Monday 09/05/2022

Today I was responsible for the A/V of a book talk. The speaker was Dr. Patnode, who has lectured here many times. He doesn’t use any slides, just a whiteboard, so the setup is real simple. And he doesn’t want it recorded, so I don’t have to remember to start the zoom recording. So I managed to run an event without screwing anything up.

Prior to the event I walked briskly over to NY Pizza on Hamilton and ordered five big pizzas for the floor dinner tonight.

I’d been invited for lunch with Marcia and Kent, plus Connie Erica and Joanne, so that was very pleasant.

After lunch I went down to Fopal and ripped through 9 boxes of mostly crap. I need to go back tomorrow and tidy the shelves and do a pre-sale count, for the sale this coming weekend.

At 5:15 I went down and waited for the driver with the pizzas. In all there were 14 of us in the 6th floor dining room for dinner. It was very nice and sociable.

Sunday 09/04/2022

Usual Sunday morning. At 11:30 I started walking to Maples Pavilion to attend a Stanford Women’s Volleyball match against #1 Texas. Longer walk than I had estimated, but not too bad. The temperature was in the low 80s, not at all the scary heat wave that had been predicted.

I bought a general admission ticket, got a hot dog and drink and sat down to watch the match. It was pretty clear from the start that Stanford was overmatched. Texas’s defense was quite noticeably better. The first set ended 25-16. So I left, and got a Lyft home. Later I checked and, yup, they lost in straight sets.

Did some work on the Studebaker, which is getting pretty close to done. I’ll finish it next week. And a couple of hours of pleasant coding.

At 6 I was out the door to attend the second theatrical thing of the weekend, Hershey Felder as Chopin. Mr. Felder is a well-known pianist and he has been doing these, what I think of as tribute band productions, where he impersonates a famous pianist, performs some of their works and talks about “his” life and times.

The program said, 90 minutes no intermission. I said, “oh dear.” And yes, if there had been an intermission I’d have not come back from it. Well, it wasn’t bad, just not great.

Anyway, on to Labor Day.

Saturday 09/03/2022

Three meetings in the space of an hour this morning. I met with Grace in the lobby to help her with some photos on her phone. Then with Bert and David G. to talk about resident assistance for the staff Emergency Response Team. They expect power cuts this weekend (but in fact the promised dangerously hot heat hasn’t happened here, no doubt it’s tough in Sacramento but we have yet to break 85), and during the first couple of hours of any emergency, the front desk tends to get overwhelmed. So at Bert’s insistent lobbying, Rhonda and staff have agreed that selected resident volunteers will come to the lobby and set up an info table. We will monitor channel 3 of the house radio and answer in-person and on-radio questions, shielding the front desk person. Channel 3 is the channel of the in-house walkie-talkies that residents are expected to use. There’s a handset in every floor’s lounge with an instruction sheet.

Then off to the fifth floor for a tech squad call on Mary Ann who had various problems with email and facebook. Somehow she had acquired two Facebook accounts and two iCloud accounts, and wasn’t sure of the passwords for any of them… I won’t say I got her straightened out, but at least I clarified a few things.

Later I made a silly mistake with the Studebaker. I glued the body tub with seats and dashboard onto the chassis, failing to notice that a large section of the bottom of this piece shows through the chassis. I should have painted it flat black but didn’t, so white unpainted plastic glares through the chassis. I will have a ticklish job painting it, reaching around the driveshaft and other parts.

Had dinner with the Allens and Edie and then it was time to walk to Lucy Stern center to see the Palo Alto Players production of School of Rock. Here’s the review I posted to CHBB today:

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It’s a silly silly play but if you don’t go looking for depth, it’s a blast. I remember the movie (2003) and I saw a Broadway production in NYC. This was a really good effort, with a cast of 40 (FORTY!) and multiple fast scene changes on the relatively tiny Lucy Stern stage. The kids were all cute and talented, and the principals worked their butts off to pretty good effect. The music was satisfyingly loud, but not so loud that you needed earplugs. (As an A/V amateur I am in awe of the sound setup, with 40 people wearing wireless mics and multiple electric instruments to balance.)

Friday 09/02/2022

I took a shorter than usual walk, and picked up a prescription on the way back. Then changed to my docent shirt and went to the museum to lead the noon tour. There only four people, a family of mom, dad, 10 year old boy who has a Raspberry Pi, and granny. So a very intimate tour.

At 4pm it was time for the monthly AV team meeting. Nothing of great note there. I went down to dinner at 5:30 and sat at one of the two-person tables… and sat and sat. We’re shorthanded again it seems. After ten minutes without any attention I got up and drove to Town&Country and had a burger at Kirk’s.

Thursday 09/01/2022

Started the day with a gym session. Actually did enough to feel tired.

Initiated a custom order for a Chevy Bolt. Last night, I walked up Homer ave. to a Mexican restaurant for dinner. On the way I noticed a new Chevy Bolt in their red paint, a very deep candy-red, parked by the curb. It really clicked with me; that was a car I could like. So today I went back to the Chevy website and configured a Bolt, as I had done a couple times last week when I started shopping. This time when it couldn’t find any close matches to my build (it seems no dealer nearby has one with any of my three must-have features: adaptive cruise control, the upgraded sound system, and the red color) I clicked “submit custom order” and indicated my preferred means of contact was email. Shortly got an email from “Jessica” at Boardwalk Chevy, to which I replied, but she hasn’t responded since. I also got a text and a phone call, each from a different sales person, which I ignored.

At 6:30 I left to attend a talk at CHM. This was to celebrate the 50th birthday of Smalltalk, featuring Dan Ingalls and Adele Goldberg. A couple of weeks ago a neighbor, Florrie, had asked me about this talk; she had seen the email from CHM (she’s a member) and recognized the name Dan Ingalls. She and her husband knew him and his wife in Vermont in the 80s? Something like that. But she decided not to accompany me. Which worked out well because Ingalls didn’t actually come. Due to a “recent bicycle accident” they said, he had to attend remotely. So Florrie couldn’t have met him anyway. Also convenient because it left me free to leave early, which I did, because it was really boring.

Wednesday 08/31/2022

Went for a standard walk. Then faced a day with nothing at all on the calendar. Well, I had a verbal date with Grace to help her move some pictures on her iPhone, but I had forgotten to put that on my calendar. But she called me to remind me. Other than that, I did some reading, worked on the Studebaker, and worked a bit on my hobby software project. But that hit a serious snag. Back in 2015 I had used a spell-checker called hunspell. It was a lot of trouble to get hunspell packages for MacOS, Windows, and Linux (the app ran on all three). Now I tried to install the hunspell package and it definitely doesn’t work on MacOS. I do not feel like diving into compiling open-source software; I remember the hours of fiddling I wasted on it back then. So I put the project back in the metaphorical box and gave up. Now thinking about it, I might investigate other spell checkers?

Tuesday 08/30/2022

Went down to the gym at 7:30 and for the first time did the full program on the new machines, that is, two rounds of 8 exercises on 3 machines. Later I had the writers meeting, to which I contributed nothing.

Later in the day I went out to buy coffee at Peets, and since I was close with nothing to do, I dropped in to FOPAL and did an hour and a half of sorting. That is such a satisfying activity. I hadn’t done any sorting in a while, spending all my FOPAL time instead on pricing and shelving computer books. But I really enjoy the sorting.

Monday 08/29/2022

I had a date with Dave T. to get him to the Apple store to exchange his too-small iMac for one with a bigger drive. He’s quite limited in his ability to walk, although mentally clear and funny. So I brought the car around to the front and he got in, I put his walker and the old computer in its box in the back, and we drove around onto University and were able to park almost in front of the Apple store. They actually had a suitable iMac in stock which was a pleasant surprise, as he had to wait 3 weeks for delivery of the first one. We were in and out in 20 minutes, very nice service.

Back at his place I went through the process of installing the new one, a repeat of Saturday, and once it was started copying the old backup files, I left. I had lunch and then zipped down to FOPAL and spent 2:30 processing 8 boxes of books. Back at CH, about 4pm I was back to Dave T’s place where his new machine was almost ready to go. Just the usual fussing with re-entering your iCloud and Gmail passwords, which thank goodness Dave T. had written down. And it was all set.

Earlier Bert, the tech squad leader, had taken me aside and lectured me on how I really shouldn’t help people install new equipment, but should rather send them to an outside contractor. OK, point taken, I will try to avoid such entanglements in future.

Yesterday I put a few coats of clear on the body of the Studebaker. Tonight I sanded it with 2400 grit to take off some of the nibs and orange peel. Tomorrow I will give it one more coat of clear and that is going to be it for the body. Still have parts of the chassis to paint and assemble.

Sunday 08/28/2022

After breakfast and watering plants and doing the puzzle, I went off on a little quest. The other day I had a sudden nostalgic urge to see a cricket game. Quick check of the Map app in the phone, and by golly there are several cricket clubs in the area. However most of them either didn’t have websites, or the sites had not been updated for a year or more. Small-time volunteer outfits clearly. The only site that showed a bit of current maintenance was for the Santa Clara CC according to which they were playing a game today.

Well, I found them and they were actually playing.

In the middle is an actual game in progress. On the left under the trees, a few folding chairs for the members of the team that’s in (batting) to sit while waiting their turns to bat. That was it. Absolutely no provision for spectators. No sign of girlfriends or families or any kind of non-players. And no visible scoreboard, without which a watcher has no idea of the state of play. Imagine walking into a baseball game in progress with no scoreboard. Who’s up, what’s the score, what’s the count? No idea.

So I didn’t stay around. I drove back to California Ave and walked every bit of both sides of the market. This has become a really thriving, fun, crowded market scene, way better than the Downtown one near Channing House. I was part of about 5% wearing masks.

Later I put some time in on the Studebaker. I want to get that done and then I think that will probably be the last model car, at least for a good while. I kind of have to force myself to get on with it.

And that was the day, pretty much.

Saturday 08/27/2022

I had a tech squad request to help Dave T install a new iMac. I thought this was going to be easy. Since I had to leave soon after 11am I wanted to get this out of the way, so we met in his place at 8:30. I unpacked the lovely new iMac and set it up and started the process where a new Mac sucks up all the data from your backup drive. Except that this stopped after about ten minutes with the message, not enough room.

Turns out, Dave T’s old iMac has a 1TB drive that is half full, 480GB of mostly pictures, about a 100GB of music. The new iMac that he ordered from the online Apple store? He had gotten the default 250GB SSD. Ooops. He was shocked. He is somewhat mobility limited so I said I would go an enquire at the Apple store. I took down and re-packed the new iMac, and set up and booted up the old one.

Then I walked over to the Apple store and found out the good news. There’s a 14-day return policy. They’ll take it back and credit his card for the purchase price. Then he can order another one with a proper sized disk. I went back and gave him the word. We’ll work out transporting the box to the store on Monday.

Then off to the museum to lead a tour. I had about a 18 at the start, dwindling to 10 at the end. There was nobody signed up for the 2pm tour and I briefly considered being a hero and doing a second tour, but I really didn’t feel like it.

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While waiting patiently for Dave T’s new iMac to scan the backup drive I flashed back to an experience in what had to be, 1972 or even earlier. I was still doing software support out of the SF branch office. I had to help a customer in Monterey, CA do some major software install on a 360 with a 2315 disk array. A few days before I had fallen off my bike and dislocated my shoulder so my arm was in a sling and kind of painful. I can remember being very bored and impatient waiting and waiting while the computer initialized a disk pack and copied a lot of data from tape.

So today I was sitting in front of a computer waiting for it to copy a lot of data to initialize a disk and I realized: I’ve been waiting for computers to finish copying files for fifty fucking years!