Monday 08/05/2024

Went for the standard walk, which is always pleasant, listening to a podcast, stopping at Starbucks at the 3/4 point for a cup and a cake. Back by 9:30.

At 10 I went down and set up the auditorium for the First Monday book talk. Gigi Tsai, who has been organizing this series now for a year, had scheduled herself in. She is married to Tom Tsai, who published his autobiography a year ago. SInce then Tom has been losing mental capacity, so Gigi read excerpts from his book for him.

After shutting down the auditorium and copying the video recording to my laptop, I stowed it in my room and headed off to FOPAL. There I processed several boxes of books and prepped my section for the upcoming sale weekend. Back home about 4 for a nap. Had dinner with the neighbor Brian and with Sophia and Mark, relatively new residents.

Later in the evening I was reminded of another event video that needed processing, so at this point I have the old laptop working away on processing one and the newer, and much faster laptop zipping through the other.

Sunday 08/04/2024

Took a lovely day off. Easy start, lounge around the apartment, play a little guitar, watch videos, chill out. I liked it.

Saturday 08/03/2024

Once more out the door at 8am, pick up Frank, drive to CHM. Unload the two boxes of books I got last night, arrange our display with some fresh books.

And spend 9am to 5pm standing around selling books. Boring and tiring. Then pack all the remaining books into boxes and schlep them down to the car. Took two cars to bring the books to the sale, but only one car to take the remainder home.

Back to FOPAL and unload. Meet up with the John the treasurer and turn over our cash box and credit terminals. Drive Frank to his place, drive home, crash.

Bottom line: we took in $1,800 dollars, and sold well over 500 books. Double last year’s performance. Looking forward to a day off tomorrow.

Friday 08/02/2024

Left at 8, picked up Frank at 8:20, got to CHM a few minutes later. Worked hard with volunteers Frank, Tony, and Arlette to set up our display of lots of “vintage” books and software.

Then from 10 to 6pm it was really quite boring, sitting around, while the other volunteers — some of them are teens and I got to sign their public service credit sheets, I’m not sure what agency gives them credit for this, but whatever — took care of the actual sales. Mostly using the cute little Square terminals, which are very slick, handling all types of sales.

After 6, Frank wanted to take part in the official social hour for exhibitors, outside on the patio. I spent the time chatting with Laurel, who is starting to come to terms with Bill’s death.

Then off to FOPAL main sales room where I selected two boxes of books from my regular shelves to spice up our sale tomorrow. Left Frank there, came home and made myself a sandwich for supper.

Thursday 08/01/2024

Down to FOPAL at 9:30 to meet with John the treasurer to pick up the Square terminals and cash box. Then I loaded 16 bankers boxes of books into the Prius. Intern Arlette joined and volunteer Amy showed up and at noon we drove down to CHM. There we loaded our 30 boxes of books in, but, as in prior years, we couldn’t set up. There was another event happening this evening that prevented setting up our tables. So we will have to set up in the hour before the show opens tomorrow. On the positive side, Eric the organizer agreed to give us 4 tables, more than I expected, and very welcome.

So back home by 3. Got a phone message from Dennis, call Laurel. Did; her husband Bill had died, while at work. She was just in the beginning stages of getting her head together. Bill’s health was not the best, but still the sudden event is a bad shock.

Wednesday 07/31/2024

A quiet day before the big VCF weekend. Took a standard walk in the morning. During the day of mostly lounging in my chair, I exchanged a dozen emails regarding different aspects of our VCF sale.

At 4pm, there was an open meeting to introduce some changes in the housekeeping department. Mostly small things, although there may be a change in our 6th floor housekeeper, from Wanda whom we all love, to who? Also, they will no longer supply toilet paper; we have to buy our own. Well, I’ve been buying my own TP since shortly after I moved in; the house version is too thin. Also they won’t be supplying plastic bin liners for our wastebaskets. Well I’ve been stocking and using my own plastic wastebasket liners for some time, because the standard size they use is too big. So the changes don’t effect me.

Tuesday 07/30/2024

Went down to FOPAL at 9am to meet with Frank and decide what to do about some bulky hardware items. People donate stuff like this, we don’t normally take it but somehow these items were accepted. Now do we want to try to sell them at VCF? I am concerned about how we really don’t have enough table space for our books let alone these things. Specifically two modern-ish office typewriters. From the 80s, I would guess? Daisy-wheel printers with keyboards and some amount of brains, little LCD screen with menus. 20 or 30 bucks on ebay. We decided we would maybe bring them the second day, if we sold enough stuff on the first day to make room on our table.

The other item was an original Osborne 1 computer. The person who donated it told somebody that it was working. It isn’t, now. We powered it up. The screen lit up and it spun the floppy disk we loaded in the A drive, but it didn’t display anything or try to boot from the disk. So we will take it and offer it at $100 as-is.

Talked about some other things. Later in the day I made some “all sales as-is, no returns” signs. Tomorrow I have nothing to do, yay; then Thursday the busy part starts.

Talked briefly to Dennis; Toni is not well at all.

Monday 07/29/2024

About 4am I was awake and obsessing about the upcoming book sale at the VCF. We have 20 boxes of books which are just in the order they were collected over the past year. But on Thursday when we “load in” to our tables at the Festival, we will want to put things in some kind of order, and it will be a pain to try to organize a nice display starting from no order at all. In the pre-dawn mulling I figured out a scheme. At 8am I went down to FOPAL to implement it.

I went through all 20 boxes of books and reorganized them into boxes by large categories: PC for everything relating to Windows and MSDOS; MAC for everything Apple; HR for stuff related to hardware design other than windows PCs; SR for everything related to software other than Windows and Mac — programming in BASIC, Fortran, etc, computer design, etc.

This took about 3 hours. In the course of which I lifted and carried 50 boxes: 20+ lifted and carried out to the patio, 20+ repacked boxes carried back in.

Another thing I was mulling at 4 was, the need to send an email of orientation to the 8 other volunteers who have signed up to help with the VCF sale. I composed that and sent it to Janette and Frank to proofread. This VCF thing is just about all I am thinking about this week. Be glad when it’s over.

Sunday 07/28/2024

Usual Sunday morning. The NYT puzzle was one of the best I remember, because of the long clues were all crazy long palindromes. “Rock group clashes over album art” — CD CASE DIVIDES ACDC. That’s really clever. “What happened when the bust went sideways?” NARC IN A PANIC RAN. “Headline about a children’s author’s controversy” — SEUSS IGNITING ISSUES.

At 10am I opened up the auditorium so Gigi could practice her book talk. She will discuss her husband Tom’s biography. He is still around, but he is slipping into dementia and can’t present it on his own. Anyway I set up her slide show and she ran through her talk while I timed it. Gave a couple of notes to improve clarity.

After lunch I went down to the museum expecting to help lead a private tour with another docent. The tour group was supposed to be 75 kids, arriving at 2:30. Then we heard that only half would arrive then, the other half at 3:15. So the other docent took that first group and I waited for the second. And waited. About 3:30 we found out that the second group had gone first to Google Experience and were delayed. We agreed I could leave at 3:45. Exactly at 3:45 the bus pulled up. So I have a very hasty, abbreviated tour. As usual with these big groups, a small cluster of geeks hung on with me while the rest scattered out. Which is fine. But I didn’t get home until 5:15. Found a phone message from Jerry and Betty, join them for dinner at 5:40. OK, that worked out.

Saturday 07/27/2024

Left about 8am, had a nice coffee and pastry at Midtown. About 9, hit FOPAL where Frank had collected a bunch of old software donations, including some Adobe stuff that he thought might be valuable. I priced through it. Prior to 2013, when you bought Adobe Photoshop, or Illustrator or whatever, you bought it. From 2013, Adobe only sells annual subscriptions, you rent your software not buy it. So the pre-2013 versions, provided they have their product serial number you need to install them, are valuable. There were a couple of those. Some other stuff I marked at $10 or $5 and set aside for the VCF next week.

About 11 I went to the main room where I found with some dismay there were 7 boxes of computer book donations. So I spent 2 hours pricing and shelving those.

Treated myself to a burger and shake at In’n’Out, then went home where I thought I was supposed to set up mics for a memorial service at 3, only turns out it was at 2 (not my mistake) and I was just in time, at 1:45, to get the auditorium set up. The memorial was for a woman I never met, she’d been in the AL center for years; and it was a standard religious service with bible readings and hymns, so I sat out in the lobby until they were done, and shut the auditorium down. And went to my room and had a long nap.

Watched a little bit of Olympics but I really can’t muster much interest in it.