Friday 02/20/2026

As is our tradition (well, nearly a year-old custom) Joanne and I went for a walk including a stop at the pop-up bakery. The bakery is an ambitious local one, Little Sky Bakery. They specialize in heavy, solid stuff. Their peanut butter cookie is the size of a saucer and weighs half a pound I swear. On Fridays they put up a marquee outside a restaurant on Homer st, and that is where Joanne has a long-time custom of buying a bran muffin, which she shares with her circle of buddies at Saturday breakfast. I just tag along, well sometimes I buy me one of their cookies, which I dole out quarters of to myself over the week.

Anyway we did that. Then at 11 our AI interest group met. The talk was mostly about Stanford Robotics and their desire to use us as guinea pigs to test their robot companion. We’ll see, I’m dubious anything will come of it.

At 3, I went over to the AL floor across the patio to listen to a professional entertainer. They have in an entertainer every Friday afternoon, I hadn’t known this. I wanted to listen to how a pro performs for that audience. I didn’t get the gal’s name. She was very proficient. Sat on a stool with a guitar, she had brought her own mic and amp, had a wide repertoire of feel-good sing-along songs. I was pleased that she didn’t have any flashy instrumental chops, just strumming basic chords. But she made eye contact and kept people involved.

At 7pm there was a sing-along. This was all gospel songs, in honor of Black History month. I hung around for 3 or 4 songs then got bored and wandered off.

Thursday 02/19/2026

Did some desk work in the morning, including completing the accountant’s tax workbook and uploading all the needed files. I think I’m done with taxes, just have to wait for Katie the Tax to send the returns.

Another thing? After reading both newspapers this morning, I concluded that the SJ Merc is the better of the two, in general and definitely for my taste. I went ahead and paid the damn exorbitant fee. I think rather than canceling the Chron outright, I will keep the electronic subscription, which is quite inexpensive.

Then it was off, using Pru’s Prius, to the Museum to lead a tour. The Prius because it was one of those very rare times when we both needed the car this morning, and Joanne gets priority. I initially thought of taking a Waymo, but it was saying 25 minutes to get a car, and $23. Lyft was quoting $9. Something has gone wrong with Waymo’s business model as they have expanded. Last year using them in the city, they were competitive on price.

Anyway I was one of two docents guiding a group of older dudes from SF. The other, Larry, was also trained in running the 1401, the restored IBM system from the early 60s. So we not only did a tour of the exhibits, but Larry was able to fire up the old machine and demonstrate punching cards and printing. So bonus for those visitors.

Back home I had a brief meeting with Andrew of our IT department. He wanted to know about a couple of devices in the equipment rack, whether they are used. No, we said.

The rest of the day I just laid around reading and relaxing. Totally indolent, which always leaves me feeling guilty and depressed.

Wednesday 02/18/2026

In the morning Joanne and I took a walk, over to the creek to see it flowing, deep and strong after days of rain, then to Town & Country to Trader Joe’s and the coffee shop. A rain cloud came up and started dumping, so we called a Lyft to get home.

On return I took the car and went down to FOPAL where I processed another, I don’t know, 5 boxes? No, six, because the person sorting brought out another one when I thought I was finished. I still had three boxes of books that I had priced previously, but didn’t fit on the shelves. Remembering that they had included a number of database, “big data”, how to analyze big data, and such books, I went through the boxes and pulled those out, to nearly fill a shelf. I made a special “Big Data” section. Everything looked much much neater when I was done.

This morning the SF Chronicle arrived at my door along with the SJ Merc, so I could compare them, and you know? I’m doubting my decision to switch. The Chron isn’t any fatter than the Merc. It is missing a couple of the funnies that I like. On the other hand, $750 a quarter versus about half that…

Tuesday 02/17/2026

In the morning I took a radical step. I subscribed to the SF Chronicle. Back story: ever since we moved into our house in Palo Alto, 1974 or so, we took the SJ Mercury. Nearly 50 years, geez. But the paper has been getting skinnier and skinnier, while the bill they send me each quarter has gone up ane up. Each of the last four or five quarters I have struggled with whether it’s worth it. The latest bill for the next quarter is for over $700, an increase of at least 10%. That’s it. I’ve subscribed to daily delivery of the Chron at less than half that. When I see it arriving with regularity I will call up the Merc and cancel.

Then I had another go at trying to get into my United Health Care account. And again failed and again went through the multi-step, 45-minute long script of their chat assistance and eventually talking to a real person who said that a technical person would process the “support ticket” and get back to me in — wait for it — thirty days.

Then I called up the IBM Benefits support number. This is a branch of Fidelity which is only responsible for the pension, not the health care, but I told that operator that I wanted to escalate a complaint about the health care support. She said she could send a “comment” to IBM corporate, which I asked her to do.

Time for the writers meeting. The prompt was not one that interested me, and only a few people wrote, so kind of a flat meeting. After lunch I went into the auditorium and played around with the settings of the video cameras. The center one of the three had a bad white balance, and I managed to get it to match the other two somewhat better. Then I attended the line dance class.

In the evening was the bimonthly movie, this time Annie Hall. I had never seen it. Very cute, very intellectual.

Monday 02/16/2026

It was raining outside so for walking, I went to the gym and did 2 miles on the treadmill. Later at 10:30 it was time for the monthly EvCo, event coordinators, meeting, going over the calendar of stuff planned for March.

From there I left for FOPAL, driving Pru’s Prius, as agreed, to keep the battery up while she’s away. Which I don’t like. Doesn’t have the power-adjust seat so I sit too low, and the suspension seems very bouncy and sensitive to road bumps. Oh well it’s free.

Three hours of work and I will need to go back again this week some time.

At 4, Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. She gave a more detailed timeline for the reconstruction of the elevators. The Heritage Circle has approved the grant request Patty and I put in for the 11th floor TV area, and more money for, it isn’t entirely clear what, more 11th floor AV equipment.

Joanne and I at dinner as arranged, with my new 6th floor neighbors, Rob and Nancy. Super nice people.

Sunday 02/15/2026

Watered the plants, did the big NYT puzzle, because it’s Sunday, so of course. Then walked out for coffee with Joanne and continued a serious talk we’d started the day before. Not going into any detail, but all is good there.

Had an early lunch then drove to the Museum to lead a tour. This was a private tour for a small group of Santa Clara U students. Nice group.

At 5:00 met with Joanne as planned and we drove to the Stanford Shopping Center, to Restoration Hardware, where I had made dinner reservations for us in their rooftop restaurant. We don’t usually go out to “fancy” places. This wasn’t any sort of special occasion, other than V-day weekend. There were many, many dressed-up couples around the big room, so it was the thing to do. Well, duh.

While we were sipping decaf and polishing off dessert, we noticed a couple in the middle of the restaurant doing the whole proposal thing, him kneeling, best friend taking a video. Couldn’t hear if she said yes, but they were smiling.

Saturday 02/14/2026

Spent an hour plus cleaning up files on my desktop machine. I discovered I had a whole drive image from circa 2015 with files going way back to 2002. I had to check these and verify the things worth keeping, most of which it turned out I already had in a different place. Oh well.

About 11 I met with Joanne and we set out as planned to walk over to Cal. avenue to have lunch at Joanie’s, a neighborhood restaurant. Nice lunch. We exchanged valentines cards (everybody say “awwww”) and walked on back. (Almost 5 miles for the day.)

I spent a little more time cleaning up the Mini and making sure I have the latest Python version. If I can think of an app to build, I am going to try building an app with Claude. All these “vibe coders” are just having too much fun.

The 10th floor put on an excellent V-day party on the 11th floor. I ate snacks there and then by 6 I still didn’t feel hungry so I just snacked some more in my room.

Friday 02/13/2026

As usual Joanne and I had a morning walk. Later I noted I was faced with a choice of things to do, I could (a) practice guitar or (b) work on my taxes, and it was actually a tough choice. Which says something about how I feel about practicing. Eventually I did both. And also fixed up the V-day card I bought the other day, ready to give to J tomorrow.

Also did some reading and some sitting around. It is now 6:15. At 6:30 we meet at the garage to go to a concert by Voices of Music. Just thought I’d get this post done so I wouldn’t have to do it later, or more likely forget to do it.

Thursday 02/12/2026

I had set aside time yesterday to go to the Bing box-office and get help fixing the problem I had with those Simon tickets. That worked really well.

I had set aside today, well, this morning really, to get help from the IBM/UHC website to get over the problem I had with it, that kept me from seeing anything about my account. And with yesterday going so well, I thought this would be good too.

Wrong. I ended up spending all day, from 9am to 4pm, interacting with the UHC website help chat. My original problem was that logging in was no problem, but after I had logged in, I couldn’t see anything. It would give me an error message and say try again later, That’s been a problem for months, and I went in going to solve it once for all.

And now I couldn’t even log in. So I spent the day trying to get the automated help, and then the first and second layers of web support, just to log in. And failed. Oh, there were lots of gaps where one person said they were transferring me, and there would be 30 minutes or an hour before the next person came into the chat. So I got some reading done. But basically a wasted day, and nothing accomplished.

Better day tomorrow, It can’t not be.

Wednesday 02/11/2026

First up, a hike with Joanne and Martha. I had proposed we do the Dish walk, the 3.6 mile loop past the Stanford Dish. However parking near the trailhead is usually a problem so we were going to take a Waymo there and back. But recently Waymo has been quoting strange prices, and today it wanted $47 to go the 2.5 miles. (It wanted $27 to do the return trip when we checked later.) So instead we used Lyft, under $10.

Anyway there was rain yesterday and showers forecast for today. It turned out the weather was great, unusual for here with shafts of sunlight through lots of clouds, occasional spatters of raindrops, and a rainbow.

Just a great walk. After lunch I wanted to go to the Bing Hall box office, and Joanne wanted to go to Menlo Park for a medical appointment. So I drove and dropped her off, then drove to the Bing. There a very nice young lady helped me resolve the problem I had with verifying and seeing my Paul Simon tickets. Drove back to Menlo Park just in time to pick Joanne up, so that worked out well.

This was the day for the monthly 6th floor meeting. No big news, just a fun meeting of neighbors, and dinner after.

At 7:30, a talk by Dr. Sara Cody. Recognize that name? If you are local, you do. She was the Public Health Officer for our Santa Clara County, and as such was the first to issue a shelter-in-place order in March of 2020. For which she took a lot of hostility. She recounted the details of those early months of 2020, how little info they had, why they made the choices they did. Her closing slide was a bar chart with three bars. Deaths per 100,000 population for the year 2020, that is, up to early availability of a vaccine.

Again, COVID deaths per 100,000: Santa Clara County, 90, California, 120, United States as a whole, 182. So what they did, worked, producing a death rate one-half of the national rate.