Saturday 05/31/2025

Sooo intellectual. Well, a bit technical too. This morning I walked to the main library (2.5 miles for the day) and spent a while going through poetry books. Have I mentioned “Poetry Out Loud”? This is a monthly thing organized by Joanne where half a dozen people meet, and each reads aloud a poem they want to share. And it is coming up on Monday and I didn’t have a poem picked. Problem is, I don’t read a lot of poetry, so I needed to get familiar with some poet other than Shakespeare and Byron. I only got through the poetry stack from A through about C and settled on Billy Collins for this month. Very safe choice, one of the best known poets around, but for good reason, he’s very readable and read-out-loudable.

I also spent a couple of hours trying to make headway in the book Abundance by Ezra Klein and some other dude. Depressing reading.

Mary Beth, the queen of the gift shop, gave me an old iPad donated by some departed resident’s family, to wipe and restore. I did another one a few weeks ago and came up to the same problem with this one: you can reset it to factory settings, erasing all data, but when you try to initialize it for a new owner, the firmware sends the hardware serial number to Apple. Apple looks to see if this is in any user’s Find My list, and if it is, says no no no, you have to sign in to iCloud.com with the owner’s email and password before you can continue. So now we are in an email loop with the relatives, saying, can you please resurrect mom’s Apple password? If you can, here’s the simple instructions for the one-minute process of removing this device from her Find My device list.

Yesterday Joanne told me that she and her buddies Sherry and Tita were going to the opera tonight, would I like to tag along? So I bought a ticket to Otello as done by the West Bay Opera company, at our nearby Lucy Stern Playhouse. Joanne and friends went out to dinner in her car. She texted me about 6:30 they were headed back. She swung through the parking lot and I hopped into the car and off we went to the opera.

So I have seen an opera for the second time in my life. The first was Romeo and Juliet at the Sydney Opera House in 2005, on a Road Scholar tour of Australia. This one was — OK. The performers and the staging and the orchestra were really good. Wonderful voices. The plot is just ridiculous, but I guess that would be Shakespeare’s fault, not Verdi’s. Verdi could have picked up the pace quite a bit, though, and put some more tuneful melodies in it. Well he’s dead now so that’s that. Anyway nice outing with a group.

Friday 05/30/2025

Nice day. Walked with Joanne for coffee. I brought along the drawings that Rhonda shared with the Common Areas group on Tuesday. I’m not supposed to do that, we are supposed to keep things confidential, but I am not worried about Joanne blabbing anything, and I wanted her insights, which she did have.

Later I worked on a video for Bert. When he ran AV for the Aurora Singers Tuesday, he recorded video but something was wrong with the exposure or white balance of the camera, and he didn’t properly mic them so the audio was very low. I took the video file and used iMovie to fix it up. Got the brightness up to acceptable level and also the audio up somewhat. He was pleased.

Spent some time with the guitar, working over old and new songs. I can definitely sing Guy Clark’s “Stuff the works” and it would definitely go over with the CH crowd.

At 5:30 I joined up with Joanne for a planned outing to dinner. We went to Tamarine, a restaurant on University ave that has been there for years but I’d never been to. Very nice dinner, good food, good service. Good company.

I thought I had an AV event to run tomorrow morning, but this evening I found out it had been cancelled. Sorry we forgot to tell you. Well no problem, now I have a free Saturday morning, and I have a plan to put it to use.

Thursday 05/29/2025

Nothing on the calendar except a Good Times meeting at 3. I spent the morning at my desktop machine, reviewing that novel that I am not working on. I read all the existing chapters and am trying to decide if there is any value in continuing. One reason to just trash it? It’s set in the near future, 2030 or so. And things are changing so fast in tech that the “near future” I could imagine now would probably look pretty silly by the time it got published.

Spent some time working on some new songs to play. Good Times committee is working on finalizing the list of show tunes and how to present them.

Felt like a beer and a change of scene so I walked out to a restaurant I’d not been to, NOLA, food of New Orleans. Had a pulled-pork Po Boy sandwich and a good beer. Came back and immediately fell asleep for an hour. Pathetic old man.

Wednesday 05/28/2025

Joined Joanne and 5 other people — Martha, Susan, Eva, Joanne the lesser and Erika — for a group walk. Just a short one, a quick drive down to Byxbee park and a walk around the Baylands, 2.5 miles.

I also fooled around with the 11th floor TV, trying to prove that I could connect a computer or a phone to it. But no. The only thing that works is an old USB-to-HDMI adapter. I had just bought a nice small new adapter that I was going to leave there for people to use, but with the new adapter, nothing gets through. With the old one, it works. I think I know what is happening; it’s the same problem as with the Blu-ray disc player. When I managed to configure that player to only emit a 1080p resolution, it worked. By default it tried to go to the modern higher 4K resolution, and that doesn’t get through. Same deal with the computer; the old adapter probably constrains the signal to the lower res; the new adapter tells the computer, 4K is the way to go, and it doesn’t work. But how am I supposed to get the average person with a laptop to play along? I need to supply them with an old adapter. So I spent a lot of time trying to find a USB to HDMI adapter that does not support 4K resolution. I found a couple and ordered them.

At 3 we held our monthly AV meeting and I told the gang that I would like to step down as chair. I’ll still do events but I want to off-load the administrative part. I had printed up a nice detailed job description which I distributed, and also sent by email to the several people who hadn’t come to the meeting. We’ll see who steps up; I have my eye on a couple of people.

I was a grouch at supper. I sat at a community table with two other people. And what I ordered really displeased me. No point in going into details; I just thought what had been served was inedible, not worth the effort of chewing it. I just silently dropped my napkin on my plate and walked out. Went and made a sandwich in my room. Hope I didn’t offend anyone with my behavior.

Came back down for a concert at 7:30: the Aurora Singers. Very large group, must have been 30 of them on the stage, local volunteers, all very enthusiastic, led by an even more enthusiastic director. Did a bunch of songs, the only one of which stuck out to me was “Count on Me” which I think I need to learn to perform.

Tuesday 05/27/2025

For the writers group the weekly cue was “Trees and me”. I wrote a little essay on the Douglas Fir. A dozen people had written about trees. Nice meeting.

Then off to FOPAL to process a few boxes of donations.

Back in time for a short nap and then the Common Areas Advisory committee. I am pleasantly surprised that staff, the CEO Rhonda and new COO Elvira, are paying very close attention to the opinions of this group of residents. Rhonda showed us tentative plans for the major upgrade she is planning in our public spaces. Basically all of the ground floor, second floor, and 11th floor would be remodeled, with the majority of the present rooms converted into other kinds of rooms. Very ambitious, I gotta say she’s not thinking small.

This is all because the Board and Rhonda agree that the only feasible way to increase revenue is to add units. There is no way to add units to the present building, ergo, they will be expanding to buildings elsewhere in Palo Alto. Where? Don’t know yet. But wherever, it means there would be a population of 20, 30, 50? new residents who would be coming in to the main building here for events and some meals. And spending time in between meals and events, maybe waiting for the shuttle to take them home? So all the common spaces need to be upgraded to “create a wow experience” is how she put it.

Today we saw some preliminary renderings and preliminary floor plans. Lots to comment on and comments were made. But we will meet again in two weeks for more comments.

Monday 05/26/2025

Took an early walk to test out my modified shoes. I’ve been walking in Hoka walkers for a year plus now, and have always been bugged by the shoelaces. They were just a few inches too long. I’d tuck the ends into the shoe and a mile along the loose ends would be flopping around me feet. I was looking for shorter laces on Amazon when I spotted elastic laces that never need tying and which you cut to the exact length. Bought ’em, installed ’em. Now I have Hoka slip-ons. Only took like 18 months to finally do something about it.

Picked up my sack supper on return. Then sat down and paid my estimated taxes on-line. That’s a new thing for me, change from the years of carefully mailing the 1040-ES voucher and a check.

Then went out again to pick up a prescription at CVS. And then it was time for the big Memorial Day BBQ lunch. They actually did the ribs real nice and tender.

Peter had given me a DVD of a documentary about General Magic. I decided to watch it on the 11th floor, to test the Blu-Ray player that I had debugged a few days back. The player worked fine but I was horrified to discover that the user manual I had created had quite wrong instructions for using it. So I had to edit that and print it.

Ate picnic supper with the rest of the 6th floor gang. Conversation turned to AIs (not my doing) and this gang of 80-somethings were comparing AI search engines, arguing the merits of Google’s AI versus Perplexity versus Claude.

I watched the rest of the documentary after supper and replaced the bad page of the user manual. I’m pretty sure General Magic was the outfit I applied to back around 1996, after I left SGI and thought I would work a while longer. In the interviews with various people I mentioned my accomplishments, published books, columns in computer mags, manuals for Informix and SGI. Later the interviewer called me back to say they were not going to offer me a position. I asked why, naturally, and he said something like, “Oh, a couple of people commented you seemed a bit arrogant.” What can you say to that? I guess I just wasn’t a fit.

Sunday 05/25/2025

So I dressed in my red docent shirt and thought, I have the noon tour, so I should leave at 11ish but what’ll I do for lunch? So then I thought, I’ll leave earlier, and cruise the Cal Ave farmers market, pick up a nice pastry or something, maybe some fruit. So I left at 10 and was just pulling into the garage off Cal ave when my phone rang. It was my neighbor Mary asking, wasn’t I going to meet with her at 10 as we’d agreed? Oh shit. I just hadn’t looked at my Google calendar, or remembered the appointment. Much apologizing. We’ll meet at 2pm, ok?

Bought a nice pastry and some blueberries and dried apricots, and went on down to the Museum. Had a big group, 25 or so, for the tour. Did a good job, they were enthusiastic. Fun tour.

Stopped at Piazza’s to get some other groceries and got back to CH just in time to hit the door of Mary and Andrew’s apartment at 2pm. They wanted to learn how to do a Google doc. We went over that and they seemed happy.

Saturday 05/24/2025

The big deal today was a hike that Joanne had signed up for, and invited me. Joanne has a long-time friend Anne — their husbands worked together at Stanford for years. Anne is a docent with the Mid-Peninsula Open Space Trust, an organization that manages a bunch of parks in this area. Anne invited Joanne to take part in a docent-led hike and I got to tag along.

The scene was El Corte Madera Creek Open Space Preserve, a large hunk of the Coast Range that was logged off 80 years ago, and has since regrown a redwood forest. The tour formed up at Skegg’s Point, a parking lot on highway 35, and had about 20 people in all, including Anne and another docent. Here’s early in the hike.

The total route was just under 4 miles, which is long for both of us, and included a couple of long uphills and downhills. We left in bright sun but the normal summer fog bank was sitting on top of the hills (see picture) and it was chilly and damp in the woods.

There is a scenic spot deep in the woods called the Tafoni sandstone, a boulder the size of a small office building with interesting holes and stuff.

The outing was five hours door to door, about 3 hours actual walking time plus a longish drive each way. It was an enjoyable day although I think I’m going to be sore tomorrow.

Friday 05/23/2025

(oooh sneaking up on a full house, 5/25/2025)

Took a nice walk with J in the absolutely beautiful morning. Trying to be consciously thankful of being able to walk, in health, in lovely weather, with a friend.

Before going out I moved all the furniture off my area rug. At 10 a housekeeping guy came with the carpet cleaning machine and shampooed the rug. I can’t find the blog post where I got this rug; I know I ordered it from Amazon and it went down very soon after I moved in. This would be its first cleaning.

While he worked I talked to Dr. Margaret down the hall, trying to get some background on Dennis’s medical issues so I could talk sensibly. At lunch time I drove out, picked up a burger at Jack, and drove on down to Dennis’s place. Chatted with Toni then had a long conversation with Dennis, trying to be helpful about his situation.

Back home I wrote two extremely sensible emails. One was to Rhonda and our lead marketer. This was a response to the idea that, because our building has a majority of studio and 1BR units we are at a marketing disadvantage. My proposal was that they hire an architecture design firm, to do attractive renderings of different imaginative ways that an studio apartment can be arranged with custom furniture and professional use of color and texture.

The other email was a response to a question from another resident about AI and the prospect of AGI, artificial general intelligence. I gave my reasons for thinking the present AI systems have no chance of improving to that level, some other design approach would be needed.

Thursday 05/22/2025

Didn’t leave the building today, I realize now at the end. Neighbor Jeb dropped by. He wants to scan some 35mm slides. Yesterday I dug out my old Canon scanner from my storage cage downstairs, which is very good for that job, and tested it. So I showed him how, and talked about the process, and then he said he would need to reorganize his office space to make room, but he’d come back to borrow it later. So now I have the scanner in a box cluttering up my bedroom. Oh well.

At 1 I attended a lecture on how to approach and live with dementia patients. I left early; it was going too slow. Actually all the good advice was on a single-page handout.

At 3pm the Good Times committee met to start planning our September event, which will be a celebration of the best Broadway show tunes. We came up with an initial list of 25 or so. I helped Lou set up a Google Sheet so we could avoid the method used previously, Lou maintaining an Excel sheet and sending out revised copies by email. Everybody can view it and see updates instantly.

Then I spent an hour looking at websites with names like “best 100 broadway tunes” and so forth, auditioning songs on YouTube. There’s some crappy songs that are celebrated now. Like “Hakuna Matata” from The Lion King. It’s a comedy routine, not a song. Or “Memory” from Cats — boooring. “Defying Gravity” from Wicked, SUPER boring. Meanwhile, “Let It Go” from Frozen is as good a female anthem as anything Broadway produced.