Rough week


Mostly work.



Sorry for the light blogging, but it's been a really rough week. Where do I start?

For the past few weeks, I've been trying to get my ground software results to match the onboard software results for LET on STEREO, and I've been only about 85% successful. After banging my head on my code, I finally had to delve into some pseudocode for LET to duplicate the onboard software. The problem is that the onboard software is programmed in FORTH, with no floating point math, and while I'm familiar with FORTH, I'm not fluent in it. Besides, given FORTH's limited built-in functions, it's really all about defining words, which means I'd have to read a lot more code than I'd like to. So, I resort to the pseudocode. Further, without floating point math or even math libraries, everything has to be rescaled and rounded to integers -- calculations are done in log-space, with multiplications and divisions converted to additions and subtractions, and so on. It's been driving me nuts, trying to bend my floating point code to this integer-rounded, log-space stuff.

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There's been some drama at the boys' daycare center involving taking control of the school's web site from a former parent, and some hard feelings are apparently involved. I wish I weren't involved, but as an officer of the board, I have to be. Plus, the school is losing a couple of much-loved teachers, including one who was there since before William started at the school. She's got a lot of paid vacation time coming, and as treasurer, I'm going to have to find a way to pay for that time.

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My knees are feeling better, enough that I returned to yoga class yesterday. They still feel slightly gimpy in the joints, as if slightly too much extension or twist would be dangerous, but the muscles are back up to strength enough to keep them stable. I also ordered a bike computer , which arrived only today. I'll start biking next week and see how it goes. So far, I've lost only two pounds since the beginning of January -- barely worth mentioning, except that it has stayed consistently below the December maximum.

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I was surprised last week that Hsuan hadn't arranged a follow-up appointment with the pediatrician to check on James' ear infection, but she set it up after I mentioned it. The appointment was this past Wednesday, and we were disappointed to find out that he still had an infection. We got a prescription for a new, hopefully more powerful antibiotic.

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William has rediscovered the joys of the kazoo, and I've been serenaded by his kazoo-playing today and yesterday, on the drive between home and school.

Posted: Fri - February 2, 2007 at 11:56 PM          

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