Saturday 08/13/2022

Pretty much a nothing day, I didn’t leave the building.

Last night before I went to bed I did something I’d been thinking about, namely, set up the Nikon on a tripod with the 500mm mirror lens pointing at the hummingbird feeder. From about 8 feet distance, its field of view nicely frames a hummingbird’s size. With the sun up this morning I shot a bunch of pictures, exactly one of which was sharp and well composed. I shared it on the CHBB list and got lots of nice reactions back.

Not quite perfect, a perfect shot would not have cropped off the end of her tail.

Also yesterday a new flash drive arrived from Amazon. One by a name-brand maker, SanDisk, so presumably not fake garbage like the previous one. I put it to work copying the Users folders from Lois’s old iMac, so as I promised her I would have all of her old files if she needed them (she won’t). Then before supper I started the machine reformatting the hard drive with a “secure erase” meaning it writes every sector twice. I am hoping that this will improve its horrible slow performance. That took 2 hours. Meanwhile I cleaned its filthy keyboard and the case and screen. Now it is re-installing the OS. I can probably see it booting before bedtime.

At 2pm I went down to the auditorium to run a movie. Karen who manages the movie series had chosen Lion about an Indian orphan who uses Google Earth to figure out where he was born and go back and (spoiler) find his mother. I was ok with it to about the half-way point where they introduce a lot of (I thought) unnecessary family conflict and misunderstandings, so I mentally checked out and read a book on my phone.

Friday 08/12/2022

Took the standard walk for the first time in a while; it was fine. About the only other thing I did today was to meet with the lawyer recommended by Prime Fiduciary, for the task of rewriting my family trust (technically it is now a “survivor trust”) to have the professionals as successor trustee. We talked about a few other modifications and edits, and it all seems pretty easy. Should be wrapped up in a week or two at the most.

The lawyer is a 30-something blonde lady with a bubbly personality. The world is being run by the children now (the old geezer huffed).

Thursday 08/11/2022

The main thing today was to help set up sis-in-law Jean with a cell phone. Her late husband Bill set them up with Verizon wireless contract years ago. He had an in-house wireless router that distributed the 3G signal to three wireless phones around the house. Recently Verizon notified her that they were going to shut down 3G service and she would have to upgrade, which she took as a cue to finally switch to a smartphone. After looking at various options, I finally said, heck, we’ll just add you as a line on my T-mobile account. So that was what we were to do, today.

I picked her up at home and we went to her local T-mobile store, half a mile away. Unfortunately their San Antonio road store was closed for remodeling and they were getting an overflow of customers. We were third on the list and waited an hour. Then the rep said what we needed first, was a full account number and a transfer PIN from Verizon. Which meant going to a Verizon store. The nearest was in Cupertino, so off we went. After having gotten the requisite numbers there, we had lunch at a handy Paris Baguette store. Back in the car, I was going to use Apple Maps to find my way back to the Mountain View T-Mobile but it showed me there was a T-Mobile store right across the street from where we were parked. So we went there. The T-Mobile rep Yuri was super helpful and spent an hour with us, helping Jean get a start with her new iPhone 13 Mini.

A hangup, which was dreadfully reminiscent of recent tech calls at Channing House, was that Jean has no idea of their iCloud password. So we tried to reset the iCloud password but she failed to correctly answer the security questions that Bill had set up probably back in 2010 or so. Yuri tried to get the new phone set up to receive Jean’s mail but again she didn’t have the password to her comcast mail account. Sigh.

So back to her place where her iMac already knows the password for the email (but not for the iCloud, too bad). I thought I was going to be clever and use the Keychain app to show all these passwords. However, Keychain wanted something I had never heard of, a keychain password. I am logged in as an administrator, dammit. However I got Firefox to divulge the comcast.net password, haha. So we got the iPhone receiving mail. But weren’t able to get the Apple ID straightened out. Jean is going to keep trying on that, and meanwhile learning other apps. She also is taking on a new roommate/house-share, Sally, who also has an iPhone and will be able to answer questions.

That was about it for the day.

Wednesday 08/10/2022

Main activity today was to lead a tour of 20 Apple employees at the museum. Given a knowledgeable group and a private tour, I stretched out to some topics I don’t normally do, but kept them to the end.

Back home I worked on Lois’s iMac. This is a 2014-era iMac that Lois has replaced. It was running very slowly and I want to try reformatting the hard disk to see if it will go faster. But before I do that, I promised I would save the files to an external drive. Although she prepped her new iMac from a backup of this one, she is afraid there might be something she missed.

To do a backup I need a large capacity flash drive, so I bought one off Amazon. Unfortunately after wasting a couple of hours formatting it and having it fail, I looked at the reviews on Amazon and discovered others violently dissing it as a fraud and a scam. So I wasted $30 on a supposedly 1TB thumb drive that doesn’t work. I ordered another from a reputable maker. Meanwhile I’m trying to take dumps of specific users (there are 4 user folders defined on this system and I’m not sure which of them have useful files) onto a smaller thumb drive, and the iMac is behaving strangely. It’s kind of buggered, basically. She was smart to replace it when she did. I am reading up at ifixit.com on how to replace its hard drive with an SSD, but I am wondering if it’s worth it, given that it can’t run the latest OS.

I updated my own 27-inch iMac (2015 retina) and found that it, too can’t run the latest OS, only the one before.

In lieu of a floor meeting, because it’s tradition to have no formal meetings in August, we had a 6th floor cocktail party this afternoon. After cheese and crackers and wine I was nodding off. Such a party animal I am.

Tuesday 08/09/2022

First thing was a birding expedition of sorts, with next-door neighbor Carolyn. In the mornings there is a… crow? that sits somewhere above our apartments and makes a noise. It kind of says RALPH! very loudly, but spaced out at about 1-minute intervals. Or maybe not RALPH! exactly, the same noise that a baseball umpire makes to say “strike!”. I find it only mildly annoying, I’m up when it starts soon after sun-up. But apparently Carolyn wants to sleep with her patio door open. But we can’t agree on where exactly the noise is coming from, the big redwood alongside the building? or to me it sounds like it’s in the middle of the building, although that seems unlikely as it would have to be standing on somebody’s railing.

Anyway at 7:30 she came by and we went to listen from various points, in the fire stairs at the end, from the roof, from the lounge patio of the 8th and 7th floors. Unfortunately this morning the bird shut up early and we heard nothing.

At 11 it was time for the writers meeting. I had nothing to read, but enjoyed hearing the other people’s work.

After lunch I had a frustrating tech call: a resident, Randy, can’t get his email. Somehow for reasons unknown, his Mac can’t log in to his Yahoo account to get mail. I spent a frustrating hour trying to get Yahoo — which is now really AT&T, only his email is PacBell.net — one of them to let him reset his password. Finally I gave up. Bert will refer him to a professional outside tech person.

I spent some time getting my purchase of tickets for the next season at the Pear Theater right. Several of my neighbors had decided on the dates they were going so I was trying to get seats on the same dates.

And somewhere in their I did my laundry. Normally on Wednesday but tomorrow I have a docent tour in the morning.

Monday 08/08/2022

A nice easy start to the day. No walk, just tidy up things I neglected over the past few days owing to VCF. Paid a bill, cleaned up the kitchen. At 11 I drove down to FOPAL where I turned over the cash box and credit card iPad to the Susan the treasurer. Then spent two hours processing books and finalizing my section for the sale weekend coming up.

Back home I had a couple of hours of which at least one was a deep nap. Then off again, this time to PAMF to for a routine visit with Dr. Dibiase, cardiologist. I look fine, but should start exercising again. I will, when the CH gym is reopened later this month.

After supper I stood by David M while he set up an event, a talk by a guy who was born in a minority sect in Afghanistan, and with his family found refuge in Canada, and has a long academic record in various universities, currently working at Stanford. He told about the various difficulties of Afghans under the Taliban, and about the complexities of Afghan society split among ethnicities and factions.

Sunday 08/07/2022

Up at 5, so I could have coffee and water the plants etc. before leaving at 7:30. The second day standing behind a table at VCF went well, with help from Dennis. We started boxing up our wares at 4pm and had everything stowed back to the storage room at FOPAL by 5:30. Which meant I got home in time to eat in the dining room. Then a little while relaxing and then early to bed.

Saturday 08/06/2022

Up and out early to set up our table at the Museum. Got there about 8am, and for the record, left about 6pm.

Dennis stopped by around 1pm and spelled me and Frank for a couple of hours, which was a much-appreciated break.

When we counted the take, we had taken in just over $600, mostly cash, some credit and PayPal. Which since we sold most books for $2, suggests we moved about 300 books.

Nearing 6:30 as I got near home, which was nearing closing time for the CH dining room, so I redirected to Town&Country and had a hamburger and shake from Kirk’s. Then home to kick back and go to bed early.

Friday 08/05/2022

Today was the big day to assemble as a crew and move to the Vintage Computer Fest, the boxes of Vintage Computer books we have been saving since last year’s fest. I met with John, the FOPAL treasurer at 12, to get the iPad and the Square card reader, and the cash box with $150 in change in it.

Then at 1 Frank showed up and we three and John’s daughter Iliana began moving boxes out of the storage closet they’d been in, to where the truck could park. Same storage closet has many boxes of LP records. They’ll have to have a vinyl sale soon, the one two years ago was very successful.

Then Allen arrived with a pickup truck already half full of the old books and stuff he meant to sell in the consignment area, and we loaded him up with 15 boxes, and put the last 6 in my Prius, and off to the CHM.

There we used hand trucks to move many boxes through the loading dock up the freight elevator, to our tables. And started putting books out, trying to organize them and make them look nice. A long two hours of that. About 4:45 I declared it done enough, we could finish up before the show opens tomorrow. I dropped Frank and the hand truck at FOPAL and came on home. Pretty tired. But glad to have this part done, I’ve been trying to get this coordinated for days it feels like. Actually minding the tables and selling books for 8 hours two days in a row will be easy.

Thursday 08/04/2022

I meant to show this picture yesterday. Working on the Studebaker model. The kit contains two little molded coil-over shock absorbers. The molding doesn’t actually show the shocks, just the coil part with a solid center. But I figured if I painted inside red and the outer edges of the coils with metal (“oily steel” is the name of the paint), the eye would be fooled into seeing a red shock inside a metal coil. And it kinda works.

Big event this morning was an appointment with a Fiduciary, a person licensed to handle money and related affairs. This is to attach a professional agency as the Successor Trustee to my trust, to handle the termination of my estate after I die. Currently that’s Dennis. While I’m sure he could handle the job, it would be an unkind burden. Much better to have a pro doing it. So the appointment was with Charley at Prime Fiduciary in Los Altos. There is paperwork still to be done which must be done by a lawyer. He recommended one, and on return to CH I emailed her. And shortly got an “on vacation” email back. So that’s on hold for another two weeks until she gets back.

On the way back from Los Altos I stopped at the Copy Factory and picked up the posters for the VCF.

I was rudely wakened from a nice nap about 3pm by a phone call, from Leah the hair dresser reminding me that my haircut appointment was now.

After supper I spent two hours happily absorbed in software. I had downloaded my Tetris experiments. This was in Python using the Qt5 GUI package. However Qt5 is out of date and I had to modify the code to use the next release, Qt6. This took an hour of fiddling, running the code, having it stop on an error where a name had changed or something, fix that, repeat. But after a while, viola, up it came. Just over 1500 lines of code (well, counting extensive comments) and it looks like it’s working. Gonna play me some Tetris.