morrowlife

Here’s my new MacBook Pro booting up for the first time.  Look at that beautiful retina-display goodness!  Not the best Great Art, but a really cool computer.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at our apartment here in the Village at the City of Hope, and part of my famous Machinery series.

No post yesterday.  The internet was completely dead.  So sad.  And so sorry, Loyal Readers.  I’m sure you were worried about us.  Don’t worry, we weren’t in Simi Valley.

But we did have a nice Fourth.  The day was fairly normal – we both spent a lot of time working.  More about that later.  But we did have a pleasant, patriotic evening.  At about 8:30, we drove three miles over to Monrovia for their 9:00 fireworks show.  Found a parking lot a couple blocks away from the park.  When we parked the car, we noticed a couple of families sitting on the berm between the lot and the street.  Asked them if they’d seen the show from there before and if it was a good vantage point.  They answered in the affirmative.  We parked ourselves on the lawn.  The view was pretty good from there.  Not perfect, but pretty good.  It kept LRN4 away from crowds and got us out of the apartment, so it was a pretty good night.  Plus, we definitely beat the traffic getting out of there.

There were other fireworks shows visible during the drive back, and neighbors of the hospital were shooting off a few very impressive fireworks shows of their own.  We stood outside in the warm, beautiful night air and enjoyed the show just a little bit longer.  Then, inside and to bed.

LRN4’s feeling pretty good.  Her sore toe seems to be continuing to improve.  Her numb feet are still numb, but she reports less pain than before.  Every little improvement is something to celebrate.  Other than those things, she’s doing great.  She’s stronger, healthier, and better in every way than she was yesterday.

My iOS app is progressing fairly well.  Sadly, it’s not in the state I had hoped for by today – not by a longshot, actually – but there’s good progress and I’m pressing forward to completion.  I’m estimating a one-week slip in the completion date, which still means it’ll be released on or near the first of August.  Got to get it to market before school starts in the fall.

And I can’t believe we’re just a little bit more than a month away from school starting again.  They have no business starting until the day after Labor Day.  Period.  Kids need a three-month summer vacation.  We got it and we owe it to them too.  That’s my completely unanimous opinion.  My Loyal Readers are welcome to opinions of their own, but not on this subject.

Anyway.  Started reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, titled [amazon asin=B004DEPH3E&text=The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt].  Quite an interesting character – and in many ways an amazing man.  I’m beginning to see why they thought he deserved a place on Mount Rushmore.  Apparently, this is the first of three books on Roosevelt’s life by the author.  This one covers his birth through his assumption of the presidency.  I can’t wait to finish it and move on to the next one.  Even though I’m less than 10% into it, I’m tentatively recommending the book.

And it’s already time for bed, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: ice cream assault!

See you on Monday.

Here’s a poor, lonesome, sad-looking yellow flower amid a sea of beautiful red ones.  I kind of feel sorry for the little fella.  Look at all those holes in its leaves.  Maybe they planted it as a sort of sacrificial lamb.  Yeah, that’s it.  This noble flower is slowly giving its life that its more attractive brethren may live on.  Touching, really.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope’s rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

Long day today.  I may or may not be actually posting this well after midnight on Thursday morning.  Behold the wonders of WordPress – as far as my Loyal Readers can tell, this went out at 11:15 PM on Wednesday.  Bwa ha ha.

And I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s about time for me to go to bed.  So let’s move right along and consider LRN4’s condition, shall we?

We had her second visit to the substitute doctor today.  Spent about six and a half hours in the clinic, what with having her blood drawn for testing, getting her daily anti-fungal IV meds, having red blood cells infused, waiting for her doctor appointment, visiting with the doctor, and getting a shot of Neupogen.  These things take time.  We skipped our daily stair climb because we were so ready for lunch.  I’ll make her work twice as hard tomorrow.  Otherwise, she felt good and it was a quiet day.

I made a teeny tiny bit of progress on the iOS program today.  It was another one of those days when it’s hard to concentrate.  I’m trying to do a bunch of stuff I don’t really know how to do, so it’s slow going.  I’m also at the point in the project when I doubt my ability to do it at all.  Which is silly – it’s a very straightforward problem and I’ll get it figured out.  I’m just frustrated with it right now.  Tomorrow is another day, although it’s possible LRN4 will prevail upon me to take the holiday off.  We’ll see.  I’ll at least be taking the evening off, as we’re planning to go to Monrovia to see the fireworks and possibly the concert beforehand.  Should be a fun evening.

I have much better news to report regarding my cryptography class: I got the extra-credit programming assignment done.  Started looking at it in Objective C and quickly decided that I didn’t want to rewrite all the code the professor gave us, so I bit my lip and did it in Python.  So now I’m a Python programmer.  The point of the exercise was to demonstrate for the student why it’s not secure to reuse one-time pad encryption keys.  They call it one-time for a reason, after all.  We were given eleven ciphertexts that had been encrypted with the same key, along with the algorithm used for the encryption.  Per the algorithm, the encryption key was chosen at random – not even the professor knew it.  Our assignment – if we chose to accept it – was to decrypt the last message.  If we were caught or killed, the secretary would disavow all knowledge of our actions.  The crux of the solution was the knowledge that when you use one ciphertext to encrypt another ciphertext when both were originally encrypted with the same key, the resulting ciphertext effectively eliminates the effect of the key and you get kind of a mishmash of the two plaintexts.  You can then manipulate and compare the texts to reveal a plaintext character for each column where one of the plaintext characters was a space.  If you have enough texts to encrypt against each other, you can fill in most or all of the columns with the plaintext.

That’s the theory, anyway.  As I said, I figured out enough Python to write a program that encrypted each of the first ten ciphertexts against the eleventh one and printed them one above the other and – lo and behold – the message was easily discernable!  There were a few characters in there that I had to fill in, but that was easy.  I ended the day feeling so successful that my earlier struggles were blunted a bit.  So I had my ups and downs today.  More like downs and ups.

And it’s way too late again tonight, so I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: cheese fire causes traffic meltdown!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a beautiful red rose in front of a bunch of other beautiful red roses.  Not to mention a few other beautiful colors there in the background.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope’s rose garden, previously published on Facebook, and part of my exclusive Garden series.

Had enough roses, Loyal readers?  Well, I have one or two more of them coming.  Get used to it.  Plus, I’m kind of competing with LRN5 and Clifford.  They grow the world’s most beautiful flowers and they’re both very good photographers.  So their pictures look really nice.  Must keep up with the Loyal Readers.  Also, roses are very pretty.  I’m thinking of becoming a professional rose photographer.

Yeah, I know.  Don’t give up my day job.  I already did that.  But I love my new day job, so I guess professional rose photography can be my backup career.

LRN4 (that’s the real reason you’re here, isn’t it, Loyal Readers?) had a very good day.  Since I was so engrossed in work (see below), she made a couple of shopping runs on her own.  The first was to the gift shop here in the hospital.  The nice lady who checks us in every morning told us they sell jewelry in there for unbelievably low prices and that they had just gotten a new shipment in.  LRN4 went over and had a look.  The story checked out.  She got several very pretty necklace and earring sets, which is absolutely great.  She has had very little jewelry here at the hospital – in fact, all she had until today were some beautiful things her sister gave her for her birthday in May.  They’re nice, but that’s insufficient jewelry.  So now she has choices.  I really like the things she got.

Her second trip was to Ralph’s for groceries.  She was also quite successful on that trip.  Groceries have been procured.  The food around here has been unbelievably good, by the way.  I was planning on doing the cooking for the first little while after LRN4’s parole was granted, but she took over immediately and I was relegated to dishwashing duty.  I’m okay with that, though – I think her creative cooking energy was pent up for all those months and she has unleashed a torrent of amazingly delicious meals on me ever since.  I’m most unfortunately gaining some of my unwanted weight back, but man oh man am I eating well.  It’s amazing what she can do with the primitive tools we have here (i.e. our kitchen here is very poorly equipped).  Two thumbs and two big toes up for the food!

Speaking of big toes, LRN4’s sore toe is looking way better today.  It’s been draining for days now and it finally looks like the toenail has gone back down to pretty much where it ought to be and a lot of the discoloration is gone too.  It may yet heal up without the loss of the nail.  Let’s hope so, Loyal Readers.  Otherwise, LRN4’s condition is very good.  Her radiation-induced “suntan” seems to be peeling off.  She’s not too happy about the somewhat splotchy aspect that remains, but there’s pink, healthy-looking skin under there, so it’s a very good thing in the long run.  Oh, and her sore, tingly feet are improved.  I’ve also noticed even more of a return to her normal healthy appearance.  The transformation in the past month is nothing short of amazing.  I can’t wait to see what the next month will bring.

Good work day.  I spent several hours on my iOS program and made significant progress.  Had a bit of consultation with LRN1 – he’s a really excellent iOS programmer – and figured out a couple things I was doing wrong.  After dinner, I also did the first week’s homework for my online cryptography class.  Got a 96%.  Now working on the programming assignment.  They recommend using Python for that part.  I started it that way but it’s taking a while in that language, owing to the fact I’m not an expert.  I’m thinking of starting over in Objective C or maybe just plain old C.  Why spend the time to learn another language?  I have choices.  It’s always a good thing to learn, of course, but time’s not my friend right now.

LRN1 told me the other day he was going to take the crypto class.  I checked it out, liked it, and signed up.  It’s fun!  I like that it’s a bit challenging – you might even say rigorous.  There’s actual math!  The class started a couple weeks before I signed up, so I have some catching up to do.  A lot of catching up, truth be told.  But I’m enjoying it for the relaxing diversion it is.  Must not take it too seriously.  At the same time, I’m doing my best and hope to learn some cool stuff.  Maybe I’ll become a full-time professional cryptographer.  That’ll be the backup to my backup career.

Does tonight’s post seem a little disjointed to you?  LRN4 and I have been watching a few episodes of [amazon asin=B0058YPNPK&text=Drop Dead Diva] tonight.  We just started season three.  It’s getting a tiny bit soap opera-ish, but we’re still enjoying it.  The whole plot line of Grayson being hit by a car, going into a coma, and then waking with amnesia was a bit trite.  Let’s bear down, writers!  And some of the courtroom scenes stretch my capacity to suspend disbelief.  But I still find the series compelling and often touching.  Still recommended.  And many thanks to LRN16 for sending us seasons 1-3.  We’ll get ’em back to you, LRN16 – we promise!

Anyway, it’s a bit difficult to watch TV and write scintillating prose.  Looks like TV won tonight.

Oh, we’re also watching a bunch of episodes of [amazon asin=B000HT3P60&text=Bones], also sent by LRN16.  It’s become a favorite.  We’ve started alternating our evening entertainment between those two series (until we run out, of course) and one more we just started a couple days ago – [amazon asin=B005VPNJ5W&text=The Number One Ladies’ Detective Agency], loaned to us by LRN29.  One-sentence review: An amusing, thoughtful detective series that alternates between addressing serious subjects and fun, quirky African topics.  One-word review: recommended.

I still think I ought to start a social website called One-Sentence Reviews.  I think it might be successful.  I’ll make that the backup to my backup to my backup career.

And I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: getaway donkey!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s a bunch of peach-colored roses.  I’m not too happy with the composition of this particular Great Art, but the flowers themselves are so beautifully colored that I decided it’s Great Enough Art.  Great Enough Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope rose garden, previously published on my Facebook page, and part of my famous Garden series.

Pretty good weekend.  We didn’t do much.  LRN4 felt well and continues to get stronger and healthier every day.  Her blood levels are pretty fair.  The white cell count was up just a little this morning, which was a very good sign.  Platelets were low, so she got some this morning.  Other levels seem to be okay, although we forgot to pick up today’s sheet with the actual numbers.  So all we know is that she got platelets, her magnesium was a little low, and her creatinine was a little low.  But the doctor decided the latter two weren’t low enough to warrant any additional treatments.  So it was a normal day.  Can’t complain.

Our doctor is on vacation this week, so we saw another one.  This guy wasn’t our favorite, but we seem to always learn something new from everybody we see.  Today we learned that taste buds usually take about three months to start working again.  So we’re maybe a month out from LRN4 being able to taste things again.  She reports she’s currently able to taste pretty much only vegetables.  What a horrible fate!  Now I know for sure I don’t want to get cancer.

Also, we got something for her poor sore, numb feet.  We’re hopeful it will help reverse things.  Today’s doc said the numbness is a typical side effect of chemo and that if it becomes annoying and painful, it can be treated.  LRN4 said it’s annoying and painful, so he’s treating it.

On Saturday, I started working for real on my iPhone/iPad program.  It’s going frustratingly slowly as I come back up to speed on the development system, including all its many changes since the last program I wrote.  I’ll get there, but it’s kind of rough right now.  There’s a bit of progress so far, at least.  But not much.

And that’s about it for today.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: Swedish sausage attack!

See you tomorrow.