Thursday, 1/17/2019
Today I was scheduled to spend a full day (10-4) doing cataloging at the CHM Shustek Center in Fremont. Prior to leaving I took a shower and… noticed the hot water wasn’t, or at least was only warm. I immediately knew the water heater wasn’t heating. It was familiar because, I dimly recalled, we just recently had that same problem fixed. So once dressed, I pulled down the big red three-ring binder in which we have kept all receipts for household repair for the last oh gosh, since the 1980s? Earlier maybe. Flip flip flip to the tab for “plumbing”, wondering did I file that receipt last fall, or just scrap it? Yes! I had. On 10/18 we had a repair person from “Water Heaters Only” in to fix the temp sensor so the pilot would light.
Called them. They could come today; sorry, I can’t be home today, tomorrow? Sure, 12-4pm; great, tx bye. Off to work. Cataloged some old stuff: parts of a Motorola EXORciser, a microcomputer development system from 1975. M6800-based box with a motherboard and a bunch of cards plugged into it, oh, a mighty 32KB memory card there. And a heavy (52 pounds, we weigh these things) dual 8-inch floppy drive box. This was a donation from the California Department of Transportation. What the heck was CalTrans doing with a Motorola development system in 1975? Perhaps developing some piece of embedded traffic control hardware based on the M6800. But why had they held on to it until now? Maybe because they only just retired the last of their whatever-it-was embedded traffic light controllers, who knows?
Back home, I just had time to snatch a bite and a quick nap and then had to head out to a house concert that started at 7pm in Santa Clara. Concert was OK, a trio of people doing bluegrass and old contra-dance tunes on fiddle, banjo and guitar. I’d expected more bluegrass, but the lead guy was big into work songs — he gives workshops teaching people to how to sing during manual labor, didn’t think there’d be a lot of demand but, well — and we the audience got coerced into singing some sailor rope-pulling songs a capella. A lot of the audience were into contra dancing, which is apparently quite a thing in this area, to judge by the long list of upcoming contra dance events that was circulated at the break. Come to First Methodist Church in Palo Alto Saturday evening and if you don’t know how to dance, we’ll teach you. Um, nunh-unh, thanks.
That was implementing part of my “being a bachelor” plan that I’d worked on last fall. One of the bullet points is, “attend at least one performance event per week”. Well, I’m over-achieving because, movie last Sunday, concert tonight, basketball game tomorrow. The unwatched TV is stacking up on the DVR. That is not a problem.
Codgerville 