Weekend!

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1. Packers/movers arrived today. They packed my wife’s Kindle. Not good. They hope to be on their way by 1-ish tomorrow. Then we have to clean. Tomorrow we plan to go on our way.

   Also, I am going to have to stop by the post office a couple of times tomorrow. Inexplicably, the USPS’s web site will not let me fill out a change-of-address form online because our new ZIP code is “ineligible.” ?!?!

   • The Packers were there? I’m sure Burt is jealous.

     • It’s good to have some big guys to lift the heavy boxes.

   • Oof, MORE moving. Safe travels for you, your loved ones, and y’all’s stuff.

2. So the next door neighbours, a couple of sweet kids from Stevens Point, a brother and sister, have been putting in a nice garden in the back yard (we live in a duplex). Her boyfriend, N, goes back and forth to Missouri, where he’s an ornithologist.

   So he’s been compiling these bird surveys. It’s all done scientifically, integrated with Google Earth overlays using KML files.

   I’m now writing him an Android GPS app, brutally simple. He stands at one point, points the phone at the bird he’s looking at, guesstimates a distance to the bird — and creates data point in a KML file. The app can then put up a little form, so he can enter the proper species code, behaviours and other important information for his surveys.

   No graphics, nothing but Latitude, Longitude, Bearing and Distance. Fumbling around in the trigonometry, learning how to compute a destination and final bearing given a start point, initial bearing, and distance along the great circle arc.

   Formula: φ2 = asin( sin(φ1)*cos(d/R) + cos(φ1)*sin(d/R)*cos(θ) )
   λ2 = λ1 + atan2( sin(θ)*sin(d/R)*cos(φ1), cos(d/R)−sin(φ1)*sin(φ2) )

   Lots of double precision numeric variables. It’s been a while since I had a nice fun project like this to work on.

   • It may be simple to you, but I am very impressed. The only thing I can make is oatmeal cookies.

     I woke up with the stomach flu this morning and had to leave town on business. It took some effort not to vomit on the pupils I instructed for eight hours. Eh, I get another try tomorrow ;). This weekend I’ll be doing birthday prep for my big party next weekend. I’ve decided that I was deprived as a child due to being born so close to Christmas and now my birthday is the third Saturday in July. That’s right, it’s a national holiday. Feel free to kick back on July 20th this year and toast yourself, I’m going to. It’s great for the old self esteem :).

     • *lifts a glass* Slainte!

       And happy new birthday.

     • July 20th

       That makes you a moon child.

   • Nifty!

   • φ is latitude,
     λ is longitude,
     θ is the bearing (in radians, clockwise from north),
     d is the distance travelled,
     R is the earth’s radius (d/R is the angular distance, in radians)

     Mary: my daughter follows the same convention. Born on 29 Dec, she’s my little tax deduction. We always chose a day in July to celebrate it.

3. Friday night: Deetroit Tigers vs. Texas. Went Wednesday, too (beat the White Sox–cheers!)
   Sat/Sun: Cleaning and packing for this year’s trip to L.A.

   • this year’s trip as in “LA is where I am going this year”? or do you go to LA every year?

     • We get to L.A. probably about 3 out of every 5 years. For some reason my wife likes to visit her family (I kid; I have great in-laws), and we have to pick up daughter #2, who is spending 2 months with the grandparents.

4. Tomorrow I turn the age of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

   Saturday we have the party. I get up at 6am, and soak wood. I go back to sleep and get up again at 8am, and light the first smoker.

   Between noon and 8pm or so, we expect to have somewhere around 50-70 people swing by, grill something, smoke something, throw their kids in the pool, drink a lot of beer, and swing back out. I will be alternating operating three smokers and two grills and drinking lots of water and beer.

   After we close down the party, my old college roommate, my nephew, and my sister are spending the night, and we will play lots of games. Sunday, Kitty has book club, so we’ll probably play games on Sunday, too.

   And be hungover.

   • So far, I know we’re going to have smoked turkey legs, a brisket, smoked salmon, pulled pork, at least one whole chicken, and sausages.

     Dad’s bringing a bucket of potato salad and his baked beans. Other sides will show up randomly.

     • Our birthdays sound similar, except mine will be fairly meatless.

   • This sounds like an idyll. Er, other than the hungover part. Happiest of happies to you.

   • Happy Birthday to both Pat and Miss Mary.

5. I do not have a whole lot of plans for the weekend, but I will most likely fit Pacific Rim in there somewhere.

   • Write a guest post.

     It’s getting stellar reviews from a wide assortment of nerd friends who have disagreed on every nerd movie, as a group, so far this year.

     They all loved it.

     • I will if I can come up with something, but I think any attempt at a review would make it seem like I do not like the movie.

       I thought it was a great, awesome, fun movie about giant robots fighting monsters. That is exactly what I wanted.

       On the other hand, the plot was very formulaic and by-the-numbers. Top pilot leaves due to tragedy but gets called back because things are desperate. Young rival pilot who cannot stand the hero, but they have to work together. Lot of cliches. But none of that matters, because the plot was really just an excuse to let us see monsters fighting robots, and the fights look awesome. It was ludicrous and silly and fun, and I loved every minute.

6. There’s a Star Wars exhibition (props, costumes, etc.) at the Canada Aviation & Space Museum, so I’m going to that. Also doing some cycling, since the weather is lovely.

7. Zazzy’s cousin and his fiance are coming over on Saturday to meet Mayo. I think that is the only real thing on the docket. I may try to sneak away for some beers with friends after the Saturday visit. We shall see.

   Regarding smoking, I had a highly successful experience smoking some spare ribs on my gas grill, making all the necessary modifications. They were fantastic.

8. This weekend, we’ll be swimming, and probably little else. It’s friggin’ hot!

   Oh, and Glyph, look who I’m seeing next week.

   • Man, I don’t want to prejudice you…but last time I saw them, they phoned it in, bigtime.

     Now, the first two times I saw them they were awesome, so hopefully it was a one-off problem; but they are pretty old now, and haven’t made any new material together in a long time, so it could now just be a “get the cash” situation.

     Fingers crossed for you –

     • Eh, I admit that at this point I’m going out of nostalgia, so I probably won’t be terribly disappointed if they don’t have the energy they might have 20 years ago.

       That said, it’d be nice if they added to the fun by being good.

9. I just got back from the mountains and I am going to spend some of this weekend being amazed how much faster weeds grow than my veggies. Then I am going to spend a serious amount of time being a hoer.
   Sunday we plan on seeing Pacific Rim.

10. Worked a 12. It sucked. Might work another one tomorrow.

    I hope to only work an 8 on Sunday. There’s a PPV.

11. i’m late but cleaning catboxes, replacing lightbulbs, housework, cooking, and internet.

    also writing for the paranormal blog

    • This is what I did last week. Well, not the paranormal blog. I am currently trying to figure out how to change the lightbulbs in the unattainable fixture. I’m wondering how they got put in there in the first place.

      • You might find the answer on the paranormal blog.

      • The bulbs probably went in first and the fixture was installed around them.

12. I wake up before the brains in the outfit and spend a couple of hours weekend days being quiet, surfing and wish I didn’t have to write something to see the replies in your post.

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