Thursday 08/10/2023

Did the gym machine round, tidied the apartment for Wanda’s 2pm cleaning, then headed to Milpitas to work at the Shustek center. In the morning shift, I worked with Dave B. to catalog items from a donation by Len Shustek himself. Shustek has made several appearances in my life lately. Two weeks ago I spent several sessions watching a 12-hour course he recently taught at Stanford on the history of computing. Over the VCF weekend he was hanging around CHM, I saw him go by several times. Now I’m cataloging stuff he has donated from his personal collection.

Shustek got a physics doctorate from Stanford, then worked for a while at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the electron-smashing place in the hills west of Stanford. Then he founded not one but two successful Silicon Valley companies, Nestar and Network General. He did that along with another Stanford physicist, Harry Saal, who for several years was a star researcher at IBM San Jose. I believe I met him one time back in the 70s. Shustek married Donna Dubinsky who herself was founder of Palm (remember the Palm Pilot, the first real PDA?) and another company.

So what he had donated that we cataloged today was a “Sniffer”, which was a portable Compaq PC set up to do network traffic analysis. It was Network General’s first big product. But the other was the real prize, as far as I and Dave B. were concerned. It was an Altair 8800, the first real home computer. Just an Altair would not be such a big deal, we already have several, and in my docent tour I always stop at the one on display and talk about it. But this one was different. It had a SLAC property sticker, and it had been heavily modified, and was just stuffed full of boards, many of them hand wire-wrapped.

We got out the donor letter and found out that this had been ordered in 1975, so it was an early one. It was used in the experimental physics lab at SLAC, for various kinds of experimental measurements. That makes it very much one of a kind.

After lunch I worked on de-duping documents. We have piles of documents, mostly manuals from early computer companies, in a big donation. Some of them exist in the collection already. The game is to pick up a document, and try using various searches to find the same document in the collection. The records aren’t perfect, so sometimes to be certain you have to down the long aisles in the document storage area and pull out a box and look in it to find the match, or not. Non-dups go in a pile to be cataloged. Dups go in the recycle box.

Wednesday 08/09/2023

Started the laundry. But before that I took a poop sample, before my upcoming wellness exam (next week). I sealed the little sample bottle in its bag and in its stiff cardboard mailing envelope. It was addressed to the lab at PAMF, so I thought instead of mailing it I would walk it up there. So once the first load was started, I put the envelope in my hip pocket and set off for a brisk mile walk to PAMF. When I got there, went down in the elevator to level A and turned toward the lab. Put my hand on my back pocket and — no envelope.

Clearly it must have fallen out. So now I walked briskly back the way I’d come, looking for the envelope on the sidewalk. There it was, about half a block from CH. So I carried it back into the building and put it in the outgoing mail slot.

Finished the laundry. Spent what seemed like most of the rest of the morning emailing people and calling people about one thing and another. There’s an even scheduled on 9/8, which was a simple event, and then the organizers decided it needed to be a zoom event, in an unusual location. Lots of emails back and forth.

At 6:30 I went to set up for a Wednesday Night Lecture. Standard event, only unusual because for once, the presenter had no visuals, didn’t want any projection. Fine, makes my life easier. Except not, because the Zoom Room equipment expects the projector to be used. I had to make one change in its settings, but it wanted a password I didn’t know. I called several people and eventually Bert, who was at Tahoe, answered and he knew the password.

The presenter was Giovanna Sardelli, the new artistic director of Theaterworks, along with the playwright and a singer from a new play. Mainly asking for money because it seems that regional theater is in trouble everywhere, and they are launching a new “save theaterworks” funding campaign.

Tuesday 08/08/2023

Pretty quiet day. At the writers meeting, where the topic was “crisis averted or endured”, and I had nothing, several people had really dramatic stories to tell. Like one person was doing charity work in South Sudan when a cease-fire broke and a revolution resumed and she had to get out of the country somehow.

At 4pm was the third, or is it 4th? in a series of talks detailing levels of care at CH. This was about the Assisted and Skilled care in the Lee Center. After the usual bullet points by staff, they had three current IL residents talk about how their spouses were cared for. All three were women talking about how the Lee Center staff cared for their husbands in their final year or so. All were very specific about the ways the staff were caring, and flexible, and creative in making their spouses comfortable. I know two men whose wives are in the Lee Center now, so it isn’t always women with failing husbands. But bottom line, at this meeting and multiple other times I’ve heard the staff praised.

Monday 08/07/2023

Back to work day. At 10 I set up the auditorium for a First Monday Book Talk. The speaker was Prof. Ran Abramitzky, talking about his book, Streets of Gold, research into the facts of the immigrant experience in America. Quite an interesting talk. I recorded it on my laptop and in the evening finished editing the video.

Then I headed out to FOPAL where I spent 2 hours setting up my section for the coming sale weekend. Back home by 3, had a quiet sit and a nap until supper time. Bumped into Craig and Edie in the hall and had dinner with those two and the Beelers and Florrie. Talk about the lecture in the morning led to everyone comparing their ancestors’ immigrant experiences.

08/06/2023

Relaxing day getting caught up on things left pending after the VCF. I did the month-end record of the Nest Egg status. I’m still wealthy.

Next I edited the video I made of the G.I.F.T. kids performance Thursday night. Unfortunately the audio balance came out wrong, the musical accompaniment is too low so the singers’ voices are too loud. Still, I tidied it up and passed it on to the people who sponsored it, to send on to the director for his use. Well, anybody can see it for a while until I get around to deleting it. (Skip to the 3:00 minute mark to get over the intro.)

Then I started on a project that took most of the rest of the day. Back in ’19 I bought a cheap HP Chromebook, to take along when traveling instead of my expensive Macbook. A Chromebook runs a cut-down Google-modified form of Linux. It’s basically an Android phone in the shape of a laptop. The thing is, Chromebooks have an expiration date. About three years after purchase, the announce to you that you’ve had your last update and there won’t be any further software updates, security or otherwise. This is currently a major issue for local schools, who bought these things by the truckload to give to students so they could study remotely during the pandemic. Now the schools have literal truckloads of chromebooks that can’t be upgraded or have new apps added.

It seemed to me that there ought to be a way to get the Chromebook to boot plain old Linux. It is an Intel-based system, just cheap PC hardware, why not? Well it turns out the Google had gone out of their way to make that difficult. The firmware that runs the boot operation (what we used to call the BIOS back in the last century) is designed so it can’t be used for a general OS boot, but only Google’s software.

After much searching however, I found Chrultrabook which documents how to do it. It involves a rather complex series of operations ending with completely rewriting the boot ROM, but after that, you have a normal laptop that can boot anything, even Windows.

And I am very pleased to say that I got through that whole process — including disassembling the laptop to remove the “write protect screw” from the motherboard! — and re-flashing the boot ROM, and installing a Linux system, which boots, and runs, and the wifi works and everything. Which made me feel like I AM TEH KING NERD. Bow before me. And now I have a slow, but functional, cheap laptop to take traveling. If I ever travel.

Saturday 08/05/2023

Up and out early, first to make a quick stop at the FOPAL main room where I picked up another box of books I thought would sell. Then to pick up Frank and on to the Museum, arriving at 8:30 to set up for the day. We brought in a total of six boxes of books to freshen up our tables, because the first day had left them very depleted. Here’s how it looked.

It was another long day, some of it quite boring sitting around reading a book on my phone when no customers were coming by. However in the end it was a real success. We took a total of 18 boxes of books down. We brought five boxes back. Total receipts just over $1400 for the weekend.

All the volunteers helped, including Dennis. But I have to say Nikole, whom I hadn’t met before this weekend, was just a joy to have around; smart, thoughtful, pleasant and cheerful with everyone, and a good planner. I thanked her and told her how good it was to have worked with her. I hope she stays on as a FOPAL volunteer. It would be ideal if there were some way to get her a paid position, but I doubt the library budget would extend to that.

I got back to CHM in time to have supper in the dining room. Early to bed, and taking a day off tomorrow.

Friday 08/04/2023

Up and out at 8, picked up Frank at 8:25, over to CHM. Moved our 12 boxes of books out and arrayed them on our table. There was barely room for everything. Here’s the table with Frank and a few shoppers.

Dennis arrived pretty soon and stayed to noon. He’s behind the table where the arrow points. Nikole had done a great job of getting more volunteers so we had 2-5 FOPAL people there all the time.

Business was good. Lots of people bought one book, but two guys really loaded up. One bought something like 25 books. By the end of the day we had taken in close to $800. The table was looking a bit thin, and everything left had been picked-over multiple times so probably wasn’t going to sell.

So at 6pm closing time, Frank and I drove back to FOPAL and hit up the Bargain Room and the towering stacks of boxes behind it, and found another 3 or 4 boxes of books that might sell to this crowd. That will freshen up the table for tomorrow.

What with that and then dropping Frank off at his place, I didn’t get home until 8. Tomorrow I get to do it again.

Thursday 08/03/2023

Did the gym round first thing. Then at 9am, met with Susan P. to review using her phone to send music through the speakers. Had an early lunch and headed down to FOPAL. Today was the day to load up the 12 boxes of books and stuff to sell at the Vintage Computer Fest, and take it down to CHM.

Met Frank and Nikole. Frank is a long-time FOPAL volunteer and a mainstay of the whole program. Nikole is a summer intern. First up was to load the boxes, and a hand-truck, into my car and Nikole’s. Then we went to the opposite side of the Cubberly complex, to the building that houses the Children’s room and the FOPAL offices, for training in the new portable terminal. And there ahead of us was Dennis, who is volunteering to help part of the weekend. We learned how to use the cute little terminals that handle cards and phones etc. A big improvement from last year when we had an iPad with a Square card reader.

Now I and Frank drove down to CHM, Nikole following, and we schlepped our boxes into the museum. Unfortunately there was another event using the space assigned to us, so we had to stack our boxes. Tomorrow morning we will carry them across and set up our tables.

Back to CH. At 5:30 the young theater people from G. I. F. T. showed up. They were here a few weeks ago, presenting the Addams Family musical. Today they were back with a shortened version of Singin’ in the Rain. As before I turned the AV on, put batteries in all of our wireless mics, and basically turned the system over to them. They come in and in 20 minutes have mastered our sound and light systems, and at 7:30 they presented the show, with all the light cues and music cues — music off an iPhone by Bluetooth into our system, just as I was teaching Susan to do — like they used our stage every day.

Wednesday 08/02/2023

Did the standard walk. Then at 10, met with Susan in the auditorium. There are a lot of Susans around here, nearly as many as Mary Anns. The Susan in the writers group is Susan H. Today I met with Susan P.

Susan and Joanne (there are a lot of those, as well; this is Joanne L) are going to be leading three rehearsal days when people can practice the Country 2-step and the Country Line Dance. They will do it in the auditorium and they want body mics. At first I was going to ask for AV volunteers for this three additional events in the month (grrrrr….) but then Ian said, why not train them to do their own mics? Well, Susan was open to the idea.

Susan is smart and capable. She taught English Lit at College of San Mateo for a zillion years. I walked her through the process of turning our system on, preparing two mics, putting them away, and shutting down. She went through it twice and I deemed her “trained”. The I raised the issue of music: how were they planning to have music during these dance lessons? Then I showed her how the audio board had a Bluetooth input, and how easy it was to sync a phone to it, and play music right out through the speakers in the ceiling.

Later in the day I was listening to a podcast when the speaker, a writer, was asked about his writing tools, and said he always composed in a web app, 4thewords.com, which is a great help, he said, at motivating you to write. So I took a look. It’s bizarre at first, but you know? I’m gonna give it a try, maybe it will un-stall my novel. It turns writing into an adventure game. If you’ve played any of the adventure games, Zelda or anything, it would be familiar, except to advance you don’t do fake combat. You conquer monsters and earn loot by writing. 250 words kills a small monster.

At supper I was eating with Patty and the Allens when Susan P stopped by our table. She had been down to the auditorium on her own to practice (gotta love an enthusiastic student!) and couldn’t make the Bluetooth thing work. So we’ll meet again tomorrow at 9. Tomorrow is going to be an “extra value” day.

08/01/2023

Did the machine round in the gym. Other than that the day was pretty blah. Writers meeting at 10:30. The assignment was, a letter from a future relative written in 2123. I did not write because I didn’t feel like writing gloomy predictions and couldn’t think of any other kind. Others wrote pretty dark stuff. For example, one recounted how they were really lucky to have gotten a place in the Sierras above 10,000 feet, where it often dipped below 100º at night.

One writer surprised me: she’d used ChatGPT to write her first draft, then edited it. She sent it out (we send our writings to the group by email so we can read along as the writer reads their essay aloud) in two forms, one with the parts from ChatGPT highlighted. Susan’s 90 (plus or minus a year or two) but obviously still running on all cylinders.

I disassembled the crap lectern and had facilities take it away along with its packing materials. What a waste.

At 4pm was the third presentation in the series, levels of care at Channing House. This one on the services and care provided in our third-floor AL units. There are 11, of which 7 are currently occupied, which surprised me.

Did I say, a few days ago, how I started to watch Return of the Jedi? I had this package of the first three Star Wars movies on Blu-Ray and I had watched the first two. Return of the Jedi is the one on Endor, with the Ewoks. Well, I got bored and turned it off and put the disk away. Partly it was seeing Carrie Fisher in her prime. But mostly it was that the movie wasn’t very good.

Anyway I don’t feel very good about myself or the world today.