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.

Monday 07/31/2023

Took the standard walk. At 10:30 I met with Peter to discuss A/V requirements for a lecture series he plans for October and November. Then I went to FOPAL. No computer books to process, reasonable since I was just there on Saturday, so I did a bit of sorting.

After supper I picked up a large package from the mail room. A big flat pack about 4 foot by 3 foot by 5 inches. This was the $90 lectern I bought of Amazon. I spent an hour assembling it. Afterward I was disappointed. The whole point of changing out the lectern we have, is that because it doesn’t have locking casters, it wouldn’t support anyone who leaned on it. Well, this $90 piece of … furniture has locking casters. However they are very small, like 2-inch diameter wheels, and hard plastic. So even with the back two casters locked, it slides quite easily. And it tends to tip. If you lean on it from the back it likes to tilt forward. Not a good pulpit for a revival preacher for sure.

So I have wasted $90 plus tax. Of my own money because no way will I ask for reimbursement on this thing we can’t use. At least because it was covered by Amazon Prime the shipping of the 40-pound pack was free.

Oh and I now have the problem of how to dispose of it. I’m thinking put it on the curb (well away from Channing House) with a “free” sign on it.

Sunday 07/30/2023

For fun I walked over to California Avenue. I have no imagination. A bunch of my neighbors went off to see Oppenheimer. A bunch of my neighbors went to a concert in the Music at Menlo summer series. Me? I went for a walk.

Lennie had done some googling and found that my new neighbor, Brian, had a sufficiently big career in computers that the CHM had done an oral history video. They have a large collection of oral histories. Anyway, I listened to his this afternoon. Interesting guy with an impressive resumé.

That reminded me, didn’t I write up a history of my career in tech? LIttle searching finds, yes I did, in 1995 just after I started at SGI. So I started reading that and obviously I had to edit it and bring it up to date. (Not much to add as my professional career finished with SGI.) But that killed another two hours.