Sunday, 4/12/2020

…and Friday and Thursday… Actually I’m very comfortable and under no stress at all. (The CH Writers’ Group “writing prompt” for the next meeting is, “what are you afraid of?” and I have to think a while. Aside from obvious things like “getting cancer” I don’t think I have any on-going fears. For which I try to remember to be grateful.) I do miss all sorts of ordinary things, like going for drives, my volunteer gigs, and eating at restaurants. But as solitary confinements go, this is pretty plush.

So by 10am I had read the paper, done the big puzzle, watered the plants and tidied the room. There was a new video from one of the youtubers I follow. I did some programming and really got on top of the Visitor Pattern. I went for a 3-mile walk, up into the Stanford campus.

Channing House is trying to keep spirits up. About 4pm there was a knock on the door; it was servers from the kitchen with bottles of white wine and easter-themed chocolates. Nice. Had a phone call from Dennis, an email from Scott, and (yesterday) a text from SWBB friend Nancy. So, connected.

Games. Yesterday I tried out and eliminated Everything and Gnog. The first is just weird. You are dumped into a cartoonish landscape populated with animal figures that move in a very peculiar way. You can apparently become any other living thing you bump into, so you just keep moving from avatar to avatar. But why? The second is an attractive puzzle game, in which you manipulate crazy objects to make them do things. I don’t like puzzle games, it turns out. They make me feel stupid. After I’ve poked and clicked and dragged every which way on a thing and it doesn’t do anything, I get bored and want an answer. Oh, if you click this and drag that in the right sequence, it turns over and there’s other stuff. Don’t care.

Today I tried out A good snowman is hard to build. It’s a puzzle game. Your little avatar builds a snowman by rolling balls of snow to make them the right size, then stacks them. Problem is, the field is limited. If you get a snowball up against a wall, you can’t move it more, except sideways. So you have to figure the exact sequence of rolls that will let you get the three balls to the right size, and stack them, without getting any ball stuck. The reward is you get to move on to another puzzle. See above; it made me feel stupid.

Saturday, 4/10/2020

Sludged around until 10, when I went for a 2.5-mile walk. The route was basically south on Webster to Page Mill, and back on Waverley. This brought me within half a block of my old house on Tasso street. I considered turning in to look, and instantly vetoed it. I have strong and somewhat conflicting emotions about revisiting that old life that basically ended with Marian’s death. There was six months of tidying up loose ends (documented here about 300 posts back) and then settling in to a new life here. While walking the familiar blocks of Webster, Oregon, and Waverley circling the old home I felt the first flashes of grief I’ve had for months. Not so much grieving the lost partner so much as the lost life in general.

I’ve been reading the poems of one of my neighbors, Elizabeth. She just published a “chapbook” (I’d’a called it a pamphlet, 30 pages in 4×5 size) of poems. They comprise a  scrapbook of vignettes, flashes of her memories of a year centering on the death of her long-time partner. People grieve in different ways and about different things. I suppose I could recall a few vignettes of Marian but I couldn’t make poetry of them. Well, I never claimed to be a poet.

Back at home, I started into chapter 5 of Crafting Interpreters and immediately slammed into something new to me. In his Java code, Nystrom is making use of the “Visitor Pattern“, a fairly sophisticated software engineering technique. I’d maybe barely heard of it; here I am faced with understanding it well enough to reproduce his Java code in Python. The first time I’m having to learn something new for this project, and I welcome it. I backed off to do some reading. Later thought, maybe I should just read ahead in the book and Nystrom might talk about it.

 

Friday, 4/10/2020

In the morning rather than running I tuned in on zoom to Veronica’s balance and fitness class. It’s 45 minutes, a little slower-paced than the 20-minute video I worked out to earlier in the week. I am ridiculously uncoordinated. A lot of these exercises have you doing one thing with your feet and another with your arms. I have a lot of trouble doing them. I can walk and chew gum at the same time, but I can’t simultaneously kick forward with alternate legs while reaching out and then up with my arms.

Spent maybe 3 hours all told finishing up the code for chapter 4 of Crafting Interpreters. After picking off the usual dozen syntax errors, my code ran all the tests in the test bucket the author provided. On to chapter 4, where we’ll be parsing the tokens and building a syntax tree, I believe.

Spent half an hour on the phone with Connie trying to make her macbook air behave. It is really hard working with people over the phone. “So just click there and you will see…” and they say, “No, actually it is showing me this totally different thing.”

Missed the first part of Rhonda’s 4pm Friday phone meeting. Apparently she said that there was a delay getting the DIY vacuums. I want my vacuum so much. It has been 6 weeks, I think, since my carpets were vacuumed. I made a list of all the surfaces to be dusted, wiped down, swept or vacuumed. Cleaning day could take 3-4 hours. Fine, I’m eager to get started. My hard floor has little gritty bits I feel with my bare feet, too. Well, you know, I do have a broom. I could sweep that. Maybe I will.

 

Thursday, 4/9/2020

Somehow today I felt busy all the time. But I hardly left my unit.

Ran that 20 minute exercise video in the morning. Tomorrow I think i will try the in-house “strength and balance” stream at 9:15.

Worked through a couple more sections of  Crafting Interpreters. This is being a great and enjoyable exercise in refreshing my knowledge of Python.

The exciting activity was that today my 6th floor InstaCart order was shopped and delivered. A few substitutions, but not too bad. I was on the app exchanging texts with the shopper as he worked. He rolled up outside about 2pm and I had everything wiped down with bleach and delivered by 3pm.

My bag of fresh linens wasn’t quite right. I guess Wanda, my usual housekeeper, is off being a nurse’s assistant. The bottom sheet was for a twin bed, so didn’t fit, and the top sheet was also a twin I think, but worked. And no pillowcase. I am not going to complain. I just reversed the old bottom sheet and made do.

With a fresh 9V battery I could check and indeed the bulb in the metronome was toast, but not because it was a burned-out incandescent. It was a neon bulb that had been smashed. And the little plastic dome that had been over it. Pretty clearly the thing had been dropped on its head. I couldn’t see the broken bulb because it was under the cracked and crushed plastic dome. Now they are both off and I am wondering what to do.

I could get a neon bulb, but a bare neon bulb wouldn’t look good. How to get a neon with a finished-looking dome over it? I spent some time on electronics websites like Jameco and Digikey. There are plenty of attractive panel lights but they are all at least an inch deep behind the panel. Unfortunately this light is right on top of the little motor, with less than a quarter inch of clearance. The old one had a couple of wires snaking through a hole and the neon bulb lay sideways on the top of the wood under its little dome.

There are nice looking orange LEDs that have no depth, the leads come right out of the bulb. But the available power is 120VAC. LEDs want low voltage DC. OK, google some more. In fact you can drive an LED from 120VAC, if you provide in effect a voltage divider and a diode. So I ordered a handful of parts and I will see if I can make that work. Been a while since I had to solder resistors and diodes and shit.

Helped another person, Judy, whose Mac had suddenly said, you are not connected to the internet. In fact, she wasn’t. Somehow she had managed to turn the wi-fi off. Telephone technical help is not fun. You try to talk somebody through finding the wi-fi icon in the upper left corner of their mac screen, and open its menu, and select “turn wi-fi on”, when you can’t just point and say, there, click that.

 

Wednesday, 4/8/2020

Went for a run. Felt good.

At two points today, other residents called me up for assistance using Zoom on a Mac. I spent an hour on the phone with Connie walking her through the process of creating and hosting a meeting. Later in the day she told me that it was working and she felt ready to host the Floor Reps meeting tomorrow, which I guess she had been asked to do.

Another resident, Kiki, has a lot of trouble using her iPad, in part because her hands are very shaky so it is hard to tap on things accurately. Anyway I managed to talk her through joining a meeting.

I really wish people would put in proper tech help requests. They’d probably end up referred to me anyway, though, being Mac users. When we get back to normal I will have to try to fix that.

I did a little more with Crafting Interpreters. Then it was suppertime and the evening’s meal was a dud, almost inedible. Well, salad and dessert were acceptable. With it, I drank my last Pepsi. Hopefully I will get more with the grocery order promised for tomorrow.

The evening’s communication from Channing House had two new restrictions based on advice from the County health department. One, all residents of senior facilities are to have their temperature taken daily and be surveyed for symptoms. CH is allowing us to self-report if we have the means for taking our own temps, and I do. They didn’t specify any particular time of day.

Then there is this, which rules out attendance at church for any reason, among other meetings.

Residents are not to leave the facility to celebrate holidays. The order states: “Gathering with people who do not live in your residence, even to celebrate a religious holiday, poses severe risk of COVID-19 transmission. The risk is especially high for those who live in congregate settings such as long-term care facilities. Additionally, under the Public Health Officer’s Order of March 31, 2020, any non-essential gathering between people who do not live in the same household is legally prohibited.”

A Channing House apartment is a household/residence. So, gatherings of people who do not live in your apartment is also prohibited.

If you attend gatherings, we have been directed to either prohibit your entry back into the building or have you isolated for 14 days. To have the Public Health Department authorize us to prohibit your return is shocking and speaks to how important they see this issue. We would opt to have you isolated. But, we hope you will just stay home this holiday season.

Note the management’s use of “shocking”. Kind of agree. Not being able to go to church is no issue for me. And I already wasn’t attending any other sort of “gathering”. But this also formalizes what we all were pretty much observing before, not going to someone else’s apartment.

Tuesday, 4/7/2020

(I’m actually writing this on Wednesday afternoon, because I was sure I had done a blog post yesterday. But I hadn’t. I was remembering the blog post of Monday. The days are all alike in Sequesterville.)

In the morning I did 20 minutes of exercise, using a video that one of my neighbors had passed around weeks ago, when fitness classes were canceled here. It was pretty good, 20 minutes had me sweating anyway.

An email went out today from Angela, saying that due to problems people had experienced holding the door to get their meal distribution, they would be sending someone from facilities to every upgraded unit (floors 6-10) to “adjust” the door closer. That would be the hydraulic door closer that I was fiddling with on Saturday, because it pushed too hard. I can well imagine that some of the feebler people might have had trouble holding against it while reaching for their meal box.

I spent a couple of hours getting started on the Crafting Interpreters project. It looks to be quite fun, basically re-doing in Python what the author displays in the book, written in Java. Java’s an ugly language; I’m glad I never had to use it. But now I have to learn something about it, because I have to figure out what he’s doing and reproduce it. Then I can critique his code, heh heh.

In the evening I put in our 6th floor grocery order, via Instacart to be shopped at Molly Stone. Only three others participated. Maybe we don’t need to do it weekly. Anyway I have to say I am pleased with the Instacart web UI. It is quite easy to find products, to know if they are in stock, to put them in my virtual cart, etc. The order is to be shopped and delivered on Thursday. I installed the Instacart app on my phone so I’ll get timely updates from the shopper.

Late in the day, Mary R. offered an old metronome on the bulletin board. “Sound works, light doesn’t.” I wrote back, if a real musician wants it fine, otherwise, I’d like to try fixing it. Later in the day it appeared outside my door. I went and got my tool box and opened it up. I expected to find a circuit board, maybe discrete transistors. Nope: it’s all analog, based on a nice little spinning A/C motor that rotates a conical drive wheel. Adjusting the rate dial on the front moves a driven wheel along the cone to change its speed. The driven wheel has a lever that tightens and releases a little spring, so every revolution a little metal hammer goes whock against the back of the box. The wheel also has a janky little contact that bridges two copper springs to light a little incandescent bulb on the top.

First job after I got it disassembled was to check continuity through the little bulb. I got out my VOM, which Scott gave me last year and… it was dead. I opened it up, it needs a 9V battery. Of course I don’t have one. So I hustled back to Instacart and added a package of 9V batteries to my grocery order!

 

Monday 4/6/2020

Well, CV may be slowing down. Back on Day 1.118, Sunday 3/29, the world count was 700K, having doubled in 7 days. I predicted 1.4M on Saturday, but it only reached 1.37M today, so doubling in a shade over 8 days. Next double, 2.8M, would be expected on a week from Tuesday, 4/14. We’ll see.

Today I went for a run after breakfast, between rain showers. It felt good. Spent the morning in an old occupation: cleaning up and upgrading my Python programming environment. It’s been more than a year, maybe two, since I had to fiddle with environment variables and versions of stuff. I had to google some things to remember how to accomplish stuff in the terminal command line.

The point here is that I’ve decided to go through the new online textbook, Crafting Interpreters. I read a blog post by the author, describing the four-year saga of writing it. He walks through writing an interpreter, coding it first in Java and then in C. Now one might think that interpreters are old hat to me, since I worked on a team building one, APL\360, more than forty years ago (1975-7, about). However the challenge here is to repeat his Java code, approximately line by line, in Python instead. It could be of interest to others; anyway it will be fun to do.

Does this mean I’ve given up studying Lisp, as I mentioned several times last year? Yeah, Lisp just isn’t fun.

After supper I tried another game from the bundle, Europa Universalis IV. It turns out to be one of those games in which are you are a ruler trying to grow your province in a medieval Europe, to quote from Wikipedia,

The gameplay requires the player to lead a nation by finding a balance of military, diplomacy and economy. The player does so through their choices as sovereign of their nation, and through the spending of resources available to them: Prestige, Stability, Gold (Ducats), Manpower, Legitimacy for Monarchies, Republican Tradition for Republics, Devotion for Theocracies, Horde Unity for Hordes and Monarch Power (Administrative, Diplomatic, Military).

Very complicated. I started through the tutorial. The Pale province of Ireland has risen in rebellion. Select your army in London, make them hike over to Wales, get them to board your fleet, direct the fleet across the Irish sea, direct the army to attach the peasants. Watch as little toy soldiers exchange blows. I can see where this is going. Meanwhile there will be some other disaster in Essex or Yorkshire, and you’ve got to build forts and farms, and it will get more and more complicated. The graphics are fairly cute, the gameplay UI is usable, but it’s too thinky. I have another game, Galactica, that is similar in overall concept except it’s about planets, not provinces. I’ve played that a couple of hours and could play more. This one I don’t want to continue in.

 

 

 

Sunday, 4/5/2020

Had coffee and read the paper. Then doing email, I followed up with Bert on a tech call from Grace. Grace was my next-door neighbor while I was on the 4th floor. She was having trouble changing her Amazon password. She had written up a nice sheet of notes with all her passwords and PINs, and put that and her iPad in a bag and hung it on Bert’s doorknob.

Well, we should not be passing germs between units (why we will get individual vacuums soon). So what to do? I put on gloves and got the bag from Bert’s door. I discarded the bag as too hard to clean. I wiped down the iPad carefully with my “Virus Death” solution. I made up a bottle of this a couple of weeks back, the last time I went by myself to the grocery. Water, bleach, a couple drops of detergent, a dash of isopropyl alcohol. Wiped thoroughly with the solution on a paper towel, dried with another.

Now I used the iPad to change her password, which worked as it should. Gloved up, wiped the iPad again, returned it to Grace. Hopefully no contamination from her to me or vice versa.

Channing House custom is that Sunday lunch is the main meal of the day. Back when we could eat in the dining room (sniff) people often had relatives in for that meal. These days we get the packaged meals to our doors and, frankly, the fare has been, um, less than inspiring? But today’s lunch was actually pretty good.

A decent chef’s salad, pea soup, jalapeno corn bread, berry shortcake. I’d have had wine, except I finished my bottle of wine yesterday. I shall try to get a bottle with next week’s grocery order.

Later I tried the next game in my big bundle, Brütal Legend. It turns out to be one of those fighting games, where you control your hero as he slashes and chops and punches an endless series of enemies. I used to watch people playing these on game consoles at the pizza place back in the 90s. This one has a heavy-metal theme; besides his axe, your hero also carries an electric guitar and can hit power chords that slay. Again, well made, amusing graphics, a nice intro video featuring Jack Black; but not the kind of thing I want to spend any time with.

 

 

 

Saturday 4/4/2020

A quiet day in Sequester City. I took a walk after breakfast. Then I got on a chair and fiddled with the door closer on my apartment door. They install a hydraulic closer as part of the upgrade. I’d just as lief do without it, but I couldn’t see any practical way to remove it. I figured out how to adjust its resistance, however, and set it to minimum. So at least I don’t have to brace my shoulder and lean into it, to hold it back, as I accept my meal package from the server.

Later I looked at part of a walk-through of Broken Age and decided it is really a young kid’s game, with a lot of silly and nonsensical puzzles. So uninstalled that.

That was about it. Reading. A nap. Phone call from Dennis.

I do try to be consciously grateful. I watched Top Chef in the evening, and it made me want to go out to a restaurant. And I can’t. Yeah, I have it tough. I am safe, comfortable, in good health, have my food brought to me, and have money to weather the post-corona recession. So: grateful.

 

 

Friday 4/3/2020

Started with a run, which felt fine. Since earlier in the week we have had a three-basin hand-washing station outside the front door. Everyone who enters the building has to be seen washing their hands before the door will open for them. The staff people who stick a probe in my ear to take my temperature are getting to know me, and ask how the run went.

By the way, UPS and etc. delivery people don’t have to wash their hands, because they don’t go in. They put the boxes on the ground and our door person sprays the boxes with disinfectant from a pump bottle, then moves the boxes in himself.

Killed time until lunch. After lunch, I ordered what I’ve been thinking about for a few days. MERV-11 quality furnace filters, and some 1/4-inch elastic. Actually, 5mm elastic because the 1/4-inch width was “only two left, order soon”. So OK, 1/5 of an inch will do, and it was in stock. Can you guess what I’m gonna do when these arrive? Hint: I will be using my kitchen shears and my office stapler.

Later I thought to try out another of my new games. Next in alphabetic order was The Alpha Device. Another big disappointment, and without even a cute big-eyed spider for company. The game screen came up, and then did nothing. No keystrokes or mouse actions caused any reaction whatever, not even the ESC key which is the one constant in every game I’ve played. Hit ESC to bring up a menu to pause, save, or quit. Look for a YT tutorial; no help there, that player somehow smoothly glides into the game world. On the Steam user forum I learn the reason: this game requires a gamepad. It just doesn’t use keyboard or mouse. At all. Hmmm, I wonder what they go for? Quick look at Amazon, around $40. Nope.

Next up, Broken Age. Cute fantasy characters. Maybe. I played this 46 minutes (Steam keeps track of that). It has two different threads with two different main characters who at least at the start, are completely separated in different worlds. I ran the boy character up to a place where I couldn’t make any more progress. I will look at a YT tutorial to cheat. Tomorrow.

At 4pm Rhonda held her weekly phone call. Not a lot of new news, except that the DIY room cleaning kits will include a lightweight vacuum cleaner. They really are going to buy 80+ vacuums for residents to use. But in perspective: how does that cost compare with the cost of the nursing aid positions that they won’t have to fill, when they repurpose some number of housecleaners?

Had a zoom “cocktail party” with Jerry, Betty, and Patty. Consumed my last but one bottle of beer. Can I get more? We will see when we get to the shopping order for next week.