Author: Peg

Sort of tired today. Feeling the years I guess. Also, guess that I didn’t think that would happen to me. Figured I would be able to keep up my pace until the very last day. Then I would just stop. But no, like an old watch – I am just slowing down. Only 7,000 steps on the fitbit.

And, from the weedlot – 

Consider the lilies of the fields… 

But, my tired old self worked on Alexa Skills today – and got one to work. It doesn’t do much – But, start to finish – both major parts. It works. Happy day. 

It is – of course – a variation on Kerrigan and Ritchie’s:

main() { printf(“hello, world\n”); }

But since the early ’70’s (well into my coding days) that is where we start. 

and my wild and crazy garden box. 

Not much happening here – but I have been ignoring it. So, glad that it is doing anything.

Don’t know what to make of this lily. Guess I should just tell it “howdy”.

As for the Alexa skills experiment – I got this out of her:

Skill response was marked as failure
Hello Mars
Request Identifier: amzn1.echo-api.request.e59e09f5-4aac-49de-b50e-9f0b463e2667
The target Lambda application returned a failure response

But, I am happy that I got the Python part and the front end to “compile” or what ever the 21st century terminology is. And, to attempt to communicate with each other. And, it was sort of cool – saying Computer, Hello Mars and getting a spoken error message. Then I told it to stop and it did. I was afraid I would get my Echo into a hard loop…Will play some more later.

Seems like the Orange Lord threatened to  “stop trading” – exactly how is this going to work. No more Champagne, Belgium chocolate, Dior clothes? No more $299 55 inch TVs? No more Lamborghinis? What exactly do we not import? Agriculture products – that’s what. And who makes the agriculture magic happen? That’s right boys and girls – immigrants.  

Still not seeing any reason to shoot RAW on a regular basis. 

Just an ordinary day. Did life support things. Laundry, coffee and grocery run, review my books. Back in the day, I would call it balancing the checkbook. Now it is more like scouring the Quicken reports for anything odd looking. And, The Old Bat Cave was cleaned. (Not by the Old Bat.)

Will be finishing up Alas, Babylon tonight. I have been sort of stringing it out because I am enjoying it so much. 

Tomorrow will include another little foray into the world of Alexa Skills creation. I will be surprised if I can get my elderly brain around it. But, then again – I might succeed. 

Today, I took the “correct” gear out to shoot a bee on “my” milkweed. All I found was an ant. Still, I shoot what is in front of me with the camera I have.

Nice day at the office – spiffed up a Survey Monkey thing. No work on figuring out how to make an Alexa skill. Napped instead.

Currently reading Alas, Babylon. The 1959 novel by Pat Frank. It is considered one of the first apocalyptic novels of the atomic age and is eerily relevant today. It was a Playhouse 90 offering – but I don’t think it survived. Maybe a copy will surface some day. For now, the book is still good.

Addendum: OK, a copy does exist – in the UCLA film archive. 

Told you it was magnolia season. Oh and for no apparent reason other than I could – I ordered a pair of Google VR goggles to go with Shamu 2. Want to be sure I have plenty of toys when I get “old”.

Walked around the Asylum after dinner and noticed a bee on “my” milkweed. Shamu 2 was in my pocket playing The Dead – so, it took the picture. Should have had the macro lens on one of the Oly’s…but I shoot what’s in front of me with what I have.

Which brings up what is hard…writing an Alexa Skill…that is what is hard. At least it is hard for this old bat. It certainly got me thinking outside of my normal boxes. Now there are  “paint by numbers” Alexa skill generators – but I want to build my own – from scratch. Like for years, I wrote my own HTML – so – I know what Word Press is doing. 

I might be too old to learn this new trick. Especially since there is no economic incentive.  Stay tuned.

Scarfed up this image from one of the USGS webcams monitoring Kīlauea. The wind and sun are all lined up nicely so this shot is pretty good.

It’s a big image – click on it an admire Tutu Pele in action.

Walked all the way to work today and took the time to photograph a low hanging magnolia. I have taken about every magnolia picture that a person can take – but I don’t get tired of them.

Caught with my elbows on the table (haven’t a clue why that is considered poor form). But, I see that I am drinking water and a coffee cup is in evidence – so it must have been after the 6 glasses of wine.

And things are still looking pretty voggy back home in Hawai’i.

Day off tomorrow. Gotta work on my weed patch. 

For no apparent reason – our local Tesla dealer brought a couple of cars over for the old people to see this afternoon. I thought they were pretty cool. A little big for my tastes. But way cool.

Not long after yoga, it was time for dinner. Dinner lasted 3 hours. And our staff leaves at 8:30. So, dinner started at 5PM. 

First thing you know –

I find myself driving a fork of octopus right up to my teeth. (It was great.)

And that girls and boys is about as good as it gets at the old folks home.

Oh did I mention the 6 glasses of wine? Think I am slipping into an alcohol induced haze.

I spent this cold and rainy day ensconced in my chair, wrapped up in Carlton’s buffalo blanket. Drinking coffee, eating biscotti and reading dead tree news papers. 

Then I took a nap. A long nap.

Back to work tomorrow. And tomorrow night – The Wine Dinner. I am not that much a fan of wine. But, I do like to eat. So, I am hoping that the chef ups her game for the meal. Dinner usually costs $9.95 – this dinner costs $65 – we’ll see if will be worth the cost. Heck, even if it isn’t food isn’t great – the theater should be worth the cost of admission.

The Asylum has Shit on a Shingle on the menu and people actually order it. And Gordon here said it was very good. Don’t think I’ll try it. 

As for me – I had a leisure day. Spent 30 minutes in the weed lot rounding up Devil’s Tongues that escaped the first exorcism. Only logged 3 miles on the Fitbit – but I did rack up 2 naps. 

I never felt guilty about taking a leisure day until I moved to an old folks asylum. Now when I think about taking a leisure day – I just remember President Lincoln’s famous telegraph to GeneralMcClellan:  “Will you pardon me for asking,” he telegraphed, “what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?”

Nothing blooming in the garden box yet. But it is a mass of green wildness. And Ray the Rosemary is doing fine. Putting out new growth. 

 

I hope that this is the noxious weed that I was supposed to search out and destroy. With my luck, I may have destroyed an unknown patch of Appalachian Yellow Asphodel. I had lots of it. How was I supposed to know it was one of the bad guys?

Our electricity wasn’t off very long last night. But, there is something amiss with our power setup here – when the power goes off… the emergency generators kick in automatically. That is a good thing. BUT, when the power comes back on – the electric company has to make a house call to our building to get us reconnected to the grid. Which is not good. Because, our regular “apartment” power isn’t on the generator system.

So, I think I’ll just pass for now. Save the batteries in case this is an extended outage.

The Lightening strike tracker….  check it out sometime.

If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try, and try again. Then stop. Don’t make an ass of yourself. Well, I spent a couple of hours trying to make some little note cards for a friend. I decided to try a new printing service. Well, I couldn’t get them set up correctly. I would like to try these people. But, their online setup doesn’t work the way my brain works. I’ll try again on Friday. Maybe I’ll just use the old service.

I just got an email saying that the air was so bad in Kona that the cruise ship didn’t stop this today. And, it does look like LA in the 1970s.

I was out on weed patrol today and a couple of my weeds turned into flowers. So, they get a reprieve. Google says they like full sun. Right now they are in full shade – so, if I am feeling generous – I’ll move them.