Back into (computer) chess again. Nowadays (with permission of my wife hehe) I have 2 PC's, one with 48 threads, the second with 40 threads. It enables me to evaluate 100 million randomly chosen chess positions in one day. In total I need one billion to create a neural network for my chess program and gain hundreds of elo. It's the real AI stuff set in motion by "Alpha Zero" from Google a couple of years ago. They (Google) have changed the computer chess world.
It was more work than I really wanted, but less work than having four workouts in four days. I thought my wife was going to do one of her workouts today but she decided not to because of the weather. It was sufficiently cold she didn't want to be out in it, so I went for a regular walk. It's probably just as well she didn't come out, she wouldn't have liked the cold or the wind. I think today's workout for her would have been to jog at a relatively leisurely pace for 30 minutes.
More fun pulling cables. There are more beams than I expected lurking inside the roof cavity of my porch, so I had to drill some more holes to feed a fish tape over the beams to get it from hole to hole. Eventually I got it to work, it only took about 90 minutes to feed a cable from a 4" hole to another 4" hole 12 feet away. The next job is to feed another cable from a 4" hole to another 4" hole about 25 feet away. This one should be easier, I've got a few holes predrilled from when I was trying to seal holes to block drafts. Hopefully I can run a cable from hole to hole and hop all the way from beginning to end without too much aggravation.
I kicked today's workout out a day because I had a badly disturbed night and really didn't feel like another round of speed repeats. Instead i used some time to sleep in and thereby get at least some sleeping done, and then pulled some strings through my porch roof cavity. Having pulled strings I could use the strings to pull cable, so now I've got a temporary cable running to the first power point, and nice new cable in place which will connect to the second and third power points once the new permanent cable is installed. Maybe tomorrow I can see to that - this is the bit where I drill a hole through the outside wall and hope my 5/8" drill bit makes a hole that is 5/8" wide and not a honking great hole that will be very difficult to fill in around the wire. Once the permanent cable is in place I can fit the rest of the back boxes and get busy putting some trim back in place. All being well I'll have lights ready to roll before it starts to get really cold again. Eventually the final power point will have a fan/light, but that might be a little way down the line. For now it might end up just having a light - if I fit a light I get some benefit and have until it gets warm again to look for a good deal on a suitable fan.
Speed repeats today, and they were brutal. They are hard enough at the best of times - a fairly challenging pace and I usually do them running back and forth across what's effectively a basin so I run downhill for 1/4 mile and then uphill for 1/4 mile. Today things weren't helped by 25mph winds that offered little benefit when they were behind me but turned a hard run into a brutal run when they were relentlessly in my face. I got one done into the wind, then modified them so I ran downhill into the wind and then turned around to run uphill with the wind behind me. The last one I did into the wind I just couldn't maintain the target pace at all because the wind was so strong. Then I got some more work done on my porch. I now have a fresh hole through the outside brickwork with a shiny new cable through it, and poked some cement into the gaps around the new cable to maintain a seal against cold and bugs. I still need to connect the inside end to the switch that will control it but everything else is in place and joined together. I need to replace the trim on the porch and then I can put the lights back on. I'm hoping to get that done before it gets too cold. Thankfully my 5/8" drill bit made the expected size of hole, and I was able to do the job with an 18" long drill bit which meant I could return the 24" SDS bit I bought as a fallback. The other hole I'm going to need to drill through the wall, to put a light on another porch, will be much easier because I can get at where I need to be from the outside and just drive straight through towards the inside.
More progress on my porch. I got the new cable connected to the switch, and put some temporary light fittings in place to make sure it all works. Then it was time to start replacing the metal trim across the ceiling. My wife was on hand to help me with that part, which made a huge difference. I was able to hold panels in place while she handed me nails and anything else I needed, so I didn't need quite so many trips up and down the ladder. Finally I had to stop because I had managed to shift by about half an inch from where the panels were originally, which meant a cut piece didn't quite fit. I'll need to figure out how to trim about 5/16" from the edge of two entire lengths, which will take up the slack and let me continue with the job later. I'm just not sure how I'm going to accurately cut the edge without creating a razor-sharp problem for myself. Now I've got three lights, all controlled by two switches. Once the metal is back up I can look at putting the nicer lights back in place and doing a more permanent job of the wiring. At present a lot of stuff is just pushed into place, on the basis the light fitting is sufficiently lightweight the wires are strong enough to more or less support it.
Today was a bit of a battle. I got myself some more nails ready to do more work on my porch ceiling, and one of the guys at the local hardware store used to do a lot of work with siding material and said I could use my table saw to trim a bit off one edge. It was a bit fiddly to do it, not least because keeping the edge against the fence without the thin metal sliding under the fance was an ongoing battle, but I got two pieces trimmed. I had one of my workouts scheduled for today so did that instead of spending more time fighting with the porch. This one was titled "Long easy run" so I tried to at least kinda-sorta pace myself from the beginning rather than going at it really hard and blowing up. Despite starting out at what I thought was a relatively gentle pace I still managed to shave a bit off my 10k personal best, which was nice.
Today my wife and I were able to finish the first section of our porch roof. Most of the pieces went into place reasonably easily but I needed to shave about 1/4" off the final piece to get it to fit into place without bowing slightly. Now we've got the hang of feeding a long piece of metal through the table saw it was relatively easy. There's an ugly hole where the light fitting used to be (I couldn't leave the light there as the wires were just poked through a beam, and modern electrical code requires back boxes and the like) so I'll need to find or buy an offcut to fix that up. I'll also need to figure the best way to attach the light fixture to the back box, given the material on the roof is ridged which means the light won't sit quite as flush as I might like. Perhaps I can find a back box extender that will sit about 1/8" proud of the back box. If needs be I can probably cut something out of some wood. Tomorrow we can attack the next section of the porch. Now we've got a better handle on how to get everything in place I hope it will be a lot quicker. It's also handy that there's a small section of awkwardly shaped pieces and then it's a simple matter of putting straight pieces in one after the next. Hopefully it will all fall into place quickly. Then I can see about getting a fan fitted. I've got a heavy duty back box screwed to the beam ready to fit a fan. After getting the porch done I did one of my workouts. Today was hill repeats. They are kinda boring - I've been finding them too easy for a while. If I had a steeper hill to work with I'd use it but I need a hill that's steep enough, that doesn't have much traffic on it, and that I can safely run up without worrying what happens if a dump truck crests the hill going too fast. In the meantime I just run the hill faster - today I attacked it at a full-on sprint pace. I only have to run for 15 seconds, which is probably just as well because I don't know how much longer I could hold that kind of pace.
Chased a bull moose down the road this evening coming back from site. Don't see the bulls very often.
Another workout, and this one was hard. Last week I had 8 speed repeats to do and the feedback I offered was that it was hard. The response was to increase the workout to 10 speed repeats. At least today it wasn't windy so I could actually do them but the last ones were hard work. Then my wife and I went to a diner she recently discovered for lunch, to take advantage of one of their specials. It was good. Then we stopped for some hardware bits and then a swift beer at our favorite brewpub. All in all a pretty good day. Tomorrow we're planning a hike so I hope my legs work.
Fatigue fight. So much to do I'm confused as to what comes next. Got that "deer in the headlights" look. This 4 day holiday might provide a jump. Or, the opportunity to be an insufferable instigator on my favorite forums, handing out free advice and pious platitudes. Recipe for failure: combine 1 recliner with 1 laptop and mix with surround-sound system.
Ridiculous. Betrays a profound deficit of understanding even the basic concept of Deity. And with all that scholarship.