Friday 03/10/2023

Took a walk over to Town & Country to buy a pound of coffee at Peet’s. Then got to work on three projects, two I’d been putting off, and one that just came up.

The one that just came up is, an email from Zoom noting that our pro account we use for resident-sponsored events was coming up for renewal. We got this account a year ago, when we had conflicts with staff-run events. We needed a paid account so that we could have meetings run any length (the free account cuts meetings off at 40 minutes) and we paid a whopping $800 extra to host meetings with more than 100 attendees.

This account has been used heavily by everyone on the A/V team. But as far as I know, we’ve never had more than 50 participants on Zoom. So I put out an email to the A/V team asking if anyone knew a reason to renew that large-meeting option. By evening several had replied saying, dump it.

Second pending issue was to update the event-setup checklist for showing movies. I’m going to help Chuck H show an opera DVD Saturday. I have hopes of getting him well enough trained he can do it on his own. To that end I need a clear checklist. We used the previous checklist last month and I noted several changes to make.

So I edited that and sent him a PDF so he could review it, and I printed a paper copy and put it on a clipboard ready to use tomorrow.

Finally I turned to documenting our stage lighting. We have a black box for controlling the lights on the auditorium stage. It is literally a black metal box with lots of buttons and sliders, and also figuratively in that nobody understood it. Last month it stopped working, or seemed to, and then only four of the eight sliders worked. Bert investigated, and found some info. He tracked down the manual for the box online, and figured out that the non-working sliders were due to a breaker that got thrown during a power outage last month.

I did some more research, I read the manual, figured out the technology, and today made up a three-page document with photographs and a diagram explaining it so the black box is a mystery no more. Here’s the diagram I made. There are eight sliders and these are the lights they each control. I used Open Office Draw.

Thursday 03/09/2023

Did the gym machine round.

Main activity today was that I had signed up to do two docent tours at the Museum. Normally I sign up for one, either the noon or the 2pm. This time I signed up for both.

First tour was just a single family, mom dad and 3 kids, roughly 15,12 and 8. Very nice people. Said they were in a hurry so I edited myself to cut the tour down, and managed to finish under 40 minutes. They’ll never know all the good stuff I left out.

For the 2pm tour there were about 15 people, and they were very appreciative. One guy accosted me as I was leaving the building, and complimented the tour, asking if it had ever been video’d, it ought to be recorded. My goodness. What would be the point?

In Covid news, our little outbreak keeps breaking out. One of my 6th floor neighbors has it, I know because I walk past her place and yesterday it sprouted a red dot on the nametag. Then today came an email from another sixth floor person, just the subject “Oh no I have a red dot”.

Remember when I had a red dot? I forget when it was … oh yes, June 21, day 2.177. I had one day of fever but never tested positive for Covid.

Wednesday 03/08/2023

Did the laundry. Sprayed the first coat of blue on the Corvette body. That was about it.

Well, I studied up on the stage light system in our auditorium. I found out several things about it that I had not known.

In the evening I attended a lecture, via Zoom because I want to avoid the Covid Cooties when possible. Except I had to go down to the auditorium early anyway, because David M. called for help. He was getting audio feedback, which is a frequent problem, and couldn’t find it. Soon after I got there he found the problem by himself. So back to my room.

The lecture was about Dr. Russel Van Arsdale Lee, the founder of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) and of Channing House. He founded PAMF in 1930, and started promoting the idea of Channing House after retiring in 1960. Several current residents either worked under him as doctors, or alongside his sons who were also doctors, including Larry Basso. A couple of other residents were treated by him or his sons, or worked at PAMF in other capacities during his tenure. So there were lots of anecdotes. Lee was apparently a visionary but also a strong-willed character with some notable quirks.

Oddly enough, there’s no wikipedia page about him. Here’s a page about him:

https://www.paloaltohistory.org/russel-va-lee.php

Tuesday 03/07/2023

Did the gym round in the morning. Then tackled what had become quite a list of things I’d been putting off doing. Most of them got crossed off by the end of the day.

The writers meeting at 10:45-12 was entertaining. The prompt was, “precious things”. I didn’t write anything this time, but there were nice short essays on a favorite fringed-leather skirt, a necklace bought in a market int Yazd, Iran, and a very large teddy bear — the latter with photos of the bear doing his daily activities. Cute.

One of the put-off things was to read a document that Scott had passed along, about the using a debit card supplied as part of the IBM pension/health benefit. I had a blurry memory of getting that, except that it was mixed in my mind with the very similar California State debit card that I wrote about a few weeks ago (Day 4.071).

I took a casual look through the file folders in my desk, then wrote to Scott saying, I didn’t get one of these IBM debit cards. He wrote back to say, you did and you wrote about it. No I didn’t. Yes you did, he said, and pointed to Day 4.03. Oh! Look, a lengthy discussion about calling IBM pension support and getting info on this debit card. Well, shit. I went back to my desk and quickly turned up the exact IBM debit card, attached to a sheet with my notes on how to use it. (It can be used to pay for prescription drugs and dental care, mostly.)

Until I was looking at the blog post, I’d have sworn there was no such card. This doesn’t say good things about my brain.

Monday 03/06/2023

Two big events today, one to attend, one to run.

First up at 9am was a meeting chaired by Rhonda to introduce a new option for in-house medical care.

History: Until 2018, PAMF doctors held regular weekly office hours at Channing House. This was a result of the founding of CH by Dr. Russell Lee, one of the founders of PAMF. Around 2018 PAMF was bought up by Sutter Health and that relationship ended. Rhonda said that negotiations went on with Sutter Health for some time but Sutter was recalcitrant, insisting on a very sizeable regular payment for very limited coverage. In any event, the weekly office hours by PAMF doctors only benefited residents who used PAMF. That’s most of them, but there are some with Kaiser coverage, and others.

Recently a total of five PAMF doctors have announced retirement, affecting nearly 100 IL residents. So lots of people looking for new doctors anyway, and Sutter Health being typically slow and incommunicative about assigning new doctors. It seems there is also a doctor shortage generally. Problems problems.

So today CH has a new medical partner, Pine Park Health. This is a company that specializes in providing in-home medical care for residents of senior facilities. Their model is, they become your new primary care physician. Your insurance doesn’t change. Like any PCP, they bill your insurer for whatever they do, they have access to all your records, and they can make referrals.You keep all your existing specialists, cardiologists, surgeons, whatever. But you call them whenever you need something, or attend an in-house clinic day. They provide a minimum of 1 day a week of in-house clinic, 2 days a week or more depending on how many people sign up with them. They also provide phone consults, 7 days, 9-5; and do video visits if needed.

The in-house care is actually not by an MD but a Nurse Practitioner. The NP’s are supervised by an MD, one specific MD, Dr. Denise Yun, who was there at the meeting today to answer questions. Since she is the one-and-only MD they have for the Bay Area, how does she do it? She asserted — and I later verified with my neighbor Dr. Margaret — that a typical PCP has over 2,000 people on their “slate”. Most people see their PCP once or twice a year. (That’s still a lot of people. 2000/300 == 7 annual checkups a day, roughly. Do doctors do that many checkups, over and above whatever illnesses people come in with? No surprise it is hard to get an appointment.) Anyway, Dr Yun asserted that as the Pine Park Bay Area MD she has fewer, more like 1,800, people on her “slate”, and doesn’t see them directly except as the NP’s call her in.

So that’s the solution that CH is able to offer, for in-house medical care. If anyone wants to switch, they are making it very easy, and I’m sure the simplicity (no change of insurance) and convenience (in-house treatment) are attractive for the approximately 100 being jerked around by PAMF right now. My PCP is nowhere near retirement and I like her, so I don’t plan to change. I might at some future point if it got difficult to go to her office.

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That took until 10:30, which left just 30 minutes to set up for Gigi’s Book Talk. I have to say, that Gerald of IT made a hash out of the A/V for Rhonda’s meeting. She couldn’t advance her slides with the clicker; he didn’t mute zoom attendees as they joined so there was chit-chat from them; there were mic problems galore.

I am very pleased to say that Gigi’s talk came off perfectly. No mic or audio problems; she could advance her own slides, etc. Not only did it run smoothly but I was also able to make a video recording of the talk on my other computer. We have often talked about the ability to record events directly, but to date we have always run them as Zoom meetings and used Zoom to record. This wasn’t zoom, and I managed the recording all by my little self. Running two MacBooks like a boss.

The rest of the day was empty and I just wasted it. (But now I’ve made a list of like 6 things I need to catch up on tomorrow.)

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Late news: 6 IL residents and 3 staff members have tested positive for Covid. There was a bus load of people who rode to the Ballet in SF yesterday (Sunday) and someone among them had Covid. Now everyone on the bus is under contact warning, meaning they have to avoid the dining room and public spaces and wear masks, while testing daily. Unfortunately several have already tested positive.

More unfortunately (also ironically), probably some of those now testing positive, also attended this morning’s meeting about in-house health care. If so, we might be on the verge of a good solid breakout. Tomorrow will tell.

Sunday 03/05/2023

After the usual Sunday morning routine, I went down to FOPAL. This is the week preceding the monthly sale, and I need to process any waiting donations, and put my section in order for the sale. Ordinarily I would do this on Monday but tomorrow promises to be a very busy day, and today was not.

So I spent two hours pricing and shelving books. Then back in time for lunch. Later I worked on the Corvette model, finishing the 472 V8. The body paint I ordered has only shipped today so it will be a few days before I can paint the body, but I can start on the chassis if I like.

Saturday 03/04/2023

In the morning I painted a few 427 engine parts. Then at 11 I went off to the Museum to lead the noon tour. About 25 people, nice mix of ages, it went well.

Chilling in the afternoon, I got an email from Gigi. Her talk on Monday, by her choice, is not going to be zoomed. But somebody who can’t come asked her if it would be recorded and put up on the Channing House Vimeo channel with our other events. Well — no, because we make the recordings as a feature of the zoom event. However I have said in the past that we could record events without zoom. But can I really?

I grab the laptop and a handful of adapters of various kinds and head down to the auditorium. Patch the ceiling camera into one USB port. Patch the audio from the PA system into another USB port. Quicktime Player, File > New Video Recording. Choose the external camera and external mic. Adjust audio levels. Aha. Yes, there is the stage, I can frame the big screen so her pictures will be visible, I can pan left to get her in the picture when she is just talking. Voice in a microphone comes through clear. Yeah. I can do this.

Oh I should note: the SWBB team continued to disappoint me, by losing yesterday to UCLA in the PAC-12 tournament semifinals. I feel better about not going to Seattle to see them in the NCAAs. I’m pretty sure they will lose there.

Friday 03/03/2023

First up, went for the standard walk. All good.

Spent an hour going over the first dozen bits of the Corvette, which are the parts that will make up the 427 V-8.

Noticed that SFJazz was going to stream a live concert tonight featuring Jake Shimabukuro, the ukulele-ist virtuoso. I last hear Jake on, can you believe it, Day 0.003. I noted then that his show was bit over-long.

Tonight I decided to show the stream on the big screen on the 11th floor. A couple of other people joined me. As before, Jake’s show was a bit too long. The other people left before the end, and then I shut it down before his final number.

Thursday 03/02/2023

Notice the .091? There are 365 days in a year, and one quarter of that is 91 (and a fraction, duh). One-fourth of a year gone! (This blog’s year started on December 3.)

After the usual tidy-up so the apartment wouldn’t look like a dump to the cleaning lady, I headed off to the Yosemite warehouse for a day of artifact work. Aurora, the curator, was a little distracted today because after lunch she had a visitor, a woman who is currently in charge of the collection at the Hiller Aviation Museum. In exchange for showing her around, Aurora hopes that she (and possibly some of us volunteers) will get a tour of the restoration shop at Hiller. We’ll see.

The actual artifact work today involved the ECHO IV, the first actual “home” computer. The problem was, one of the curators had noticed that the collection included about 100 nearly identical circuit cards all titled “ECHO IV Module”. Here’s one example. That curator was aware that there was also a complete cabinet named ECHO IV, and was concerned that maybe we had pulled all the circuit cards out of it?

But when Aurora found a cabinet labeled “ECHO IV cabinet” the modules in it didn’t look like those, and was at a loss. Here was where I got to shine, because I was there when we cataloged the ECHO IV. A little searching on my phone and I found the pics I had taken at the time, which turned out to be: August 2015! And I knew for a fact there was a different cabinet, one that was packed with plenty of those circuit modules. Where was it? Aurora couldn’t find it in the catalog system.

So I spent some time walking around the warehouse craning my neck to look up into the pallet racking trying to spot it. In the end another volunteer, Allen Baum, spotted it. Once we knew the location it was easy to find it in the catalog, I still don’t know why it hadn’t turned up in the initial searches. With all the info in hand, I made a couple of corrections to the catalog records so things were linked to each other better.

Then I remembered that I had actually written an article about the ECHO IV at the time (here it is). Plus I had found other source material like an article in Popular Mechanics, and one in BYTE, and it turns out that CHM actually has a video of James Sutherland describing how he built this first-ever in-home computer on the CHM YouTube channel (skip to about 18:00 to get to the interesting stuff).

So I spent a couple of hours re-finding all these sources online and putting together a list for Aurora. Leaving it to her to figure out which and how to integrate those into the catalog record.

Wednesday 03/01/2023

Went for a walk in the morning. The standard walk. It was ok. The creek is running very strong with brown water, after the rain.

Later in the morning I did something nice for my fellow residents. March 1 is when you can order a year’s on-street parking permit from the city of Palo Alto. The website where you do this is an appalling mess of bad UI design, or so I remembered from last year, and yes, it has not improved. The process is very complicated.

Just to start with you have to sign in using your account number. You know, the account number they assigned to you a year ago? You saved that, didn’t you? Well, probably, if you search your email history you can find the receipt email from last year.

Later on in the process you have to upload digital images of your vehicle registration and your photo ID. You have those around, right? And mind you they have to be .jpg files. Not .jpeg, oh no perish the thought. And if they are .png, well, it lets you know with a “server error” diagnostic message.

I got to the end of the process and clicked Cancel, then went back to the start and did it all over, documenting each step. Then I sent an email to CHBB explaining how to do it. Several people thanked me later.

In the afternoon I opened the box of the 67 Corvette Sting Ray. It looks like a very detailed model. It will be a lot of work to do it proper justice.

The red thing is a sprue whose only content is four adorable tiny bullet-shaped tail light lenses. I spent an hour going over the body and every piece that will attach to it (hood, windows, bumpers etc). The point is to make sure everything fits perfectly now. Later, when the body is painted, it is very important that added parts just drop into place with no sanding or scraping or fitting. So I dry-fitted all the bits that go directly on the body.