18 Aug 2020
0105 working on the last Accipiter comments
0332 working on the last Accipiter comments
1154 sleeping
1502 answering emails
Food: ham, cheese, fruit and veggies for lunch
Fact: The Combat Cockroach Musuem was in an exterminator's office in Plano. Cockroaches were dressed up in various scenes or as famous people. Sadly we never went and it closed when the owner retired.
Finally finished the Accipiter comments around 0530. Sent it to Jason and Matt with a couple more clariifcations then i went to bed. Woke up and answered some emails then talked to Jason about some potential funding stuff before heading to wallmart to pick up the groceries. Dom was amazed i do normal things like grocery shop. I tit tell him its only because of covid that i do trips to the store. once i got home I did some sound normalziatoin on the naoc presentation to show a potential donor then talked to a prof at vanderbuilt about our bird common name thing. I told her i worked at ANSP She was actually in RI and was like oh we could meet up sometime in PA, and i was like actually I'm in AL so when she has to come back south maybe we could meet up then lol. Then it was lunch time. Put on the Yankee's game (we lost) and took Dumas for a walk while talking with Jason about potential semiar titles. Then watched Lord of War while making templates for each common name we need changed.
17 Aug 2020
1143 sleeping
1350 sleeping
1649 on my way back from the vet/publix
2147 working on the last Accipiter comments
Food: scallops and shrimp for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: Cypraea fultoni is a mollusk found off the coast of Mozambique. The shells are a collector's item especially since until really recently all the specimens were found inside the stomach of fish. Each shell has a unique pattern and some of the individual shells have names describing the pattern, just like some of the big diamonds/other gems.
Woke up and answered some emails before going to the vets. I had to get food for Schubie and meds for both puppies. Stopped at Publix on the way back to get some fruit since we were out. There was still basicy no paper towels (only 2 packages), half a display of toilet paper, and no cleaning products. Othere than that adventure I spend the evening working through Jason's final comments and getting the Accipiter manscript ready to go. We listened/watched the yankees game- we won again and Chapman got his first save. Then father checked the sky and it was pretty clear so we set up the camera (and my tv). Took 10 30 second pics and then did 50 at 30 seconds. I sat outside with the camera to make sure it didn't get hit by a random critter or something until it finished. Then we pulled the pictures off and looked but no shooting stars. Tomorrow we are going to try zooming in and taking 600 1.666 second pictures then stacking them. Father also thinks we could make a movie of the stars moving. By this point it was well after midnight and the parentals went to bed and i watched tv while working on the manuscript. I also recieved Maria's wedding invite, I got two trexes cause I'm extra awesome.
16 Aug 2020
0633 sleeping
1126 sleeping
1306 sleeping
1846 watching the Yankees/Red Sox
Food: cinnamon toast and ribs for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: when filming HP8 they brought in "dead" harry in a body bag. Daniel Radcliffe was hanging around the set and found it rather weird
Woke up, heard the parentals still talking to fathers siblings so i kept sleeping until they woke me up. Then we got the last of the sunroom set up for churching. Then it was time to church. We used the 2 mike set up, but when we were doing some troubleshooting I had muted the output on the laptop so we ended up having no audio until the end of the homily. Afterwards we chatted for a bit (found out that one could not go to St. Mikes in the 1970s and be VP of the US material. Then we spent the rest of the day chilling. Tried getting my hangboard set up- we found the studs but realized the plywood needs to be trimmed down and that circular saw isn't working so I'll have to do it by hand. Then we put on the Yankee's game (which we won). Drew summed up the season by saying the red soxs make him realize his childhood dream isn't dead he could still be a pitcher for the sox. Afterwards I watched the directors edition of HP 7b and put the finishing touches on the manuscript so Jason can read the final version tomorrow.
0452 watching NAOC talks from earlier in the day
0733 sleeping
0954 sleeping
1920 NAOC social
Food: ribs and sweet tea
Fact: Starlings recognize individuals just like crows do
Woke up and answered some emails. Sounds like my talk went well! Its funny, in some respects prerecorded talks are more stressful because I wasn't totally sure the moderator knew it was going to be a prerecorded talk. But luckily since Renata was in my session i let her know to let the moderator know if he was looking for me. Then I went for a quick birding walk to add Alabama to the NAOC map. I also watered my plants and discovered more flowers on my morning glory. Once I got back it was time for the story telling session, then bird calls, trivia, and a social. I was briefly 4th out of 150 people in trivia but then I collapsed and ended up like 105. The social was really fun, there were about 70 people and it was a series of 15 minute breakout sessions with between 4 and 6 people. Talked to a big variety of people ranging from someone who lived in Plano from 1988-2001 (we talked about high school football), to a couple high schoolers (I told them to choose wisely since their high school project could become their phd), to a bunch of Canadians studying seabirds. One person was in my randomly assigned breakout session 4 times in a row which we both found amusing. The stories were also pretty good- some were serious (judging people for accents and local people in birding areas confronting bird people asking why nothing they do benefits the local community), to touching (doing field work with your dad and telling your family you are going to be a biologist), to funny (loosing your phone after running away from a cow that looked at your funny and finding it by using a bluetooth speaker to retrace your steps and listening for the tone saying you are paired). After the total group got down around 20 we just did a single session instead of breakouts which mostly consisted of us talking about what birds are the worst to deal with in hand (cardinalids) and the crow people talking about how awesome crows are. The zoom randomly died about 2120 (tbh it was supposed to finish at 2100) so then i ate dinner, drank my sweet tea, and then chilled with the parentals. Then we got the sun room set up (even more extra than usual) since eddie wants to church early. then the parentals went to bed and I watched tv.
14 Aug 2020
0737 sleeping
1159 sleeping
1920 eating dinner
2242 trivia
Food: korean beef tacos
Fact: Reindeer eyes turn blue in the winter, apparenlty to help them see better in the dark. Eddie would have gotten this right (he figured Scandinavians often have blue eyes so was going with that) but Ania and Zac were very certain this was not true. Ania even said if they were blue she would pay him. I told her to pay up.
Woke up and did some work before the musuem people unoffical meet up. It was really funny because one of the people cheersed with their beer, and someone said something about beer sounding good so we took a 30 second break to beverage before starting. I had a freestate beer but i hadn't had one in so long that i had forgotten there actually was a Prairie Falcon on the label so i said it was Prairie Falconless. They broke us up into a series of breakout rooms, first I was with Paul (AMNH) and some people I didnt know, but 4 of the 5 us us had loans from Paul. Then i was in a room with John (FMNH) and some others that i vaguely knew, then I was in a group with Shanta. It was really great meeting a bunch of new poeple though- considering if that was a normal meeting i prob would have just hung out with John and/or Shanta the whole time. I really like how that works- and everyone is on even footing since even the most senior person wouldnt know everyone (or even most people) when thrown into a random room like that. Then it was dinner time, but Mrs. Armstrong called right as we were
sitting down. So we waited while father talked to her. Guess they were
updating her address book (who has an address book) and were trying to
decide if he should get filed under C or P. After dinner we got ready for trivia and then started the call. The west coasters won, although Kevin and Maria were also in the center and we had all the pie pieces and were heading to the center. The best was Eddie and Zac tottally confused about which gospel writers were apostles (even though Ania knew the answer immediatly). Mother died a little inside. We also had some random singing from the parentals of dawning of the age of aquarius.
13 Aug 2020
0045 working on thrushes
0311 playing WoW
1432 sleeping
2343 working on thrushes
Food: enchiladas for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: Alger Hiss was found guilty of being a Soviet spy (which is still debatable). Part of the trial included a discussion of Prothonotary Warblers which he said he had seen and was considered to be a detail you wouldn't just tell random people so the fact Whittaker Chambers knew he had seen one was proof they knew eachother. This trial launched Nixon's political career.
Woke up and was a room leader for the LBTGQA+ social. We did two breakout sessions that went pretty well. Then we had trivia. I did awfully but it was fun. Ended up talking to Alix quite a bit during the trivia. After the social ended I talked to Matt for a while about the hawk paper. After dinner I put on a Yankees game from last year. We beat Baltimore, but they had a player hit for the cycle. I talked to Eddie for a bit also. He got a big DOE grant so is hiring a postdoc. He's all important these days. Then the parentals went to bed and I watched tv and worked.
0101 working on Accipiter comments
0528 reading
1818 working on Catharus
2217 playing trivia
Food: Burgers for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: You can use drones to do telemetry (via triangulation) in remote or inaccessible areas. Also, since the drones are at a higher elevation than a person standing they can pick up signals that might otherwise be missed.
Woke up in time for the LBTGQA+ round table at NAOC. The panel was pretty interesting. I always forget how much Mark amuses me. I really should hang out with him more when I go to UIUC. After that it was time for my poster presentation. I was the first one in my session which was a bit stressful not knowing how any of this would go, but i actually really liked it. Each speaker talked for 3 minutes, then every 5 posters or so there was a 5 minute break for questions. I actually stayed for the whole session since there were some interesting drone talks. It was really easy to interact on zoom also since the chat function allowed people to give questions and then before they were actually asked by the moderator the presenter had a few seconds to prepare responses. Once that was over I hung around for a bit then took Dumas for a walk before we ate. Since it was raining Schubie didn't want to stay out very long. Then it was trivia time. Our team won, but it was back and forth until the final round so I think everyone was happy with how it turned out. The highlight though was maria admitting she got an answer right because of us making her go to maritime museums (it was about light house lenses). I also got a question right due to lord of war (name one thing on a Mozambique flag, I knew AK-47). Then we randomly watched some home shopping network because they were selling these weird fake plant things. Then i put on Spectre after the parentals went to bed.
11 Aug 2020
0256 playing WoW
0806 sleeping
1721 Working on Catharus
2117 Watching tv with the parentals
Food: brautwurst and potatoes for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: Before today 8 sept 1915 was the last time NY state hosted 3 major league home games on the same day (Buffalo Blues beat the Baltimore Terrapins in a double header; the Boston Braves beat the Brooklyn Robins in a double header; and the Yankees lost to the Senators). Interestingly enough, if you search for 8 Sept 1915 mlb in yahoo it brings up the scores for that day but with the modern team names.
Woke up and did some sequence cleaning. Pretty uneventful day overall though since all the NAOC stuff is uploaded and I'm waiting on the last of the hawk MS comments. The highlight was probably trying to take pictures of the meteor shower. We were partially thwarted by clouds and we didn't capture any shooting stars, but I think we have a better idea now what will work picture wise. Father stacked the images and the 1 second ones were way too dark, but the 5 second ones look really cool, even without shooting stars. Then I put on Skyfall and worked on the comments on the response to reviewers.
10 Aug 2020
0047 working on my NAOC talk
0209 working on my NAOC talk
1513 working on Catharus
1855 eating dinner
Food: pork chops for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: In 1992 Pepsi ran a big competition called Pepsi Number Fever to win a million pesos in the Philippeans to try to increase their popularity. Only problem is when they decided to extend the competition they drew a number (349) that had actually been printed hundreds of times. Riots happened, people were killed, and lawsuits made it to the Philippine supreme court (which sided with Pepsi on not being responsbile for paying all the holders of the caps).
Woke up and spent basicly the whole day working on NAOC stuff. I asked Dom how to say send me an email if you have any questions in Spanish and then father and I worked on getting my prounciation of mandármela correct. The e was giving me such a hard time, even though i was apparenlty getting the e right in every other word in the phrase. Father found it rather amusing but I eventually got it. We recorded the intro outside, figured we would just record it half a dozen times and pick the one that sounded the best. Apparently Dom's daughter has trouble with that word even though she only speaks spanish at home. So i told father it isn't my fault. Worked on the quail poster while waiting for Jasons comments on the recording. I talked to Jason just before dinner about his comments, which were all pretty minor luckily. We also talked a bit about some sequecing i want to do of South American hawks. After dinner I rerecorded the slides he had comments on. I had father listen to it all the way through to make sure it sounded ok and then I saved it as an mp4 only to discover somehow it was 21 seconds too long even after I had set all the transitions and added them all together. So had to trim the transitions a bit and redo the mp4 conversion. Got it uploaded with 8 minutes to spare. Then i spent the rest of the evening relaxing while watching tv.
9 Aug 2020
0211 working on NAOC talk
0952 sleeping
1404 sleeping
1521 waking up
Food: steak for lunch fruit for dinner.
Fact: Crush, TX was a temporary citie where a railroad staged a crash between two unmanned locomotives. 40,000 people came (making it the 2nd largest city in Texas for a couple day period). Admission to the event was free and round trip tickets to the site from anywhere in TX was only 2 bucks. Only problem was rather than going off without a hitch like similar events in other places, both boilers exploded and the flying debris killed two people. Ironically it ended up favoirbly impacting the railroad and other railroads continued holding fake crashes after that.
Woke up and started putting transitions into the slide show. Didn't quite get it done before churching. We still havn't gotten the dual mikes sorted out- there was an echo so ended up using the crowd mike the whole time. Then father got the slide transcription going. Once it was done I worked on that while we watched tv. Once i got that finished (and everyone else was sleeping) I rerecorded my slides. I didn't get finisehd until about 6am, luckily father was able to keep all the criters quite while I was finshing, since they can be rather loud (looking at you schubie and grey kittie before and after breakfast.
8 Aug 2020
0634 sleeping
1154 sleeping
1711 working on the presentaiton
1856 finishing dinner
Food: tamales and enchaladas with Corona, veggies, and asparagus
Fact: Ammonium nitrate is highly explosive and used in mining. It is also used as a fertilizer. This is the material that caused the West explosion (side note, it was a really strange experience being in Tanzania during the West explosion even though my experiences with West were all about stopping for kolaches), and also the recent explosion in Beirut. To make it easier to handle, but still effective as a fertilizer, it can be mixxed with calcium, although this isn't commonly done for some reason.
Woke up and watered the plants. Then spent pretty much all day working on stuff for my presentation since that has to be uploaded Monday. I also gave the slides to father to translate. During dinner I convinced the parentals we should take one more shot at the comet since we were thinking some longer exposures. So we drove out to the dam and got set up. We had a fairly easy time finding the comet- we found the marker star before it was even fully dark and were able to get lined up on it, then took a series of 10 second exposures until we found it. The hardest part was actually getting the comet where we wanted it so it wouldn't leave the field of view during the 5-9 minutes it took to take the series of pictures. The last set we did was 30 seconds (with 5 second pauses) for 15 pictures. We just wish we had figured this out when it first started, could have had some amazing shots when the tail was really pronounced. Then we headed home and played with the stacker some.
0027 working on Accipiter complex
0813 sleeping
0924 sleeping
1416 working on Accipiter complex
Food: tacos and veggies
Fact: The King's Highway was built between 1650 and 1735 on the order of King Charles II. It ran from Boston, MA to Charleston, SC. It was originally used to transport mail on horseback, but eventually widened and smoothed as stagecoach traffic increased.
Right as I was falling asleep (arond 0600) black kittie appeared
and started playing with some felt, although at first i thought he was a
mouse until i heard him thud. So i picked him up and tried to make him
love me but he jumped away and started playing with the felt again. So
I tried to grab him and throw him out of the room, but he hid under the
bed. So i pulled him out and chucked him out then mostly closed the
door so grey kittie could still come in if he wanted. But then black
kiitie came back again and started playing with the felt yet again.
This time when i tried to grab him he ran into the corner. So i fished
him out and threw him back into the hall then latched the door shut.
then for the next 10 min he kept launching himself into the door trying
to break his way in. Father was laughing at him, and i couldn't just give him the felt in the hall because i was worried about the dogs eating it. Then I actually go to sleep. Woke up a few minutes before the 1300 meeting with about Jacob's checklist committee document. It was a very producitve meeting and we came up with a plan both for the opinion piece and for proposals. Then I got back to Accipiter stuff. Had tacos for dinner, and then back to work. Just before 200 AOS announced they changed the longspur so that was good news. Then it was trivia time (which had been delayed until 2130). Everyone was impressed with the sign mother made for the birthdays. Then we had father open his lens, he was super excited and surprised. Trivia went well, we had a slow start, but it was competitive to the end. Maria and Kevin won, on their first card once they got to the central circle. We did have an intermission to all eat our baked goods, with candles (and we sung happy birthday). Eddie ended up accidentally with trick candles which was pretty amazing. After the game the parentals went to bed and I worked on the mt genomes.
6 Aug 2020
0438 working on Accipiter
0735 finally fell asleep maybe
0738 finally fell asleep maybe
1841working on Accipiter complex
Food: salmon and rice for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: Towards the end of WWII the germans tried doing some guerilla fighting drawing on superstition like the existence of werewolves. One group was made up of actual military personnel, while the other was civilians. In either case they were supposed to terrorize soldiers or anti-nazi germans, typically in small very localized attacks. They were not particuarily successful, although they did cause millions of dollars in damage and killed thousands of people.
I had a heck of a time getting to sleep, it was close to 730 before I actually finally succeeded. I looked over some comments that people had started making on the Accipiter manuscript and then got to working on the Accipiter complex for NAOC. I got my NAOC mug in the mail, and also the tool kit eddie got me. Otherwise it was a pretty low key day. Took the puppies for walks and listened to the Yankees game. We decided to give comet photography another try since its pretty clear. I brought mothers laptop and was planning on working on the way only to discover Microsoft needed to connect to the internet in order to verify the license so so much for that plan. Once the sun went down we started looking for the comet. It took a while to find, eventually we found a post about what constellation it was near and then a map of the constellations relative to the Big Dipper. We basicly had to make our way across the sky taking pictures as we went until I eventually spotted it. Then we took a bunch of photo series (20-40 pictures each 5 second long). There was a lot of light for some reason, even though the moon was down so that complicated things. Then we headed home and father messed with the image stacker for a while. We tried figuring out the comet stacker but couldn't get it to work right so that will be a project for tomorrow apparently. Then I skyped with Dave for a couple hours. In the process I realized I am basically on New Zealand time. Afterwards I worked on Accipiter some more then went to bed.
5 Aug 2020
0340 working on Accipiter (almost done!)
0611 getting ready to go to sleep
1957 walking the puppies
2326 watch House Hunters and working on this post
Food: chicken and rice stuff for dinner
Fact: The oldest road bridge in the US that is still in use is the Frankford Ave. Bridge in Philadelphia. It's actually the bridge I used to stand on while waiting for the bus to take me to the Market-Frankford Line when I lived with the nuns. The bridge was completed in 1697 as part of a law passed that required all river crossings along the King's Highway to have bridges between The Fall's of the Delaware (in Trenton) and Sussex Co, Delaware.
Woke up and started working on the alignments for NAOC since the presentation has to be recorded by Monday. Otherwise it was a pretty low key day. Listened to the Yankees doubleheader. Favorite yankee got his 3rd hit and 3rd homer. Later in the game he got a 2nd hit that was his first non home run hit of the year. It was frustrating that this year doubheaders are 7 innings since I think we would have come back to win it but at least we won game 2. Took the pups for a walk and then it was trivia time. Our team one again, although with very little input from Zac. We made some suggestions to even out the scores a bit though. Then I watched some HHI while I worked, then turned on Lord of War since I hadn't watched it for a while.
4 Aug 2020
0942 sleeping
1318 sleeping
1942 walking the puppies
2255 working on Accipiter
Food: steak and the ham chowder for lunch, fruit for dinner
Fact: Very little is known about the history Viktor Bout, the arms dealer that Lord of War (best movie ever) is based on. He was in the Soviet army, and he was probably born in what is now Tajikistan although his date of birth is not certain. He is fluent in 6 languages, and possibly also in Esperanto the language that was artificially constructed in 1887 (a triva question we got wrong last week) even though father thought it was in the 1800's i thought it was more recent than that.
Woke up and had mother cut my hair. She's getting pretty good at it lol. Next week i hope to have enough free time that she can dye it again for me. Then I just spent the rest of the day working on the manuscript. By the time I went to bed I felt pretty good about where it was at and figured it was ready for others to look over. The extension cord to move my laptop from my office to the sitting room in the evening is working well. I really hope the new battery fixes this though. Since the yankees game was postponed due to rain we listened to the game against boston from Sunday. Always love it when we beat them. Took the puppies for a walk this evening- Schubie was wanting an actual walk so we went down to the bottom of the hill and back up. Dumas and I went all the way to the sign. The kittie in the house on the corner seems really lonely and was meowing at us through the window so mother is looking to see if it is possible for us to go play with it (and Maria and I think it should join the family).
3 Aug 2020
0057 working on Accipiter
0305 working on Accipiter
1447 sleeping
2334 working on Accipiter
Food: Burgers for lunch, fruit for dinner
Fact: The airport on Midway Atoll (Henderson Field) has restrictions on what time planes can land to protect the albatri. During the nesting season (November-June) planes can only take off or land at night.
Woke up and spent basicly the whole day doing Accipter stuff. I pretty much have the analyses done (other that what I need from Julie) so was working on figures and cleaning up the text. I did talk to Matt for over an hour about the morphology figures for the paper. We also agreed to skype beer at some point, maybe even skype skin if i can get ahold of some birds to prep. We listened to the Yankee game, still no John. Turns out he was hospitalized for a blood infection, but he should be back this week. The most amusing part of the day though was father saying the was thinking about buying a macro lens. Luckily he mentioned this before he bought one (he had been looking on ebay) so we told him to wait until chrsitmas... or Friday lol. For dessert we had the rest of the lemon pie mother made then the parentals went to sleep and I kept watching tv while working on the manuscript. Donor Choice had a 10x match with Tyson so maria and i funded a bunch of projects. I did a lego one, a book one, and then she and i split a school supply one right before midnite since it was one of the the last 3 projects eligible for the match that would be expired before the next time Tyson did the match and the others were were small kids that I figured would get funded before they expired at the end of the month (this one was school supplies for a high school special education classroom)
2 August 2020
0418 working on Accipiter
1302 sleeping
1642 babysitting my computer backup
2124 watching TV
Food: Tamales, beans, tomatoes, with Corona for dinner
Fact: The Bethpage region of Long Island, NY was bought for £140 (about 34,000 now) in 1687 (although the deed wasn't signed until 1695) by Thomas Powell Sr. He purchased about 15 square miles from a group of indigenous tribes (who retained the right to pick berries and hunt on the land). He called it Bethphage (the 2nd h disappered eventually) because it was located between Jerusalm (now Wantagh) and Jericho (a Quaker settlement) just like the bethpage in the bible.
Woke up and messed around with my computer backup. Then I briefly helped mother work on the treadmill, but wandered off while she and father finished it. Sent some emails, and then it was time to set up for churching. Mother realized the treadmill would make a really good ambo so we decided to flip everything 90 degrees in order to use that. It really looked nice since you can now see the stained glass. Only issue is we forgot to test the speakers out and there was some sort of interaction with the new mike we got (so we now have a crowd mike and a second mike on the ambo) and we couldn't get them both working on the fly. So we ended up having to just use the laptop and since everything was going through there now we had to take off the recorder. Too bad because I got to do my principalities 2nd reading and father had a good homily. Then we took everything down, but left the treadmill with the board on it so i could use it as a walking desk. Then we had dinner- father decided to channel grandpa ikie with our meal. It really hit the spot. We also were talking about reading vs speaking Spanish- he doesnt think grandma stella or grandpa ike really read Spanish very well even though it was their first language, only aunt celine really did a lot of reading in Spanish. But apparenlty mothers grandmother actually took Czech classes when she was a kid so she learned to read and write in Czech. I also learned that father has a diary that grandmas father kept during WWI and grandma used to read and translate it to them when they were kids. I told him he needs to digitize it and it should go in a museum. Then we watched some tv- an episode of Home Improvement. Since it was clear outside we took a bunch of pictures (father figured out how to take 20 shots in a quick succession). Mostly of the star from last night (but it was almost directly overhead and the focus kept getting messed up from the weight of the lense when taking 20 shots over 2 minutes) and another bright star, but also a few of Jupiter where you can see a bunch of the moons. Then we all came in and watched a couple episodes of another show- According to Jim. It was a pretty amusing show although none of us even remember it being a thing. Then the parentals went to bed and I watched HHI while working.
1 August 2020
0057 trivia
0248 planning my 52 big day route
0728 sleeping
1156 sleeping
Food: Ham, potato, and corn chowder, fruit and veggies for dinner, fruit for a snack
Fact: American Robin (Turdus migratorius) can raise up to 3 broods a year. Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) frequently parasites their nests, but robins appear able to recognize the cowbird eggs and remove them.
Woke up for a zoom with Jacob to make sure we are on the same page with what we are going to do with the common names. He also put me in touch with a new FMNH grad student who is into introgression and species delimitation. Could be really handy for the sharpies. Spent the rest of the day working on Accipiter. Annoyingly Dumas turned off a power strip and my computer almost died. Then i discovered my battery is completely not charging anymore. Guess it's time to buy a new battery. It was finally a clear night, so father and I took some star pictures. We got a computer monitor hooked up so we can look through that instead of the viewfinder which makes it a lot easier to see the stars. Impressively for the really bright stars autofocus even works. What was amazing though was at one point he was trying to adjust the focus and the stars suddenly disappeared. We both assumed he had bumped the camera or something, only to look up and discover the clouds had gone from virtually nothing to thick in just a few seconds. So we called it a night and I worked on my computer for a while then started a backup.
31 July 2020
0021 working on Accipiter
0756 sleeping
1141 sleeping
2024 working on Accipiter before trivia
Food: Pizza for dinner
Fact: Jimi Hendrix was the closing act at Woodstock. Luckily father new this since it was on the final card for trivia
Woke up and had a quiz bowl conference call. Didn't really come up with any resolutions other than Rhys is confused about how auto grading would work. I agreed to demo it but not until after my revisions are submitted. Then I spent most of the day working on Accipiter. However, we did do a pickup from Lowes in Hartselle, to get some new kitchen mats since the black kittie has destroyed the ones we have and listened to the yankees game along the way. Also got stuff to hang my hang board. Picked up pizza on the way home. Then it was trivia time. We were off to a slow start and it looked like Kevin and Maria might defend their title, but we came roaring back and won. We even got 4 questions on the Baby Boomer card for the win. The highlight though was the west coasters trying to figure out how many quarts were in a peck, which mostly devolved into everyone doing the tongue twister.
30 July 2020
0718 sleeping
0943 sleeping
1241 sleeping
1847 getting ready for lunch
Food: hot dogs, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs and veggies for lunch, fruits for dinner
Fact: Rickie Ricardo, the spanish broadcaster for the Yankees's is actually named Jorge Lima, Jr. However, as a young DJ the station's main talent suggeted he use Rickie Ricardo as a stage name and Ricardo is his middle name) because the listeners would never forget him.
Woke up in time for yet another 1100 zoom, this one the black/brown caucus at ANSP. It was a really good session, hopefully we can come up with a plan for real change to make behind the scenes at ANSP more inclusive and supportive of diversity. After the meeting I sent some emails and got Julie some files she needed, and then I went back to sleep. When I woke up I did a some work and then skyped with eddie to try and fix fathers computer. I succeseded in breaking it more, but I think we came up with some ideas about what is actually wrong. Then did some work, father put on yestedays Yankees game and we had dinner. After that spent the rest of the evening working, first while listening to the game, then after the yankees won (as called by Rickie Ricardo and Suzyn) to House Hunters.
29 July 2020
0451 working on alignments
1438 working on alignments
1650 working on alignments
2314 working on alignments
Food: sausage, rice, peppers, and broccoli for lunch, fruit and veggies for dinner
Fact: In a cartoon short, called Missing the Mark, Mark Hamill
voiced 4 characters- 3 of his normal ones (The Joker, the Trickster, Swamp
Thing, and a fictionalized version of himself.
In the short, Mark Hamill is kidnapped by the Joker. Must have been confusing.
Woke up for the lunch meeting. Jason was the only one at first but a bunch
of others trickled in. As always good to
talk to everyone. Apparently Janice has
3 roosters that need to go but she isn’t sure she is ok having Nate turn them
into soup. Then I went back to sleep til
a more reasonable hour. Woke up to
mother slicing jerky. She also
experimented with some venison, but since there is a bone in it itll take some
work to get right. Other than the zoom
meeting I spent the whole day working on the various Accipiter projects and
also getting some stuff prepped to run for Renata. I weighted the kitty, black kittie is his highest ever at 17.4... Almost twice gray kittie who was 9.1. Then it was time for trivia (where I got
todays fact). Social Distancing
Flycatchers came in first by 1 point (beating Hot Mess made up of Alice, Grace,
and Maria). I was happy that WoW was the
video game making the most money in 2014 (Zac thought it ws a Pokemon, but I figured
those 14 bucks a month add up). Then the parentals went to bed and I watched House Hunters while working on the alignments. Random baseball note- the Jays played some home game at the National's stadium. They even made the crown noise to be cheering the Jays instead of the Nats and played the normal Jays music during the game. This season is beyond strange
28 July 2020
1744 eating lunch
1955 fixing the tredmill
2111 working on Accipiter
2223 working on Accipiter
Food: chicken and rice stuff with fruit and a salad like yesterdays, fruit and cucumber for dinner
Fact: The first post WWII professional symphony orchastra in Poland was the Kraków Philharmonic Orchestra. They formed shortly after the Russians moved in, and held their first performace even before the war officially ended in Europe.
Shortly before going to bed Saudi Arabia checklists started trickling in. It was so depressing- while i got a couple of them, i missed out on a really good one (with a new game bird) by like 300m. But Dom had it even worse. Not only did he miss out on that checklist, but he missed on one of the checklists i got by like 100m (or less). Joost tried to convince Matt to move us since Dom has shady connections, but alas. He did say he has considered telling everyone at Christmas that he expanded the radius by 1km. I wonder how many birds people would pick up. Woke up to the sound of the parentals slurping. Found out they were slurping all the juice cubes they had made yesterday so we are set for both lemon and lime juice for a while. Spent the day trying to figure out exactly why the SNP pipeline was sometimes erroring (turns out the there was still an issue in the file names, where it wold run through the first few steps which takes like 2 days fine, and then get to the last step and die because of a underscore instead of a dash in the original files). But now it is all running for hopefully the final time. Since tonights game was again postponed due to covid we put on a 2019 game. Then mother and i glued a backing piece onto the treadmill to tomorrow we can attached the final piece so it will be up and running again. Then we all sat in the sunless room for a while. We want to put a tv in there and some plant towers like we saw in the keys. Then i decided to take Dumas for a walk. Grey kittie was being wierd so i told him if he followed me from the sunroom to the sitting room i would take him with me. Since he did i put him in the kittie space capusle and took him on the walk too. He seemed to enjoy it until he meowed a couple of times and then pooped. So he got a bath. Luckily he took the bath pretty well. Then we cleaned the capsule out and hung it to dry. Listened to the rest of the game (Yankees won, and infact won both games of the double header against the sox). Then i spent the rest of the night watching house hunters and working on Accipiter.
27 July 2020
0721 sleeping
0808 sleeping
1153 sleeping
1537 working on Accipiter
Food: baked chicken with fruit and a cucumber/tomato/cruton salad for lunch fruit for dinner
Fact: 1/3 of KFC's sales in Japan happen in December. When he ran the original KFC in Japan, Takeshi Okawara, said christmas chicken from KFC was a tradition worldwide and it stuck.
Woke up and spent the whole day working on Accipiter. It had rained quite a bit this morning so I didn't need to water the plants. Anthony was able to reboot the workstation while I was sleeping so woke up and hit the ground running with the SNP calling pipeline. Also tried to get partitoin finder running (and mostly failing). But I did get raxml running with the final data set. I talked to Jason for quite a while about the hawk stuff and also some planning about grants to go for and other funding sources. Then it was time for lunch which was very tasty. Since the yankees game was postponed due to covid we didn't do our planned double header and instead put on yesterday's game this evening to listen to. Sadly it was cloudy all evening so no pictures today.
