Wednesday 05/27/2026

Hike in the Baylands with Joanne and Martha. After lunch I had a good guitar/singing practice session.

Early in the day Rhonda had announced an special meeting for 4pm. The reason was that our US Rep, Sam Liccardo, had held a press conference about the issue of the slow processing of work permits and residence permits for immigrants. Pretty obviously the current administration is deliberately slow-footing all that paperwork as a tactic to force immigrants to leave.

The human and economic costs are great. Rhonda had been asked to participate in this press event, speaking as an employer who has been losing staff. It seems we’ve had to let 9 people go, out of our employee roster of just over 100, when their work permits were not renewed. Not denied or canceled, just never renewed after they had applied.

The resident meeting was to describe what she had said, and then to let three of our staff — Yadira (brought to the US by her parents at age 3; has a masters degree in senior care administration), Izveth, our director of nursing (another dreamer, waiting for her DACA renewal), and Priya, our director of HR, another immigrant who has to counsel employees on these issues. They described the emotional pressure of waiting for the bureaucrats to respond to their application for extension. How they can never make long-term plans; don’t dare buy a house, etc. It’s really a cruel system made more so by current policies.

After supper I helped David G set up for an event. I won’t try to explain but the AV was unusual and we both messed it up. Fortunately the speaker was tolerant. That lecture event dragged on because my neighbors asked a bunch of dumb questions in the Q&A. Oh well.

Tuesday 05/26/2026

In the morning I paid my estimated tax, and did some paperwork re a tour we are planning, and tidied the apartment for the housekeeper. And then wrote a short essay for the writers group. After lunch I had a good long session with the guitar.

Then at 4pm I attended the meeting of the Common Areas Advisory Group, residents reacting to Rhonda’s plan for the building upgrade. Today we talked mostly about the plans to add both a bistro/coffee shop and a bar, where they would be in the building, what they would serve and how that would affect dining services in general.

I left the meeting while it was still in progress at 5, to meet with Joanne. We went straight in to dinner and managed to get served and finish eating by 5:30. Then we headed for the car and drove down to the museum for an event. That started with a reception, a couple hundred people not one of whom did I know, milling around in the big meeting space. As I had sort of supposed they had food, a sushi bar and a slider bar, we could have skipped supper at CH and eaten here. But actually it was less awkward the way we did it. Walking around with a plate of sushi looking for a table with open seats among strangers? Nah.

We heard some congratulatory talk by the museum CEO — they passed $100M of donations this year — and then went into the big auditorium for the evening’s event. This was the author of the book Steve Jobs in Exile: the Untold Story of NeXT, Geoffrey Cain, moderating a panel of three people who worked with Jobs at NeXT. Those were,

• Dan’l Lewis, most recently the CEO of the Computer History Museum, but in the 80s, the head of marketing for NeXT,
• Avie Tevanian, head of software at NeXT and then at Apple where he helped create both MacOS and iOS,
• Bud Tribble, part of the original Mac design team, software lead at NeXT and later at Apple.

That’s three heavyweight computer people, all of whom worked along with, or reported to, Steve Jobs for many years. So it was a fun presentation hearing the inside stories of the rise and fall of NeXT and its reincarnation as MacOS.

One story: the NeXT cube (see above) was made out of magnesium for lightness. It was difficult to cast and technically, magnesium metal is flammable, although there was never a problem with a NeXT burning up. The contractor who made the cubes had to sand them to remove mold marks, and the magnesium sanding dust is definitely and easily flammable and they had problems with fires. Also magnesium is hard to paint, and it was difficult to get a good coating of that nice black color. The original budget was that the case would be a $50 part, but it ended up costing more than $50 just to paint it.

I knew the general outline of the story. One item that I had never heard, was that when Tim Berners-Lee was developing what became HTML, he did the programming work on a NeXT cube.

My own story of the NeXT is this: When I was working as a tech writer at Informix, Steve Jobs cane and did a personal sales job on the VP in charge of documentation, and sold him on the idea that his writers and editors should use NeXTs. I remember vehemently telling him, “No, it’s the wrong decision!!” He ignored me, and our department of maybe 8 people got NeXTs to make manuals with. Of course, all the development engineers and everyone else in the organization was using Sun workstations. So we couldn’t run or test the software they were making. Not to mention the NeXT was slow.

Monday 05/25/2026

It’s a holiday so dining services is off tonight, and giving out sack suppers in the morning. At 8:30 I went to the dining room and picked up a salad and a cookie for supper. The plan is for the 6th floor to share pizza, but if you want a salad or a drink or whatever, pick it up from the kitchen in the morning.

With that done I went back down and met Joanne and we went for a walk. Bought a couple of things at Trader Joe’s, then had a coffee and a chat. We needed to plan tomorrow night: we are signed up for a reception at the Computer History Museum at 6, so we needed to figure out how to work in supper ahead of that.

Joanne had the car for a lunch date with her friends, so after lunch I hopped the #21 bus down to FOPAL. The #21 runs direct from Channing House to a block from FOPAL. And with my senior Clipper Card, the ride is only $1.

I found a mass of boxes, at least 10. I processed 6 of them, then caught the #21 back home.

At 5:30 I met the pizza guy at the front door and carried them up to 6 where 10 or 11 of us crowded around the table in our floor dining room and gossiped and had pizza. Everybody paid $15 which ended up about $40 more than I had spent, so the excess went into the 6th floor petty cash fund. That still left $120 for me which I stashed in my desk, along with the wad of cash remaining from the last time I bought pizza. Problem is, I almost never spend cash for anything, I always pay with my phone.

Sunday 05/24/2026

Usual Sunday morning. Largely a quiet day, nothing scheduled. I do not deal well with leisure. Joanne says I am “task oriented”. Sounds right. I get upset and depressed at the end of a day when I realize I didn’t do anything I would call worthwhile. OK, I did practice guitar.

And I killed my Kindle. This was a Kindle Fire tablet, the original 9-inch tablet from about 2012. It was bought new by my late brother-in-law, and his wife gave it to me. I’ve kept it by my bed for bedtime reading for at least a decade.

But the battery was starting to fail, and Amazon has announced the end of support for it. I had started to read up on how to jail-break it, so I could read non-Amazon ebooks. But first I wanted to replace the battery. I bought a new battery install kit for it. Watched the video on how to do the replacement.

I did the replacement and it seemed to go well. When I hit the power button, it booted up, the screen lit up, all looked good. Then I discovered that the touch screen was not responding. However I tapped or swiped, no reaction. Unfortunately the touch screen is the only input it accepts. If you can’t tap or swipe, you can’t do anything. I took it apart again and reassembled it twice, checking carefully that I had reattached all the cables. No dice. “It’s dead, Jim.” I took it to the basement where Facilities has a closet for collecting e-waste. RIP Kindle.

Saturday 05/23/2026

Main activity today was to lead a tour at the museum at 2pm. Don’t remember what I did in the morning, but I’m sure it was terribly constructive. Oh, I remember. Actually this was yesterday: the pot containing one of my favorite plants just split, half of the side of the pot falling off. I didn’t actually notice that, what I noticed was that the plant was obviously water-stressed, leaves all limp. Poor baby, what’s wrong? Oh–half of your root ball is exposed. So I had to repot the plant in a hurry, and made a mess of potting soil and stuff on the balcony. So part of this morning was to sweep up the mess and generally tidy up.

Anyway, after lunch I hopped in Fred and off to the museum. Good tour, had a couple of people who were absolutely riveted by my spiel, watching and nodding at every word. Very flattering.

After supper I was looking through some of the old pictures on my Smugmug page, and casually asked Joanne if she would be bored by somebody’s 20-year-old vacation pics. She very generously came down and spent an hour looking at my old pics of New Zealand. So that was nice.

Friday 05/22/2026

Joined Joanne for our customary Friday “muffin mosey”. We sat at Starbucks and planned out a trip we may take next year.

At 11 I joined what was until now the AI interest group. As of today we have a new focus. We recently learned that the new Channing House IT director, the jolly and likeable Jean (French zhan that is) means to replace our old in-house resident website, fondly known as Resweb, with a completely new site based on the Cubigo platform. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to replace Resweb which has a rather endearing turn of the century look to it, but there are a lot of immediate concerns about the details. The AI interest group has spent a lot of time talking about the shortcomings of Resweb lately so our collective ears perked up.

Jean made that switch at his previous employer, The Forum, a much larger senior residence a few miles away. He replied to a query that there, they had a Resident Tech Committee that was, he says instrumental in testing and refining that system. Channing House has no such general committee as yet, so we have appointed ourselves the ad hoc resident tech committee and we will work with the Resident Association exec committee to get that made official.

Frittered the rest of the day away.

This post is created using my iPad. Looking ahead to possible travel, wondering if I could make do with just the iPad, or should I carry a real laptop. Answer: either get a real keyboard for this, or the laptop.

I had a couple of pics from the Wednesday hike that I forgot to post.

Thursday 05/21/2026

An unscheduled day, nothing in the Google Calendar. Simultaneously freeing and worrisome. Started with an early walk, out at 7:30, back before 9. Was catching up on email when there was one from Joanne, saying she was going to go and get Fred smogged, did I want to come along? Sure. So I rode along as she drove Fred to the Smog Check station. We walked around California ave, had a coffee, the station texted her it was done. Back to the car and home.

After lunch I paid a bill, mixed some breakfast shakes, and put in a good productive hour of guitar practice.

Nice supper with Mary and Grace and Andrew.

Wednesday 05/20/2026

First thing was a hike with Joanne, Joanne, and Erika. We went to Wunderlich park in Woodside. Been there at least 2 times before. The hike is basically up for a mile and a half, then down. It’s only — did I really say “only”? — 600 feet up, heck that’s only fifty fucking flights of stairs, no problem, right? Just under 4 miles for the day.

Quick lunch, then the 1pm FOPAL volunteer zoom. And a solid nap. And then another meeting, Leah Lin had come in to chat with the Tech Squad, me and Bert and Craig. Leah of course is the person I contract with to hold my medical POA. She has the same relationship with Joanne, but this was about her providing technical help to Channing House residents. She’s working with several of our neighbors on various issues.

Answered some emails, practiced some guitar. Ate dinner in my room.

Tuesday 05/19/2026

Up and about and because neighbor Patty is away, I could start my laundry at 7:45 and had it all done and put away by 10:30. In between loads I tidied the apartment and wrote a piece for the writers group.

After lunch, about 1:30, Joanne and I went for a walk and coffee and a talk. That was nice. Then I put together some info for the AV team and wrote a long email for them. After supper it was time for the classic movie. The movie committee had decided to start a 4-film series of the best of Fellini, beginning with La Strada, which I had never seen. Welp, now I’ve seen it. I don’t plan to see it again. Nope, not a fan.