morrowlife

Here are some red roses, some yellow roses, and one beautiful red-yellow rose.  They’re all on the same rose bush.  I’m not sure how they do that.  Magic, maybe.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken in the rose garden at the City of Hope, and part of my exclusive Garden series.

Extreme short shrift today.  It’s quite late yet again and we need to get up early tomorrow for an 8:00 blood test.  Such is life.  So I need to get to sleep Real Soon Now.

Great day.  LRN4 and I just kind of hung around.  We both worked, we both relaxed, and LRN4 even took a brief nap in the afternoon.  And we even took a nice, long walk right around sunset.  I’m not entirely clear on what LRN4 accomplished, but I’m sure it was very important.  I, on the other hand, am entirely clear on what I accomplished.

Got some good progress made on the iOS app.  It feels like I keep running over the same ground time after time, but I guess it’s all for the best.  The app is running pretty well, and I’ve even started implementing the next phase.  Good progress indeed.  I’m hoping to get the updated input from LRN2 tomorrow – or at least half of it – and start folding it in.

And I’ll stop there for the night.  Time for bed.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: birthday cookie cake battery!

See you tomorrow.

Here’s the big fountain out in front of the Main Medical building here at the City of Hope.  Check out that fleet of wheelchairs there in the background.  They mean business around here.  Great art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope in Duarte, California, and part of my famous Statue and Garden series.

Yes, I realize this particular fountain has been featured here before.  That was totally different, though.  That was night, this is day.  They’re as different as … umm … night and day.  Har!

Pretty view, night OR day.  But I still think those parents are taking way too many chances with that poor little kid.  Also, that woman has one leg that’s way shorter than the other.  But it’s still no excuse for child abuse.

Good day today.  I made substantial progress on my app.  Of course, nowhere near enough progress, but it’s moving forward.  I think I have the database architecture figured out and I’ve started implementing it.  I also put in a quick placeholder for the Settings/About view.  Good (but not great) progress.

LRN4 is feeling pretty well today.  We’ve increased the daily quantity of the medication that is supposed to reduce the pain in her feet.  That drug is also pretty famous for making you sleepy.  So she’s sleepy today.  And her feet hurt.  But otherwise, she’s doing great!

We watched one of our favorite movies tonight: [amazon asin=B0001WTWS8&text=My Favorite Wife].  It has Cary Grant, LRN4’s favorite actor of all time, and Irene Dunne, umm . . . an actress I like.  Not to mention Randolph Scott.  [amazon asin=B0001Z4OXS&text=Raaandooolph Scooott]!  Highly recommended.

And there’s nothing else to add today.  So I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this shocking food violence news: burrito assault!

See you on Monday.

Here’s a cluster of pink roses.  That’s why I’ve titled this post “Pink cluster.”  Call me a realist.  Great Art courtesy of the exclusive iPhone-cam, taken at the City of Hope rose garden, and part of my famous Garden series.

Maybe no more rose pictures for a while.  Although who knows.  I took a few more today while we were out walking.

No post yesterday.  I got discombobulated and forgot.  Sorry about that, Loyal Readers.

But lots of things are going on nevertheless.  The biggest news – LRN4 doesn’t have to go to the clinic every morning for a daily IV infusion anymore!  Since she got off the ‘roids a week ago, she’s been ruled healthy enough to avoid fungal infections on her own.  The doc does want her to get a quick CT scan tomorrow to make sure the previously-seen nodules on her lungs either aren’t there or at least aren’t doing anything nasty.  We’re pretty confident she’ll be fine in that area.

So we slept in this morning.  It felt great!  Got up a little after 8:00 this morning.  Did I mention it felt great?  Well, it did.  Now we’ll probably stay up way too late every night and get up way too late every morning.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  In fact, I kind of prefer it that way.  I could sleep until 8:00 every day.

And, well, that was about all the news.  So I guess lots of things aren’t really going on.  LRN4 mentioned this morning that even she can see a lot of strengthening in her arms and legs.  She is really doing well.  No new complaints, no new problems, no new nothing.  Even her poor sore feet are doing a bit better.  Her toe looks a bit better also, although that’s a very relative term.  There’s still a ways to go on that one.  Still, progress.

Didn’t do any work today.  No excuse.  I’m just a lazy programmer, I guess.  Instead, I finished the week 2 programming problem for the crypto class.  Worked on it last night until kind of late and got the first half figured out.  I got the second half working today.  I was supposed to write code to encrypt and decrypt AES ciphers, but the decryption part was the only part we really needed to use, so that’s all I’ve gotten done so far.  I’m still planning on finishing that part, but this class is taking a lot more time than I had expected.  On the positive side, I’m learning a lot more about cryptography than I knew before, and I’ve done a lot of reading on the subject.  So there’s some good and some bad.  At any rate, I’m still really enjoying it.  I just can’t let it get in the way of working for money, now can I?

So I’m planning on putting in a full day’s work tomorrow.  I have the little matter of LRN4’s CT scan to work around, but that’s manageable.  We’ve been managing around a whole lot more than that for lo these many months.  I have specific things I’m working on, which are too boring to share here, and I think I’ve been avoiding them a bit.  New stuff is hard, no?  So wish me luck tomorrow, Loyal Readers!

And that’s it for tonight.  I’ll leave my Loyal Readers with this exciting Morrowlife Employment Agency job opportunity: scrounging tortoise!

See you tomorrow.

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.