Thursday 06/01/2023

Got a comment on yesterday’s post from Pat Snow, wife of John Snow, saying that he had passed after nearly 57 years of their marriage. It’s been quite a while since I actually saw John, and memories of him are way in the past. Here’s one. This would be when I was maybe 20 and John was a couple of years older, and much more experienced, having actually served a couple of years in the military. Anyway, he was still living in his mother’s house in Seattle. I think this is the period when I was living in a studio apartment on Capitol Hill, not far away. (Horrible time of my life.) Anyway, the Seattle paper ran a contest with some decent prizes. I don’t remember details but it involved answering trivia questions which had clearly been designed to be ambiguous, so that any question could be answered different ways. Answers had to be sent in on forms printed in the paper. We spent a weekend making answer forms and entered many times answering every question multiple ways. Didn’t win a thing. In hindsight, they probably threw out our hand-drawn forms. But that was how John was, willing to throw himself completely into any project that engaged him.

Today I spent a full day at Shustek center, processing 4 boxes of Sandy Fraser’s papers. These mostly related to multiple projects that AT&T had during the early 90s, to build consumer devices, music players or home networking hubs, or chips that would be part of such products. None of them made it into production. This very smart guy with all of Bell Labs’ expertise behind him, repeatedly made wrong guesses about where consumer taste was going, and where technology was going. Was it Yogi Berra who said, “Predictions are hard, especially about the future.” (Actually no, it was originally a Danish proverb.)

Wednesday 05/31/2023

While the first load of laundry ran I took a short walk and had a nice coffee and pastry break. Then finished up the laundry. Later, to kill some time, I ran down to FOPAL and did an hour’s sorting. Added about 100 words to the novel, and fiddled around with a programming problem that has been bothering me.

In the evening I went downstairs for a talk. Professor Emeritus David Abernethy, taught at Stanford from the 1960s, working on a book in retirement. He’s writing about the general issue of how a few European countries came to dominate and colonize so much of the world, with effects still shaping the world today. He summarized that in an hour, so basically the outline of his book. I didn’t like how David M. was running the A/V but since he is one of my very best team members I am not going to criticize.

Tuesday 05/30/2023

Did the gym machine round. In the hour before the writers meeting I threw together 300 words on the topic of “idols or heros”. Later in the day I went out in the car for a couple of errands. That was about it.

Monday 05/29/2023

It’s Memorial Day. And CH scheduled a BBQ lunch outdoors on the patio behind the dining room. I really meant to go to that. Was quite looking forward to it. And forgot all about it. I went for the standard walk in the morning, and then about 10:30 went down to FOPAL and did two hours of work, and came home about 1 and had a snack in my room. So stupid. I did a similar thing yesterday; Caroline invited everyone on the 6th floor to come join a “broadway musical sing-along plus ice cream” event at her church, which is less than a mile away. That was yesterday at 3, and I even had it on my calendar. Just forgot. And I was bored yesterday, too.

I don’t like myself when I act like such a doofus; also I don’t like the implications. Am I getting worse about it? Or have I always been a doofus, it’s just more obvious when I don’t have a spouse to remind me of things?

Sunday 05/28/2023

After my traditional Sunday Watering of the Plants and Crossing of the Words, I decided to walk to a market. But not over to the California Avenue one, because I’ve done that. Rather to the one in Menlo Park, because I hadn’t. Well it was a nice 2.5mile walk but the market is not a patch on the one to the South, or even on the Saturday one.

Nice little market, I said in a patronizing tone, and had coffee and pastry at, plan D, Starbucks. Plan A had been, buy something nummy at the market. Plan B was La Boulanger but they were not open. On Sunday at 10am? Crazy. Plan C was a bagel place next door but I wasn’t really feeling bagelish, so, plan D. Anyway.

In the afternoon I actually added words to the novel. Pat pat pat.

Saturday 05/27/2023

First of two well-nigh unstructured days. In the morning I solved a tech problem, well, I took a second look and found the obvious answer.

Yesterday after the AV team meeting I was thinking about the upcoming dramatic presentation. I wrote about this on Wednesday (174), how at supper I had learned by chance the CH drama group had decided to have a performance in the middle of June. How this was not on the monthly calendar that was just about finalized and ready to be published; how they had not bothered to file an Event Planning Form to in request support from AV; etc. You want microphones? You want the stage lights turned on? You best file an EPF.

Subsequently I learned that they actually plan two performances, one morning and one evening on 6/16. When I suggested that they might want a tech rehearsal to try out the mics and such, they thought that was a good idea, so that is scheduled for 6/14. And they did get listed in the calendar that goes out to every apartment, before it went to press. But I had also learned that they have been working on two-person scenes, and the presentation will be four scenes, each with two people. The rest of the cast will wait in the Green Room for their turns.

So yesterday after the meeting I realized, it has been years since the Green Room — a little room off a hallway behind the stage — has actually been used as for performer prep. I wonder if the monitor in there works to show a view of the stage, and the sound works. Because if they are waiting for a cue, they need to hear a cue. So I went down and tested it. The monitor works fine, shows a camera view of the stage. But there was no sound.

I sent an email to our tech mailing list asking if anyone remembered whether Green Room audio worked before. Bert wrote back, it used to, look for a volume control. A volume control!?! What a concept!! This morning I went down there and sure enough, there is a big, obvious, black knob, just inside the door, right beside the light switch.

Turn it up, and sound from the auditorium system comes in loud and clear.

For the heck of it I called up Dennis and suggested lunch. He suggested Santana Row. I haven’t been down there since I browsed it along with Marian, probably 2016. It was good. Santana Row is a shopping mall in the form of a European pedestrian district, streets with shops and restaurants. It was bustling with lots of people, mostly youngish, and there was a good vibe. We had a pleasant lunch and chat.

Back home, about 5:30 the Comcast signal went out and all the TVs died. As of 9pm it is still not back.

Friday 05/26/2023

At 9am I drove down to the museum to lead a group of 20 “members of the UK Armed Forces Advanced Command & Staff Course” according to the schedule. Bunch of 30-something men, mostly, no women, a few maybe older. I got a nice round of applause at the end so I guess I did a good job.

My other activity for the day was to hold an A/V committee meeting at 4. I had set up the two Lecternettes with their new wireless mic setups. I just checked, these aren’t made any more. There are products kinda sorta similar, but not with the extra inputs and stuff. So after we had debated over who would do what upcoming events, I urged the 4 attendees to take some time, poke around and get to know the systems. I had made an info sheet for each with pictures and arrows. When I write that I think of Arlo Guthrie singing about the “8 by 10 glossy photos with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back”.

In the mail tonight? A bill from El Camino hospital for $1500. Huh? I haven’t been there in a year. So I turn it over and find that in fact, this is the residual bill for my TAVR operation of May 2022. It has taken this long for the charges to work through all the layers of insurers. The total for the operation was $360,000. After all the reductions and offsets and payments, the residue for me to pay is $1500. OK, I’m good with that.

Thursday 05/25/2023

First up was to lead a tour. Supposedly “30 IEEE members” and I was the only docent signed up. I expected a crowd of engineers in mid-career, so they would know a lot. Wrong. It turned out to be 21, not 30, which was good news, and they were college students, ranging in age from 20-25, with a handful of 30-somethings. So I had to do a lot more explaining than I had expected. But they were fine.

Then off to the East Bay for an afternoon sorting more of the papers of Sandy Fraser. This session was more interesting than before because a whole box was documents from the middle 1990s and related to a project that Fraser was apparently promoting inside AT&T, to build a consumer product, a “personal music player”. This was the same era when Sony was promoting their “Minidisc” format, and Philips was promoting the “digital compact cassette”.

Sandy wrote many memos between 1992 and 1997 promoting his idea of a digital music player based on solid-state media. AT&T apparently owned some patents for high-quality digital audio compression, and he wanted to leverage those to get lots of music into the limited memory capacity of the day. It was clear to me that he came close to inventing something like the iPod.

I’m filing all these memos, and it was really interesting. However, unlike Steve Jobs, Fraser and his Bell Labs team didn’t have a clear picture of what would work as a consumer product — or any experience whatever with consumer marketing. When it came out in 2001, the iPod was a complete system, interfacing to Apple computers, with the iTunes app as a music store and music distribution system. Music publishers could just send their audio files to Apple and start earning cash from every iTunes download. I didn’t see any sign that Fraser thought about the support infrastructure, or a system of selling music.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday, even though it occupied a very intense hour of computer work. The novel has two main characters, Ethan and Emma. Some time ago I searched online for stock photos of young people who look like my imagination. I found a couple of attractive and striking photos, but the problem is, they are pictures of real people. There’s no intent of putting the pictures in a published book, but they might be useful in a website supporting the book, and for such a use, it is not a good idea to have pictures of somebody who might claim a copyright violation or ask for modeling fees or something. So I need some fake people, and I know how to get them: from one of the AI image generators.

I tried both DALL-E and Midjourney and preferred the results from the latter. So here are two entirely imaginary people, Ethan and Emma.

The implications of this kind of thing are just a little bit profound, ya know? No modeling fees, no copyright issues, and no graphic artist or photographer to pay. And I could put one of these pictures back in and ask for “this person in combat fatigues” or “holding a saxophone” or whatever, and get it.

The pictures are really striking, yes? I am using them for motivation to keep writing. These imaginary kids need to have a story to live in.

Wednesday 05/24/2023

Took the standard walk, felt OK. At 11am I got the call from the desk; it was time to come down for my bivalent Covid booster.

At 3 it was time for the Country and Western committee. The committee that planned an executed a very successful 1950s Sock Hop now plans to have a C&W evening for 9/21. Not a barn dance, they decided early on there would be no hay bales. The main part of the committee has been working for weeks. They have finalized the list of songs and some other details. I only get involved because at some point, as before, I’ll be putting together the video sequence. (They have loose plans for a 1960s folk revival night, and a 1960s rock night later on.)

I went down at 5:30 and sat at one of the “community tables” more or less at random, ending up beside Susan. In the course of the conversation it turned out that she is in a group that have been taking a drama class from the artistic directory of the Pear Theater, Sinjin Jones. Susan told me that they had only today decided to have a public performance of some dramatic scenes in the auditorium “on the 15th”. I knew already but quickly verified that there was nothing in the A/V schedule for the 15th, and that the June events calendar was pretty well set in stone at this late date. So I and (ex-RA president) Carol kind of piled on poor Susan, wanting to know, have you filed an event planning form? Have you reserved the room? You need to call Betsy, who edits the calendar, right now. I apologized; poor Susan felt very besieged. But really. You want to have a public event in June and you decide that on May 24th? After supper I called up the people she named as actually organizing it, Prudence and then Peter.

Tuesday 05/23/2023

Started with a round of the gym machines. Then I had an hour before the next thing so I went up to the 11th floor where I had the two Lecternettes (small amplifiers with mics) stashed, and took some pictures so I could make up an operations info sheet. On Friday I plan to share this with the AV crew.

I got a start on the info sheet, but at 9am I had to break off because I was joining an excursion in the CH bus over to the campus to walk around the Stanford Cactus Garden. About 20 of us trundled over there and walked around for an hour. There were not so very many blossoms but the light was good. Here are the pictures I took.

Back home I attended the tail end of the writers meeting, then finished the info sheets for the Lecternettes. Spent an hour going through the cactus pictures and picking the best and uploading them to smugmug, see above.