Tuesday 03/17/2026

Today was the day I was to present my talk on the origin of personal computers, “1975, the year everything changed” for the Fellowship Forum (see 7.099). I carried my script on my iPad; I had already sent my slide package to the organizer. I met with David M and we walked up to the Sheraton at 11 am.

I don’t usually think of myself as small, but in a room with 50 other men all wearing suit jackets, somehow it seemed like almost everybody was at least 6 inches taller than me. Anyway, I gave my talk and it was well received, good applause, several people went out the way to say “great talk” afterward.

David M had to sit with a committee of the F. F. so I walked back alone through 80+ degree heat. Got home all sweaty and tired. So I took a nap and then a shower and put on a clean shirt.

By arrangement met with Joanne at 5:30 and we went out for dinner. I had a yen to go back to Kirk’s burger joint. It moved to Midtown a couple years ago, I had been to that location just once. So that’s where we went. But probably not again. It’s just a typical sports bar, 6 or 8 screens showing different games. The burgers are nothing special and, the main problem, the room is noisy. I can see where they have put up some acoustic paneling on some parts of the ceiling. It ain’t enough. There were noisy family parties and… well, Joanne summed it up. As we were walking to the car, she said “You know there’s something wrong when you feel relief at leaving a restaurant.”

But we were back to the CH lobby by 6:40 and in plenty of time for the St. Pat’s day party. Hosted by the 7th floor and they did a great job, with Irish coffee and Irish Stout and lots of green cookies.

Monday 03/16/2026

Didn’t do much of anything at first. At 10:30 I attended the EvCo (event coordinators) meeting. Then off to FOPAL. Joanne had taken Fred for a car wash and gas-up yesterday so he was looking pretty.

Post-sale triage and processed three boxes of donations. Next time I go down I will have to replace all my section labels. I make these myself, print out labels and cut them into strips of paper about 15mm wide, which are attached to the front edge of the shelves with tape. The existing ones have gotten tatty, so I will have to redo them.

Back home, I practiced my talk for tomorrow. Passing in the hallway earlier, Martha mentioned that an internet search for something else had turned up this blog, and she had read the top articles. So of course now I had to do that, it’s been a year or two since I looked at them.

Sunday 03/15/2026

Normal Sunday morning routine. Then walked alone to Cafe Zoe for coffee. On the way back I realized the solution to the confusion I felt yesterday, trying to digest the use of, and relationships among, all those unfamiliar software platforms and packages. Claude confused me; get Claude to clarify.

So I sat down after lunch and had a long chat with Claude. I had it explain each of those things, what it was for, how they fit together to make a finished app. Much, much clearer now. And worked out probably a better, simpler approach. I felt much better after this chat.

I understand the Oscars are on tonight. I have no interest. Watch something else.

Saturday 03/14/2026

Yeah, you gotta be a geek to get that. 3.14 are the first three digits of the constant pi. (3.1415926 is all I ever memorized.)

Indeed I am a geek, but it turns out, not the geek I used to be. See below.

Nothing on the calendar. Took some clothes to the cleaners. Walked the local farmers market. I took the little Canon Elph (see 7.096 for a picture of it) and took a few pictures with it. I took the same picture with my iPhone 16. Here is a small section of the two shots.

If the 2000s call, they can have their camera back. We have come a long way, baby. (Plus, the entire camera hardware, lenses and all, of the iPhone is smaller than the tip of your thumb.)

Decided to get serious about Claude Code. First thing, you have to prepare at least some documentation about the app you want to build. I’d been working on that, so I spent an hour finalizing my requirements.txt and functional_spec.txt and set them up in a directory and invoked Claude Code and said /init. It spent 30 seconds reading my docs and presented me with a nicely organized summary of what I wanted to build. The requirements contained several open implementation decisions, and it provided suggestions on how to handle these.

Problem was, it was suggesting a bunch of open source platforms that I had never worked with and knew nothing about. So before I could approve its plan I needed to understand what it was talking about. For web hosting, Supabase, Huh? database, PostgreSQL. Hey I was an expert in SQL in, um, 1983. Code in Python, OK I am all over that; with FastAPI. What? Front end, React with Tanstack Table. Both new to me. Host the web app on Render. Wha?

And it says, shall I start building some code? No, no, wait. I have got to know what you are talking about. You could be hallucinating half of that. So I start looking up websites and trying to understand what these various platforms and products consist of, and cost.

An hour into this my brain is fried. There was a time when I could plunge into tech shit like this for hours. Not any more. My little gray cells, as Hercule Poirot says, they are weary.

Fortunately about that time Joanne texted saying, you want to take a walk? Uh, yeah. We walked up to Douce France for a cup. Funny thing. We were walking back along the bike path beside the railroad, holding hands, and a cyclist, not a kid, looked like a thirty-something athlete, zoomed past and yelled, “Hey, you lovey-doveys!” What, people can’t hold hands?

Friday 03/13/2026

Led a tour at the museum at 10am. I and another docent split a group of 30 comp. sci. students from a local school I had never heard of, San Francisco Bay University. Nice people, bit older than I expected, well, 20-somethings but looked closer to 30-somethings.

In the afternoon I did some av tech and also rehearsed my song, as part of our vest-pocket size version of the music man.

Out of that at 5, and at 5:15 got with Joanne and we drove to the AC Hotel (see 7.099). Got to their bar/lounge as the musicians were setting up. Ordered beers and a couple of tapas plates, and listened to the music for an hour. When the performers broke between sets we decided to go, and got home early, 7:30. But it was nice.

Thursday 03/12/2026

With a mostly uncommitted day I spent the morning doing tech stuff in the auditorium. I worked out a microphone setup for the upcoming musical show, mics around the stage instead of on the performers. Also sent a couple of emails to the AV mailing list, pointing out a couple of traps that could cause trouble during an event.

Late in the afternoon I sat at my desktop machine and started to get into Claude Code but ran into layers of documentation some of it contradictory, and got frustrated.

Evening, Joanne came by and we watched another episode of Riot Women.

Wednesday 03/11/2026

Took a hike with Joanne, Martha and Erika. Wunderlich park, where the trail goes up and up for 1.5mi, gaining 650 feet. Then back down again. Three energizer bunnies zipping up the trail chatting, me following along puffing like a steam engine. But whatever. I made it, and although breathing heavily I had no sort of distress or cardiac issues.

5pm, 6th floor meeting and dinner. No news of note. Well, Carolyn who has been driving a Chevy Bolt for several years, the lease is running out so she is going to lease a new one. I was close to buying a Bolt a couple years back mostly because of having driven Carolyn’s. Then GM announced the end of the Bolt program. Now two years on, they have brought it back. But I don’t need one.

Ran the AV for a speaker event, Art Bernstein who is on the citizen advisory committee to the US Mint, talking about designs of the quarter, all the various commemorative quarters there have been and will be.

Tuesday 03/10/2026

Morning I was able to run my laundry early and got it almost done.

At 11 met with David M and we walked to the Sheraton hotel, This was to attend a meeting of the Fellowship Forum, a group of men that meet weekly to have lunch and hear a speaker. I will be the speaker next week so the idea was to get used to the format.

Pleasant bunch of older men in “business casual” meaning I had to wear my only sport coat. But no tie. The lunch was a nice hotel lunch soup and grilled salmon. The speaker was a guy from the Hoover institute talking about the Baltic nations, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. And how they are reacting to events like the Ukranian war. Interesting.

In the afternoon I finished the laundry (ironing my docent shirts) and practiced the talk I am giving next week. It’s a good talk, you can listen to how it sounded last November.

At 4:45 I met with Joanne and we went off for a little outing. Some performers we have heard at Channing House and liked, Terrigal Burn and Tamara Dunn, are performing in a hotel lounge on Friday night at 6pm. We thought maybe to go, but then Betty had given us a mixed review of that hotel lunge, and the hotel website was not clear on whether they had food. So we went to case the joint.

It’s the AC hotel, an upscale Marriott brand, on San Antonio road. We drove over there and were able to park on the street, avoiding the valet-parking. Checked out the lounge. Not the greatest venue for listening to music, but it will be ok, and they do have food, a Tapas menu. So we can eat and listen.

It was about 5:30 at this point and we were talking about taking a hike tomorrow, and I was saying my Hoka shoes are worn out. So Joanne jumps on her phone and says there’s Footwear Inc in Los Altos, open until 6. So we drive over there and get to the store with ten minutes to spare and I buy a new pair of Hokas.

Then shall we eat here or go home? Oh there are so many restaurants in Los Altos. But where? I get out my phone and zoom in on Apple Maps and start reading nearby restaurant names. When I hit “Urfa” Joanne says “yes”. So we walk to Urfa which turns out to be Mediterranean, mostly Greek, food. Nice supper at a table on the sidewalk.

Monday 03/09/2026

Yeah, about that supper in my room? I had completely forgotten that I had agreed to join Susan and Harry and Peter for supper Sunday night. I didn’t notice that the message light was blinking on my house phone, from when Susan called from the lobby to remind me at 5pm. I just completely spaced out on this commitment. After playing the phone message at 8am today, I feel like a complete schmuck. I stood up my friends for no reason.

So we had the resident association meeting. These are really interesting, not a chore. It’s the point where all the resident directed things come together and get reported. New residents are introduced, by other residents. Various other committees report. Joanne got up to talk about Scribble and Sketch, appealing for contributions. Then Rhonda reports on what she wants residents to be aware of. Then by convention, all staff leave the room, and the floor is open for questions and comments by anybody about anything.

Afterward I spotted Harry in the lobby and I was able to apologize for being such a klutz, standing them up last night. Then off to FOPAL. There were 5 boxes of donations to process and a final tidy-up of the shelves. That took 2:30. I just barely got back in time to order lunch before orders cut off at 1:15.

Quiet afternoon. Well, emails. Back last November I gave a talk (Day 6.344) about 1975 when personal computers were invented. Resident David M. is on the speaker committee for a Men’s Fellowship organization and he recruited me to give my talk to them. That will be a week from tomorrow. They meet weekly so tomorrow he and I will attend this week’s meeting. So I spent some time getting shit together for that.

Sunday 03/08/2026

After watering the plants, but before doing the big puzzle, I headed out to meet with Joanne and we took a long walk to the Cal Ave farmers market. Just to get out, and maybe to buy some fruit, but fruit season is long past, or maybe not yet come, and we didn’t get anything. Total distance for the day, 4.6mi, 12K steps.

After lunch, I boarded the Channing House bus for the Pear Theater. Enough of us, 20 or so, subscribed to the Pear season, and chose the Sunday matinee, that it was practical to use the bus. There’s a fee for a weekend bus ride (overtime for the staff member who drives it) but that was covered by the Heritage Circle.

Anyway, the show was My Fair Lady. They did a really good job of staging a big show in that very small space, about 75 seats on three sides of a stage that is about 20 by 40 feet. I was impressed by the dancing; the local choreographer had got the small chorus (six or seven people) to do some really intricate dance routines, and they executed perfectly. The main characters had good voices and performed with a lot of personality.

The show was supposed to run a rather chunky 2 hours 45 minutes with an intermission. In fact it ran longer, total of three hours from start to final applause. For me, the second act dragged, I was checking my watch often. I’m not sure if the director had tinkered with the original Broadway script or what, but it seemed like Professor Higgins and Eliza were just arguing pointlessly for scene after scene without ever getting anything resolved. In fact they never did reach a romantic conclusion that I could see.

But there were still the great songs, “Luverly” — “On the Street Where You Live” — “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” — “With a Little Bit of Luck” — “I’m Getting Married in the Morning”.

Back home I took a look at the evening menu and decided that I wasn’t that hungry, and went to my room and had a PBJ and an orange. Not sulking, just not feeling sociable.