Monday 08/29/2021

First thing I walked up to PAMF to have a blood draw. The final test the cute endocrinologist wanted was for me to take a single dexamethazone(?) tablet at 8pm, and have a blood draw at 8am. I forget what this is meant to prove; I’m sure she will tell me tomorrow.

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One of the blogs I follow had, this morning, a post about the DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act), the law that lets somebody claim a copyright violation against, say, a youtube video. You file a DMCA claim with the provider that hosts the content, and typically they take it down immediately and let the one who posted it, protest.

Well, that reminded me of when, 4 years or so back, I found somebody had swiped a bunch of my content and reposted it. What happened was, for 15 years or so I maintained a vanity site where I advertised my book Secular Wholeness and also posted the full text of two books I’d published in the 1980s, and two screenplays I had written. Finally I decided it wasn’t worth $25/year just to show off to the internet, so when it was time to renew the domain name, I didn’t, and let it lapse.

Some person unknown immediately bought the domain name. They had apparently scraped the content previously (there is a way to get notified of all domain names that are about to expire), and now they recreated my old site, mostly. They lost a few things so some pages came up 404 not found, but most of it was there.

As far as I could tell they didn’t put ads or malware on it; they just kept it. Which pissed me off so I paid a fee to a lawyer specializing in IP issues, to find them and write them a nasty letter. And the domain disappeared. I thought that was it and forgot about it until today. But after reading that blog post, I though, hmmm, I wonder, and I typed in the old URL and … it’s back, baby. I’m not putting the URL here because I don’t want to give them any more clicks.

With some research I found out what provider was hosting them (cloudflare.com, one of the biggest hosting companies there is) and used their DMCA claim form to say, that’s all my stuff used without permission. We’ll see what happens.

That pretty much blew the morning.

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At lunch I was sitting with Lennie (Madeline) and mentioned how we still hadn’t tested the hearing aid loop in the auditorium. She said, her hearing aid worked with that. So we agreed to meet at 1pm in the auditorium. I fired up the sound system and talked into a mic. She could hear me in her hearing aid. Test complete, yay.

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I brought in the spray booth and put the first coat of primer on the Chrysler. I was going to put a second coat on, but after 3 hours the first coat still felt kind of tender to me and I decided to let it harden over night.

Sunday 08/29/2021

Did the usual Sunday things. Actually what with the warm weather I had to water the plants Thursday and again yesterday, so that didn’t take long.

Decided to walk to California Ave and possibly take a Lyft back. But in fact I felt fine and completed the return trip on foot as well. Almost 4.5 miles for the day, the longest walking in quite a while.

I spent some time thinking about a problem with Software Tools. It’s way too complicated to try to do justice to, here. But I think I came to a good conclusion. However, it means that my version of Kernighan’s programs will have to be somewhat different from his. That’s all right, though. One of the major points of Software Tools is that they couldn’t know what OS their readers had, or what facilities it would offer, so they basically say, if your OS supports this, fine, otherwise do it this other way.

In the evening I had nothing much to watch on TV except America’s Funniest Videos, so I finished reading a book. It was a very satisfying two-volume story that I would like to recommend, but I can’t really. It sucked me in by being about some really nice, appealing characters, and then about 2/3 of the way through the first book, surprised me with explicit sex scenes. Which puts me in a bind. I’d like to write a 5-star Amazon review saying, this is a well-written fantasy about likeable characters having big adventures — but then I’d have to say, but oh by the way, there is so much fucking. It’s as if Tolkien had paused every 3 or 4 chapters to give you a high-def anatomical play-by-play of Aragorn getting it on with Arwen; and then, back to the swords and the sorcery. Well, ok, adult me would probably read that; but who is it for? I don’t think I could have handled it at age 12, which is exactly who the rest of the book is suited to.

Saturday 08/28/2021

Today was the first day of “Silicon with Adam Savage”, a convention of movie and comic book fans at the San Jose Convention Center. I drove down, parked, went in, registered and walked around. Lots of my fellow visitors were in costume, but I am really out of touch with current memes. I could recognize the half-dozen Imperial Storm Troopers who were doing “security” at the entrance, and two or three teenage girls dressed as Harley Quinn. But lots of the costumes I could see were costumes, but I couldn’t name the characters or the movie.

The heart of the con was a large hall filled with vendor booths. I wasn’t inspired to take a lot of pictures, but here’s one to give the flavor.

Art based on Star Wars, on Star Trek, a little bit of Harry Potter, a lot of Anime film characters. At least three vendors selling beautifully crafted light-sabre handles. Like that.

There was a schedule of panels and such, and you could get an autograph from a number of B-list actors. One of the few whose names I recognized was Lou Ferrigno, the original Hulk.

I spent a couple of hours seeing most of the vendor area. I sat down in the Grand Ballroom for the keynote/kickoff talk by Adam Savage with guests astronaut Cady Coleman and SF author Mary Robinette Kowal.

I’m sorry to report that this quickly became quite boring. After half an hour, I left. I looked over the schedule of panels, and except for the 6pm Costume Contest there wasn’t anything I wanted to see. So I came away and had a quiet afternoon at home, reading.

Friday 08/26/2021

Took the standard walk. Back pain is obnoxious sitting or getting up, but not an issue walking.

Futzed around variously. At 2pm met with Bert in the auditorium to do more with AV equipment. Still did not resolve an on-going problem with the camera, or resolve how to do a Zoom meeting that shows the activity on stage to remote attendees.

At 5pm, went to Peter & Juthica’s room as invited, for drinks before dinner. Janet was also there. Pleasant conversation then and through dinner which Pru joined.

Thursday 08/26/2021

Did the aerobics. Buzzed off to Shustek for a day of cataloging. Left early so I could attend the annual Trustee-Resident meeting via Zoom. The meat of this is the financial report. Bottom line, Channing House is solvent.

Some on-going things. I have a couple of what should be quite valuable early books from Xerox PARC, that came in a box of donations. Both were published in 1976. One is Personal Dynamic Media and is basically a manifesto for the use of computers in education. Although the author is given as the “Learning Research Group”, I believe that was basically Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg who in the early 70s developed a lot of fundamental concepts at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, including little things like the whole idea of a graphical user interface with overlapping windows.

The second is Smalltalk-72 Instruction Manual by Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay. Now you can find lots of copies of the Smalltalk-80 Instruction Manual in the used book market, selling on eBay etc. for like $10. But this is an earlier version from eight years before and there are no, zero, zippity doo copies of this book anywhere. Either of the books. That’s great, it means they are rare. But without comparables, what are they worth? We usually set used book prices based on what the same books are selling for on Amazon or eBay. But here we got no guidance. This has been the subject of lots of emails between me and other FOPAL people.

Another on-going thing is, lower back pain. I’ve been bothered by a nasty pain around my left hip and up into my lower back for several days. Only very particular movements bring it on, and fortunately it doesn’t happen when walking. But certain specific movements when sitting or in bed bring an ouch. I expect it will go away like this kind of shit does. But I wanted to note it here.

Wednesday 08/25/2021

Today is the day for which I bought tickets to the exhibit “Last Supper in Pompeii” at the Legion of Honor in the city. Initially I proposed this outing to Jean, Darlene and Jessea, but D&J had already seen it, so it came down to just Jean and me. Which worked out fine.

She drove up and parked in our lot at 9:30, and we took my car on up to The City. There were two special exhibits there. The Pompeii one had lots of small domestic items from Pompeii, utensils, cups and bowls, wall frescoes and floor mosaics, to illustrate how the Romans were living pretty comfortably until the town was wiped out in a few hours by hot ash flows from Vesuvius.

A special treat was cooked dormouse, “either as a savoury appetizer or as a dessert (dipped in honey and poppy seeds)”. The exhibit included an actual Glirarium, a big pottery cage used to keep and fatten dormice, and also a special small pottery oven used to roast them. Not clear to me how they were prepared; did they skin them? Need a small sharp knife for that. And at the table, how do you eat one? Probably put the whole thing in our mouth and suck the meat off the bones. They didn’t say that; I’m speculating.

The other exhibit was a number of large pieces by “Afro-fusion” sculptor Wangechi Mutu (do an image search on her name). Really striking stuff, I thought; made me want to take pictures. Here’s a couple.

Anyway, we entered the museum at 10:30, and by 11:30 we had seen all we wanted so started back. At Channing House Jean headed off in her car, and I grabbed a sandwich from the grab-and-go for a quick lunch before my first meeting at 1pm.

Oh, also, I started my laundry.

This was a zoom meeting for volunteers of FOPAL. The first open sale weekend in two years, two weeks back, netted about $17,000, or about half what we got in the old days. There were about half as many people. On the upside, that meant that nobody felt crowded or unsafe. Everyone conformed to the mask rules and generally a good time was had by all.

Next meeting was at 3pm. Continuing my laundry, I watched the start of this in the laundry room folding my underwear. This was a talk by Dr. Sarah Cody, the Public Health Officer for Santa Clara County, who was the first public health official in the country to implement a shelter in place order, March 2020. She described the days leading up to that, getting hold of their first testing kits, starting a program where anyone who came to a county hospital with respiratory issues, and who tested negative for flu, was tested for Covid. After two weeks of that, she looked at the numbers, and compared them to numbers from Italy, and realized that we were on the exact same curve, but just two weeks behind the Italians. So with other regional public health officers, they authored the shelter in place and announced it.

Unfortunately I had to leave that program to join my 4pm meeting, the Channing House Strategic Planning Committee. I have mixed feelings about this committee but it is starting to feel like maybe it will do something productive. This one left a better taste in my mouth than the last one.

Bumped into Craig and Diane and Jerry going down to supper so ate with them.

Tuesday 08/24/2021

Aerobics class was slightly delayed owing the leader being a bit late. From that I sat down to the monthly concert by Stephanie Trick and Paolo but had time really for only half of it before it was time for the writers group. I didn’t have anything to read, but was entertained by some of the others.

Straight down to FOPAL for a long stint, processing several boxes of books and getting a start on a planned triage of several shelves, prior to rearranging some shelves when I have a little more room.

The dinner menu didn’t appeal (two dishes with beets, give me a break). I debated going out for a calzone but eventually settled on a sandwich and beer in my room. I see that breakfast tomorrow features waffles, so I may go down for that, contrary to my usual habit.

Monday 08/23/2021

First thing I walked to PAMF for an 8am appointment with an endocrinologist. This was set up because the person who analyzed my recent CT scan noted a nodule on the adrenal gland, “probable adrenoma”. Dr. Yalamanchi turned out to the the cutest person, a south-Asian (no idea what country that name indicates, maybe Sri Lanka?) woman, small, soft-voiced, but very willing to listen to the me and careful to make sure that I understood everything she had to say.

The “adrenoma” is almost certainly a benign growth, common, not really a concern except that sometimes they can start making extra adrenaline or other hormones. She asked me a ton of questions about conditions that might indicate this was happening, and I was able to answer “no” to all of them. She ordered blood tests, so when I left her, I went down to the lab in the basement and had that blood drawn.

Then off to Peet’s for a nice coffee-and.

Back home I worked on the Chrysler model. I have some new, skinny masking tape which I applied around all the chrome areas on the body. The plan is to apply liquid-rubber “frisket” to the chrome, with the tape keeping its edges nice and neat. Then I pull off the tape and spray primer and color. Then remove the frisket and apply tape again; and apply liquid chrome, restrained by the tape. Then spray clear coat over everything. I can’t really start on that until Friday; the next three days are going to be busy.

I worked on STIP but I am wondering if I really want to continue. It’s turning into a proper book, of which I have completed a first draft of maybe … fifteen percent? In other words, a year-long project at least. For what? Who in the world would want to read a commentary and re-coding of a 40-year-old text?

Sunday 08/22/2021

Morning brought an email from the tech squad, would I help Barbara with a dead Macbook Air?

Around 9am, after I’d read the paper, watered the plants, and done the big crossword, I called her and we met in her lounge, the 10th floor. The Air was completely dead, unresponsive. She said when she plugged it in, the green light came on, indicating a full battery. It didn’t respond to the one trick I knew, to hold the power button down for a long count of 5, which if the CPU is doing anything, will force a power-down, and then you can hit the button again to start it booting up. Nope. So I advised her on where to take it.

Later in the morning Peter called, reminding me I had agreed to help him get a new printer online. So I went to his place and between us we managed to get it properly identified to the system and showed it would print and scan. So that was a success.

As I mentioned the other day I’ve been testing paint on the hood of the Chrysler, and found I need to use primer before the color. I stripped off the paint I’d put on, and sprayed it with a coat of primer. To do that I had to fiddle around with my airbrush, look at couple of YT videos. But got it all working.

Spent a couple hours on STIP. The next program to translate from Pascal to Python is the first really big one. It’ll end up a couple hundred lines of code, I bet. But thinking about how to do it revealed a problem in Kernighan’s design. Well, not so much of a problem in 1980, when things were simpler. I don’t feel like trying to explain it here, partly because I don’t fully grasp it myself yet.

Saturday 08/21/2021

As planned I went down to the southern entrance to the baylands and walked a mile in and back. Lots of pelicans. I had texted Dennis last night but he had to take his car for service so couldn’t join me.

Back at the apartment I continued some experiments with painting the Chrysler model. Learned a bit, in particular I learned that I absolutely must put on a primer coat or the color won’t stick well. I had nice layer of red on my test piece but when I tried using my skinny masking tape on it, up it came. Also learned that I need better masking tape. The Tamiya 5mm (1/5th inch) tape, although made for modeling, does not curve or conform as well as I would like. Ordered some 1/16th inch pin-striping tape.

There was a movie today which I didn’t watch, Marshall, about the early career of the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. At dinner I was talking to Helene and Ilse about racism. One grew up on the south side of Chicago, one in Tennessee, so they had seen racism. Helene commented that in her part of town there was one exclusive suburb where you couldn’t buy in if you were jewish, which her family was.

Meanwhile I grew up in white-bread rural Washington. There was nobody of color at Bethel, as of the 1960 Annual (which I just checked; all white faces in all four classes). However I recalled for them how there was, for one year only, I think my sophomore year, a girl from India. I remember her as very attractive, as Indian woman often are, with the big dark eyes and hair. I also remember thinking I would ask her out, and my mother talking me out of it. Or did she turn me down, and Cecil thought that was good and I shouldn’t pursue it?