Sunday 03/15/2025

Watered the plants, did the big puzzle. Put on my red shirt and headed out about 10. I stopped first at the Cal. Ave. farmers market. Bought a muffin to eat, and some dried apricots, and little thing I thought would please Joanne.

Then down to the museum to lead the noon tour. Had a big group for a Sunday, about 25 people, and they mostly stuck with me. I was thinking I wasn’t being quite as glib as my usual delivery, but everybody seemed pleased at the end. As I was walking away, one of the crowd, a guy in his 30s? accosted me and said, “I just want to tell you, sir, you are just the coolest guy ever.” I was kind of floored. Said “thank you” and “great you liked the tour”. But, ok. Coolest guy ever. I’ll take that.

Dr. Margaret gave a talk on strokes and TIAs in the afternoon. This was a “Sunday @ Home” talk, the series organized by Stew. She’s a great presenter and everyone loved her. I ate dinner with her and Stew and Kathy and David G and Helen. Talked to Stew about doing a solo concert as a Sunday @ Home. Possibly May?

Saturday 03/15/2025

The big activity today was to give an informal concert to an audience of four. Joanne, Mary R, Kay, and Jerry (Jeraldine). The point of this was to expose my bedroom practice sessions to a real audience and get comments, especially whether I am competent enough, and entertaining enough, to do a full concert for a “Sunday@Home” event.

Mary directed the Channing House chorus until she retired last year, and is the producer for two annual music events. She and I sang duets twice, “An Old Fashioned Wedding” (day 5.196) and “You’ve Got a Friend” at the Folk Festival (day 5.294). Kay was the music director for the Palo Alto school system and Jerry taught music in Palo Alto schools, so both are very knowledgeable about music performance as well as CH events. And Joanne just has solid good taste and an ear for music.

I set up our 6th floor lounge nicely, with a couple of bowls of nuts to nibble, and a song list and a writing pad for each to take notes on. They all arrived right on time at 3:30. So I ran through a dozen songs and we talked. They had some comments on improvements, and on particular song choices, but generally it went pretty well. I didn’t flub too much and everybody said they were entertained. I have to rethink the order and selection of songs, and they particularly stressed I need to have a few sentences to introduce each song.

So, glad that’s over and went ok. Then for fun I got out my super pro joystick and attached it to the Mini, and downloaded and installed Vendetta Online. I played this space game for quite a few hours a decade ago, and I’m glad it’s still around. Not only still around, but free to play on any platform. The new high-powered Mini, with the new 5K monitor and good stereo speakers, should make a good gaming system. Of course I will have to relearn all my spacecraft skills, but it should be fun.

Friday 03/14/2025

At 8:30 met with Joanne in the lobby for what is becoming our regular Friday morning walk. We kept it short this time, back by 9:15, and then at 9:30 we met again to get in my car and drive to the city where we toured the exhibit of Paul McCartney photos at the De Young. In 1963-64, when Beatlemania was just cresting, the Beatles did major tours of Europe and then the United States, including their first and second appearances on the Ed Sullivan(*) show. During the period Paul was using a Pentax 35mm camera to shoot everything around him, fans, security, the other Beatles and friends, agents etc. Not long ago McCartney found a trove of these photos and this exhibit has a couple hundred of them in two large halls at the museum.

We spent an hour plus looking at all these, then as it was too late to make lunch at CH, drove to Menlo Park to a restaurant Joanne remembered, Carpaccio’s, for a quiet lunch.

Later I trouble-shot a problem Jerry A was having in the auditorium, and practiced my music.

(*) When I first typed this sentence, my brain did that thing it often does these days: just blocked the name “Ed Sullivan”. I knew about the show, I could bring to mind a picture of the host with his jowly face, I had just looked at a dozen pictures Paul took of backstage at that show as Ringo tried out the drum set. Could NOT bring up the name “Ed Sullivan”. I had to go to a web browser and type in “beatles 1963 american tv” to find a reference. There it was, “The Ed Sullivan show”. Of course! But for five minutes, that name had been erased from my mind.

Thursday 03/13/2025

Nothing pressing this morning, so I worked at trying to figure out how to get the new Mini to share its backup drive with the laptop, like the old iMac did. Kept getting frustrating problems for no clear reason, and no help from the internet. Late in the day it occurred to me to fire up the old iMac and look again at how the various options and things were set on it. One tiny difference from what I was doing on the Mini. And that was it. Suddenly the laptop could see and use the backup drive on the Mini over the network.

At 10 there was a meeting presenting Zip Cars. Channing House has secured a special rate with Zip Car, and two Zip Cars are stationed in our garage. But if they don’t get used enough they will be stationed in our on-street parking area and will be available to anyone in the neighborhood. However the Zip Reps did not make a convincing case to me, why I would rent a Zip Car instead of taking a Lyft there and back. The problem is, you rent a Zip at about $15/hour, and that is charged whether you are driving or not, until you end the rental. And you have to end the rental, dropping the car off the same place you picked it up. So, a complete trip.

So suppose I wanted to go down to the Museum to lead a tour at noon. I would have to start the rental at 11 because I want to be there before noon. Then I would come home about 1:30. So 2 and a half hours rental time, $50 give or take. A Lyft down plus one back would cost at least $10 less. Medical appointment, same deal or worse. The only time the rental makes sense is a multi-stop errand run. Which I don’t do. So I left the meeting early.

Practiced my concert one time. Then at 4:45 I went down and met Joanne in the lobby and we walked to a new (to us) restaurant, Ethel’s Fancy, for dinner. This was fun, very interesting high-end food prep. Like one appetizer was a tiny loaf of bread baked in a special way, with special butter made with rice milk (I think it was). The loaf was hot, right out of the oven, and designed so it was easy to cut into four thick slices, and the butter just melted straight into it. Another we had was “sesame pancakes” which were fat little pancakes about 2 inches in diameter crusted with sesame, and a side dish of a sauce that involved fish roe and avocado. It was all good — and Joanne insisted it was her treat because she had gotten a nice tax refund.

Sitting up late now, well past my usual bedtime, to see the lunar eclipse. If I get a good picture I’ll put it in tomorrow’s post.

Wednesday 03/12/2025

Today was laundry day. In between loads I continued setting up the new mac. Pretty much everything works. I have a pair of external speakers that I am having trouble finding a USB port for. More seriously I have a new backup drive. So I was able to back up the new machine. But with the old system, it shared the backup drive on the local network, so I could use it to back up the laptop as well. But I can’t get that working. Yet. Tomorrow maybe.

Practiced music for an hour. Then it was time for the monthly 6th floor meeting followed by dinner. After which I went for a walk in the rain. There is a nearby restaurant that Joanne and I want to eat at tomorrow, but their website didn’t seem to offer a way to make a reservation. They only open at 5pm. So I walked over there after supper, in light rain, and made a reservation the old fashioned way, face to face with the pretty young thing at the desk.

Tuesday 03/11/2025

Today is housekeeping day so I tidied up first. Then because I felt guilty for not writing anything for the last 3 writers meetings, I made myself sit down and think of something to with the prompt, “shout out — whatever’s on your mind”. So I wrote about the hype storm around AI, how hard it is to tell actual progress from hype, and gave a very pessimistic view of the future of an AI bureaucracy. Others wrote interesting things too.

Then headed out for a 1pm appointment at the CVS in Mountain View where I had made an appointment for a Covid shot. Unfortunately the nice young nurse there was a stickler for the rules. She checked and found my prior shot was 10/24/24 (which I knew) and that was two weeks less than six months ago. The CDC recommends a booster at 6 months, so sorry, can’t give you one early. So I wasted that trip. (They didn’t have generic zantac, either.)

Got in a couple of hours of music practice through the day. At an early supper and met with Mickie at 6pm to drive down to CHM to hear Sal Khan talk about his new book. Mostly he talked about the AI tutor they have added to Khan Academy. It wasn’t a great talk, and I was bothered by the sound reproduction in the big auditorium at CHM. It was kind of diffuse and echo-y and hard to understand.

Monday 03/10/2025

Started the day with the 9am monthly Resident Association meeting. This finished unusually fast, before 10am, so I had an hour free to practice music. I have actually scheduled what I’m calling my concert beta-test. Saturday I will run through an hour of my repertoire to an audience of four, two of whom are knowledgeable former music teachers.

Then it was time for lunch with a prospective couple, the Burtons. The marketing team sometimes do this, ask residents to have lunch with prospects. Jenny from marketing asked me, then she said, “who would be a good fourth person?” I waited a whole three seconds before I said casually, well, Joanne is always a good representative. So this was lunch with me and Joanne and this couple who may someday be neighbors. They were nice. He was in product development for a bunch of high-tech companies including Sun (AKA The Competition, when I was Silicon Graphics), but we never worked for the same outfit.

Right after lunch a traveling nurse sent out by United Healthcare stopped by for an annual checkup. This is a feature of the UHC Medicare Advantage plan that IBM subsidizes. It’s a 20-minute chat where she reviews my meds, takes my vitals, asks if I have had a fall in the past year. I lied and said no. That time I fell while hurrying back from the train station in the dark doesn’t count.

Then down to FOPAL to do the post-sale cleanup of my section. There was only one box of donation to process, so I was out in an hour. Bought a pound of coffee and headed back. After supper a little more music practice. Getting serious, are we?

I’ve almost half way into Fei Fei Li’s The Worlds I See and liking it a lot. She does a great job of weaving together her personal story of being a confused immigrant teen, with the story of the start of machine learning and vision.

Sunday 03/09/2025

It being spring-forward day, I put on a polo shirt rather than a turtleneck. And I turned the mattress of my bed, and changed to a different blanket. Because that’s what I do at this time.

Two different women have told me I should wear more color. My shirts are mostly black, gray, sometimes beige. So I got onto Lands End and ordered some more colorful polos.

Practiced music for an hour in the morning. Late in the afternoon, I sent an email to four people inviting them to listen to me play for an hour, and give me notes. I’ve been planning to do this for a while and finally decided to get off the dime and do it.

After lunch I brought the car around, to be one of four cars in a pool of people going to The Pear for Gods of Comedy. This is a farce about a classics professor who is in a crisis, having lost a priceless ancient manuscript. She calls on the gods of ancient Greece for help and gets, not Athena or Zeus but Dionysus, god of comedy, and Thalia, the Muse of comedy. Who are total klutzes at working magic. Hijinks ensue. It was quite well done. I didn’t actually laugh out loud although other people did, but I was amused.

Saturday 03/08/2025

Plan today was to attend a concert by the Keller Sisters at the San Gregorio General Store. Originally several people were planning to carpool, but all of them dropped out except Joanne, so this turned into our little outing together. I didn’t plan it that way but it pleased me no end.

So off we went for a nice drive over the mountain through the redwoods on a beautiful spring day. The concert was excellent. We were back by 2:30 or so.

In the afternoon, looking around Reddit (I used to spend 30-60 minutes a day keeping up with Reddit, but these days it’s more like a couple times a week), I found a post about a new novel writing tool with AI integration. It’s written in Python using PyQt, which is a platform I am very used to having written a couple of apps using those tools myself. So I spent a couple of hours installing it and giving it a bit of a test, and writing some notes for the author.

Friday 03/07/2025

Main activity today was to lead a tour at the museum. This was a private tour for 15 Apple employees. I asked them what their group did, the answer was “chips”. So I guess they were somehow working on the Apple silicon, either CPUs like the M4 (my M4 Mini is supposed to arrive on the 15th) or the new Apple modem chip. Or who knows. Anyway, hardware.

Because it was a private tour I wasn’t constrained to come in under an hour. On the other hand, since this was a bunch of people working in hardware, I didn’t need to spend any time on what is a transistor, and what is an integrated circuit, or Moore’s law. Just the same, when I parted from them and checked my watch, a bit over 90 minutes had passed. But they were fine with that.

In the afternoon I practiced music for another 90 minutes. And spend some time reading Fei Fei Li’s book, The Worlds I See. She is interweaving the story of her growing up in China and then as a high school student with limited English, in New Jersey, with the story of the development of artificial intelligence research. Nice book.