Tuesday 11/04/2025

I needed to finish up at FOPAL and my only free time was this morning. So at 7:30 I headed out for that. Got all the computer donations processed and the shelves are nice and tidy for the sale. Back by 10:30. Then tidied up for the cleaning lady, and started my laundry. Had lunch while the laundry was running. Got all foldd nd put away by 1:25, just in time to join the new Line Dance class at 1:30. This teacher is quite different from our prior one but nice enough and didn’t give us anything too complicated.

Time for a short nap before I went to the 11th floor to set up the zoom for the “Reimagining Democracy” webinar from Stanford. About 6 people showed up to watch. I don’t have to this for the next Tuesday, the final in the series. It is going to feature Condoleeza Rice and a different group are going to set it up in the auditorium, figuring to get a bigger audience. (I won’t be part of it; I regard Condy as a war criminal in the same bucket as Henry Kissinger.)

This episode was very insular to Stanford, it was all about what faculty and students are doing to improve political dialog at Stanford which sounded all very nice, but having very little relevance to the world outside the Stanford bubble. Grump.

Monday 11/03/2025

Spent an hour going over my talk again, then at 10 went down and set up the auditorium. Sandy ran the AV with a bit of advice from me. So I gave my talk, “1975: the year everything changed” and it was very well received. About 75 people showed up, they listened, they laughed at all the right places, and afterward an embarrassing number of people congratulated me on a “great” talk, “superb”. So I done good. When I have edited the video i’ll put a link here.

After lunch I had time to go down to FOPAL but could only spend 2 hours. I will have to go back, I think probably tomorrow morning, to finish up and get my section sale-ready.

Back in time for Poetry Out Loud at 4. After 5pm I felt tired, so I skipped going down to dinner. I practiced music in my room and ate a sandwich.

Sunday 11/02/2025

Completely clear on the calendar, but when I started thinking about what I needed to do and wanted to do the day filled up. Main activities were, one, to take a good walk, which I did by walking to California ave. to walk around the market. Busy market, but all the good summer fruit has disappeared, just apples now, and pomegranates. 4.4 miles total for the day. Back to CH I read through my talk for tomorrow again. Then lunch. Then a meeting of the good times group to review our last show and plan the next one. Then I took a tech squad call to a lady with a printer problem.

Before supper I put in an hour in the music practice room. After supper I spent an hour trying to find a poem to read for Poetry Out Loud tomorrow. I may end up not going, although Joanne runs it and I want to support. Found one marginally readable poem. But not pleased with the state of modern poetry.

Saturday 11/01/2025

In the morning I put together an advertisement for The Rounder Circle, the group I am promoting to appear next Thursday. I am not sure I mentioned them before?

A couple of months ago (6.285) I took the guitar to Gryphon Instruments. While I was waiting for the repair guy to do his thing, I was listening to other clients. There was an attractive young woman talking about her guitar and explaining that she has a group, she said they were doing “about a gig every week” or something like that. The clerk asked the name, and she said “The rounder circle” and then had to explain how it’s a joke, nothing is rounder than a circle, but it could also be a circle of rounders, old word for wastrels or layabouts.

Naturally I had to look them up (see link above) and check some videos, and figured they would go over well at CH. So I went through the process we have to book musical events, got an ok, and invited the group. They’re coming Thursday night and it was time to put up ads on all the floor bulletin boards. There are rules: half-page size, no sooner than a week ahead. So I printed up 10 copies and went around and posted them.

Then at 11 I got in Fred and drove down to the Museum and led the noon tour. About 20 people at the start, several small kids who dropped off, ended with a dozen. Good tour. Back home for a nap, then took the guitar down to the practice room and practiced my half hour set which actually runs to 35 minutes but I doubt they will care.

Friday 10/31/2025

Took a very pleasant walk with Joanne in the morning. Then settled down to preparing the Keynote slide show to accompany my talk on Monday. Got that all nicely done and practiced reading through the script with the pictures. Still 42.5 minutes, just right.

Did a lot of napping in the afternoon. Dinner. Now realize I didn’t practice my music, gonna do that.

Thursday 10/30/2025

Spent the whole dang day writing and organizing the talk I am to give on Monday. I was very pleased to find, when I wrapped it up and then timed my reading it, it came to just 42 minutes. That’s perfect, an interesting talk (and I really think it will be) and plenty of time for questions.

That’s the text; tomorrow I will prepare the projected slides to go along with it. I have collected all the images, but I need to organize them into a presentation file. A powerpoint except it’s Keynote because I am a Mac kinda guy.

Wednesday 10/29/2025

Spent the morning and some of the evening collecting materials for my talk on Monday. Summarizing, Gigi who organizes the First Monday Book Talk Series asked me to talk about Bill Gate’s autobiography Source Code. I decided to expand to focus on his and Steve Wozniak’s autobiography, iWoz. And especially, on 1975 when the MITS Altair announcement created the whole home computer industry.

Sounded like a great plan in, oh, August. But shit’s gettin’ real now. Gigi has been sending out CHBB emails touting this event and I am afraid I will have a big, expectant audience. So it needs to be good. I took notes on Woz’s book, but I need some more. I spent some time skimming the intertubes for pictures.

At 12 I met with Joanne and we walked to Town & Country for lunch. Her fave spot, Douce France, was jammed, so she suggested Wild Seed, a vegetarian place. That worked out very well.

Here’s a cute thing that happened. We were starting to walk back through the center, holding hands. Joanne as usual cute and smartly dressed, me at least tidy in jeans and a polo shirt and a fedora. Oh, both of us wearing dark sun-glasses, I bet that’s what did it. A lady walking by just burst out, “Well, aren’t you just the cutest couple! So stylish!” We thanked her nicely and kept going. Just a cute elderly couple, that’s us.

At 4pm Rhonda had an open meeting in the auditorium, this time to introduce the name and logo of the new satellite. It is (drum roll please) Arris by Channing House. I’d seen all this last week. The logo is very well done. Joanne doesn’t like “by”. OK, marketing dept. will take that under advisement.

Tuesday 10/28/2025

First thing to do today was to write something for the writers group. I’d stiffed them for 2 or 3 weeks running. The prompt was “title and first paragraph of a novel you’d like to write.” Thrashing around I was thinking about how SF is dead because of AI.

(Any future that a Millennial or Gen-Z reader can conceive, since 2024, has to have AI in it. But if you have credible AI, what’s left for your protagonists to do? Just ask the AI. Makes you appreciate Frank Herbert, when he wrote Dune in 1965 he foresaw this very problem. He made sure that his 10,000 year future would still be human-scale by having them remember a terrible war against the robots, and artificial intelligence being banned. So the desert Fremen can fight with swords in AD 11,000, and we can have a successful movie franchise.)

So I wrote a scene between a jaded SF writer and his agent where they discuss this problem.

Got in some reading and some guitar before 3pm when I had to attend an appreciation fund meeting, requested to do the same magic I had done before, capture the audio transcript and feed it through Claude to get a meeting summary. Speaking of AI. From there to the 11th floor to put the Stanford “Reimagining Democracy” webinar on the big TV. 6 people attended. Then down to dinner, Prue had arranged dinner for our friend Connie, with me, Peter, and Joanne.

After which it was time for the monthly sing-along in the lobby.

Waiting for the Butlerian Jihad(*)

Ryan took a long pull from his beer, placed the glass on the bar with precise care, took a deep breath, and pronounced, “No. It’s pointless.”

Ashley rotated her glass of ginger ale and for the fourth time, lifted the stem of the maraschino cherry and gently let it drop back. “Oh come on, your last two books sold; one was even optioned.”

“Yeah, optioned. Then nothing. You know why? Because the movie dudes see the same thing I do. Science fiction is dead. Killed stony dead by AI.” He pushed his beer glass around a little square pattern and sighed.

“You don’t use AI,” Ashley objected, “Nobody serious does. My staff watches for the slop, they turn an AI manuscript around so fast the postage has scorch marks.”

“Ashley, you don’t get it. It isn’t the writing, it’s the plots! Just by existing, AI has killed SF plots.” He took another long pull from his beer and paused. His agent just looked at him, waiting for him to go on.

“OK, here. First, you can’t read the old stuff any more. Pick any SF book from the last year. Set in the future, right? Except, where’s the AI? Your POV has a problem, why didn’t she ask GPT-19? Zip, no problem. Every conceivable future — any future we can conceive of now, any future that a millennial or Alpha reader can conceive of — has to have AI in it. Which any SF book published before 2024, including mine, does not.” He glared at his beer glass and burped. “It’s like nobody can read Robert Heinlein any more because, good as his shit was, his characters don’t have pocket phones or even computers for fuck’s sake. No, Ashley, to be believable, any SF story has to better AI than we have now. Which means, the characters can solve all their problems by just asking the AI, and you have no plot.” He burped again. “Excuse me.”

Ashley dunked the maraschino in the flat ginger ale again. “OK, wait, how about two AIs have some kind of conflict.”

“AIs as characters? Just shoot me now.”

“Well, no, the AIs are in some kind of contention, different thingies, what’s the word, alignments. And they aren’t the characters, they’re off-stage. The human characters are like, subverted, or co-opted. To do the AI’s dirty work.”

“Huh,” Ryan said, and mused a moment. “OK,… and then the characters catch on and realize they aren’t really enemies…?”

“Right, so they join forces…”

“Hah! And fall in love! But now the AIs are trying to wipe them both out!”

“Sounds good,” said Ashley. “Shoot me a 20-page treatment and I’ll shop it around.”

(*) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dune_(franchise)#Butlerian_Jihad

Monday 10/27/2025

Went early for the standard walk (3.8 mi for the day). Then assisted Ian running a book talk. Drove off right after to FOPAL, 3 boxes, out and back by 2. Stopped at TJ’s to get bread.

4pm the common areas task force. Knowing this was coming, and since there’d been no change in the green room for a month, I went to the green room and shot a short video so people could see how it was cluttered with various large superfluous things that shouldn’t be there. When it was my turn I put my computer on the big screen in the board room, showed the video, and in a calm and constructive way, discussed the issues that needed to be addressed.

The Task Force also discussed at great length the needs of the new satellite campus. I showed the video of the cute Zoox autonomous vehicle and everyone agreed it would be wonderful to have one of those as our shuttle between sites.

Sunday 10/26/2025

Sure, Sunday. Until yesterday, clear on my calendar. Then I failed to get Office working on Susan’s machine, and Ian asked for help with zoom, getting ready for an event he’s to run on Monday. So I met with Ian in the morning. Then a couple hours to myself, and I got in an hour of guitar practice. Then to Susan’s place, where following a good hint from Leah Lin, I was able to get a clean, working Microsoft Office on her machine. Yay me.

Finally dressed up a little and met with Joanne and we drove to Indochine restaurant for dinner. That was nice.