Tuesday 02/17/2026
In the morning I took a radical step. I subscribed to the SF Chronicle. Back story: ever since we moved into our house in Palo Alto, 1974 or so, we took the SJ Mercury. Nearly 50 years, geez. But the paper has been getting skinnier and skinnier, while the bill they send me each quarter has gone up ane up. Each of the last four or five quarters I have struggled with whether it’s worth it. The latest bill for the next quarter is for over $700, an increase of at least 10%. That’s it. I’ve subscribed to daily delivery of the Chron at less than half that. When I see it arriving with regularity I will call up the Merc and cancel.
Then I had another go at trying to get into my United Health Care account. And again failed and again went through the multi-step, 45-minute long script of their chat assistance and eventually talking to a real person who said that a technical person would process the “support ticket” and get back to me in — wait for it — thirty days.
Then I called up the IBM Benefits support number. This is a branch of Fidelity which is only responsible for the pension, not the health care, but I told that operator that I wanted to escalate a complaint about the health care support. She said she could send a “comment” to IBM corporate, which I asked her to do.
Time for the writers meeting. The prompt was not one that interested me, and only a few people wrote, so kind of a flat meeting. After lunch I went into the auditorium and played around with the settings of the video cameras. The center one of the three had a bad white balance, and I managed to get it to match the other two somewhat better. Then I attended the line dance class.
In the evening was the bimonthly movie, this time Annie Hall. I had never seen it. Very cute, very intellectual.
Codgerville 