Saturday 03/26/2022

So this is the off day between tournament sessions. A whole day to be passed in Spokane.

The La Quinta Inn has full breakfast. This morning at 7am the breakfast area was dominated by, I think, some kind of team, girls and their parents, probably high school because a college team would have fewer parents. And the make your own waffle machine was out of order. Oh well.

After breakfast I set out to walk around down town. I checked out the indoor mall where there is a multi-screen theater playing several movies I have no interest in seeing. Spent some time browsing Auntie’s Bookstore, where I found the one magazine that always soothes me: Wooden Boat. I took it back and read it cover to cover. I don’t know, I can read about making boats for hours. With that and naps and a book on my kindle I passed the afternoon.

I had a ticket for an event at 8pm. I made a reservation at a restaurant near the theater for 6:30. This was the Europa Bakery, a bar/restaurant with an Italian menu. The meal was quite good, caprese salad and tortellini in a red pepper sauce. When I asked for the check, the waitress handed back my credit card and informed me, “We have a customer who likes to anonymously buy meals for some people and he’s picked you tonight.” Okayyyy so I had dinner for free. Thanks, anonymous benefactor!

My event was a solo comedy show, Julia Sweeney: Older and Wider. She had already done the show in L.A., but it turns out she grew up in Spokane, so she came back here to tape it as a comedy special in her home town, and in fact in a theater where she worked as a teenager. It was pretty good, I had a few chuckles.

I had walked over to the restaurant and the theater, about 1.2 miles, but took a Lyft for the return trip. That’s because there are quite a few homeless people hanging around the 7-11 across the street from my hotel, and along 2nd avenue. I’d walked this area twice earlier but didn’t want to do it after dark.

Friday 03/25/2022

Basketball wouldn’t be until 4pm which meant passing a day in Spokane. Which I did mostly by walking around. On the Gonzaga campus I found a nice little art museum that was good for half an hour. Walking around Riverfront Park I had the first real period of grief in months.

I have been in Spokane at least 5 times, always following SWBB, and of course, always with Marian. So every other time I have walked through this park was with Marian. So… yeah.

I ended up back at the hotel around 12, and chilled in the room until 3. Then off to the arena by Lyft. Here I found that the ticket I’d got from the Stanford ticket office was TERRIBLE. Directly behind the basket, 25 rows up. I have pictures of this but it’s too much trouble to get them into this chromebook I use when traveling. Take my word for it, they were the worst possible seats in the whole arena.

Fortunately several weeks ago, when I decided to go on this trip, I had bought a seat from the NCAA. Although this seat is in the upper deck, it is toward the center and turned out to have quite a good view. Harriet, who also got shafted on tickets, same section as mine, just moved herself to a vacant seat in a better section of the lower bowl. There’s no real usher policing going on.

In the first game, Ohio State put up a good fight but couldn’t quite beat Texas, losing by 3. They actually had the ball in the final seconds and could have tied the game, but Texas didn’t let them get a shot off before the buzzer. Too bad, as I’d rather see Stanford play them than Texas, to whom Stanford lost early in the season.

In the second game, Stanford seemed to have no problem with Maryland until the fourth quarter when a comfortable 20+ point lead started to evaporate. Stanford finally won by 10 but it wasn’t easy.

Thursday 03/24/2022

Puttered around getting ready to travel and packing. Went down for lunch at 11:30. Then at 12:30, met with Yadira and Pam re the Zoom account. Gave Yadira a couple things to think about, like very probably the staff can’t be without their own Zoom account for a couple of good reasons. We settled that if we were to have a resident zoom account for events, they could front the first year’s cost for us. Then Pam’s Events committee could factor the cost into their annual ask of the Heritage Circle for following years. That’s progress. I agreed to see if the AV committee is willing to take on the job of administering a resident zoom account when we meet on Tuesday.

Then it was time to call a Lyft and head for the airport. The flight to Spokane was delayed an hour but no big deal. I was surprised, though I guess I shouldn’t be, that SFO to Spokane was only 2 hours, from pushback to touchdown. Two long days of driving, it would be.

Got a Lyft to my hotel, and later, another to a restaurant. Frank’s Diner, in a real converted railroad car. Very good burgers and fries. And just for a change, an Uber back to the hotel. If it were summer, I think I would have walked at least one of those trips, it was a bit over a mile, but it was dark and chilly and late.

Wednesday 03/23/2022

Spent the day basically emailing people trying to set up meetings. I am getting quite tired of the volunteer roles I play around here.

Tuesday 03/22/2022

So in the morning I have a lot of things on my mind. The upcoming trip to Spokane: I keep thinking of things I need to do before departure, and running over to a notepad and writing them down, or (later) crossing them off.

Then there’s the whole thing about staff wanting residents to take over the zoom account, and how would that work. And then, a couple days ago a staff member, Caroline, filed an event request for support with a memorial. The daughter of the deceased wants to hold a memorial, which is common, but she wants to hold it in the Activity room on the 2nd floor, rather than the Auditorium. There’s no real AV in the Activity room, just a couple of loose speakers on stands and a couple of wireless mics that are wrapped in their own power cords on a cart of misc. junk. And they want to show a powerpoint presentation, with music, and make it a zoom thing for distant relatives to attend. All that would be a challenge in the Auditorium. I don’t see how to do it. Plus staff member Caroline notes that she’s requested support from the IT department — so why is she asking resident A/V volunteers to help?

I message Bert asking to talk to him. He is very confident and knowledgeable about how this place works. We set up to meet at 2:30 on his floor lounge. I talk on the phone to Pam, the Events committee person. I do some other things, emails.

At 2:30 Bert helps me get my head straight, as I’d hoped. He points out that staff cannot get rid their zoom account, because Rhonda the CEO wants to hold monthly general meetings, and no way is she going to want to rely on resident volunteers. Probably. Plus, he proposes a much simpler way for them to administer the use of the zoom account, which would take a lot of the stress off them.

He and I go and check out the 2nd floor activity room, and as we recollected, all of its built-in A/V equipment — which it once had — was still disconnected and boxed up in a corner. That was because in early 2020, they had converted what was a general activity room into a Covid ward, with hospital beds and a sealed air system. The de-conversion back to general purpose is only half-done.

So now I had a mission: to talk to Caroline and find out (a) why not the Auditorium and (b) who she’s talked to in the IT department, such that she thinks they will help. I go to the front desk and ask for her, but she doesn’t seem to be working today so I leave her a voice-mail. As for the other issue, I send Yadira an email asking for a 15-minute appointment.

With my mind somewhat relieved I pass a quiet evening.

Monday 03/21/2022

Started with a standard walk. Back in good time for the 10:30am meeting of the event managers committee. Before that I called Stanford Tickets and ordered my all-session seat for the Spokane regional. It sounds as if they will be able to give me a good seat. We’ll see.

Yesterday, and I can’t believe I didn’t write about it, came an email from administrator Yadira, to me as AV committee and to Pam as Events committee head, saying that staff would like to get rid of the responsibility for the CH Zoom account.

They created a professional level zoom account back at the start of the pandemic. They have closely guarded the password to that account since. When an event manager wants to do a big meeting — say, David G wants to start the Resident Association meeting, 2nd Monday of every month — they have to call a staff member, who logs in to Zoom with the secret email and password, creates the meeting, and then makes the event manager the host. The staff member can then go on their merry way, while the event manager conducts the meeting as host.

Now they want to be rid of this responsibility, and apparently also rid of the $800 a year that it costs, for a pro account plus the right to have more than 100 attendees. So today we discussed this at the event managers meeting. It was settled that Events could in future pay for the annual cost of a zoom account, although finding $800 for the first year, now when some of their budget has already been spent, might be a problem.

Again, this is all due to how Channing House events are all resident-driven, not staff controlled. Including the costs. Each year the Events committee asks the Heritage Fund for what they estimate to spend for the year on museums, speakers, etc.

What wasn’t settled was who, or how, the new account will be managed, that is, who will be responsible for starting meetings when needed while keeping the account credentials secure? I am carefully not volunteering myself for this.

Meeting over, I headed down to FOPAL and spent 3 hours processing books.

After supper, it was soon time for the talk by Judge Cordell. John did a great job of running the zoom, which was available to a long list of other senior residences, although in the end only about 60 people joined the meeting, and some of those were from Channing House.

An innovation here was, for the first time, John allowed Zoom remote attendees to unmute and ask questions vocally, rather than restricting questions to the chat window. I had feared doing this would start a horrible feedback loop. It did not, and I’m not sure why. The remote person’s voice came out of our auditorium speakers, and it should have been picked up by the lapel mike Judge Cordell was wearing and sent around again. But it wasn’t.

Sunday 03/20/2022

I kind of messed around doing my usual Sunday things, watering plants, big crossword, and so on. At some point I took a mile walk. I had planned to attend a zoom meeting, which I thought was at 3pm but when I checked in at 3, it was just over.

So, at 5pm it was time to meet my carpool and head for Maples for the second round of the NCAAs, Stanford vs. Kansas State. K State played tough the first half, and the game was tied 30 seconds into the second half. Then Stanford exploded, outscoring Kansas in the third quarter 32-15 and taking the game over. A few minutes into the 4th Stanford was ahead by 40 and Tara sent in subs. This was sparked by Lexie Hull who had a 36-point day and got a standing-O when she left the floor.

So, tomorrow I can call the ticket office and get seats for Spokane. My flight is on Thursday afternoon.

Saturday 03/19/2022

Today was mostly devoted to the annual Channing House Board Retreat. I was invited (required) to go as a member of the Strategic Planning Committee, because the whole purpose of this retreat was to work over and prioritize the S.P. goals that the committee (in reality, its chair and its consultant) had prepared.

The retreat took place in the large meeting room at the Mitchell Park Library. This library complex was rebuilt and renovated a few years ago. It now incorporates a large modern library, a cafe, and a bunch of meeting rooms for community use. We were to arrive by 8:30 for a light breakfast and start work by 9. I rode with Joanne, who is the incoming treasurer for the Resident Association (replacing me), and Lennie, who is the incoming R.A. Vice President.

The day was pretty well organized. 25 or 30 people were there in all, maybe 5 members of staff including CEO Rhonda, four members of the actual Board that governs CH, me and Martha and Marcia of the SP committee, and the new RA executive committee. We were divided into 4 working groups at four round tables, each table with a Board member, a staff member, and 3-5 residents. There was a lengthy list of possible SP goals to hash over and prioritize, divided into 5 general goals. Two groups took them 1-5 and the other two went 5-1, so we wouldn’t all get tired on the same set of goals, as Rhonda said. It took all morning. We had a working lunch at 12, sandwiches and drinks while continuing to talk, then there was a wrap-up, and the residents were dismissed at 1pm. Staff and Board stayed on for their business.

I chilled for a few hours and then it was time for dinner with the people involved in tonight’s talk: Sally the speaker, Stew the event manager, Stew’s wife Kathy, and me and Lennie again now as the technical staff to bring off a zoom simulcast.

Which we did, it all worked. We had only about 14 zoom attendees and about 35 live audience. Sally gave a really interesting talk. For a number of years in the 90s and 00s she was an interim president at three different small colleges, one after another. She explained why and when a college would need an interim president and how she got hired to be one the first time. She was a success there, and on the strength of that got hired to the next and the next, each time helping to repair and reorient a school that was in trouble for one reason or another. These were small denominational schools, one Presbyterian and two, Catholic. In the Catholic schools she helped them get used to the idea of having a lay president, after generations of being run by Sisters.

Here’s a typical story. At her first school, a student complimented her saying “You’re different.” How so, she wondered. “You leave the lights on in the president’s house, and it’s so cheerful.” Turned out, the previous prez, who had left because of a no-confidence vote by faculty, was frugal, and always turned off the lights when she left a room in the house, so it was always dark. Sally hadn’t known that, and “I needed the lights on because it was a strange house and I couldn’t find my way around in the dark.” So what came naturally to her, was seen as a symbol by the community. Just a bit of luck.

In the question period she was asked about our local Santa Clara University, where they have recently hired their first female and first lay president. Sally said, “yeah they had to, they’re running out of Jesuits.” A fun talk and a really impressive biography. I’ve often noted how this place is full of over-achievers.

Anyway the technical part worked fine. I had a few scares setting up, things not seeming to work and me fumbling around, but the actual event came off perfectly, and now I’m off the hook. David M. has an event tomorrow afternoon, and John runs the Cordell event on Monday.

Friday 3/18/2022

Went for a standard walk; it was fine.

At 10am I had a rehearsal for the event Saturday evening. This will be a “Sunday @ Home” which is a series of talks by residents on their life experiences. Stew is the event manager. Sally is the speaker for this week. Lennie got roped in to help with the zoom simulcast from the auditorium.

This is the first one of these simulcasts I will be responsible for. I’ve seen David M. do two, and David G. do another. The stress level is very high because it is complicated to set up. In this case, more complicated because Stew had put out advertisements (on the email BB and posted in the elevators) with a Zoom ID that was based on Lennie’s personal zoom account. Which meant that she had to be the one to sign in to Zoom to create the meeting. So this is the setup:

I put my old Macbook on the control desk by the stage, and plugged into it, the USB with the room audio. Lennie creates the Zoom meeting from her own laptop. I join the meeting from my laptop. She makes me the host. Now as host I can “Spotlight” attendees, making them stick for for all attendees.

I have another Macbook, actually my newer one, on which I have Sally’s slides as a Powerpoint file. I open them with Keynote (which opens Powerpoints just fine). From that laptop I join the meeting with my OTHER Zoom account (because if I joined with my usual Zoom account, it would log me out of the other meeting, duh, ask me how I know). At the other laptop I invite that laptop to share its screen. At that laptop I share the slideshow.

Now I put my iPhone on a tripod, facing the speaker podium. From the iPhone I join that meeting, using the zoom name “PodiumCam”. Back to the host laptop, I “spotlight” that user for all attendees. Now what every attendee will see, is the speaker’s slides large, and beside the slide window, a thumbnail of the presenter at the podium. And they hear the sound coming from the auditorium mics.

Now we put a lapel mike on Sally and give Stew a hand-held mic for his introductions, and … it all worked. Took Lennie’s laptop out of the room to check, and yup, audio loud and clear.

So all that was working by noon, tore it all down and cleaned up.

At 4pm I joined John and Francis and Marcia in the auditorium. This was their rehearsal for the LaDoris Cordell presentation on Monday. Similar setup by John, with three (I think) laptops in use plus an iPhone on a tripod for a view of the speaker. And that all worked.

At 5, I and Patty got in my car and drove over to Maples to see the NCAA Regional. Got there for the second half of #7 Kansas versus #8 Georgia Tech. Kansas won. Then #1 Stanford played #16 Montana State and just obliterated them. Stanford’s starters held the Bobcats to a big goose egg in the first quarter. The score was 23-0 when, 1 minute into the second quarter, Montana scored its first bucket. With a 40 point lead, Tara put in the bottom of her bench for the entire fourth quarter.

Got home after 9pm and went to bed.

Thursday 03/17/2022

Most of the day was uncommitted so I decided to spend some time in the auditorium and try to get the technique and setup for a hybrid zoom event worked out. Here I made an embarrassing mistake.

Part of this is to get the video from our one house video cam into the zoom, as the video from the host. We have an HDMI cable with the camera signal, connected to a little video capture device whose output is USB. The USB goes into the host’s laptop. You start the meeting and select “Camlink 4K” as your video in place of your laptop’s builtin cam. Presto, the view from the camera, which is mounted on the ceiling above the audience, facing the stage, shows up in place of the host’s ugly face.

Or not. In my case it showed up as a black screen. I fiddled and farted and then got mad and wrote a rant email and sent it to the list for my AV committee. Five minutes later, Jerry appears in the auditorium and takes a look at the setup, and says, “you forgot to assign the camera to the recorder” and he taps two buttons on the control panel for the system and boom, the video appears on my laptop.

Thing is, I knew that had to be done, it’s just one of the tricky little setup items and I just forgot about it. So I had embarrassed myself to my squad of nerds. Blush.

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Late in the day Yadira, one of the staff admins, sent an email to me and to Pam, the head of the Events committee. I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned how, at Channing House, there is no staff entertainment coordinator. All the planning for lectures, trips, parties, movies, concerts, sing-alongs, etc. that are the staff of life in a senior residence, are planned and run by residents. So the Events committee is a big deal. Also a big committee because there is one member for each event series of which there are at least 20. Sunday @ Home (residents talking about their experiences), Book Talk (authors talking about their books, I did one of those early on), and on and on.

So Yadira was writing to me as chair of AV and Pam as chair of Events, to say: staff don’t want to administer the Channing House Zoom account any more and would one of our committees take it over. I immediately asked, would staff cover the $200/year price of a “small business” Zoom account, or what? And she quickly replied, no, it should be covered by Events, or maybe by the Heritage Circle.

Fortuitously, the Events committee has its monthly meeting this coming Monday. So we will talk about it then.

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BTW I have immense respect for Yadira, she is a top-notch admin. She’s the one who, back in the summer of 2020, initiated the extensive paperwork to get us Covid vaccine, before any other residence did. We got our first shots in December 2020, months before others, thanks to her initiative.

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The Heritage Circle is a fund established decades ago, that gives annual grants to projects that improve the quality of life for residents. It is run by, and funded by residents. My neighbor Patty, who is on its board, put the arm on me in my first month to contribute a lump sum to it. Which I did, $5000. I believe the whole fund is up over $3M now, and gives out over $50K a year from its interest income. This year one of the grants is buying a bunch of bike lockers. The Events committee usually gets a grant around $10K to fund things like bus rides to events and stipends to outside musicians or speakers. So probably they can afford $200 for Zoom.