse than the single use bags. And now, with the virus running the state, we are no longer allowed to use reusable bags and, of course, the plastic bags you still have to buy. Wonderful. I smile so wide tears come to my eyes. Ok, it's just so sad and you'd think that grown men who have the jobs to look after us and the environment could see the truth and not do obviously stupid things. You can put plastic straw bans in that category too.
Bottom line, all is good here. I hope you are all doing well out there too.
Tuesday, April 7, 2020
Monday, Start of Week Four
The good news is that the sink seems to not be leaking. I was not expecting that.
Otherwise... Not much new. The cold and rain have come back in. House bound is more literal than it has been. We got a walk in and then took a trip to the post office. Pretty exciting stuff...
The stock market was pretty healthy. I expected it when Trump suggested the lock down can't last forever. Now, is that really news?
How about the reporter who asked if grocery stores and fast food restaurants ought to be closed? How much food does everyone have? A month's worth? And closing food stores will make stuff better for anyone?
Not sure what all of you think about the main street media these days, but they have not made much of a favorable impression on me. Always looking for the worst case scenario. People have enough fear without piling on with no rational reason.
I'm finishing this on Tuesday morning...
The kitchen sink is pronounced to be complete. No drips over night and so we are putting the under sink stuff back in their proper locations. To repeat, all this started to get a new faucet installed. The faucet is very nice and a good upgrade. It has a nice spraying function and an automatic rewind function as the head can be pulled from its holder to rinse sink corners and othre things.
I wanted to mention a topic that usually is bandied about here at the casa and that is models. No, not those kinds, the ones that are not correct, might be barely accurate and are used to set policy for billions of people.
I got introduced to models via golf swing physics and the climate change debate. Barb, on the other hand, is a well respected model maker for a small segment of the scientific community. We talk about them and what they are good for and what they are not.
One of the problems of science is that the researchers and users fall in love with their models (and theories too) and become quite entrenched and defensive even when it is quite clear that the models are doing much less than helping. We are seeing some of playing out in the current news. The death and ventilator and needed hospital beds are all being estimated with a model. What we all have to be careful about is relying on these, or expecting them to be correct, and assuming that the output from the model is/are data.
When you build a model you make all sorts of assumptions. You can't be right about the important parameters usually because there are a lot of them and it's typically a difficult problem. If the output of the model doesn't match the data as they show up, you have to be willing or perhaps eager to toss out the model and try again. But that's difficult. Like many things in life and government and business, vested interests show up immediately. Cure the common cold? What about the nose wipe tissue industry -- can't be tossing them out of work!
So we know the models are going to be wrong, the other item you want to try to calculate a priori is an estimate of error, also known as uncertainty. How much leeway could we expect from the prediction. And if you are looking for it, you can see some of this. They plot a curve and there are shaded areas surrounding the expected value. This is an estimate of how high/low the data actually will be. And the further out you run the model, the wider this estimate should / must be. For example in climate forecasts they are predicting that they will know the global temperature within one hundredth of a degree in the year 2100. Anyone with some exposure to this sort of thing will give it no weight. But then someone like Al Gore takes it and runs with and then media jump on it and pretty soon we don't have single use plastic bags anymore and the price of gasoline is artificially bumped to help stop climate change.
So these can be dangerous and are not commonly understood by folks not in the business and sadly that includes folks that use them.
Ok, that's enough doom and gloom for the moment. The stock market up some more. Even NY deaths seem to be dropping and maybe we are seeing the down slope of all the virus stuff.
Otherwise... Not much new. The cold and rain have come back in. House bound is more literal than it has been. We got a walk in and then took a trip to the post office. Pretty exciting stuff...
The stock market was pretty healthy. I expected it when Trump suggested the lock down can't last forever. Now, is that really news?
How about the reporter who asked if grocery stores and fast food restaurants ought to be closed? How much food does everyone have? A month's worth? And closing food stores will make stuff better for anyone?
Not sure what all of you think about the main street media these days, but they have not made much of a favorable impression on me. Always looking for the worst case scenario. People have enough fear without piling on with no rational reason.
I'm finishing this on Tuesday morning...
The kitchen sink is pronounced to be complete. No drips over night and so we are putting the under sink stuff back in their proper locations. To repeat, all this started to get a new faucet installed. The faucet is very nice and a good upgrade. It has a nice spraying function and an automatic rewind function as the head can be pulled from its holder to rinse sink corners and othre things.
I wanted to mention a topic that usually is bandied about here at the casa and that is models. No, not those kinds, the ones that are not correct, might be barely accurate and are used to set policy for billions of people.
I got introduced to models via golf swing physics and the climate change debate. Barb, on the other hand, is a well respected model maker for a small segment of the scientific community. We talk about them and what they are good for and what they are not.
One of the problems of science is that the researchers and users fall in love with their models (and theories too) and become quite entrenched and defensive even when it is quite clear that the models are doing much less than helping. We are seeing some of playing out in the current news. The death and ventilator and needed hospital beds are all being estimated with a model. What we all have to be careful about is relying on these, or expecting them to be correct, and assuming that the output from the model is/are data.
When you build a model you make all sorts of assumptions. You can't be right about the important parameters usually because there are a lot of them and it's typically a difficult problem. If the output of the model doesn't match the data as they show up, you have to be willing or perhaps eager to toss out the model and try again. But that's difficult. Like many things in life and government and business, vested interests show up immediately. Cure the common cold? What about the nose wipe tissue industry -- can't be tossing them out of work!
So we know the models are going to be wrong, the other item you want to try to calculate a priori is an estimate of error, also known as uncertainty. How much leeway could we expect from the prediction. And if you are looking for it, you can see some of this. They plot a curve and there are shaded areas surrounding the expected value. This is an estimate of how high/low the data actually will be. And the further out you run the model, the wider this estimate should / must be. For example in climate forecasts they are predicting that they will know the global temperature within one hundredth of a degree in the year 2100. Anyone with some exposure to this sort of thing will give it no weight. But then someone like Al Gore takes it and runs with and then media jump on it and pretty soon we don't have single use plastic bags anymore and the price of gasoline is artificially bumped to help stop climate change.
So these can be dangerous and are not commonly understood by folks not in the business and sadly that includes folks that use them.
Ok, that's enough doom and gloom for the moment. The stock market up some more. Even NY deaths seem to be dropping and maybe we are seeing the down slope of all the virus stuff.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Friday
Hello fans,
I had an interesting walk down memory lane with watching of the 1980 Masters tournament on YouTube.com.
Seve wins in a bit of a walk over. It was fun seeing all the players when they were skinny. It was the time before the food pyramid fattened us all up. Seve was 23, everyone had the huge billed Amana type golf hats on.
The first 30 minutes of the video was without any announcers. That was pleasant, but some graphics would have been nice. A number of the players I didn't recognize and the cameras didn't provide a lot of close ups. Arnie and Jack and The Black Knight were in the field and they were on camera a couple of holes.
Coverage started at the 11th and then was a bit spotty through the rest of the course. All in all it was a nice watch and if you're a bit starved for the Masters this year, there are a lot of the broadcasts on YouTube.
Plumbing news: the wash machine seems to be leak proof at this point and it and the dryer have been moved back to their customary positions. The sink however is playing hard ball and there is a minor seep that looks like it will produce about 2 drops a day. I have to do some testing to see which of the three ports on the fixture are leaking. It's the hot water port and it feeds the faucet and dishwasher.
It's still cold here. I saw a prediction that most of the country was getting some last winter weather; I can't complain about what is going on here, but I wish it were warmer.
I'm still hitting rubber golf balls at the school. I'm happy with what I'm trying to do, I'd like to confirm on actual balls at some point. Even if the Feds lift the shelter in place rules, I wonder if California and the local governments will follow suit. They do tend to be a bit crazy out here.
Interesting point to ponder is that California had about the same number of virus cases as New York at one point, but the number of cases in NY exploded and have been barely a blip here.
Hang in there folks!
I had an interesting walk down memory lane with watching of the 1980 Masters tournament on YouTube.com.
Seve wins in a bit of a walk over. It was fun seeing all the players when they were skinny. It was the time before the food pyramid fattened us all up. Seve was 23, everyone had the huge billed Amana type golf hats on.
The first 30 minutes of the video was without any announcers. That was pleasant, but some graphics would have been nice. A number of the players I didn't recognize and the cameras didn't provide a lot of close ups. Arnie and Jack and The Black Knight were in the field and they were on camera a couple of holes.
Coverage started at the 11th and then was a bit spotty through the rest of the course. All in all it was a nice watch and if you're a bit starved for the Masters this year, there are a lot of the broadcasts on YouTube.
Plumbing news: the wash machine seems to be leak proof at this point and it and the dryer have been moved back to their customary positions. The sink however is playing hard ball and there is a minor seep that looks like it will produce about 2 drops a day. I have to do some testing to see which of the three ports on the fixture are leaking. It's the hot water port and it feeds the faucet and dishwasher.
It's still cold here. I saw a prediction that most of the country was getting some last winter weather; I can't complain about what is going on here, but I wish it were warmer.
I'm still hitting rubber golf balls at the school. I'm happy with what I'm trying to do, I'd like to confirm on actual balls at some point. Even if the Feds lift the shelter in place rules, I wonder if California and the local governments will follow suit. They do tend to be a bit crazy out here.
Interesting point to ponder is that California had about the same number of virus cases as New York at one point, but the number of cases in NY exploded and have been barely a blip here.
Hang in there folks!
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Wednesday, April 1
It's the fourth anniversary of my retirement. Of course we spent it at home.
Actually, I did ride my bike down to the park. I hit on the bang board for 15 minutes or so, then a guy from the city came out and put up signs that the park was closed due to the virus. Hmm. I was a good boy and packed up and went for a longish bike ride home.
I replaced the shutoff valve under the sink. The old one was leaking. I tried to use the nut and compression fitting from the old valve with the new valve body. That is supposed to be reasonably ok plumbing practice. Alas that was not going to work. But my new pulling tool came and I was able to easily pull the old pieces off and then put on all new parts. We're leaving cabinet doors open until tomorrow to make sure there are no leaks, then put all the under sink stuff back.
I bought a couple additional plumbing tools - the puller mentioned above and a special wrench that is supposed to work great on the type of valves I just installed. It didn't seem to want to get around the new nut. It make need a bit of file work. I've been collection plumbing tools for awhile. The issue with plumbing is not that it's difficult, but you rarely have a lot of room to work, and you are usually in some strange physical position that doesn't help. So any tool that has reach and doesn't need finicky adjustment is worth its purchase price.
Pretty quiet otherwise. I ran across some "Carb Control" tortillas the other day. I had two tacos with them yesterday. They tasted very good. And I made a small pizza with one today. I've not said much about the diet I'm on, but basically I'm trying to eliminate all carbs. Doing that will cause your body to burn its fat and not the carbs you're eating. It seems to be working quite well. Lots of loose skin here and there. But my activity level has been crashed with the shutdown. I think I'm going to spend more time on the bike and take some longer rides. I can feel my thighs burning a bit.
I bought some stuff to make Keto ice cream. I was balking at $6 a pint at the store, but I'm not sure the raw ingredients might go that high. I'll report back on that when it comes out.
The weather is warming some. It hit the high 60s today. Hopefully warmer tomorrow. I may pitch the hammock. I want to get more sun exposure and I have some pesky tan lines that I would be happy to, er, tan.
Still lots of reading is the time sink.
Actually, I did ride my bike down to the park. I hit on the bang board for 15 minutes or so, then a guy from the city came out and put up signs that the park was closed due to the virus. Hmm. I was a good boy and packed up and went for a longish bike ride home.
I replaced the shutoff valve under the sink. The old one was leaking. I tried to use the nut and compression fitting from the old valve with the new valve body. That is supposed to be reasonably ok plumbing practice. Alas that was not going to work. But my new pulling tool came and I was able to easily pull the old pieces off and then put on all new parts. We're leaving cabinet doors open until tomorrow to make sure there are no leaks, then put all the under sink stuff back.
I bought a couple additional plumbing tools - the puller mentioned above and a special wrench that is supposed to work great on the type of valves I just installed. It didn't seem to want to get around the new nut. It make need a bit of file work. I've been collection plumbing tools for awhile. The issue with plumbing is not that it's difficult, but you rarely have a lot of room to work, and you are usually in some strange physical position that doesn't help. So any tool that has reach and doesn't need finicky adjustment is worth its purchase price.
Pretty quiet otherwise. I ran across some "Carb Control" tortillas the other day. I had two tacos with them yesterday. They tasted very good. And I made a small pizza with one today. I've not said much about the diet I'm on, but basically I'm trying to eliminate all carbs. Doing that will cause your body to burn its fat and not the carbs you're eating. It seems to be working quite well. Lots of loose skin here and there. But my activity level has been crashed with the shutdown. I think I'm going to spend more time on the bike and take some longer rides. I can feel my thighs burning a bit.
I bought some stuff to make Keto ice cream. I was balking at $6 a pint at the store, but I'm not sure the raw ingredients might go that high. I'll report back on that when it comes out.
The weather is warming some. It hit the high 60s today. Hopefully warmer tomorrow. I may pitch the hammock. I want to get more sun exposure and I have some pesky tan lines that I would be happy to, er, tan.
Still lots of reading is the time sink.
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