Monday 03/06/2023

Two big events today, one to attend, one to run.

First up at 9am was a meeting chaired by Rhonda to introduce a new option for in-house medical care.

History: Until 2018, PAMF doctors held regular weekly office hours at Channing House. This was a result of the founding of CH by Dr. Russell Lee, one of the founders of PAMF. Around 2018 PAMF was bought up by Sutter Health and that relationship ended. Rhonda said that negotiations went on with Sutter Health for some time but Sutter was recalcitrant, insisting on a very sizeable regular payment for very limited coverage. In any event, the weekly office hours by PAMF doctors only benefited residents who used PAMF. That’s most of them, but there are some with Kaiser coverage, and others.

Recently a total of five PAMF doctors have announced retirement, affecting nearly 100 IL residents. So lots of people looking for new doctors anyway, and Sutter Health being typically slow and incommunicative about assigning new doctors. It seems there is also a doctor shortage generally. Problems problems.

So today CH has a new medical partner, Pine Park Health. This is a company that specializes in providing in-home medical care for residents of senior facilities. Their model is, they become your new primary care physician. Your insurance doesn’t change. Like any PCP, they bill your insurer for whatever they do, they have access to all your records, and they can make referrals.You keep all your existing specialists, cardiologists, surgeons, whatever. But you call them whenever you need something, or attend an in-house clinic day. They provide a minimum of 1 day a week of in-house clinic, 2 days a week or more depending on how many people sign up with them. They also provide phone consults, 7 days, 9-5; and do video visits if needed.

The in-house care is actually not by an MD but a Nurse Practitioner. The NP’s are supervised by an MD, one specific MD, Dr. Denise Yun, who was there at the meeting today to answer questions. Since she is the one-and-only MD they have for the Bay Area, how does she do it? She asserted — and I later verified with my neighbor Dr. Margaret — that a typical PCP has over 2,000 people on their “slate”. Most people see their PCP once or twice a year. (That’s still a lot of people. 2000/300 == 7 annual checkups a day, roughly. Do doctors do that many checkups, over and above whatever illnesses people come in with? No surprise it is hard to get an appointment.) Anyway, Dr Yun asserted that as the Pine Park Bay Area MD she has fewer, more like 1,800, people on her “slate”, and doesn’t see them directly except as the NP’s call her in.

So that’s the solution that CH is able to offer, for in-house medical care. If anyone wants to switch, they are making it very easy, and I’m sure the simplicity (no change of insurance) and convenience (in-house treatment) are attractive for the approximately 100 being jerked around by PAMF right now. My PCP is nowhere near retirement and I like her, so I don’t plan to change. I might at some future point if it got difficult to go to her office.

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That took until 10:30, which left just 30 minutes to set up for Gigi’s Book Talk. I have to say, that Gerald of IT made a hash out of the A/V for Rhonda’s meeting. She couldn’t advance her slides with the clicker; he didn’t mute zoom attendees as they joined so there was chit-chat from them; there were mic problems galore.

I am very pleased to say that Gigi’s talk came off perfectly. No mic or audio problems; she could advance her own slides, etc. Not only did it run smoothly but I was also able to make a video recording of the talk on my other computer. We have often talked about the ability to record events directly, but to date we have always run them as Zoom meetings and used Zoom to record. This wasn’t zoom, and I managed the recording all by my little self. Running two MacBooks like a boss.

The rest of the day was empty and I just wasted it. (But now I’ve made a list of like 6 things I need to catch up on tomorrow.)

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Late news: 6 IL residents and 3 staff members have tested positive for Covid. There was a bus load of people who rode to the Ballet in SF yesterday (Sunday) and someone among them had Covid. Now everyone on the bus is under contact warning, meaning they have to avoid the dining room and public spaces and wear masks, while testing daily. Unfortunately several have already tested positive.

More unfortunately (also ironically), probably some of those now testing positive, also attended this morning’s meeting about in-house health care. If so, we might be on the verge of a good solid breakout. Tomorrow will tell.

Sunday 03/05/2023

After the usual Sunday morning routine, I went down to FOPAL. This is the week preceding the monthly sale, and I need to process any waiting donations, and put my section in order for the sale. Ordinarily I would do this on Monday but tomorrow promises to be a very busy day, and today was not.

So I spent two hours pricing and shelving books. Then back in time for lunch. Later I worked on the Corvette model, finishing the 472 V8. The body paint I ordered has only shipped today so it will be a few days before I can paint the body, but I can start on the chassis if I like.

Saturday 03/04/2023

In the morning I painted a few 427 engine parts. Then at 11 I went off to the Museum to lead the noon tour. About 25 people, nice mix of ages, it went well.

Chilling in the afternoon, I got an email from Gigi. Her talk on Monday, by her choice, is not going to be zoomed. But somebody who can’t come asked her if it would be recorded and put up on the Channing House Vimeo channel with our other events. Well — no, because we make the recordings as a feature of the zoom event. However I have said in the past that we could record events without zoom. But can I really?

I grab the laptop and a handful of adapters of various kinds and head down to the auditorium. Patch the ceiling camera into one USB port. Patch the audio from the PA system into another USB port. Quicktime Player, File > New Video Recording. Choose the external camera and external mic. Adjust audio levels. Aha. Yes, there is the stage, I can frame the big screen so her pictures will be visible, I can pan left to get her in the picture when she is just talking. Voice in a microphone comes through clear. Yeah. I can do this.

Oh I should note: the SWBB team continued to disappoint me, by losing yesterday to UCLA in the PAC-12 tournament semifinals. I feel better about not going to Seattle to see them in the NCAAs. I’m pretty sure they will lose there.

Friday 03/03/2023

First up, went for the standard walk. All good.

Spent an hour going over the first dozen bits of the Corvette, which are the parts that will make up the 427 V-8.

Noticed that SFJazz was going to stream a live concert tonight featuring Jake Shimabukuro, the ukulele-ist virtuoso. I last hear Jake on, can you believe it, Day 0.003. I noted then that his show was bit over-long.

Tonight I decided to show the stream on the big screen on the 11th floor. A couple of other people joined me. As before, Jake’s show was a bit too long. The other people left before the end, and then I shut it down before his final number.

Thursday 03/02/2023

Notice the .091? There are 365 days in a year, and one quarter of that is 91 (and a fraction, duh). One-fourth of a year gone! (This blog’s year started on December 3.)

After the usual tidy-up so the apartment wouldn’t look like a dump to the cleaning lady, I headed off to the Yosemite warehouse for a day of artifact work. Aurora, the curator, was a little distracted today because after lunch she had a visitor, a woman who is currently in charge of the collection at the Hiller Aviation Museum. In exchange for showing her around, Aurora hopes that she (and possibly some of us volunteers) will get a tour of the restoration shop at Hiller. We’ll see.

The actual artifact work today involved the ECHO IV, the first actual “home” computer. The problem was, one of the curators had noticed that the collection included about 100 nearly identical circuit cards all titled “ECHO IV Module”. Here’s one example. That curator was aware that there was also a complete cabinet named ECHO IV, and was concerned that maybe we had pulled all the circuit cards out of it?

But when Aurora found a cabinet labeled “ECHO IV cabinet” the modules in it didn’t look like those, and was at a loss. Here was where I got to shine, because I was there when we cataloged the ECHO IV. A little searching on my phone and I found the pics I had taken at the time, which turned out to be: August 2015! And I knew for a fact there was a different cabinet, one that was packed with plenty of those circuit modules. Where was it? Aurora couldn’t find it in the catalog system.

So I spent some time walking around the warehouse craning my neck to look up into the pallet racking trying to spot it. In the end another volunteer, Allen Baum, spotted it. Once we knew the location it was easy to find it in the catalog, I still don’t know why it hadn’t turned up in the initial searches. With all the info in hand, I made a couple of corrections to the catalog records so things were linked to each other better.

Then I remembered that I had actually written an article about the ECHO IV at the time (here it is). Plus I had found other source material like an article in Popular Mechanics, and one in BYTE, and it turns out that CHM actually has a video of James Sutherland describing how he built this first-ever in-home computer on the CHM YouTube channel (skip to about 18:00 to get to the interesting stuff).

So I spent a couple of hours re-finding all these sources online and putting together a list for Aurora. Leaving it to her to figure out which and how to integrate those into the catalog record.

Wednesday 03/01/2023

Went for a walk in the morning. The standard walk. It was ok. The creek is running very strong with brown water, after the rain.

Later in the morning I did something nice for my fellow residents. March 1 is when you can order a year’s on-street parking permit from the city of Palo Alto. The website where you do this is an appalling mess of bad UI design, or so I remembered from last year, and yes, it has not improved. The process is very complicated.

Just to start with you have to sign in using your account number. You know, the account number they assigned to you a year ago? You saved that, didn’t you? Well, probably, if you search your email history you can find the receipt email from last year.

Later on in the process you have to upload digital images of your vehicle registration and your photo ID. You have those around, right? And mind you they have to be .jpg files. Not .jpeg, oh no perish the thought. And if they are .png, well, it lets you know with a “server error” diagnostic message.

I got to the end of the process and clicked Cancel, then went back to the start and did it all over, documenting each step. Then I sent an email to CHBB explaining how to do it. Several people thanked me later.

In the afternoon I opened the box of the 67 Corvette Sting Ray. It looks like a very detailed model. It will be a lot of work to do it proper justice.

The red thing is a sprue whose only content is four adorable tiny bullet-shaped tail light lenses. I spent an hour going over the body and every piece that will attach to it (hood, windows, bumpers etc). The point is to make sure everything fits perfectly now. Later, when the body is painted, it is very important that added parts just drop into place with no sanding or scraping or fitting. So I dry-fitted all the bits that go directly on the body.

Tuesday 02/28/2023

Started the day in the gym, doing the round of machines. Took one tech squad call. Then it was time for the writers meeting. The cue “music that affects you” brought out about 12 mini-essays. Mine (see yesterday) was well-received. Also another person recognized the name of my late neighbor Harriet Goldeen.

After lunch I finished up the tax preparation workbook. I think I’ve whined already that in prior years, they had an online interactive workbook, but they are switching to a new system so had to go with a straight 28-page PDF. Well, I fixed that. I printed their workbook (on used paper). I filled it out. (In the end there were only about 8 pages where I had to enter anything.) Then I took it and a thumb drive down to the big Ricoh copier in the office area. That big ol’ copier has a scanner function. You stick in your USB memory stick and put your 28-page document in the input tray and press “go” and flick flick flick it makes a PDF out of your document.

Then I uploaded the filled out workbook PDF back to the preparer’s ShareFile site along with all the other forms, the 1099s and so forth.

Had a nice supper with Caroline and the Thompsons. After, I did a lot of online shopping to find the paint I want for the Sting Ray model and ordered it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll open that box.

Monday 02/27/2023

It was raining so I walked indoors, two miles on the treadmill.

At 10 I went down to the auditorium and set up for Gigi to rehearse her talk. This went very well. Two of the 45 pictures I had set up in a slide show were in the wrong order, but we fixed that. Her talk is a nice 45 minutes long and there were not too many pictures as I had feared. Gigi is Chinese, a couple of years older than me. She got her law degree at Yale, practiced law, served on the SEC, was president of the local Rotary, raised a couple of over-achieving kids, has several cute grandkids. Through all of that her English is still heavily accented. But her talk is, as one would expect from her background, well organized and presented clearly.

After lunch I did another couple hours filling out my tax workbook. I think I’m nearly done.

Evening I noticed emails piling up for tomorrow’s writers meeting. That’s what the writers do, they send their pieces in email to our group mailing list, so by Tuesday morning there will be 8 or 10 emails with “[CHWriters]” in the subject line. The cue this week is “music that moves you.” That called to mind a couple of moments from my past. So here’s what I have to read tomorrow.

Two times a piece of music has arrested me, pierced my mind, forced me to pay attention, made me play it over and over. I am slightly ashamed to say that in both cases the music was decidedly popular, obvious, plebeian. Others might get a transcendent taste of the divine from hearing an oratorio or symphony. My ear is decidedly lower-class.

The second time was sometime in the 1980s. I know where I was: driving alone, northbound on 101, somewhere around Gilroy. I do not know what radio station I was tuned to; but that station played Swanee River Boogie performed by Dave Alexander. I can’t find that recording online, but a reasonably similar performance is here:

I had probably heard boogie-woogie piano before but this just riveted me. All I got from the broadcast was the name of the performer, but that was enough. I stopped on the way home at Tower Records and found the album. Got home to Tasso Street and put it on. I remember I was so high on the performance that I wanted to share my delight with my next-door neighbors, the Goldeens. Come over and hear this fabulous piano piece, I said. Harriet Goldeen was a pianist and a piano teacher. I can remember her trying to control her face as the record started and she realized what style of piano it was. She worked really hard to not say anything negative, but left as soon as the track was finished.

The other time was earlier, 1970. I was living alone in a basement apartment in Daly City. Minimal furnishings, no TV or radio or — of course — no computer. (How did we survive?) I had a portable record player with crappy little speakers. Late one lonely evening I put on Elton John’s Tumbleweed Connection album for the first time. Somehow Burn Down the Mission just came up out of the silence of that lonely room and for a few minutes, owned me. I played the track over and over.

If you want to remember the song, it’s here:

It moves through a lot of phases in 7 minutes and has quite complex instrumentation and shifting rhythms.

There’s really nothing more to say. These were moments when the combination of music and a phase in the evolution of my brain combined to make a permanent mark on my memory. I draw no conclusions about myself or the music.

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More details: Dave Alexander, known later in life as Omar Sharriff, had a minor career as a blues pianist and recording artist. The kid in the video, Luka Sestak, is now grown up, still performs, and has played at SFJazz a couple of times. Sir Elton John recently retired from performing after a long and fruitful creative career.

Sunday 02/26/2023

Fiddled around in the morning. Decided to do my Monday stint at FOPAL on Sunday instead. Spent three hours down there, pricing computer books and sorting.

In the evening I set up a mic for the “Jazzy Trio”, Stew Arlene and Kay, to play a concert of pop songs in the lobby. Kay and Arlene are pretty skilled on flute and piano respectively. Stew is energetic and enthusiastic on percussion.

Saturday 02/25/2023

Lazed around for the morning. At 11am, departed for the museum to lead the noon tour. Had a good group of 20 or so, varied ages, nice tour.

At 6, went up to 11 to join the rest of the large committee that put on the sock hop. Two cooks had prepared two kinds of chili, veggie and meat, plus drinks and desserts left over from the snacks bought for the event. We’ve continued to receive congratulations on what a successful fun event that was, so all in a self-congratulatory mood. They are already planning to do a similar event in September, but with country and western music. Much debate around the table who to include. Johnny Cash of course, Hank Williams, I voted for Patsy Cline, etc.