Friday 03/11/2022
Took care of what felt like a lot of pending business but it didn’t really amount to much. Well, I did finish the tax workbook, uploaded all the files, and turned in the electronic workbook. Hopefully that’s done for the year.
Oh, one of the pending things was to complete the application for a Palo Alto parking permit, through their ridiculously complicated, ugly, and confusing website.
Thursday 03/10/2022
Yesterday afternoon, Gerald, one of the IT staff people, emailed to say that a technician from the auditorium system vendor would come by at 8am today to diagnose the problem with the wireless mics. Would I like to be there? Well, duh.
So first thing I was in the auditorium. The tech was informative and helpful. Unfortunately his diagnosis was that our mixer board was failing and it wasn’t part of the system they had sold. Nobody is quite sure how old it is or when it was bought. He didn’t want to open it up and look; just advised replacing it. Warned that it might fail further, different mics cutting out, maybe during a performance.
He was able to help in another way, though. The whole system runs in one of two modes, auto or manual. In auto mode the mixer board is completely bypassed, and all the mics work. Unfortunately, the only way we had to capture the sound signal, the combination of all mics, for a zoom session, was via the MON jack on the mixer board. So for a hybrid zoom we had to run in manual mode, in which case, some of the mics were dying in the board.
But the tech spent quite a bit of time modifying the system so he could bring out the audio feed in auto mode, so we could do a hybrid zoom without the mixer board.
It’s my personal plan that next week, after the three (3!) upcoming hybrid zoom events, I’m going to take my tools some late night and open that mixer up. Look for the spider nest or leaking capacitor or whatever is causing the problem.
Around 1pm I drove down to FOPAL, checked my shelves prior to the sale weekend, and did a pre-sale count.
Later in the day I printed two more pictures for my picture rails. There are people who walk the halls for exercise and more than one has told me they like finding new pictures.
At 7:30 I went down to listen to classical music by five young musicians from the Music@Menlo organization. They were very skilled, which is no surprise as they are mostly graduates of Julliard and pursuing advanced degrees at various universities.
Wednesday 03/09/2022
Today being laundry day, and me holding the 10am-2pm laundry slots, I took only a short walk in order to back in good time to start the laundry. With the first load drying and the second load started, I went down to get some lunch.
There I was accosted by David G, who wanted my help at 1pm, rehearsing the setup for multi-casting a live and zoom meeting, the Resident Association meeting of next monday. It was already 12, and I didn’t see any open seats in the dining room and didn’t want to wait for service, so I went back to my room and had a Plan B, namely a lovely PBJ.
At 1pm I joined David and helped him set things up and try them out. The final setup is,
David starts the Zoom meeting on his laptop. He takes his video from the ceiling camera, and “spotlights” it, so what zoom attendees see, is the lectern and Carol in the middle of the screen.
From the second laptop he joins the meeting, and its video is the agenda page, which he also spotlights, the now zoom attendees see the lectern on one side and the agenda on the other.
His laptop’s screen output goes into the system to the projector on the ceiling, which shines on a big screen at the back of the stage, so people in the auditorium can see the zoom screen, mainly they can see the agenda points..
At the end of the meeting when the last agenda item is “open discussion” the second laptop replaces the agenda with the webcam, so the zoom attendees see the lectern and a wide view of the physical audience.
I had to leave him at 1:50 because I had the RA executive committee meeting at 2. This is my last exec committee meeting, as I will be termed-out as treasurer effective next week. There wasn’t a lot of news although there was a lot of discussion.
Now I got an hour break, and then it was time for the 6th floor meeting at 4:45. No big issues there either, but we had good attendance for once, only a couple of people not there. My 6th floor neighbors are a nice bunch of people.
Had supper with Carolyn, Edie, and Patty. Carolyn has just sold her house. She didn’t say for how much, but they had a number of bids. I know it was a large house only a few blocks from Channing House, so I imagine she got at least 2.5 million. She wasn’t broke to begin with, either.
Tuesday 03/08/2022
Went for a walk in the morning. Attended the writers group at 10:45 although I had not written anything. The prompt, “something had to be done”, evoked several interesting responses from others.
I see that I was supposed to do something at 4pm but I didn’t. Had a nice supper with Susan and Harry.
Monday 03/07/2022
I had an appointment for a cardiac ultrasound at 8am. I also wanted to touch base with Ian, who was going to do an auditorium event at 11am. I knew he ate breakfast in the dining room early, so at 7:30, on my way to the basement for my car, I stopped off at the dining room — but he wasn’t there yet.
So drove to PAMF and had my chest ultra-sounded. Very relaxing, lie on your left side while the tech runs a cold gooey sensor over your ribs. It was done by 8:45 so I drove back to CH, ran in, and called Ian. Of course this proved unnecessary as he had everything in hand and was totally on top of the job.
So now I could go to my main job of the day, FOPAL, where this is the last few days before a real sale weekend, the first in months. There were I think two sale weekends last fall, after Delta and then it was shut down again for Omicron. I found another 10 boxes of computer books waiting to be triaged. Over the next four hours I went through all of them. The proportion of “keeps” was low, I shelved maybe 1 in 8 and sent the rest to the bargain room to get $1 if they could, or be recycled if not.
It’s interesting how donations ebb and flow. For a while I got so many books about compilers that I started a special shelf for them. That’s dried up and now I am getting lots of books about medical data processing. Just depends on who’s retiring and downsizing, I guess.
I walked out of dinner. I went down at 6. It was Italian night — the chef has been doing a different regional cuisine every day for weeks now. I chose Veal Saltimbocca, which is a veal cutlet wrapped in prosciutto, the thin-sliced ham. The presentation was nice, very professional looking, but the food itself was bad. The veal was tough as boots, I could barely cut it with my table knife, it was red in the middle, the ham was paper-thin as it should be, but also paper-crisp. I took two bites and excused myself and left.
Sunday 03/06/2022
At noon I headed out. First to FOPAL to try to mail the manual that sold yesterday. But the building with the mailing equipment was locked and nobody was around. I’ll have to do it tomorrow. Then I went to the museum to lead a tour. Tours are supposed to be 10 people max due to covid safety rules. I started with 10 but several more attached themselves so I ended up with 18. I ain’t telling people to not follow me.
On return at 3pm it was just time to start watching the PAC12 tournament championship game, which started at 2:45. Stanford’s opponent, against all expectation, was Utah, who had upset Oregon Friday. Utah started strong. The game was tied at the half and Utah went ahead by 1 early in the third quarter. Then Stanford opened a 9-point lead, and in the fourth quarter just pulled away to win by 20. Undefeated in conference play.
I didn’t like the look of the dinner menu so I went out. Walked four blocks and on impulse turned in to Il Fornaio, upscale Italian place I’ve not been into for years. Had a delicious plate of pasta and a beer.
George has offered his iPad to be sold by the gift shop if it can be cleared of personal info. The Tech squad delegated me. I had George leave the iPad in my cubby. Picked it up on the way back in tonight. It took maybe 5 minutes to reset it to factory specs. I spent more time cleaning the folding cover it came in.
Saturday 03/05/2022
For the first time in weeks, I went out in the morning to the farmers market and got a “chocolate hazelnut swirl” from the baker.
I picked up a package on the way back. It was from House of Hobbies and contained a can of what I hoped would be exactly the right color for the 57 T-Bird kit that has been sitting in my closet for a year.
So I opened the kit. The first step was to find all the parts that would need to be painted body color. I’ve learned from experience that this is fundamental. You get all the body parts; you painstakingly sand and fit them so they all fit smoothly and don’t have any mold marks or flashing. (Because once they are painted, you can’t do any sanding or other changes.) When they are perfect, you paint them and set them aside.
Unfortunately this kit, which is from a reputable kit company, AMT, is not very good. One key part, the windshield trim surround, was broken. One piece, the panel that closes the butt end of the car below the trunk lid, was warped and stained and didn’t want to fit. The gap where it met the tail fins would have to be filled with putty. Most important, the chrome ring that makes the taillights look like rocket jets, was simply not there. It was in the plan but not in the parts provided (and I checked carefully, many times).
There were other problems, for example although the kit provided for opening doors and hood, which is cool, it did not provide separate windshield wipers. The wipers were just molded into the hood, which makes it very difficult to make them stand out from the body. How can you have separate door handles and mirrors, but not wipers?
Anyway, I finally convinced myself that this kit can’t be built to my standards. After the MG TC and the Beetle, this was a big letdown. I’m going to give it away.
Bert, who coordinates the Tech Squad, is getting bombarded with help requests from people trying to use the Palo Alto parking permit site. I have not yet managed to get in to it. It claims my account has been registered, but it has never emailed me my account number. Three times I clicked “forgot account number” and three times it cheerfully said an email with that info had been mailed to me. No email has arrived. It’s a massively disfunctional site, just a disgrace.
I had an eBay surprise. I listed another Xerox Alto manual, a really rare one. I set the “buy it now” price to $70. I sent an email to the guy who bought the last two, and posted the listing. To my surprise, it sold in four hours. Not to the user I had emailed.
Friday 03/04/2022
Still not feeling 100% when I got up, but improved through the day.
The City of Palo Alto used to have a simple Residential Parking Permit (RPP) program. There was a simple online signup, or you could go to City Hall, and you got a sticker for your back window, and then you could park on the street in the Downtown area for more than 2 hours. For a small added fee you could get a “hang tag” that a visitor could put on their mirror. I got my sticker in 2019, and then through the pandemic they kept extending the time it was valid, up until now.
March 1, they have a whole new program. No more stickers; license plates will be read electronically and checked against the permit database. Permits and hang tags both now cost $50 each. Well, so be it. But the worst part is that the way to get a permit or tag is only via a new web portal which is absolutely the worst-designed, most user-hostile, web design ever. Absolutely horrible to try to use especially by a person uncertain about computers and with not-great eyesight. Which is most people at Channing House.
Why do Channing House residents need parking permits? We have secure underground parking. Well, one, not all of us do. There are some holdouts who feel affronted at paying $65/month (soon to go up to $90) for the parking garage. But the main reason is that Channing House uses the spare hang-tags for visitor and employee parking. We residents are encouraged to purchase permits so we can purchase hang-tags, which we can give to the management, who will reimburse us.
So a whole slew of seniors, some of them very savvy and experienced users (like me, Craig Allen, a few others) and lots of them not so much, are butting heads with this vile reeking dumpster fire of a website. And those who fail, call the tech squad.
I have not yet succeeded in getting into the damn portal but today I got dispatched to help someone who has. Joanne’s only problem was that, where she was supposed to upload a picture of her drivers license (yes, they want you to do that, along with a utility bill) she couldn’t figure out how to get the picture as a JPEG to upload it. I solved that pretty quick. Discussed it at supper with Jerry and Betty. Jerry is a highly skilled computer user and is having trouble with it.
Never mind. Stanford Women played in the PAC12 tournament semifinal tonight and beat the Colorado Buffs handily. Which was satisfying because the last two times they played the games were very close and very physical. We out-bufallo’d the buffs this time, maintaining a 9-12 point lead until the 4th quarter and won going away, by 24.
Thursday 03/03/2022
Felt close to normal when I got up. Went for the standard walk and it was ok.
On return to CH I went in the auditorium and checked out a variation on the problem with the wireless lapel mics where mics 6-7-8 were silent. Yup. This is a software problem. Changing the mode of the system brought the sound back on those mics.
Later I made a little spreadsheet to document my charitable contributions, and filled in the first quarter, about, of the accountant’s workbook. Should be able to finish the taxes next week.
At 2:30 the Stanford women took on OSU in the PAC12 tournament. They played a lot better than in the prior two games and led from start to end, by 10-15 points.
Wednesday 03/02/2022
When I rolled out of bed I staggered. Touch of vertigo, not bad, not crippling, but enough to make me feel unwell. Later in the day it only showed up as, whenever I bent over and stood up, that caused nausea.
I went for a moderate walk early on. Did some computer work, paying a bill etc., but napped and read most of the day.
About 3, David G called from the auditorium. He was practicing setting up a zoom and it wouldn’t work with his Macbook Air. I brought down my Macbook and demonstrated that the exact same setup worked for me. Only real difference was the level of the OS, he had stayed on Mojave, and concluded he needed to update.
He also reported that the lapel mics were not working. After he left I investigated. There are four wireless lapel mics, numbers 5-8 on our mixing board. #5 actually did work, although it was crazy loud, I had to turn its level down to 20% to avoid feedback. Mics 6 7 and 8 were clearly working to a point: when they were on, the little green pilot LEDs on the #6, 7 and 8 mixing controls would blink. But no sound from there. The controls for them and for #5 were set exactly the same.
In the evening, blasted through the first games of the PAC-12 WBB tournament.
I had signed up to go to Shustek tomorrow, but learned that Gretta won’t be in, and the opening I signed up for shouldn’t have been open. This is actually a relief. I expect to feel better tomorrow but still, I’d like the option of staying home and doing quiet things. Like taxes.
Codgerville 