Friday 01/17/2025

What Bill Pawek used to call an “extra value day”. First thing, a medium distance walk with Joanne, always a pleasure. Then at 10:30 the line-dance class, which I had to slide out of early, to join the monthly AI interest group meeting at 11. We talked at length about the possibilities of using AI in Channing House, either to assist residents or for staff efficiency. Bert is on an email discussion list of elder facilities and will try to find out what other places are doing.

A quick lunch and then at 1pm I meet with resident Jim to try to figure out why his iMac runs slow. I don’t have any good answer. Of course the fact that it’s 10 years old… nah. Well, yeah, if it were my machine, I’d back it up then reformat the hard drive, and restore it. I bet that would speed it up. But I wouldn’t dare do that with somebody else’s machine. I urged him to take a walk over to the Apple store (only 6 blocks away) and look at the current iMacs. But I’m not sure if a new computer is in his financial reach.

Anyway at 2pm I met with Leon, another member of the tech squad, to try to figure out how to get Linda’s printer to talk to her brand new iMac. We figured that out but then found the HP printer wasn’t printing any black ink. So I figured out how to make it do a head-cleaning, and after it cleaned its jets twice, suddenly it could print.

I had a nice nap and settled in to watch youtube videos when I realized I was the AV person for a jazz concert tonight. So I had a hasty supper at 5pm so I could open up the auditorium at 6pm. Nice concert, but to keep my own interest up, I practiced using our three video cameras to get a good recording. Which is fortunate since the band members had set up an iphone to record it but forgot to turn it on until the second song, and anyway, that was one angle where I had multiples. So I will edit the video and put it on dropbox and pass the link to the band leader.

And so to bed.

Thursday 01/16/2025

Yet another person accosted me in the lobby to say they really liked my performance yesterday. Cool!

I drove across the bay to Milpitas and did some work at the warehouse. David Bennett and I strapped a couple of big artifacts to pallets. That was about it, pretty boring. Came back early to hit the monthly ice cream social, but very few people turned up, so it wasn’t real social this time. Maybe a bigger deal in the summer when they have it outdoors.

Followed up a tech call but the guy isn’t available today so we made a date for tomorrow.

Sat down at my desk machine for the first time in weeks and did some fun stuff. First, I need some kind of video to be playing while I sing Annie’s Song. This is the gushiest, most sentimental love song evahhh. But it has a series of images,

You fill in my senses like a night in the forest,
Like spring in the mountains,
Like a walk in the rain,
Like a storm in the desert,
Like a sleepy blue ocean

and some gushy stuff about come let me love you, let me always be with you etc. So I decided I would make my own video by stringing together really sentimental still pictures. Where to get pictures? Why generate them with an AI of course! I prefer Midjourney for images (midjourney.com) so I spent an hour giving it prompts asking for images “in the style of” various famous painters, and I got some good ones. I won’t show them all, but here’s the image for Like spring in the mountains:

Is that sentimental or what? This was so fun. For the finale, You fill up my senses, come love me agaiiiiiiiiiiiin, I have a time-lapse of a beautiful red rose bud opening. I was just chuckling all the way down to dinner.

Wednesday 01/15/2025

Did my laundry, yay. At 1pm it was time for the monthly FOPAL zoom meeting. That was nice. I forget what we made but it was good.

Then did a run-through of my 3-song set for later, and changed clothes (gray slacks, black Steve Jobs style turtleneck) and went down to set up the mic for the birthday dinner, which I would sing into. The monthly, or I guess now bi-monthly birthday dinner is a semi-fancy setup, free wine and special cake, in Quad 4, one of the four divisions of the dining room that is closest to the auditorium. Only this quad has speakers in the ceiling driven by the audio desk in the auditorium. So you can set up a wireless mic on a stand in quad 4, and get amplified sound.

Except today when I set it up and turned it on, no sound came out. This is 4pm before a 5:15 performance. So I thrash around checking everything, then I get Paul the staff IT guy involved and he re-checks everything I checked, and he reboots the audio panel. Nothing. Now it’s 4:30.

Then I had a thought. There is a big rack of equipment backstage where all the wireless mic receivers are a other stuff, and I said, “Paul, is there like a separate amp for quad 4?” We walk backstage and open the gate over the rack and look, and down at the bottom of this stack of many boxes is one box labeled “Dining Room” and it has a power button that is in the off position. Turned it on and bingo. Audio in quad 4. Score one for me.

So at 5:15 there were about 30 people at tables in quad 4, people who had signed up for birthday dinner because they were born in December or January. I got out my guitar and Kay got out her flute, and I did Malvina Reynolds’ “Sing Along” and Pete Seeger’s “My Get up and Go” (Has got up and went), and a song called “New Lover’s Waltz” which I did the last time I performed at a birthday dinner, and Barbara, who organizes the birthday dinners, requested I do it again. And we sang Happy Birthday to us, happy birthday everybody. I didn’t screw up any chords or forget any lyrics, so that was ok.

Several people told me afterward that they really liked my performance and said other very nice and complimentary things.

I had set up my phone on a tripod all set to record video. But I forgot to start it recording. Duh. So no video of this wonderful performance.

Tuesday 01/14/2025

First up: walk to the dentist and get my teeth scraped. Followed by breakfast at Mme Collete’s coffee shop.

The writers group was especially good today. The theme was a moving musical experience. I cheated, there was a similar prompt two years ago when I wrote about 2 musical events that moved me (the whole text is at Day 4.088) so I just lightly updated that and read it. But other people had some truly moving essays.

After lunch Joanne picked me up, on her way from her line dancing class, and drove us to Costco. I hadn’t been in a Costco in some time, my goodness what an amazing place that is. Our goal was to find me a few shirts or jackets to spruce up my boring wardrobe. I rummaged through the piles on many tables, prices were very low, quality decent, and I got three jersey like shirts I can pull over a turtleneck or a polo, and a light jacket that I really like and will wear often.

We got back to CH just in time for the monthly Hearing Support Group, where a guy from Pacific Hearing gave a talk on cochlear implants. This corresponded with the time when my apartment is being cleaned so I went to that, as did Joanne. Fascinating technology, although I am glad I am nowhere near needing even a hearing aid, much less an implant.

Twice during the day I ran through my 3-song set for the birthday dinner tomorrow. A couple more times tomorrow before 5pm showtime will be good.

Monday 01/13/2025

First up was the monthly resident association meeting. For once I wasn’t needed for any help with the AV. I just sat in the back and listened. After Rhonda spoke (she is always the last speaker, after which the meeting goes to open Q&A with the RA president) I hopped up and intercepted her outside the auditorium and asked if I could talk to her about implementing some AI projects (see 6.036 ResBot). She asked me to put it off until she had hired a COO. She had reported to the meeting that they had almost hired a COO but that person’s current employer had offered many inducements to keep her, and she had decided to do that. So the search starts over.

Immediately afterward I headed out to FOPAL for the post-sale cleanup. That took less than two hours, good. Then home for a nap and then practiced my songs for the birthday dinner coming up Wednesday night. Only two more days to rehearse, gulp.

01/12/2025

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Reading the paper I saw a strong review of “Some Like It Hot”, a touring Broadway company at the Orpheum in SF. Sounded like a fun thing to do with Joanne, but then I thought, no, going to SFJazz concerts is such a pain, coming back on the CalTrain at 11pm, yuck. Then it occurred to me, I bet they do matinee shows too, duh. Checked and they do, so I wrote the available matinee dates on the review page. Took it down to breakfast and showed it to Joanne. Later in the day she emailed yes, let’s, so I booked it.

Kay says we need to fill 15 minutes at the birthday dinner this Wednesday, so I needed one more song, so I spent some time going through my collection of songs I know and picked one. Practiced all three and timed them, 13 minutes with brief intros, so that’s fine. Need to practice more. Never enough practicing.

After lunch I had an afternoon open so I decided to do something I’ve been meaning to do, register an account with ZipCar. Two Zips are in our garage now and there is a Channing House discount deal. The registration process is not too hard, and the app then says we usually approve in a few minutes, wait for an email. I waited more than an hour, no reply. Later Carolyn told me it was three days for her. So it’s after 2pm and seems I won’t be trying out a Zip today. It’s a beautiful day and I feel like a drive. So I set out in my own car, deciding to go to the Legion of Honor in SF, which closes at 5, but if I get there before 4, that’s enough time to see what I want.

Except there’s a really slow jam in Palo Alto trying to get to El Camino, and then I hit 19th avenue in SF and it’s slow and time keeps bleeding away. Finally I can see that at best I’ll have 45 minutes in the museum, so to hell with it, and I loop back from Golden Gate Park and go home. It was a nice drive on 280 with a full moon rising to my left.

Saturday 01/11/2025

Not much to do today. At 1pm I met with Ian in the auditorium and we worked through a problem with zoom room. At 3pm I met with Kay in the music room and we practiced a song for the Birthday Dinner — which is coming up next Wednesday, damn that rolled in quick.

Took a short walk, took a long nap. Typical Saturday.

Friday 01/10/2025

In the morning I went on the standard walk. Back in plenty of time for the line dancing class at 10:30. This is an exercise class that I decided to join because Joanne suggested it, and she is usually there. The class leader, Will, is very good at his job, gives clear directions and leadership. There are about 10 people of varying levels of dexterity. Dexterity isn’t the right word for “light on your feet and coordinated”. What would that be, podiatrous? Anyway.

Practiced some music, did some reading. Finally it was time to go downstairs and meet Joanne for a dinner date. We went to the Village Bakery in Woodside, a very nice little restaurant. Had a reasonably quiet table for two and had a long talk, a serious talk but a friendly one, over a very good meal.

Thursday 01/09/2025

For the first time in over a year, I think, there was a volunteer work day at the CHM warehouse on Yosemite drive in Milpitas. Just about the whole crew was there.

In the evening we had a concert by Steve Gill, a musician who has been doing free concerts at CH for 16 years. Bert couldn’t come and asked me to make a video recording. which is kind of presumptuous but oh well, I used it as an excuse to practice using the cameras. Sandy had signed up to do the mics, and she did, I stayed out of her way and just ran the cameras. Now I have to copy that to my computer and upload it somewhere.

Wednesday 01/08/2025

First up was to join a walk in the Baylands organized by Joanne. It included Martha, Susan H, Joanne The Other One, and Erika. Pleasant 2-mile outing over trails I have not taken before.

The rest of the day went to napping, reading (Life as no one knows it by Walker, on the new physics of Assembly Theory)(difficult read, as a tech writer I kept finding flaws in the presentation) and music.