Thursday 12/07/2023

Tidied up the apartment and before I left, tried to call one Edlyn but she wasn’t at her desk yet. Here’s the tedious story on that. A resident here, Paul P, has a lifetime of bird photos and likes to show them. He plans to show bird pics next Monday in the AL activity room at the Lee Center. That’s a big common living room shared by the AL residents. There’s a big tv screen.

Paul is quite disabled, he gets around in a powered chair, and has a paid aide named Franko. I helped Franko connect his computer to the tv to show videos on the 11th floor for Paul’s 80th birthday party. I wrote about that but don’t feel like finding the day number. So last week Franko called me to ask for my support running Paul’s bird show next Monday. Well, (a) I don’t like being treated as a personal assistant, (b) they should have filed an EPF request a month ago and we could have planned for this, and (c) I’ve never done anything in that building, and (4) anyway I need to be supporting the Chorus tech rehearsal next Monday. But yesterday I went over to the AL floor and checked things out. It will be easy to connect the computer to the tv, the HDMI cable is there and the tv remote all ready. But Franko wants also a microphone so Paul can narrate his slides. The nurse on duty didn’t know about that but referred me to Edlyn who is the Activities lead. She wasn’t in so I left a message, but she didn’t call. So now I tried again but no dice.

Off across the bay to Shustek where I worked with Sherman to catalog a bunch of stuff that the curators have rounded up to show in a special exhibit this summer. The theme seems to be robots, because the collection included a Teddy Ruxpin, a Furby, a Hello Barbie (a version of Barbie that could talk), and several varieties of Golem statues. Did you know there was a Pokemon Golem? Me neither.

To my surprise, Hello Barbie is still a thing, here she is looking just like I saw her today. She is battery powered, and so has to be charged up before use. Oddly enough that web site doesn’t show the charging cable. It’s part of that sleek “charging stand”. It terminates in a skinny silver tip that you insert into Barbie’s back just below her belt. We had some dirty old man chuckles about basically penetrating Barbie with an anal dildo.

On the way home stopped to pick up a pound of coffee at Peet’s, then went straight to the Lee center, and this time found Edlyn in. She assured me she had talked to Paul, she had a microphone he could use, and she would be around on Monday. So I went to my room and called Franko and told him that. One job off my hands.

A couple people have gone out of their way to ask what happened that I missed yesterday’s meeting. Which is nice and makes me feel better. No explanation of why nobody knocked on my door, or maybe somebody did but not loud enough?

Wednesday 12/06/2023

Took the good old standard walk, no problem. Then sat down to do month-end numbers, copying all the Schwab account totals into the “Codger Accounts” spreadsheet that I first created based on a design by Marian, back on Day 31. Bottom line, the nest egg is still healthy

Next job up, was to make a video out of the recording of Mary M.’s First Monday book talk. This was a matter of taking the raw video recording from the camera in the auditorium, editing out some pauses and awkward moments, then cutting in the images from her powerpoint slides. It took about 2 and a half hours, 10 to about 12:30, to do this. I uploaded it to Vimeo and sent a link to Mary M. for approval. Later I got back this email,

Oh. My. God. Dave.  You did an absolutely masterful job!  Really.  The way you cut what needed to be omitted, the way you went back & forth between the speaker and the slides, the timing…. I mean it was truly professional.  Thanks so much!

I’ll take that as a sincere compliment, considering that Mary taught business communications for thirty years at Dartmouth and Stanford graduate business school. Here’s the video.

I spent another hour plus late in the day, applying chrome to the window frames of the 240Z using Real Metal foil. Much better results than the metal leaf foil (compare to yesterday).

Unfortunately I got absorbed in this and completely forgot about the 6th Floor meeting at 4:30. When I set the Z aside and started down for dinner at 5:30 I saw the sign-up sheet by the elevator and remembered the meeting, which was now clearly over, and everyone had presumably gone down to dinner already. I went down anyway and, yup, three tables were occupied by my neighbors happily chowing down. I am seriously bummed out by this. Other floor meetings I’ve attended, people look around and say, “Where’s Gwen? Where’s Phil? Somebody go knock on their door.” Apparently nobody thought to say, “Where’s Dave, go knock on his door” at 4:30. Or at 5:15 when they all went down to eat together. I didn’t go into the dining room to eat. I just moped back to my room to mope.

Tuesday 12/05/2023

Did some guitar practice. Wrote a short couple of paragraphs for the writers group. Attended the meeting. Oddly, the subject of “laughter” seemed to bring out a lot of bittersweet, or downright gloomy, essays.

Did some more practice. Went out and bought some groceries.

Spent an hour on an initial attempt to apply chrome trim to the 240Z. This is going to be frustrating. The orange paint is finished (multiple coats) and has had a day to harden. Now I want to put “chrome” on these incredibly narrow little bands that represent the drip rail and the window frames. There are three ways to do this. Today I experimented with using metal leaf. This is incredibly thin aluminum(?) foil. Think back to when you would pop a stick of Juicy Fruit and then sit there peeling the foil off the wrapper? Like that foil but much, much thinner. You paint on an adhesive liquid where you want to foil, wait for it to set, then carefully without breathing bring a piece of foil over and using a brush, lay it down and press it home.

Yeah, in your dreams. Next way to try is using Real Metal(tm), which is a slightly heavier foil that has its own adhesive. Easier to handle, and you can cut it into pieces with straight edges.

Monday 12/04/2023

I took a shorter than usual walk so as to be back by 9. Then set up for a First Monday Book Talk. While on the walk I realized, no way I could finish the book talk and get down to Dennis’ place for lunch, as planned. So called him and had him come up. The talk went smoothly but ran right to 12. Then joined Dennis and we walked around downtown Palo Alto looking for a place to eat. Settled on Osteria for pasta.

Later I went down to FOPAL and spent 2 hours processing books and setting my section up for the sale. Back home at 5, and pooped, so had an hour nap. Busy but satisfying day.

Sunday 12/03/2023

Usual Sunday morning stuff, plus a little guitar work.After lunch I joined a multi-car pool of people going to the Pear theater. It was quite ridiculous how many people in the audience of about 60 people, were from CH, at least 15. This play was District Merchants, a play derived from The Merchant of Venice, with most of the same plot elements but set in the 1870s, when black people were only newly enfranchised as full citizens of the US. It ends up with a trial over whether Shylock can enforce his contract for a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Portia, instead of using the “no drop of blood” argument from Shakespeare, instead argues that as the 13 Amendment has made slavery illegal, to take a pound of Antonio’s (a black man) body would be to enslave at least that much of him, so the contract is unconstitutional on that basis. There was a lot of other stuff in the play including lots of drama and talk about discrimination in all directions, including against the Irish.

Saturday 12/02/2023

Welcome to the first post of the sixth year of this blog. (Click “It Started Here” to see the first post, from 12/2/2018.) I’ve been pretty consistent about keeping it going.

So the only thing scheduled on this day was lunch with Cousin Darlene and her partner Jessea. They live in Oakland, and we had a very pleasant lunch at a cafe in the Rockridge district, a nice neighborhood shopping street. Then we went to the home of Carol Aust, a painter from whom I have bought paintings before. She was having an open house at her home, which conveniently is only 2 blocks from where Darlene and Jessea live, showing new works and some things by her daughter. There wasn’t a lot of interest so we didn’t stay long.

In the course of the day I had birthday greetings from Laurel, from Dennis, and to my surprise, a video call from Marc Lacrampe. So I’m well congratulated for being a year older.

Friday 12/01/2023

366? What, was this a leap year? I don’t know how that numbering came about. All I know is, day 1 of this blog’s year, is December 2nd. So tomorrow will be 5.001. The “off-by-one” type error was always my biggest downfall as a programmer. Deal with it.

First activity today was to set up for Mary M. to do a rehearsal of her book talk, scheduled for the coming monday. The First Monday book talk series is for CH authors to talk about their books. Mary has been teaching communication skills for 40 years, she says, and has taken her textbook through 9 editions. So she went through an abbreviated version of her talk, just to make sure the powerpoints were pointing powerfully and the mics were working and all.

After lunch I changed into my red docent shirt and went down to the museum and led the 2pm tour. About a dozen people, and they seemed to enjoy it.

Back home I noticed that the weekly SFJazz 7:30pm live stream was Pink Martini, a group I thought would probably be a crowd-pleaser, so I put it out on the email BB that I would put this concert on the 11th floor TV, which I did, and about 8 people showed up and enjoyed it.

Thursday 11/30/2023

Tidied up, watered the plants, and headed out to Shustek. We are filing the papers of Bert Sutherland. This means going through the boxes donated by his family, and putting each document in an archival manila folder, with cataloging information written on the tab. This isn’t the actual cataloging step. That happens later, probably much later. This just gets things identified and into archival storage material. Today among other things I noted a memo to Sutherland from Bob Taylor. Just a stapled memo made in 1965 on a typewriter but Sutherland had written across the top, “ARPA genesis” and indeed when I looked, the bulk of the memo was Taylor laying out at a high level how a network of connected computers would work, complete with the acronym IMP (Interface Message Processor). IMPs were the earliest form of router, we have one of the first IMPs on display at the museum. So this was a memo laying out how to build the internet, before there was an internet.

During the day I got an email dispatch from the tech squad. Ilse had a problem with her password. After I got back I checked her out. Ilse is quite old and as far from being a techie as it is possible to get. Here’s what I wrote when I closed the call,

Ilse has a Chromebook made by Acer. It is working fine.

She had somehow managed to hide the web page with her gmail inbox and was looking at a google search page. It wanted her to sign in to Google. Which she didn’t know how to do, but didn’t need to, anyway.

I shut the Chromebook down and restarted it. It comes up showing her name and asking for her password, which she knows (it’s on a sticker on the keyboard). I entered it, and Chrome said, should I restore your apps as they were? Sure, do that. So up comes the Chrome browser.

I notice that there are about 25 tabs open all to the same thing, her mailbox. I close them all except one, and there is her email inbox. So she is good to go.

Just another day on the tech squad.

Wednesday 11/29/2023

Did the laundry. Took the standard walk, but in the afternoon.

At 3pm there was an information session on Medicare and related topics. This was motivated because Sutter Health, the corporation that owns the Palo Alto Medical Facility, is changing its policy on what insurance plans it will accept. Several people received notice that their plans would no longer be accepted. My plan, which I share with two other retired IBMers here, is one of the many plans that are shown on the Sutter website as “Under negotiation”. So will my IBM-provided United Health Care Group PPO be accepted next year? The majority of the people in the room are patients of PAMF, plus a few with Kaiser.

The person giving the info was a nice and well-informed guy who is an independent health insurance broker and advisor, not a Sutter employee. He gave a clear rundown on the different kinds of plans, Medicare part A and B, and supplemental plans, and part D plans, and Medicare Advantage plans.

Bottom line, for 2024 Sutter is no longer accepting ANY medicare advantage plans except its own. Medicare A and B and supplemental plans for those are still good with them, but not Advantage plans. Except for the exceptions. On the Sutter website, a ton of plans from United, and Blue Cross, and other big outfits, are shown as “under negotiation”. The consultant was not able to answer the question, “when will these negotiations be complete, is there a deadline?” Nope. No deadline. Can’t say.

What will happen if UHC and Sutter don’t agree? Will I have to change plans, or keep the plan and change doctors? If I changed plans, would IBM still pay for it? The consultant could only say that all such questions are between “your corporate benefits administrator and Sutter.” (There was one guy with a similar issue regarding his Hewlett-Packard retirement benefit.) Craig Allen later contacted an IBM benefits person who could only say “it’s under negotiation.”

Tuesday 11/28/2023

Writers group at 10:45. In my copious free time before that, I sprayed a coat of orange on the 240Z, third coat with my airbrush, it’s starting to look like a real paint job. Then I set up my camera on a tripod and shot videos of myself, performing two of the songs I propose to do for the upcoming event on the 27th. I cut them down to under a minute, i.e. one chorus, each and sent them to Mary R, the producer of the event. I personally thought I looked and sounded… well, not like shit, maybe, but not like entertainment, either. She wrote back later that she “loved them”. So no easy-out that way. Committed. Must practice harder. Later in the day I practiced and I was forgetting lyrics, forgetting chord changes, just…

After the writers meeting (I had nothing to contribute) I helped Dr. Margaret work through applying for a visa to visit Tanzania. She has signed up for a Road Scholar tour but apparently each person has to get their own visa. Man, after working through that process, I would not go to Tanzania if you paid me. Not only do they want you to upload a passport photo, they want you to upload a picture of your passport, and a PDF (specifically PDF) of your return flight ticket. And pay $100. Plus a $1.50 “handling fee”. Here, handle this, Tanzania.

Felt like a change so I walked out to eat at a restaurant on University. Came back and participated in a sing-along in the lobby.