Two events today. For the first I left at noon and drove to San Jose for a baby shower, for my niece Denise. Met with lots of relatives I don’t see often enough. Denise is probably the most competent and grounded member of the family, which is good.
From there I drove to Menlo Park for a house concert which I thought started at 3:30 but in fact didn’t start until 4, so I was early. I had not been to this house before, a very pleasant back yard surrounded by trees. The music was by Dirty Cello, which is really Rebecca Roudman and her husband. Rebecca plays cello, classic-style with local symphonies, and as Dirty Cello does rock, bluegrass and klesmer music. I took a really nice video of them doing “Orange Blossom Special”.
I first heard these two play on the street at a Palo Alto World Music Day back around 2014 or so, and I’ve seen them maybe five times since. (Sorry for the blurry picture. WordPress “optimized” the video down from 1080p to something like half that.)
Had a good lunch at the baby shower, and a couple snacks at the concert, so skipped supper.
Went out for coffee in the morning. Then put in a couple of hours on the 56 t-bird. It is getting close to done. Here is a dry fit of the main parts together.
I am very pleased with the quality of the decals they included in this kit. The dashboard detail is very good.
About 2:30 it was time to go and set up for an event, specifically a lecture by Steve Liston. He’s the son of two residents, and a former employee of the State Department, now working for an NGO. He had just attended the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and told us all about US policy (or lack of) toward South American states, and how vigorously the Chinese are cultivating commercial and diplomatic ties with those states.
My job was to run a zoom simulcast. This is really complicated and I almost screwed it up but did not, and it all came off very well in the end. Here’s the boring description.
I sit at the A/V desk to the right of the stage (technically it’s stage left but whatever). I have set up the room audio, I have put a lapel mic on the speaker and have two hand-held mics going, one for David G. to take around the room during question time, and one for me. The room audio also comes out of a monitor jack to a USB adapter.
I set up my older MacBook on the desk. It is the Zoom host machine. I connect its HDMI output to a jack for the big projector in the ceiling. So whatever is on the screen of the laptop is mirrored on the big projection screen at the back of the stage. What that will be is, the Zoom meeting window. Thus the local audience is basically looking at the zoom window, and also at the speaker who is standing at the podium stage right.
The output of the camera in the ceiling is brought to a USB adapter and plugs in to the laptop. In Zoom, I select this as my video. Thus the host’s thumbnail in Zoom is what the camera sees, and I operate the pan and zoom controls so it nicely frames the speaker’s podium. So zoom attendees can see the speaker. I change the name of this zoom user to “Speaker Cam” and I spotlight this user so that image is always at the top left for everybody.
I set the MacBook audio to output through the HDMI port, which means any audio out of the host machine will be heard in the room audio. I connect the room audio stream from the USB adapter to the MacBook, and in Zoom, select that as my mic input. Thus anything on room audio goes to Zoom as the “voice” of the host, AKA Speaker Cam. That will of course usually be the voice of our speaker over his lapel mic.
I put my iPhone in a holder on a tripod stage left, turned so its camera looks at the audience. I log in to Zoom from the phone and join the meeting, and change that user’s name to “Audience Cam”. Back at the zoom host machine, I spotlight that image, a wide-angle view of the audience, so it is always up next to the speaker’s image, for zoom users.
On a second MacBook I open the speaker’s slide deck. He’s given us a PDF, fine, open it with the Preview app. On this laptop I log in to zoom and join the meeting, under my own name. I insert into this laptop the USB dongle for the slide clicker, and put the clicker on the podium for the speaker to use. All this setup takes 45 minutes so now I have another hour to kill.
My neighbor Stew is in charge of this speaker series but he is visiting family in Ohio today, so he logs in to the meeting. I spotlight him so his image is next to the speaker’s. At 4:30 he introduces the speaker. By the magic of my setup, his voice in Zoom also comes out of the ceiling speakers in the auditorium. The local audience can see him and hear him. When he’s finished, and Steve is starting to speak, I remove the spotlight from Stew. On the second MacBook I “share my screen” with zoom, selecting the window with the speaker’s slides. The first slide now fills most of the screen for zoom users, and also fills most of the screen on stage.
The speaker talks. He’s a very practiced public speaker, smooth and informative. He uses the clicker to advance the slides, and by the magic of whatever, bluetooth?, the clicks go to the dongle on my 2nd laptop making it advance slides, for zoom and for the local audience.
About 15 minutes into the talk, a little message pops up in the corner of the host computer’s screen, a familiar sight to mac users: “Battery is low. Your Mac will sleep soon unless you attach the power adapter.” Oh. My. God. Mind you I had charged this mac to 100% at 2pm, and it’s a new battery. I assumed it was good for at least 8 hours and didn’t bring the adapter with me! Apparently connecting to all this crap uses battery really fast? No matter, in just minutes, the whole zoom meeting is going to be brutally terminated.
I exit the auditorium at a fast walk, to the elevator, to the 6th floor, jog down the hall to my room, grab the adapter out of the wall socket, jog back to the elevator, race-walk through the lobby to the auditorium, and unobtrusively (I hope) go behind the A/V desk and plug in the adapter. The zoom meeting is still running. The little warning disappears from the screen. Disaster averted!
At 5:10 Steve’s ready for questions so I un-share the slides. Most of the screen is now filled with the speaker cam and audience cam images. David G. carries the mic around the room for questions locally. A few people in the zoom audience (of about 45 people) “raise” their electronic hands, and I unmute each one in turn so they can ask their questions. At 5:35 Stew comes back on to thank the speaker and wrap up. Event over!
It takes ten minutes to tidy everything up and shut down. After I put my gear back in my room, I go down and join the Liston family for dinner.
Another day with no requirements. I went for the walk in the morning. I promised myself I could stop at the Verve coffee shop at the end. Unfortunately when I got there, the line was about 20 people long. I didn’t feel like waiting. Oddly there are no other coffee shops near my route. Well, there is the University avenue Starbucks, but it is a really unpleasant place, dark and literally sticky-looking. Maybe one other; anyway I just walked on home.
Neighbor Florrie asked for advice about some iPhone/mac issues. I helped her and asked her to please keep the fact on the QT. I really don’t want any more people who think of me as their personal Mac consultant.
I was scheduled to see Steel Magnolias at the Bus Barn theater at 8pm. At 7:30 I remembered this, and had to hustle. Fortunately I hit a lot of green lights on Alma and got there in plenty of time. This production was good enough that I stayed past intermission to see the end. The cast acted their butts off and several were really good. The script helps, lots of gags, as well as a tear-jerker ending.
Nothing at all on the calendar today. I loafed around. Printed a couple of pictures and rearranged my gallery. Printing is not as simple as opening and image and hitting cmd-p. There’s some fiddling in Affinity Photo (Photoshop replacement) to make an image that looks good on the screen, come out somewhat as vivid on the printer.
Spent a bit of time on the 56 t-bird. At a home-made sandwich while watching the january 6 hearing.
Went for The Walk in the morning, felt ok. Started early which was a mistake in a way. Returning, I thought, oh, I’ll stop by CVS and pick up the prescription they told me about days ago. But of course CVS pharmacy window doesn’t open until nine, and I was there at 8:40 and didn’t feel like waiting. So… tomorrow. Probably.
Printed a couple of pictures for the picture gallery in the hall.
At 1pm I drove to the Museum. I was to lead a group from Yotascale at 2:30. This worked out well, my usual tour led them perfectly to the door of the 1401 lab just in time for a 1401 demo. They got to punch their names in cards and see them printed out on the 1403, etc.
This morning I needed to respond to a tech call from Grace. It was a matter of getting this relatively new iPhone back onto the CH wifi, which I quickly did using info that Craig had sent me.
Then I responded to an email from Connie. She has a bunch of old doc files that, when she opens them in current Word, “just look like chicken scratches at the edge of the window.” Huh? I had her mail me one. Yup, the doc is displayed as a bunch of ###% etc on the left edge of a blank page. Oh wait, look at the bottom, this thing has 27 pages. I start scrolling. About 15 pages of sparsely scattered #%#%#% into it, there is the original text in ascii with no formatting.
I go into the terminal and use the UNIX file command which instantly reports, “Microsoft Word for Macintosh 5.0”. It’s a poem and the title includes a date, 1997. Really old. I download OpenOffice, but to my surprise, it shows it the same as Word. I really thought the open-source Word replacement would have better backward compatibility.
I do about 90 seconds of searching (not “googling”, I haven’t used actual Google search in a long time) and find Zamzar.com, an outfit that sells file conversion apps, and offers free conversion of single files on their site. I feed it Connie’s doc and get back a properly formatted .docx file that looks great in both OpenOffice and Pages. I write her a note saying what I found.
So that’s two people’s tech issues solved between 9am and 10:30. I am feeling like The Techmeister. It’s time for the writers meeting. The cue is “comic strips” and I have written up the history of web comics. It is well received. Several other people have written entertainingly of childhood memories of comics.
Next, I make myself a sandwich and drive to FOPAL to finish my section for sale day. That takes an hour. Back for a nap and soon it is time for the monthly Sixth Floor meeting. The only news is that the 6th floor is responsible for the July TGIF party, which is to also be the 4th of July party, on the 11th floor before watching fireworks. I literally sit on my hands so I don’t get volunteered for anything. I guess when the time comes I will be scooping ice cream to make root beer floats.
Went for the standard walk and felt fine. Just like 2020 or earlier.
Drove to FOPAL to process 6 boxes of books. This is the week before the sale weekend. Today I spent two hours pricing and shelving. I plan to go back for another hour tomorrow to tidy the shelves and arrange books nicely.
Back home, David G. called, wanting to experiment with computers and zoom in the auditorium so we did that for an hour plus. David G. is a retired surgeon, smart, experienced computer user, and with the both of us that zoom simulcast crap is still a struggle.
Also have a tech squad call to help Grace with some iPhone problem. Talked to her briefly in the lobby before supper, and it sounds like her iPhone can’t connect to wifi? Promised I would look at it tomorrow.
Today, I decided to take my neglected pot plants in hand. I had a plant whose leaves were dirty because there had been a white fly infestation. I had killed these nasty things with a soap spray, but they drop sticky liquid, and then wind-blown dust sticks to the leaves. The same plant was also leaning over and needed to be staked.
Plus at the Strategic Planning off-site weeks ago, our table favors were tiny succulents in 1-inch pots. I’d brought a cute one home but it needed a proper pot, the tiny plastic pot needed watering every day. And also, months ago I had bought a really lovely marantha or such with pretty green and purple leaves, and plunked it down in the living room by a window. It had been very happy there, so happy that now it was so completely root-bound it wouldn’t hold water. But the only larger pot I have, lacked a saucer, which is essential for a plant that stands on an end-table.
Off to the nursery to buy a nice 4-inch pot, and some plastic stakes, and some potting soil and some 8-inch saucers. Then I took the gummed-up plant (I don’t even know what it is, I lost the tag) and held it under the shower to get it washed off. Staked it upright. Potted the little succulent. Re-potted the big marantha. Watered everything.
At 1pm I had a conference with Stew and Lennie over an upcoming event. That was about the day. I could have gone to two baseball games, but didn’t. Just kept tabs on them online. Also the Warriors won.
I meant to continue last night, where I was telling about looking at Road Scholar tours, to add an emotional reaction. I was looking for something else, but one of my searches turned up a tour of the south of France. Looking briefly at the itinerary I saw a lot of familiar names, starting with Aix-en-Provence. That brought a wave of memories of when Marian and I toured that area in… what year was it? This morning I went into the photo collection to verify the date: that trip was in 1990. Anyway, something about remembering that trip just gave me a wave of loss and grief such as I haven’t felt in quite a while. A different life, now absolutely out of reach.
Saturday 06/04/2022
Decided that I wanted to walk to Midtown for coffee, which I did. I held open the option of taking a Lyft back, which is what I did the last time I did this, but no, when I finished the coffee and scone, I felt fine and just toddled on back on my own tootsies. And felt great. Total miles for the day, 4.4.
At 1 it was time to go to an event, a choral performance. One of my neighbors, Bert, is a member of the Peninsulaires, an a capella singing group. Today they were holding a joint performance with Mission Valley Chorus, a women’s group. I was on my way to my car in the basement when I passed Bert’s wife Barbara, who was waiting for two other riders to carpool with, and attached myself to them for the free ride.
The performance was nice.
Neighbor Bert is 3rd from the right
This was at Grace Lutheran in South Palo Alto. Afterward, at Bert’s suggestion, I took a look at the church’s A/V setup. Very fancy with a video switcher and six cameras. I took a couple of pictures of that and sent them to the A/V group.
At 6pm I left in my car for Stanford to see Stanford baseball play Texas State in their Regional game. Stanford had a bad moment in the 4th and was behind 1-4. Coincidentally I had just got a frozen lemonade thing from the concession stand. I like the frozen lemonades because they take a long time to eat, ten minutes or more. Now I realized that I would be sitting in a big crowd (fewer than half with masks) with my own mask down, nibbling frozen treat, for ten minutes. And we’re trailing. So fickle fan that I am, I left. Stanford eventually lost, and will have to play on the loser-bracket game tomorrow. I have not stayed through a whole game this season. It is quite the waste of money. I think next year I won’t renew my season ticket.
Back home at 9pm, I got absorbed in working on my essay for Tuesday’s writers group and now it’s 11:30 and I am way late going to bed.
Went for the standard walk and felt fine. Definitely stronger than pre-TAVR.
The year is half over, so how, you ask, am I doing on my crossword puzzle times? Back at the end of 2021 I wrote that my time to solve the LA Times daily crossword puzzles was steadily increasing. Is that ominous trend continuing? I thought mid-year was a good time to check. Yes, the trend continues.
I’m holding my own on Sunday and Friday. The other days I’ve slowed down another 5%.
Mid-morning a neighbor called me because she had updated her version of Quicken and it had messed up the display of her data. In the end I was no help. I don’t know Quicken, so I just tried to back her up to a prior version, but failed.
At noon I headed over to Sunken Diamond to watch Stanford Baseball play in the NCAA regional they are hosting. They won.
Spent some time looking at the Road Scholar website and thinking about where I might travel. Right now many of their tours are already booked for the rest of the year.
Codgerville 