1.015 coffee, deskwork, movie

Tuesday, 12/17/2019

Met with Harriet at the PA Cafe to chat, mostly to hear about her trip in the Hurtigruten up the coast of Norway to Tromso to see Northern Lights.

Back home I tackled a stack of stuff on my desk. Paid a couple of bills. Called the bill-pay outfit to ask about Anthem (see 1.012). That service rep had no clue, “Call Anthem”. The Anthem rep couldn’t say what Bill Pay might be expecting, but said she uses a like service to pay her insurance, and notes that there is an option to simply define the name and address of the payee. She was right, and I recalled doing that at one time. So I did that, defined Anthem’s payment address to Bill Pay and ordered it to pay this payment of $20 right away. Hopefully it will go through.

Cleaned up several other minor paperwork items as well. After lunch, I actually did some writing on the novel. Not adding a lot, but expanding one key conversation to set up a plot point. Well, not nothing.

I had a ticket for Peter Jackson’s They Shall Not Grow Old, in 3D at the Century in San Mateo. Figured I would have supper somewhere near the theater, and so should leave about 5. When will I ever learn? Of course it took an hour to go the 10 miles from Palo Alto up 101 to San Mateo, so by the time I was at the theater it was 6:15 and no time for a restaurant meal. Fortunately the theater actually had fresh Pizza Hut pizzas, so that’s what I ate, sitting in the fine reclining lounge seat. As this was a “special event” there were no previews to watch, either. Not that I missed them.

I respected the movie for the fine technical work that went into it, converting shaky old 1915-era film to watchable, color, 3D images. And if you didn’t know a lot about the Great War, it would have provided a good historical intro, with a lot of realism of life in the muddy trenches, surrounded by corpses and rats. They had a voice-over script of the actual voices of veterans, describing their experiences, and selected the images to illustrate what the men were saying.

For my taste, it was a shallow introduction, mostly because I’ve been steeped in the week-by-week review of all fronts of the war in the Great War YouTube series. The movie was limited strictly to the British experience — reasonable, since the source material was all from the British War Museum — in France. Also, for narrative structure, they talked about joining up, then training, then life in the trenches, then one long sequence describing a typical battle, then the end of the war and going home.

What was lost compared to the video series was the understanding that the war was fought on multiple fronts, east, west, and south, by soldiers from a dozen nations; and that the British (and every other country’s men) didn’t fight just one great battle, but multiple battles large and small, back and forth over the same terrain over the span of the four years. Well. Not sure what they could have actually shown, and stayed in a two-hour film.

One silly little thing that stood out in all the lingering close-ups of the British soldiers? My gosh but the common Brit of that era had awful teeth! It was so noticeable that their teeth were in really bad shape, showed in every smile and grin.

1.014 FOPAL, tech call

It turned out in hindsight that the Cardinal did something special beating Ohio State last night. A week earlier, Ohio State had won over the #2 ranked team, Louisville, behind a breakout performance by a highly touted freshman player. In last night’s game, said phenom had zero (0) points. So Stanford (i.e. Tara) had prepared a perfect game plan for this threat and the team executed it, and easily won over a team that had beaten #2. So maybe we deserve our current #1 ranking in the polls.

Monday, 12/16/2019

Went for a run in 50º weather and felt good. That was a pleasure because last week I hadn’t felt all that great, just a bit off, but now all was fine.

Drove to FOPAL for the post-sale cleanup. Counted my section, 406 books before, 330 after, so 76 sold. Purged about 4 boxes of books that had been sitting around for 3 sales or more. Only one box of new donations waiting, shelved three books. Did sorting for two hours.

Back at CH I took on a tech squad call. Judy, like a lot of people around here, gets her email “@yahoo.com”, but actually reads the mail in the Mail app on her iMac. For some reason recently, Mail could no longer pull mail from Yahoo, and Judy was cut off. Mail (which I don’t use) apparently calls on the “Internet Accounts” panel of the Settings app. I’d never paid any attention to that panel, either. Anyway, what Judy sees is, the Settings app popped up in front of the Mail app, asking for her Yahoo password, which she had, it seems, forgotten. Peter worked on this the day before and got nowhere. Craig asked me to look at it, suggesting that I try to work through Yahoo instead of Mail.

That was a good suggestion. As soon as I went to yahoo.com in her Safari browser and clicked Log In, Safari happily offered to fill in her user id, and then offered to fill in the password for that user. Perfect. So we still didn’t know the password, but we were logged in. Go to “account management” and change the password to a new one. Fortunately Yahoo, unlike some sites, did not ask for the old password when taking a new one! With a new password set and tested, I could go back to Settings and put it into Internet Accounts. When I restarted Mail it immediately pulled in several days of mail. Yay!

Ate dinner at a table with one of the several other Davids in this place, and Colin and two guys whose names I should know but don’t.

1.013 Sunday, play, SWBB

Stanford volleyball started slow, behind as much as 6 in the first set, and I’m thinking, oh dear, this is going to be another five-set marathon if that. Then suddenly, with the score Stanford 14 Penn State 20, they woke up and ran off a bunch of points and finished the set 25-22. And just dominated the next two sets to win in a sweep. So they are off to the final four.

Sunday, 12/15/2019

Coffee and paper at the PA Cafe. Then drop in on the FOPAL sale room before anyone was there, to tidy up my section after Saturday’s sale traffic. Move books back to their proper sections (why do books from the adjacent Business section get shelved with mine?), neaten the rows, etc.

Showering this morning I noticed that my last bar of Pear’s Soap is diminishing. After breakfast I checked the shelves of CVS and Walgreens. No bar soap of any kind. Hmmm. I seem to have missed a general social transition to liquid bath soaps. I don’t care to use a bath gel, I’d rather rub a bar on my bod. Well, a repeating theme lately. I try for a product in the local stores. Then, 30 seconds at amazon reveals exactly what I want at a reasonable price with free shipping. It is so easy to fulfill any wish…

I don’t think I mentioned that among all my other activities yesterday I ordered the 8×10 area rug I want. A week ago I spoke to Angela the Upgrade Honcho and she said of buying a rug, just be sure to have it in house before January 10th, when the freight elevators are restricted to the move. Store it in your temp room and we’ll install it on the move. So I looked it up again on Amazon and it was in stock with free Prime shipping — which actually means something for a package that size, about half a cubic yard and heavy.

Then I headed out to see You/Emma at the Pear theater. This is a one-woman show in which the actress rehearses the plot of Madame Bovary, alternating between, one, the persona of Emma Bovary, two, a modern woman reflecting on how Emma’s life might have been in this century instead of 1840, and three, Gustave Flaubert (the same actress wearing a black wig and giant moustache, on a TV screen at the side of the stage). At some point in the past, Flaubert was quoted as saying “I am Emma Bovary”. In the play, Emma argues with him over his treatment of her, and his lack of insight into her plight and circumstances. It was quite clever and well done.

The play ran from 2pm to 3:30pm. Then I had an hour to kill before a SWBB game at Maples, my third time at Maples in three days. Stanford played Ohio State, which I had thought was ranked, but checking now it isn’t in the top 25 in any poll. They looked big and athletic in warm-ups. And Stanford had four players in street clothes, including two sometime starters, so I expected a competitive game. Stanford quickly took a lead and widened it steadily to the end. Six players scored, three of them freshmen. This is one solid team.

1.012 many doings, SWVB

Stanford prevailed over Utah, but played very inconsistently, winning the second and third sets by a wide margin, but losing the first and fourth sets by a lot, and squeaking out the fifth. So it’s on for tomorrow night.

Saturday, 12/14/2019

After breakfast sat down at the desk to clear a pile of misc. paper. One item was a bill from Anthem, $20 for the first month of my new Part B drug coverage, covering 1/1 to 2/1/2020, due and payable by 1/1. Oooookay, pay in advance. Try to add it as a new account in SFCU bill-pay; it knows about Anthem but when I fill in my Anthem ID, it says “that isn’t the format that Anthem expects.” Hmm. Oh, also, I try yet again to log in to the Anthem website. I get one step further than before: after entering username and password, then entering the TFA code it sends to my cell (note, the fact that it knows my cell given my name, proves that I have “registered” successfully), it says “gathering your information” as it did before. Then it clears the window and puts up a lock icon saying “you are entering a secure site”; that’s new, yay! But then it says “Hmmm, we can’t complete your login” as before.

I set off on foot to do things. First to the credit union office, where I learn that Bill Pay isn’t their work; it’s a third party that they contract with. They can’t say why it thinks Anthem wants a different format of userid, but they give me the service number of the company; call them M-F 9-5.

Then to CVS on University to look for Famotidine to replace my now-recalled Ranitidine. I note their price, then walk a block to Walgreens. Oooh, Walgreens has a sale, so I buy it there.

Off around the corner to the post office to mail a Christmas tip to my newspaper deliverer, and to buy stamps because putting a stamp on his envelope cleaned me out of them. Around another corner to the Farmer’s Market where a CH resident had said, his barbershop quartet would be performing. But at this time there was a much larger group of singers doing carols. Bah Humbug. I bought a pound of dried apricots and a delish raisin snail and went home.

Then out again because I was determined to go to Macy’s and get one more pack of undershorts. Back on day 0.152 was when I bought a bunch, but didn’t buy quite enough to got two full weeks between laundries. Of course this outing was very stupid, a real brain fart. It’s noon, two weeks before Christmas, and I’m going to the shopping center. Doh! of course the parking lots were jammed with asses insisting on waiting for a car to back out, holding up everyone else. Well, I got parked — there were acres of open space on the second floor, people! — and walked into Macy’s and got my pack of tighty whiteys and hey, there was a nice full-zip sweater on sale at 50%, right there, why not.

Oh, cleaning my desk in the morning I did cancel the Apple Card. So that’s over. I asked the phone rep how to recycle the fine titanium metal card itself. There’s a recycle page on the Apple website, she said, or you can take it to an Apple Store. So I stopped at the Apple store in between drugstore stops, and the guys in the red shirts were completely flummoxed. They consulted with somebody and finally said, only on-line. So in the afternoon I got on the Apple site and with difficulty found where to recycle the card. They emailed me a Fedex label which I printed, and put on an envelope, and now, after Macy’s, I went to a Fedex store and dropped it off.

Back home again I had a nap and watched a couple of YT videos. Watching one of my subscribed videos is a sure way of nodding off for a nap. One of the subscriptions I’ve been following is The Great War, documenting each week of WWI exactly 100 years after. They started, obvs. in 2014. I picked it up in 2018 and had only just now caught up to October 1918 when the Germans are starting to collapse and the Armistice surely must be near. Hearing about that war spread out over (in my case) two years has felt like a real ordeal (imagine what it must have been like to live it). Looking at their website just now to get a link, I see that they are continuing to 1923 (i.e. 2023). The same crew has started a WWII series, week by week 80 years after; I’m not sure I want to watch that simultaneous with the other.

After waking up I thought about the novel for a few minutes, but didn’t actually write.

After an early supper it is out again to the volleyball game.

1.011 Docent, essay, SWVB

Another, but milder, episode of vertigo in the night. No problem in the morning, but it looks as if I just have to stop sleeping on my left side entirely.

Friday, 12/13/2019

Went for a run first thing, and without any breakfast. Whether for that reason or some other, I didn’t feel very good, and although I completed the usual distance, by the time I was back in the room I felt tired and worn-down. Was I sickening for something? By 11am when I left for the museum I felt better, and by afternoon felt normal.

At the museum, I had only four people for the tour. At least two, I felt were putting up with me out of politeness, but the other two were interested. Oh well.

With a few hours to kill before leaving for the women’s volleyball regional, I worked at getting my year-end wrap-up essay incorporated into the blog. This was not easy. I wrote it as a Pages document. From Pages I can export to PDF or some other formats, but not to HTML. The WordPress blog will let me create a “Page” as distinct from a “post” but the only way it will incorporate a PDF document is as a link. I want it to be a Page, which is a section of my “site” — but on the other hand why? Because from the normal site URL, all you see are the blog posts. The “pages” only appear if I put a link to them in the banner line.

Well. The essay “My First Year as a Bachelor” is, well, that’s the link. It mostly consists of quotes from this blog, but there’s some added value in the editorial comments around the quotes.

Off to the volleyball.

1.010 vertigo? Yosemite, concert

During the night I turned over in bed to my left, and immediately had a moment of vertigo. When I got up to pee, I had to reach for the walls for stability. I spent the rest of the night sleeping on my back with my head propped up, and in the morning was pretty much ok again.

Thursday, 12/12/2019

Spent the day at the Yosemite warehouse, including a couple hours scraping degraded foam out of the inside of a Cray 1.

The Cray was recently ousted from the museum’s lobby and sent to Yosemite for long term storage. It has six, pie-slice-shaped, power supply boxes that surrounded its base. These had been detached for shipment. Aurora wanted them opened and vacuumed out; she could see dust and crud inside.

The machine has been badly treated over the years. I believe it was actually used as Los Alamos, but it has been an inoperative exhibit for a long time, and not handled nicely. The covers of the power supplies, for example, are held on with eight flat-head philips screws, and none of the six boxes had more than three screws remaining, others being broken off or just lost. Anyway, I opened the first and groaned. The top and front panel were lined with that abominable black foam that we’ve had to scrape out of so many old machines. It gets soft, then brittle, and rains down into the machine as a toxic, acidic black snow. The stuff in the Cray had just reached the squishy state and had started to drop crumbs down; that’s what the boss saw, black crumbs of foam. I wore gloves and a breathing mask for this. Alan, who did more of it after lunch, disdained the mask. OK, your lungs.

We also played “museum tetris” moving the 1401 “study collection” (two 1403 printers and a 1402 reader/punch all partly cannibalized for parts, plus many cartons of SMS cards and cables, all from the 1401 restoration project) into a more compact arrangement to help make room for the Cray.

Back home, I had to prepare for my second A/V committee assignment of the month. This was a concert by the Silicon Valley Boy Choir. I fussed with the position of the Steinway on the stage, and the lighting. Then I contacted Florrie, who was in charge of the event, and she had me change some things. Then we waited for the performers to arrive. They were supposed to come at 6:30 and of course didn’t actually arrive until 6:50. Then they wanted the piano moved and could the mic be on a stand instead of hand-held? Well, no, mainly because I didn’t know where the mic stand was and it was time to start. Had they come on time there would have been time to find the mic stand (I know where it is now, I looked after the concert). Feh. Talent. What’r’ya gonna do.

1.009 haircut, FOPAL

Wednesday, 12/11/2019

I had a haircut appointment for 9:30, so wanted an early run. Just to keep it short, I ran on the treadmill in the basement. 32 minutes of running there feels like more exertion than actually running on the street. I’m not sure why.

Actually could have had time for breakfast in the dining room, but instead had a Sated RTD on the way to Chris’s place.

From my haircut to FOPAL where I got the Computer section ready for the upcoming sale weekend. That includes counting the books on the shelves and generally arranging things for a pleasing layout.

I walked over to the grocery store for snacks and took a break in the car; then went back in for two hours of sorting.

A few days ago I think I mentioned that my anti-acid-reflux med, Ranitidine, had mysteriously disappeared from drugstores and online. This morning I messaged Dr. Julia about this, and she replied that Ranitidine had been recalled because of possible contamination with a cancer cause — but unlikely and don’t be concerned. Meantime, use Famotidine 20mg. So I need to get some of that.

Before supper I gave my wrap-up essay a final editing pass. I would like to get it read by Susan, who I know is a good editor, but I am a little afraid to do so. It’s pretty raw and open about emotions and it might be uncomfortable to expose myself this way to somebody here. On the other hand, why not? Well, think about it.

After supper (where I sat at an empty table and was quickly joined by Craig and Diane, which was nice) it was time for the Channing House Chorus to perform. I had bowed out of the Chorus back on day 326 (or 0.326 as it would be, by the new numbering scheme). Since then they’ve done a lot of work and did a pretty good performance. Most successful was a number in which two spirituals, Amen and Go Tell It were woven together; they actually swung it. There was drinks and cookies after, so very nice.

1.008 mostly writing

Had breakfast in the dining hall and then spent several hours finishing up the year-end essay. I want to go over it one more time, then will post it as a “page” of the site.

Later in the day I worked with ACDSee Photo Manager for Mac, and satisfied myself it would do everything that I have used Adobe Bridge for. It lets me organize image files in folders, retaining the Mac OS file structure; and I can edit image metadata with it. That was important for organizing our many scanned slides. They don’t automatically have a GPS location like iPhone pictures. Just the same, because they’ve all been keyworded by me, I could search for, e.g., “Toronto” and find all images taken there. Or all images created in 1993, or that are pictures of a bridge, etc.

I did all that keywording and searching with Adobe Bridge, but I can’t get an updated version since I dropped my Adobe subscription; and the old (pre-subscription era) version I’ve been using is a 32-bit app which won’t run in the next Mac OS. Hence the search for a replacement, and ACDSee’s product worked, had a usable interface, and could do the metadata management and searching. It has some added functions Bridge didn’t have as well. So I paid $80 to have a legit copy that I can use forever, and suck it, Adobe. With that and Affinity Photo I have good replacements for all Adobe stuff.

On the way to supper I was invited by Carolyn to sit with her, shortly joined by John and then by Lennie. We all had some degree of computer backgrounds (John especially from many years at DEC and then Google). Carolyn wrote a book about Silicon Valley and during the writing of it, interviewed Steve Jobs.

1.007 FOPAL, writing

Monday, 12/9/2019

I started the day with a run, out the door at 7:20, a bit earlier than usual, so that I could be back and showered and dressed in time for the monthly Residents’ meeting. Nothing too exciting there.

Immediately after I went to FOPAL to manage my Computer section, and found only one box of books waiting by it. However the yield from the one box was unusually good; I priced and shelved about 8 books, and found two high-value ones. Then I did sorting until 1pm.

Back home I had a nap, then spent another hour working on my year-end summary essay. Hopefully can finish that tomorrow.

About 4:30 Patty called, asking me to join a dinner party, which I was happy to do. Patty and Mildred and Craig and Diane and one other person whose name I didn’t get in the first place, so don’t have to confess to forgetting it.

1.006 blog tidy, year summary

Sunday, 12/8/2019

An uncommitted Sunday, per my Google Calendar. What shall I do? I think that I will use this day to get caught up on computer-based things. One, finish reviewing the first year of this blog, and tidy up the use of tags. Two, use the tag system to get a numerical summary of my activities. Three, start drafting an essay on my experience of this transitional year. Four, research a replacement for the Adobe Bridge app (since I’ve found an adequate replacement for Photoshop in Affinity). Five, explore the use of a different browser, the Brave browser, to possibly replace Chrome. Eventually I’ll report on the last two items to the tech squad.

By lunch I have finished the review and tagging. By 2pm I have cleaned up the tag usage and can offer the following

authoritative summary of activities

for this first year of Codger-dom. First, regarding difficult emotions,

Days on which I reported feelings of Grief: 46 (most, but not all, in the first half).
Days on which I reported feelings of Anxiety: 13 (all in the first half).

More detail on those emotions in the essay, later.

One goal I set for myself was to get the F out of the house and attend performances of various kinds, and visit museums and galleries. At this I succeeded, reporting

Days I attended a musical concert: 14.
Days I attended another kind of performance: 33. This includes theatrical performances, lectures, baseball games, and a day at the Scottish Games.
Days I visited some type of art museum or gallery: 14. Includes two visits to SFMOMA, and a morning wandering around Carmel looking at galleries.
Days I viewed a movie: 12. Four were at home on TV, the others in theaters.

I used volunteer work as a way to structure the week and see other people. In the year I counted

Days of artifact conservation at the Computer History Museum: 43.
Days when I led tours at the CHM: 58. Wow, more than one a week.
Days that I put in hours at Friends of the PA Library: 84. Once a week in the first few months, but after I was asked to manage the Computer section, twice a week.

I gratefully noted meeting with a friend or friends on 36 days (thanks, Scott!) and with family members on 35 days (thanks, Dennis, Jean, and Darlene!).

Meanwhile I did amuse myself with some hobbies, reporting

23 days when I did some creative writing, mostly on my novel in progress.
36 days when I did some kind of handicraft work, restoring tables or a plant-stand or repairing something.

I was away from home traveling for 21 days, in two trips, one to Las Vegas, one to Greece.

On 18 days I reported some kind of medical/dental item, an appointment or procedure, mostly routine.

On 65 days I reported something to do with selling my house: meeting with agents or contractors or paying bills or signing papers or making phone calls. Thankfully that is all over and done!

And I went for a morning run on 104 days. That’s twice a week, less than my goal; but I also reported “Exercise” on 58 other days. (A regular exercise routine is an ongoing issue.)

As planned, I got 500 words or so into my wrap-up essay, then spent an hour looking at alternatives to Adobe Bridge. And now at 5pm I am settling down for a quiet watch of some youtube videos. A new episode of Project Binkie is in!