Tuesday 5/12/2020

Oh damn it happened. I didn’t do a blog post last night. Now it’s Wednesday afternoon and I cannot remember what I did yesterday. Seriously. Like I was in a coma from Sunday to now. Wait… (Checks the “sent” folder of emails) … ok, I remember something.

One, I polled the 6th floor residents to see if anyone wanted to do any shopping this week. Nobody did.

Two, I got called by a resident who wanted help with her TV. She called me directly, which is a kind of a no-no. The appropriate thing is to call the Tech Squad hotline and Bert would assign a squad member to help. I didn’t think fast enough. I asked a couple of polite questions and then I was committed.

The lady was set up some time ago by somebody with a very large, at least 60-inch, LG TV and a Bose sound-bar. She drives it with one of the old, small Xfinity boxes and the old-style remote. Her problem was that the TV only showed snow. She said she had been “on the phone with XFinity for hours and they were useless.”

Indeed they are if they couldn’t figure out what a screen full of snow means. I knew from 30 seconds into the call what was wrong. I’ve seen it once or twice before, here. Somehow they manage to switch the input-select of the TV away from “Cable” onto some other source. HDMI-3 or something. Or in this case, to “Live TV”, which is how the menu on the LG screen described it when I hit the “input select” button on the remote. I.E. it was switched to “antenna”. There was nothing connected to the antenna socket, hence: snow. And if the XFinity call center couldn’t suss that one out, they were really bad.

There is a vicious button on the top corner of both the old and new Xfinity remotes, “TV Input” which — if the remote and the cable box have been properly paired with the TV — will call up the TV’s input source list. Unfortunately, many of our residents have no idea what that means, so they ignore it, and then they end up with this problem, a blank screen. It bugs me, too, because it is really easy to hit by accident; and once you hit it, the remote can’t be used to tell the TV to dismiss the damn menu. I have to go pick up the TV remote where it is gathering dust in the corner, and use it to dismiss the source menu.

Anyway, I figured it would not be possible to talk her through the fix on the phone, so I broke all the quarantine rules and went to her apartment and stood in the doorway and used her remote to pick “cable” from the TV’s menu, and instantly there was CNN or whatever. She was awestruck at my technical mastery.

Oh, and the Bose sound-bar? Not working. I strongly suspect it is powered off. I asked if she had the remote for it. She didn’t think so, or if she ever had one, didn’t know where it was. So I set the TV to use its internal speaker.

So that was Tuesday, pretty much.

Oh, one more thing! I ordered some stuff from Amazon that I will discuss after it arrives. Quarantine time-filler stuff.

Monday 5/11/2020

Went for the usual run, which felt just fine. Spent several hours coding, working through most of chapter 11 of Crafting Interpreters. Author doing some really clever stuff. I enjoyed translating it.

I didn’t mention yesterday, that I finished the game HiveSwap. Well, I say finished it; I mean, finished with it. I got to another point where I was stuck, so I turned again to the YT video play-through and watched up to the point where I was stuck and a little more to see what I had missed. Then I did go back and play through that puzzle (and one more achievement that the video guy had missed, ha ha). Then I realized that the video play-through had only about 20 minutes to run, so the game was nearly done. Heck with it, I just watched the rest of the video. Glad I did, because it turns out, the game so far was only chapter one of a much longer story. It ends on a cliff-hanger with Jodie and Xephros riding away from the evil Heiress on a Lusus and…never mind.

Since they produced this game back in 2017 and haven’t added another chapter since, it probably won’t ever be finished. Too bad. It had nice characters, a good script, clever art. But I can’t recommend it even as a freebie, because it isn’t finished.

I am getting a lot of entertainment from Youtube videos. There is such an endless range of subjects and personalities. You want something that will chill you right out and leave you calm? No, not meditation. Spend half an hour watching this guy restore a painting. I watch a guy designing and building a computer from scratch. I watch a woman rebuilding a Toyota MR2. I watch a machinist adapt a piece of equipment. People doing stuff, skillfully, that’s what I like. It’s soothing.

 

 

 

Sunday, 5/10/20 <- nice sequence

Sunday. Mother’s day. Apparently I missed out on something, because I had declined breakfasts on my meal request sheet. Or maybe it was just the women? Anyway, I saw comments on the local bulletin board thanking Sodexo for the lovely Mother’s Day  breakfasts, with, it seems, a small bottle of sparkling wine, and orange juice for making Mimosas, and flowers.

Actually later, with my lunch tray, I got the little bottle of sparkling wine also, which I sipped after supper.

Per this blog in late March last year, I started the process of recycling three old Macs which eventually resulted in my having three Apple store coupons worth in total about $700. Today I spent two of them, which covered all but $20 of a new iPhone SE and a wireless charging stand. I like the idea of the charging stand. I’ll put it on my night table where I usually lay the phone, and it can be charging all night. It’ll be handy to have it charged every morning.

The phone will be a minimal upgrade from my 7S one. Same size and color and shape, but a somewhat upgraded camera and a faster processor. Eventually I’ll take the old one down and swap it for the 5S that I loaned to Jean, and then recycle that one. In that sweet bye-and-bye when I can take the car out and drive around.

I wanted to go for a walk but I’m bored with just going out for a loop. I need a destination, which in the past would have been a coffee shop or some other kind of public sitting space. OK, today I opened maps and picked a park, Greer Park, a bit over a mile away. Walked there, found a nice tree to sit under, and sat for a while.

Then got up and walked back. Phone said I’d walked just over 4 miles. But at least I had “been someplace” definite.

 

 

Saturday, 5/9/2020

Two weeks have breezed by and it’s time to do the laundry again. We have a nice magnetic sign-up board in the 6th floor laundry room, with little magnetic chess pawns with our names on them. Yesterday I claimed the first slots on Saturday, 6-8 and 8-10. It takes 45 minutes for one load,  45 minutes for the next, and another 40 minutes of drying, so you can’t fit two full loads into a single, 2-hour slot. Especially if you are going to forget to set a timer on your phone to remind you to cycle the laundry.

The rest of the day I did some programming, and watched a lot of YT videos. After supper I turned on the TV and for some reason, it had no sound. I never did quite figure out why, because in the course of investigating, I made a discovery.

When I set the TV up with a sound bar (about a year ago now, I can’t be bothered to go find the blog post) I ran into a problem. The sound bar takes its input either as digital-optical, which would be the preferred way, or by HDMI pass-through from the TV, or by a plain old stereo wire with a mini-plug. I couldn’t get either of the two hi-tech ways to work. The TV dates to 2011 and its optical output is an old style. And the HDMI thing didn’t work for some reason. Anyway, I settled for plain old stereo which sounded fine anyway.

(Parenthetically, this was one of the reasons I shopped a lot for a new TV, back last summer. I figured a new one would have working digital audio out. Later I reset all the color controls and the picture now is so good, I can’t justify a new one.)

So tonight I’m fiddling with the XFinity DVR settings trying to figure out why no sound is coming out and I see a settings option that alerts me to the fact that the DVR itself has optical audio out. Huh. I have an optical cable right here in this drawer. I hook up the DVR to the sound bar and sound comes out. Well, well.

Later I turn the TV off and discover a problem with this new setup. The DVR never really turns off. The TV shuts off, but the DVR keeps going — and putting out sound. I have to get the control for the sound bar and mute it separately. That wasn’t a problem when the sound bar was fed by the TV. (Another problem: once in a while I like to hook up the MacBook to the TV to stream something on a big screen. When I do that, there won’t be any audio from the sound bar. The sound bar is listening to the DVR, not the TV. But I can leave the old stereo wire hooked up and switch back to it.)

 

Friday 5/8/2020

Went for a run but an odd coincidence made me shorten it. Once again I had left the building without my mask. Well, it was early and nobody was around. There’s a point where I cross a pedestrian bridge over a creek. Approaching this I found myself catching up with a man walking slowly, also without a mask. He was slow, but fast enough that I could not pass him before the entry to the bridge. So I’d have to follow him over the narrow bridge, in his breath-wake. Nunh-unh. So I turned away and took a shorter route home.

One nice thing today was that for the first time in weeks, I heard construction workers below me on the 5th floor. So they are back on the job.

I did some programming. I played HiveSwap for half an hour, until I got stuck again; then I watched more of the YT play-through to see what arbitrary clue I had missed.

The weather was warmish, up to 80 in the afternoon, and for the first time this year I was comfortable sitting out on my balcony.

I tried watching a play streamed by the UK National Theater, By Jeeves. It was by Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd Weber based on PG Wodehouse. That’s a pile of talent, and should make it good, but it wasn’t. If I’d seen it in a theater, I’d’ve left at intermission. I left the stream earlier.

And that was the day.

Thursday 5/7/2020

Did the 7:15 aerobics class. Then, after a bit of sitting around catching up with the internet, I started the Thursday apartment cleaning. Dust. Wipe down kitchen, and then all the surfaces in the bathroom. At the start of the DIY Housekeeping thing, they gave me a vacuum, a swiffer, and a big spray bottle of a cleaning solution, Peroxy, “hydrogen peroxide based cleaner”. It’s odorless, clear, and very effective. Light spray on any hard surface; wipe it around with a damp rag; wipe it off with a dry rag; it sparkles. Go over all the wood surfaces with a dry rag and Pledge.

Then move all furniture onto the carpets and Swiff the hard floors. Then move all the furniture off the carpets and vacuum. Then change the bed linen and done.

My shower has clear glass doors. Back on Tasso street I kept a squeegee in the shower and squeeged (is that a word?) the inside of the glass before getting out. It helped a lot to keep the water spots from building up on the glass. I decide to do that here also. I order a squeegee and a suction-cup hook from Ace Hardware up the street. After lunch I go up and pick it up.

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Got an email from SFJazz: all concerts through August canceled. Damn. I had booked two shows that I was really looking forward to. Now I have to decide whether to return the tickets for credit or donate them. I split the difference, claiming credit for one show, donating the other.

 

 

Wednesday 5/6/2020

Started with a run. I found myself awake at 5:50, so I ended up starting my run at 7am.

At 9 am I got notification that my grocery shopper had started working. She arrived with the stuff just before 11am. I hastily put the bags in my room and headed for the basement, because today was car freedom day, when we are allowed to take our cars out of the garage. I took the Prius out for a 20-minute run, just to warm it up and charge the battery, then back to the garage.

Back upstairs I broke down the grocery order. I had filled out order forms for the 7 customers (6 plus me). I put them around the big table in the 6th floor dining room and put the items next to their forms. At this point I noticed (rather belatedly) that the case of Anchor Steam I had ordered was on the bill, but not present.  I texted the “runner” and yes, it was still in her car. We arranged for her to circle back with it later.

Then I wrote down the prices of everything and added up the individual bills, and delivered everything to the recipients. By which time my lunch tray arrived at my door, and almost at once I got the text from the runner, she was outside with muh beerz.

After lunch I placed an order for pizza delivery. I had agreed with Patty to share a pizza tonight. We did that last Wednesday, when she ordered. Rather than split that, we agreed I would order this week.

What a busy morning. Think I need a nap.

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Supper was nice. Patty and I sat on opposite sofas in the lounge and talked while gorging on pizza. First time I’ve eaten a meal in the company of another person in … six weeks?

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Bag balm! Stuff fucking works! Once or twice a day I put a little dab on the back of each hand and rub it around and up my forearms, and it moisturizes nicely. All the dryness I was having from washing so often, is gone. Also, remarkably, the little patch of psoriasis I’ve had for years on the back of one hand, is staying softer and smoother than it has in a long time. I’m getting to like the smell of creosote.

Tuesday 5/5/2020

Started the day with Victoria’s step-aerobics at 7:15. This time there were four attendees, up from one (1) last Thursday. It’s a gentle workout, but it is a workout.

Did a little desk work, paying an insurance bill, and entering the end of month values for my various Schwab accounts in the spreadsheet. I note that I created this spreadsheet back on Day 31, early January 2019. This gives me an overview of the state of the Nest Egg. The total as of 3/30, was down %20 for the year. In April it recovered some, and is now down only %13 on the year.

Through the day I was fielding emails about our weekly 6th floor shopping. I ended up with a list of nearly 20 items — after everybody said “nah, nothing this week” and then had second thoughts next day. This week I am trying Errand.com for shopping instead of InstaCart. The actual shopping will happen tomorrow. Tomorrow is a big day for other reasons. (Not really.)

Did three computery things in the day. An hour on the Affinity photo book (dodging and burning, three different ways, including one I’d never heard of); proofed three pages for Distributed Proofreaders; and did some study in Crafting Interpreters. The latter got my nickers in a serious twist, because I strongly disagree with the way the author is presenting the information.

I was listening to a podcast where they were going on about the movie, His Girl Friday. I think I’ll try watching that on Prime Video tonight.

 

Monday 5/4/2020

Went for a run; it felt fine. Divided my non-fiddling-around time between crafting interpreters and studying Affinity. That was about it.

OK, editing. Couple of things worth noting.

One, little flashes of grief. Haven’t been troubled by these for some time, but somehow, looking at the plants reminded me of Marian, and later something brought up recollections of trips we had taken together. Not grieving so much for the person, as for the entire life as a couple that ended. I remind myself that I’ve done a good job of crafting a safe, comfortable, moderately interesting new life, and that’s great. But the old one is gone, never to return, and that makes me sad when I dwell on it.

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In the area of not-dwelling-on-it, I spent some time with the game, Hiveswap. I “cheated” by watching a video walk-through to get past the latest snafu, getting Joey (not Josie as I wrote before) past the latest snake-lizard monsters and into the safety of the attic. Where she is shortly sucked into a bizarre portal and the “swap” of the title happens: Joey is transported to another world, and we see a different character, a sort of evil Joey?, being transported the other way. I believe the game maker’s plan was to have a second game about that character, but they didn’t finish it?

Anyway I stuck with Joey through the first couple of scenes in the new place, which included an amusing puzzle. She picks up a bizarre alien ipad thing and tries to log into it. The log-in process involves playing a game of “snake” — remember that old game from the 80s? If you can get the snake to eat five targets, Joey is logged in to the pad. That only took me about 6 attempts.

Sunday 5/3/2020

I used to maintain a varied structure to my week. Monday morning and Wednesday afternoon, working at FOPAL. Thursday, artifact work at the museum. Friday and/or Saturday, lead a tour. Sunday morning, coffee at a coffee shop while reading the paper; also watering the plants.

All that’s wiped away now, so every day is pretty much like every other. We try to keep up some standards, anyhow. Sunday I still water the plants and do the big crossword. Other than that, it was pretty similar to Saturday, and Friday, and…

Well, next Saturday morning I will do my laundry, so I  have that to look forward to.

The programming book that I’m working through, Crafting Interpreters, gave me a little bit of mental work. I’m finishing up chapter 9, and at this point have the skeleton of a programming language implemented, with variables and if-statements and loops working. So at the end of each chapter the author has these “challenges”, basically extra-credit puzzles. The one at the end of chapter 9 was, “Ok, you have loops working. In many programming languages there is some kind of a break statement that terminates a loop early. Add a break to your interpreter. It should be a syntax error to have one outside of a loop. Inside a loop at execution time, it should end that loop only.”

Working out how to do that took me a few hours on Friday and again Saturday. Then while taking a walk today I figured out what I was missing, so finished that task and tested the code.

Fun, right? Fascinating? Well, better than doing another crossword puzzle. Which I also did.