Tuesday 10/28/2025

First thing to do today was to write something for the writers group. I’d stiffed them for 2 or 3 weeks running. The prompt was “title and first paragraph of a novel you’d like to write.” Thrashing around I was thinking about how SF is dead because of AI.

(Any future that a Millennial or Gen-Z reader can conceive, since 2024, has to have AI in it. But if you have credible AI, what’s left for your protagonists to do? Just ask the AI. Makes you appreciate Frank Herbert, when he wrote Dune in 1965 he foresaw this very problem. He made sure that his 10,000 year future would still be human-scale by having them remember a terrible war against the robots, and artificial intelligence being banned. So the desert Fremen can fight with swords in AD 11,000, and we can have a successful movie franchise.)

So I wrote a scene between a jaded SF writer and his agent where they discuss this problem.

Got in some reading and some guitar before 3pm when I had to attend an appreciation fund meeting, requested to do the same magic I had done before, capture the audio transcript and feed it through Claude to get a meeting summary. Speaking of AI. From there to the 11th floor to put the Stanford “Reimagining Democracy” webinar on the big TV. 6 people attended. Then down to dinner, Prue had arranged dinner for our friend Connie, with me, Peter, and Joanne.

After which it was time for the monthly sing-along in the lobby.

Waiting for the Butlerian Jihad(*)

Ryan took a long pull from his beer, placed the glass on the bar with precise care, took a deep breath, and pronounced, “No. It’s pointless.”

Ashley rotated her glass of ginger ale and for the fourth time, lifted the stem of the maraschino cherry and gently let it drop back. “Oh come on, your last two books sold; one was even optioned.”

“Yeah, optioned. Then nothing. You know why? Because the movie dudes see the same thing I do. Science fiction is dead. Killed stony dead by AI.” He pushed his beer glass around a little square pattern and sighed.

“You don’t use AI,” Ashley objected, “Nobody serious does. My staff watches for the slop, they turn an AI manuscript around so fast the postage has scorch marks.”

“Ashley, you don’t get it. It isn’t the writing, it’s the plots! Just by existing, AI has killed SF plots.” He took another long pull from his beer and paused. His agent just looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

“OK, here. First, you can’t read the old stuff any more. Pick any SF book from the last year. Set in the future, right? Except, where’s the AI? Your POV has a problem, why didn’t she ask GPT-19? Zip, no problem. Every conceivable future — any future we can conceive of now, any future that a millennial or Alpha reader can conceive of — has to have AI in it. Which any SF book published before 2024, including mine, does not.” He glared at his beer glass and burped. “It’s like nobody can read Robert Heinlein any more because, good as his shit was, his characters don’t have pocket phones or even computers for fuck’s sake. No, Ashley, to be believable, any SF story has to better AI than we have now. Which means, the characters can solve all their problems by just asking the AI, and you have no plot.” He burped again. “Excuse me.”

Ashley dunked the maraschino in the flat ginger ale again. “OK, wait, how about two AIs have some kind of conflict.”

“AIs as characters? Just shoot me now.”

“Well, no, the AIs are in some kind of contention, different thingies, what’s the word, alignments. And they aren’t the characters, they’re off-stage. The human characters are like, subverted, or co-opted. To do the AI’s dirty work.”

“Huh,” Ryan said, and mused a moment. “OK,… and then the characters catch on and realize they aren’t really enemies…?”

“Right, so they join forces…”

“Hah! And fall in love! But now the AIs are trying to wipe them both out!”

“Sounds good,” said Ashley. “Shoot me a 20-page treatment and I’ll shop it around.”

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)#Butlerian_Jihad

Monday 10/27/2025

Went early for the standard walk (3.8 mi for the day). Then assisted Ian running a book talk. Drove off right after to FOPAL, 3 boxes, out and back by 2. Stopped at TJ’s to get bread.

4pm the common areas task force. Knowing this was coming, and since there’d been no change in the green room for a month, I went to the green room and shot a short video so people could see how it was cluttered with various large superfluous things that shouldn’t be there. When it was my turn I put my computer on the big screen in the board room, showed the video, and in a calm and constructive way, discussed the issues that needed to be addressed.

The Task Force also discussed at great length the needs of the new satellite campus. I showed the video of the cute Zoox autonomous vehicle and everyone agreed it would be wonderful to have one of those as our shuttle between sites.

Sunday 10/26/2025

Sure, Sunday. Until yesterday, clear on my calendar. Then I failed to get Office working on Susan’s machine, and Ian asked for help with zoom, getting ready for an event he’s to run on Monday. So I met with Ian in the morning. Then a couple hours to myself, and I got in an hour of guitar practice. Then to Susan’s place, where following a good hint from Leah Lin, I was able to get a clean, working Microsoft Office on her machine. Yay me.

Finally dressed up a little and met with Joanne and we drove to Indochine restaurant for dinner. That was nice.

Saturday 10/25/2025

Spent 9 to 12 in Susan’s place, installing her new Macbook Air. Mostly this went well as I anticipated. However, trying to install Microsoft Office 2024, the non-subscription Office package, went sour. Could not get Excel to “activate” and come out of read-only mode. And Word just crashed on startup. Later I talked to Leah Lin on the phone and she had a suggestion, saying MSoft’s web interface is not clear, and possibly I downloaded the subscription version which is a different binary than the fixed-price one. I will pursue this soon, as Word and Excel are the only tools Susan uses, other than Mail and a browser.

Then changed clothes to my red shirt and went to the museum to lead a private tour. This was for some alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design. It went ok, but over-long as, at their suggestion, I broke off my tour half-way and we all trekked to the other side of the building to watch the PDP-1 demo, which was run by Peter (somebody), a guy who as a college student wrote the first music synthesizer for the PDP-1, at MIT around 1960. Fun hearing a 65-year old computer playing a Bach organ concerto, using a program written by the guy standing beside it.

That was an intense day. I got home and collapsed for an hour. Then went down to dinner. Saw Susan, tentatively scheduled a session with her machine for tomorrow.

Friday 10/24/2025

Friday morning walk with Joanne as usual. Nice chat and coffee stop. Afterward I edited the video of the event I ran the other morning, “Talking with your family about your estate plan” (well it’s no secret, here it is).

Ethan from marketing called to ask would I be available to have lunch with a prospect and his son-in-law. Oh sure. And could they maybe view my apartment? Yeah, gimme 5 minutes to tidy up. They didn’t show at 11:30 as planned so at 12 I went down to the lobby where I found Bob and Bill, two other residents, also asked to the lunch party and we chatted while waiting for the prospects to show up. About 12:30 they did, with Ofelia from marketing. Turned out they had been looking at my room. Well, ok, whatever. Had a pleasant lunch. The prospect was Howard, the son in law John. Howard was getting pretty far on I thought. John was chatty and we all had a nice lunch.

Did some music practice. I have signed up to entertain in the Lee center next month, so now I have motive to get at the guitar again.

At 4:30 it was time for the monthly AV meeting. We quickly filled up the schedule for the month. Even though David M, a stalwart who pioneered zoom events for us, is backing away from doing AV. He has a new volunteer job, organizing our twice-a-month lecture series. I will actively try to upgrade the skills of two of the other members, we need more who can do zoom events.

Decided to snack in my room instead of going down for dinner.

Thursday 10/23/2025

I met up with my friend Susan, who has a 2016-era MacBook Air that needs to be replaced. She’s been reluctant to do that, but has come around. I committed to get it installed and set up, but with the understanding that afterward, she would take any problems to the tech squad, I wouldn’t be her personal IT guy.

Then I took myself down to FOPAL to process the 6 boxes remaining from the other day. I used Lyft one way and Uber the other, because Joanne had plans for the car. This was not a problem in any way, just how the system is supposed to work.

We met up for dinner with relatively new residents Karl and Dee. Pleasant getting-to-know you kind of talk.

This evening the Palo Alto Players, semi-pro local acting group, came by, 6 people performing selections from Broadway musicals. In several cases, songs that they had performed when acting in some production of that show. Very skilled and entertaining.

Wednesday 10/22/2025

First up, a long hike. Joanne had selected Windy Hill Preserve, the trailhead off Portola road back of The Sequoias, another large senior residence. I’d never done this. Joanne the Other One and her partner Erika joined us. JtOO did know the trail and led us out for 2 miles, when we agreed we had had enough. That was rough, it was mostly uphill for 2 miles and quite steep in parts. Then two miles out, turn around, downhill 2 miles back. I was beat, frankly. Took an ibuprofen and a nap after lunch.

While walking and talking, about restaurants, and I remembered Indochine, nice Thai place in Midtown. Joanne says, didn’t you take me and Patty there a while ago? Later, check blog, yeah, It was Day 4.155, in May 2023, 2+ years ago. Which is weird, I didn’t think I even knew Joanne two years ago. Must have just met her?

Anyway, at 3pm I met with John and Ian to talk about some details of two events that Ian has signed up to run. I wanted to be sure he knew about the repaired choir mics, and about how to get a zoom recording of a book talk next week.

Then at 4pm, it was the second session of the naming and branding of the new satellite. The prior meeting I learned the address of it a week before the official reveal. Now I know the official name and logo it will have. I’m under NDA on that like before. I will say the logo is pretty. The name… well, it has to have a name I guess.

Tuesday 10/21/2025

Today was the day for a lecture sponsored by the Heritage Circle, with me doing AV. They had brought in a lawyer, John, who specializes in estates, and Jeff, a specialist in estate planning and giving, to team up for a presentation on “Talking About Your Estate With Your Family”. Each of the presenters had a powerpoint on a thumb drive. I got their presentations onto my older MacBook. The newer MacBook was Zoom host. The older signed in to the meeting and shared its screen. At the appropriate point I very smoothly, if I do say so, switched from John’s slides to Jeff’s slides. The whole thing went off very smoothly. I spent my time managing the cameras and think I did that well, also. When I edit the video in a day or so you’ll see.

As soon as they finished at 11:30, I shut down and headed for FOPAL, where I knew more than 10 boxes of books waited. I had ordered a grilled cheese sandwich to go, that was ready, off I went. Spent 3 hours there and headed back. I had under an hour before I was due to put the Stanford Webinar on “Reimagining Democracy” on the 11th floor TV at 4pm.

I was reading my email and here was one from the facilities staff. Did I want to change to a stall in the Tower garage? Wayyyy back on Day 143, a month before I moved in to CH, I had been given a choice of garage stalls, and I had picked one in the garage under the Lee center because it had a 120V outlet for charging the Prius. That has always been a bit of a pain because it is a long walk from the elevator through the basement, four different doors, to get to the Lee garage. When we started sharing Joanne’s car, and had no use for the 120V outlet, we put in a request to move to the much more convenient Tower garage under the main building. And I guess my name had bubbled to the top of the list.

So I, Joanne, and 3 other people watched the webinar, this one with a couple of journalism professors talking about the changes in journalism generally in this modern era and administration. Then I ran off to the Lee garage to get Fred, while Joanne went to the front desk to get a different garage clicker, one for the Tower garage door. I brought Fred around and turned in the clicker for the Lee garage. Then Joanne drove us around and down the ramp into the Tower garage and parked us in our new stall #32. Lots of room, easy to get in and out. Great.

For supper I made myself a sandwich in my room so I would have time for a wee bit of a nap before 7pm. At 6:45 we met again in the auditorium to watch the Tuesday night movie, Great Expectations from 1946. What a silly plot. But nicely made movie.

Monday 10/20/2025

At 7:30 I went to the auditorium and set up the system to demonstrate the two problems we had with the sound board. A little after 8am Robert from ICS (the contractor for our av systems) came as scheduled and fixed our probs. Robert is a friendly guy and a good teacher, I learned a bunch.

Our first problem was that sometime a week or so ago, all our microphones seemed to get extra sensitive and loud and prone to feedback. This turned out to be due to our having accidentally pressed one button the sound board. Unclick that button, the problem went away and the mics were back to normal. Operator error due to inadequate documentation.

The other problem the so-called choir mics being too sensitive and going instantly into feedback, required him to make some adjustments in the rack of electronics back stage, but he also schooled me and Paul the IT guy on how the choir mics should be used and not used. Excellent session.

Then to the Event Coordinators meeting, which I’ve been able to skip for a while owing to John taking over the AV scheduling. But this time I needed to present the band I have booked for November, and ask for the $300 to pay them.

Out of there, I got the car from the garage and brought it up and picked up Joanne out front and off we went to Sequoia Hospital. I’d asked her along because, well for company of course, but also because although this was a quick and simple procedure, there was always the tiny chance that something could go wrong and I’d have to stay longer, in which case Fred would be stuck in the Sequoia parking garage. So she was a backup driver who could take the car home in the very unlikely event I had to stay.

So this was to drain my renal cyst, finally. There was a tiny bit of pain, the usual “little pinch” warning when shooting in some lidocaine as a local. Then some poking and pressing as Dr. Tamrazi inserted a needle that I never saw, but I’m guessing of at least a few inches length, and started aspirating. For this I am lying on my stomach, with my chin on my crossed arms, on the sled of the CT scanner. It took about 10 minutes all told, to draw out 1.2 litres (2, 600ml bags) of piss. In and out of the scanner ring for another image. “Did the balloon collapse?” I asked. “Yes, the balloon is collapsed” the doctor said, “See you again in a year or so, my friend.”

Joanne had brought a sandwich and a bottle of tea so we had a snack on the hospital patio and drove home. I was pondering how to work in FOPAL, which I couldn’t go to today, and my laundry, which should be done tomorrow, and finally figured out that I could do the laundry today and FOPAL tomorrow. So I ran my laundry in and around attending Rhonda’s open meeting, more facts and figures about the new satellite. The building has multiple apartments, but one of them is a “penthouse”, the third floor, which has 4BR and 5 baths, and a view. All us ordinary old folks are wondering what somebody would do with 4BR/5bath, oh right built in wine cooler etc. In retirement, mind you. And the rules do NOT allow live-in care-takers. If you need constant care-taking, you need to be in our Assisted Living section. However, unlike the present building, the Forest Ave building will allow pets. So I guess you could keep your 17 cats in one of the bedrooms… Not that there are a lot of cat ladies who can afford a $6.9M buy-in, which is what the penthouse will cost.

Sunday 10/19/2025

Usual Sunday morning stuff. Spent some time reading, trying to finish Mary Roach’s Bonk so as to give it back to J. At 2pm I, Joanne, and Sandy met up and got in Sandy’s car to go to a house concert in San Mateo. The performers were Bob Beach and David Jacobs-Strain. Nice stuff, slide guitar and harmonica, blues and country style, mostly original material.

Back at CH around 5:30. Not hungry, had a few snacks at the show, so being a hermit in my room tonight. Big day tomorrow.