Friday 07/08/2022

Went for The Walk. Right after, I had a date with Lois and Randy to help activate Lois’s new iMac. That took most of an hour but was successful. While the iMac was transferring files from the old backup disk, I helped her identify some stuff that had been at the back of her desk for, she said, years. One was an external hard drive that was plugged in to power but not to the Mac, and was blinking red/blue like it had a problem. I took it away and checked it out later, it was a 400GB drive but it couldn’t spin up. For at least a year it had been sitting back there blinking that it had a problem, and nobody knew. Or cared. Another was a nice powered speaker set, bass and two tweeters, also not connected. And couldn’t be connected because it wanted stereo RCA jacks in. Lois’s “old” iMac, at least 5 years old, behind which the set had been sitting, doesn’t have analog stereo outputs. Maybe her machine before that had, but that was a while ago, and since then, the speakers have been taking up space and gathering dust.

Then I stopped by and helped Dr. Margaret resolve some problems with Mac Mail. I hate the Mail app but everybody else uses it, except it doesn’t do what they want. This was quite a tour through the app’s many settings to get things how Margaret wanted them.

Which brought me to lunch time. Today I met with Patty, Lois, Randy and Mildred. We crammed into Lois’s Prius and off to Mandarin Roots on El Camino, a highly regarded chinese place. We had several dishes, a couple really good and a couple just meh. The point was to check it out for Patty. Her son, his wife, and 2 teenage grandkids are coming to visit next month. They’ve requested chinese and mexican cuisine so Patty is trying everybody’s recommendations.

Nothing scheduled after that. I goofed off in my room, had a PBJ supper, and that was it.

Thursday 07/07/2022

Today’s activity was to take a nice road trip to Carmel with Jean and Dennis. I had to hustle to get my apartment tidy for Wanda’s visit at 2pm, then left at 8:30. I thought I was being clever in adding Ben Lomond as a GPS intermediate destination, thus sending us on a nice scenic run down highway 9. Unfortunately I didn’t check the route overview, and the helpful GPS had routed us over 17 and then back up to Ben Lomond. So we had a fast freeway run to Carmel.

We walked around a bit, looked at the ocean, had a very nice lunch, and headed back. I got back just before 3. Almost exactly 200 miles, 52 mpg. Yay Prius.

Wednesday 07/06/2022

Went for The Walk first thing, fine. Then it was a matter of killing a bit of time until 10:30 when I went to the lobby to await the arrival of my guest, Dan Nitzan. He’s a charming guy who knows a lot and has done a lot in the tech field. (He doesn’t seem to have much of an online presence. Here’s an old interview from 2012 about his fireworks job.)

In person it turns out he is one of those people who has something entertaining to say about any topic, and he kept my group of AV nerds entranced for an hour in the auditorium, talking about our system and what we could do with it, and for another hour having lunch. (Scott would know what I mean when I say he could out-talk our friend Denny Sargent.)

After lunch I triaged some of my plants. Got rid of a couple that were sickly or actually dead, and noted what pots I have available.

In the afternoon I drove down Middlefield to the gas station and fueled the Prius for tomorrow’s outing. Then into the nursery where I picked up a couple of new plants.

There was a memorial reception on 11 at 6pm, which needed a mic, but I had delegated that job to Kass. She called me at 6:30 saying they had 4 people going to sing and they’d like a mic. She and I agreed that our mics don’t work when set back from the speaker, they have to be right by your mouth. But the people who were going to sing insisted, so I went down and got a mic stand from the auditorium and took it up to 11. Set the mic in the middle and instructed the singers to stand close and lean in. Which they didn’t do, so there was very little amplification. From what I could hear, that wasn’t a great loss anyway (he grumped). But Kass thinks we should have a more appropriate mic for this situation. Not knowing what to get, I did the obvious and emailed the question to my new bud, Dan Nitzan. I’m sure he’ll have an answer.

Tuesday 07/05/2022

A day with not much scheduled. I spent some time printing some new photographs for my picture gallery outside my door. The pictures there hadn’t changed in a while. I also reloaded the ink tanks in my Epson EcoTank printer. This was the first time I had done this since I bought the printer near the end of 2019. It has printed maybe 100 big color prints, not a whole lot of text.

I attended the writers meeting as usual, and read my reminiscence about shooting off fireworks in my youth.

I checked with Dan Nitzan, who had tentatively scheduled to visit here tomorrow, and confirmed that, and also reserved a table for lunch. Nitzan is a local expert in AV, setting up systems at local theater groups and churches. He has had relatives at Channing House. Patty and Lennie met him at a Pear Theater fundraising event.

Monday 07/04/2022

First thing I went for the standard walk, which was fine. Not long after my return I went to the auditorium to meet with Ian. Today’s event was a book talk by Prof. Patnode, who has given a number of such talks here. He never has media to project, he wants a whiteboard and a podium and that’s it. So this was supposed to be a simple, audio-only event, which Ian had signed up to manage.

Unfortunately George, the event manager, decided on his own and without consultation, to advertise the event as “auditorium or zoom”. Since it was in the daily calendar, the house email list, and the signs in the elevators, we had to provide zoom support. Which Ian has never done. Hence my joining him. We set things up using Ian’s PC and the talk went fairly smoothly. Actually it went very smoothly for the 35 or so people in the auditorium. One (1) person attended on zoom, and owing to various issues, they got audio problems and video drop-outs and what-not. Every time we do this we “learn something new”, i.e. we fuck it up in a different way.

When the talk was over and the equipment tidied away, I headed down to FOPAL where I had to get my section ready for the upcoming sale weekend. I was back by 2:30.

Laurel had started an email thread reminding me of childhood 4th of July events, which I wrote up for her, and then copied the email and re-edited it to make an essay for tomorrow’s writers group.

Like all holidays, the dining staff prepare sack suppers which we are supposed to pick up after lunch. As has been our custom for the last few months, many of the sixth floor residents gathered in our dining room to picnic on our sack suppers as a group.

Following that, I went down to the auditorium to grab a mic stand, and then up to 11 to help my volunteer Kass set up a simple one-mic arrangement for the 4th of July party. That was all set by 7:15, well ahead of the start time of 8pm.

Back to the apartment where I washed an amazing number of dishes considering I basically have a service for one, period. And refilled the hummingbird feeders and mixed up breakfast shakes for the next four days.

Then it was 8pm. Neighbor Carolyn had an operation last Thursday, an ankle replacement. She is using a wheelchair and I had agreed to wheel her up to 11 for the party, but now I found out that she wasn’t feeling up to it, and had decided to go to bed early. So I went up to the party, had a root beer float, listened to some very amateurish musical performances (well, they meant well and are our neighbors, so no criticism here).

The air was remarkably clear and the sunset light on the hills was lovely. I took some pictures that I need to process a bit. I watched the start of fireworks, then called it a night.

Sunday 07/03/2022

Usual Sunday morning. In watering the plants I am kicking myself for the state of some of them. I have two that really need to be put out of their misery and the pots reclaimed. I don’t feel like gardening today. Maybe Tuesday? Or not.

Off at 11 to lead the noon tour at the Museum. The place was unusually crowded today and I had a big batch of people, probably 35-40, at the start of the tour. Some peeled off as we went along but I still had 25 or so at the end, and got a nice round of applause. So that was nice.

Saturday 07/02/2022

First thing I went for a medium walk and came back through the farmers market. Later I glued the last bit on the t-bird and shot some pictures. My desk is clear again. After weeks of having half the L-shaped surface covered with tools and bottles of paint, it’s all cleared out.

I ordered some more display cases but they haven’t come yet. Here’s a couple of shots of the car.

The proportions don’t look quite right from the side. I think it is a little too low in the back. I tried to correct that but then the rear bumper didn’t fit right. The hood opens to show the engine, I didn’t take a picture of that.

At 1:30 I met with Patty and Lois and we drove to the Pear theater (which is practically next door to the Computer History Museum where I will be tomorrow) to see a play, The Piano Teacher. This is mostly a monologue by an elderly woman, a retired piano teacher, reminiscing, and then trying to get in touch with former students, and then gradually finding out that they don’t remember the past they way she does. Who’s right? Who’s in denial, or fabricating? It was too slow for my taste, almost 100 minutes no intermission, and it was nearly an hour in before anything actually happened. I was mentally disagreeing with the plot most of the way through. Oh well it kept me awake.

Friday 07/01/2022

Determined to get some stuff out of the way and go into the weekend clean. First up: polish my shoes, for the first time in probably a year. Well, it needed doing. Next, down to the Auditorium to try out some things regarding doing zoom meetings. They didn’t work but I learned a couple of things. Then, off to FOPAL. The sale weekend is coming up and my section is a mess. Was a mess. Now it’s all tidy.

Back to CH and resumed work on my writeup on how to zoom. It’s 12 pages long, which may seem like a lot but the whole process is ridiculously complicated. That done I distributed it by email to my A/V people, and shortly after it was time for that committee to meet and portion out the events for next month. I got two, which is tolerable.

I was invited to dinner with the Allens. I really need to invite people to dinner. I am accepting invites but never issuing any.

Thursday 06/30/2022

Tidied up the apartment as usual on a Thursday. Then off to Milpitas for a day of work at the Yosemite warehouse. Actually there wasn’t much to do, mostly because everything needing doing, required curator Aurora’s supervision or involvement and there was only one of her, so we volunteers stood around a lot. I left early.

In the news there’s a shocker: USC and UCLA to leave the PAC-12 conference.

Wednesday 06/29/2022

I did not go for a walk this morning because I needed to do laundry. Ordinarily I’d have started a load and gone for the walk, but our washer has been intermittently acting up and I felt the need to stay close to it. So I supervised the laundry from a nearby chair. That took until 11 because for once I ran three loads. The third was my bathrobe and a floor mat from the bathroom. I’ve been wearing the bathrobe for a couple of hours every morning for three-plus years, so I thought I’d wash whether it needed it or not. <jk>

Then, quickly make a sandwich for lunch and drive off to FOPAL. I needed to be back for a haircut at 2:30. And buy some groceries first. So I had to leave there at 1:30 which meant I was not able to finish all the accumulated books. I’ll have to go back, maybe Friday.

So at 2:30 Leah, the house beauty person, cut my hair. Then down to the Auditorium to meet Bert and watch as he experimented using his big fast new Windows laptop with the Dell Dock. As soon as he connected the USB cable, the laptop immediately recognized the Dell Monitor attached to the Dock and made it an external monitor. That’s what the MacBooks will not do. So he worked through what he needed to do, to show slides for an event. He will shadow David M. for a presentation tonight and he will know what is going on.

After supper I went down and watched the setup for the presentation, and some of the presentation.