Situation and progress

A few years ago I mentioned how I side with the minority here in placing the start of fall at the start of September. Again, it fits: lately the house has been mid-seventies, the air conditioning hasn't much cut in. Still, it was pleasant and sunny. I may even have mowed the yard had I slept better last night, or not eaten too much pizza for lunch. My weight had again dipped enough for me to briefly indulge in unrestrained consumption which, today, included a spinach feta pizza from Domino's. They're reliably quite good and my local branch is walkable, though not such that I want to walk there for carryout. I also ate a small butterscotch meringue pie. They are a little sweet for me, and I do rather like lemon, but I am also partial to butterscotch and those were the meringues significantly discounted.

Progress on the house is painful. More urgent issues involve leaks and drainage, for obvious reasons, also finishing the floors, for livability. With my now paying out of disposable income, everything else with the house, and there is yet plenty, probably has to wait for next year. I am coming to terms with this, it still gets me down. I think it is part of why I have not been getting much done lately on the domestic front.

Work is coming back under control. Practically, I am settled into a routine, with desk setup and meals and the like. My attention is mostly on three projects, on all of which I can try to make progress this coming week. The C++ project involves instrumenting existing code, the Java one is a web portal, the Python one is on deep learning. Soon I expect to be down to two on-site days per week. Recently I attempted to use an evolutionary algorithm, mutation guided by biases, to optimize spiking neural networks that I was using as classifiers of input sequences; they worked on easy problems but not on harder ones, so more investigation is indicated. I find that my work laptop has two USB C Thunderbolt connectors and the monitors provided me have, more or less, a dock built into the back of each. Linux support for such now seems decent.

Anniversary reflections

It is strange to be reflecting again on 9/11. My basic thoughts on it haven't changed. I first heard about it on the radio in the car with mst3kmoxie on our way to the gym where they had television screens that showed the Twin Towers. I felt relatively safe, central Ohio is not a high-value target. Later that day, I believe I saw Air Force One pass over, with escort. The surprise for me was that people were so surprised. With specific complaints against the US in the Middle East and, growing up in Western Europe, being used to bombings, etc., from the IRA locally and others like ETA further afield, I had been puzzled that the US had not been more of a target of international terrorism. It was hardly unthinkable, American authors had already written of the use of passenger airliners for such.

What has changed for me over the years is the emphasis. We have not learned or fixed much as a country since, at least that I see. However, 9/11 and its aftermath have touched many lives, both here and overseas, and, in the years since, I have encountered many such examples. Whatever their feelings on the broader politics, it's so many ordinary people who have suffered lasting harm and, these days, I am more likely to be sad and angry for all those who, in various ways, caught the fallout. I am glad that at least some received some help, that there are good people out there, but the tragedy casts a long shadow.