Not much to do today. I took a walk. I worked on the model car. I started to mess around with one of my old programs. You see, all my old programs, at least the ones I wrote in the last 15 years, are on GitHub. Just sitting there, waiting for me to come back and finish them. Or at least, to read them. So something reminded me recently of one of them and I started re-reading my old code, and there is very little reading more fascinating that one’s own writing, as any writer will tell you. So I got to wondering, if I updated one of these to use the current version of all the libraries it includes, would it still run. So I tried, and it ran. I may just keep playing around. It’s very seductive. You can really wallow in this stuff, just lose yourself. Well, I can, I don’t know about you, but I can just shut out the world and disappear into this stuff.

Tuesday 08/02/2022

Before the writers group I put in an hour on the Studebaker model, and more than an hour on various emails, trying to coordinate the FOPAL book sale at the vintage computer fest which is coming up this weekend. Simple enough, we need somebody with a truck or van to move 20 boxes of books, and access to the FOPAL cash box and credit card gear. And I wanted to make a couple of posters.

Four of us went out to lunch at Casa Lupe, then I had a nap, and then more emails. The posters, it turns out, can be made at the Copy Factory, all you need aside from a credit card is a PDF of what your sign should say. Oh. I had the text in mind (Frame your vintage computer in period books) but had given no thought to layout or art or anything.

So at 3pm I tackled that and in not too long I had found clip art and designed a poster and made a PDF and uploaded it and there you are. Sometimes I amaze myself.

The Copy Factory has a really usable web interface for specifying your poster and ordering it. So I should have two of those by Thursday.

Monday 08/01/2022

Took the standard walk first thing; all good. Soon it was time to set up for an event in the auditorium. I almost got everything right. Speaker was interesting, famous historian Professor Andrew Roberts on his biography of King George III. I got the zoom meeting started right and all, but I made a wee mistake in the audio so that the zoom attendees were not able to ask questions back to the auditorium. Simple stupid oversight that I figured out five minutes after the event was over.

Then off to FOPAL where I found 8 boxes of donations, which yielded about 1 box of saleable books. While there I spoke to Janette, the boss of it, asking for help setting up for our sale at the Vintage Computer Fest this coming weekend. She later sent an email to several people which I hope will get the help I need.

Today was the first Monday which is mixer dinner day. If you go down in time (there are a limited number of tickets) you can draw a number that randomizes you to a table of other residents. The idea is to dine with people you don’t ordinarily see. I get the next to last ticket, and dined with some people I didn’t know that well.

Tomorrow is the writers group and the topic is “technology and you”. Obvs. I can’t pass that one up. Here is what I wrote in about 90 minutes. Read to the end, I’m quite pleased with the punchline.

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In truth I think I am just a tiny bit onto the edge of the autism spectrum, if that can be allowed as an excuse, if not an explanation, for a lifelong fascination with things, accompanied by a lifelong disinterest in people. Physical things, and how they work, have engaged me from earliest childhood. Here I am fascinated by a thing at age 3.

I have brought that same focused attention to things ever since. From this age through high school my favorite things were automobiles. I learned everything there was to know about them. Each month the school library would get a new copy of Car and Driver and I would be the first to read it. I disassembled cars and sometimes reassembled them successfully. I had a small motorcycle that I completely rebuilt. (I never had the money, the access to tools, or the mentoring needed to build a proper custom vehicle.)

I never stopped caring about cars, but I added electronic devices to my interests. I mastered radio and hi-fi amplifier circuits, first with vacuum tubes and then transistors. When I dropped out of college I took a year of electronics vocational school, in order to pass the Federal Communications Commission exam to operate broadcast transmitters. (If you have a transmitter with more than 1000 watts of power, I’m your boy.)

While in fact I never laid a finger on such a transmitter, that license got me other jobs, first with the telephone company — which had buildings full of quite boring things in which I quickly lost interest — and then with IBM, which had a wide range of absolutely delightful things, endlessly complex yet logical, some mechanical, like keypunches and card sorters, and then the electronic ones, the computers.

And then I realized that the computers were only the physical arena for a vastly wider, near-infinite, array, of entrancing mental things called “Software”. You may imagine me as a 30-year-old peering into a CRT terminal with exactly the same intensity as 3-year-old me stared into that headlight.

I’ve never thought of “Technology” as something separate from me or from life. Life is really all the things, mostly interesting, some boring, all connected by common principles, one interest leading to another. Oh, sure, there’s people too. They’re important. You have to say that, so they’ll stop bothering you and let you get back to your things.

Sunday 07/31/2022

Slept in, as much as I ever do, until 7. After reading the paper and watering the plants I took my computer and the crossword puzzle and drove to Midtown. Had an omelet for breakfast sitting outside.

Went back home, finalized and sent the letter to Rhonda urging resident input on the hiring of a new IT director. Then since I had a clean car with a full tank of gas, I went for a drive. I looked around for anybody to accompany me but the halls were empty. Too many of my neighbors go to church or visit family on Sunday mornings.

Did some work on the Studebaker. Finalized the engine assembly and the dashboard.

At 6:30 I met Patty in the lobby and we got in the car of her friend Pat, and rode the less than a mile to the Lucy Stern center to see Nan and the Lower Body. That is a play about the work of Dr. Papanicolaou, inventor of the Pap smear, and a woman who worked with him, and their respective spouses. It was fairly strong and certainly well-produced and acted. I was commenting on the way back that I don’t like having my emotions played with by a plot and resist it.

Anyway that was the third night out in a row, although this one is ending at my normal bedtime.

Saturday 07/30/2022

Spent a couple of hours composing a letter to be sent to the management here re hiring a new IT director, and getting some of my colleagues to comment on it. Took the car out to get it washed. Worked on the Studebaker model a bit.

At 4:40 Scott & June pulled in, we got in my car and off to SFJazz to see Elvin Bishop and Charlie Musselwhite. A more satisfying concert than last night, mainly because it was one 90 minute set instead of two 40 minute ones. I would have happily listened to Marcia Ball for 90 minutes. Anyway, a good time with nice people.

Friday 07/29/2022

Went for the standard walk in the morning and felt fine. The next item on my calendar was to move the car up to the street level, preparing for a brisk 5pm departure. However about 1pm I got an assignment from the tech squad: Dave T. (yes, another David, to go with David G and David M) was having trouble with his iMac.

This iMac was just being glacially slow, taking forever to respond to the simplest click. I couldn’t find a cause, except that a couple of things I saw strongly suggested that it was having repeated disk errors and recovering from them. I spent an hour fooling with it. Finally I said the only solution I know is to get another computer (this one was from 2015). An hour later Dave T. called me and said he had ordered a new computer. I think this one, similar to Lois’s of a few days ago, could be fixed if its hard disk was given a low-level format and the OS reinstalled. But I’m not sure and that’s a lot of trouble to go to. Even when it has a full backup, as this one did.

At 4pm was the A/V committee meeting for the month, to allocate events of August to volunteers. Then we talked about what is likely to come from the recent (two days ago) resignation of Vanessa, the staff IT director.

At 5pm I met in the lobby with Sandy to leave for a concert in the City as SFJazz. This is quite an adventure, driving into town, parking in the public garage, eating in a restaurant, attending a concert. Heavy stuff!

The concert was two acts, C.J. Chenier (son of a famous Zydeco accordianist), and Marcia Ball, described this way. I had expected these two New Orleans musicians to perform together, but not so. Chenier was first, played from 7:30 to about 8:40, then there was a 20 minute break while they cleared the stage of everything but the drum kit, and set up for Marcia Ball’s band. Then they came on and played. This was not the greatest format. For one thing, they try to finish by 10pm, and this limited each act to an hour. It also caused me some stress as I had heard the garage I used closed at 10, and I was picturing my car being locked in if they ran over.

In the end we got to the garage about 10:05, along with several other people, and one exit was already blocked but another was still open.

I am going again tomorrow night with Scott and June for this double bill, but notice this one has an ampersand in the title (Bishop & Musselwhite) where the one today had a slash (Ball/Chenier), also it is described as a “duo performance”. So I am hoping tomorrow the two stars will be on stage together.

The music tonight was pretty loud, and although I didn’t mind it, I did notice some ringing in my ears as we left the building. Tomorrow I will pick up a package of earplugs to share out.

Thursday 07/28/2022

Not much to do today before the 3pm tour that was rescheduled from yesterday. Worked a bit on the Studebaker engine and then looked at the dash. To my surprise, they had cast microscopic little numbers and hands on all the dials. You could barely make them out. But I tried putting some dilute black paint on them and then rubbing the tops of the marks with the tip of a toothpick, to uncover the white plastic. I’ll have to do some more of it but it did bring the numbers out.

At 2pm Wanda knocked on the door and I grabbed my docent bag and a hat and headed out. The custom tour group was a group of high-school level students on a summer computer camp. Most were from Italy. I’d thought from the name of the group, CodeEng (coding in plain English) they would be from England, and I had boned up a bit on early British computers. But it turned out they were mostly from Italy, only one Brit, so that was wasted effort. Anyway they were mostly attentive and seemed to enjoy themselves.

When I got back at 5 I found that Wanda had locked my door. Fine, only I had not taken my keys with me, only the car key. So I had to call the front desk and have a facilities guy come and let me in.

I didn’t go for a walk first thing because I was focused on the tour I was to lead at 11:30, for which I should leave about 10:45. So I had breakfast and changed into my docent clothes and fiddled around, and left at 10:40 without a last look at my email.

Turns out, when I got to the museum, that in an email received about 10:20, Jesse the front desk boss had notified me that the tour was rescheduled for tomorrow. So I had had a nice drive for nothing. Back at CH I changed to regular clothes and then went for my usual walk, ending with picking up a prescription at CVS.

I am interested in this tour group, described as “eager young coders from England”, and I do have time to take the tour tomorrow at 3.

Next up I was to be the AV person for a talk at 7:30, which I thought was happening in the auditorium with a live speaker, so I was planning to go to the auditorium about 6 to set up. But I talked to David M. first, and between us we worked out that oh no, this is a zoom only event and the speaker is in Minnesota. Which makes it a much simpler job, just running a zoom meeting, no problem at all. I created the meeting but David M. is much more used to being the host for these things, and enjoys it, so he took over and ran it very nicely.

Tuesday 07/26/2022

Woke up determined to take care of some “bidness”.

In the middle of the night it had occurred to me that I hadn’t heard anything from Erik Klein, the organizer of the Vintage Computer Fest, where we will be selling books weekend after next. Last year he had sent a detailed email to all exhibitors early on. Went into the email looking for his email address and luckily my search terms turned up the letter I had expected, which had arrived two days ago and gone into spam!

With that in hand, I wrote an email to a list of FOPAL people asking for help in organizing transport for 25 boxes of books, and other details for the weekend.

Then I picked up an info sheet Patty had given me, recommending a Fiduciary firm that she and others here have been using for their trusts. The Family Trust such as I have, is a very convenient and sensible way to manage an estate and avoid probate. However, when the remaining trustee (which is me) dies, there has to be a Successor Trustee who will be responsible for winding up the estate and distributing the proceeds as spelled out in the estate documents. Currently my successor is Dennis, followed by Marian’s cousin Darlene and Marian’s nephew Marc. All good and decent people but two are already retired and one isn’t that close and none are interested enough to have the considerable legal burden of an estate dumped on them.

Hence a professional Fiduciary, a legally trustworthy person or agency who will act as successor trustee. To get a handle on this I emailed Bob Sullivan, head partner in the financial management company that has been overseeing The Nest Egg for 30 years. He wrote back almost instantly (really, under 10 minutes) saying basically, it is an excellent idea to get a professional fiduciary as successor, and he knows the people Patty recommended and likes them. So later today I will call them.

Then it was time for the writers meeting, where I had a submission to read for once.

After lunch I took care of more stuff. When I saw the doctor last week, she referred me to dermatology for a routine look-over, and now I finally got around to calling for that appointment — which turns out to be in October. Skin doctors are busy.

Then I called the Fiduciary company. Someone will call me back tomorrow to make an appointment.

In the evening I did my laundry, including ironing my chinos and my red docent shirt. This relieves the time crunch I had, trying to do my laundry and get to the museum for an 11:30 tour which I am scheduled for tomorrow.

Monday 07/25/2022

Out first thing to register campers for Tara’s camp. Talking to Eileen, the director of basketball operations, she said that the announcement of USC and UCLA leaving the PAC-12 was a complete surprise for everyone. Her opposite number at UCLA told her, they only found out when a reporter for the NYT called the head coach that morning.

Anyway, we did our thing and the half-dozen volunteers shared a free breakfast at the cafe on SWBB’s tab.

Then directly to FOPAL to process 6 boxes of mostly, useless stuff: two high-value and about a dozen books shelved for sale.

Leaving FOPAL I stopped at Piazza’s groceries to get a loaf of bread and some drinks. Outside in the produce display were some “heirloom cantaloupe” and I suddenly had a yen to eat cantaloupe. I bought one and brought it home, and my lunch was a half of a cantaloupe eaten out of the shell. Delicious.

Diddled around the rest of the day doing nothing special.