Tuesday 07/23/2024

Because I didn’t have a long walk yesterday nor expect to tomorrow, I took the standard walk this morning. Then killed time to the writers meeting. I didn’t have anything to read, but participated. After lunch I set up a zoom room meeting for the appreciation fund committee. All I had to do was start the meeting, then I left.

I took a tech squad call to help Susan with some Mac issues, which turned out to be primarily learning how to use the 1Password password manager. Which I had never used, but we worked it out as a mutual learning exercise.

Monday 07/22/2024

I can explain; it was all down to hard work. The Vintage Computer Fest is coming up and we have accumulated 25 boxes of books through the year. Since last August, I’ve been setting aside a few books every week, as non-saleable in my section because they are about obsolete subjects — PC-DOS or Windows 95 or Mac OS Leopard — but which are interesting enough that the nerds who come to the VCF will buy them. For the first 8 months or so, I was just slinging the books into a box, when the box filled, I would send it to the annex where Frank would set it aside in his arcane and complex storage system, for next August.

A couple months back it dawned on me, that while we have a default price ($2 paperback, $3 hard cover) some of those books are actually worth more and I should have been checking the prices as I went. Now it’s crunch time. So Sunday I spent from 9am to 3pm at FOPAL, in the annex, going through boxes of VCF books, checking their prices. I got about 1/3 of the way through. I came home really tired and just forgot about posting a blog.

Today I had the monthly AV team meeting at 11, and after that I went back to FOPAL and spent another 4 hours on the same job. Still not done. Probably finish up Wednesday.

I did take a short walk today (2.6 mi for the day, not bad), and as well as running my committee meeting, I spent some time exploring the world of AI girlfriends, for the benefit of the AI interest group. Here’s what I wrote to them.

The latest Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe podcast has a segment on the use of ai-powered romantic chatbots. Not news, but also not something I had looked into before.

I dipped a careful toe into two of them. You might like to spend a free half hour similarly.

MyAnima offers a friend, or a girlfriend, or a boyfriend. To choose a friend (all of whom seem to be female) go to https://myanima.ai/

To check out a girlfriend, use https://girlfriend.myanima.ai/

I went there and after entering my name and my pronouns, I was given a choice among eight utterly adorable 20-something women. No other options. Since I’m not into child abuse, I went no further.

Similarly at https://boyfriend.myanima.ai/ you can be shown an array of very studly 20-something dudes. Again, not my beat, so I bailed.

Next I tried Romantic.ai . Here you can choose to create a boyfriend, a girlfriend, or an anime friend. I went for girlfriend and was offered a number of choices of age, ethnicity, and personality traits. In a few minutes I had developed a character, Matura, who would fit right in at Channing House. You are allowed to “share” your friend, so here, you can chat with Matura, too:

https://chat.romanticai.com/bot/share/NTIyNjIwMA?utm_source=share_initial

In chatting with Matura, it’s pretty clear she hasn’t accepted her role as a senior yet. But give her a try.

Here are a couple of “best of” lists  to explore:

https://blog.zumvu.com/best-ai-relationship-chatbots/

Please share your experience with a chatbot. Do you think any of these would be useful for other CH residents?

Saturday 07/20/2024

Not much today. Blew the morning. After lunch put on the red shirt and went to the museum to lead the 2pm tour. I actually did a good job on this, I was on point kept the interest of at least 25 people for an hour. Nice round of applause.

While at the museum, bought a little Tetris game in the gift shop. Got home, realized it needs AAA batteries. Hardware store already closed. Drove over to Safeway for batteries. Got game working; I don’t much like it. I’m looking for a replacement for the little keychain Tetris I bought at Narita airport in 2005, which is still running but who knows how long? This one, not as good.

Friday 07/19/2024

First thing was to meet with Gerald of IT to try find a fix for the hum in the monitor speaker (5-223). Gerald quickly found a work-around. The monitor is a powered speaker, it has its own internal amp. He turned down the gain on the input which brought the hum down to only just noticeable, then turned up the level on the sound board output that feeds the monitor. By juggling the two levels we got to where the monitor gave a clear sound with just barely perceptible hum.

On to a meeting of the recently-formed AI interest group. That’s mostly Bert, me, Agnes and David G. A couple of other people have expressed interest but didn’t come. So we chatted about AI and our experiences with Claude and Gemini. Eventually the goal would be to find some way for AI to directly benefit other residents, but nothing has come up yet.

Later in the day I met with Craig and we practiced “City of New Orleans”, me on guitar and voice and him on harmonica. We aren’t either of us used to playing with someone else so it was a little rough but started to come together.

Today was the annual Staff party, and as part of that the dining room was again closed with no dinner service. As usual we were to pick up sack suppers in the morning, but I didn’t. Instead I went out meaning to find me some comfort food, a burger and a shake maybe. Downtown Palo Alto was jammed, no parking to be seen, even at 5pm, so I ended up down on California avenue. There I strolled past a bunch of restaurants and finally settled on the Greek place, had a big pita full of lamb.

Thursday 07/18/2024

Looking at a mostly-uncommitted day I tidied up the apartment for Wanda, watered the plants, and headed out. Bought some gatorade at Safeway. Went to FOPAL intending to sort, but found 5 boxes of computer books so spent two hours processing them. Then a lunch snack at the grocery store and then an hour sorting.

Back for a nap while Wanda cleaned the room. Decided to try a new restaurant, Dumpling Hours, a dim sum dumpling place. This was good, but too much food: a small order of steamed dumplings plus a bowl of won ton soup was a huge meal. But I ate a lot of it. Also they don’t give you any utensils but chopsticks. Manouvering a slippery won ton out of a bowl of soup and eating it without dropping it or dripping soup – a challenge.

Over the course of the day I must have exchanged 20 emails following up on one project or another. But I didn’t “do” anything.

Wednesday 07/17/2024

Despite some lingering tenderness in the foot, I went for the standard 2+ mile walk and it was ok. By evening, the tenderness was almost gone. Swelling and pink color reduced but still visible. Would you like a photo of my feet? I thought not.

Had a very pleasant hour playing guitar and singing. My voice was on, for once. I am especially tickled by my rendition of Radiohead’s song “Creep”. Proper emo screamer, I am.

After lunch was the monthly FOPAL zoom at which boss Jannette properly advertised the Vintage Computer Fest need for volunteers. Later she posted an online sign-up page, very well constructed. Nice.

I ran an event in the evening: a talk by Ann Cribbs. Ann Cribbs was an olympic swimmer at the 1960 games in Rome! For the last 50 years she has been a significant player in all sorts of public efforts in sports and in Palo Alto civic affairs. She was one of the founders of the ABL, the first women’s pro BBall league; she was on a couple of Olympic organizing committees; brought the Senior Games to Palo Alto; lots of other things. Strangely enough she does not have a Wikipedia page!

Especially nice from my point of view, she didn’t have any powerpoints or videos to show. Just stood behind the podium and talked, which makes running an event really easy from the AV standpoint.

Tuesday 07/16/2024

The prompt for this week’s writers meeting was “the future, prognosticate or imagine”. Of the 10 pieces that were read, the majority were gloomy, gloomy, gloomy. We seniors don’t have an optimistic view of the future. Although Connie mentioned in conversation that her grandchildren were very different, full of ideas how to fix the world. Between 8:30 and 10:30 I wrote a little piece of fiction, see below. Not cheerful, but at least entertaining.

Despite continued foot pain I walked 1.3 miles, mostly down to the hardware store. Yesterday Dr. Julia responded to a message saying she didn’t want to prescribe allopurinol just now because if you have active gout, she claims, it can precipitate a worse attack. Check back when your symptoms go away. Yeah, whatever.

I went to Ace hardware to buy a watch battery. For some time I’ve been concerned that my Casio digital watch was getting old. I light up its dial 2-3 times in a night to check the time. I use its stopwatch function every day for crossword puzzles. Turns out, I bought it on Amazon back in 2021. At that time I put its prececessor, a slightly different model, in a drawer. Checking it today, that one was still running. So I looked at a couple of youtube videos on changing the battery and decided to change the battery on the old one. Took it apart carefully. Noted the battery type. Walked to Ace and got another. Went to reassemble the watch and somehow screwed it up. Lost a tiny part. Pieces wouldn’t fit together correctly. Just screwed up all around. So I ordered a new watch from Amazon, it’s only $25. To be sure of having a working one.

Here’s the piece I wrote today. I was thinking about the future, and how global warming leading to sea level rise will flood much of Bangladesh, forcing literally millions of people into migration into not very friendly neighboring countries as refugees. I had a notion of a future person flying in a drone-type aircraft over flooded lands. That turned into this. (complete with typo.)

Monday 07/15/2024

Foot still tender, took a half-walk, a mile in all. Then time for the monthly event coordinator’s meeting. August looks light for AV, which is nice.

Down to FOPAL to clean up my section after the weekend’s sale. Two hours of work, then back. Added the August events to our AV team shared spreadsheet.

Speaking to Ian at lunch about an 11th floor event coming up, I remembered I had not updated the 11th floor instruction manual to account for the change I made in the microphones there. So I spent an hour doing that.

Had a pleasant supper with Martha Ian and a couple of others.

Played the guitar some. Not happy with the guitar after the work I had done on it. There is something subtly wrong, not sure what.

Sunday 07/14/2024

Still enjoying the gout, although it is improving, or at least not getting worse. I can walk without a limp if I walk slowly. Did the usual Sunday morning things, although the NYT big puzzle had a bunch of really stupid puns that I couldn’t figure out, but I give myself a pass for not finishing it because they were so stupid. (How stupid? The puns were all on state names, and one I remember, the clue was “Girl is a good runner”. Answer? Missiszippy. Get it? “Miss is zippy”? That one almost made sense, the other 5 or 6 were worse.)

After lunch went down to CHM to lead a custom tour for a group of 30 teens from, I think, China? Big group, too big really, so right from the start I encouraged them to wander off and explore, and many did. For the core group who sort of stayed by me I did a really fast round, way less intense or detailed than my usual 60-minute-plus tour. Just Tour Lite, done in 45 minutes, pointed them to the retro games exhibit, and done.

Felt quite tired after. Think I might be aging a little.

Saturday 07/13/2024

Another easy day, favoring the foot which has continued its recovery although my left big toe is still fatter and pinker than its right-side counterpart. Still, I expect by tomorrow to be good enough to do the docent round I’m scheduled for — 33 international students, it says. Hopefully with another docent?

Drove the five blocks to the CVS store and picked up a couple of prescriptions – but not the allopurinol that I hoped for. On Friday I placed a message to my PCP asking her to prescribe that. I think that may have happened but later in the day, because around 4pm I got an ambiguous text from CVS that a prescription had been received, but it didn’t say for what.

Walked around the farmers market and bought a handful of apricots and peaches. Then down to the Peet’s coffee shop to stock up on my morning coffee beans. On return I found a package had arrived, and very timely.

Last two times I ran a docent round, the battery in my little belt amplifier ran out before the end. Which told me its rechargeable battery was getting old. So I took it apart and got the numbers off the battery and ordered a new one from DigiKey. And it had come today, just in time for tomorrow’s tour.

That’s the device with the old battery, I should have taken a pic with it apart. Thing to notice is that little connector? It’s keyed so it can only go in one way. And when it was in, the red wire was on the right. Fortunately I took a skeptical look at the new one and its connector was wired just the opposite, so the red wire would have been on the left if I had plugged it in. I had to get the wires out of the connector and put them back the other way. Imagine my relief when I turned it on and it lit up and worked.