Thursday 09/21/2023

Tidied up and watered the plants. Spent ten minutes abusing my fingertips on the guitar. I found the most amazing website, chordbase.com, which has chord sequences for hundreds of song and other useful guitar stuff, including an online tuning meter.

At 9 I had to make a choice: to drive to the East Bay and work at one of the two CHM locations, or not to do that. I opted not to go. I spent time printing three more pictures and putting them out on my hallway gallery. Then at 12 I skipped lunch and went down to FOPAL and did two hours of sorting. As I’ve often said, sorting is very satisfying. I skipped lunch because I knew that at 3pm there was to be the monthly ice cream social here at CH. I came back just in time for that and made myself a large and satisfying sundae.

At 5:30 by arrangement, Edie joined me and we went back down Middlefield (seems like Middlefield is the only street I drive these days) to Mike’s Cafe in Midtown. Nice supper and talk.

Wednesday 09/20/2023

Started the laundry early so as to be able to leave at 11am for various things.

Which included first, a stop at FOPAL. On Monday I had found two very valuable donations, things that were going for several hundred dollars on eBay. One was a copy of the Bell System Technical Journal for July 1978. This was the edition that had several articles describing the UNIX system, the first public announcement of UNIX. I had carefully put these in the High Value box, and emailed Nigel, the High Value manager. Yesterday he went by to pick them up and couldn’t find them. So today I stopped down there and searched the HV boxes and none of the books I’d put in were there. I was perturbed. Emails back and forth. Eventually Nigel found that the eBay sales manager had picked them up and was getting ready to sell them. So whew, and all that, but annoying.

On down to CHM where at 1pm my next-door neighbor Carolyn stopped by with her brother Doug, who is visiting from the East coast. Their father worked for IBM back in the pre-computer days. We walked around the parts of the museum we don’t go to on the tour, then they joined the 2pm tour which I led, and then we all watched the 1401 demo at 3pm.

Back home, I had a nap and then set up a mic for the monthly Birthday Dinner. Then up to the 11th floor to set up for a speaker coming at 7:30. This was Brian Neider who manages what used to be CAR, the support organization for developmentally disabled kids. Now it has merged with other agencies and is called Ability Path.

The auditorium equipment is supposedly being upgraded. I was in there to set up the mic for the birthdays and not much is happening. But anyway, events are now on 11, using the mobile TV/Zoom Room setup. This came off ok, although I think I messed up and it didn’t get recorded. So it goes.

Tuesday 09/19/2023

Out early, walk to PAMF (2.2 miles for the day) for the second blood draw, after I consumed the single tablet of dex last night. I have no idea what this is supposed to prove. The Sutter Health website notifies me of new test results and this one hasn’t come in yet.

That left me an hour to write something for the writers group. The cue this week was “music lessons”. I’ll stick what I wrote at the end. It was a good session, ten or eleven people had written, and all but one of them had similar experiences to mine, where they didn’t get have a good experience or learn anything.

Afternoon I helped Edie solve a silly problem with her Mac. And I took down the pictures that have been in my hallway gallery for several months and decided what to print for the next set. I printed one picture, 17×11, and the printer goofed up and did some banding and skipping. Didn’t quite ruin the picture because it only affected the left and right edges, so I cut it down to 14×11 and could still frame it and put it up. But then I had to clean the heads, and then I had to run a “power cleaning” which takes a long time and uses up half the capacity of the waste-ink-box. But after that the printer was ok.

The set of guitar strings I ordered two days ago arrived, thank you Amazon Prime, and I spent an hour re-stringing Karen’s guitar. Then I downloaded a guitar tuner app for the iPhone. Tuned it up and it sounds great! It’s a Yamaha, quite large, I think it’s Yamaha’s copy of the Martin “Dreadnought” style. With new strings it feels good and it has a very big sound. I played it for ten minutes and my left hand is sore. Not the guitar’s fault. Just out of condition muscles.

Monday 09/18/2023

Out at 8 to walk to PAMF. Dr. Marx has ordered a cortisol level test which involves having a blood draw, then 12 hours later taking a single dose of dexamethasone, and another blood draw. So I walk to PAMF for the first blood draw, then have a nice coffee and pastry for breakfast at Peets, and walk back.

At 10:30 it was time for the event coordinator’s meeting, where we finalize the calendar for the next month. Back to my room to enter all the events into our A/V calendar spreadsheet and schedule an A/V team meeting. Then to FOPAL for a couple of hours of book pricing.

Back in time for a quick nap and then Rhonda’s monthly open meeting. This is one thing that distinguishes CH from most senior facilities. Staff respects residents sufficiently to have monthly direct contacts, including things like, today, going over the Strategic Plan and how it is progressing.

Then Rhonda finished up by sharing a presentation she had given to the Lee Center residents last week. Called “road to Channing House” it was basically her autobiography. The initial motivation was a dementia program called the Golden Leaf, which among other things tries to build trust by having residents and staff share their “road” to where they are now. Rhonda led by example, but other staffers are expected to provide similar talks in coming months.

Anyway, her bio is quite impressive, with multiple degrees, first in financial management, which she practiced for a number of years as a consultant and as a manager; and then a masters in geriatric care. She met her husband the first day of college, and is still married to him. He’s a physicist and chemical engineer. They have one natural daughter and one adopted son.

Before supper I put together another event video, from zoom recordings of a memorial a couple of weeks ago.

Oh, I ordered new strings for Karen’s guitar. Lightweight ones, so hopefully it will not be too painful getting my calluses back. Do I want to practice enough to get my calluses back?

Sunday 09/17/2023

Did a little writing in the morning. At 1pm I brought the car around to be one of three CH carpools to Noises Off at the Pear Theater. They did a really good job on that show. Very entertaining and fun.

Evening, dinner with Karen and David M and Bob S. We talked a lot about the music of the 1960s, when all of us were in, or just out of, college. Or dropping out, in my case. I was (as usual) the only person at the table without an actual degree. It developed that Karen has a guitar that she hasn’t played in decades (took lessons a while then put it in the closet). She offered to loan it to me, and they brought it around after supper. So now I have a guitar in my apartment. Not totally sure if that’s a good thing or not.

Saturday 09/16/2023

A lovely unscheduled day. I walked in the morning to Cafe Zoe in Menlo Park. Very tasty zucchini/carrot cake.

Later in the day I actually did some writing on the novel.

At 7pm, walked over to the Lucy Stern theater to attend Matilda the Musical. I had seen this show in London, Day 1.078, and as you can see from that link, thought it “very silly” and also had a hard time following the lyrics. Well, the TheaterWorks production was just as silly (no surprise, same book) but was even harder to understand. This was due, at least mostly, I’m pretty sure, to a really bad sound system. I’m sitting in an excellent seat, G108, 7th row center. All the sound seems to be coming from high up to my left, and it is too loud and distorts on all the peaks.

The actors were all working really hard, well-rehearsed, sharp, great dance moves, great physical comedy. Can’t understand a word they sing. The whole long story that Matilda tells the Librarian? One word in 20, maybe. A shame. During the first big number I decided I would leave at intermission, and I did.

Friday 09/15/2023

Went for a standard walk in the morning. Then spent the rest of the morning in my California Driver’s License on-line study program.

There was a frustrating half hour during which the DMV website kept getting 504 time-out errors while trying to verify my phone number. It would send a text with a 6-digit code, but then crash with the error when I tried to enter the code. Or it wouldn’t send the code. Repeated trials using different browsers on different computers all failed, and then finally it all worked and I was in.

Once in, the on-line class was pretty well designed. I took lots of hand notes. The quizzes at the end of each section were rather simple. Hopefully the test at the DMV next week will be as easy.

At 4:30 I went down to set up the auditorium for the long-awaited C&W Jamboree. The committee had done a great job setting up and decorating. My part went smoothly, and I was given lots of heartfelt thanks from everybody for how smoothly all the videos and stuff came off. No big messups or even little ones. A good time was had by all.

Thursday 09/14/2023

Spent the day at the Shustek center, cataloging old manuals. That’s about it.

Wednesday 09/13/2023

A nice low-pressure day. I took the standard walk first thing, and it was ok. I rebuilt the C&W video for what I hope is the last time. I helped Sandy figuring out how to make a page magnifier work in the CH library. Somebody had donated this thing, it has a 15-inch CRT monitor (“hey the 80s called, they want their TV back”) on a stand with lights under it. You put a document on the tray and can roll it around and the TV shows a magnified image. She hadn’t figured out how to hook it up. It wasn’t hard. Afterward, it was ugly, but it worked.

Dr. Margaret is back from her summer at her place in Tahoe. I’d been saving my old blu-ray player for her at her request, and I installed it. In fact she already had a DVD player and didn’t know it. It was in the bottom of her media cabinet and not hooked to the TV. Somebody gave up early, I guess, when moving her stuff back, in 2019, from the upgrade. Well now she has a better one which actually works.

Today was the monthly 6th floor meeting and dinner. Nothing special from the meeting. While I was sitting in the dining room having supper, David G came by. He’d been setting up for the evening’s speaker, and couldn’t make the ceiling camera work. Well, it worked, but it wouldn’t zoom or pan. I suggested a couple of things to try. He came by a few minutes later and said those hadn’t worked. Then he went to another table to have his own supper.

Since I was done with my entree, I got up and went into the auditorium. I verified that the camera was on but wouldn’t pan or zoom. Those functions are controlled by a little box. I power-cycled the little box. Pan and zoom now worked. I went back in the dining room and told David G. Score one for the old “have you tried rebooting it” ploy.

The lecturer was Dr. Lerone Martin, currently in charge of the MLKJr. Institute at Stanford, where they are collating all of MLK’s papers. Couple of penetrating questions from the audience. “What would he have thought of our intervention in the Ukraine-Russia war?” Ans. MLK was all about non-violence, but struggled with non-violent responses to evil violence. “What did he have to say about discrimination toward women?” Ans. In many ways, socially, economically, he foresaw a future that didn’t yet exist, but in matters of gender, he was a man of his time.

Tuesday 09/12/2023

In the morning I completed preparing the video for the C&W show. For what I thought was the final time, but of course during and after the rehearsal this afternoon people wanted changes, so I will do it one more time. I edit the material in iMovie. Then I have iMovie export the finished video as a file, which will typically be 8GB in size and takes an hour. Step 2, run that through Handbrake which produces a video of the same resolution that is just over 1GB. This takes 45 minutes. While it runs I go back and verify the exact starting times of each “chapter”, that is each of the 24 musical numbers, like “Crazy” at 17:42. These are in a text file and only need changing from the point where a new song is added. The compressed video is opened in Metadoctor, an app that knows how to add chapter markers, and it loads the text file and marks the chapters. Then I just have to copy the movie off the desktop machine and into the laptop that will show it.

At 10:30 was the writers meeting. This week we were supposed to write about what we’ve been reading. I had written my little essay while in Silverdale, so I was set.

At 12:30 I met with Marcia for lunch, at my request. Marcia is the resident member of the Board, and the chair of the Strategic Planning committee. I wanted to talk to her about what I saw as the unnecessary hiring of a consultant for yet another boring and expensive round of planning. We get along well, we’ve been working together since back in 2020 when we were the volunteer coordinators for the resident Covid volunteer groups. She told me what she understands about the process, but in fact I still don’t see it. But I’m not going to make any more trouble.

At 1:30 I started setting up for the C&W rehearsal. That only took half an hour this time so I was way early. We finally got going with a full run-through at 3:10 and finished at 4:45, so it is well under the 2 hours we’d set as a limit. After I’d tidied the AV equipment up, I could relax for the rest of the day. PBJ sandwich for supper and early to bed.