Read the paper, had my brekkie, watered the plants, did the crossword, talked to Dennis. Told him I was heading out for a walk, but then realized, if I go now for any decent length of walk, I won’t be back when the lunch cart comes around.
So spent the time to lunch completing the coding of that old project. What I had done was to try to create an abstract “deck of cards” that could be shuffled, dealt into “hands”, put back in the deck etc. Written as a Python module that could be used by any kind of card game. Then as proof of concept, I started coding a simple Klondike solitaire using my deck. That’s what I got working yesterday and today. It has a very lame user interface, just ascii characters to show the tableau and the foundations etc. But after picking off 3 or 4 bugs, it plays the game. So that was fun. Not sure what to do with it next, if anything.
After lunch I went for that walk of a bit over 2 miles. Then it was time to watch The Limelighters’ production of Pirates of Penzance now streaming free for a week. After supper I started watching Men In Black recorded off the HBO. Will I stick with it to the end?
So today I did my laundry. I hadn’t gotten my preferred 6-10am laundry slot (there’s a magnetic board we put markers on to claim time slots, and a neighbor grabbed the best slots a week ago) so had to do it 10-12. I started the first load then grabbed a shopping bag and a hat and headed out for the five-minute walk to the farmer’s market. I only bought a pound of ripe apricots.
With the laundry done and put away, it was almost time for the garage to be opened for returning cars. Mine spent the prior night on the street, because of driving down to FOPAL yesterday. Now I put it away. Next on the program was a nap, and I tried to take one on my balcony. However, being on the sixth floor, I can hear sounds from blocks away, and somebody was remodeling a house in the next block. Later I spent a couple of hours working on an old software project, one I’d set aside back in 2017.
One more shipment came in, an order of a few colors of model paint colors from eBay, but not the order from Amazon. I’m waiting on that, which should have come yesterday, to start work on the next car model.
Went for a run first thing; it felt good. Watered the plants. Refilled the hummingbird feeder. Little buzzers are emptying it in 6 days, average. That’s what, 50 hummingbird weights in sugar water, say 10 hummingbird weights consumed per day. By one, or perhaps two, birds. Slurp slurp.
First order of business, however, was catching up with the FOPAL decision to not have an August sale after all. It occurred to me, hey, those signup sheets are still open. I went through all 6 of them and changed them to stop accepting results, supposedly at 9am. By 9:30, 3 of them had “closed” status but 3 didn’t. Little bug in Slottr, there.
Also in Nancy’s “sorry, changing to september” letter that I forwarded to all signed-up people last night, she indicated that the signups would be preserved. Um, easier said than done. I looked but couldn’t find any way to reschedule a “slot” to a different date. One can only delete a slot (losing any signups) and enter a new one. There’s a work-around, to export all the existing signups to a spreadsheet and manually reenter them. So I wrote to Slottr support asking for guidance on that.
Then bugged Frank to tell me when he’d be at FOPAL so I could go down and finish working those boxes of Computer books.
Then wrote a note to the CH bulletin board advising Mac users about the latest update. MacOS keeps suggesting politely but insistently that we should upgrade to Catalina. I don’t want our in-house Mac users (of whom there are many) to attempt that, because if there is any problem, which is possible with an OS version change, they’d be on their own. However, MacOS also offers other updates the same way. So I sent a graphic:
Don’t click on the one thing, do click on the other to install a Security update and a new version of Safari. Should be clear enough, right?
Updated the status of all my pending online orders. Somehow I have ten things on the way to me, mostly from Amazon but also eBay and Peet’s coffee. Shopaholic much? It looks like three will arrive today, maybe four. (In the end three things arrived: one small order, a larger order, and half of each of two orders that Amazon had split and recombined, who knows why.)
And that got me to 11am and feeling like I’d had a full day.
After lunch I got the car out and drove to FOPAL where I processed the last four boxes of computer books. Back home, I listened to Rhonda’s Friday meeting. There was little news this time. All covid tests are coming back negative. The program for allowing family visits is working well. There have been quite a few calls from people interested in moving in, which is not what Kim in marketing had expected. The 5th floor upgrade is moving along, with planned move-in for October. Generally a feeling that we are getting on top of this pandemic thing and starting to cruise.
One of the orders that arrived today was my final order of model cars, an order I placed nearly 2 weeks ago.
So now I have 4 models to choose among. There are great reference pictures online for both Chryslers. They are very collectible. Examples: 1955 300, 1956 300B. One thing I learned from these pictures: the original Hemi engines were not painted red! They were painted gold.
Both cars were successful as stock racers. The 1955 in particular was the star of the Mexican Road Race, which brings up the idea of dressing the model in racing colors:
That would be a lot of work, and I’m not sure my skills are up to it.
Victoria was late starting her Zoom session for aerobics. She comes up from Hollister–which is a hell of a commute–and today for the first time in Shelter Days, there was heavy traffic.
This was a pretty blank day. Took two naps, that’s how boring it was. I was curious whether, with the new, every-other-week cleaning schedule, I would still get the usual weekly delivery of fresh towels and sheets. And I did, so whee, excitement, I got to change the bed.
I spent some time casually looking into something that caught my attention recently: Prius camping. There is a little subculture of people who live in their Priuses, and a slightly larger subculture of people who use the Prius for camping. I’ve figured all along that when we all get busted out of house arrest, it would be time for a road trip. I’d thought of that in terms of staying in motels. As I noted last year, camping was one of the things I figured never to do again. But camping in the Prius…hmmm.
One more car model came in the mail, the 1/16 scale MG-TC.
The box is much larger than the box for the 1/25 scale Ford. I’m not going to do this one next; I expect it to be of very high quality and detail (if those spoke wheels in the picture are really that good, wow) and I want to do it justice, so I’ll do at least one other, first.
Then about 8pm came news from FOPAL: they have decided that they can’t run a sale August 8-9 after all; the recent increase in ‘rona cases makes it irresponsible. So now we get to test the feature of Slottr, that lets you send an email to everyone who has signed up. Tomorrow.
After my run and checking email I got in the car (parked on the street) and headed over the hill to the coast. I had just stopped at the first of three nurseries outside of Half Moon Bay when my phone rang: it was Nancy, of FOPAL. Today was the day the sign-up sheets should be open for signing up, and it seemed they weren’t, or at least one wasn’t.
I couldn’t do anything from there, so I started back, taking another call from her as I drove, tsk tsk. By the time I was back to the apartment, Nancy and Frank had worked out the issue, whatever it was, I really don’t know. Anyway by 11 all the sign up sheets were functioning, much to my relief. I had picked this sign-up sheet website to use and it was very distressing that it failed as soon as it was being used. Thus I didn’t get to look for plants or pots. Maybe Saturday?
Nothing much the rest of the day, except for putting the car in the garage at 2pm. With the mail one of the models I ordered came in, the 53 Ford Victoria. It includes a period Coke machine model.
According to the side of the box, it has even more detail than the 52 Chevy (peeking out above).
Observe that engine, a flat-head V-8? I know it very, very well. There was a period when mine had a head-gasket leak. With John Snow’s help I changed the head gasket, which promptly failed. We took the head off and I had it milled (I forget what I used for transportation with the car down) and John reinstalled it. I bought a torque wrench to make sure we did it right. But it failed again. I remember that John got angry at this, elbowed me away, and changed the gasket for a third time in a couple of hours, working in a complete rage. I think that third time was what worked.
I eventually more or less abandoned that car in Seattle, selling it to Tom Attwood for $100 (or maybe less?) before moving back to San Francisco. Will this be the model I do next? Must wait until three more kits come in.
Did the aerobics class, then frittered time to the CH Writers’ meeting at 11. The cue this time was “your relation to France”. I didn’t realize when Connie assigned that last week, that today was Bastille Day. Anyway I had nothing. I thought about me and France. I might have made something of why in 1957 I opted to learn French as a second language in high school, instead of the presumably easier Spanish. (Or for that matter, how little old edge-of-suburbia Bethel HS in Spanaway WA even offered both French and Spanish. Go BHS!) Except I don’t remember why I made that choice. Or how I have a bunch of nice French in-laws who I don’t socialize with. So, nothin’.
Before and after the meeting I was negotiating with Frank at FOPAL to implement my actual physical presence. I got the car out and went down there at 2pm and spent a couple of hours going through some of the backlog of computer books. Found something like 15 “high-value” ones, books that bring more than $25, used, on Amazon. And two boxes of ones worth selling here, and assigned prices to them. I did all this sitting at a table in the shade in an open courtyard. It felt really good to be out of the house, doing something useful.
On return of course I had to park the car on the street. I can’t bring it in until tomorrow at 1:30. I have a plan for tomorrow morning, as well. Harriet texted me that she had seen fuchsias for sale in the nurseries over the hill at Half Moon Bay. So I’ll probably drive over there in the morning.
In the evening I tried to watch School of Rock and couldn’t hack it past 20 minutes. Sorry, Jack Black.
Went for a run early; I was back and showered and dressed by 8am.
The Residents Association meeting went off smoothly. Only about 80 people on at peak. As treasurer I gave my report in one sentence, “There have been no transactions since the last meeting so the balance is still the same as then, $974.” A bit to my surprise the question of the cell tower on the roof was not brought up in the open discussion period. Good.
Didn’t do much else of note. Looked at some old software projects, wondering if I want to do some more hacking on them. I’m participating in a beta test of a picture storage manager. It crashed on me so I reported that, and filed a couple of feature requests. The developer is really friendly and accessible and the app is pretty, but it lacks some function I would need.
A friend asked how I liked Chariots of Fire, which aired on PBS this week. She didn’t think it deserved all the Oscar nominations it got back in 1981. I had it on the DVR so I started it. Got 45 minutes in and gave up. Very pretty PBS-style costume drama. Downton Abbey with foot races. Booooring. Other movies on my DVR: Men in Black, School of Rock. Both of which I saw in theaters when they were new. Actually we saw the Broadway production of School of Rock when we were in NYC in 2017. So some low-brow fun waiting for later in the week.
Up again at 4:30 to attempt another picture of the comet, this time with the camera on the tripod. And again my best shot is not quite in focus. It is extremely hard to focus the camera manually in near-darkness, but autofocus doesn’t work looking at a dark sky. End result, no detail in the comet and the few stars in the image look like white tennis balls if you zoom in. So in the daylight I carefully focused the lens exactly, and then taped it in position with masking tape, so I can’t mess it up, and I will try again tomorrow morning.
For breakfast I tried the vanilla flavor of the meal replacement I’ve been beta-testing. It was not very good. I wrote up my final beta-tester report and posted it. Short version: not ready for prime time, guys.
Under the new rules the garage is open on MW and Saturday, so I thought heck, I’ll go look at a couple of nurseries. Went to Wegman’s and the one in Ladera, and disappointed in both. I want some largish (12-inch) pots that aren’t ugly, and a couple of fuschias that have an upright pattern and interesting blossoms. Struck out on both fronts.
Nurseries, it turns out, are emotionally hard for me. I found myself tearing up when I walked by a shelf of little fuzzy cacti and succulents just like we had on the windowsill. Yeah, move on. Couple other times I noticed plants Marian had bought at various times. Notice I’m looking at fuschias? She was never very much for fuschias.
Back home, did some online shopping. First checked on the status of various orders I have pending. I have a total of three model car kits on the way. A week ago I was looking around for a kit and I was attracted by a 1955 Chrysler and ordered it from Amazon. Then today, I got the notion of an MG-TD kit, because some family friends had one in my childhood. Well there are none currently made, but oddly enough, there used to be, and people on ebay are selling them, unopened. So I ordered one. And then got to thinking how my first car, a 1941 chevy, is not available, but my second car was a 1952 Ford. Ah yes, 1953 (practically identical) Ford kits are available. So I have all these on the way and at some point I will have to decide which to do first. Probably the Ford. I spent an hour working out which model paint colors match the dark blue top, light blue bottom, of the car I owned.
Plus I wanted a new pair of jeans so ordered that from Levi’s.
And THEN I got an email from Frank at FOPAL. Boxes of computer books are stacking up in the courtyard at the Cubberly center. That’s a former high-school complex converted by the City into a community resource; FOPAL occupies several rooms there, and has been storing its donation overflow in stacks of boxes in a courtyard. At which point I realized: that’s out of doors. I could work out of doors, alone, sorting and pricing those books. Probably? So I checked with CH staff and later got an email confirming, yeah, that sounds safe. Yay! I’ll be able to do some volunteer work again.
Got up at 4:30am again and this time I saw the comet! Comet NeoWise was right where that web page said it ought to be, and directly opposite my balcony, very convenient. The comet is not very bright but it is easy with the binoculars. I started scanning with the binocs and in about 2 seconds the comet jumped into the frame and said “howdy!”
Once I’d seen it that way and knew where to look, I could juuuussst about persuade myself I could see it with the unaided eye. If we had a really dark sky it would be easy, but the light pollution here is so bad only Venus and maybe two other stars can be seen easily.
I took this picture with the Nikon but it is a half-second exposure hand-held and not sharp. Why didn’t I get out the tripod? I think I’ll try again tomorrow with the tripod.
I took a shot with the iPhone as well but it barely shows the comet head, never mind the tail.
Later in the day I finished up the car model. This is how my desk looks, clean for the first time in over a month.
I took a bunch of pictures and collected them into a Smugmug Gallery. Looking them over, I give myself at best a B-, more like a C+, for execution. Just so many little hacks. The body paint has gross orange peel and other goofs, and … well, I won’t dwell on it. I have another kit on order and will apply lessons learned. I have looked for John Deere tractor kits of even the approximate era without result. I have looked for 1941 Chevrolet kits (my first car), and there actually is one, but it is a convertible, which isn’t right. Later in the day I ordered a plastic display case, and also a Dremel kit, actually not a Dremel, but a different small rotary power tool that Adam Savage recommended.
In late news: I heard that Valet, the custom cabinet makers, had been allowed back in the building. I contacted Kim Krebs wondering if that meant they could now go ahead with my closet remodel? Yes! is the answer, and the ball is rolling on that. Maybe we’ll get that done soon!
Friday is the day for Rhonda’s meeting. Much discussion of the details of the upcoming testing schedule and the latest order from the County. Hair salons are reopening and, anticipating lots of us would want a haircut, she gave the following advice:
If you do choose to access these services, please ensure the following so you know that the County’s directives have been implemented:
Signage: A sign that states “COVID-19 Prepared” and a “Social Distancing Protocol Visitor Information Sheet” is to be posted prominently at the entrance to the business.
Everyone working there must wear face coverings at all times. Observe if they are wearing them properly, covering their nose and mouth at all times. If not, you should leave.
Prior to your appointment, the salon should call you to see if you have had any covid symptoms or been exposed to anyone who has. If they don’t call you to confirm this, then don’t go. If they are not confirming you are symptom-free, they are not confirming that their other customers are symptom free.
They should require that you wait in your car until your appointment is available. All waiting areas & common spaces must be closed.
They should screen you again for symptoms when you enter the building. If they are not screening you, they are not screening others.
I know the opening of these businesses has been long-awaited by many of you. I just strongly encourage you to use good judgement. I have heard some tell me that they are the only person in the room, except for the salon operator. That is not relevant, if the salon operator has been exposed and is not displaying symptoms. You can contract the virus from one person while you are in close contact. Be careful. And, ask yourself the question: Is it essential that I obtain this service right now?
Codgerville 