Saturday 01/06/2024

Because I am in the exposure protocol, I kept a low profile today. I felt fine and healthy. Tomorrow morning I will take my day-5 Covid test; I expect it to be negative, then I will be clear.

For today, I drove down to Midtown and had a luxurious capuccino and cinnamon roll, then went on to buy a pound of coffee at Peet’s. Back home I spent about 90 minutes on the guitar. Then over two hours trying to find ways to make an AI be a useful writing assistant. And you know? This may work. It is quite astonishing how creative Claude’s responses can be if you ask the right questions.

Friday 01/05/2024

Tested: negative. Felt fine, normal temperature, no symptoms all day. Took a short walk.

Took care of a bunch of stuff pending in my email inbox. One was, to call Cirenis, the head nurse at the Lee center, about these memorials they keep scheduling. People die, then their relatives want to have a memorial service on the 11th floor. They get dining services to cater snacks and drinks, Housekeeping to set up chairs and tables. And OF COURSE they want the sound system turned on, and the mobile TV so that the daughter or somebody can put up a slide show of pictures of the departed throughout their life. Which means, somebody on the AV team. Or else some IT staff person has to come in on the weekend to do it. So what I proposed to Cirenis was that I would love to train one of their Activities people — they have two, maybe three with that title — to do the setup of mics and the TV on the 11th floor. She was dubious but said she would discuss it at their staff meeting.

At 2pm I met with Ian to go over how to use the Zoom Room setup in the Activity room, for the weekly Current Events class he runs. It’s done by some prof from Foothill College, and has been zoom-only. Ian wants to bring people into the Activity room for more interaction. Should be straightforward but he hadn’t done it before.

Then I took a tech squad call to my neighbor Dr. Margaret to try to resolve some email issues. She had multiple email addresses, one very historical, and some mail didn’t get picked up by the Mail app on her mac, and other complications. I mostly straightened it out.

I was going to go to the SWBB game tonight, but some members of my car pool party were dubious about riding with me. Very reasonable, I can’t disagree. And anyway, the protocol for exposure is that I am supposed to avoid “group activities” until I have tested negative on the fifth day, which will be Sunday. So I am staying home, watching the game on TV.

Thursday 01/04/2024

Lovely day except for a couple of things. I had lunch scheduled for tomorrow to introduce Leah to Dennis, and Dennis called to say he was sick. Then before I could decide whether to cancel, I got an email from Susan, one of the actors in the drama class whose rehearsal I was at yesterday, saying that she had tested positive for Covid. Since I was in the same room with her for a couple of hours and talked to her one-on-one, I’ve been well exposed. So now I have to avoid all group activities and the dining room until I have tested negative on the 5th and the 7th. Assuming I do.

Other than that I took care of some stuff, worked on printing out some of the guitar music that I have been playing off the screen of the computer.

Wednesday 01/03/2024

Because rain was promised, and there was actually a blob of green approaching Palo Alto on the weather radar map, I did a 2-mile walk on the treadmill. In fact, no rain fell.

I paid a bill and practiced some guitar, and I got rid of some of the model-building paints. Then after lunch I worked AV for a tech rehearsal by the drama workshop group. Setting up mics, and practicing capturing video. That ran 2 hours.

In the evening I worked at getting some song scores printed out off the websites I’ve been using, so I don’t need to have my laptop when practicing.

Tuesday 01/02/2024

Remember when you used to write checks? And when the year turned, and you’d write a check and put the wrong year on it? And swear, and have to tear up the check and write “VOID” in your checkbook for that check number? Ah the good old days. I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working to set up an AI writing assistant. Hoping to jump-start my novel. We’ll see. I also spent some time down at FOPAL, partly because I had a couple of complicated donations I didn’t know what to do with, and wanted to catch Janette, the boss, for advice. And I did. So those things somewhat dealt with.

I haven’t mention the big screw-up. I was getting less and less happy with the 240z project, it just wasn’t working out, and then I was pressing a decal into place and broke off a piece of the body. To fix it would be a lot of work and I just said fuck it, and not only did I trash that project, I also decided to clean all the model-building stuff out of the closet. Today I gave away the airbrush and my collection of paints.

Monday 01/01/2024

I opened the new year with the standard walk, and felt fine. So that’s nice. On return to CH I got the news that the talk that was scheduled for 11am, the one we helped Dr Basso rehearse for on Friday, had been canceled, as he felt unwell. Had it not been canceled for that, there would have been another problem, in that the AV desk in the auditorium was still covered with a plastic tarp after the weekend’s rain had produced another leak. But it was relief all around that he’d canceled.

I had been invited by Carolyn to join her and Edie and Gwen for lunch. As normal on a holiday, lunch was a big deal meal, and then dining services all pack up and leave right after for afternoon with their families. So the menu was a little fancier than normal.

I asked the ladies what kind of songs I should be rehearsing with the guitar, and one said, Peter Paul and Mary, and another said, Pete Seeger. So after lunch I spent some time collecting guitar music from those, and have a bunch of songs to work on. One Seeger number, I think the title is “Get up and Go“, is going to work very well. It’s funny anyway but I can “sell” it (better than Seeger, if I dare say so). So that is definitely in my “set list” for the next time I perform. Which is not scheduled in any way.

At 5:30 there were only 6 of us who met in the 6th floor dining room to share our sack suppers. But a friendly little group, me and Carolyn and Edie, plus Dr. Margaret and Diane and Craig.

Sunday 12/31/2023

Quiet Sunday morning. Dining services provided a nice lunch. At 5 I brought the car up so the SWBB car pool wouldn’t have to trek the long basement walk to the Lee garage. The carpool was only me, Patty and Martha this time. The game was a non-conference one against Morgan State (Maryland), and Stanford won easily by 60 points.

Back to CH by 7:45 in good time to join the new years eve party on the 11th floor. Sat at a table for one round of Trivial Pursuit, when was the last time I played that? Peter and Al were playing Jenga at a very high level, I caught the end of the game:

Into bed by 10 to lie and listen to the explosions of illegal fireworks from east Palo Alto.

Saturday 12/30/2023

This morning my neighbor Dr. Margaret called me in to help her fix her antique clock. It’s a very tall “grandfather” — I think the right term is a “case clock” — easily 7 foot high that her grandfather got in payment for a medical bill, in England way back sometime. She had been trying to adjust the pendulum and disconnected the pendulum. There’s only one guy in the whole bay area who works on these and he’s booked out for months. So I provided the muscle and at her direction we removed the top cover that surrounds the works. Then we could see where and how the pendulum attaches, and it was fairly simple to reattach it. Then the clock starts the tick… tock… routine just like a grandfather clock should sound.

Later in the day I polished the clear coat of the 240z. That revealed a number of glaring flaws in the finish, but you only see them if you are like an inch away. I thought I knew what I was doing with this paint job but… I gave serious thought to ordering a new kit and doing it all over again. OTOH, once it’s done and in a nice clear plastic box, nobody will notice.

Got bored in the afternoon and went down to FOPAL and processed four boxes of computer donations. Later, had dinner with Patty and Stew and Kathy.

Friday 12/29/2023

Took a standard walk in the morning, timed to let Wanda clean my room, and incidentally timed to pass between bands of rain coming through.

At 1pm it was time for the monthly AV team meeting. We tried headset mics. David G made a strong argument that we need more people, and I agreed to make a recruiting pitch at the next RA meeting.

At 3pm was scheduled a rehearsal for Dr. Larry who is to give a talk this coming Monday, yes 1/1. Larry is not in the greatest of shape, but is determined to give the talk. I assisted Ian in setting up. Ian will actually run it, but I need to be there also I think.

Thursday 12/28/2023

Ordinarily this would be apartment cleaning day, but owing to the holidays, that will be tomorrow morning instead. I got the Advance Health Care Directive signed, anyway. I had lunch with Kass to talk about a tech problem with a resident’s Mac. I put in an hour sanding the orange peel out of the clearcoat on the 240z.

I spent about 4 hours trying out three of the new AI writing assistants. These are web apps that intend to assist people writing books by providing an AI writing partner. Probably the most polished example of the three I tried would be Sudowrite. I won’t go into detail here, but I spent a lot of time on these and didn’t find any of them congenial.

Here is a link to the 8 minute video of my performance last night. (See the clip in yesterday’s post for an overall view of the setup.) Today several more people came up to congratulate me on this performance. It’s quite embarrassing, really, they say very nice things though.