Tuesday 10/14/2025

What a busy day. To start with, Joanne and I met on the roof at 9am to do a VO2 test. We’ve been reading about longevity and “health-span”, how long you remain in reasonable health. One important measure of general fitness is VO2 max (Wikipedia article), basically a measure of how much oxygen your body can process during sustained physical effort. Normally measured while wearing an oxygen mask and running on a treadmill, but it can be measured more casually using the Rockport Walking Test. Basically you walk a measured mile as fast as you can, and take your pulse rate at the end. Plug your age, gender, pulse rate, and the time to do a mile, into an equation, and read out approximate VO2 max.

I had set up a spreadsheet to do the calculations. What about the measured mile? Years ago residents had measured the walking path around the flat roof of Channing House, and found that six laps of the roof, plus another 200 feet, was a mile. So that’s what we did, walked that mile as fast as we could. Hard enough exercise that we couldn’t keep up a conversation. I kinda thought that I would pull away from Joanne but oh, no. She was maybe 15 feet behind me at the end, so our times were effectively the same. Here’s the result,

You can find many charts of “V02 max by decade” around the web, and no two are identical, plus I haven’t seen one that gave numbers for people over 80. Always the last column in the chart is “age 70-79”. However, for all of them, my 30.5 is at least 75th percentile for men, and her 26.4 is 75th or higher for women (95th percentile on one chart, “Oh, I like that one” she said).

Next was the writers group, supposed to be writing a review of an imaginary book you wish you had written. Prudence had the best one; she “reviewed” a murder mystery set in a senior residence, describing all the suspects and victims as recognizable CH residents.

Lunch. Then at 1:30 to the 8th floor lounge where Debbie’s Vision Support Group had a meeting to hear a speaker whose name I forget. I don’t normally attend this group but she had advertised it as having something to do with AI, so I was curious. That turned out to only be a recommendation to use Google Gemini for questions, ok. But he actually had a lot of interesting stuff about book readers. Did you know the Kindle app is able to read aloud? Its voice doesn’t have a lot of expression, but it will do it. Also Adobe Acrobat will read any PDF aloud.

Then I had an hour free until 3:30. I had committed to putting the Stanford Continuing Education web class “Reimagining Democracy” on the big TV on the 11th floor. So I did that. Originally this was going to be me and Joanne but a bunch of other people expressed an interest, and about 8 people showed up. And a nice little discussion after the class ended.

Then dinner and at 7:30, a jazz concert in the auditorium. Terrigal Burns piano, Tamara Dunn singing. They’ve been here before. Jazz standards well performed.

Can I go to bed now please?

Monday 10/13/2025

The Resident Association meeting was at 9. During the open-comments part at the end, I took the mic and complained about the loss of the binder from the 11th floor.

Then I headed out for FOPAL for the post-sale triage. Sent four boxes of non-selling stuff to the bargain room. There was only one box of donation waiting, so I was back by 1.

At 2pm I went down and started setting up the auditorium for the 4pm Appreciation Fund Kickoff event. Something has gone wrong with the sound board, the controls aren’t working right, or at least not the way they were last week. Part of my job was to get a decent remote experience to the Assisted Living section who would watch on zoom on a big TV. But in the auditorium there was a series of powerpoint slides to accompany the various skits and songs in the event. I knew I couldn’t properly manage the video cameras and also switch the slides at the right time, so I handed that part off to Bert to run while I did the video. Tomorrow I’ll edit the recording and see how well I did.

The show itself was only 25 minutes long, so at 4:30 we broke everything down and put it all away. Then I spent a few minutes in the large reception that was going in the lobby. Didn’t feel hungry, felt tired, went to my room and then napped right through the dinner hour.

Writing this blog the phone rang. It was another resident, living in Independent Living but not much longer, I suspect, as his grasp on things is definitely getting fuzzy. He was asking me for help with his TV. He said he had the book I’d set up for the 11th floor — aha! the thief! — which he thought would help him figure out his entertainment system. Normally his wife is here also, but she is away for a short vacation, and he can’t figure out the rather complicated setup in their apartment. Neither could I figure it out. There are a number of remotes including an extremely complicated universal remote, and I simply could not get his TV to show Comcast.

No matter how often I pointed out that his system was nothing like the one on the 11th floor, he insisted on reading my writeup and trying to apply it to his gear. The combination of a strong masculine personality with failing cognition is… hard to deal with.

Anyway I got the 11th floor book back and put it in its proper place.

Sunday 10/12/2025

Sunday morning, usual. At 9:30 I met with Susan H, responding to a tech squad call. She gets messages from the Chrome browser saying it won’t support her computer. Yup. Her 2016 MacBook Air is four MacOS releases back from the oldest MacOS that Chrome supports. If it were updated to the latest release that supports that machine, it would still be a release back from the one Chrome (and Firefox) will support. We talked about options. She can keep slogging along, it will all keep working, just no security, or other, updates. Or she can buy a new machine, which she is reluctant to do.

After lunch I got on the bus to the Pear Theater. Enough CH residents have subscribed to Sunday Matinee shows at the Pear that it justified hiring a bus. The play was “The Art of Murder” and now I find there are multiple TV shows with that title but this was none of them. Anyway, it is a black comedy about four people double-crossing each other. Somewhat amusing.

At 7:30 a resident called me from the 11th floor, she couldn’t figure out how to show a DVD. Sigh, why don’t you just read the very clear, illustrated instruction book? Turns out, the book that I wrote and carefully formatted and put under the TV, step by baby-step on how to show DVDs and other things — had disappeared. Some asshole has taken it. After I got her going with her DVD I searched the 11th floor carefully. The book is gone. WHY?!? Why would some jerk pick up this very useful 3-ring binder and walk off with it? I am righteously pissed.

Saturday 10/11/2025

Did a little work to get ready for the App. Fund Kickoff Monday. Took the guitar down to the music practice room and played for an hour. Somehow that is better than my bedroom, feels more like real performing.

Read a bit. After lunch, Joanne texted, “how about a power walk” so off we went, walking down Channing to the Edgewood market and back, a couple hours, 4 miles for the day. That was about it, except, later on, Gigi, the mistress of the FIrst Monday Book Talks, emailed querying the title of my book talk next month: “1975, the year everything changed.” Could I explain, please? Here’s what I wrote back.

In 1974, most people had heard of computers, but not many people had seen a computer, fewer still had actually programmed one. In that year Intel released the 8080, a single chip that contained 5,000 transistors organized into a complete CPU: the central logic of a computer that previously would have occupied a refrigerator-size cabinet and cost $10,000, now in a chip smaller than one’s thumb and costing $400.

A small-time entrepreneur, Ed Roberts, realized he could package the Intel 8080 in a breadbox-sized cabinet to make a functional, usable mini-computer priced in reach of a hobbyist. His “Altair 8800” was publicized on the cover of Popular Electronics magazine in January 1975. That magazine story inspired two college students, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to implement a simple programming language to run on the Altair. They sold the rights to their program to Roberts for $50,000 — the first income earned by their new company, Microsoft.

Meanwhile Steve Wozniak, a student of electronic design, then an intern at Hewlett-Packard, also read about the Altair 8800 and was sure that he could design a better hobbyist computer for less money. Before the end of the year, he and his pal Steve Jobs were selling Wozniak’s machine, now called the Apple I.

In 1974, nobody had heard the phrase “home computer”. By 1976, every electronics hobbyist in the country had heard of home computers, and wanted one. Within five years, Apple and Microsoft were major corporations, and millions of people were using home computers from a dozen manufacturers.

Friday 10/10/2025

Friday morning, time for a walk with Joanne. This time to the shopping center, we both wanted to get stuff from Trader Joe’s. Then coffee at Douce France. After lunch I set up the auditorium for the rehearsal of the Appreciation Fund kickoff show. The total show is only 20 minutes. We ran through it twice. An hour to set up before, and half an hour to put away after. Life of the AV tech.

The CH house library’s copy of Bill Gates’ book Source Code has disappeared. I need to study it because I’m to do a book talk on it on 11/6. Libby the library app to the rescue, I checked the e-book out of the Palo Alto library. I plan to steal pictures from it. I’m going to talk about both Gates and Wozniak, and how everything clicked in 1975 to launch the home computer explosion.

Thursday 10/09/2025

The upcoming Appreciation Fund event takes place on Monday. Today was a partial rehearsal from 4-5, mainly of a complicated skit that has a bunch of players in it. However for the event there is a set of slides to be projected. In order to keep the stage clear we lower the projector screen less than half way, and each slide has material only on the top third, the lower part being black. So it’s a wide, skinny slide up high, and the projector doesn’t shine on the people on the stage doing whatever.

Bert had done the initial set of slides, but he is not going to be in town for the actual event so he handed the powerpoint file to me. I’ve been adding stuff as the emails fly back and forth among the producers. That was the morning to 9:30.

At 9:30 I joined a meeting that was a confidential focus group, mostly residents plus the marketing team and some marketing consultants. The purpose was for us experienced wise ole residents to give feedback on the marketeer’s short list of proposed names for the new “satellite” of Channing House. Which meant we got to see pictures and learn the address of the new acquisition. Which I am bound not to disclose before the official reveal, a week from tomorrow. I’m gonna blab it to Joanne on our walk tomorrow, but not here. She can be trusted to keep her trap shut, but you, mister internet person, can’t.

At 3 I set up the auditorium for the rehearsal and tried out my slides and they need more adjusting. Bert was there and pointed out things that needed changing. Anyway all I had to do for the skit rehearsal was set up a bunch of mics.

Joanne had recommended I Stanford Continuing Studies course “Reimagining Democracy“, and she thought the first lecture was interesting. Also I knew at least one other resident was watching it. And it’s free why not. Then I thought, we should watch together, and then I thought, why not put it on the 11th floor TV so more people could watch. So I ended up putting out a public email asking for interest, and 20+ people responded, I am astonished so many had signed up for the same zoom course. So I had to reserve the 11th floor for 4pm on the next 5 Tuesdays. And I won’t be watching the lectures in a cozy duo with Joanne, but we will be part of a crowd of a dozen or more.

Wednesday 10/08/2025

First thing today was a hike organized by Joanne. The same 5 as last week, her, me, Joanne the other one, Erika, Martha. We went to Edgewood park and walked a loop that included a heck of a lot of steep climbing both up and down. Four miles, now reading 4.5 miles for the day.

Took care of some misc biz in the afternoon. This was the day for the 6th floor meeting and dinner. Then I went up to the 11th floor with my older macbook, connected it to the big TV, linked to the Zoom from Keplers, and at 7pm a few of us watched an interview with Sir Tim Berners-Lee. This was an author interview from Kepler’s bookstore, where we went last night. So, two nights of Kepler’s author talks, one in person and one on zoom. And turns out, Joanne is going with Ellen to hear yet a third author, at Keplers, tomorrow night.

Tuesday 10/07/2025

The writers group prompt this week was, “a friend who influenced your life.” I wrote a couple of paragraphs about how Scott redirected my life, by suggesting I should get IBM to transfer me from working in the City to the Palo Alto Development Center. Looking back, I cannot imagine what my life would have been if I had not taken him up on that. There I learned to program, and met Marian, and got married, and got to spend 2+ years in England. It was in England, working with IBM people from all over Europe, that I discovered I had a skill for technical writing, doing documentation clear enough that a bunch of Swedes and Britishers and Italians could understand. If I had stayed in the city, a completely different life would have ensued.

Got my laundry done in just over 2 hours. At 2pm I remembered to call the surgeon’s office. They had previously told me that I would have my cyst drained on 10/20, but didn’t know the time. Finally we connected and I learned the time, 1pm, check-in at 12:30 that day. OK.

The Lee Center, our assisted-living section, took over the auditorium today at 2 for an Oktoberfest. They had brought in an actual German-style band, with brass instruments, wearing lederhosen and so on. Served pretzels and such. Non-alcoholic beer. I stopped by long enough to have a pretzel, but wasn’t that interested.

Speaking of technical writing, we were to go and hear the Queen of technical writers, Mary Roach, talk about her new book, Replaceable You, about the science of replacing body parts. I brought the car up at 6 and Joanne hopped in and we drove off to Kepler’s. I haven’t been into Keplers in a while; it is doing fine. Just walking through the store to get to the place where the chairs were set up for the talk, I saw so many books I wanted to stop and look at. Ms. Roach was fun, she’s a lively character with lots of stories to tell.

Monday 10/06/2025

Book talk event at 11. And the projector quit working. Why? Nobody knows. Fortunately Ian didn’t really need his slides, so it went alright.

Then down to FOPAL to set up for the upcoming sale weekend. Got back at 3:30, and next thing was the Poetry Out Loud group at 4pm. I read a Sylvia Plath poem about being a hospital patient, “Tulips”.

Right after supper, a concert by Steve Gill and friends. He and they have appeared here regularly, every few months. Tonight doing a salute to Willie Nelson. OK.

Sunday 10/05/2025

After watering the plants and doing the puzzle I thought about the problem of storing stuff in the green room and I decided to go and look at the Container Store. I had looked at their web site but it isn’t the same. As an exercise in being car-free, I took the #21 bus, which picks up right in front of CH and drops right at the middle of the shopping center.

I walked all the aisles looking for a practical storage container that would fit a 17″ deep shelf and a row of which would look ok, and bought one, a gray canvas one. It was less than $20 so why not try it. The next #21 bus was 45 minutes out so I called a Lyft to get back. In time to get the tail end of our fancy new Sunday Brunch service.

At 3:30 I met with Joanne and we hopped in Fred and drove 5 minutes to the campus to attend a concert at the Bing auditorium. This was Roseanne Cash, with her accompanist and husband, guitarist John Leventhal. We talked later about how convenient it must be to be able to tour as a couple. Nobody has to stay home alone for weeks, and she doesn’t have to pay a touring band either, as Leventhal is such a great guitarist he is all the backing she needs.

Afterwards we drove into downtown (another 5 minute drive) and had dinner at Tamarine, a very nice Vietnamese restaurant. Swell evening all around.