Wednesday 07/21/2021

Today’s exercise was to drive to FOPAL at 8:30 and work there until 1:30, with a half hour break for lunch. I handled at least 10 boxes of books, moving about 8 boxes to the bargain room stack, shelving about 3 boxes worth. But I left my section neat and tidy and well stocked.

At 5pm I left via Lyft for Redwood City where I had a ticket for Blues Night at Club Fox. I didn’t like the band, Howell Devine, as well as I thought I would. Music started at 7pm. At 8:10 the band took a break and turned the stage over to local musicians for an ad-hoc blues jam. I came on home at that point.

Tuesday 07/20/2021

Between 6am and 8:30, after reading the paper, I wrote a short piece for the writers group.

Did the aerobics class. Killed time until the writers group. I’ll append the piece. The cue this time was “Water”. Just that, water.

At 12 I headed out for FOPAL where I found the computer section had been slammed with at least 10 boxes of donations. I processed four boxes which took all the time I had — I need to be gone by 3pm when they open up for donations. I will have to go back tomorrow and try to catch up.

Yesterday and again today I worked on a program for STIP. This was based on an exercise at the end of Chapter 2, which basically said, “rewrite the program in this chapter to do its work this completely different way.” So I did.

This evening I finished coding it before going down to supper. Then after supper, I ran it. The first test cases worked perfectly! This creates lots of good feelings. Some more complicated test cases revealed two bugs, which I fixed easily.

Here’s my piece for the writers.

---

The first mental image following on the prompt “Water” arose from my childhood. Here’s the setting.

Our farm was served by a gravel road which descended on a gentle grade past our driveway.

The road, like all county roads in western Washington, was flanked by ditches to carry the runoff from the frequent rain. A stream of clear water ran in the ditch all winter and spring, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a burly flow.

At our driveway the ditch passed through a 20-foot cement culvert about 14 inches in diameter. This introduced the magic of all culverts and bridges: water entered on the uphill side, disappeared, and emerged on the downhill side. A floating object could be released at the high end, would vanish, and then would — usually! but only after much more time than seemed appropriate — emerge at the low end. Is it coming? Too long… it must be stuck… there it is!

Right? Tell me you never played this game!

At the lower end of the culvert the water had eroded a little pool which I, aged 8 or 9, would enthusiastically enlarge. On a Saturday morning, after a rainstorm had cleared, I would put on my Christopher Robin-style rain boots and go out to the end of the culvert. For an hour or more I would tote rocks and pull up sods from the adjacent field, and build a U-shaped dam to hold the flow in the ditch. I could build up a couple of bathtubs worth of water. After running a few sticks through the culvert to fetch up in my new harbor pool, I would kick out the center of the dam and admire the heavy whoosh of water escaping on down the ditch.

And then build up the dam and watch it refill. The satisfactions of flowing water are endless.

Wow, Monday just vanished in the haze. Was there a Monday? I have no idea.

All I can remember is, I didn’t like the dinner menu, so I walked over to NY Pizza on Hamilton and bought a calzone. Which was delicious, and also huge so I saved half to eat for lunch tomorrow.

Sunday 07/18/2021

Went for a small walk in the morning. Really had good intentions to do the cyber cycle later, but never did.

Worked on the Chrysler model for an hour. Worked on STIP for maybe 2 hours, which is the most I can spend being intellectual and concentrating, although I love it. Also got online and bought two pair of 511/34-30 jeans in different colors, for half what Levis.com would like to charge.

Had a nice dinner with Jerry and Betty and Margaret.

Oh, and I processed the video I shot last night and uploaded it to YouTube. I made it Unlisted as I am not sure about the copyright status; but here you go. Enjoy a couple of numbers. Also admire my video technique with the iphone.

Stevie’s remark at the start, about “Watching Glenn’s fingerpicking is a freakout”? He is referring to the fact that Houston is left-handed, and plays a standard guitar “upside down”. He just flips it left to right with the result that the fatter bass strings are on the bottom and the higher, thin strings are on top, upside down to what every other player sees. Can’t quarrel with the results, though.

Saturday 07/17/2021

In the morning I headed out for a little retail therapy. First to Stanford Shopping Center, the Levi’s store, where I wanted to verify what I thought was probably true, that a Levi’s 511 jean, waist 34, would fit my somewhat reduced body. Certainly the 511/36-30 pair that I have are too big, but are they 2 inches too big?

I was very pleased to find that a 511/34-30 fits me exactly, like it was tailored. I bought one pair but I mean to buy a few more in different colors.

From there I drove across the bay to a hobby store in San Leandro. I had found it indirectly, when I was trying to locate US distributors for a particular line of Japanese car models. Hobbies Unlimited is in a tacky run-down mall just off the freeway. They have quite a large selection of model railroad stuff, and of aircraft models and military vehicle models. Not so many car models and a very weak selection of paints. But there was one model bought, to add to the pile of models in my closet: a highly-detailed model of an original 1960s-era VW beetle.

Back home for lunch and then, the CH Events Committee ran the movie Nomadland on Zoom. What a downer. Well, it had a kind of upbeat resolution at the end. Frances McDormond deserved her Oscar for this but my my. My book got criticized for being too slow, nothing happening? This was Best Picture of last year and my goodness does it unwind slowly.

At 6:30 I headed out to get a Lyft up to San Mateo to attend a house concert, for the first time since probably 2019? The Quitters, I shot a little video which if I get around to it I will post tomorrow. It’s past 11pm and I need to go to bed. I took a Lyft because I didn’t want to deal with parking or driving home in the dark. But goodness is it pricey. $30 going up, $40 coming back.

Friday 07/16/2021

Went for the standard walk. I thought about doing the cyber cycle instead, I really want to do more of that, but didn’t.

At 11 I met with the other 3 members of the long-form critiquing circle. Not very productive. Well, I was able to give some constructive thoughts to Pru and some minor edits to Peter. I don’t thing this group is going to last.

At 3pm I drove to PAMF (well, I had done a good walk in the morning). This was to meet with Dr. Lee, a urologist, to talk about my kidney cyst. Which when viewed in the CT images, is really awesomely large, like a balloon taking up quite a bit of space in my thorax, pushing my stomach and bowels around. 15cm on the long axis.

His advice, “What I would tell you if you were my brother”, is to let it be. But if it really bothers you, having it drained is a simple and pretty safe procedure. He showed me on the CT, just stick a needle in here in your back, no problem. It might refill in a few months. A much more serious option, which we would not do until you are off the Plavix, is to go in through the front, and cut the wall of the cyst away entirely.

I lean strongly toward having it drained. I just want to find out which of my current mild and variable symptoms would change. So I will be consulting an “interventional radiologist”.

Thursday 07/15/2021

Did the aerobics. Then immediately showered, dressed, and headed out for the east bay. At Shustek I spent my time cataloging donations. I cataloged two modules from UNIVAC-1, then jumped forward 70 years and cataloged a set of Spectacles from 2018. Finally I started on a little cardboard box that contains somebody’s collection of unusual chips. This was one of those donations where you couldn’t just catalog a whole collection as one object; each chip, or pair of them, in the collection was unique. I got through maybe 3 of them and it was 3pm and time to go.

I left early because I had to attend the CH board meeting at 4pm. The Strategic Planning Committee of which I am a member, was presenting its revised Mission Statement. This is pretty much all the work of a paid consultant, and I’m not happy about it. I feel like we committee members were pretty much asked to rubber-stamp what the consultant had done. Meaningful input from us, or at least from me, was not there. So the meeting was not very interesting. I never unmuted myself.

Somehow, writing about everything I did yesterday, I didn’t mention doing the laundry. Well, I did, in between everything else.

Wednesday 07/14/2021

Started the day with a walk; felt fine.

Then for a couple of hours before lunch I played catch-up. Paid a couple of bills. Filed some papers. Mainly, read and editing texts from my critiquing group in preparation for meeting them Friday.

Afternoon, had a couple of meetings regarding the ERF. The Event Reservation Form is how anybody wanting to host an “event” reserves a time and a place and any necessary support. The organizer fills out an ERF requesting the room, on the date and time, and any arrangement of chairs, any catering, any A/V support.

The ERF has been a paper form, a bit more complicated and about as readable as a 1040A, forever. A few months back a couple of people put together an online ERF, a fillable form that when submitted, generates PDFs that it emails to whoever is concerned. Today I met with Lennie and Pam to talk about finishing that project, bringing out of “beta” status. We identified some problems with it.

Fortunately, and only very recently, Lennie has gained write access to the platform where the ERF was built. This milestone meant that she had gained the trust of the staff IT people. (Justifiably so, as when Lennie retired she was managing the IT department for all the Stanford Libraries. Think she can handle a WordPress site?)

One problem was the list of people who receive a PDF when an ERF is submitted. It was badly out of date. I took that as a task, and went to my favorite staff person, Kim The HR, who was able quickly to identify the proper addressees for the various things. If the form requests chairs and tables to be arranged, for example, that goes to Housekeeping. And so on.

In the evening I spent some time with STIP-IP. I am just finishing up one of its more complicated programs, executing it for the first time and picking off the initial bugs. Rather to my surprise, the first bug I found was not mine, but one that has existed in this widely respected textbook since 1981. I found a bug in Brian Kernighan’s code, hahaha.

Tuesday 07/13/2021

Did the cardio class. Then worked on STIP-IP until time for the writers group. The cue was “In which I go shopping.” This was an easy one because just a few days ago I had had a shopping experience. I will put the piece at the end here. I read it well and was interrupted by laughter several times.

From there I went to FOPAL where about 7 boxes of computer books awaited, of which I ended up shelving half a box, the rest off to the $1 room.

In which Mister Grumpy goes to Macy’s for the last time ever…

A simple need for a simple man: due to normal attrition in the underwear drawer, I am one brief shy of a 14-day laundry cycle. I need a three-pack (because that’s how they come) of Jockey standard briefs, 36 waist. And by long habit I know just where to get them: second floor of Macy’s Men’s Store in the Stanford Shopping Center. So on a bright Wednesday morning I go over there.

And of course it isn’t there any more. What was Macy’s Men’s is now a construction site. I cross back to the main Macy’s, where “men’s” is now a mere department, and indeed one that is not called out on the store directory sign inside the door. I wander through the glittering bright maze of the Macy’s ground floor. A distant glimpse of a Tommy Hilfiger sign gives me direction and I stumble into an island of men’s wear.

There are no clerks or customer service people of any kind visible in this quarter of the huge store. I circle around until, quite by chance, I find the underwear display. There! A small rack of Jockey briefs. The three-packs are in disarray, with all styles and sizes jumbled. The packs are taller than the shelves in the display case, so they have to be forced in, bent double. I spend five minutes putting Macy’s display into a semblance of order until, on the third shelf, I find my prize, a three-pack of standard briefs, 36 waist. Success!

Or is it? I need to pay for it, but where? I look around; then I walk around the core of the vast, eye-dazzling sales floor. The only human beings I see are a few other customers. I see a distant exit door and briefly consider leaving with the goods, but the package has a fink tag attached and would raise an alarm. It is about this point when the thought first arises: “You could have ordered this from Amazon, you know.”

At length, near the perfumery, I see two women behind a counter, chatting with two women on my side. Each pair is having an engrossing talk, it seems. After a long minute I begin to follow. I’m not sure what the nearer pair is on about but several times the store lady asserts, “Well, I will be here on the 15th.” The third time she says this, I think, “Great, but are you here today?”

As these conversations are apparently interminable, I wander off, still looking for assistance. After another half circuit of the floor I spot a person behind a counter busy doing something obscure, and interrupt them to ask, “Can you check me out?” And they can! No, I don’t have a Macy’s card. No, I don’t want to have a Macy’s card. Just do the thing so I can hold my phone by the machine and let it pay you, thanks so much.

As I make my way to the far-distant exit door, which turns out to be the one on the side of the building opposite to where I would like to be — but I don’t mind as long as it gets me out — as I exit, I think with iron certainty, I will never enter this place again. If Amazon doesn’t sell it (and what do they not?) I will do without.

Monday 07/12/2021

Most interesting thing today was that instead of a walk, I took a ride on the Cyber Cycle, which I attended a demo of a couple weeks ago (2.193). It’s fun, although my cycling legs are only a memory. I think I will do it more.

Thanks to the beta blockers I take, my heart doesn’t go much over 70 bpm even when I’m breaking a sweat. I sent a query on that to my cardiologist who said, no, the meds are fine, and no harm if your rate is low.

Spent quite a bit of time working over the current chapter of Software Tools (No Longer) In Pascal. I’m finding a fair amount to criticize in the work of author Brian Kernighan, which is rather presumptuous of me given he is one of the original developers of UNIX and a respected professor of comp. sci. at Princeton. Same age as me, FWIW. Well, he’s welcome to work over one of my books, I’m sure he’d find plenty to criticize.

Tried out the new online meal ordering system, ordering my supper to take out and eat in my room. I have to say somewhat ashamedly that I rather like eating by myself.