Monday 11/29/2021

Went for the standard walk. Stopped at Ace hardware to pick up a plastic dropcloth. My new spray method is to drape the conical basket chair on my balcony in plastic and use it for a spray backstop. I sprayed the first coat of primer on the VW.

Down at FOPAL I found only three boxes of computer books, down from 6 last week. The in-house wi-fi was having tantrums, but I managed to get the books all priced in 90 minutes anyway.

Kathleen, who is running the candle-lighting hannukah(?) thing in the lobby, asked for help setting up a mic and I did that. Although she’s pretty competent and means to be on the AV squad some day. Soon, I hope.

Sunday 11/28/2021

After the usual Sunday morning stuff — well, I ripped through the NYT big puzzle in 28 minutes, so that was fun — I decided to take a walk. Instead of walking toward California Ave, I went North to Santa Cruz avenue in Menlo Park.

More than a year ago I had printed some big prints (8×10, 11×17) of photos and put them in cheap frames, aiming at a photo display on my hallway wall. Today I started thinking about that again. Reviewed my hall wall space which is mostly taken up with two large paintings, Leap 2 by Carol Aust, and a realistic view of Yosemite by Dean Linsky. The Yosemite one will probably be moved to the 6th floor Lounge. The committee decorating the lounge would like it there and I’m in favor of it being more visible. I decided that after the painting moves to the lounge, then I will put up a couple of picture rails and start doing a rotating exhibit as I had planned. But nothing to do now, although I may start printing pictures again.

That was the excitement for the day. Well, I set out the paint colors I mean to use on the VW bug. I cut its hood and engine cover off their sprue and carefully sanded the edges to get a perfect fit in the body. Then I washed the body panels in detergent using a bit of fine steel wool. This hopefully gets off grease and other contaminants, and scuffs the surface to take the primer. I need to get a plastic tarp to use when spraying on the balcony, then I will spray the body. I’m doing this model in reverse: the body will be a perfect gloss paint job before I start on the little detail bits like the engine.

Saturday 11/27/2021

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Numbering note I knew things weren’t right. This blog starts on Day One, which was 3 December, 2018, the day Marian died and my new life as a bachelor began. I started numbering the headings with the year to keep them in order. This year’s blog started with 2.001 on 12/03/2020. So the numbers should be approaching 365 as we approach 12/02/2021. Obviously they weren’t. I went back over the whole year of posts and found that 02/17/2021 had day number 2.077, and then somehow, I headed 02/18/2021 with number 2.073 when it should have been 2.078. So I lost 6 days in the count. There was probably another slip somewhere. Anyway this day should be 2.360. You would think “one more than yesterday” would be simple enough to do, wouldn’t you.

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Went out to grab a pastry and some green grapes at the farmers market. On return I took a tech call, working with Gloria on getting mail and contacts to all sync up between her desktop mac, iPad, and iPhone.

Today was the third game at the “pink flamingo tournament” in the Bahamas, featuring Stanford Cardinal v. Maryland Terrapins. The Cardinal got a bit of a break from what was expected to be a challenging game, because the Terps were short a couple of key players. Stanford took an early lead and stretched it, finishing the game 30 points ahead.

I just idled the rest of the day away, pretty much. So to spice up the blog, here are a couple of student-athletes.

Anna Wilson is ripped. Actually, if you look through her Instagram, Cameron Brink is pretty cut as well.

Friday 11/26/2021

Day after a holiday felt like a holiday. First activity was to try to watch SWBB from the Bahamas, playing South Florida. They started badly and were down 10 early. However the promised video stream from “flohoops” didn’t start on schedule so the only way to follow the game was the live stats page. So I gave up and went for a walk.

Jean had brought the old iPhone SE that had been Marian’s, and which I’d kept on the contract (since a two-number T-Mobile contract was almost the same price as a one-number one). But I kinda sorta want to change carriers, or do something about the poor reception in the building. So I had her bring it back to me so I could have it along when I went to, say, Verizon.

I carried both phones and walked up University to the T-Mobile store. They do offer an interior hot-spot (such as I had at 2340) but it turns out that it requires a wired (cat-5?) connection to “your modem”. My modem is embedded in some ceiling or other, there’s no wired connections here. The guy thought maybe if I called customer service they might have a “signal repeater” which sounds like it might help. So I didn’t walk back to the Verizon store and change carriers. This time. I felt very dithery about this.

I decided that I deserved “a cup and a cake” as they say in New Zealand. It was now about 11am. The line to order at Verve was 20 people long. I thought, OK, I’ll just go down a couple blocks to Starbucks. There I found (a) another dozen-person line waiting to order, but also (b) a dirty, dingy, ugly store, with trash and sticky stuff on the floor and sketchy people at the few tables. Never mind, two blocks more and there’s Blue Bottle coffee with a nice patio. And again, a line of 15 or so people waiting to order. Everybody in the world was out this holiday morning.

While waiting for my coffee to be made I checked back into the game and found Stanford had managed to get ahead by a couple of points, with a few minutes left in the game. For the fifth time in the last 10 games, going back to the end of last season, this game came down to Stanford with a 1- or 2-point lead, seconds on the clock, and the opposition in possession. Other times, the opposition hasn’t been able to score, which is how Stanford got to be national champs last spring. Today, the USF players were able to score, hitting a three with 2 seconds left, and Stanford lost by 1.

The rest of the day was very quiet, reading and futzing around with the computer. Oh, well, I got out another car kit and kind of looked at the parts.

Thursday 11/25/2021

A little tidying in the morning. About 9:30 I went to the 11th floor to try to… wait. need to explain in order.

SWBB is playing in a tournament this weekend, in the Bahamas. Their first game is today at 10:30. The games are streamed on “flohoops”, a small sports network. Jerry has paid $29 for a month of flohoops. His plan is to start a zoom meeting at 10, and share his screen, showing flohoops, to the meeting. Then anyone in house can join the meeting and watch the game.

My job is to join the meeting with my Macbook and put its screen on the big TV on 11. I did that on Wednesday and it worked fine. Today? Of course not. The Macbook recognized the HDMI cable; it reformats the screen to fit the dimensions of the target. But the TV continued to show “no signal”. Tried a different cable. No go. Left Jerry a phone message and went back to my room.

About 10:30 he called me; he was on 11 trying to connect with his Android PDA. It also didn’t work. So that was it for putting the game on the big screen. Craig passed the ID of the zoom meeting on CHBB and eventually maybe 8 people were watching.

At 11:30, sister in law Jean arrived. I thought she’d never seen the place, but she says she saw it just after I moved in. Now, in the evening, I can check: yup, Day 0.200, 6/20/19. I’d completely forgotten. I showed her around anyway. At 12 we sat in the lobby watching the last 2 minutes of the SWBB game (they won by 3 points), and were joined by Paul and Elizabeth. We had a very pleasant lunch trading stories of when each of us had lived overseas.

In the evening, since the dining room had closed after lunch and I didn’t order a bag supper I needed to go out for some food. I found that at Wahlburgers, where two employees were holding the fort for a handful of eaters.

Wednesday 11/24/2021

Took a walk. Futzed around. Had a lunch of leftover pizza from last night.

Had my AV Committee meeting at 4pm. I ended up stuck with the big Holiday celebration with the CH choir and stuff. Well, Ian said he’d help. It will be a bid deal with at least 4 wireless mics needed, at least one rehearsal (probably two) and two performances. I need to talk with Mary, the director, ASAP.

Went down to the dining room, looked at the menu, came back up to my room to make a sandwich. Later got a call from the front desk, saying, “your birthday dinner is ready.” That’s weird as it isn’t my birthday. It was on the calendar that today was the November birthday dinner. They do one special dinner per month. You have dinner in the same section along with other people with birthdays that month. Everybody sings happy birthday. Gag me with a spoon.

In any case, I thought you had to sign up to get your name on the birthday dinner list. I certainly have not signed up for November, and have no intention to do so in December either. So I sat down to eat the rest of my sandwich.

Tuesday 11/23/2021

I did my resistance exercises at 7:30. I really like getting that out of the way before 8:15. It went well. Sometimes I have to just pause for a few seconds. I can’t say exactly why; just that my body issues a “hold up a sec” signal that is quite emphatic. Speculating, because of the beta-blockers, my heart really can’t speed up very much, so maybe I am sensing high CO2, where normally it would be taken care of by a speedup in heart rate. Oh well.

Knowing I will be showing the apartment to Jean for the first time ever on Thursday motivates me to keep tidying. I moved a large box of face masks, which I have been storing for the resident association, to the outside balcony. And applied oil to the coffee table which was looking quite dry.

The writers meeting was at 11. The cue or topic hint this time was “clan” and several people took that as meaning, describe your family thanksgivings. I had not written anything but afterward I sent the following picture to the writers group mailing list.

For those who don’t know, left to right, my mother Cecil, my niece Laurel, my nephew Dennis, me (age 18, high school senior), a child we will come back to, my father Emil, my sister Joyce (Dennis’s mother), sister Eleanor (Laurel’s mother). Also, Jesus. I don’t know who got up from the empty chair to take the picture; probably Eleanor’s husband (?Roger?).

I believe the smiling child was named Chris, and was being fostered by Eleanor. But I’m not really sure. Anyone? If it is he, do we know what became of him later?

Also, why was Joyce trying to look like Vampira Mistress of the Night? Put the knife down, sister.

Anyway several of the writers replied that it looked wonderful, nice traditional thanksgiving. Which made me snicker knowingly.

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Anyway I got bored in the afternoon and went for a bit of a drive up into the hills. Came back down to University Ave. and had supper in the Curry Pizza place. Chicken Marsala pizza and a beer. Burp.

Monday 11/22/2021

Did the walk. Then did a bit of tidying up of my balcony. When I bought the printer (which was day 0.328, just over 2 years ago) I had kept its big box. Well, it had five plastic bottles of ink and I left them in the box. On the back corner of the balcony. Today I moved the bottles of ink indoors and set the box aside for trashing.

(Two years along and the original ink supply is still above 50%. I had originally intended to print a fair number of photos on 8×10 and 11×17 paper, and have a rotating gallery on my outside wall, but never got around to it.)

Also back there: the air-brush spray booth I lavished quite a few hours on last year. This is the booth that I discovered, some weeks back, had been damaged. At some point it had fallen off the chair it was on, and then been replaced on the chair, so I only noticed the damage some time after it occurred. At that point I used some duct tape to patch it up; but since then the duct tape had dried out and peeled off (duct tape is shit and nobody should use it for anything), and again the box was falling apart.

Today I examined it carefully. Unfortunately the broken parts were not really repairable. It held together with hinges that turned on metal pins, and two of these hinges had broken in multiple pieces. (See the picture from day 2.124, the gray piece that makes up the floor had broken, along with the edge of the box it mates with.)

At first I thought of buying another $100 spray booth and using the good parts of that, along with the panels I had modified with extra plastic and velcro. But there there was no way of replacing just the broken parts, it would have to be a complete rebuild. It hadn’t been that much of a success when it was whole, so to hell with it. I added the broken machine to the pile, and put in a facilities call to have all this bulky crap sent to the landfill.

I can still spray but I will do it in the open air, not indoors in my little box. I can see how to do that. And for now, my balcony looks much better.

Anyway, off to FOPAL to process 6 boxes of computer books. Here I scored a coup: one of the donated books turned out to be the most valuable high-value book I’ve ever found. It is selling, used, on Amazon at $880.

I have now asked at various times, Carolyn, Eva, Joan, Pru, Mary Ann, Michele and Edy to join my table for Thanksgiving lunch, and all of them have plans to go to relatives. Makes me wonder who will be left to eat in the dining room here? Other than me, Paul, and Jean. Oh, ok, Elizabeth said that since she is only going to her daughter’s after 4pm, she’d be happy to sit and have some tea with us. So that’s four. I wonder what John and Francis are doing, I don’t think they have kids.

Sunday 11/21/2021

Sunday morning. At 1pm, SWBB would play at Gonzaga, and the only video would be a stream from a Spokane TV station. I intended to do something clever with Chromecast to show that on the 11th floor TV, but I was quite unsure about the details so I wanted to get a start at it.

I buzzed through Sunday morning, and ran into a hitch when the big NYT crossword took more than the usual amount of time. I took a short walk, and then I was up there playing around about 11am. Jerry came along and we both tried to get to the TV, me from the Macbook and he from an Android pad. The original Chromecast proved very flaky and unreliable. He said he’d heard that later ones were better, but we don’t have a later one. So I did the reliable thing, attached my Macbook by an HDMI cable.

But at 1pm that Spokane station didn’t go live with the game after all. I’m told they finally did, an hour later, show the second half of the game. But by then I had found that the Stanford radio broadcast, plus the live stats page, gave quite an adequate account of the game. KHQ Spokane can go stuff itself.

Stanford trailed by a bunch in the first half, caught up, and just squeaked out a win at the end. One of their best players was “unavailable” for unstated reasons. Now they are off to the Bahamas for a three-day Thanksgiving tournament. Jerry has paid for a subscription and will broadcast those games as Zoom meetings.

I took another walk before supper. I’ve been turned down by more people for my Thanksgiving lunch table; everyone it seems is going to their relatives. Well, Mary Ann says her kids are unsure of their plans and she’ll let me know tomorrow. Elizabeth isn’t going to her daughter’s until late, and says she’ll stop by and drink some tea but doesn’t want to eat.

See, this is why I don’t like to attempt hospitality. Too much stress.

Saturday 11/20/2021

The big meeting between Vanessa, the Channing House IT director, and members of the AV team, happened finally. Somewhat inconclusive. Vanessa is a sharp cookie who likes to dive into problems. That’s good. Her main concern just now is, she’s been directed to make it possible to have smooth webinars that use the auditorium and look professional and can be seen in the Lee Center as well as on TV within the building. A tallish order.

David M. came equipped with facts and figures on the system he recommends, a $500 box from ATEM. Vanessa was unconvinced. David M’s church has a multi-camera semi-pro zoom production and he is to make arrangements for her to see that system. She went away with I think a better understanding of the top issues on the 25-item issue list I had prepared, but no fixes were forthcoming.

In the afternoon two people had asked me to get the Stanford-Cal Big Game on the 11th floor TV. I made a mess of this, failing to realize initially that main PAC-12 channel was directly available in the basic Xfinity subscription that TV has. So I spent a lot of time trying to get PAC-12 via the Roku box. Duh. Anyway it worked.

I am trying to populate the 5-person table I’ve been promised for Thanksgiving lunch. There’s me and Paul, my neighbor and a very recent widower. And Jean has agreed to come. I have two more seats to fill.

The next four SWBB games are away, and not on any TV channel, only streamed. Ended the evening exchanging emails with Jerry and Stew about how to get these onto the 11th floor TV. I am all excited about the Chromecast device I discovered while flailing around this afternoon.