Thursday 10/14/2021

When I get up, I always immediately take my blood pressure and my oral temperature. My average temperature for the previous week was 97.7. This morning it was 98.4. Huh! I said. Am I sick? Don’t feel sick.

An hour later, as I was about to step into the shower, I noticed I had a band-aid on my left shoulder. Huh? Oh, right! Yesterday I had my COVID booster shot. I think that will do for an explanation of +0.7F temperature. Hey, my immune system is working!

Again I went to the gym and did two rounds of our six resistance machines, 20 reps each round. Followed by 20 minutes riding through a virtual landscape on the cyber cycle.

Early I received an email from Greta, the curator for whom I would normally be working today. She is unwell and won’t be in, so the 4 volunteers that would have gone to Shustek will have to stay away. So I have the day off.

Wanda is coming to clean my room as usual at 2pm. So after lunch I go to FOPAL and work for a couple of hours.

In the evening I watched the decisive Giants-Dodgers game: Dodgers win, Giants season ends.

Tuesday 10/12/2021

Instead of going to the aerobics class, I went directly to the gym in the basement. Here I worked through each of the resistance machines. These machines supply resistance by air pressure in a cylinder. You raise or lower the pressure with buttons on the handles. So I worked out what pressure I could handle for 20 reps, on each machine. I figure in future to do more than 20 reps. Then I finished the session with 15 minutes on the Cyber Cycle.

In the time preceding the writers meeting I did a bunch of stuff. The SWBB schedule is now finalized, and I entered all the games into my calendar. Then I made a table of home games that I meant to share with CHBB, but held that up because I knew the next question would be, can we use the CH bus for transport to games. Which has never been done before; always ad-hoc car pools. So I wrote to Kim Krebs, asking what she thought of the bus, and she promptly replied that I take it up with James Alvarado, but there were problems with evenings (several games) and weekends (several other games).

I had nothing to contribute to the writers meeting, but there were a couple of good things to listen to.

After lunch I spent an hour in the auditorium and succeeded in solving a puzzle. Bert and I had not been able to figure out how to get audio out to headphones from the “MON” jack. I figured it out this time, but it isn’t what I expected. There doesn’t seem to be any way to monitor the actual mix going out to the speakers. The monitor jack has its own level and individual levels from each possible source.

Monday 10/11/2021

What a busy and productive day. For starts, the Resident Association meeting was at 9am. As head of the A/V committee, I pitched for more volunteers. I thought it was a good pitch but alas, as evening comes on, I’ve received no emails from would-be volunteers. This is not good.

Then I headed out to FOPAL where I spent three hours taking care of the post-sale duties. First I counted the books in my section and was able to report that I’d sold 42 books, almost 10%. That’s pretty good. Then I went through all of the remaining books. I marked down some of them to lower prices, and sent three boxes of them to the bargain room as unsaleable. They’d been through at least 3 sale weekends at lower and lower prices, so, out with them.

Back to CH where I met with Lois about a Mac problem. She wanted to be rid of Dropbox. I thought that was easy, per the instructions on the Dropbox site. It wasn’t. They basically said, pull down the menu from the menu bar and select “quit”; then find the Dropbox app and put it in the trash. Easy, right? However, Dropbox.app couldn’t go in the trash because “some of its extensions are in use.” I had to bring up the Activity Monitor, find the process named Dropbox, and Force-quit it. Anyway we talked about her real problems, which revolve around iCloud, which I know nothing about.

Had dinner with new residents Carolyn (my next-door move-in) and Cindy, also new on this 6th floor.

Sunday 10/10/2021

Did the usual Sunday things. Plants, paper, puzzles. Met with Dennis at the new State Street food hall in Los Altos for lunch. Not impressed. Only outside seating, well, that’s Covid (“we’re hoping for January” the waiter said), but they had Mexican music playing on the speakers outside which was not an enhancement to fine dining. Made it hard to converse. Also, only one, (maybe none?) of the multiple restaurants there is Mexican-themed, so why? Anyway food was just ok.

Saturday 10/09/2021

At 9:30 I met with Lennie to go over the interactive online Event Reservation Form she is building. We got to talking about Connie’s upcoming talk and how my plan for a Zoom simulcast, using a macbook air on a chair, didn’t please her because it showed her full height. I confessed that Bert thought it should be done with an iPhone on a tripod as that could move in closer. We decided to go try that out, so we met in the auditorium after I got my tripod and iPhone holder. In fact this did work better. Lennie, who is an experienced Zoom host, started a meeting on her iPhone. We clamped it into the holder and set the tripod 6 feet in front of the podium and it frames up a very nice picture of the speaker from the top of the podium to just above their head.

We called Connie and she came down and tried it and liked it. So that is how we will do it. Lennie will initiate the zoom from her room. I’ll join it on my iPhone on the tripod in the auditorium. She says she knows how, as host at her computer, to “spotlight” one attendee to hold them in the middle of the screen.

Afterwards I walked up to Ace Hardware to get another extension cord, needed to bring power to the iPhone on the tripod to make sure it doesn’t run out of battery.

That took most of the time to lunch. Between a pastry I had at 8:30 and a candy bar I bought at the hardware store, I didn’t feel like lunch. At supper I didn’t care for the look of the menu so decided to go out for … what shall I get… decided, Mexican. Ended up at Palo Alto Sol on California avenue.

edit: about that “paint” — I fiddled with mixing a particular color for an upcoming model. It’s another Chrysler, but I am determined this time, to do the exterior body first. The usual model instructions have you build the engine, sub-frame, and interior in that order, before you do the body. But it’s the body texture and its details (chrome strip!) that have given me trouble time and again so it comes first. When (if!) the body looks right, then I will build the rest.

Friday 10/08/2021

First thing to do this morning was to head down to the PAMF blood lab Los Altos for a blood draw. This is to check up on my metabolic function after two weeks of Spironolactone. The results came later in the day, all the numbers were at the high end of the normal range except two. My BUN was just high, and by GFR was just low. Which means what? Dunno.

I sent a message to DiBiase with my average BP for the week before I started that drug, and the average for this current week. The latter is a bit less than the former, but not enough lower to be significant, in my highly trained medical opinion. Shortly her nurse replied that the doctor would be back in the office next week and would reply then.

At three PM it was time for “Oktoberfest”. This was something our Dining Services cooked up: for the 5 Fridays of October, at 3pm, you can have a beer and a German-style snack. One had to sign up for it, and there is a charge. I didn’t mention it last Friday, when the snack was a quite decent baked pretzel. They are providing German, or anyway European, beers, different each time. Unfortunately only about 8 people signed up, so it isn’t really festive. This time the snack was potato pancakes but they weren’t very good, should have been thinner and more cooked.

At 4pm it was time for Rhonda’s weekly Covid Zoom. No bad news this time; but no real good news either. The public health directors of the 7 Bay Area counties have announce a complicated series of metrics under which they will relax public mask requirements. Santa Clara will probably do so in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately senior residences are also under state mandate, and will probably continue to require indoor masking. However Rhonda promised to have some sort of announcement on capacity limits for the public spaces (auditorium especially) next Friday.

Thursday 10/07/2021

Slept as late as I ever have this year: looked at my watch at 5:45am and thought, OK, get another 20 minutes. And next woke up at 6:40. Also did not do the aerobics this morning. Off to Yosemite at 9am. Where I tidied up a couple of database records, and then helped to pack and store several objects. After lunch, Aurora asked if anyone wanted to do boring database work and, since I had brought my computer glasses, I volunteered.

The boring work was, there are about 16,000 objects in the database that have “redundant child records”. The current system, when anyone edits the Object Name field, creates a child record with the previous name. Some notion of a history trail? The people creating the new database have asked that these be eliminated as it will assist the conversion process. For context, 16K is less than 10% of the total.

A previous volunteer had created a Word document that is simply a list of object catalog numbers for objects with redundant child records. Imagine a list of 16,000, 9-digit numbers,

102610484

102610493

and so forth. So with that open in Word, and the Mimsy database program open, it turns out to be possible do this with mouse clicks and keystrokes as follows. I did this for 3 hours today so I know it pretty well.

1. double-click the next number
2. control-c to copy
3. alt-tab to switch to Mimsy
4. control-v to paste the number in the catalog number field
5. F8 to perform a search
6. take a sip of tea while the search completes
7. click three lines down on the first child record
8. shift-F12 to delete the child record
9. Enter to confirm delete child record
10. repeat from #8 until all child records gone (typically 2-4)
11. F10 to save the record
12. F7 to start a search
13. click in the catalog number field (preparing for #4)
14. alt-tab to switch back to Word
15. repeat from #1

I am going to bring my earbuds next time so I can listen to music or a podcast while I do this.

Wednesday 10/06/2021

Went for the standard walk. Messed about reading. Sorted my laundry and right after lunch, started it.

At 2pm I went up to the 8th floor for the RA executive committee meeting. Nothing very shocking today. Rhonda mentioned that the second floor work is ahead of schedule and everyone from there will be back in their apartments by the end of October. I think that means the whole huge years-long upgrade project will be over by November. This will surely be a huge relief for all the staff and the Board, and for the residents generally. There’ll be a major party I’m sure.

Two shipments came in: two pairs of trousers from Lands End, and the pair of Pikolinos shoes that I believe I mentioned a few days ago. The shoes were correct, identical to the pair I already have. I was a little surprised at how they fit. Three years of wear stretch the leather. But I’m wearing the new ones now and they are just right.

Tuesday 10/05/2021

Today was the second event I was supposed to do A/V support for. But more, because I knew that George, who supervises the First Monday Book Talk series and finds speakers, is not really capable of the rest of setting up the auditorium. I knew that the speaker, same guy as last time, wants a lectern for his notes, and a whiteboard. And I was obsessively concerned about this so I decided to forego morning aerobics and go and set up the auditorium at 8am. Ridiculous, I told myself, for an 11am event. Hah!

First thing I found when I entered the auditorium was that the chairs were still in the disarranged state they had been left after yesterday’s flu shot clinic. Second thing was that when I moved the lectern into place and plugged it in to one of the outlets set into the stage floor, the light in it, a little brass goose-neck thing, didn’t come on. Oh dear. I presumed the bulb in it, and odd tubular shaped bulb (later I learned it was a T10 shape), was burned out. Do we have a spare?

But the third thing I found when I went to turn on the audio system was, it wouldn’t come on. A little investigation and I found that the tall rack of equipment in the stage left wing area, normally a tower of green LEDs, was a dark monolith. No power. Panic.

I went out to the front desk and asked the lady there to ask housekeeping if they could please put the chairs back where they were supposed to be. Then I dithered a bit, and wrote an email to Vanessa, head of the IT department, asking for urgent help with the audio. But then I bumped into Paul, the main IT tech, who was just passing through the auditorium. He immediately shifted from whatever job he had been doing, to the dead audio rack. He realized it just had no power, and made a call to Facilities.

Meanwhile I went to the 11th floor to get the small self-contained lectern there. It contains its own amp and mic system, so it would do, presuming that I could plug it in. I brought it down the elevator and rolled it up the backstage ramp and plugged it in to the stage outlet. Nothing. So whatever power outage affected the audio system, also included the stage outlets. By now a guy from Housekeeping was tidying up the chairs. Great service!

Just then two guys from Facilities walked in, and in a few minutes had isolated the problem to a breaker in a breaker panel tucked away behind the audio rack. The rack stuff lit up and also the stage floor outlets came to life. Thanks guys!

So I verified the audio system was working, and laid out the two mics to use for the book talk. Then I took the little lectern back to the 11th floor, and in the process barged right through an exercise class that AJ was leading via Zoom. Sorry, AJ!

Back in the auditorium it was now 9:30 but I had everything set up, except that all the dry erase markers on the whiteboard were dried up. Hell, I’ve got time. I got my car and drove 2 miles to Staples, and bought a pack of dry erase markers and brought them back. 10am and everything is set for our speaker. Who arrived at 10:30 and all went well.

After lunch I decided to go give my section at FOPAL one last pre-sale check. Good thing I did. One thing I wanted to check was the value of what I thought were two original Windows 95 intallation CDs. Some might remember how Windows 95 install CDs were distributed in a sealed cellophane packet through which you could see the warning, “for distribution with a new PC only”, and an official looking certificate of authenticity? I had gotten one of those and another sealed envelope with a cryptic label about WIN 95/WIN NT, in a donation box.

I had put them on the shelf with prices of $5. But then I got to wondering, maybe they are worth more? So I took them off the shelf and over to a computer and started googling. Sure enough, similar unopened Windows CDs were selling for $10 to $40. But then, I happened to flex my sealed package and it bent. There was no CD inside, it was just the “install guide” booklet. Junk! And the other envelope? I decided I had better open that, and it wasn’t from Microsoft but some third-party add-on software on a 3.5-inch floppy. Trash!

So a good thing I checked and didn’t try to sell them.

Back to CH in time for a special CEO’s open meeting on the dining services. I haven’t written about that since April, when we kicked out Sodexo and started our own in-house system. It has had some ups and downs since then, and recently they began cutting back because they were spending over budget. So today was a presentation from the chef and the manager on what they’ve done and are doing, followed by a lot of questions from residents. I don’t want to try to summarize 90 minutes of that.

Monday 10/04/2021

This is the week leading up to FOPAL’s monthly sale, and time to tidy up my shelves and take a pre-sale count. Looking at Tuesday’s calendar, it looked crowded, so I decided to do that job today, and in fact to do it without taking a walk first, as FOPAL (I tell myself) counts as exercise. So at 9am I set off in the car — and got about 5 blocks and remembered, dang it, today is the day for the in-house flu shot clinic, and the 6th floor was to be called around 9:30. Woopsie. Turned around and went back.

I was actually called about 10:30. Went down to the auditorium, got my shot, and headed out for FOPAL. Finished up my work there at 1:30. On the way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought a 6-pack of Anchor Steam. Carrying that on the long walk from my garage spot to the basement elevators, the handle of the 6-pack was cutting into my fingers. While waiting for the elevator I tried to transfer the 6-pack to my other hand, and dropped it. Straight down onto a tile floor.

Only one bottle broke, putting beer and broken glass between the doors to elevators 2 & 3. I sped up to the first floor and told Ethan on the desk. He picked up a walkie-talkie thing and called “Lulu” who turned out to be one of the housekeepers. She showed up in a minute with a pan and a mop and in about 3 minutes had the mess completely disappeared. So up to my room with my five bottles of beer.