Last night I dreamt that I was part of a group of women involved in scamming a bank out of money. There were two older women I was with. At the bank, I tried to deposit money, and I was caught because I forgot I had a driver's license from the state of Minnesota instead of my normal one from Wisconsin. The women I testified against were mad at me, I shrugged when I saw them, but I was glad to be released from my previous fear and tension.

Despite the dream, I slept surprisingly well. I could have slept longer except the phone rang, and I had to tell my niece that it was too early to be calling people, and she needed to go back to her room and play quietly if she couldn't get back to sleep. In other news, my family survived our first soccer tournament. The girls are sleeping in this morning. I sat through at least seven soccer matches over the past few days. We ate concession stand food for several meals, I feel like garbage today, next year, I'm going to do things differently.

Next year I'm going to tell the girls that they are responsible for knowing when their games are, which field they're at, and how early they need to arrive to be there for practice time. My oldest daughter's coach is reportedly fed up with coaching girls. I'm glad we had him for the time that we did. I think he treated the girls fairly, he made them work hard, and I still have a lot of respect for him in many areas although he failed to corral the team effectively at times.

Today I'm going to go through my bag collection, and find one that I can stock with things that I wish I would have had at previous soccer matches. I keep a blanket in my car. I also have a picnic throw, but I never seemed to have both of those things together when I needed them. Sunscreen is a must. The girls are okay. My face is fried. I would also have used mosquito repellent on Saturday as most of the complex was a swampy marsh after the heavy rains.

By stuffing cleats with cedar blocks, and putting them outside, I was able to prevent the girls from sticking their clean dry feet into soggy cleats. Two pairs of cleats aren't necessary, but if I can find extras at a rummage sale, that might be worth the investment. I'm also going to have the girls pack bags so their gear is together when they need it. Water bottles, a snack, soccer balls, shin guards, extra socks are nice, and their soccer sandals, shorts, and jerseys.

Both girls needed extra layers as the season progressed. It was forty-six when I woke up, it's fifty-two now, and soccer matches are rarely cancelled. We have long sleeved t-shirts, but I'd like to get the girls turtlenecks for extra warmth. They wear regular shirts under their uniforms now, I'd like shirts with tighter wrists, and I'd like dedicated soccer clothes so I don't stress about the mud and dirt that gets on their regular clothes.

I went through the soccer socks. Both girls now have black socks, and I'm going to tell their coaches that until the club is willing to order socks that fit, we're going to wear what we have. In the past we've had to order special jerseys since my daughter's are petite. This has been a hassle in the past since coaches think that the jerseys they order are small, but this year I have a new contact who told me I should let her know as soon as the girls are assigned to a new team, and she'll order appropriate sized jerseys for us.

Another thing I would like the girls to have is leggings to wear under their shorts although I'm not sure if that will be allowed during games. Their soccer shorts are designed to be cool, and to wick moisture away which is great during the summer, but not practical in some weather they've played in before. The stretchy gloves are another thing I'd like them to keep in their soccer bags. At one point we had a pair that had grips on them, those provide some hand warmth during really chilly games, my youngest was crying after she lost circulation in part of her left hand, and I don't want to go through something like that again if we can prevent it.

We drank a lot of peppermint infused water yesterday. I should have made soup, maybe I'll do that today when I clean out the fridge. I need to be better about planning and organizing the time before and after events like soccer. I have a plan for when I'm there, but so often I forget that the girls will be starved when we get back, and I'd like to have simple meals prepared so we can get things on the table before they fill up on a bunch of junk.

From now on, I'm going to tell the girls that treats are for people who eat their meals. I won't get into what we ate this weekend. I was good on Saturday, Sunday was a disaster. Layers are good for soccer. You can't prepare for every event, but there are certainly things we can do to make games more enjoyable, and less stressful. I'm going to get myself a sun hat. I can't afford to get burnt like this in the future.

All in all it was fun to see the girls and their friends play. I really enjoy talking to other people, and I was so proud to hear my youngest tell me that she didn't eat a cupcake when it was offered to her after the celebration. My oldest daughter's team lost the three games they played, but my youngest daughter's team won the championship in their division. There are several strong players on her team. A set of twins joined recently, both of those girls are good, and my youngest would be better if she had more confidence.

This season was disappointing in terms of the weather. It was a season to learn, and I'm glad it's behind us, so we can start looking forward to a smoother next year. Today we have dentist appointments, these should be interesting. After that, I'm going to take the girls to a garden center so we can learn more about container gardening. My youngest has chosen several vegetables she'd like to grow. I have a lot of ideas for our yard, and the plants I've set outside haven't been appreciating the cold, so I hope I don't lose any.

I found a YouTube video of relaxing Thai massage music. That's been something different to listen to. I'm still doing my hundred words a day. That's been a successful and fun undertaking. I had a brief meltdown on Saturday. I'm in a much better frame of mind today.

Have a wonderful time wherever you may be today.

Jess

E2 Reader- Implementation

The E2 Reader is being implemented as a Web service that is open to invited testers and interested persons in the E2 community.

Phase 1

Take all of the links that are provided in the E2 XML tickers and organize them into hierarchical menus in the sidebar as the interface for exploration. The top-level menu organization is Content and People. It currently looks something like:

  • Content
    • More by this author
    • More of this node type
    • Similar topics
    • Others recommended by same recommenders
    • Flow (softlinks)
    • New
    • Recommended
    • Staff Picks
    • Stuff you might like
    • Collections
    • Reading List
    • Power search
  • People
    • This Author
    • Recommenders (who cooled this)
    • Followers of this author
    • Followed by this author
    • Following me
    • Followed by me
    • Who I might like
    • Groups
    • Me

The menus under Content and People items provide links to four contexts: the current writeup displayed, the current node, a recommendation space, and the reader (you). Think of each context as a cluster of immediate destinations that you can reach by a click from where you are at the moment. 

The bolded items above can be implemented with the current XML interface that E2 provides for client programs. I have them working now. The others are new features that need information the XML interface does not provide. Phase 2 is about implementing those features.

Phase 2

The purpose of the second phase is to test ideas for discovery and recommendation that are not directly provided by the current E2 interface. The information on content and people for those links will have to be scraped from ordinary E2 pages or generated by new discovery and recommendation mechanisms.

Obtaining the needed information efficiently is the first issue; the second issue is storing the information for efficient retrieval. The data could be stored within E2, but it would require building new database indexes or new database tables, which I think is not going to happen.

The best immediate solution to both problems is to store the information outside of E2 in a different sort of database structure that is called a graph database. The graph database is particularly good for this purpose because its structure reflects the natural linked structure of the data and the structure of E2 Reader navigation, which are the same.

 

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