Tuesday 09/15/2026

Started the day with an early walk, out before 7:30 and back before 9. Then I went to Joanne’s room and helped her with a simple issue on her Mac, getting the backup drive set up.

Tidied up my apartment for the housekeeper. Joined the writers meeting as usual. That wrapped about 11:30. Usually at that time I would find the housekeeper waiting outside my door, but not today. It seems somebody didn’t come to work so they were running behind. A different housekeeper showed up abut 1pm though, so that was ok.

Read and played the guitar a little until suppertime. Then: exercise! In the middle of the night last night, I had a realization. I want to use the machines in the gym twice a week. I have been trying to go down early, 7:30am or so, and I keep running into problems with some of my neighbors who are also early birds and like to use the machines then. Well, duh, I realized at 3am, that I have a big block of time, from after dinner to bedtime, when I am usually not doing anything scheduled, just watching TV. Why not hit the gym after dinner?

So I tried that tonight and by golly. Nobody else using the machines. Except one person: Joanne, walking on the treadmill, which apparently she likes to do after dinner. I had no idea. She has the machine set to 3.5mph. This is a woman who routinely walks 2-3 miles on the streets every day and who was in the line dance class this afternoon as well. Anyway, there was no conflict, I didn’t need the treadmill so I got on with my routine.

Monday 09/15/2026

(Filed on Tuesday morning, tsk tsk)

Resident Association meeting at 9. Before, consulted with DG, and Paul The IT Guy about a problem with Zoom. For unknown reasons the camera was not being shown to Zoom attendees. That had been true Wednesday night as well. Paul had jury-rigged a camera for the RA meeting because we get a couple dozen remote attendees.

(Later we found that the whole problem which had appeared to be hardware, was in fact because a wrong button had been pushed on the video switcher box.)

Highlight of the RA meeting? Well, 8th item on the agenda (of 15), was me announcing the Beatles show Friday night.

Then a quick tech call, and then off to FOPAL for the post-sale cleanup. Back by 3 for a quiet afternoon.

Sunday 09/13/2026

I bailed on “Judgment at Nuremberg” at the half-way point. Joanne says she stuck it out to the end.

Usual Sunday morning. Water plants, read paper, do puzzles, go for a walk. Had lunch. Played some guitar.

Evening, went for a walk with Joanne, then we watched a lecture in the “Music and Math” Great Courses series we are working through.

Saturday 09/12/2026

Last night’s play was The Revolutionists by Lauren Gunderson. It was more educational than entertaining.

Today I got some more tech stuff done, then after lunch put on my red docent shirt and went to the museum to lead the 2pm tour. One neat thing happened: one of the people on the tour was a programmer on the original Shakey robot, an early experiment in AI at Stanford. He gave the tour group a nice 2-minute intro to Shakey and his role in it.

Tonight we are going to watch the movie Judgement at Neuremberg. Since it runs 3 hours, I will write about it tomorrow. If I stay through the whole thing. I am dubious.

Friday 09/11/2026

Took our usual muffin walk in the morning. Right after lunch I went into the auditorium where the Activity Faire team was transforming the place. The Faire is a celebration where every one of the many, many activity committees get a table to show what they do, and possibly get new members. I hung out with the AV table. I took a couple pics.

After supper Joanne and I will go to the Bus Barn to see a play. I will report on that tomorrow.

Thursday 09/10/2026

Often I just summarize, “Did some technical stuff and in the afternoon…”. I’ll try to put in some boring details today.

Down in the auditorium there were a couple of USB chargers, which didn’t seem to be working. Yesterday I threw them in my satchel after the event. This morning I tested them, connected my phone to each one and it was working, charged the phone. Huh. So I took them back down to the aud. and plugged them in again.

Back to my room, got on Amazon, ordered a much nicer USB charger which I will install in place of those two when it comes.

It was only 7:30. I had a meeting at 9. Well, let’s take a walk. Walk the mile up to Peet’s and have coffee and mini-bun. Back at 8:40. Walk to 8th floor and join the meeting. This the organizing meeting for the Winter issue of Scribble&Sketch, our literary mag. I have only a minor role, I am a proofreader. There are three experienced editors (and by experienced, I mean they had professional careers editing books and magazines). And Jerry who handles the page layout and is photo editor. Joanne chaired the meeting and did a lovely job, kept things light and moving and everyone happy.

Back to my room. In the aud. I had noticed what appeared to be a broken lapel mic in the mic drawer. I brought that up and examined it more closely. It was a Shure, and a model that retails for $140. But was just the little button mic and its cord, no wind-sock and no tie clip, so basically unusable. Well, I check B&H Photo (good retailer for all sorts of sound gear) and I can buy spare wind-socks and spare tie clips to fit it. BUT before I do that, is it still functional? Back down to the aud., turn on the system, plug mic into a transmitter, talk to it–yes, it is working fine. Back to my room order wind-socks and a tie-clip for it. When they come I will restore that mic to use.

Get an email from Craig, who is dispatching for the Tech Squad. Neighbor JJ has reported a problem with an Epson printer on her Mac. Craig says, “I don’t do printers or Macs, you can take this.” OK, call JJ’s number, no answer.

Relax for a bit, then go down for lunch. Take a book, sit at a two-top table by myself. But to my pleasure, Joanne wanders in and joins me. Later, JJ comes in for lunch, I go and talk to her. We agree I’ll come look at her printer at 2:30.

Take a nap. Look up the user manual for JJ’s printer and skim it. Play some guitar. My voice is working today, which is a pleasure. When it works, I sound like maybe Johnny Cash’s younger cousin Goober Cash, and I want to go record myself.

At 2:30 I go up to JJ’s apartment. She is just coming in from a walk. Her problem is that her Epson 2803 won’t recognize when she has loaded paper. It only takes paper in the rear paper feed, but when you put paper in the control panel keeps saying, need paper.

I am baffled so I do what we Tech Squad people know best: when in doubt, power-cycle the unit. I turn it off and on. Then it is all happy and sees the paper when I load it. I test making a copy (it’s an all-in-one unit, print, scan etc), then I print a page from her Mac, then I use the Mac to scan a photograph and then print the scan. All working. JJ is happy and I leave to write a report for Craig.

Write this entry to this point, settle down to read a while. Went to supper, sat with Prue and her visiting son, and Stew and Kathy. Watched some TV. End of a day of “stuff”.

Wednesday 09/09/2026

Started the day with a hike. Joanne organizes these most Wednesdays. Today four of us, me, Joanne, Joanne the other one, and her partner Erika, went to Wunderlich park. This was a late change of plans; I had originally said, we haven’t done the Dish walk in a long time. But JTOO pointed out, the forecast was for temps in the 90s, and the Dish walk is mostly in the open, so let’s go where there are trees. Anyway, nice strenuous 3.5 mile walk among mostly redwoods.

We have a new system for packages. The delivery person, Amazon mostly or UPS, is supposed to put the package in one of the lockers in a bank of lockers, and enter a computer code for the recipient. Then you get an email and the Parcel Pending app shows you have a package. Well today I got an email from Amazon saying my package had been delivered. This email even had a picture of our parcel lockers. However, the delivery guy must have screwed up the computer part of it, because Parcel Pending says “no parcel pending” and there was no automatic text giving a code to open a locker. So, incomplete delivery. Amazon customer service no use of course.

After a quiet afternoon, I ran the AV for a lecture in the evening. The damn Zoom Room was messed up, not getting the camera input, so the 9 or 10 remote viewers couldn’t see the speaker. But they could hear, and see his slides.

Tuesday 09/08/2026

In the morning I ran my laundry while tidying the apartment. Then we had the writers meeting; I had not written.

At 1:30 I went to Line Dance. There are a couple of those dances where I actually use the correct feet in something like time with the music.

At 3, got with Joanne for an hour’s walk. That was about the excitement for the day.

Monday 09/07/2026

Went to bed without posting. Thank you Dennis for reminding me.

First thing, do the AV for Lenny’s book talk. She summarized David Pogue’s Apple, the first 50 years. This was “first Monday” and Gigi, the organizer, was not about to let a national holiday change her schedule. Except that she moved the start time back to 10:30 so the audience could get to the noon BBQ lunch in good time.

I did not go to the BBQ lunch; I got in the car and ran down to FOPAL where I spent 11:30 to 3pm processing about 10 boxes of books and getting my section ready for the upcoming sale weekend.

Back in time for the Poetry Out Loud meeting (Joanne, like Gigi, doesn’t let holidays get in the way of her group’s schedule). Then crashed for a nap, and supper, and that was the day.

Sunday 09/06.2026

Today was the day of the memorial for Rajat Deb. I never met the gentleman, although after hearing all the things said about him, I wish I had. Dr. Deb had a career first as a professor of comp. sci., partly at Stanford, and then as an entrepreneur making custom software for the electric power industry. My neighbor Rich worked for him for more than a decade in the 80s-90s. He was asked to speak, and the family asked him to also give some kind of history of Silicon Valley for the non-technical people in the group. Rich had volunteered me to do that part.

I was also to drive, and neighbor Peter, who knew the Deb family well, was going to come. This morning Peter called to beg off, not feeling well. So Rich and I drove up to the Fogarty Winery on Skyline blvd, arriving about 2pm. What a gorgeous place. Their event space is a huge roofed deck looking out on a fabulous view of the southern half of San Francisco Bay (click the link for a pic). We were there a couple of hours. Could have drunk a lot of wine but had coke instead, as I still had to drive down very twisty roads.

Gave my little talk, Rich gave his little talk, we at some snacks. Rich of course knew many people in the crowd of over 100, while I of course knew nobody. But it was ok. Everyone was very nice.