Friday 07/21/2023

Went for the walk. Then it was time, as planned a week ago, to install Edie’s new iMac. I had taken a tech call with Edie, a 6th floor neighbor, a few weeks ago and noted that her iMac was from 2014 and couldn’t run the latest software or update hardly at all. So later I walked her through the process of buying a new iMac. It was delivered, and sat a week until now.

I spent a couple of hours getting the thing done. Installing the new copy of Microsoft Office she had bought took half the time.

Then I spent an hour preparing for the AV committee meeting at 4. Mainly going over the latest quote for the auditorium upgrade work, which left me quite upset and angry. I sent off an email to Rhonda requesting a meeting for Monday. I gotta get some clarity on why this shit is so confused and stalled.

The meeting itself came off alright. The main thing was to get the August events on the spreadsheet assigned to people. I had to take more than my share, frankly.

Immediately it was time to meet with Patty and Edie (yes, her again) and Julie in the lobby as agreed, to go to Armadillo Willy’s for ribs. Which were good.

Thursday 07/20/2023

Did the gym round. Tidied the apartment then drove to Milpitas to work at the Shustek Center. Full complement of volunteers for once. Toni and I were assigned to start cataloging the documents from the “Kossow Collection”. Story time.

Al Kossow is a dedicated, energetic, and slightly eccentric volunteer computer historian. He heads up a one-man operation to collect data from old media and hardware. His HQ is one large corner of the Shustek center building where he has built what an uncharitable person might call a hoarder’s nest of hardware and media. But out of this has come his personal website, Bitsavers.org, where you can read scanned copies of manuals for all the old computers. And a large amount of data retrieved from old and decomposing reels and disks at Shustek. So CHM gives him space and funds.

He had recently designated a bunch of manuals from his hoard to be added to the museum collection, and we started on that, a large pile of manuals on a rolling rack. Because neither Toni nor I had done document cataloging before it took us a while to get a work flow going. It was like handling the Sandy Fraser papers except also entering the documents into the computer system.

I had to leave not long after lunch. On the way out I stopped to take a picture of one aisle at Shustek. On the left are boxes labeled “Kossow Collection”. Those are the documents that

have been cataloged and stored properly.

One reason I left early was for the ice cream social on the patio at 3, except I learned it had been rescheduled for Monday. At 3:30 I met with Stew, Joanne, Kay and Lou, the team planning the C&W party for September, to go over some details. One of the details is that we were planning on Mary, the chorus leader, singing Patsy Cline’s “Walking after Midnight” but Mary is going to be away on the date, so we decided to video her before she left. I did some thinking about how best to do this, and there was a flurry of email to set a date for this shoot, next Sunday.

Plus the AV group meets tomorrow and Bert, just back from vacay, has tested positive and is sequestered and wants it on zoom. So I figured out how to make that happen.

So the AV committee, and AV planning, and CHM work on Thursdays and a tour to lead on Saturday, and FOPAL work on Monday and planning for the VCF…

Am I possibly overcommitted?

Wednesday 07/19/2023

Went for a walk in the morning. At 1pm I joined the monthly FOPAL zoom. Last month’s sale netted over $20K. I gave a pitch for the Vintage Computer Fest. Hopefully a couple of people will step up to help.

At 3pm it was time to set up for an event: Christopher Gardener, Stanford Professor of (from his bio) “food and nutrition research at Stanford for 30 years. He has completed and published more than 20 studies involving more than 2,000 research participants. He is also very involved with the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and the Culinary Institute of America…” And a very engaging, cheerful, entertaining speaker. Excellent talk. I’ll link to the video when I get done processing it.

Ann, who produced this event, had a dinner table for 6 and invited me. Nice evening.

Tuesday 07/18/2023

Did the gym round. Then did a lot with the auditorium lectern. Here’s the deal: I had proposed replacing it. I went to a lot of trouble to do shopping, present the situation to the Ev.Comm. yesterday. This morning I find an email from Bert who is just back from vacation and reading his email apparently. He proposed a whole complicated thing about converting the old lectern to have locking casters. He didn’t send that just to me, oh hell no. He sent it to the AV team and several others.

So I went down and photographed the lectern, and wrote an email explaining why changing to locking casters wouldn’t work (the locks would be out of reach under the skirt of the lectern base). A plain, factual unemotional email.

Then I went ahead and did something I’ve been meaning to do. The lectern had a little brass gooseneck lamp which caused two issues. One, it was situated such that there wasn’t room to put a laptop on the lectern and open it. Two, it needed a power cord plugged into the stage, which was a tripping hazard and constant nuisance. So I had already ordered a nice battery operated gooseneck clip-on lamp which came yesterday. Today I disassembled the lectern, removed the ugly little brass job, and clipped on the new one. Presto, no more power cord to make presenters trip, and no obstacle blocking their laptops.

Wrote an email about that, also, with pictures. Very factual and unemotional, this is what I’ve done, isn’t it nice.

All that before 10:30. Then the writers meeting, although of course I hadn’t written anything.

At lunch, the left molar crown popped off. This was the one that came off and was reglued back on day 4.056. The dentist had said it probably would, but as the months went by I was feeling pretty confident. Nope. I got an appointment for 2:30 (hah, sounds like a bad dentist joke). He offered to try to glue it again, but admitted it wouldn’t stay as long.

The only real alternatives are, A, to get a partial made. I used a partial for a couple of years, a decade ago, and hated it and abandoned it. Or, B, an implant. The process of getting an implant would be, one, dental surgery to extract the roots of that tooth and implant some bone material; two, 4-6 months of healing time; three, surgery to implant the post to support the new tooth; four, build a new tooth. Or, C, he could just do a filling to close up the top of the truncated root so it wouldn’t decay, and try how it goes with even less chewing surface on the left. I opted for C.

In all the excitement I forgot to attend a talk at 4pm which I really wanted to hear, the first of seven staff lectures on CH health care and options. I expect I can pick up the zoom recording soon.

Later I wrote an email to several people at FOPAL re the upcoming Vintage Computer Fest.

Monday 07/17/2023

Started the day with the standard walk. Then it was time for the monthly event coordinators meeting, where we finalize the calendar of events for the next month. My contribution to this was to present a proposal to replace the lectern in the auditorium. There was agreement that this was worth doing and the money was available, but the choice of lectern needed more shopping. There are an incredible number of podiums and lecterns on Amazon and elsewhere.

After lunch I went to FOPAL and processed four boxes of books. Back to CH in plenty of time for Rhonda’s open meeting. She wanted to talk about the bill in the State Assembly that would set a $25/hour minimum wage for all workers in health care. Very broadly defined; it would cover any worker at a SNF or AL or CCRA, including dining services, janitorial, drivers, etc. Our average pay here is currently $19.50 (before benefits which include health care for workers and optional subsidies for families). Rhonda estimates the annual cost of the increased minimum would be about 500K, or 3-4% on our monthly fees. That’s tolerable for us, but, quoting Leading Age, the trade organization for senior residences, a number of facilities have a majority of beds paid by MediCal, which already reimburses at 20% below the real average cost of care, and no reimbursement increase is proposed with the legislation, just the mandated pay increase.

In the evening I spent some time looking at podiums and lecterns. Whee.

Sunday 07/16/2023

Yesterday on the way to the Pear I took note of the tents and crowds of people at the annual Palo Alto Clay and Glass festival. This morning I walked over to it and around it. This is an annual artisan’s craft fair that Marian was very fond of, and we went to it regularly. I’m not sure if this was the first held since Covid; in any case it was the first I’ve gone to since maybe 2017.

Lots of neat crafty stuff. I took a few pictures with the cell phone and will stick some at the end. Total walking for the day, 3 miles.

At 3:45 it was time to set up for an auditorium event. I had assumed this would be zoomed, and had invited Ian to join me to get experience running a hybrid event. But in fact Stew, who is in charge of this Sunday @ Home series, decided this one wouldn’t be, and didn’t advertise it as zoomed. So all of a sudden we were back to the old basic setup, plug a laptop into the projector with an HDMI cable and that’s it.

The presentation was to show a 40 minute video of a cruise in Norway and the Scottish Islands, narrated by Edith (I’ll call her Edith to avoid confusion with my 6th floor neighbor Edie). It went off OK, no disasters. Afterwards I had dinner with Stew and Kathy and Jeb and Edith.

Saturday 07/12/2023

Ran the gym machines, third day in a week. Yay me.

Yesterday Harriet had mentioned she was going to take her visitors to see the “orbs on the campus” and I had no idea what she was talking about, which surprised her. It turns out that the art piece named Pars per Toto, Latin for “parts for the whole”, has been in the Science Quad since 2021. Later she sent me this article from the Stanford Daily. (Scroll to the very end for details of the materials in the stones.)

So this morning I went to see it. It’s easy to get to; just park on the Oval, walk toward the Memorial Church, turn right to the next quad and the huge, perfect spheres are hard to miss.

Balls on the engineering quad. Ah, the jokes just write themselves… Fortunately the spheres are grand enough to rise about college humor. They are really astonishing, I would love to know how the artist even starts to make a perfect 5-foot-diameter sphere or granite.

In the afternoon I joined a party of 7 others to attend the season-announcement party at the Pear theater. Several of my neighbors are strong backers of the Pear, donors etc. I keep touting the in-my-opinion equally good and worthy local theater, the Bus Barn, but to no avail. Anyway the Pear is doing some interesting things and some not so interesting (IMO) next season and I suppose I will sign up for a season ticket.

Friday 07/14/2023

Took the standard walk for the first time in a while. It went fine. In fact the latter half went fast because I was practicing a talk I plan to give to my AV team next week.

Then I put on my red docent shirt and went off to CHM to lead the noon tour. I had scheduled this at the request of my basketball friend Harriet, who said she had a couple of visitors from out of town who would like to see the museum. So the three of them arrived in good time and joined the tour. Everybody enjoyed my talk it seemed. The visitors were Dave and Judy, up from San Diego. After the tour we went for lunch across the street at Cucina Venti, which has poshed itself up somewhat since I was last there. Also its prices. Oh well.

Nothing much to say for the rest of the day. I plan to watch the Friday live stream from SFJazz, with Savion Glover.

Thursday 07/13/2023

Did the gym thing. Twice in a week. Will I do it again Saturday? Time will tell.

Just like yesterday, walked to T&C for coffee and scone at Peet’s, then across the parking lot to the PAMF building where my cardiologist hangs out. This appointment went nicely. She listened to my heart and said the TAVR valve doesn’t have any sounds that suggest backflow. So it is functioning nominally. Yay! We reviewed my BP and she reduced one of my three BP meds from 7 days to M-W-F only. See you in a year.

Back home, at 1pm I met with Alice. Alice is very smart, very with-it. She has a bit of a reputation for being a PITA around CH, because she is very involved in progressive political causes and organizes a lot. (She has more than once traveled to Washington DC on her own to lobby congresspeople.) However she is nice enough in person and like I said, quick on the uptake. At the last RA meeting, David Golden had thrown in an extemporaneous plea for more AV volunteers, and Alice had contacted me to volunteer. Can’t turn that down.

Today I met with her on the 11th floor and walked her through using the Lecternette there. Then we went downstairs to the Auditorium and went through using the downstairs Lecternette, the one we wheel out to the lobby for events there. She had no problem picking it up. We went backstage and she showed me some things about the stage lights that I had not known! Then we went over the auditorium microphone usage.

After supper we had a concert, flute, violin, cello, piano, some classical music. It was well performed but I didn’t stay for all of it.

Wednesday 07/12/2023

I planned the whole morning around an appointment with my cardiologist at 11am. This has been in my calendar for weeks and weeks. Somehow, when PAMF notified me of the date they had assigned for my annual visit, I thought it was Wednesday. So a little after 9 I headed out on foot for the Town & Country shopping center where I had a nice coffee, then at 10:30 walked across the parking lot to the medical building and checked in.

The nice receptionist seemed to be having a problem finding my appointment. Then she said, “Your appointment is for tomorrow.” Yup, I had put an appointment for 7/13 into my calendar on 7/12, all those weeks ago. And when I did the online check-in they wanted it had escaped my notice that the appointment date was 7/13, or didn’t notice that the 13th was not Wednesday. So, nice walk, no doctor. Tomorrow I will get to repeat the same drill I guess.

Later I followed up on an A/V puzzle. The Activity Room is a classroom sized space on the 2nd floor, used for exercise classes and meetings of all sorts. It has a big TV with ZoomRoom, and a sound system, and a lectern with a microphone. But some users would like to have a second mic, one they could hand around, for some meetings. In a closet there is a cart full of discarded audio equipment. In it I found a wireless mic and receiver with a label on a piece of tape, “Not Working”. I took it and cleaned it up and thought I had a major win when it appeared to be working. I connected it to a speaker and I swear that for two seconds, it was putting out sound. Then it cut off, and the little LED that says “RF OK” meaning the mic was synced with the receiver, went out and never came back. I took it apart and looked for a loose connection but no, there was no visible problem. It had a brief fling at working then died permanently. I gave it to the IT guys to recycle.

We had our monthly 6th floor meeting and dinner. Nothing exciting except, it appears that there is finally a taker for the room across the hall from me, which has been vacant over a year. A John McKuen (sp?) who Carolyn says seems very nice.