Saturday 02/03/2024

It’s the pre-sale week at FOPAL. Monday looks very busy for me, so I decided to clean up my section today. That took a couple of hours. After lunch it was time for the Good Times volunteers who are going to be singing along, barbershop style, with the Beach Boys, to rehearse. I turned on the auditorium systems, and took my computer with the videos down and connected it into the sound system and provided accompaniment. I also snuck in a rehearsal of my own number before anyone else arrived.

Afterward, my package of new HDMI cables had arrived from Amazon. So I went up to 11 to try again to make the new blu-ray player work with that system. David G had suggested maybe it was the cable. But a new, top-spec 4K video cable didn’t make any difference. Later I wrote an email to the staff IT guys asking for help.

Friday 02/02/2024

Yesterday I got a notice in the mail that my car registration was due, and that a smog check was required. So this morning I went out to get smogged. With that out of the way I did a few other things. At quarter to six I brought the car around to drive my car pool buddies to the SWBB game. This was a miserable game, a home loss to USC and their freshman phenom who scored 49 points. I am more an more sure I will not renew my season ticket next year.

Thursday 02/01/2024

Finished up the Strollin video. Well, actually not, there are several more steps but the contents are complete.

At 9:30 joined Stew in the auditorium to test out the “karaoke screen”. It worked fine, putting the song lyrics that Stew has prepared on both screens at the same time.

I asked Stew, as the producer, whether I should sing with my guitar or with the original accompaniment. He was very much for the original record with drums and backing vocals. Which is great, much less stressful for me.

After lunch, the new blu-ray player I ordered arrived so I spent a frustrating couple of hours trying to install it. It worked perfectly connected to my own TV, and connected directly to the 11th floor TV, but it needs to be connected to a big receiver that switches between half a dozen sources, and drives the audio. And it doesn’t want to talk to the blu-ray player, or not completely. It passes the audio but not the video.

Wednesday 01/31/2024

Went for the standard walk in the morning, first time in some time. Then paid a couple of credit card bills, and filled out the E-sign forms from SFCU to put the name of the trust properly on the account.

Then I did something that I had woken up in the middle of the night and resolved to do. I got a youtube version of Who Put the Bomp — the song I am to perform as part of the upcoming Strollin 60s party — and extracted the audio from it. This I uploaded to each of three different websites that claim to use AI to extract the accompaniment from song, suppressing the vocalist. One did a better job than the others, although all three were adequate. I put that together with the picture of the Barry Mann album cover, as a video, and inserted it into the sequence.

Now I have the option. I have been practicing the hell out of Who Put the Bomp on the guitar, thinking I would perform it to my own accompaniment. But now I have the option of instead performing it karaoke-style to the original band. I don’t yet know which way to go on this.

Then I spent the rest of the morning finishing that video for the party, 55 minutes of solid oldies. To name just a few, Stop in the Name of Love, Up on the Roof, Only Love Can Break a Heart, Where the Boys Are, The Twist, Leader of the Pack, Good Golly Miss Molly, Sherry Baby… Don’t you wish you could come to this party?

After lunch I had scheduled a video clinic inviting any on the AV team who were interested, to watch me prep a video of a lecture. I had booked the Training Room with a big screen that I could put my laptop screen on. Only two came, Bert and Lennie, but they learned a bit I think. Lennie says she might try it in 2026 when she isn’t president of the resident association any more.

At 4:30 I had a personal help call from a neighbor on this floor to figure out how to watch netflix. I was going to show her how to get her Mac’s screen on the TV, but turns out, she has a nice new Vizio which has basically a Roku built into it. So quickly we had Netflix on the TV, native.

Then I took a scheduled tech squad call: Romy has a Brother printer that was putting dirty marks on the page. I’d never seen a printer like this, it has four separate toner rollers that dispense C, M, Y or Black toner powder. So not a simple ink-jet like I’m used to . We figured out that the black toner cartridge was leaking powder. After we had wiped off the loose powder inside the machine and replaced the toner cartridge (fortunately she had one), the problem was fixed.

Tuesday 01/30/2023

Such a day. I’m tuckered out and it’s only 4:30. The planned first activity was to go, with Leah, to see Charley Tucker, my agent at Prime Fiduciary. Back in August of 22 I set him/them up as the successor trustee on my trust. It’s been a while and I wanted to make sure they had my health directive with Leah as first responder, and meet her and verify that they would be able to pay her fees.

Before that, though, CH issues occurred. I had reported the problem with the 11th floor blu-ray player to the combined tech email list, and a couple of people had responded saying, did it every play blu-rays? Raising the issue, had I tried to make a plain DVD player play discs it didn’t recognize? That would be embarrassing. So I went up to 11 to check, no, it is plainly labeled “Blu-Ray” on top and sides. It’s just a piece of old gear. Then Stew wanted to test the karaoke screen on Thursday so I had to contact Gerald to get hold of it. So I emailed Gerald.

I fussed around finding all the documents I wanted to share with Charley. Then went down and brought the car up. At 10:20 Leah walked up and we went off to meet Charley. This meeting went very well. We talked about a lot of things, details of how my affairs can be handled when I am incapable or dead. Both I and Leah got a clearer picture of what the Fiduciaries can and will do. For example, if I get really old and am not completely incapable but just tired of paying my bills and such, I can just hand my affairs over to them and they would manage things on an hourly fee basis. At any rate, everybody knows who to call in what circumstances.

One point is, either Leah or the Channing House nurses will likely be the one to call the Neptune Society to take my remains away. So both should have info on my Neptune account. I had made copies of that info; when we got back I ran up to get a copy for Leah. But it’s on my to-do list to add that info the folder at the nurses’ station.

More on the to-do list of things to settle. Charley needs to know, is my SFCU account under my name or the trust’s? I had no clue. Who’s the beneficiary of my IRA? Ditto. So I emailed Howard at my financial advisors, I think he would know about the IRA. I contacted SFCU. They have both my name and Marian’s, and the trust, on the account, except it’s the old trust, not the current Survivor trust. Apparently I never told them Marian had died. Now they may need a death certificate. I think I still have one. I have a pretty good idea which file box to look in, anyway.

Got with Gerald in the afternoon and arranged about the karaoke screen for Thursday. Emailed Stew to tell him to be ready at 9:30 Thursday.

Mary M. filed an EPF for a new event, just two weeks ahead on 2/14. Full auditorium + zoom lecture event. The A/V volunteers commit to their tasks at the end of the month, for the next month. Added events like this mean I have to email the volunteers and beg for somebody to handle the event. Probably I will end up having to do it. I was fairly harsh with Mary M. but she wasn’t actually the perpetrator — she was acting for a person who is vacationing in Paris. How nice for her. It isn’t clear if the Paris person knew about the event any earlier or what. But how can we keep people from doing this? If you don’t book your event at least 30 days in advance, it won’t appear on the monthly calendar (which was just distributed around the building last week), but could we also say, “you better be ready to do the A/V yourself because the regular crew aren’t interested”?

Talked to my friend Pam, who it turns out is head of the committee that wants to show blu-rays on 11. Told her we should replace the player with a new Sony XBR-700, do they have money to reimburse me for the $180 cost? Yes they do, so I sat down and ordered one.

At the end of the day I was able to send Charley an email answering most of his open questions. I also completed purchase of a California-legal POLST bracelet, so will be carrying a DNR signal on my body. Not sure if I will actually wear it, but I’d been meaning to order one ever since the End of Life series a few months ago.

Such a day.

Monday 01/29/2024

First business today was to set up the auditorium for Oscar to rehearse. He is doing a book talk in a week, and his talk consists of him narrating the story of the book Passing by Nella Larsen, about a black woman passing as white in Harlem in the 1920s, while playing clips from the Netflix film of the book. He has a friend, David Richardson, who is doing his tech support: he has collected the movie clips on him computer and shows them on cue while Oscar talks. Richardson is real geek, arriving with not one but two backpacks full of gear. At least two Macbooks. So all I had to do was set up the system, lower the screen, then get out of the way.

The movie version of Passing, or what I’ve seen of during Oscar’s rehearsal, is very powerful. So many scenes have me just cringing, oh no, don’t do that, don’t say that agghhh you said it…

That out of the way, I went to FOPAL and processed two boxes of donations. Then bought coffee and peanut butter at the store next door. Back home, worked a bit on the Strollin’ video. Then it was time for Rhonda’s open meeting, this month discussing numerous changes in the ancillary fee schedule — none very significant to me — and some changes in Dining Services, again which seemed common-sense and no problem to me. Although like any hint of change in a senior residence, they provoked many questions and comments.

The meeting ended at 5:30 and obviously 75 people would now head into the dining room, so I went to my room and had my other can of mushroom soup and a sandwich. One number reported today was that although the CH contract promises 3 meals a day, the average resident only eats 1.8 meals a day, on average. Well today for me, that was 0.0 meals in the dining room, although 1.8 is a pretty good average for me.

Neighbor Brian reported the DVD player on the 11th floor wouldn’t play blu-ray discs. I went up after supper and tried it, and yes, it plays DVDs fine but gags on blu-rays. Hopefully one of the resident committees has money to buy a new one.

Sunday 01/28/2024

So the usual Sunday round — the balcony plants need very little water this time of year, I finish that chore in about 3 minutes — and then pass time pleasantly until lunch. After which I go off to the Museum where it is Apple Employee Day. Closed to the general public but full of Apple employees and their families. I lead the 2pm tour, about 30 people, big crowd, and I manage to keep them all interested to the end. Of course the crowd knew a lot going in, at the point where I explain integrated circuits, I kind of said, well, who am I talking to, you know all this stuff. But there’s enough history they don’t know. Anyway, they stuck with me and gave me a nice round of applause at the end.

Three different times today I practiced “Who Put the Bomp”. This is my performance bit for the upcoming “Strollin into the Sixties” party and I need to get it totally memorized — get “off book” as they say in theater. Very frustrating when I screw it up. “Come on you know this shit” I chastise myself.

Meanwhile I’ve assembled a book of songs I can play, with a recent addition, “Jennifer Johnson and Me” by a songwriter I had not heard of before, Robert Earl Keen. Really simple to play, fun to sing.

Saturday 01/27/2024

Did a few things today. In the morning I made a list of my various financial account numbers, bank, brokerage, credit cards. Charlie the Fiduciary requested that for our meeting next Tuesday.

After lunch I went down to FOPAL. Frank had asked me to look at a bunch of old Mac software he had collected in the bargain room. This was software packages, some in the original shrink-wrap boxes, dating back to 2005 and earlier. Would they sell in the bargain room? Frank should know as that’s his bailiwick. Would they sell better at the Vintage Computer Fest next summer? That was what we talked about. There are complicated compatibility questions. From 1984 to 2000, Apple put Motorola 65K chips in Macs, and used what we now call Classic Mac OS. There were a few software packages in Frank’s collection dating to pre-2000. But he says that, with the current 40th anniversary of the Mac, lots of hobbyists have been making online videos of pulling out their old 1990-era Macs. So they are still around.

Apple used the PowerPC chips from 2000, when they introduced Mac OS X, to 2006. Mac OS X version 10.4 “Tiger” in 2006 supported both the PowerPC and the Intel CPU chips. Then with 10.8 “Snow Leopard” in 2008, they dropped the PowerPC support, except that old PowerPC apps could still be run under an emulator named Rosetta. With 10.7 “Lion” in 2009, all support for the PowerPC chip was dropped.

Some of the software on Frank’s shelf dates before 2006, and calls for OS 10.3. Those definitely require pre-2006 hardware to run. But, some people still have those. Some of his collection dates to 2008 and later; that requires a 2008 or later machine to run. He decided that the few boxes in original shrink-wrap we would put away now for VCF. The rest will stay on the shelf for the next sale weekend. What doesn’t sell then, he’ll put away for VCF also.

Except for pre-2006 copies of “Norton Utilities for Mac” and Microsoft Word for Mac. I designated those as garbage, nobody in their right mind would want either, throw them away.

Back home I did a clever thing. I have to start preparing the video stream for “Strollin’ into the 60s” coming up in 3 weeks now. Like previous Good Times shows, we will have videos of the music on the big TV on stage, and I have to prepare that hour-long stream from downloaded YouTube videos. For the C&W Jamboree last fall, I did a cute clip of worn barn doors that shut at the end of each video and opened to reveal the next. For this one I wanted just theater curtains. I found a curtain video that would do. But I needed it also to close. In fact I wanted a clip that had the curtain closing, one second of it closed, and then opening. Also that one is too slow, I wanted it twice as fast, 3 seconds instead of 6.

So in an hour and a half of intense work before supper, I downloaded that video, I made it faster, I copied it and made the copy play in reverse. I stuck the two copies together into one clip that closes, pauses one second, then opens again. And I tested it and it works nice. iMovie supports the green screen, so the green part disappears and lets the underlying music video show through. Curtain opens on Chubby Checker doing the Twist, curtain closes, curtain opens on Little Richard doing Good Golly Miss Molly, just as slick as you like.

I feel like the video master.

Friday 01/26/2024

Took a shorter walk in the morning. Then did a couple of minor things and some guitar practice until lunch at 11:30. Right after lunch I put on my red docent shirt and left for the museum. There I led a custom tour for 20 Stanford Law students. I adjusted my usual route to include the Atanasoff sort-of-computer which I normally don’t cover. But now I could tell law students about the huge Sperry-Honeywell patent suit that invalidated Mauchly’s ENIAC patents and established that the digital computer was a public idea for anyone to use.

They stuck with me through my extended tour, probably an hour and a quarter, and seemed interested, so that was flattering.

Thursday 01/25/2024

Tidied up and left for Shustek a bit earlier than usual. Today all the Thursday volunteers, those who work at Shustek doing cataloging, and those who work at Yosemite doing other curatorial tasks, were to meet at Yosemite for lunch. Ordinarily we all meet at one of a rotating list of restaurants. But today would be Gretta’s last day so lunch around a table at Yosemite and say goodby to Gretta. Which meant bringing something to eat, so I left early to stop at the store and buy a sandwich.

Gretta started with CHM in 2015, so I’ve known her for nearly a decade. For the past three years she’s been in charge of the acquisitions (“acquisitions registrar” is I think the job title), and on Thursdays that meant managing a crew of us old fart techies(*). The other days of the week I’m sure she had other things to do. But she always kept this diverse crew busy and focused, and always was cheerful and constructive, quick on her feet, ready to answer whenever somebody said “Gretta….?” which was about every ten minutes through the day. I am very sad to see her leave. She’s moving to Vashon Island in Puget Sound, where her husband has gotten a job running a year-round environmental campground.

I left Shustek about 3:30 which was later than I meant, because at 4pm was the annual Resident-Trustee Budget meeting, where the financial state of CH for the past and next fiscal year would be discussed, and the rise in monthly fees revealed. But traffic on 101 was backed up at Shoreline, so I moved over to Middlefield, and it was 4:10 before I got there. I didn’t miss much. The rise is 6%. The good news is, we are losing less money next year than this, and look like reaching break-even again in FY26.

(*) including IBMers me, David Bennett, and Steve Madsen, and Paul Laughton. Paul’s claim to fame, though, is that he wrote most of Apple DOS for the Apple II.