Saturday 1/25/2020

Today’s main thing was to lead a private tour for a small group from the American Society of Systems Engineers. Only eight people, various ages, very receptive. The 1401 docents, Bill and Steve, agreed to work overtime and give my group their own demo at 12, which was very nice of them.

Since I didn’t write this post that evening and now it’s 24 hours later, I don’t remember how I spent the afternoon.

Friday, 1/24/2020

Today’s main activity was to take advantage of a field trip: a bus ride to the Oakland Museum of California to see the traveling exhibit, “No Spectators: the Art of Burning Man”. I’ve been aware of the annual Burning Man art/performance/rave but never attended (or much wanted to). A city of many thousands of residents is created on a flat dust plain in Nevada, celebrates itself for a week, and is carefully deconstructed and removed.

The exhibit had lots of photos and a few of the smaller artifacts. Heroic-scale art constructions are the prize features. Some of the smaller objects were here and I was impressed enough to take a few pics.

The silver dancer at OMCA was about 15 feet high, one-fifth the size of the one that appeared in the desert a couple of years ago. I was taken by how she rose up out of the nice hedge of Ceanothus that was just coming into bloom. The steel dodecahedron (? I didn’t actually count the faces) was just lovely.

In the evening was a SWBB game against Colorado. The Buffs came very near getting the upset. Their aggressive, pressing defense seemed to throw the Cardinal off their game (and they were not helped by lacking two more, for a total of five, injured players from the roster of 15). Stanford trailed most of the game. With seconds to play, Colorado hit a clutch three to put them up by 2 with 1.6 seconds on the clock. The Colorado bench were on the court celebrating until the refs shooed them off.

Stanford inbounded from in front of their bench. Lacey Hull did the inbound, a high lob to Ashten, the 6-5 center, standing at the post, and she laid it in on the buzzer for a tie: overtime! That five minutes was close as well, but Stanford got a 3-point lead with a minute to go, Colorado had to start fouling. Stanford made their free throws, and ended up winning by eight.

 

 

 

 

At 12:53am the fire alarm went off. To quote the official memo from our CEO,

The good news is that the alarm woke many residents. While this is an inconvenience, one of our most frequent complaints in the past after a fire alarm was that people could not hear the alarm. This issue appears to have been resolved.

Yeah, I think so. The loud continuous honking came out of a speaker in my ceiling, and from speakers about every 20 feet along the hallways. I got up from bed and listened. I heard no sirens nor people shouting or running, so I judged I had time to put on clothes, which I did. Then went to the Lounge on our floor, turned on the emergency radio, and heard two other floors reporting in exactly as we’ve been trained to do. So I reported 4th floor in, no problems. I think eventually all 9 floors reported in using proper radio procedure. However, also from the official memo,

The not so good news is that the front desk was immediately flooded with calls from residents. Many were angry and yelled at Felicia demanding that she shut off the fire alarm. These calls caused Felicia to miss important phone calls from our fire alarm monitoring company and the fire department. In addition, the front desk receptionist does not have the authority to silence the alarm.

About 10 people in all gathered in the lounge over the next five minutes, out of about 25 on the floor. The PAFD arrived about 1:03 by my watch, no siren. About 1:10 the alarm was silenced and the all-clear given on the radio and the PA system.

It turns out the alarm was because of a momentary pressure drop in the sprinkler lines, seen as water flow. The timing has been adjusted so as to prevent such a short drop triggering another alarm.

Thursday, 1/23/2020

I got up (again) at 6:10, and before 7:30 was out for a run — to make up for skipping Wednesday’s, and anticipating that tomorrow I won’t have time, either.

At 10am I left for the Mitchell Park library for a meeting of FOPAL volunteers. There was FOPAL business, among which I was pleased to learn that they are going to acquire a proper garbage cart so we can dispose of non-recyclable rubbish. The place generates a massive amount of recyclable paper and cardboard but there are things that need to go to the landfill, and until now there’s been no garbage cart to put them in.

The entertainment was a presentation by the president of Foothill Community College. I think it was really a rehearsal of her pitch for two bond issues they are putting on the next ballot, but they certainly presented an interesting and glowing picture of the work the Foothill/de Anza campuses do. According to them, the California Community College network is the second largest educational institution in the world, after the nation of India’s. And they stressed that all their teaching is by paid instructors. “You go to Harvard and take Psych 101, you’re in a class of 500 students and you are taught by a grad student. At Foothill, you are taught by Doctor Smith and you can see him in regular office hours any time.” And money: if you maintain at least 12 units with passing grades, tuition and books are free. If you live at home, doing the first two years at Foothill saves an estimated $85,000 over doing them at UCB — and 85% of their graduates are accepted for transfers into the UC system.

That over, I drove to the Yosemite warehouse where we continued opening boxes looking for the lost Ferranti plugboard (see 1.045). And home to rest briefly, write this post to this point, then eat and head out to the Pear Theater.

Here’s the kind of thing one comes upon when opening boxes in the CHM archives. It’s a circuit module from ILLIAC II, an experimental supercomputer of 1962. Per the original label, this module implemented bits 0-4 (of 51 bits) of the Accumulator.

Apparently they hadn’t worked out printed circuit boards, but wired all those transistors together with elaborate point-to-point wiring. This is odd to me, because I know that the first integrated circuits were produced in 1961. But I guess the ILLIAC designers had started earlier and were locked in.

Anyway, it wasn’t the Ferranti plugboard, so close up the box and put it back on the shelf.

Aurora (curator) shelves a box of ILLIAC modules, helped by Tom (volunteer).

Monday, 1/20/2020

Hah, look at that date. Can’t wait for October 20th.

Went for a run, routine normal. As noted a few days ago, because FOPAL was supposed to be closed for a week, I’d agreed to play in the 3rd Monday Duplicate Bridge game, which I normally dodge because I like to work my section at FOPAL on Mondays.

Craig had dragooned, excuse me recruited a total of 12 players, so three tables, 24 “boards” (pre-made hands), starting at 10:30 and not finishing until nearly 3pm. That’s a lot of bridge. My partner was Colin (who was one of the first people whose name I learnt after moving in here), the 90+year old guy who skipped his regular tennis game to play bridge today. I’m afraid I made one, maybe two bidding mistakes that cost us dearly. He was nice about it.

When bridge wrapped at 3pm, I thought I’d go take a look-see at what was happening at FOPAL. I had been told that the new carpet (carpet-tiles) would be installed tomorrow, the 21st, so I supposed there was some prep work going on.

Oh my yes. Thing is, other than sale day, every aisle in the main room is littered with boxes of books. I cleaned up the couple of boxes at my computer section, and then joined several other people working at getting everything either out of the place — to a small storage shed where we tetris’d in an amazing amount of stuff, folding tables, boxes of this and that, and to the bargain room. There was still quite a few boxes on the floor, but there were also quite a few wheeled carts. So we loaded boxes onto carts. The plan is that tomorrow, they will just keep rolling carts away from a section at a time, and rolling them back after the carpet tiles are down.

So I spent a couple of hours helping with this physical work, then headed back arriving just in time for supper. I sat with Kay and Don, and Helene, and Mary whom I hadn’t met properly yet. (Mary number… there are 6 plain Mary’s in the resident directory, plus as many Mary Ann/Beth/Grace’s. Oh well.)

A year ago I had toured Channing House, and wrote up a lengthy account of that, on the 20th did critical drive-by’s of two other places.

Random things my mind pops up #327: as I was leaving FOPAL I said to somebody, “well, I only stopped in to see what the condition was.” And my helpful mind, which this morning couldn’t remember the word “duplicate” (what kind of bridge are we playing, again?), started reeling off the lyrics of  “Just Dropped in (to see what condition my condition is in)” by the First Edition from 1968. Goodness what a time capsule that video is. Long hair, white go-go boots!  I had no idea that was Kenny Rogers. Everybody knows him from “The Gambler” (gotta know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em…) which was from ten years later.

Sunday, 1/19/2020

For Sunday morning coffee I walked the mile-plus to the PA Cafe, admiring a very orange sunrise, arriving 7:30-ish and having a pleasant sit with an almond croissant reading the paper and doing the puzzle. Walking back I was struck by how it seemed colder then, than on the outward trip. Don’t have any numbers or proof, but I had to hustle along with my shoulders up on the return walk, and didn’t feel that going out.

The Stanford Women were to play Oregon State at noon. I made myself a sandwich and took it to the 11th floor where I brought the game up on the big TV. There I watched the first half, hoping some other fans might join me, but none did. The team started cold and were down 11 at one point, then came back to tie at the half.

I moved to my own easy chair for the second half and watched them gradually get a small lead over a determined, aggressive opponent. More players sprawling on the floor diving for balls than in any recent game. Unfortunately the best of the talented freshmen, Hayley Jones, injured her knee. Not known if it is the dreaded ACL or just a sprain.

Which brought us to 3pm and time for the 49ers in the NFC title game. I had not watched a 49ers game all year, indeed for a couple of years. I watched most of this one as the Niners romped over Green Bay. They were obviously going to win so with a couple of minutes left I deleted the recording. Hence I missed the capper on the game, when the Packers’ last hail-mary pass was caught by a Niner.

I went down to supper about 6 and was just not a bit interested in anything on the menu. This happens from time to time, I walk up to the serving counter and… no thanks! and I just turn away. On a warm summer night, I’d have walked out to a local restaurant but tonight I went back to my room and made another sandwich.

Saturday, 1/18/2020

Today’s main activity was to lead the noon tour at the museum. I had about 25 people at the start, 20 at the end.

Back at CH I put in a facilities request for two annoyances in this apartment 435. One, the kitchen sink tap has started dripping just in the past week. Two, the little fluorescent light over the sink flickers several times before it comes on. Needs a new starter module, my diagnosis. Later in the day, a facilities guy came by. His opinion on the faucet: they will completely replace it, but that will be on Monday. Not just a washer? No, we change a washer, it will just start dripping again in a month, he said.

As to the light, he replaced the two little 12-inch fluorescent tubes. It might be brighter but doesn’t start any faster. I don’t think he knew what I meant by a starter. Forget it; it will surely be replaced when the 4th floor is upgraded, a year from now.

After he left, I opened up the light and pulled out the two starter modules. I walked up to the hardware store a few blocks away and bought replacements. Came back and put them in and… it doesn’t light any faster than before. So my diagnosis was wrong. It’s just a crappy design.

On a positive note, I then added 600 words to the novel. I really want to get that finished, maybe this month? Soon, anyway. Reason is, I have thought of another project I could do, but I refuse to start something new with too many other things pending unfinished. So that’ll be motivation.

 

Friday, 1/17/2020

Went for a run on damp streets. Pleasant. Ran a load of laundry, really just to wash one sweater that wants special handling, but I added a couple of other garments so the machine would be balanced.

The little refrigerator in this temporary apartment has been making an odd noise, and in investigating I discovered that the freezer had a half-inch coat of ice. So I defrosted it, and figured out the likely cause, its door doesn’t close properly. Well, it will probably get trashed when this unit is upgraded next year, or the new, 5th-floor camper may deal with it.

I received word that FOPAL was back in operation, so after lunch went to see. A hazmat removal service had taken out all the old carpeting. I had wondered how they would deal with the many heavy book cases. Well, it appears they just cut close around their edges with utility knives and left the carpet under them. Later in the day Janette notified us that the building owner would pay for new carpeting, installed as carpet squares, next week. I did some sorting for a couple of hours until all of the regular Friday 2pm volunteers arrived and it was too crowded.

Not much else of interest this day.