Wednesday 04/01/2026

Morning I took a standard walk Joanne is traveling, so she isn’t organizing Wednesday hikes). Then off to the Stanford Medical Imaging center to have my annual CT-with-contrast to check on the status of my aorta. After that, grab some things at Safeway, eat a powerbar for lunch, and then into Stanford Hospital proper to meet with Irina, surgical assistant, to review the results of the scan.

Good news, my aorta is stable, unchanged from prior scans. Also she measured my renal cycsts and there are two that measure about 4cm across. That is good; before I had the big one drained last year, it was 15cm across (i.e. grapefruit). So they are not refilling to any significant degree.

Back home I checked the package room and aha! My Macbook was back from Apple. That was fairly speedy, actually. According to the note inside they replaced just a bunch of stuff, including, if I read it right, the main logic board? I don’t know why. But as long as it was covered by Apple Care, whatev’. I got a complete refurb, no just a new screen.

But they had wiped the hard drive and reinitialized it with the latest MacOS 26, which I had been avoiding. And all my files gone. Of course I have a backup. I spent a couple of hours getting the backup to work and run. To save time I didn’t back up my Applications folder, figuring any that I had installed would need an upgrade for the new OS anyway.

So then I spent like 4 more hours installing the apps that aren’t included with the base OS, and I am nowhere near done. So much work just to get back to my familiar working environment. I won’t go into detail. but bleagh. A pain.

Tuesday 03/31/2026

Had a meeting at 10, so I hurried to get the apartment tidy for the cleaning lady. And to edit and print the documents I was going to share with Rhonda and Patty. Then it turned out, Rhonda had to reschedule, so no meeting.

Writers group at 10:45, went briskly through several short pieces. Then lunch while the cleaner was in. And a long quiet afternoon, napping, playing the guitar, and then reading.

Monday 03/30/2026

Took the standard walk in the morning (3.3 mi for the day). Then edited a document that Patty and I will present to Rhonda tomorrow.

At 11, went down to the lobby to see Joanne off on a trip. She’s flying to Seattle to meet a friend, then tomorrow the two of them fly to North Carolina to visit other old friends from her Port Townsend days.

Then off in Fred to FOPAL where I put in three hours. Processed 8 boxes of donations (6 boxes to the bargain room so I guess I must have shelved two boxes worth).

I also put new labels on some of my shelves. Long ago… when did I take over the computer section? 2019 or 2020. Anyway, the prior manager had everything together, I guess sorted by author or something. To me it was quickly clear that computer books fell into a lot of simple categories, and somebody looking for, say, a book on Python programming would not want to look through 20 shelves to find it, especially if they didn’t know the author or title.

So I set it up in a bunch of small topic areas, none larger than one shelf. Database. Graphics. Security. Web design. IT management. And so on. I printed up labels for each shelf and stuck them on with tape. And they have gotten kind of ratty. So I stuck on new labels today.

Sunday 03/29/2026

Sunday morning stuff. Plants, puzzle, mess around on the Internet. Finally time for lunch and the fancy Sunday Brunch service let me down. I took several things and all of them displeased me. The pork loin was near-raw, the French toast was soggy and tasted funny. I poked at things on my plate and got up and walked out. Walked down Hamilton ave. and had a slice at New York Pizza.

Then I had a personal failure. I returned to Claude Code for another try. Mind you, I like Claude, the interactive chat you find on the web at Claude.ai . I use it often, although for quick factual questions, I like Perplexity.ai better. Anyway I have used Claude.ai for many things.

What is all the rage among programmers is Claude Code, which is basically the same AI, except reorganized as a coding companion. I used to think of myself as a programmer, a coder. I mean, I got paid to do it for IBM for a decade. And documented other people’s code longer than that. And wrote a couple of quite sizable apps, thousands of lines of Python code, just for fun, after I retired. So I know my way ar und a command line, I know about program structure and program design and functional specifications, and how to use Github to store and manage code.

So the way Claude Code works is, you set up a directory with some files containing basic information about the app, functional spec, rules about what libraries and platforms you want to use. (Which I still haven’t decided, see a few days back; all the web pages about the different platforms and libraries that I was trying to learn? Are on my good computer which is away getting its screen replaced.)

You set up these files, Claude.md and so on, and you invoke the claude app from the command line. It reads your stuff and it takes over the terminal session and prompts you, What do you want to do? In effect, it becomes your command shell. You can still give a UNIX command by prefixing it with an @sign, but other input is received and acted on by Claude.

I had already read about this stuff, and there is a lot I need to add to the setup files in the directory. But today I just wanted to start with a basic issue. “I have set up a GitHub repo for this project, how do I give you access to it?” It mulls for a second, then it runs a couple of commands which produce errors, then it tells me I need to get either a new private token or a new SSH key. For which it gives abbreviated directions, Go to GitHub.com, go to settings, do this, do that. Which I do, and all that gets me is an error message I don’t understand. At which point I am feeling defeated. Again. The details just go on and on.

I may go back to beat my head on it yet again, but every time it seems like a whole new rabbit hole opens up that I need to go down to get back to the previous rabbit hole.

Saturday 03/28/2026

In the morning I walked to my bank to deposit a check. Then for some coffee. Then realized, hey, I am planning a long walk later. Well, too late.

So home to help Dr. Margaret with a tech issue. Then at 12, met with Joanne for our expedition. We walked first to Gamble Gardens where we had a picnic lunch. Then on to California Ave. That was the start of the No Kings demonstration, which was planned to stretch a mile-plus along El Camino back to Embarcadero. So we walked that, and at the end, walked back home. I ended the day with a very impressive 6.4 miles, 15K steps. Well I was impressed.as

So how was the demonstration? Not as impressive to me, as the last one. That one had a definite start and end, with a march from one to the other. Being part of an organized march felt more like an event than this, which was very strung out and had no flow to it. Also we didn’t think the signs were as clever as last time. The best one, which we saw a couple of times, was

THE ONLY ORANGE MONARCH I WANT

Another was held by a Channing House neighbor, it said “Now you’ve done it, you’ve pissed off granny”

Friday 03/27/2026

Joanne and I had our regular Friday morning walk, such a nice custom. And planned the logistics for tomorrow, which is complicated. She has appointments in the morning, then we want to enjoy the No Kings demonstration along a stretch of El Camino, and I need to be back to CH for a Music Man rehearsal at 4.

At 11 I put on my docent red shirt and headed to the museum to lead the noon tour. Smallish group, maybe 12 at the peak. But I managed to get all my clever points in and finish under an hour.

Quiet afternoon, then there was a sing-along at 7. Which is always fun.

Thursday 03/26/2026

Did a few domestic chores then walked to Cafe Zoe for coffee. At lunch and again at dinner people praised the CMX event Tuesday night. It was a real hit, it seems.

At 1:30 I joined 20 others in the 6th floor lounge to hear a talk by Sarah Dean, the artistic director of the Pear Theater. Some inside info on how they go about getting right to plays and other production details. Fun fact, Theaterworks, another local production company, is “professional” in that they pay everyone, no volunteers. Because of that, they are able to get dibs on the plays they want. So Sarah would love to do Come From Away but Theaterworks got a regional exclusive.

Then I walked to the Apple store with my poor broken MacBook. Turns out that because I paid for AppleCare and renewed it last year, my new screen will only cost me $99. And the battery showed up as under 80% capacity (78% exactly) so they will replace the battery as well. Only down-side: it will take 5-7 days. So I came home and spent an hour getting all the web sites and other things I access back up on Old Faithful, an “early 2015” model that I had kept around as a spare. It works fine.

Evening, we had a movie, another documentary in the UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival) series that our resident Social Justice Committee is running. This was Surviving the Silence, about the troubles of lesbians serving in the US Army.

Wednesday 03/25/2026

Morning activity was to take a hike. Well, a walk. It can’t be a hike if it is on city streets, can it? I, Joanne, Erica and Martha met to walk down to the Edgewood market, a round trip of 3.5 miles. In the afternoon I did some reading and a bit of music. I want to tackle Claude Code again and I just can’t make myself sit down and do it.

At lunch and later, different people went out of the way to say how much they enjoyed the CMX event last night. It was really a success! Which artist to do next? I’ve had two votes for Billy Eilish and two for Bruno Mars.

I was invited to join the Hartzells for dinner with tonight’s speaker. That was Phil Taylor, a recently retired sports writer who, after early years with the Mercury News, spent most of his career with Sports Illustrated. And his wife and his mother in law, my neighbor and friend, Carol Bachetti.

Then into the auditorium where Phil gave a fun talk about his personal highlights. Including being in Candlestick Park for the Loma Prieta earthquake. Hey, I was there, too!

Tuesday 03/24/2026

Patty gave me her laundry time so I could start at 8am, which I did, so it was all done by 10:30. The writers meeting was interesting. I had written about the drought of ’76 in England. Turns out, one other member had been living in London in 1976 and remembered it, and two others had written about the drought of 1976 in California.

Before supper I went up to 11 and arranged chairs for 20 people in the TV area. After supper I took my laptop up and got all set up with nice audio and a slide show of Taylor Swift pictures on the big TV. Everybody who had signed up showed up pretty promptly around 7pm and we listened to the 12 tracks of Life of a Showgirl, with a small amount of discussion between tracks. General feeling was that Taylor’s music is boring but her lyrics are interesting. And the general feeling was that it was a worthwhile session and we should do it again. Now I have a month to figure out which artist to do next. Billie Eilish? Bad Bunny?

Oh, and I broke my laptop. My nice M1 Macbook. I got the power attachment, the little magnetic thing, caught between the lid and the keyboard and smushed a black spot in the lower left corner of the screen. I can live with it for a while, but I know that it would cost a bunch to get it fixed. Well, it’s 5 years old, too. So I have to consider, is it time for another one?

Monday 03/23/2026

Off to FOPAL first thing, well, 9:30. Worked until 1:30 clearing 9 boxes of donations. Also tidied up some shelves and moved some stuff around.

Took a short walk with Joanne in the afternoon. Then after supper I used the big copier in the lobby to duplicate lyric sheets for the CMX tomorrow. Six pages. The copier doesn’t collate, well, I don’t know how to make it collate, so I had to do the collating afterward in my room. work work.

Then sat down to write something for tomorrow’s writers group meeting. Optional cue was “Drought” so I dug up our old 1976-79 journal of our time in London, because the first year, 1976, was a drought year in England. I wrote about conserving water and having no air conditioning.