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.
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.
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.
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.
Started the day in the gym, doing the round of machines. Took one tech squad call. Then it was time for the writers meeting. The cue “music that affects you” brought out about 12 mini-essays. Mine (see yesterday) was well-received. Also another person recognized the name of my late neighbor Harriet Goldeen.
After lunch I finished up the tax preparation workbook. I think I’ve whined already that in prior years, they had an online interactive workbook, but they are switching to a new system so had to go with a straight 28-page PDF. Well, I fixed that. I printed their workbook (on used paper). I filled it out. (In the end there were only about 8 pages where I had to enter anything.) Then I took it and a thumb drive down to the big Ricoh copier in the office area. That big ol’ copier has a scanner function. You stick in your USB memory stick and put your 28-page document in the input tray and press “go” and flick flick flick it makes a PDF out of your document.
Then I uploaded the filled out workbook PDF back to the preparer’s ShareFile site along with all the other forms, the 1099s and so forth.
Had a nice supper with Caroline and the Thompsons. After, I did a lot of online shopping to find the paint I want for the Sting Ray model and ordered it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll open that box.
It was raining so I walked indoors, two miles on the treadmill.
At 10 I went down to the auditorium and set up for Gigi to rehearse her talk. This went very well. Two of the 45 pictures I had set up in a slide show were in the wrong order, but we fixed that. Her talk is a nice 45 minutes long and there were not too many pictures as I had feared. Gigi is Chinese, a couple of years older than me. She got her law degree at Yale, practiced law, served on the SEC, was president of the local Rotary, raised a couple of over-achieving kids, has several cute grandkids. Through all of that her English is still heavily accented. But her talk is, as one would expect from her background, well organized and presented clearly.
After lunch I did another couple hours filling out my tax workbook. I think I’m nearly done.
Evening I noticed emails piling up for tomorrow’s writers meeting. That’s what the writers do, they send their pieces in email to our group mailing list, so by Tuesday morning there will be 8 or 10 emails with “[CHWriters]” in the subject line. The cue this week is “music that moves you.” That called to mind a couple of moments from my past. So here’s what I have to read tomorrow.
Two times a piece of music has arrested me, pierced my mind, forced me to pay attention, made me play it over and over. I am slightly ashamed to say that in both cases the music was decidedly popular, obvious, plebeian. Others might get a transcendent taste of the divine from hearing an oratorio or symphony. My ear is decidedly lower-class.
The second time was sometime in the 1980s. I know where I was: driving alone, northbound on 101, somewhere around Gilroy. I do not know what radio station I was tuned to; but that station played Swanee River Boogie performed by Dave Alexander. I can’t find that recording online, but a reasonably similar performance is here:
I had probably heard boogie-woogie piano before but this just riveted me. All I got from the broadcast was the name of the performer, but that was enough. I stopped on the way home at Tower Records and found the album. Got home to Tasso Street and put it on. I remember I was so high on the performance that I wanted to share my delight with my next-door neighbors, the Goldeens. Come over and hear this fabulous piano piece, I said. Harriet Goldeen was a pianist and a piano teacher. I can remember her trying to control her face as the record started and she realized what style of piano it was. She worked really hard to not say anything negative, but left as soon as the track was finished.
The other time was earlier, 1970. I was living alone in a basement apartment in Daly City. Minimal furnishings, no TV or radio or — of course — no computer. (How did we survive?) I had a portable record player with crappy little speakers. Late one lonely evening I put on Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection album for the first time. Somehow Burn Down the Mission just came up out of the silence of that lonely room and for a few minutes, owned me. I played the track over and over.
If you want to remember the song, it’s here:
It moves through a lot of phases in 7 minutes and has quite complex instrumentation and shifting rhythms.
There’s really nothing more to say. These were moments when the combination of music and a phase in the evolution of my brain combined to make a permanent mark on my memory. I draw no conclusions about myself or the music.
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More details: Dave Alexander, known later in life as Omar Sharriff, had a minor career as a blues pianist and recording artist. The kid in the video, Luka Sestak, is now grown up, still performs, and has played at SFJazz a couple of times. Sir Elton John recently retired from performing after a long and fruitful creative career.
Fiddled around in the morning. Decided to do my Monday stint at FOPAL on Sunday instead. Spent three hours down there, pricing computer books and sorting.
In the evening I set up a mic for the “Jazzy Trio”, Stew Arlene and Kay, to play a concert of pop songs in the lobby. Kay and Arlene are pretty skilled on flute and piano respectively. Stew is energetic and enthusiastic on percussion.
Lazed around for the morning. At 11am, departed for the museum to lead the noon tour. Had a good group of 20 or so, varied ages, nice tour.
At 6, went up to 11 to join the rest of the large committee that put on the sock hop. Two cooks had prepared two kinds of chili, veggie and meat, plus drinks and desserts left over from the snacks bought for the event. We’ve continued to receive congratulations on what a successful fun event that was, so all in a self-congratulatory mood. They are already planning to do a similar event in September, but with country and western music. Much debate around the table who to include. Johnny Cash of course, Hank Williams, I voted for Patsy Cline, etc.
There was rain in the morning so I went down to the gym and walked a mile on the treadmill (lazy dog). Then I created a lengthy to-do list of minor things that had been on the back of my mind, and killed the list. One item: actually cutting back the begonias. Poor things. I also processed the few pictures I wanted to keep from the car museum.
At 4pm I met, on zoom, with the A/V team, or most of it. Two didn’t show. Nothing of note there.
Did the gym round in the morning, then as usual tidied the apartment in prep for housekeeping day.
Then did an hours worth of stuff toward the taxes. Should be able to have it all done by the end of the month, except I am still pending receipt of “realized gains and losses” reports from 3 of the five Schwab accounts.
At 11:45 I went down to board the bus for a field trip, this one to the Academy of Arts Auto Museum, on Van Ness Ave., coincidentally just a few blocks from where in 1962, I worked as a general flunky at the Cadillac dealership. I had never heard of the Academy of Arts, even though they claim to have been founded in 1929. So I didn’t know that they teach Industrial Design, and the auto collection, which started as a private collection and was then gifted to the Academy, is maintained by that department.
It’s housed in a nice building that, back when I was working at Cadillac, was the local Plymouth dealership, and like all those early dealerships, very grand with tile floors and classic columns. There were 40 vehicles on display out of what was said to be a total collection of over 150. Some grand rich-people cars from the 20s, some more contemporary like the Tucker (third ever made out of a total of 50), and a 63 Sting Ray, and so on. It was a pleasant outing. I took some pictures and will throw a few in here now.
The gang gets intro from docent.Not a standard color for a Mercedes: this one was owned by Jennie Craig (of diet fame) who had it repainted a more feminine color.Deusenberg pipesEngine bay of a Packard 12.
Codgerville 