Went for the benchmark walk in the morning. Felt fine. Then to the Event Coordinators meeting. When that was over (no real news or discoveries) I went off to FOPAL.
To save time I took some food from the “grab and go” refrigerator. I am disappointed by the provisions in this area lately. No bananas. Only one type of sandwich, roast beef. I was driving down Middlefield trying to eat my sandwich and it was pretty bad. Although the roast beef was sliced very thin, it still had bits of stringy gristle that were impossible to chew.
At FOPAL there were ten boxes of books waiting by my section. I spent two hours processing five of them. I shall have to go back tomorrow.
Leaving there I bought a few grocery items, and drove to the post office to buy stamps. The self-serve postage machine gives you holiday-themed stamps. The final stamp from my prior batch was also a Santa stamp. I must have bought those last Christmas and they lasted all year. Now I have 30 more Christmassy stamps which will likely last to next December.
After my usual Sunday morning stuff I pottered. Worked on polishing the VW body, a multi-stage process. The plants didn’t need much water, shows the effect of lower temperatures. The hummingbirds, on the other hand, were in a mass feeding frenzy on my sugar water, again probably a result of lower temperatures. I shot a short video of it. WordPress won’t let me embed it, but you can click this link to see it out of my Dropbox.
About 2:30 I went to set up for today’s Sunday at Home talk, by Walt, a resident who keeps bees. He has had hives behind his Palo Alto home for decades, and while he rents out the house, he has retained the bees.
Stew, who organizes the Sunday at Home series, had prepared some short videos. He also wanted to do a zoom simulcast. So this was complicated, with one laptop looking at the stage and another laptop showing the visual aids on the big screen, and also sharing its screen with the zoom session. And a couple of mics. I had been antsy about this production for a week, and I’m very glad to have it over with and no big mess-ups.
Oh. The internet. It just keeps getting more amazing all the time. How amazing? OK, we are waiting for people to dribble in (nobody comes on time for one of these) and Stew, killing time, says, does anybody know any bee jokes? I lean over to the laptop in front of me, the one whose screen is mirrored on the projected screen at the back of the stage. I bring a browser to the front and in the address bar type “bee jokes” and hit return. Instantly a dozen hits. I open the top one and just that fast, we start reading bee jokes aloud. I mean, they aren’t great jokes, but it was literally less than 10 seconds from question to answer.
Fiddled around in the morning doing this and that. Well, one thing of note: sat down with Charity Navigator and made donations to the list of charities I curated last year. To get all my donations into the tax year.
In the afternoon was SWBB against Tennessee, nationally televised on ESPN2. Seeing how they played against lesser teams (UC Davis, UOP) I had predicted they would at best squeak out a narrow win here. In the first quarter the two teams seemed well-matched. In the second quarter Stanford went nuts and ran up a 20-point lead. After the half, in the third quarter, they went 8 of the 10 minutes without a score and let Tennessee come back to within 3 points. Then in the fourth they found their stroke again and ended up winning by 6.
Tuesday they play South Carolina, who they beat by 1 point in the Final Four last spring, so you know that SC will be motivated. Again on ESPN2.
Nominally an open day, nothing on the calendar before a 7pm concert. Still, I was busy with little things, sending emails to various people and reading online and such. One thing was to get and print and really study the manual for the video recorder that the contractors installed in the auditorium. But I couldn’t get into the auditorium to play with it today.
Left at 5 to have a burger and shake at Gott’s, and then to the concert. Voices of Music, classical stuff, in the First Congregational Church, one I’d never been in. My goodness they must have a half a block of land, some parking lot but the rest modern buildings of all sorts, classrooms and a giant sanctuary with a snazzy organ about 50 feet high.
Unfortunately I found the music really boring and I left at the interval. One problem was that somehow I had gotten shivery-cold (could it be a large chocolate shake, ya think?) anyway just couldn’t get comfortable and the music did not distract. Home and early to bed under my poofy duvet.
About 4:30 pm I happened to glance out my window to the east and saw:
I wish I had noticed it about 10 minutes earlier with the moon not so high.
Made myself hit the gym at 7:40 for resistance exercise. Then headed out for CHM work, the last of the year, this time at the Yosemite warehouse. There I was assigned to repack this object.
It’s a semicircular array of small vacuum tubes all wired up to vertical bus wires. It was a logic module for the ILLIAC I. Ten years ago, when it and a dozen like it were moved from Mountain View to the then-new Yosemite warehouse, they were packed in non-archival cardboard boxes which are now starting to fall apart. So this is probably not the last one I’ll get to repack. I made custom hunks of foam to stabilize it in a new box, all acid-free materials of course.
Another fine object came in last year and only today was being unpacked It’s an exquisitely detailed model of an IBM 1401 installation.
Pencil is really seven feet long. No, wait — normal pencil, tiny little machines.
Unfortunately it had suffered some shipping damage. However I understand the maker of the model is local and may come by to repair it at some point.
Back home by 4:15. I had to leave at 6:30 to pick up Jean and attend a play at the Bus Barn. I thought, phhhht no problem, and went down to get some dinner at 5:30. Unfortunately we seem to be a bit understaffed in the dining room. At 5:50 I hadn’t even gotten a glass of water or given in my order, so I apologized to my table mates and got a sandwich from the grab-n-go and ate in my room.
The play was Every Brilliant Thing, here’s a review that describes it well. An important feature of the show is that the solo performer calls on audience members to play with her. “Excuse me, sir, would you mind being my father for just a second?” and drags some guy up on the stage. The audience members so treated tonight did not include me or Jean, although we were asked to sit in the front row and be an elderly couple in a hospital waiting room. That was easy. But at least three were asked to improvise characters for several-minute scenes, as the lead’s father, school teacher, and lover. The people chosen stepped up and did very well.
Today was the day for the holiday music event, for which a lot of people have been practicing for a long time. It all came off very well. Here’s a pic of my view from behind the sound control desk.
I didn’t realize Peter had stepped into my shot. The odd spidery splodge above Peter’s head is one of Jerry’s three cameras, well, phones, taped to the column. The chorus sang well, the flautist and clarinetist played well, Arlene is actually a really good pianist. This was the morning performance. The hand holding a program in the lower left is Ian’s. Ian very kindly agreed to run the AV for the evening performance so I could go to the basketball.
There wasn’t a lot of “running” to do. There were two microphones for specific performers to use, the one on a stand in the left center, and one lying on top of the piano. To save the performers having to remember to switch the mics on and off, they were on all the time, but Ian or I at the board would only un-mute a mic when a performer was ready to talk into it. That was the only actual duty, turning those mics on and off, plus setting things up beforehand and putting away after.
At 1pm I had a haircut appointment with Leah. Then I ran my laundry, finishing up only half an hour before it was time to join three other fans to ride to the basketball game.
The game was uninspiring. Again Stanford played decently, but again they should have dominated a lesser team, in this case the UC Davis Aggies, and didn’t. They never trailed and won by 20, but it should have been more. They are off next week for Tennessee and South Carolina and I think unless they pick it up a lot, they are going to get their butts handed to them there.
OK, it looks like I went to bed last night without doing a blog post. Funny. Thought I did. Well…
Monday 12/13/2021
Residents Association meeting at 9am. I gave my treasurer’s report. Afterward, went down to FOPAL for the post-sale cleanup and cleanout. Sent four boxes of books to the bargain room because they had been on the shelves for at least 3 sale days and been reduced in price at least once.
Tuesday 12/14/2021
Went for a walk, on damp sidewalks after two days of real rain. Here’s San Francisquito Creek after a lot of rain.
Then it was time for the writers group. I had written on the history of the Pearl Harbor attack, as instructed by our leader.
At 2pm it was time for the technical rehearsal of the big chorus event which happens tomorrow. Ian and I worked out microphone placements and levels and it should all go off well. The choristers, plus 2 soloists, plus a flautist and a clarinetist and also the harmonica group, were all prepared.
Went down early to FOPAL to tidy my section. Shoppers are so messy. Returned; did the Sunday Puzzle; and at 11:15 met with David G., Martha, and Patty to ride to Maples Pavilion in Patty’s car for a basketball game.
This was against the UOP (Stockton) Tigers, who gave Stanford a decent game although Stanford never trailed and won by 20 or more. Stanford hasn’t begun clicking as a team yet, though. They are individually good but they do silly turnovers and mistakes.
I had a nap about 3pm and when I woke up, I had the answer to the problem of representing the welting on the VW model. This is how to convincingly show the black vinyl(?) strip between the fenders and body, and the taillights and body.
I had tried drawing those black lines with a narrow pen and couldn’t get it right. My hands aren’t steady enough, or skilled enough, to maintain a smooth curve, or I jerked a little and made a blot. Whatever.
I woke up thinking, I bet thread would do it. I have some fine black thread in my sewing supplies. I have clear acrylic paint, I bet it would work as glue. So I cut a piece of thread and saturated it in the clear paint and gently laid it on and pushed it into place with a small paint brush. It worked!
It’s better than I could do with a pen, and it has a 3D shape. Next step is to cover the body in clear acrylic and polish it.
I also spent a couple of hours following up Adam Savage’s picks for 2021. It’s interesting how he and I are interested in the same general topics, but we disagree on liking particular books or channels.
Parenthetically: I watch YT videos now more than I watch regular TV! I have subscriptions to quite a few channels, so I check in each day and find, aha! so-and-so has posted a new video. I only added a one of Adam’s YT picks to my list of subscriptions. He failed to mention several I watch and think are superb, like Project Binky or Sampson Boat.
In books, he, like so many nerds, is a huge fan of Andy Wier’s Project Hail Mary, which I liked but found many, many annoying flaws in. However, in the comments under Adam’s video, other viewers name a lot of interesting stuff, and from them I got pointers to a couple of books I added to my Kindle.
Pretty much just puttered around doing nothing. Went for two short walks, chatted with Dennis for a few minutes, and had dinner with some 6th floor neighbors.
Went for a walk, which felt fine. Then tried drawing the black lines of the fender welting (I think that’s the right word) around the fenders of the VW. It came out crap. I suck at this. The tiniest jiggle or blot destroys the look. I stopped after half a fender and began painting over what I’d done.
At 1pm I met on a tech call with Margaret. She is still trying to get her Apple Calendars to sync between iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. After fiddling and bumbling around, I happened to notice that the three devices were on different networks. This is likely the issue. I wrote down all the info she needs to take to Craig, our ClearPass guru, to get all on the standard ChanningHouse-Resident network.
At 4pm I met with Cindy because Bert couldn’t get her Purple Air (see purpleair.com) air monitor to sync with her iPad or MacBook. I was very confused by this, but managed to get her air monitor registered with the maker and she got an email from them saying it was registered and reporting air quality to the cloud. It would not show up on their map but maybe it will tomorrow.
At 5pm I was killing time for what I thought was a 6pm dinner, when the phone rang. It was my hostess Susan saying, we’re waiting for you. It was a 5pm dinner. This was the monthly special chef’s menu dinner on the 11th floor and it really was pretty good. Five courses delivered separately, main course lamb chops on a bed of risotto. Good wine.
Finished dessert just in time to grab my coat and go downstairs to meet with Patty and go attend a concert at Stanford. A jazz trio doing the music of Vince Gerauldi from A Charlie Brown Christmas. They opened with Linus and Lucy, which I would not have known by name, but just the opening chords are instantly recognizable when you hear them.
The leader told some stories about the TV special first aired 50 years ago. When the show was previewed for CBS execs the week before it aired, they hated it. No stars (child actors did the voices), animated (should be on Saturday morning with other cartoons), a jazz sound track, and OMG no laugh track. Fortunately they didn’t pull it and it was an immediate hit.
Codgerville 