Monday 03/21/2022

Started with a standard walk. Back in good time for the 10:30am meeting of the event managers committee. Before that I called Stanford Tickets and ordered my all-session seat for the Spokane regional. It sounds as if they will be able to give me a good seat. We’ll see.

Yesterday, and I can’t believe I didn’t write about it, came an email from administrator Yadira, to me as AV committee and to Pam as Events committee head, saying that staff would like to get rid of the responsibility for the CH Zoom account.

They created a professional level zoom account back at the start of the pandemic. They have closely guarded the password to that account since. When an event manager wants to do a big meeting — say, David G wants to start the Resident Association meeting, 2nd Monday of every month — they have to call a staff member, who logs in to Zoom with the secret email and password, creates the meeting, and then makes the event manager the host. The staff member can then go on their merry way, while the event manager conducts the meeting as host.

Now they want to be rid of this responsibility, and apparently also rid of the $800 a year that it costs, for a pro account plus the right to have more than 100 attendees. So today we discussed this at the event managers meeting. It was settled that Events could in future pay for the annual cost of a zoom account, although finding $800 for the first year, now when some of their budget has already been spent, might be a problem.

Again, this is all due to how Channing House events are all resident-driven, not staff controlled. Including the costs. Each year the Events committee asks the Heritage Fund for what they estimate to spend for the year on museums, speakers, etc.

What wasn’t settled was who, or how, the new account will be managed, that is, who will be responsible for starting meetings when needed while keeping the account credentials secure? I am carefully not volunteering myself for this.

Meeting over, I headed down to FOPAL and spent 3 hours processing books.

After supper, it was soon time for the talk by Judge Cordell. John did a great job of running the zoom, which was available to a long list of other senior residences, although in the end only about 60 people joined the meeting, and some of those were from Channing House.

An innovation here was, for the first time, John allowed Zoom remote attendees to unmute and ask questions vocally, rather than restricting questions to the chat window. I had feared doing this would start a horrible feedback loop. It did not, and I’m not sure why. The remote person’s voice came out of our auditorium speakers, and it should have been picked up by the lapel mike Judge Cordell was wearing and sent around again. But it wasn’t.

Sunday 03/20/2022

I kind of messed around doing my usual Sunday things, watering plants, big crossword, and so on. At some point I took a mile walk. I had planned to attend a zoom meeting, which I thought was at 3pm but when I checked in at 3, it was just over.

So, at 5pm it was time to meet my carpool and head for Maples for the second round of the NCAAs, Stanford vs. Kansas State. K State played tough the first half, and the game was tied 30 seconds into the second half. Then Stanford exploded, outscoring Kansas in the third quarter 32-15 and taking the game over. A few minutes into the 4th Stanford was ahead by 40 and Tara sent in subs. This was sparked by Lexie Hull who had a 36-point day and got a standing-O when she left the floor.

So, tomorrow I can call the ticket office and get seats for Spokane. My flight is on Thursday afternoon.

Saturday 03/19/2022

Today was mostly devoted to the annual Channing House Board Retreat. I was invited (required) to go as a member of the Strategic Planning Committee, because the whole purpose of this retreat was to work over and prioritize the S.P. goals that the committee (in reality, its chair and its consultant) had prepared.

The retreat took place in the large meeting room at the Mitchell Park Library. This library complex was rebuilt and renovated a few years ago. It now incorporates a large modern library, a cafe, and a bunch of meeting rooms for community use. We were to arrive by 8:30 for a light breakfast and start work by 9. I rode with Joanne, who is the incoming treasurer for the Resident Association (replacing me), and Lennie, who is the incoming R.A. Vice President.

The day was pretty well organized. 25 or 30 people were there in all, maybe 5 members of staff including CEO Rhonda, four members of the actual Board that governs CH, me and Martha and Marcia of the SP committee, and the new RA executive committee. We were divided into 4 working groups at four round tables, each table with a Board member, a staff member, and 3-5 residents. There was a lengthy list of possible SP goals to hash over and prioritize, divided into 5 general goals. Two groups took them 1-5 and the other two went 5-1, so we wouldn’t all get tired on the same set of goals, as Rhonda said. It took all morning. We had a working lunch at 12, sandwiches and drinks while continuing to talk, then there was a wrap-up, and the residents were dismissed at 1pm. Staff and Board stayed on for their business.

I chilled for a few hours and then it was time for dinner with the people involved in tonight’s talk: Sally the speaker, Stew the event manager, Stew’s wife Kathy, and me and Lennie again now as the technical staff to bring off a zoom simulcast.

Which we did, it all worked. We had only about 14 zoom attendees and about 35 live audience. Sally gave a really interesting talk. For a number of years in the 90s and 00s she was an interim president at three different small colleges, one after another. She explained why and when a college would need an interim president and how she got hired to be one the first time. She was a success there, and on the strength of that got hired to the next and the next, each time helping to repair and reorient a school that was in trouble for one reason or another. These were small denominational schools, one Presbyterian and two, Catholic. In the Catholic schools she helped them get used to the idea of having a lay president, after generations of being run by Sisters.

Here’s a typical story. At her first school, a student complimented her saying “You’re different.” How so, she wondered. “You leave the lights on in the president’s house, and it’s so cheerful.” Turned out, the previous prez, who had left because of a no-confidence vote by faculty, was frugal, and always turned off the lights when she left a room in the house, so it was always dark. Sally hadn’t known that, and “I needed the lights on because it was a strange house and I couldn’t find my way around in the dark.” So what came naturally to her, was seen as a symbol by the community. Just a bit of luck.

In the question period she was asked about our local Santa Clara University, where they have recently hired their first female and first lay president. Sally said, “yeah they had to, they’re running out of Jesuits.” A fun talk and a really impressive biography. I’ve often noted how this place is full of over-achievers.

Anyway the technical part worked fine. I had a few scares setting up, things not seeming to work and me fumbling around, but the actual event came off perfectly, and now I’m off the hook. David M. has an event tomorrow afternoon, and John runs the Cordell event on Monday.

Friday 3/18/2022

Went for a standard walk; it was fine.

At 10am I had a rehearsal for the event Saturday evening. This will be a “Sunday @ Home” which is a series of talks by residents on their life experiences. Stew is the event manager. Sally is the speaker for this week. Lennie got roped in to help with the zoom simulcast from the auditorium.

This is the first one of these simulcasts I will be responsible for. I’ve seen David M. do two, and David G. do another. The stress level is very high because it is complicated to set up. In this case, more complicated because Stew had put out advertisements (on the email BB and posted in the elevators) with a Zoom ID that was based on Lennie’s personal zoom account. Which meant that she had to be the one to sign in to Zoom to create the meeting. So this is the setup:

I put my old Macbook on the control desk by the stage, and plugged into it, the USB with the room audio. Lennie creates the Zoom meeting from her own laptop. I join the meeting from my laptop. She makes me the host. Now as host I can “Spotlight” attendees, making them stick for for all attendees.

I have another Macbook, actually my newer one, on which I have Sally’s slides as a Powerpoint file. I open them with Keynote (which opens Powerpoints just fine). From that laptop I join the meeting with my OTHER Zoom account (because if I joined with my usual Zoom account, it would log me out of the other meeting, duh, ask me how I know). At the other laptop I invite that laptop to share its screen. At that laptop I share the slideshow.

Now I put my iPhone on a tripod, facing the speaker podium. From the iPhone I join that meeting, using the zoom name “PodiumCam”. Back to the host laptop, I “spotlight” that user for all attendees. Now what every attendee will see, is the speaker’s slides large, and beside the slide window, a thumbnail of the presenter at the podium. And they hear the sound coming from the auditorium mics.

Now we put a lapel mike on Sally and give Stew a hand-held mic for his introductions, and … it all worked. Took Lennie’s laptop out of the room to check, and yup, audio loud and clear.

So all that was working by noon, tore it all down and cleaned up.

At 4pm I joined John and Francis and Marcia in the auditorium. This was their rehearsal for the LaDoris Cordell presentation on Monday. Similar setup by John, with three (I think) laptops in use plus an iPhone on a tripod for a view of the speaker. And that all worked.

At 5, I and Patty got in my car and drove over to Maples to see the NCAA Regional. Got there for the second half of #7 Kansas versus #8 Georgia Tech. Kansas won. Then #1 Stanford played #16 Montana State and just obliterated them. Stanford’s starters held the Bobcats to a big goose egg in the first quarter. The score was 23-0 when, 1 minute into the second quarter, Montana scored its first bucket. With a 40 point lead, Tara put in the bottom of her bench for the entire fourth quarter.

Got home after 9pm and went to bed.

Thursday 03/17/2022

Most of the day was uncommitted so I decided to spend some time in the auditorium and try to get the technique and setup for a hybrid zoom event worked out. Here I made an embarrassing mistake.

Part of this is to get the video from our one house video cam into the zoom, as the video from the host. We have an HDMI cable with the camera signal, connected to a little video capture device whose output is USB. The USB goes into the host’s laptop. You start the meeting and select “Camlink 4K” as your video in place of your laptop’s builtin cam. Presto, the view from the camera, which is mounted on the ceiling above the audience, facing the stage, shows up in place of the host’s ugly face.

Or not. In my case it showed up as a black screen. I fiddled and farted and then got mad and wrote a rant email and sent it to the list for my AV committee. Five minutes later, Jerry appears in the auditorium and takes a look at the setup, and says, “you forgot to assign the camera to the recorder” and he taps two buttons on the control panel for the system and boom, the video appears on my laptop.

Thing is, I knew that had to be done, it’s just one of the tricky little setup items and I just forgot about it. So I had embarrassed myself to my squad of nerds. Blush.

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Late in the day Yadira, one of the staff admins, sent an email to me and to Pam, the head of the Events committee. I’m not sure I’ve ever mentioned how, at Channing House, there is no staff entertainment coordinator. All the planning for lectures, trips, parties, movies, concerts, sing-alongs, etc. that are the staff of life in a senior residence, are planned and run by residents. So the Events committee is a big deal. Also a big committee because there is one member for each event series of which there are at least 20. Sunday @ Home (residents talking about their experiences), Book Talk (authors talking about their books, I did one of those early on), and on and on.

So Yadira was writing to me as chair of AV and Pam as chair of Events, to say: staff don’t want to administer the Channing House Zoom account any more and would one of our committees take it over. I immediately asked, would staff cover the $200/year price of a “small business” Zoom account, or what? And she quickly replied, no, it should be covered by Events, or maybe by the Heritage Circle.

Fortuitously, the Events committee has its monthly meeting this coming Monday. So we will talk about it then.

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BTW I have immense respect for Yadira, she is a top-notch admin. She’s the one who, back in the summer of 2020, initiated the extensive paperwork to get us Covid vaccine, before any other residence did. We got our first shots in December 2020, months before others, thanks to her initiative.

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The Heritage Circle is a fund established decades ago, that gives annual grants to projects that improve the quality of life for residents. It is run by, and funded by residents. My neighbor Patty, who is on its board, put the arm on me in my first month to contribute a lump sum to it. Which I did, $5000. I believe the whole fund is up over $3M now, and gives out over $50K a year from its interest income. This year one of the grants is buying a bunch of bike lockers. The Events committee usually gets a grant around $10K to fund things like bus rides to events and stipends to outside musicians or speakers. So probably they can afford $200 for Zoom.

Wednesday 03/16/2022

Went for a standard walk first thing. Felt well and strong, yay.

At 10am I held a meeting of the A/V support team in my 6th floor lounge area. We talked at length about hybrid zooms, what we’d learned etc. Yesterday morning I had tested a second way to get room audio into zoom and told them it worked. Later, David M. had tried it and says it had not worked. We also discussed at length what more equipment we need and how to get it from Vanessa, the rather uncommunicative IT manager.

Then we went to the auditorium so I could show them the second way worked — and it did not. What the hell… I swear to god it worked yesterday but today… no.

I am committed to running a hybrid zoom Saturday, David M. on Sunday, and the big Judge Cordell one on Monday.

After lunch it was time for the monthly FOPAL section manager’s zoom. Nothing new there.

Spent the rest of the day being quiet, reading and watching YT videos and real TV.

Tuesday 03/15/2022

Last night I went downstairs to the auditorium and tried out the tech for bringing room audio into zoom, and it all worked the way I thought it should. So this morning while drinking my coffee I wrote to my AV gang documenting that. Later in the morning I went down again and tried out a different and better method, and came back up and documented that.

Then it was time for a meeting of the Strategic Planning Committee, preparing for the Board Retreat this Saturday, which I am supposed to attend. There’s a good Saturday ruined… well, no, actually it could be quite interesting. We’ll see.

Next I joined the writers group in progress. When asked if I’d written anything for them I could honestly say I’ve been writing my ass off, but all in emails for the AV crew.

That over, I got a hasty lunch in the dining room and went to FOPAL where I completed the work that I left unfinished yesterday, owing to not feeling very well then (feel fine today). FOPAL had been deluged with donations yesterday it seems, the sorting area filled with many boxes and bags. So after I finished fixing up my section, which took under an hour, I spent another hour doing sorting. Haven’t done sorting in a while; it’s a fun task.

Then it was time to drive over to meet sister-in-law Jean for coffee, near her church in Mountain View. Pleasant chat reviewing all the various relatives. I meant to ask her about whether she is missing the iPhone I took away from her months ago, promising to upgrade it (I’ve been dithering over that for months). But I forgot to bring it up.

I didn’t feel hungry this evening, anyway had eaten a decent lunch and a giant fudge brownie at Starbucks, so had a minimal cheese sandwich for supper.

Monday 03/14/2022

First thing was the RA meeting, our next big attempt at hybrid auditorium/zoom meetings.

From the standpoint of the about 75 people in the auditorium, the meeting went well. I’m told the remote attendees had bad audio. The only way, I’m told, that David G. could get audio out to zoom was to unmute one of the two laptops he was using, so the room audio could go acoustically through it to zoom. That is not how it is supposed to work! I was there but not directly involved and didn’t realize what was happening.

After the meeting, David G. and John M. worked together trying to solve that problem and tried to get John ready to host the next big deal, Judge Cordell on the 21st. David G. wrote to the AV team that he had not been able to solve the audio issues. I don’t understand the goddam issue. There are not one but two electrical feeds of room audio that could be piped in to a laptop. I need to go down there and do some tests.

After that, I zipped back to my room and made some phone calls trying to get somebody to do simple A/V for the Hearing Support group on Tuesday. They put in a request just a couple days ago — there is supposed to be a month’s lead time for such requests. So I got somebody on the second try.

During these phone calls I got a sudden wave of vertigo. Not bad but enough to make me feel ill. Nevertheless, I needed to go to FOPAL for post-sale cleanup, which I did. Took my post-sale count and tidied the shelves, then came on back and sat down in my easy chair and had a two-hour nap, after which I felt better.

Then I figured out the answer to a nagging problem. The system for online event support, online EPFs (event planning forms) has finally started working. Whenever somebody files an EPF that requests audio/visual support (most but not all of them), I get an email copy. What to do with the emails? In the old days, the EPF was a paper form that I’d get in my cubby in the mail room. Once a month we would have a committee meeting and distribute the EPFs into the hands of the members who volunteered to support a given event. How to do it now?

I had set up an online spreadsheet, a Google Sheet, listing summary info for all the events, and today I realized that you can insert a “note” — any text document — into a cell of a Google Sheet. So now I just copy the contents of the emailed EPF and paste it into the Notes column of the sheet in the row for that event. And it’s there for review by anybody. And the major point, out of my in-box.

Then I wrote comments on Bert’s proposal for video equipment. And that brought us to supper time. I was going downstairs alone, standing by the elevator, and decided on a whim to walk down the hall and knock on the door of Leon and Margaret and see if they were going to dinner. They were, and with Cindy we had a nice table for four.

Sunday 03/13/2022

Read the paper, watered the plants, did the crossword. Now what? Decided to walk to California Ave. Did that, had a pastry and a bottle of juice, decided to Lyft home.

After lunch it was time for the second scheduled hybrid zoom of the weekend. Also run by David M., whose memorial yesterday came off relatively smoothly. This one didn’t.

David M. was at the controls. David G., who will be running the Resident Association meeting tomorrow, and me, David C., and Lennie, another frequent zoom host, were sitting in the front row kibitzing. In the half hour before the scheduled start, David M. and the speaker, Sally, ran through what they would show. First her intro slide, then a video, then back to her slides. It all looked good.

I was watching the zoom on my phone. Lennie saw I was doing that and she got out her phone and joined the meeting. Unfortunately she didn’t select “No Audio” when that choice came up. Having the phone, in the zoom meeting, with its mic on, created a stunning audio feedback loop. Not a simple one. It goes like this:

• Lennie’s voice goes into the iPhone
• With a half-second delay to pass through the internet to Zoom.us and back, it comes out of the host’s laptop
• Which is connected by HDMI to the Auditorium sound system because its screen is being mirrored on the projection screen
• Lennie’s voice comes out of the ceiling speakers and enters her iPhone.

The long delay give the whole thing a pulsing, booming echo and nothing you did would shut it up until Lennie killed the zoom app on her phone.

We thought that was fixed, but then the reverb echo started up again. Everybody denied they were using their phones. Maybe it was David G’s laptop? The echo died out but as soon as Sally started talking, it came on again. Meanwhile, the remote participants were in the Zoom chat saying “NO SOUND”. David M. tried everything he could think of to make the sound start and the echo stop. Finally he got pissed and declared the event was cancelled, we would try again next week.

The dozen people who had showed up to the auditorium wandered away, David M. packed up his equipment, and David G. took over to practice for the RA meeting tomorrow.

At supper, Carolyn commented that at her church (where David M. also goes) the tech committee spends hours on Saturday setting up for the hybrid zoom for the Sunday service.

Saturday 03/12/2022

The main activity today was to lead a tour group at the museum. This was a custom tour, 20 college students from the Silicon Valley Innovation Center or some such. This was a failure, as a tour. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t hold their attention, and at least 3/4 of them had drifted away by the end. I picked up a few ordinary visitors along the way so ended up with 8 or 10 people but it was not a success. I really don’t know what went wrong.

At 3pm it was time for a memorial meeting here. This was unusual; rarely are people who die here also memorialized here. In this case, Vergenia (yes, so spelled) Partington had lived more than a decade here, and died at age 104. Her daughter Karen and son-in-law David M. are also residents, overlapping the mother’s last 5 years or so! Vergenia was apparently well-known here, although I never met her; she was living in the Lee Center before I moved in.

Anyway, David M. and Karen had been working for weeks on preparing multiple videos documenting her life, with lots of pictures, and interviews with her six (!) sisters and her children and grandchildren. David M. has been working extremely hard lately to master all the ins and outs of a zoom simulcast. On his behalf I am glad this is over for him and came off well.

I attended the first half in the auditorium. I learned that the Partington family with its 7 daughters started in poverty, the father a gardener on an estate in Chautauqua NY, and they ended up putting all 7 through college, 3 teachers and 4 nurses I think it came to.

There was an intermission and I went back to my room and joined the zoom side of it just to see how it worked out. There were only 19 zoom attendees, maybe only half from Channing House, while there were at least 50, probably more, in the auditorium. Then there was a reception with some really tasty snacks from our kitchen and wine. I bet Karen and David paid a good price for that support.

Anyway, hybrid zoom worked, all their videos seemed ok, so, good on them.