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.

Saturday 09/05/2026

Went for a bit of a walk in the morning. At 11, headed out for the Museum. Led the Noon tour, had a big group, maybe 30 at the start, still 22 or 23 at the end, very appreciative group.

At 5, Joanne and I drove to one of her favorite places, the Parkside Grille in Portola Valley, for a nice supper, outdoors under redwood trees. As usual we talked about our neighbors… Edie passed yesterday… Phil fell and broke a hip… Joanne had been at Patty’s 90th birthday lunch… gossip.

Friday 09/04/2026

Joined Joanne for our usual Friday morning muffin walk. Later in the day I assisted Lenny to practice for her upcoming book talk.

Practiced some music. Read a couple chapters of a book. Quiet day all around.

Thursday 09/03/2026

Took a standard walk in the morning. Then at 11am, met with Joanne and we hopped in Fred and drove down to Mountain View to have lunch with my sister-in-law Jean. Jean is 98, in good health, walks with a cane, still drives her car for local errands. We went to her favorite lunch spot, Eric’s DeliCafe. Had a nice chat for an hour.

Main excuse for the visit was to return a book. A younger relative, J.P. Lacrampe, published an SF novel recently. Jean had been given a copy, read it, sent it along to me. Now I had finished it so I was returning it. I had tried and failed to explain to Joanne how I was related to J.P., so it was good to work through the connections with Jean.

(Octavie and Leon Lacrampe had four children. The eldest, Henri, died young but had one son, Pierre. Pierre, now a retired oral surgeon living in Danville, had four children of whom J.P. is the youngest. He is now an instructor at SCU. So J.P. is my late wife’s nephew’s son. Makes him a cousin by marriage, I guess.)

I had said I really needed to buy a new pair of black loafers, my good old Mephisto pair were just really worn out. Joanne said I needed adult supervision for that, so, being out in the car and with time to kill, we drove to Los Altos to Footwear Etc. I bought a pair of Ecco shoes. Then another errand and home.

A part of the later afternoon I spent watching the oral history video of famous Apple programmer Andy Herzfeld on the ComputerHistory.org YouTube channel. Mainly I wanted to verify what I sometimes said in my tours, that when Steve Jobs saw the Xerox Alto and decided to emulate it as the Apple Lisa, he had some of the Apple programmers with him including Herzfeld. Well, Andy does not mention that in his interview. He says he was working at upgrading the OS for the Apple II when Jobs hired him to work on the Mac. The Mac came a year after the Lisa. So pretty clearly, he wasn’t along on that crucial visit where Jobs saw for the first time, an OS with windows and menus and a mouse and such. So I have to stop throwing in that factoid on my tours.

Wednesday 09/02/2026

Went for a hike with Joanne and Martha in Edgewood park. 3.6 miles there, 4.0 for the day. Came home for lunch and a nap. Then took care of a Beatles video issue: Lou had spotted a typo in one line of the lyrics I had added. Also took care of a couple of other minor issues. I think that is ready.

Spent some time playing guitar and singing. Days when my voice is working, I get enthusiastic again, maybe I could perform around here. But I know that every time I have, I’ve been disappointed in my performance. I should sell the guitar and forget about it.

Tuesday 09/01/2026

Went for my standard walk first thing. Back by 9 to tidy the apartment, Tuesday being housekeeping day. At 10 I joined the zoom meeting for the writers group, so that Betty could make me host and leave for a family outing. The writers were kind of slow in joining the meeting which is supposed to start at 10:45. At 10:50 we only had five. Eventually we got to a quorum and read our pieces. The cue was to write about some object that you have kept and value. I wrote about a chest of drawers, one of 3 pieces of furniture I retained from the old house.

After lunch I joined the Line Dance exercise class.

Leaving the Line Dance clase, Joanne said she felt like a walk, let’s go get iced chai latte’s. So we did, a nice walk up to Town and Country and back.

Later I looked at the Health app and found that between two walks and Line Dance, I had run up 14K steps and 6.4 miles.

Played a little guitar in there somewhere. Trying to get the right rhythm for “Angel from Montgomery”.