Monday 02/21/2020
First item of business was to walk four blocks to the dentist’s office for a semi-annual tooth scraping. Make my teeth sharp and pointy, my neighbor Dr. Margaret says. Sometimes I think six-month call-backs are more for the sake of the dental business than for my dental health but…
After that I headed down to FOPAL. Without lunch. I went into the dining room but there were no servers around and I didn’t feel like sitting and waiting for service so I just went. Parked at Piazza’s next to FOPAL, went in, bought a tuna sandwich and a gatorade and lunched in the car.
Processed 6 boxes of books. Shelves getting a bit crowded so did some triage, sending things that had been sitting for 3-4 months to the bargain room.
Among the books waiting for me were some rejects from the High Value group. These have been coming all this month. It looks as if H.V. is cleaning up a backlog. I don’t recognize the books; they are not ones I sent to H.V. Probably my predecessor, Chuck S., sent them, either before I came on in 2019, or while I was in the hospital in 2020.
The H.V. person puts in the book a pre-printed slip “Not High Value” and a list of reasons to check off. One of them was an 8×11 paperback titled Alto User’s Guide published by Xerox PARC in September, 1979. Instantly recognized it; the Alto was a famous computer design — the first ever to have a bit-mapped display with a graphical user interface, the first to use menus and windows — the computer that Steve Jobs saw and blatantly copied for the Macintosh — the computer on which Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay developed Smalltalk. Reason checked was, “no market”. Well I just sold two very closely related Xerox PARC pubs on eBay for $50 each. I’m pretty sure the same guy who bought those, will want this.
Back home, a note from our IT Tech Paul. I had emailed him for help with the audio mixing console (see 3.079) and he replied suggesting we meet tomorrow. Good. Although I’m not sure he understands that system any better than I do.
Codgerville 