Friday 11/07/2025

In the morning, took a nice walk with Joanne. Middle of the day, rearranged my living room furniture for the first time since I moved in, 2019. Then lazed around doing not much the rest of the afternoon.

After supper met up with J. again and we walked the 1.5 miles to the Congregational Church for a concert, ancient music by Voices of Music. A couple of other CH people were there also and we caught a ride home with one.

Thursday 11/06/2025

Lovely day with few commitments. I decided to try to understand Da Vinci Resolve. I am sort of looking for a better video editor than iMovie. Resolve, remarkably, has a free version that isn’t crippled, and that has definitely got more features than iMovie. Oh my does it have more features. It has a user manual, quite well organized and written, a mere 220GB PDF file of 4000 pages. I got as far as page 805, flipping rapidly from chapter to chapter. In three hours I managed to prove to myself that I could do basic editing with it, but I couldn’t establish whether it could do the one thing I want that iMovie doesn’t do: put scrolling text over a video, for karaoke-style lyrics. It might? But I can’t tell. I got bored.

I got my annual wellness check at 2. Ball, Tree, Flag. 100, 92, 84, 76, 68, 60. I’m as sane as Trump.

After that Joanne and I went for a nice walk down to the Edgewood plaza for an iced tea.

I hit the dining room when it opened at 5, so I could have time to set up the auditorium before 6. That’s when the four members of The Rounder Circle were to arrive, to set up for their concert at 7:30. This was the group I discovered by chance by overhearing their lead singer, Hillary, talking to the clerks at Gryphon instruments. They showed up, and set up, and I was able to bring their sound into our system, all very smooth. I took video of their performance and their tech lead guy had his laptop and so he went away with the nice video. Their music was well received, several people told me afterward how much they enjoyed them.

And that is about the last performance related thing I need to worry about for a month. Until the December musicale at which I am supposed to sing and play something.

Wednesday 11/05/2025

Started the day with a brisk walk up to PAMF for a blood draw. This was a standard metabolic panel as a follow-up to draining the kidney cyst. Results came late in the day, no real change as a result of the drainage. My BUN and creatinine numbers are marginally high but basically flat for the past year plus.

Back from that by 9 and I set to work editing the video of my talk. I continue to get people who encounter me in the lobby saying, “great talk!” so it really went well. You want to watch it? Here’s your link!

After lunch I edited yet another video, an interesting talk by a retired teacher on the history of how California finances its schools, which has gone through many changes since the 1970s. (No, the California Lottery only pays about 4% of the total costs of education.) Heck, here’s that link.

In between those I was rehearsing my music. Then it was approaching 3pm so I took the guitar and went across to the assisted living center where I was due to perform at 3:30. I would not rate my performance very high, C-minus at best, but fortunately that is the world’s most forgiving audience. Half of them are asleep in their chairs, but the half who are awake are just so supportive. “You did that reeeeel good!” one lady would say after each song.

Anyway, that is almost all my pending jobs this week. Tomorrow is mostly clear, oh what will I ever do with myself? In the evening, the band that I sponsored is coming to perform. That will be a challenge, getting them set up, but they are quite professional and I will probably just say, there’s the sound board, have fun.

Tuesday 11/04/2025

I needed to finish up at FOPAL and my only free time was this morning. So at 7:30 I headed out for that. Got all the computer donations processed and the shelves are nice and tidy for the sale. Back by 10:30. Then tidied up for the cleaning lady, and started my laundry. Had lunch while the laundry was running. Got all foldd nd put away by 1:25, just in time to join the new Line Dance class at 1:30. This teacher is quite different from our prior one but nice enough and didn’t give us anything too complicated.

Time for a short nap before I went to the 11th floor to set up the zoom for the “Reimagining Democracy” webinar from Stanford. About 6 people showed up to watch. I don’t have to this for the next Tuesday, the final in the series. It is going to feature Condoleeza Rice and a different group are going to set it up in the auditorium, figuring to get a bigger audience. (I won’t be part of it; I regard Condy as a war criminal in the same bucket as Henry Kissinger.)

This episode was very insular to Stanford, it was all about what faculty and students are doing to improve political dialog at Stanford which sounded all very nice, but having very little relevance to the world outside the Stanford bubble. Grump.

Monday 11/03/2025

Spent an hour going over my talk again, then at 10 went down and set up the auditorium. Sandy ran the AV with a bit of advice from me. So I gave my talk, “1975: the year everything changed” and it was very well received. About 75 people showed up, they listened, they laughed at all the right places, and afterward an embarrassing number of people congratulated me on a “great” talk, “superb”. So I done good. When I have edited the video i’ll put a link here.

After lunch I had time to go down to FOPAL but could only spend 2 hours. I will have to go back, I think probably tomorrow morning, to finish up and get my section sale-ready.

Back in time for Poetry Out Loud at 4. After 5pm I felt tired, so I skipped going down to dinner. I practiced music in my room and ate a sandwich.

Sunday 11/02/2025

Completely clear on the calendar, but when I started thinking about what I needed to do and wanted to do the day filled up. Main activities were, one, to take a good walk, which I did by walking to California ave. to walk around the market. Busy market, but all the good summer fruit has disappeared, just apples now, and pomegranates. 4.4 miles total for the day. Back to CH I read through my talk for tomorrow again. Then lunch. Then a meeting of the good times group to review our last show and plan the next one. Then I took a tech squad call to a lady with a printer problem.

Before supper I put in an hour in the music practice room. After supper I spent an hour trying to find a poem to read for Poetry Out Loud tomorrow. I may end up not going, although Joanne runs it and I want to support. Found one marginally readable poem. But not pleased with the state of modern poetry.

Saturday 11/01/2025

In the morning I put together an advertisement for The Rounder Circle, the group I am promoting to appear next Thursday. I am not sure I mentioned them before?

A couple of months ago (6.285) I took the guitar to Gryphon Instruments. While I was waiting for the repair guy to do his thing, I was listening to other clients. There was an attractive young woman talking about her guitar and explaining that she has a group, she said they were doing “about a gig every week” or something like that. The clerk asked the name, and she said “The rounder circle” and then had to explain how it’s a joke, nothing is rounder than a circle, but it could also be a circle of rounders, old word for wastrels or layabouts.

Naturally I had to look them up (see link above) and check some videos, and figured they would go over well at CH. So I went through the process we have to book musical events, got an ok, and invited the group. They’re coming Thursday night and it was time to put up ads on all the floor bulletin boards. There are rules: half-page size, no sooner than a week ahead. So I printed up 10 copies and went around and posted them.

Then at 11 I got in Fred and drove down to the Museum and led the noon tour. About 20 people at the start, several small kids who dropped off, ended with a dozen. Good tour. Back home for a nap, then took the guitar down to the practice room and practiced my half hour set which actually runs to 35 minutes but I doubt they will care.

Friday 10/31/2025

Took a very pleasant walk with Joanne in the morning. Then settled down to preparing the Keynote slide show to accompany my talk on Monday. Got that all nicely done and practiced reading through the script with the pictures. Still 42.5 minutes, just right.

Did a lot of napping in the afternoon. Dinner. Now realize I didn’t practice my music, gonna do that.

Thursday 10/30/2025

Spent the whole dang day writing and organizing the talk I am to give on Monday. I was very pleased to find, when I wrapped it up and then timed my reading it, it came to just 42 minutes. That’s perfect, an interesting talk (and I really think it will be) and plenty of time for questions.

That’s the text; tomorrow I will prepare the projected slides to go along with it. I have collected all the images, but I need to organize them into a presentation file. A powerpoint except it’s Keynote because I am a Mac kinda guy.

Wednesday 10/29/2025

Spent the morning and some of the evening collecting materials for my talk on Monday. Summarizing, Gigi who organizes the First Monday Book Talk Series asked me to talk about Bill Gate’s autobiography Source Code. I decided to expand to focus on his and Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz. And especially, on 1975 when the MITS Altair announcement created the whole home computer industry.

Sounded like a great plan in, oh, August. But shit’s gettin’ real now. Gigi has been sending out CHBB emails touting this event and I am afraid I will have a big, expectant audience. So it needs to be good. I took notes on Woz’s book, but I need some more. I spent some time skimming the intertubes for pictures.

At 12 I met with Joanne and we walked to Town & Country for lunch. Her fave spot, Douce France, was jammed, so she suggested Wild Seed, a vegetarian place. That worked out very well.

Here’s a cute thing that happened. We were starting to walk back through the center, holding hands. Joanne as usual cute and smartly dressed, me at least tidy in jeans and a polo shirt and a fedora. Oh, both of us wearing dark sun-glasses, I bet that’s what did it. A lady walking by just burst out, “Well, aren’t you just the cutest couple! So stylish!” We thanked her nicely and kept going. Just a cute elderly couple, that’s us.

At 4pm Rhonda had an open meeting in the auditorium, this time to introduce the name and logo of the new satellite. It is (drum roll please) Arris by Channing House. I’d seen all this last week. The logo is very well done. Joanne doesn’t like “by”. OK, marketing dept. will take that under advisement.