Sunday 02/27/2022

Had breakfast in the dining room. Tidied, watered the plants, did the puzzle, then killed time until 11 when I let for the Museum, where I was scheduled for the noon public tour.

Gave a successful tour, I guess they liked it because three people wanted to take selfies with me.

Got back just in time for the first ever zoom simulcast, where they had a meeting in the auditorium and used the auditorium ceiling camera to show the speaker on zoom also. Complicated to set up. Further complicated because the speaker, David G, wanted to show things off his computer and fumbled it a bit. But it worked in all. David G speaking, David M running the complicated Zoom setup, David C in the audience but I brought my laptop and had the zoom meeting on it, with the audio going to my airpods in my ears. There’s a delay of about one second between David G saying something over the room audio, and his voice in my ears. That’s how long it takes for the audio to go to Zoom, turn around, come back over the network to my laptop.

Saturday 02/26/2020

The main event today was the last Stanford Women’s basketball game of the season, at noon. I had invited Dennis to join me. He arrived early. Patty also came for the ride. We had hot dogs at the arena and sat down to watch. This was a game versus UW who currently rank last in the PAC-12, so I was expecting an easy win, maybe a blowout. Nope. Washington put up a good defense and hit over 40% of their shots, while Stanford had a dismal shooting day, under 30% most of the game. The game was tied at the half and Stanford looked in serious danger of losing with two minutes to go.

They finally took a one-point lead at 1:03 on a brilliant steal by Anna Wilson. On their next possession the Huskies failed to score, so by normal basketball strategy, they had to foul in order to get possession back. Stanford made one free throw; UW got the ball and again couldn’t score, so fouled again. In the end Stanford won by 7 points, of which the last 6 were free throws.

Later, I didn’t like the look of the dinner menu so I walked out to a new restaurant, Coconuts, Caribbean food. I had a big plate of jerk chicken and plantains, quite good.

Friday 02/25/2020

Went for a walk first thing. That was fine. Shortly after I got back, I returned some pills. I was taken off Clopidogrel weeks ago. At that time I put the bottle of remaining tablets on my coffee table, to remind me to turn it in on one of the many scheduled times when the nurses office accepts unwanted meds. And there it has sat for weeks while I forget to take care of it. Finally yesterday the daily calendar email noted that unwanted meds could be returned 10-12 today and I actually did it.

Also today I printed a couple of new pictures for my picture rail, using my newly designed photo “matte” image. This looks like a nicely cut gray cardboard matte but it is just an image I created out of basic colors and a linen texture image I picked up off the internet. I also ordered some better 11×14 and 11×17 frames.

That was about that. Early to bed to read.

Thursday 02/24/2022

Went to the gym in the morning. Worked on printing a couple of pictures for the hallway. Mainly worked on trying to create a digital matte so I can print pictures that are wide, on paper like 8.5×11 or 11×14, that is not as wide, without having big white borders.

I also went through the CHM volunteer calendar and signed up for things for the next couple of weeks. Basically I’m doing one docent round a week, and one day working on artifacts. Pretty much like two years ago.

At 2pm, when Wanda was due to clean the room, I walked out to two banks, Wells Fargo to deposit a check for the RA, and then on to SFCU to deposit a check for me.

At 4pm it was time for the Channing House Board to meet on Zoom. I had to attend as a member of the strategic planning committee, as our consultant was presenting. Our consultant has assembled some marketing info that I deeply disagree with but wasn’t asked about so I kept quiet. A couple of board members clearly didn’t buy it either.

At 7 it was time to go to the SWBB game which unusually, was at 8pm. Five of us shared Lennie’s car. The team did not play in dominant fashion. However they pulled out a ten point lead in the first quarter, and the game ended a long time later with Stanford still ahead 10 points. In other words the two teams scored exactly the same rate for 3 quarters. Oh well, a win is a win.

Wednesday 02/23/2020

Walk. Get idea re zoom simulcasts. On return to my room, I have an email from Paul in IT telling me the problem with the wireless mics is fixed. Hell it is, it still existed yesterday at 11am, I reply. Paul replies, meet me in the auditorium in 15 minutes.

I go to the auditorium and test, and what do you know, the problem is fixed. Gerald from IT, after our meeting yesterday, thought of something and went back and fixed the issue. All mics work the way we need them to. Big relief to me.

In my room, I email David M with the idea I had. Then start my laundry

Stanford WBB had sent an email yesterday saying, click here to claim your tickets for the post-season games, but the link did nothing. Now I call Stanford tickets; they say I don’t have to do anything to claim post season tickets. As a season ticket holder they will automatically charge my card.

I call Ian to check on the plan for a zoom simulcast next Sunday.

I send email to AV team mailing list with the good news about the mics, and scheduling an AV team meeting for next week, when I hope we can have a workshop on how to do simulcasts.

Yesterday eBay said “remember those old IBM manuals you been trying to sell for weeks? Hey they sold and you have 48 hours to ship them.” So now I email Lisa, FOPAL volunteer who helpded me do that before, to see when she can help with another mailing.

I made a date yesterday to talk to Mary Beth, the Gift Shop manager, about money. Now I go to the 4th floor to meet her. This was a very interesting talk. I learned a lot. The Gift Shop started in the 90s as an organized committee with officers (? she’s not sure if it had bylaws etc) but over the years it was run more by “benevolent dictators” of which she is the latest, and prior ones have died or are in SN. She would like to see more structure and transparency. I suggested merger with RA and we left that idea hanging.

The GS does their banking as a sub-account of Channing House’s account at Umpqua Bank. This is a new idea to me. It means their actual banking, check deposits especially, are done by Jaisie Lozano, the CH Finance Director. Their accounting is complicated because as a retail operation they have to remit sales tax on taxable items, which Jaisie handles based on their input.

In my wanting to dump Wells Fargo I had not considered anything but SFCU, but having a sub account under CH makes sense for the RA and I will press that idea with the incoming treasurer.

In any case, the GS has never committed to paying the RA a fixed or steady amount, it has always given single grants based on ad-hoc requests for funding, all aimed at generally improving life for Channing House residents, and she didn’t think that would change. Also she is not certain how much the GS actually makes per year and left saying she was going to find out.

I go to lunch while the 2nd laundry load runs. During lunch, I get email from Lisa, she will be at FOPAL annex for a couple of hours soon. I finish lunch quickly. Check laundry. It will be fine by itself for an hour, so I drive to FOPAL and mail IBM manuals with Lisa’s guidance. In future, if I do any future eBay sales, I will be able to do it myself. From there I go to Piazza’s, buy PB, mayo, bread and gatorade. Drive home and move laundry to drier.

Bring in from car, an LED floodlight that we use for object photography at Shustek. I took from Shustek 2 weeks ago, because its switch was flaky, and I thought I could fix. Now I finally bring it up from car and maybe will actually fix it?

Nope. The problem appears to be a failure in the tiny circuit board the drives the LEDs, there is an obvious melted spot. Something overheated, pffft. Send an email to Gretta telling her so.

After a nap I put in an hour organizing tax-related papers. Next time I sit down to do that I will actually start filling out the accountant’s online workbook.

At 4, a person who had signed up for the 6-7pm tray distribution wrote to say she had a health problem and couldn’t make it.

At 5, David M. called from the Auditorium where he was trying out the tech for a zoom simulcast. He needed help with the audio input, and I had an answer in the form of a stereo miniplug to USB converter. I went down and consulted with him on that. Then it was nearly 5:30 so I picked up my dinner tray that I had ordered earlier, took it to my room and ate. At 5 to six I went back down and joined Eva in dispensing trays until 6:45 when almost all were gone.

And that was pretty much the end of the day. Russia invaded Ukraine, I notice.

Tuesday 02/22/2022 (TWOSday)

Went down to the gym first thing.

At 10am I had a Tech Squad date with Sandy to investigate a problem with her TV. The sound drops out at intervals, and she has to power cycle the TV to get it back. Except she is using her Comcast remote to do that, which also power-cycles the Comcast box. So which one to blame? I couldn’t resolve that. She will take pains to power cycle specifically one or the other next time it happens.

At 10:45 the writers meeting started. This was an important one, where the group was to decide how to organize given that its founder and longtime leader, Connie, wants to step back from leading weekly meetings.

Unfortunately I also had a date to meet a person from the IT staff in the auditorium to further investigate the problem with the audio mixing console. I signed into the writer’s meeting on my phone for a few minutes around 10:50. Then Gerald of IT came in and we fussed around with the system for half an hour. Gerald took it on himself to try to contact the vendor.

So I joined the meeting around 11:30. I carefully didn’t volunteer for anything as I’m feeling a bit over-committed these days, with CHM coming back.

Had a pleasant lunch with three neighbors, the first time in many weeks I’ve actually sat at a table in the dining room and conversed with people.

After a nap I decided to get the coffee I forgot to restock when I was at FOPAL yesterday, when I could have stopped at Peet’s right then. There is a nearby Peet’s at Town and Country, less than a mile away, so I walked there, bought coffee, walked back. Exciting times.

Monday 02/21/2020

First item of business was to walk four blocks to the dentist’s office for a semi-annual tooth scraping. Make my teeth sharp and pointy, my neighbor Dr. Margaret says. Sometimes I think six-month call-backs are more for the sake of the dental business than for my dental health but…

After that I headed down to FOPAL. Without lunch. I went into the dining room but there were no servers around and I didn’t feel like sitting and waiting for service so I just went. Parked at Piazza’s next to FOPAL, went in, bought a tuna sandwich and a gatorade and lunched in the car.

Processed 6 boxes of books. Shelves getting a bit crowded so did some triage, sending things that had been sitting for 3-4 months to the bargain room.

Among the books waiting for me were some rejects from the High Value group. These have been coming all this month. It looks as if H.V. is cleaning up a backlog. I don’t recognize the books; they are not ones I sent to H.V. Probably my predecessor, Chuck S., sent them, either before I came on in 2019, or while I was in the hospital in 2020.

The H.V. person puts in the book a pre-printed slip “Not High Value” and a list of reasons to check off. One of them was an 8×11 paperback titled Alto User’s Guide published by Xerox PARC in September, 1979. Instantly recognized it; the Alto was a famous computer design — the first ever to have a bit-mapped display with a graphical user interface, the first to use menus and windows — the computer that Steve Jobs saw and blatantly copied for the Macintosh — the computer on which Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay developed Smalltalk. Reason checked was, “no market”. Well I just sold two very closely related Xerox PARC pubs on eBay for $50 each. I’m pretty sure the same guy who bought those, will want this.

Back home, a note from our IT Tech Paul. I had emailed him for help with the audio mixing console (see 3.079) and he replied suggesting we meet tomorrow. Good. Although I’m not sure he understands that system any better than I do.

Sunday 02/20/2020

Today’s main activity was to go to the Computer History Museum and lead a tour. Although this was the second time (see 3.062) since the pandemic, and the second time with my new, slimmed-down talk, it was a first in that the Museum is now really open and the tourists were real visitors. It went well, and again I finished in 50 minutes. I think I can add back a couple of things.

On return it was time to watch the Stanford women play Oregon. Stew had organized an 11th floor watch party and it was only 1:15 so I’d only missed the first quarter if that, so instead of watching my DVR I went up there. Which was fun, watching the game with half a dozen other fans.

Stanford looked like they were suffering an emotional let-down after Friday’s game, where they clinched the PAC-12 regular season championship. They trailed from the start, behind from 5 to 12 points the whole way into the 4th quarter. With 5 minutes to go they got some defensive stops and a few points and the game was tied60-60 with two minutes to go. It remained tied for another minute and a half. Only with 36 seconds left did Stanford get a bucket-and-one. The Ducks just couldn’t get their last couple of shots to go in, and Stanford squeaked out a win. They are 15-0 in PAC12 play with 2 games to go.

Saturday 02/19/2020

About 8:30 I realized I had no plans at all for the morning. I could take one of my usual walk routes, or I could start the tax workbook. Or I could get the heck out of the apartment. Good, but where? My mind did the magical thing where all kinds of quantum possibilities weave around the synapses and coalesce into a decision: Walk The Dish. Taking Lyft.

The Stanford Dish is a big radio telescope antenna in the hills, and the Dish walk is a very popular paved walking trail that starts and ends at a gated trailhead where there is limited parking that is always full. But I just hopped out of my Lyft, sneered at the full parking spaces, and walked on in. The walk is a bit under 3 miles, with several long uphill grades. It felt harder to do than I remember my last time around (which was day 2.173, May 2021).

The scheduled activity for the day was to meet with Jerry, Ian, and David M in the auditorium to try to actually set up a Zoom simulcast. Which, over the course of two intense hours of fiddling and debugging, we pretty much did. One problem was that suddenly and for no obvious reason, the audio mixing panel wasn’t working. But much progress was made, thanks to Jerry’s research into the camera system and David M’s expertise in hosting Zoom meetings.

Friday 02/18/2022

Took a shortish walk in the morning. For much of my free time this day, I was engaged in trying to arrange things via email. Different things: a meeting of the AV committee, a trip to the City to see a concert, etc. In the course of this I killed several items on my to-do list.

I noted that today at 2pm was opening day for Stanford Baseball and decided to go. Then I thought to invite Dennis to join me. Which he was able to do. So we watched a ball game. Stanford scored one run in the bottom of the first inning, and that was all the scoring there was, all goose-eggs the rest of the way.

After a few more emails it was time to watch the Stanford Women playing at Oregon State. The Beavers hung around and hung around, Stanford leading by 7 or 9 or so through three quarters, never able to pull away. Then in the middle of the fourth, Hannah Jump hit two threes in quick succession and that demoralized OSU and Stanford ended up winning by 20 or so.