Sunday 03/31/2024

Usual Sunday morning. Then at 11 I left for the museum where I led the noon tour. Good tour, 20 people and my chat went over well.

Back home, having missed the Easter lunch service here which I was told later, was really good. Being a holiday this was sack-supper day, I had picked up my brown bag in the morning. At 5:30 many of the 6th floor community met in our dining room to picnic. Nice time.

Saturday 03/30/2024

Took myself out to breakfast, a cinnamon roll at the Midtown cafe. Around 11 I spent an your helping Dr. Margaret add pictures to her video of her visit to Tanzania. After a nice lunch with the Allens and Carolyn I played some guitar, and again in the evening. Otherwise a day “frittered away” as my mother would say.

Friday 03/29/2024

It was raining, so I took a two-mile walk on the treadmill. Then I sat down to finalize my taxes. The preparation company had done a nice job, the federal and state returns plus vouchers for payment and estimated taxes, plus a form to authorize electronic filing, all uploaded to a Sharefile account. Sharefile seems to be thing for document transfer these days, I have Sharefile accounts with the financial managers, the tax people, and one other. So I went through there e-signature routine to authorize the filing and sign the returns, and that was pretty much it. Filed.

Well, an hour of clerical fiddling to print out the five vouchers (one for 2023 payment and four for the estimated taxes), and I made up stamped and addressed envelopes for all five, and wrote two checks for the payment and the first quarter estimate, and took those two down to the mailbox and sent them.

After lunch I helped neighbor Gloria to install her new TV soundbar. That took an hour.

At 5 I had a hasty supper and at 5:30 I drove over to the Congregational Church, where I met with #1 AV volunteer David M, to watch him run the Good Friday service. This was in order to see their setup and how they did pretty much what we do here, support events in the auditorium with a second, Zoom, audience. But their equipment is much nicer. Here’s a pic or two.

The Good Friday service was elaborately scripted, with different people reading verses of the Passion narrative, alternating with choral bits from the choir and once, a flute and soprano duet. It ended with all the lights being extinguished except for one candle on the altar. Then first the choir and then the congregation, all quietly exited in the near-darkness. The light of the world has gone out, see — come back Sunday morning to see what happens next. I told David I hadn’t realized that the Congregationalists had as much sense of the dramatic as the Catholics. He said it wasn’t usually so theatrical.

Thursday 03/28/2024

AKA “an extra-value day” as Bill Pawek used to say. Tidied the house, watered the plants, off to Shustek to put in a few hours cataloging buttons (see 5.104). Left early so as to be back by 3pm, because I had been invited to be part of a photo shoot: assorted CH residents to be photographed in the dining room being served meals graciously while we smiled and oozed sophisticated charm.

From that, at 4pm, I joined AV team mentee Alice in the auditorium where she was setting up for a talk by Deana Wulff, organizer of Unite The Parks, an organization she created to promote the idea of a new national monument, Range of Light. It would comprise the present Sequoia National Forest and a few other forest lands, and connect Yosemite NP with Sequoia/Kings Canyon NP into a single unit.

I helped Ms. Wulff get her computer connected to the projector and set up the mics. And had a glass of wine and some snacks from the rather generous snack table Alice had set up. All that had to be cleared out by 6pm, and it was. Because at 6:30 a jazz trio were coming in to set up for a 7:30 concert.

This was Thu Ho, a local vocalist. She’s performed at CH once before. The real draw for me was that here accompanist was pianist Adam Klipple, who I’ve heard before in SFJazz concerts. Just a superb pianist, who took long extended solos that were very inventive. This event was run by Ian, who handled it easily.

Wednesday 03/27/2024

Since I needed to meet someone at 10, I took a fast 2-mile walk on the treadmill in the gym. But a walk nevertheless.

At 10 I was to meet with Barbara to train her in the use of the lecternette. The reason was, that she wants to schedule five, count ’em, five “fireside presentations” in the month of April. For these events in the lobby (by the fireplace, yes) she wants an amplifier and mics. And I just couldn’t see adding five events to the AV team schedule. So I more or less told this intelligent, mobile, ex-grade-school-teacher, she could learn how to do it herself, or do without.

So before we met, I thought through and printed up a step by step checklist of how to get the device out and set it up and put it away. The checklist had like 25 steps. Which seemed like a lot, but I told her, you’ve been doing laundry all your life, right? Well imagine you have to teach a smart person who’s never done their own laundry, how to do it. There’s a lot of steps if you think about it. This is like that: simple once you know it, but long to explain.

So we went through the process, checking off each step, and it all worked well and she said I was a good teacher and she feels ready to do it on her own.

Then at 1 I went in the auditorium to set up for our monthly AV team meeting. There was a full agenda. I set up to show the new lighting for the podium, and how to show DVDs and Blu-Rays right from the AV desk, and how to set up a monitor speaker — I had presented on that last July, but nobody claimed to remember and there’s a concert tomorrow that might need one — and then we sat down and debated what I should ask Rhonda for, when we meet in 2 weeks to discuss how to spend Heritage Circle money on the auditorium.

This was a lively discussion, with plenty of opinions. But one really good idea emerged. A long standing problem is that, because our auditorium has a flat floor, when they show movie or opera DVDs, with the closed captions on, people back of about the 3rd row can’t see the captions. The heads of people in front block the lower edge of the screen. The solution proposed for this in the past was what we referred to as “side screens” — large monitors that would be mounted — somehow — on the walls. Rhonda has expressed opposition to this idea mainly on the grounds it would be ugly, but also on the grounds of expense: mounting a jumbo screen above the side-aisles and running wiring to it would be pricey.

The idea that came out today was, why not replicate our existing mobile TV. We have an 80-inch Samsung on a rolling cart, with ZoomRoom hardware, and it gets frequent use. If we had one or two more — and if their carts were a foot or so taller — we could position them in the aisles and show anything on them. Particularly, the ZoomRoom, which we are very familiar with, would allow us to put content on them wirelessly.

Tuesday 03/26/2024

The big job today was to run an event. Dr. Larry Basso (a relative of Dennis’s first wife and longtime acquaintance) has been wanting to present his discussion of the life of Leonardo daVinci for many weeks. It was scheduled as the First Monday book talk in February if I remember right, and he had health problems and postponed, and postponed again, but today was the time to actually do it.

I used the adjusted lighting for the first time, and it worked well. Here’s what our camera saw, which is much more accurate and also more flattering than what it used to get

The event came off fine, his slides looked good and I didn’t forget to press “record” before he started, like I have done in the past. Later in the afternoon I started the tedious job of editing the video which will become the 94th video in our growing library of talks and events.

At 3pm I joined the Tech Squad meeting. The Tech Squad, not to be confused with the AV team, handles trouble calls from residents dealing with their devices, mostly TVs and printers. And phones. And iPads…. Bert, the leader, had several issues to go over. We went over them.

I ate in my room; just didn’t feel like socializing tonight.

Monday 03/25/2024

Looked at my calendar, it said “Prime@10”. Prime, prime… what was that about… OH RIGHT, thank you google calendar. I had made a date to get my new Durable Power of Attorney naming Prime Fiduciary as agent, signed and notarized. Which meant quickly going over the document and reminding myself who had to sign where. And I had a bunch of other things on my mind so I hastily made a to-do list.

In the actual order I did them, I called Barbara Bayha at 9 and talked her into learning how to set up the lecternette in the lobby. She is organizing a four-session “fireside talk” series and wants a microphone for each session. I persuaded her that she can learn to do it herself and we made a date to meet on Wednesday.

I called Dennis to verify he was still ok with being alternate on the POA. I filled out the parts of the POA that I could and made sure I understood the rest. Then off to Prime’s office in Los Altos. From there I went by CVS on University and picked up a prescription that was waiting. (I had meant to pick it up at the end of a nice walk, until the Calendar app reminded me I had other things to do this morning.) I put the new POA in the “Brown BInder” which contains all our estate documents. trust, will, etc. A couple of things there need updating, note they aren’t crossed off.

Before lunch I visited Gloria Hom and took care of her tech squad call regarding poor audio from her new TV set.

After lunch I got facilities to set up the 10-foot ladder in the auditorium so we could reach the track lights. At 2:30, Dan Nitzan came by for the 3rd day in a row, and this time we (well, he) succeeded in getting the right combination of light heads working and aimed in the right direction. In future our presenters will be much better lit on zoom and in the recordings.

I practiced guitar for 45 minutes then I went down to FOPAL and did 2 hours of book pricing and shelving. Came home at 7 and made a delicious supper of salami and pickle sandwich and a cup of bouillon. And basked in the glow of a day of gettin’ shit done.

Sunday 03/24/2024

Dan Nitzan came back right after lunch. We got the on-duty facilities guy to get us out a 10-foot ladder, much safer, and Dan tried repeatedly to get the two light-heads back in their track. We finally gave up and later I ordered two somewhat different ones from Amazon.

At 4:30 we had a concert by a brass quintet. They were pretty good. Then it was off to Maples Pavilion, to watch a game from my seat in section 11, row DD for the last time. Next season, if I go to any of the not-PAC-12 Cardinal, I’ll buy a ticket at the door. The game was a near-upset by the 12th-seeded Iowa State Cyclones, who had come from behind to win on Friday and came out fierce and physical. The Cardinal trailed through most of the middle of the game, and it went to overtime, where Stanford squeaked out a lead with less than a minute left and hung on to win. The concensus of the car-pool going home was that they will lose their next game, which will be in the Portland regional against, probably, NC State.

Saturday 03/23/2024

Started the day, dressed in my red docent shirt, meeting Harriet for coffee. She’s a basketball friend from way back.

Then on to the museum to lead a private tour for 25 seniors from Carmel. The leader of that group was David Wall, a trustee of the museum. The tour description said he would lead the tour but would like a docent to help. What we ended up doing was, to divide the group in half and each led one tour. He started in the Software area to give me a head start. I edited myself on the fly to shorten my usual tour, finished in 45 minutes. Handed them back to Mr. Wall to get them into the 1401 demo at 1pm.

There’s an AV problem raised by David M, that we don’t put enough light on our presenters which makes them look on the video recordings as if they were in the shadow. This is with presenters who have slides to show, which is most of them. If even a bit of the projection screen is in the camera frame, it sees that brightness and stops down, making the image of the presenter shadowy, low-contrast.

So the solution would be to get more light onto that corner of the stage where we put our podium. But our stage lights are up in tracks on the ceiling. I contacted Dan Nitzan, whom I first met on Day 3.216 back in 2022. He is among other things, an expert on stage lighting. He replied at once and since he lives close, came over this afternoon.

Dan proposed how we could re-aim two of our track lights to put more on the presenter. We got the on-duty facilities guy to bring us a ladder and Dan climbed to the top of an 8-foot ladder to reach the ceiling and remove one of the light units. Unfortunately it was somewhat tricky to put it back and its little copper tabs got bent. So Dan took it to his nearby home to repair it. He brought it back an hour later and we tried to reinstall it, this time on a different one of our tracks. And ended up with two non-functional light heads. So not a success. Now we are trying to find compatible light units to buy online to replace the two we have screwed up.

Friday 03/22/2024

So today I thought I had a meeting with CEO Rhonda and IT manager Gerald regarding the upcoming $33K grant for auditorium equipment. I had invited two of my committee to join me. Phoned them ahead of time to make sure they were up to speed and would be there. So we met at 1pm, and nobody else showed. So I checked at the desk, no, Rhonda is working from home today. Frantically search my email for the note setting up the meeting. Ooops. The meeting is for Friday April 12. Not today. 3 weeks from today.

I am making silly mistakes like this more often. Now, I always have made silly mistakes, but for 43 years I had a smart partner who would usually straighten me out in time. No, that’s not it; I’m just not as reliable as I have been. It’s concerning. Well, and it’s a Transition — see the title of this blog.

At 4 I met with Patty and Lenny and we rode in Patty’s car — a cute little Honda FIt — over to the campus to attend the opening round of the basketball. In the first game, Iowa State trailed Maryland by 15 or more in the first half. Then they caught fire in the 3rd quarter, caught up, went into the 4th quarter tied, and won by 6.

Stanford started slow and sloppy and had a lot more trouble with Norfolk than a #2 seed should have with a #15 seed, but eventually won by 30. They will have a real challenge on Sunday, playing the Iowa State team that came from behind for an upset win.

That Sunday game will be the last I attend sitting in my long-time seat, center court two rows up behind the TV commentators. Today I wore black instead of Cardinal red. Nobody caught on to the symbolism.