Saturday 01/20/2024

Main business today was to lead the 12pm tour at the museum. Since I also wanted to pick up a couple of things at the grocery, I started out at 10. I meant to have a breakfast of coffee and pastry at Midtown but they were too crowded so went on down to Peet’s by the grocery. That worked out ok. Then down to the museum, and home again.

Did some guitar practice, and kept half an eye on the 49ers game as they won late. Took a look at the dining room menu and wasn’t pleased. Called Edie to see if she wanted to go out for supper but she has apparently had a relapse, tested positive again. So off by myself, meaning to go to Armadillo Willy’s for ribs, but their parking lot was completely full so back to Mike’s for pasta instead. And that was Saturday in the land of the idle rich.

Friday 01/19/2024

Just a short walk in the morning over to CVS to pick up 2 prescriptions. Then busily to work on preparing for two different AV events. On the 23rd, Patty will run a documentary from NHK (Japan TV) that was partly produced by her son Jeff. She wants to start with a map of Japan and the southern islands. She had picked up a map she liked from geology.com, but it was like 600×800 pixels. So I ran it through the magic photo ai app I have to make it much bigger and sharper, appropriate for display on a big screen. Then in the auditorium I tested running her documentary.

On 2/5, Oscar will present a book talk. He wants to discuss the movie made from this book, showing a number of clips from the film. He has a personal friend Gary who is a tech, very familiar with video production. So Oscar and Gary came at 1:30 to try out our equipment and practice the presentation. They fiddled around for an hour and seemed satisfied.

Next into the auditorium was Stew, wanting to test an idea for the upcoming music party (see yesterday). He wants to put sing-along lyrics on the big screen, but Joanne, in charge of getting people to dance, doesn’t want the screen down because she wants the stage clear for dancers. So the solution is to put the screen partway down, and to put the lyrics only on the top 1/3 of a powerpoint slide, and to make the slide background black with white text. It looks like it will work pretty well:

That was that until 6 when I joined the carpool group to go the SWBB game. This was the game where, if they won, Tara would tie the record of Coach K. They did win, beating Oregon by 30. They got off to what you might call a good start: the score was 20-0 halfway through the first quarter. To their credit, the Ducks came back getting to within 5 at one point, but to no avail.

Thursday 01/18/2024

Drove to Shustek for a day of cataloging. On return, had a meeting of the Good Times team planning the upcoming “Strollin Into the Sixties” event. Let’s says SITS for short. The song list is now final, so I have to start gathering the videos. Also seriously practicing my contribution, “Who Put the Bomp“. But tomorrow I have a series of AV events to prepare for one way or another.

01/17/2024

Took a standard walk in the morning. At 10:30 met with Jeb to give him “Lecternette 101”, a hands-on introduction to the portable sound systems we use on the 11th floor and the lobby.

For some reason I felt like documenting all the travels I’ve done outside the US. In the course of doing that, I noticed that of the detailed travel blogs we made (New Zealand, France, Germany, Scandinavia), the one for the Scandinavian countries had never been downloaded and saved. So I did that, which took an hour or so, and naturally lead to having to read the whole blog.

At 4:30 I ran down to set up a mic for the bi-monthly birthday dinner which always features live music.

That was about it for the day.

Tuesday 01/16/2024

Up early and out the door at 7:30 to drop the car at Toyota for its 75K service. Which cost $750, and I would complain about that, except that this is the first service it has had in over 12 months. Plus the 12volt battery was failing and that was $300 more (yes, I checked and new batteries were $190 at Amazon, so I could have saved $100 by doing it myself, but they give a 6 year warranty, so what the heck). With that and the detailing I’ve spent $1200 on the car this week. But it looks lovely and is set for another year of puttering around Palo Alto.

I walked back from Toyota, so getting over 4 miles for the day, more than I’ve walked in a while. At 11 we had a lecture by a lady who is a specialist in dementia care, about how to interact with people with dementia. It all seemed like common sense to me, but nicely presented.

Did about nothing the rest of the day, and felt a bit bored in the afternoon as a result.

Monday 01/15/2024

Up earlier than usual so I could leave by 7:15. Left the car with the detail guy – seems to be a one-man shop, dude in his 60s, looks Iranian maybe? Took a Lyft back to CH. Attended the monthly Event Coordinators meeting. When that was over, took another Lyft down to FOPAL.

Here I did the post-sale triage, all the books that had seen 4 sale days off to the bargain room. Processed two boxes of donations. It was now 1pm and the car guy had texted that the car was ready. So my third Lyft of the day, to pick up the Prius. Which now looks, inside and out, rather better than when it was new. I love running my hand over a freshly polished fender.

Various emails coordinating this and that. Organized all my sheet music in a nice binder. Spent an hour playing through most of it.

The evening menu didn’t appeal so I ate in my room. Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup and bread with peanut butter. I mean, I live the gourmet life.

Sunday 01/14/2024

After a lazy start I drove down to the nursery meaning to buy some really ferocious chemical insecticide. But of course the modern nursery doesn’t have the good old environmentally bad bug killers, just some namby-pamby stuff you could take a bath in. Well. Back and I attacked the dragon-wing begonias, whacking off all the white-fly-infested leaves. Then drenched the remaining sticks with the Mister Nice Guy bug spray, hoping to kill the nasty little things and their eggs. We’ll see.

Met with Stew to plan videos for the upcoming “Strollin into the Sixties” party. At lunch I was talking to Florrie who is a pianist, and I was complaining how the Malvina Reynolds song “I Wish You Were Here” is a killer that I would like to perform, but it is just two notes too high for me. I have worked on transposing it on the guitar and there is no transposition that gives playable chords. So after we finished lunch we went to the piano in the lobby and she tried transposing it, she thought she knew how but had a hard time working it out. But it was fun talking music.

Watched the SWBB team play Colorado on the TV and lose.

01/13/2024

Not really. There were no commitments on my google calendar, which was a refreshing thing, but somehow the day filled up with stuff. I started by driving down to Midtown for coffee and a cinnamon roll. From there I drove on to the place in Mountain View where I need to take the car on Monday morning to be detailed. Just so I know where it is. It isn’t far, but I had forgotten that owing to a recent fire, El Camino is closed just about where this place is, so you have to detour around a few blocks to get to it. No big problem, but glad I know that now and don’t have to discover it at 8am Monday.

At various points in the day I did AV managing, arranging for a possible new recruit to shadow a couple of other people in the upcoming week. Emails and then trying to find people and talk to them. I also learned something about the systems on the 11th floor. I was up there trying to figure out why I wasn’t able to use all the sound system on Friday night when I ran that concert, and learned new things which meant I had to revise the user manual I had written. This is a work that I’m quite proud of: how to use all the TV facilities, the Comcast box, the Blu-Ray player, the Roku, and hook up a computer. All in very plain, simple English, step by step with pictures. I had to change the last page, taking a couple of new pictures and editing the document and printing it.

So the uncommitted Saturday turned into a fairly busy one, although there was plenty of time for goofing off and napping also.

Friday 01/12/2024

My main job today was to lead the noon tour at CHM, but before that I got some tech stuff done. First, for my AV team, I installed some new body mics in the auditorium and put out an email explaining their use.

Then I took a tech squad call to help Joanne L. She was used to streaming PBS shows on her laptop, and mirroring them on her big TV. Something changed while she was away on vacation, her sister messed with her computer or something, and now that wouldn’t work. This turned out to be an easy fix, somebody had changed the Displays settings so the second display (the TV) was no longer mirroring her laptop. It was set to be a separate monitor. I showed her how you could move the mouse over to the right and it would show up on the TV, and you could drag a window there and see it on the TV. She didn’t care for that, wanted back the way it used to be, which was easy to do.

Then off to lead a tour. Just 5 people, but they were patient and appreciative so I gave them the bonus tour, talking about the Xerox Alto and how that led to the Mac, and so on.

On return I went to help Pam, who had asked as a personal favor would I look at a couple of weird things on her mac. I like Pam so I didn’t fob her off to the tech squad. I won’t go into her problems here but one was easy to fix and one was a real stumper. I sent her an email later with a possible fix, we’ll see.

Then I did something I’ve been meaning to do for a week or two. At the new year, SFJazz announced a new program where they make available to members only, the ability to stream any concert from their library of previous concert streams. They started doing those in 2020 during Covid and there is quite a collection. One of them is the concert by Veronica Swift that I saw last October when it was first streamed, and I was super impressed, made me a Veronica Swift fanboy overnight.

So now I could re-watch that concert, but why not share it? So I put out a message on CHBB, I would be showing a concert on the 11th floor TV, come watch. It was a great concert, and about a dozen people drifted in to watch, and almost all stayed to the end and expressed sincere thanks for my sharing it. Veronica Swift rules.

Thursday 01/11/2024

Off to Shustek center in Milpitas to do cataloging. This was a sad day, because Gretta, the curator I’ve worked under for going on a decade, has decided to move, and won’t be at the Museum after this month. Gretta is attractive, smart, and an excellent manager, skillfully keeping her crew of retired computer nerds working productively. I’ll miss her very much.

What’s kind of interesting is where she’s moving: to Vashon Island. Her husband is taking a full time job running a youth camp on Vashon. Rent-free use of a small house is included in the deal. Plus her mother and other relatives are nearby. So it’s great for her, but a loss for CHM.

What I was working on today was cataloging a Fairlight music synthesizer from 1982. What a monster; the keyboard alone weighs 40 pounds.

In the evening, we had a concert by a jazz trio in the auditorium. Good singer, top-notch pianist. Singer was good, indeed excellent for a pediatric doctor which she is in her day job, and the pianist and bassist were really good by any standard.