Sunday, 5/10/20 <- nice sequence

Sunday. Mother’s day. Apparently I missed out on something, because I had declined breakfasts on my meal request sheet. Or maybe it was just the women? Anyway, I saw comments on the local bulletin board thanking Sodexo for the lovely Mother’s Day  breakfasts, with, it seems, a small bottle of sparkling wine, and orange juice for making Mimosas, and flowers.

Actually later, with my lunch tray, I got the little bottle of sparkling wine also, which I sipped after supper.

Per this blog in late March last year, I started the process of recycling three old Macs which eventually resulted in my having three Apple store coupons worth in total about $700. Today I spent two of them, which covered all but $20 of a new iPhone SE and a wireless charging stand. I like the idea of the charging stand. I’ll put it on my night table where I usually lay the phone, and it can be charging all night. It’ll be handy to have it charged every morning.

The phone will be a minimal upgrade from my 7S one. Same size and color and shape, but a somewhat upgraded camera and a faster processor. Eventually I’ll take the old one down and swap it for the 5S that I loaned to Jean, and then recycle that one. In that sweet bye-and-bye when I can take the car out and drive around.

I wanted to go for a walk but I’m bored with just going out for a loop. I need a destination, which in the past would have been a coffee shop or some other kind of public sitting space. OK, today I opened maps and picked a park, Greer Park, a bit over a mile away. Walked there, found a nice tree to sit under, and sat for a while.

Then got up and walked back. Phone said I’d walked just over 4 miles. But at least I had “been someplace” definite.

 

 

Saturday, 5/9/2020

Two weeks have breezed by and it’s time to do the laundry again. We have a nice magnetic sign-up board in the 6th floor laundry room, with little magnetic chess pawns with our names on them. Yesterday I claimed the first slots on Saturday, 6-8 and 8-10. It takes 45 minutes for one load,  45 minutes for the next, and another 40 minutes of drying, so you can’t fit two full loads into a single, 2-hour slot. Especially if you are going to forget to set a timer on your phone to remind you to cycle the laundry.

The rest of the day I did some programming, and watched a lot of YT videos. After supper I turned on the TV and for some reason, it had no sound. I never did quite figure out why, because in the course of investigating, I made a discovery.

When I set the TV up with a sound bar (about a year ago now, I can’t be bothered to go find the blog post) I ran into a problem. The sound bar takes its input either as digital-optical, which would be the preferred way, or by HDMI pass-through from the TV, or by a plain old stereo wire with a mini-plug. I couldn’t get either of the two hi-tech ways to work. The TV dates to 2011 and its optical output is an old style. And the HDMI thing didn’t work for some reason. Anyway, I settled for plain old stereo which sounded fine anyway.

(Parenthetically, this was one of the reasons I shopped a lot for a new TV, back last summer. I figured a new one would have working digital audio out. Later I reset all the color controls and the picture now is so good, I can’t justify a new one.)

So tonight I’m fiddling with the XFinity DVR settings trying to figure out why no sound is coming out and I see a settings option that alerts me to the fact that the DVR itself has optical audio out. Huh. I have an optical cable right here in this drawer. I hook up the DVR to the sound bar and sound comes out. Well, well.

Later I turn the TV off and discover a problem with this new setup. The DVR never really turns off. The TV shuts off, but the DVR keeps going — and putting out sound. I have to get the control for the sound bar and mute it separately. That wasn’t a problem when the sound bar was fed by the TV. (Another problem: once in a while I like to hook up the MacBook to the TV to stream something on a big screen. When I do that, there won’t be any audio from the sound bar. The sound bar is listening to the DVR, not the TV. But I can leave the old stereo wire hooked up and switch back to it.)

 

Friday 5/8/2020

Went for a run but an odd coincidence made me shorten it. Once again I had left the building without my mask. Well, it was early and nobody was around. There’s a point where I cross a pedestrian bridge over a creek. Approaching this I found myself catching up with a man walking slowly, also without a mask. He was slow, but fast enough that I could not pass him before the entry to the bridge. So I’d have to follow him over the narrow bridge, in his breath-wake. Nunh-unh. So I turned away and took a shorter route home.

One nice thing today was that for the first time in weeks, I heard construction workers below me on the 5th floor. So they are back on the job.

I did some programming. I played HiveSwap for half an hour, until I got stuck again; then I watched more of the YT play-through to see what arbitrary clue I had missed.

The weather was warmish, up to 80 in the afternoon, and for the first time this year I was comfortable sitting out on my balcony.

I tried watching a play streamed by the UK National Theater, By Jeeves. It was by Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Weber based on PG Wodehouse. That’s a pile of talent, and should make it good, but it wasn’t. If I’d seen it in a theater, I’d’ve left at intermission. I left the stream earlier.

And that was the day.

Thursday 5/7/2020

Did the 7:15 aerobics class. Then, after a bit of sitting around catching up with the internet, I started the Thursday apartment cleaning. Dust. Wipe down kitchen, and then all the surfaces in the bathroom. At the start of the DIY Housekeeping thing, they gave me a vacuum, a swiffer, and a big spray bottle of a cleaning solution, Peroxy, “hydrogen peroxide based cleaner”. It’s odorless, clear, and very effective. Light spray on any hard surface; wipe it around with a damp rag; wipe it off with a dry rag; it sparkles. Go over all the wood surfaces with a dry rag and Pledge.

Then move all furniture onto the carpets and Swiff the hard floors. Then move all the furniture off the carpets and vacuum. Then change the bed linen and done.

My shower has clear glass doors. Back on Tasso street I kept a squeegee in the shower and squeeged (is that a word?) the inside of the glass before getting out. It helped a lot to keep the water spots from building up on the glass. I decide to do that here also. I order a squeegee and a suction-cup hook from Ace Hardware up the street. After lunch I go up and pick it up.

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Got an email from SFJazz: all concerts through August canceled. Damn. I had booked two shows that I was really looking forward to. Now I have to decide whether to return the tickets for credit or donate them. I split the difference, claiming credit for one show, donating the other.

 

 

Wednesday 5/6/2020

Started with a run. I found myself awake at 5:50, so I ended up starting my run at 7am.

At 9 am I got notification that my grocery shopper had started working. She arrived with the stuff just before 11am. I hastily put the bags in my room and headed for the basement, because today was car freedom day, when we are allowed to take our cars out of the garage. I took the Prius out for a 20-minute run, just to warm it up and charge the battery, then back to the garage.

Back upstairs I broke down the grocery order. I had filled out order forms for the 7 customers (6 plus me). I put them around the big table in the 6th floor dining room and put the items next to their forms. At this point I noticed (rather belatedly) that the case of Anchor Steam I had ordered was on the bill, but not present.  I texted the “runner” and yes, it was still in her car. We arranged for her to circle back with it later.

Then I wrote down the prices of everything and added up the individual bills, and delivered everything to the recipients. By which time my lunch tray arrived at my door, and almost at once I got the text from the runner, she was outside with muh beerz.

After lunch I placed an order for pizza delivery. I had agreed with Patty to share a pizza tonight. We did that last Wednesday, when she ordered. Rather than split that, we agreed I would order this week.

What a busy morning. Think I need a nap.

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Supper was nice. Patty and I sat on opposite sofas in the lounge and talked while gorging on pizza. First time I’ve eaten a meal in the company of another person in … six weeks?

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Bag balm! Stuff fucking works! Once or twice a day I put a little dab on the back of each hand and rub it around and up my forearms, and it moisturizes nicely. All the dryness I was having from washing so often, is gone. Also, remarkably, the little patch of psoriasis I’ve had for years on the back of one hand, is staying softer and smoother than it has in a long time. I’m getting to like the smell of creosote.

Tuesday 5/5/2020

Started the day with Victoria’s step-aerobics at 7:15. This time there were four attendees, up from one (1) last Thursday. It’s a gentle workout, but it is a workout.

Did a little desk work, paying an insurance bill, and entering the end of month values for my various Schwab accounts in the spreadsheet. I note that I created this spreadsheet back on Day 31, early January 2019. This gives me an overview of the state of the Nest Egg. The total as of 3/30, was down %20 for the year. In April it recovered some, and is now down only %13 on the year.

Through the day I was fielding emails about our weekly 6th floor shopping. I ended up with a list of nearly 20 items — after everybody said “nah, nothing this week” and then had second thoughts next day. This week I am trying Errand.com for shopping instead of InstaCart. The actual shopping will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big day for other reasons. (Not really.)

Did three computery things in the day. An hour on the Affinity photo book (dodging and burning, three different ways, including one I’d never heard of); proofed three pages for Distributed Proofreaders; and did some study in Crafting Interpreters. The latter got my nickers in a serious twist, because I strongly disagree with the way the author is presenting the information.

I was listening to a podcast where they were going on about the movie, His Girl Friday. I think I’ll try watching that on Prime Video tonight.

 

Monday 5/4/2020

Went for a run; it felt fine. Divided my non-fiddling-around time between crafting interpreters and studying Affinity. That was about it.

OK, editing. Couple of things worth noting.

One, little flashes of grief. Haven’t been troubled by these for some time, but somehow, looking at the plants reminded me of Marian, and later something brought up recollections of trips we had taken together. Not grieving so much for the person, as for the entire life as a couple that ended. I remind myself that I’ve done a good job of crafting a safe, comfortable, moderately interesting new life, and that’s great. But the old one is gone, never to return, and that makes me sad when I dwell on it.

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In the area of not-dwelling-on-it, I spent some time with the game, Hiveswap. I “cheated” by watching a video walk-through to get past the latest snafu, getting Joey (not Josie as I wrote before) past the latest snake-lizard monsters and into the safety of the attic. Where she is shortly sucked into a bizarre portal and the “swap” of the title happens: Joey is transported to another world, and we see a different character, a sort of evil Joey?, being transported the other way. I believe the game maker’s plan was to have a second game about that character, but they didn’t finish it?

Anyway I stuck with Joey through the first couple of scenes in the new place, which included an amusing puzzle. She picks up a bizarre alien ipad thing and tries to log into it. The log-in process involves playing a game of “snake” — remember that old game from the 80s? If you can get the snake to eat five targets, Joey is logged in to the pad. That only took me about 6 attempts.

Sunday 5/3/2020

I used to maintain a varied structure to my week. Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon, working at FOPAL. Thursday, artifact work at the museum. Friday and/or Saturday, lead a tour. Sunday morning, coffee at a coffee shop while reading the paper; also watering the plants.

All that’s wiped away now, so every day is pretty much like every other. We try to keep up some standards, anyhow. Sunday I still water the plants and do the big crossword. Other than that, it was pretty similar to Saturday, and Friday, and…

Well, next Saturday morning I will do my laundry, so I  have that to look forward to.

The programming book that I’m working through, Crafting Interpreters, gave me a little bit of mental work. I’m finishing up chapter 9, and at this point have the skeleton of a programming language implemented, with variables and if-statements and loops working. So at the end of each chapter the author has these “challenges”, basically extra-credit puzzles. The one at the end of chapter 9 was, “Ok, you have loops working. In many programming languages there is some kind of a break statement that terminates a loop early. Add a break to your interpreter. It should be a syntax error to have one outside of a loop. Inside a loop at execution time, it should end that loop only.”

Working out how to do that took me a few hours on Friday and again Saturday. Then while taking a walk today I figured out what I was missing, so finished that task and tested the code.

Fun, right? Fascinating? Well, better than doing another crossword puzzle. Which I also did.

 

Saturday 5/2/2020

All days are quiet now of course. But when I got up I decided I would not go for a walk today. Spent the day entirely in the room. Did some coding.

Played a little of Hiveswap. I’m ambivalent about this. The game is cute and inventive, but it’s basically a puzzle game. I don’t mind solving easy puzzles, but the hard ones are just so arbitrary. Example. In this game our adorable avatar Josie is trying to thwart some multi-legged serpent monsters. One traps her in the basement. Command Josie to  thwack it with her flashlight; that doesn’t help. OK, what else do we have? She has some doggie treats, have her throw some at the monster. Monster eats treats and says something snappy, but isn’t defeated. Josie is proud to be a dancer, click to have her put on her ballet shoes, click the monster. Graceful Abscond! says the game, but no, she bumps into the monster and hurts her knee. Have her put on her tap shoes and do her tap dance. Monster says something scornful. But now if you try the ballet shoe escape after the tap dance routine, now she gets by the monster and up the stairs. You have to do it in the right order, or it doesn’t work. Arbitrary.

I saved the game and quit when she’s stuck in the kitchen with another monster who is keeping her from getting to the carrier pigeon with the marbles she needs to decode the…never mind. I will go back to a youtube walk-through to find out what arbitrary sequence of actions I have to do to solve that.

First thing, though, I coated the coffee table with generous amounts of Liquid Gold. Four hours later, the wood had entirely slurped up the oil. On the left, glossy with a coat of oil. On the right, later. I didn’t wipe it, it just drank up the oil.

 

 

I’m delighted at how the color has come back. See yesterday’s post to see how it was kind of yellow-gray. Now the deep red-brown I remember is coming back. It’s a nice piece. The top is made from four pieces of wood, with “book-matched” grain and almost invisible seams. The legs are pure “mid-century modern”. It is lightly “distressed”. You can see a black spot; that’s from a mistake with a sharpie 20 years ago. There’s a very small cigarette burn from the early 1980s when we still smoked.

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In the evening I watched some of a movie. I have this web page saved, “The 100 best movies on Amazon Prime tv”. One was The Thirty-Nine Steps which I watched Wednesday night. Tonight I tried Annihilation, Natalie Portman agonizing over a strange DNA-morphing alien thingy. So slow. Nice that the adventurers are a bunch of women. But it gets dreary and threatening and I got impatient. I pause the movie and take a look at the Wikipedia article. Oh goodness. That’s stupid. I exit the movie and watch a Rifftrax short feature instead.

Friday 5/1/2020

At last, the first of May! (Memory brings back from my college days, “Hurray hurray, the first of May, outdoor screwing begins today” — as if any of us were doing any screwing in any locale. But I digress.) No, the first of May means, it is not a fashion faux pas to wear straw hats in public! (Only a boor would be seen outside in a panama hat before May Day or after Labor Day.) I own a couple of very nice panama hats, and I’ve been putting off wearing them on walks until now.

I don’t wear any hat on my runs, which I took one of this morning. Then back to the cell, oh get real, it is a very nice and comfortable apartment. Did some coding. Then at noon came the email from Ace Hardware, so after lunch I walked up there (in my straw hat) and they brought out my bottle of Liquid Gold. I did a test application and it looks good.

Couple coats of that and the table should look a lot better. However I decided to wait until tomorrow to apply it. This morning I had taken all my recycling to the collection area down the hall, so I have no newspapers to put down. Tomorrow’s paper will serve to protect against spills. Ok I was smart enough to move it off the carpet, but I don’t want oily stuff getting on my vinyl plank floor either.

Later the bluetooth game controller I ordered last week arrived. I paired it to the big iMac and was disappointed to find that Vendetta didn’t respond to it. I have a couple of other games to try with it.

Friday brings CEO Rhonda’s 4pm phone meeting. It’s actually a zoom meeting but most people attend by phone. Anyway the big news today was that with the modification of the shelter orders, construction can restart on our 5th floor upgrade. That’s very good news. Doesn’t affect me directly, but there are a lot of 5th floor residents who in early February moved out to temporary quarters, and suddenly found themselves with no schedule for when they could move back.

In response to a question from someone else, Rhonda clarified that only contractors who could be limited to the 5th floor would be coming back. They can enter and exit via the freight elevator and never interact with residents in any way. But there is no unlocking for the contractors who would enter current units. Which means, sigh, the Valet company, to whom I paid a sizeable deposit back in February, can’t come in and remodel my closets.

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In the latest Channing House newsletter there is a timeline of our virus response. It is amazing how much has gone down in two months:

• 2/28, first confirmed case in Santa Clara county
• 3/2, dining room stops all self-service, removes anything multiple people would handle
• 3/4, limit of 3 people per elevator
• 3/6, library, gift shop close; dining room limits to 3 people per table
• 3/9, 9 cases in SCC; residents must sanitize hands before entering dining room
• 3/11, all outside visitors banned
• 3/12, NBA and NCAA seasons canceled
• 3/14, start checking staff temperatures on entry
• 3/15, begin checking residents’ temperatures on entry
• 3/16, official “shelter in place order” announced; new hand-washing room installed and residents wash hands before entering dining room
• 3/17, dining room closed; residents pick up take-out meals in brown paper bags; gym closed, fitness classes canceled
• 3/22, no more entry from the garage, those who want to use their cars must park on the street
• 3/25, start of food delivery to each resident’s door; first fitness classes on zoom

So that was “a year in a month”, says Rhonda, of the staff handling all those changes so fast.