Friday, December 7, 2018

A date which will live in infamy.

Not really, I just always think of that quote on Dec 7th (Pearl Harbor Day).

The painters finished up the shutters today. Here they are, freshly painted, awaiting placement:


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Fairly typical day, but we had to plan a bit at the grocery store since they're closed on both Sat and Sun this weekend. Saturday is the Catholic holy day, Immaculate Conception, and they're always closed on Sunday.

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I found a good datacamp course that talks about machine learning with time series. It seems to fit well with the weather prediction project I've been working on this week.

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This evening we went to the Plaza de San Francisco. The claim was that a Christmas light installation was going to premiere at 7pm. Turns out the publicity was wrong and the premiere wasn't until 9pm. We were not the only people fooled. At 7pm, the plaza was packed:


Even the vendors were fooled. Eventually at about 10 minutes after 7, it started to filter through the crowd that nothing was going to happen until 9pm. People left in droves. It's on every evening for the rest of the holiday season, so we'll just hit it later.

We wandered around a bit waiting for the ill-fated 7pm premiere time and went through a nearby church that's normally closed. There was a line of folks lined up to pay homage to Mary by kissing the hand of a statue of Mary in one of the alcoves. Folks walked up singly or in pairs, prayed briefly and kissed the hand of the statue. There was an attendant there that wiped the hand after each kiss:


I suppose this devotion will continue through the holy day tomorrow as well.