Thursday 04/25/2024
What a weird day. Woke up feeling sub-par. No fever, in fact the opposite, morning temp 96.7, a degree lower than normal. No other symptoms except just blah, no energy. Took a nice nap at 9am. Gave myself a Covid test: negative. At least the ear-ache was gone.
Felt more normalish by 11, so I meant to go to a FOPAL lunch thing at the Mitchell Park Community Center. This is an annual-ish deal where the library thanks its volunteers. I took the Palo Alto Link — municipal Uber-like system — down there instead of driving myself.
Got there at 11:30, scheduled start time. Made out a name-tag for myself, went in. Many tables, at least 15 tables each set for 6 people; big screen showing slides of happy volunteers; caterers laying out trays of whatever, noshes of various kinds. I look around at the 20 or so people there already and don’t recognize anybody. I sit at a table by myself and look at my phone for ten minutes. People keep coming in, but nobody I recognize. I ask myself, self, do I really want to sit with five strangers, through a lunch, hearing people talk about volunteers?
To which I answered, not really. So I got up and left. Walked the mile back up Middlefield to Midtown and had a sandwich at the coffee shop, and took a Lyft the next mile and a half back home. So I’m an asocial coward I guess. Not the first time I’ve run away from a social occasion.
So at 6pm I headed out again, this time in my car, to attend a thing at CHM. This was called Dial In, and it was a panel reviewing the very early history of social networks, specifically computer bulletin boards and Compuserve and Usenet. It was modestly interesting. I was a regular Compuserve user back in the day; I didn’t do much with BBSs.
Codgerville 