02/10/2025

The day started with the monthly Resident Association meeting. Nothing special worth noting. My UHC insurance had scheduled a window from 10 to 2, for a drop-in visit by a nurse practitioner to check on me, which is nice little feature of the IBM-subsidized policy. At 9am, just as the RA meeting was starting, my phone buzzed; it was that nurse calling to say she was ill today and would reschedule. So suddenly I didn’t have to hang about waiting for that. So at 10 I could head out for FOPAL. The monthly sale was last weekend, so this was the time I go through all the books remaining on the shelf and remove the ones that have gone unsold too long and send them to the bargain room. Usually there are also boxes of new donations to price, but not this time. So I was in and out in 45 minutes.

Back to CH for lunch. Then I had a short meeting with Bert, who it turns out had done a very clever political thing with staff, too complicated to describe here, but might have good results in a few months, or years. Or never.

Now with time on my hands I sat down and wrote something for the writers group tomorrow. First time in a long time I’ve done that assignment on the day before the meeting. Good stuff, too. The prompt was to look at the faces in a collection of candid street photos, choose one or more to be a character, and write at least the beginning of a story about that character.

Still time to spare. So I took two Mac laptops down to the auditorium to try to solve the issue I hit the other day, where it seemed that videos embedded in Keynote presentation slides, were not playing back properly, the audio broke up and stuttered and got out of sync with the video.

Turns out the problem was with the newer MacBook. It has always had problems driving our projector. The video slides played perfectly, smooth as butter, with the 10-year-old MacBook driving the projector. Then I got out an even older MacBook Air we keep in a storage locker and it also, played the material perfectly. Only the newer (2022) one with the Apple Silicon had a problem. So that resolves my problem for the Val Day show; I’ll use the two old machines and it will be fine.

Sunday 02/09/2025

Watered the plants, did the puzzle. Actually, didn’t do the puzzle because the themed answers were so dumb I couldn’t get some of them. Then worked a couple of hours in the auditorium and with Jerry’s help figured out solutions to the problems with stage monitors. Gave up on doing bluetooth into the audio system. Whatever.

Then rather than watch the Superb Owl I went over to Stanford Shopping Center and tried to find an appropriate V-day gift for um, someone. Who I don’t think reads this blog but could. Anyway I couldn’t find a suitably attractive instance of what I was thinking about. So came home and ordered what might be an adequate version, and if it isn’t, it wasn’t expensive anyway.

Then Joanne texted me asking if I wanted to go out to dinner at Dinah’s. Where I have not eaten in decades, so sure, why not. So we did. Nice supper.

Saturday 02/08/2025

I had three tech appointments in a row. At 9am I trained David T. in the use of the lecternette on the 11th floor. At 10 I met with Joanne to help her figure out a problem with her phone. Her carrier wanted her to update to an e-SIM and it had failed the first time. But it worked this time so that was easy. At 11 I met with Leon at Marlys’s apartment to try to get her laptop to do screen mirroring on her Samsung TV. We failed, so we helped her order an HDMI cable. She’s sharp enough to install it herself.

In the afternoon I worked on issues from the ValDay rehearsal yesterday. One of several was that Kay wanted to play her flute along with Al Martino singing “Spanish Eyes” but she wants to (has to?) play in the key of G. In every youtube video, Mr. Martino sings the first verse in E-flat and then at the halfway point, he and his orchestra modulate up to G and sing the rest in G. So to make it all in G, I had to pull out the audio into a separate file; split that file in half at the exact point he changes key; run the first half through a website where I can change pitch up to G; put the two files together with the video and add it back to the main ValDay video. A matter of 90 minutes or so.

I went out for a short walk, and called Laurel to talk about a family issue she’s having. She reminded me of a very important thing I need to do. Which like a dope I hadn’t even thought of — a v-day present of some kind for Joanne. OMG how could I not think of that! So did some online shopping.

After supper I picked up two packages from Amazon, one a book (yes I actually bought a physical book) (Judy Dench, Shakespeare, the man who pays the rent, which I am sure other people here will want to read so I’ll put it in our library) and the other, a better (hopefully) Bluetooth transmitter. I’ll test that tomorrow.

Friday 02/07/2025

Opened the day in the nicest way, with a companionable walk with Joanne up to Town and Country shopping center, to buy a couple of things at Trader Joe and have coffee-and at Douce France, Joanne’s favorite coffee shop. Well, not only hers, it’s very popular. Don’t tell Joanne, but I think the pastries at Mme Coulette’s are better. But we walked and chatted happily all the same.

Then I did a bunch of tech stuff. I replaced the microphone that got broken during the drama event last week. And I experimented with using BlueTooth to feed audio into our sound system. This involves sending audio from my laptop, at the AV desk, thirty feet and through a wall, to a media device in the electronics cabinet backstage. This seemed to work and I was very pleased. The quality of the music playing through that system was much better than if I fed it from the Mac’s headphone jack into an input on the sound board. Later, not so happy.

At 2 it was time go and set up for the big Val Day rehearsal. There were a lot of glitches, and I came away with a long list of things to alter in the video. My own performance of Annie’s Song went alright.

Neighbor Carolyn invited me to dinner with a couple other people, Bob and Romie, long dinner with lots of talk, very pleasant.

Thursday 02/06/2025

Headed out early on a rainy day to drive to the Shustek Center. CHM is finally restarting volunteer workdays there for the first time in a good while. However they are still in the process of converting to the new database named QI, so we cannot as yet make new entries. So no cataloging. And when something is relocated, we have to note that on a paper list because locations can’t be updated yet. I, Toni and Bud started the task of digitizing the Loan Records, a complicated clerical task.

In the evening we had a concert, no I was not the person running the microphones, by a local singer, Thu Ho, accompanied by a good pianist and an excellent upright bass player. Standard jazz numbers.

Wednesday 01/05/2025

As I was planning a walk later, I took a shorter walk in the morning, a mile around to have breakfast at a nice coffee shop. Later I processed the video of the Shakespeare group and put it on my public dropbox and emailed the director. Who hasn’t replied yet. Played some music and then it was time for early lunch.

At 12:30 I met with Joanne for the walk she was coordinating, normally several people but today only me, her, and Martha. We walked a couple of miles around the Baylands. The Baylands are a large area, maybe a couple of miles on a side? of sloughs and banks on the edge of the Bay. For decades up until about 1990, Palo Alto had a garbage landfill there, building up quite a hill of trash that was sealed with layers of clay and soil. Eventually, not sure what year, it was converted to a public park. The hill, or series of mounds of sealed trash, covers many acres, twice the size of our Old Ranch at least, and has the local name of Mount Trashmore. And there are paths over and around it and public art works and stuff. So that was nice, and I ended up with 13K steps and 4.8 miles for the day.

On the drive back, Martha and I were trading memories of IBM — she was a systems engineer out of the San Francisco office a few years after I was a customer engineer there. (Her last name is Claypool, in case that rings any bells with Scott?)

After supper I set up the auditorium for a talk. This was by Anton Eremin, a 21-year-old immigrant from the Soviet Union, where he was imprisoned for protesting the Ukraine war. He got away to Mexico and came into the USA for political asylum. Quite an impressive, articulate guy. He arrived two years ago with no English; he now speaks it very well with little accent. He continues to be an activist, supporting protest groups inside Russia, and also agitating for better treatment of refugees here. To a question from the audience, did the USA meet your expectations when you finally got here? He noted that yes we have political freedom and the police don’t arrest and torture you for saying what you think. On the other hand, in the streets of Vladivostok there are no homeless, no graffiti, no fentanyl. So, you know, pros and cons.

Tuesday 02/04/2025

At 8am an AV contractor was supposed to come to look at problems with our sound board. They were delayed, arrived more like 9. The two problems were, One, the BlueTooth module was inop.; we used to be able to pair a phone with the board and play music through the system, but it stopped working. Two, there is an effects, or FX module that you use to add reverb to inputs and it doesn’t work.

The contractor’s analysis: it’s broken. Have to send it back. But we can’t do without it, can you give us a loaner? I’m not sure what the upshot was, I had to leave. Our IT guy Paul finished the transaction.

I had just time to write up a contribution to the writers group for the prompt, a memorable beverage. Lots of interesting contributions. Mine was pretty trivial, I won’t bother quoting it.

Later in the day while my room was being cleaned, I took the guitar to the music room on the 9th floor and practiced. I sounded pretty good. And did other stuff, like re-making the drama group video because some people preferred their morning performance when I’d used the evening one. So it goes.

Monday 02/03/2025

Started the day with a standard walk. It appears I kept walking all day because I ended up with over 10K steps, 4 miles. Busy busy.

Drove down to FOPAL, processed 5 boxes and set up my section for the upcoming sale weekend.

Back home after lunch I did the tedious work of assembling the final video of the Drama club’s show of last Thursday (6.057). It actually took only about 2 and a half hours for the editing. Then it was time for the Poetry Out Loud group, which Joanne leads. My choice to read was “Relax” by Ellen Bass. It’s funny, and profound. Although the Buddhist parable it includes needs more thought than you can give it, just hearing it read aloud.

Down to supper early because it was “mixer” night, at 5:15. You pick a table number from a hat at the door, and so you sit with, presumably, people you don’t normally eat with. Usually I end up with the same people I regularly see, but tonight I had one table-mate I’d never eaten with before.

After, opened up the auditorium for the San Francisco Shakespeare traveling troupe. Very professional, well equipped, they set up their set and props and stuff fast, very cooperative. All I had to do was put out enough mics that their voices would get into the hearing-assist loop.

They presented a condensed version of Romeo and Juliet, in 52 minutes start to finish. Very well done. But it was 9:15 by the time they had knocked down their stuff and packed up so I could turn out the lights. Going to bed now.

Sunday 02/02/2025

Usual quiet Sunday morning. At 10 I met with Peter and a lecturer he is sponsoring, to rehearse for an event later this week. The rest of the day I played some music, and read a whole book of poetry by Ellen Bass. At supper time I felt asocial and walked by myself to the Creamery for a grilled cheese sandwich, but not for the chocolate shake we used to get there, just coffee. Walked down University and noticed an ice cream store, Salt & Straw, which somebody had praised to me, so had a single scoop of mint chip. It was OK but not worth the praise I’d heard.

At the restaurant the sound system was playing old Neal Young stuff and I think I could probably learn to play “Harvest Moon“. Gonna work on that.

Later: nope. There are plenty of tutorials on how to play it, and it would be relatively easy to learn — in Neal Young’s key. Unfortunately that is totally the wrong key for me, I can’t match the highs, or if I sing an octave below Neal, I can’t reach the lows. So I would have to transpose it at least 4 steps, from D to say, G? But that would make all the online tutorials useless. Bleagh.

Saturday 02/01/2025

Six hours of sleep, maybe. Put on my red docent shirt for the first time in a month or more. Had breakfast in the dining room for a change, but sat at a single table and read the internet. I like being unsociable once in a while.

Spent some time reading poetry looking for something to read on Monday. I like Ellen Bass’s work. Apparently she’s well-known; I had no clue. “Relax” is both funny and profound.

Off the museum, stopping on the way to buy a sampler of kombucha flavors. I have never tried Kombucha. I think I probably won’t like it. But I’m going to try some. Maybe organize a tasting.

Led a tour of 30 or so, and some S.O.B. kept my transistors. I had 3 transistors in a little plastic box as a show and tell. As we got to the place I wanted to talk about transistors I would hand the box to the nearest person in the group and say, “Take a quick look and pass it on.” As the box travels through the group I say “What you are looking at is three little silver cans each with three gold wires sticking out — do you know what those are?” Usually people don’t recognize them so I explain “Those are transistors, you’ve never seen them loose like that, but you are carrying several billion-with-a-b of them in your pocket right now.” And I go on to explain they do the same job as a vacuum tube that we have already talked about, but better. And somewhere along here I say, “Who’s got my transistors?” and whoever in the group ended up with them, gives them back.

Not today. Whichever person ended up with my little box of transistors — maybe not somebody in the tour group, there were lots of people in the museum today and people kept joining and dropping off — whoever last had them, kept them. Bastard!

I have some more transistors but no more little clear hinged boxes. Had to spend half an hour online trying to find a replacement.

Took a nap before supper and slept for over an hour, so rather than go down late, I just at a sandwich in my room.