Wednesday 08/20/2025

Took the standard walk, starting early, back by 9:30 despite lingering at Starbucks. Worked on editing yet another video.

At 10:30 I drove down to the Museum for an event: The Silicon Valley Womanhood project — yeah, I never heard of it either — was to unveil plaques for the first 4 of 20 woman to be honored, plaques to be mounted on the outside wall of CHM. All us volunteers got an invite weeks ago, we were supposed to RSVP, which I did, indicating I was bringing a guest because I thought maybe Joanne would be interested. In fact she was more interested in leading her usual Wednesday morning hike, so I came alone.

Which turned out to be a good thing because nobody showed up. I think I was probably the only person who RSVP’d. The event was to be at 11:30. I got there at 11, and sat around in the very nice outside courtyard at the museum until 11:25. There were the plaques on the wall, and a table with a few snacks, and maybe 6 people besides me? I think it must have been the four women being honored (one being a CHM docent, Nomi Trapnell) and maybe a couple of spouses, and that was it. I looked at this little huddle and thought, I don’t know these people, it would be ok if there was a crowd but I don’t want to be the only stranger in the group. So I tiptoed away and drove home.

Finished editing that second video, then spent the rest of the afternoon reading. In the evening we had a talk by the pastor of a church, the First Congregational, which is attended by a bunch of Channing House people. His subject was not religion as such, but the painter Caravaggio. I’d seen a couple of Caravaggio paintings and loved them. The speaker, David Howell, is a self-taught Caravaggio fan and has traveled widely to see his paintings, and had lots of interesting things to say about them. Like the one of David toting the head of Goliath,

I wouldn’t have known that the Goliath face is a self-portrait of the artist! But he painted himself into several of his paintings so they are sure this is him. At the time he was on the run from a sentence of death for a murder he committed, so this might have been a way of saying, you want to execute me? Here, this is me, executed.

Tuesday 08/19/2025

Early down to the gym, only did one round of machines. Back up to dress and tidy the apartment. Then down to the music room where I did a solid rehearsal using the new iPad and the new foot pedal. That all worked.

Worked on editing the video of the talk from last week. Then the writers meeting, for which I was zoom host because Betty had a family obligation. After lunch finished the video and uploaded it. Then spent a couple of hours learning about AI video generators. I want to make a video to accompany the song I’m to sing at the Good Times show which is today exactly a month away. I didn’t get far. The “free” video generators don’t do much, or maybe I’m misunderstanding them.

At 7 I set down for the marathon of watching Schindler’s List, which I had not seen before. Yeesh that’s a lot of movie. And it’s well past my bedtime.

Monday 08/18/2025

Took the standard walk starting early, finished it by picking up a prescription at CVS right at 9am. Then, since I have got John taking over some of the management of the AV group, including attendance at the monthly Event Coordinators meeting, I didn’t have to go to that, and could head straight out to FOPAL where I spent 2 hours processing about 8 boxes.

Back for a late lunch. I have the iPad and the ForScore app working correctly now, and today arrived another purchase, a little foot pedal device. It connects by bluetooth to the iPad, and I can set it on the floor and step on it to make the pages of music turn. So I don’t have to take my hands off the guitar to turn to the next page.

After supper I got a start at editing a video from the book talk on last Monday which I had been conveniently ignoring until Gigi called me to ask when it would be ready. Real soon now, as we used to say in the software development biz.

At 7:30 I went up to 11 where Patty was showing the movie her, about a guy who falls in love with an AI. Except when the movie was made 10 years ago, they weren’t using the term, so “Samantha” is called an OS. It’s a very well-made movie. The early stages of the romance between the guy and his computer could be–probably are being–played out today with LLMs (see here and here for a start). The later part where (spoiler) the AIs start evolving real intelligence? Not happening. Not with the present technology.

Sunday 08/17/2025

Usual Sunday morning activities. About 7:30 my mind was oppressed with a flock of little things that needed doing — “nickerty shit” as John Snow used to call it. I wrote out a to-do list and proceeded to slaughter that sucker in about 40 minutes. Later I put together a combined list of all the things Joanne and I have bought tickets for, so we could check that our calendars matched. Between two theaters (Bus Barn and the Pear) and concerts at Stanford and elsewhere, we have things planned out 10 months ahead.

One we haven’t planned is the Boogie Woogie Festival in November, which I’ve attended several years running. Just don’t feel motivated to do that this time. Despite the fact that last November, that was about the first real “date” I had with Joanne. Barely knew her then.

About 11 she texted, proposing a walk to Trader Joe’s which we did after lunch. We had been debating whether, and where, to buy new floor mats for Fred, whose front floor mats are worn out. I’d found a source for custom floor mats online, but she very practically said, you know, there’s a Subaru dealer in Redwood City, why don’t we check with them? Oh. Duh. Of course. We walk and talk about such serious matters, and dish on our neighbors.

Later I visited Pam in skilled nursing. I also spent time fiddling around with the iPad and the ForScore app. Finally this evening I hit the option to “reset all settings”. And suddenly it began behaving correctly.

Saturday 08/16/2025

In the morning, and again in the afternoon, I worked on getting all the songs that I had collected over the past two years, into the new iPad and organized with the ForScore app.

In between, I drove to the Museum and led the noon tour. Nice group of 25 or so, appreciative.

Down at 5:30 for an early supper. Finished supper about 6:15, just in time to meet Joanne in the lobby and get in the car and head for the Jewish Community Center for a concert. I’d never been inside the JCC, although it is right at the end of Charleston ave and I’ve driven past it easily a thousand times over the years. A very large complex of buildings with a huge parking garage. The concert was by 24 Corde Ensemble, a quartet of Italian guitarists playing a mix of classical and pop tunes. They were excellent, really fun to listen to and to watch.

Friday 08/15/2025

Too much trouble to think of a headline for a varied day. Started with the delightfully habitual walk with Joanne. Line dance class was canceled this week, which was good, because I had a date to rehearse Supercalif-etc. with Susan, and Mary Robell coaching us. That went pretty well. Then at 11, the AI interest group, in which I am kind of losing interest. The others in the group are all about how can we help Channing House staff learn about and exploit AI and robots. In my view, CH staff does not want and won’t listen to, our helpful observations.

After lunch I worked on good times videos, and later on collecting my music files and getting them imported into the new iPad.

Broke off from that to visit Pam, who has decided she doesn’t want to do the oncology thing, chemo etc., to try to extend her life. She has put herself into Hospice care and is very frank about dying soon. She is clear-headed and matter-of-fact about it. “My organs are breaking down, my heart doesn’t want to talk to my liver, or something. Anyway, whatever.” She has a friend in North Carolina who is terminal with pancreatic cancer, and says “But I think I’m going to beat her to death.”

Thursday 08/14/2025

Planned to go over to Stanford Shopping Center but it doesn’t open until 10, so to pass the time I took my music and guitar down to the new Music Practice Room. I practiced my two numbers for the Good Times show then just worked over some songs with the guitar.

Walked to the shopping center and purchased a new pair of jeans at the Levi’s store. Then, since there was an Apple store just down the aisle, I went and bought something I’d been thinking about for a while. All my music is currently on sheets of paper in a very messy 3-ring binder. I’ve watched John Morse play from an iPad. I asked him what app, he said ForScore. I’d been flirting with buying an iPad but was talking to Joanne about how I was looking at used ones on eBay and so on, and she said, come on, you have the money, get what you want. So today I walked into the Apple store and said, I’ll have a 13-inch iPad Air please. And walked out 5 minutes later with one.

Setting that up took an hour later on, but it works fine. Getting my various songs into it will take a little longer. Later I sat down to start the task the good times committee depends on me to do, get all the background videos for the numbers people will perform. And immediately ran into trouble with the first one.

At 4pm I attended a meeting set up by some other residents supposedly to give us advice on how to direct our political contributions in ways that might be effective. The self-taught expert they had brought in was a bit disappointing, although he did mention two interesting organizations, Movement Voter Project and SwingLeft.org.

Immediately after, at 5, I went to supper, a special birthday supper for my neighbor Brian. His friend Barbara had arranged a fancy party for about 25 residents, fancy to the extent that wine was provided, and special appetizers and a special dessert. Nice chat with a congenial table.

Wednesday 08/13/2025

First order of business was to join a party for a hike led by Joanne. There were four of us, Joanne, Joanne the other one, Erika and me. All three women are enthusiastic walkers. I tag along and try to keep my breathing from being too audible. We went to the Arastradero preserve and did a total of 3.5 miles in about 2 hours.

After lunch I turned to two chores from that list. One was that my kitchen sink wasn’t draining. I had this problem just two years ago, day 4.259, and I did exactly what I wrote in that entry, took off the p-trap, cleaned out a glob of ugly sludge, reassembled.

Also I discovered Monday that the freezer compartment of my little half-size fridge was looking like a scene from Frozen.

So I spent half an hour getting a cubic foot of snow and ice out of that. I am really puzzled by this. Two things. One, now that the freezer box is clean and open, I can see that it has no drain hole of any kind. It’s a plastic box, with a fairly tight-fitting door. So if the fridge did a defrost cycle, where would the water go? And two, why did it fill up with ice like that? Maybe I need a new refrigerator?

Anyway with those things out of the way, I practiced a little music and had a nice nap. After supper we had a lecture by a bright young woman who wrote a book about Sam McDonald. I had known the name only from Sam McDonald County Park, a big patch of wild redwood forest in the hills to the west. But he was a well-known figure around the Stanford Campus from 1900 to the 1950s, as well.

Tuesday 8/12/2025

Instead of wondering at the end of the day, “what the heck did I do today, I know I was busy but…” I am going to log it in detail.

7:30 took recycles down to the bins. Finished tidying up for the housekeeper.

8:00 my desktop machine won’t connect to our magical Clearpass wifi. I go into the Clearpass management page, delete the machine, add the machine back. After some more fooling around on the machine (curse you Apple variable IP address) it finally connects.

8:15 print the three how-to docs I hadn’t yet printed. And hole-punched them.

8:25 cut up the dead daphne plant and took the plant and pot down to the 3rd floor where there is a garden-waste disposal bin. Brought pot back and, because daphne died of fungal infection, I took the pot into the shower and scrubbed it with bleach cleanser.

8:40 futzed around trying to get a youtube video downloader to work. (I need to download videos for people to sing with in the upcoming good times show) The one I had used to, but now it puts up a message saying youtube has changed, we’re working on it. (There is kind of a continuous guerilla war between Youtube, trying to keep people from downloading their videos for private use, and a world of hackers trying to figure out how to fool Youtube. Youtube can’t win; in order to show a video, it has to eventually send those bits to the user’s computer. Hollywood tried for years to make DVDs uncopyable but there no such thing as an un-copyable bit.) Tried to install a different downloader, ran into mac install issues.

9:00 took how-tos and ring binder dividers downstairs. Got the IT guys to let me roll a small tv into the music practice room, as requested by Stew days ago, and I’d been forgetting.

9:10 reorganized the info binder at the AV station with new how-to docs and page dividers with labels.

9:30 to-do list looking much better, decided to write something fo the writers group

9:50 two-paragraph essay finished and sent. With an hour to the writers meeting, I am reviewing to-do list, which looks pretty beat-up.

Read a couple things I had set aside from my RSS feed. One was a recap of a new paper on alzheimer’s disease suggesting it might be associated with a lithium deficiency.

10:00 Ordered low-dose lithium caps.

10:10-10:40 Sandy will perform the South Pacific song “Wash that man right outa my hair” in September, but she needs the video with the audio transposed down. Spent this time finding a new video downloader.

10:40-11:40 writers meeting.

11:45 Patty had emailed that she was done with her laundry early so instead of waiting for 2pm, I quickly sorted my stuff and started the first load. Then left the room for the housekeeping lady. Had lunch. Worked on laundry, and in between worked on setting up an online repository for our AV documents.

!:30 laundry finished. Finished the AV setup and sent an email documenting what I had done, to the team. All the how-to’s I’ve written over the years, in one place, not dependent on my personal computer or email.

2:45 regarded to-do list and decided to have a nap.

3:30 resumed work on Sandy’s audio, downloading the video, separating the audio track. Then realized that I really wanted to do all this, and other things for the good times show, on my desktop machine, so moved it there. Ran the audio track through an app that changes the pitch, shifting Mitzi Gaynor’s voice down from the key of E to B-flat (she sounds like a drag performer, but that’s Sandy’s range). Put it all back together, put it where Sandy could get it, and sent her an email.

4:15 declared my day over.

After supper participated in the monthly sing-along in the lobby.

Monday 08/11/2025

Took the standard walk. At 10 set the auditorium up for a book talk, by a Stanford professor, about how the major nations handle talent, or human capital. He did not point it out, but it was clear that everything China, India, Japan, Australia did, or do, to create and foster talent to power their economies, is the exact opposite of what our current administration is doing. Well, never mind.

Then off to FOPAL for a couple of hours. Back home, after supper I made a to-do list of all the things I need to get done in the rest of this week. It is a whole goddam page long. Am I doing anything on the list tonight? I am not. But tomorrow, baby, look out.