Tuesday 06/28/2022

Started the day with a frustrating 2 hours in the Auditorium. I wanted to use the cheap little Acer laptop that we keep in a cabinet back of the stage, to test my instructions that I wrote yesterday. It was the only PC I had access to.

Well it is the slowest little slug ever. And old. Some weeks ago, our IT department added a Dell USB Dock and a Dell Monitor to the setup. When they run an event, they connect to the Dock and they are able to see the Monitor as one external screen, and the overhead Projector as another external screen. Actually they mirror those two, with the result that what they put on the Projector is also visible to them on the Monitor. David M. also uses this when he runs events.

I can connect the Dock to a MacBook, and the MacBook sees the Dock as a USB hub. Unfortunately Mac OS does not recognize the Monitor attached to the Dock as an external monitor. It does recognize the Projector as a display, so you can put various content up on the Projector screen, but to see it you have to crane your neck because you see the projector screen from the side.

The dorky little Acer, like a MacBook, could see the Dock as a hub but not the Monitor. So I couldn’t do what I wanted to. Other problems, too. With a MacBook, if you want to show powerpoint slides, you’ve got Keynote built-in. If you want to show PDF slides, you have Preview built-in. With Windows? Not so much. The only PDF viewer is the Edge browser. I tried multiple times to download Adobe Acrobat from the Microsoft Store and it failed every time with an obscure message. To show powerpoints? It seemed like the only choice was to buy a license for Microsoft 365 (aka Office). Well, no; there are free powerpoint viewer apps, but they warn “contain in-app purchases” so will they show ads? No idea.

I contacted Bert who has a better and newer PC and we agreed to meet at 3pm to try his machine. But at 3pm we found the Auditorium in use for a staff meeting.

So that was pretty much a wasted day. I did pay a couple of bills and brought the t-bird to “almost done” state. I also started looking at reference pictures for the next model, a 1953 Studebaker, like the one that Gary Pierce’s dad drove up our road in Washington every day in the late 50s.

Monday 06/27/2022

Took the standard walk in the morning, all good.

Now what? Don’t want to go to FOPAL as I was only there on Saturday and no books will have piled up in a day. If they even do sorting on Sundays. Oh, I know. For some days I have been thinking about writing up clear directions on how to do zoom events from the Auditorium. Three others, David M, David G, and John M, have each worked out their own system for what is an extraordinarily complicated mess of equipment. I need to get more people trained on this, and before I can teach it I need to get what I know, organized. For me, that means, writing it.

So I spent the day, at least 5 hours of it, sitting in my chair doing tech writing, just like in the good old days at Informix or Silicon Graphics. At one point I went down to the Auditorium and worked through a couple of things that I hadn’t understood.

Tomorrow I am going to go down there and set up the whole scenario that I am documenting. I’ll print out what I have, then write notes on the paper copy and be able to do a final version, for the A/V meeting I’m having on Friday. This was very satisfying work.

At one point Patty called and asked to consult with me and Jerry about the H.C. grant request. That is reaching another stage of discussion and she wanted a couple of questions answered. I have no idea what will be happening but I guess we answered her questions.

Sunday 06/26/2022

Did pretty much nothing today. After I’d read the paper, watered the plants, and done the big crossword, I thought, ok, what now. I decided to walk to California avenue — I know, boring, it’s what I’ve done several other times. But I did, and had myself a pastry and a juice, and then, where the last couple of times I took a Lyft back home, this time I consulted with my body and thought heck, I feel fine, and walked home again. Just over 4 miles for the day.

In the afternoon I did some work on the t-bird. One of several things was to make license plates. The kit includes decals for license plates but they aren’t California plates. So I found photos of 1956 Cal plates online. In a photo editor I cloned out its existing letters. I found a font that was pretty close to the letter shapes on Cal plates and typed in “BRD 056”. Then I printed it out at teeny tiny size, and cut them out and glued them to the license plates.

I had a ticket for a jazz concert at 7pm, over on the Stanford campus. At 5pm I drove over there, and found a supper at the student commons. The concert was part of the Stanford Jazz Festival, now in its 50th year, and was a big band of mostly students, or anyway high school and college age musicians. They played a some Miles Davis and Charles Mingus numbers, in other words, not the kind of jazz I like. But they played very skillfully.

Saturday 06/25/2022

My plan today was to get rid of those remaining 12 boxes of books at FOPAL. I started by going to the farmers market and buying a bottle of juice, a giant peanut butter cookie, and some cherries. I hit the FOPAL building about 9 and worked until 12, and did process all the books.

The evening’s activity was to host a small dinner party mainly for basketball friend Harriet, with Jerry and Betty and Gwen from my floor. Very pleasant. I need to host more dinners.

Friday 06/24/2022

I had a commitment to a docent tour at noon, and decided to give myself a lazy morning before. So I hung around fiddling with this and that, including scheduling a meeting of the A/V committee, until 11. Then off to the Museum to lead a small group. It started at 10, but was only 6 at the end.

After the tour at 1pm I drove up Middlefield to FOPAL. Ate some lunch in the parking lot, then went in and processed another 3 boxes of computer books. Despite having done 7 in the last two days there are still 12 left.

About 4pm I decided that I wanted to eat at Casa Lupe on Castro street. I called Patty to see if she wanted to go, and she answered but told me sorry, I’m in Ashland just now. So I went by myself. This turned into a little adventure when I found (as I should have known, actually) that Castro street is closed at Alma street. Like every restaurant district around it converted to street eating and parklets two years ago. But if you are going South on Alma, and can’t turn onto Castro, your next opportunity to turn right is a couple of miles on, at Mary avenue. But from there you can come back along Evelyn, and turn into the parking areas near Castro. Which were almost all full; the street was jumping. However I parked quite close to the back door of the restaurant and had a very satisfactory plate of Chile Verde.

Thursday 06/23/2022

What a productive day this was. First off, out at 7:10 to once again register campers at Tara’s basketball camp. The “day camp”, for younger girls, was Tuesday and Wednesday, except on Wednesday, the Stanford campus suffered a major power outage. Besides basketball camp there were camps for every sport going on, and all of them had to be canceled. It wasn’t certain that today’s camp, the “elite camp” for older girls, would be held at all. However, there was minimal lighting inside Maples, and they decided to go ahead. So once again I was operating a table, this time for names A-E, along with a young woman named Cipria (?).

These older campers were a little spooky to me. These tended to be girls who had legit aspirations to be recruited by a college, and quite a few were tall, over 6 foot, taller than their parents. The thing is, they are very young, maybe 15-16? And they have these delicate child-like faces and child-like body-language, but tall wispy bodies… it must be very strange to be a parent to one of these. Look up some morning and realize your 15-year old is taller than her father…

By 9 they were all checked in. Back to CH where at 10am, Bert and I were scheduled to go into a resident’s apartment and break into her computer. Well, not exactly. But Janet had a stroke and is now recovering (and said to be quite talkative and cheerful) over at the SNF. Her daughter Lesley lives in Ohio. Lesley came out to visit last week, and wasn’t able to get into Janet’s Macbook Air. Janet, unfortunately, doesn’t remember what the password was. Facilities let us into Janet’s unit. Bert got Lesley on a speaker-phone whileI fumbled around with the Mac.

This was an interesting challenge. Janet had been quite tidy and organized, as shown by the notes and receipts she’d kept in a folder labeled “Macbook”. But none of the passwords listed in there worked to login to her Mac. When you can’t remember your login password, your Mac will prompt you to enter you Apple ID and its password. Your Apple ID is for Apple generally, apart from any device password.

We had Janet’s Apple ID, her normal email address. Unfortunately it seems that she’d changed its password, also, not too long ago. I bashed away at the Macbook, trying different variations of the passwords from Janet’s notes alternately on the login screen and the Apple ID screen. Did that one end in Ell Eye ess or Ell ell ess? or Ell ell Ess?

Finally it dawned on me to try the Apple ID on the Apple website instead, using my own laptop. Hah. Apple.com offers a very clear method to reset the password for your Apple ID; you only need the ID (which we had) and the phone number she’d used when she set up the account, which we hoped was her regular apartment phone. And it was. Apple’s computer rang the phone and read out a verification code to be typed in to the web page. And boom, we could define a new password for the Apple ID. That done, I could go back to the Macbook and enter the Apple ID and its new password. The Macbook contacted Apple which again called Janet’s phone with a new verification code. Enter that in the Macbook and it happily let us set a new login password. Job done!

With a major tech challenge conquered, I headed out to FOPAL. I didn’t mention on Tuesday that during that day, FOPAL had received a major donation from the library of Carnegie Mellon U’s Silicon Valley campus. Of which quite a bit was computer-related books. And now there were 17 boxes of computer books stacked up in my section. I processed 6 of them today, and figure to go back tomorrow and probably Saturday.

I omitted to mention something yesterday. Since the TAVR I’ve been taking Plavix so basically my blood doesn’t clot, or clots slowly and reluctantly. Which means every tiny nick is an annoyance that needs a bandaid. Also as I learned a couple years ago that a nosebleed when you can’t clot is a bad thing (Day 1.345 for gory details). So Tuesday morning, half an hour before I was to go down and give my grant pitch, I blew my nose and got blood from the right nostril. How very unfortunate, I said although not in those words. I made a small pad of toilet paper and soaked it in styptic fluid and pushed it up there. But it would take a while to work and I didn’t have a while, I needed to go give my pitch. Oh wait! We will all be wearing masks! I’m saved! So I gave my pitch with one nostril blocked by a toilet paper plug, and nobody knew because I was wearing a mask! Thank you, Covid!

The wad of styptic-soaked tissue did the job, clotting me up nicely and the bleed never developed.

Wednesday 06/22/2022

This morning I was to take the Prius to the dealer for service. I had foolishly selected the first, 7am service appointment. Oh well. That meant leaving without reading the paper or drinking but a sip of coffee. From the Toyota place I walked 1.5 miles back to Philz Coffee, which I haven’t been in since at least 2017, and had a nice sit on their patio with coffee and an almond croissant.

During the mid-day, waiting for Toyota to call, I knocked off several items on the t-bird punch list. When they hadn’t called by 2pm I called them, and the service writer said he’d call back, and didn’t blah blah. So it was almost 4 before I called a Lyft to go down there, and then the Lyft did that crazy thing I’ve seen before, where they have picked the driver and he is on his way, and two minutes before he’s due, they suddenly re-book the ride with a different driver who’s 15 minutes away. I canceled the ride and used Uber instead which wasn’t really any faster but I felt better. Anyway, Prius is back home and in great shape and ready for a road trip.

In between, we had a speaker at 3pm, Don Peterson, who was a partner in the engineering firm that performed the Channing House Seismic Upgrade. This was done between 1998 and 2002, a massive job. I knew it had been done; in fact it was the determining factor in my choosing Channing House. That they would spend $18 million (I learned the amount today) for seismic safety, told me the place was run by a Board that was truly focused on the well-being of the organization and residents, and not on profits.

But I had not realized the scope of the work. The 11-story building had existed over 30 years when they started. They got under it and sank pilings 60 feet down to anchor massive beams. Then the whole building sits on flexible cushions on that beam, except for some outer walls that sit on “sliders”. The whole building is surrounded by a 38-inch wide “moat” and in principle the entire building is free to move 17 inches in any direction. (That means that every pipe and conduit that crosses the moat has to have a flexible U-joint in it to allow movement without breaking.) The building originally stood on 30 or 40 thick cement pillars. Each one of those had a section cut out with a huge diamond saw and a flexible pad inserted into it. It was an awesome job.

Tuesday 06/21/2022

I had to get going early. I was due to join some other volunteers at Maples Pavilion to help register girls for Tara’s summer basketball camp, at 7:30am. There were me, Lily, Harriet, and three others whose names I didn’t get. I was assigned to the “H-L” table. Between 8 and 9am I registered 25 or so girls. See the camper’s vaccination card, see their proof of a recent negative Covid test, give them their name sticker, tell them where to go next. Easy.

By 10 am I was back. Now it was time to meet with the committee that evaluates Heritage Circle grant applications. They were going through all the applicants and had assigned each person a ten-minute slot between 9:30 and 11. I had the 10:40 slot. I had practiced my ten-minute pitch — actually 8 minutes with time for questions after — several times in preceding days. But I changed it a bit on the day. As I was waiting to go in, my neighbor Joan came out from giving her pitch — something about improving food services — and stopped to remind the three of us waiting, that the committee was mostly board members who don’t live here, and don’t have a lot of familiarity with the details of our life. So keep it basic and don’t assume they know everything. A very good reminder.

The committee was friendly and seemed very appreciative of my explanation of our plan for technical improvements in the auditorium.

The rest of the day was pretty easy. I put in another hour on the t-bird model. I can see the end of that project, see it well enough that I made a punch-list of the items yet to do, and it was only one page.

Monday 06/20/2022

Went for the walk first thing. Back in plenty of time to do a couple of things to the t-bird before the Events Committee meeting. When that wound up at 12, I went down to start the the car. It started, which was a small win. Because yesterday, when I parked the car after coming back from the theater, there was a message on the dashboard, “Key battery low” and I couldn’t lock the car. Fortunately I have a second key fob in my desk. But it hasn’t been used in years, was its battery ok? As I entered the garage I clicked the unlock button and across the floor, the car beeped. So that was OK.

I drove to Ace Hardware and bought two 1623 batteries. Then on to FOPAL. I bought some lunch food next door and ate, then went in and processed 6 boxes of books.

Back home, I changed the batteries in both key fobs, and put the one I had been using in the desk, and the one from the desk in my pocket. After that I had a short nap and then it was time to go downstairs for Rhonda’s open meeting. It turned out that this was where she presented the Strategic Plan, developed by the committee I was on over the preceding months. She did a nice job of the presentation, I was impressed by what good work we had done. Not that I feel like I contributed anything much to it.

Shortly after that was over it was time to meet with Jerry Betty Gwen and Caroline for supper. This was nominally to send Caroline off for her ankle replacement, actually day after tomorrow. This will be her second ankle replacement. Apparently she was satisfied with the first one.

By the time we finished eating it was almost time for a concert, jazz piano and vocals by a couple of local doctors. They were really good amateur performers.

Sunday 06/19/2022

Went to the museum at 11 to lead the noon tour. Quite a large group, 25 or more, and I kept the attention of most of them to the end.

Being a holiday, the dining room was closed after lunch, with sack suppers distributed. So again the 6th floor had a group picnic in our dining room. I had to eat fast, as I had tickets for Ragtime at Theaterworks at 7pm. Patty, being quarantined with covid, had given away her ticket to Florrie, and I offered her a ride, so I had company on the trip.

The production of Ragtime was very professional, all the singers spot on and all the stage moves precise. I thought very poorly of the book, just a random string of highly improbable coincidences. No way could that ever happen, I was thinking over and over. But pleasant music.