Tuesday 02/22/2022 (TWOSday)

Went down to the gym first thing.

At 10am I had a Tech Squad date with Sandy to investigate a problem with her TV. The sound drops out at intervals, and she has to power cycle the TV to get it back. Except she is using her Comcast remote to do that, which also power-cycles the Comcast box. So which one to blame? I couldn’t resolve that. She will take pains to power cycle specifically one or the other next time it happens.

At 10:45 the writers meeting started. This was an important one, where the group was to decide how to organize given that its founder and longtime leader, Connie, wants to step back from leading weekly meetings.

Unfortunately I also had a date to meet a person from the IT staff in the auditorium to further investigate the problem with the audio mixing console. I signed into the writer’s meeting on my phone for a few minutes around 10:50. Then Gerald of IT came in and we fussed around with the system for half an hour. Gerald took it on himself to try to contact the vendor.

So I joined the meeting around 11:30. I carefully didn’t volunteer for anything as I’m feeling a bit over-committed these days, with CHM coming back.

Had a pleasant lunch with three neighbors, the first time in many weeks I’ve actually sat at a table in the dining room and conversed with people.

After a nap I decided to get the coffee I forgot to restock when I was at FOPAL yesterday, when I could have stopped at Peet’s right then. There is a nearby Peet’s at Town and Country, less than a mile away, so I walked there, bought coffee, walked back. Exciting times.

Monday 02/21/2020

First item of business was to walk four blocks to the dentist’s office for a semi-annual tooth scraping. Make my teeth sharp and pointy, my neighbor Dr. Margaret says. Sometimes I think six-month call-backs are more for the sake of the dental business than for my dental health but…

After that I headed down to FOPAL. Without lunch. I went into the dining room but there were no servers around and I didn’t feel like sitting and waiting for service so I just went. Parked at Piazza’s next to FOPAL, went in, bought a tuna sandwich and a gatorade and lunched in the car.

Processed 6 boxes of books. Shelves getting a bit crowded so did some triage, sending things that had been sitting for 3-4 months to the bargain room.

Among the books waiting for me were some rejects from the High Value group. These have been coming all this month. It looks as if H.V. is cleaning up a backlog. I don’t recognize the books; they are not ones I sent to H.V. Probably my predecessor, Chuck S., sent them, either before I came on in 2019, or while I was in the hospital in 2020.

The H.V. person puts in the book a pre-printed slip “Not High Value” and a list of reasons to check off. One of them was an 8×11 paperback titled Alto User’s Guide published by Xerox PARC in September, 1979. Instantly recognized it; the Alto was a famous computer design — the first ever to have a bit-mapped display with a graphical user interface, the first to use menus and windows — the computer that Steve Jobs saw and blatantly copied for the Macintosh — the computer on which Adele Goldberg and Alan Kay developed Smalltalk. Reason checked was, “no market”. Well I just sold two very closely related Xerox PARC pubs on eBay for $50 each. I’m pretty sure the same guy who bought those, will want this.

Back home, a note from our IT Tech Paul. I had emailed him for help with the audio mixing console (see 3.079) and he replied suggesting we meet tomorrow. Good. Although I’m not sure he understands that system any better than I do.

Sunday 02/20/2020

Today’s main activity was to go to the Computer History Museum and lead a tour. Although this was the second time (see 3.062) since the pandemic, and the second time with my new, slimmed-down talk, it was a first in that the Museum is now really open and the tourists were real visitors. It went well, and again I finished in 50 minutes. I think I can add back a couple of things.

On return it was time to watch the Stanford women play Oregon. Stew had organized an 11th floor watch party and it was only 1:15 so I’d only missed the first quarter if that, so instead of watching my DVR I went up there. Which was fun, watching the game with half a dozen other fans.

Stanford looked like they were suffering an emotional let-down after Friday’s game, where they clinched the PAC-12 regular season championship. They trailed from the start, behind from 5 to 12 points the whole way into the 4th quarter. With 5 minutes to go they got some defensive stops and a few points and the game was tied60-60 with two minutes to go. It remained tied for another minute and a half. Only with 36 seconds left did Stanford get a bucket-and-one. The Ducks just couldn’t get their last couple of shots to go in, and Stanford squeaked out a win. They are 15-0 in PAC12 play with 2 games to go.

Saturday 02/19/2020

About 8:30 I realized I had no plans at all for the morning. I could take one of my usual walk routes, or I could start the tax workbook. Or I could get the heck out of the apartment. Good, but where? My mind did the magical thing where all kinds of quantum possibilities weave around the synapses and coalesce into a decision: Walk The Dish. Taking Lyft.

The Stanford Dish is a big radio telescope antenna in the hills, and the Dish walk is a very popular paved walking trail that starts and ends at a gated trailhead where there is limited parking that is always full. But I just hopped out of my Lyft, sneered at the full parking spaces, and walked on in. The walk is a bit under 3 miles, with several long uphill grades. It felt harder to do than I remember my last time around (which was day 2.173, May 2021).

The scheduled activity for the day was to meet with Jerry, Ian, and David M in the auditorium to try to actually set up a Zoom simulcast. Which, over the course of two intense hours of fiddling and debugging, we pretty much did. One problem was that suddenly and for no obvious reason, the audio mixing panel wasn’t working. But much progress was made, thanks to Jerry’s research into the camera system and David M’s expertise in hosting Zoom meetings.

Friday 02/18/2022

Took a shortish walk in the morning. For much of my free time this day, I was engaged in trying to arrange things via email. Different things: a meeting of the AV committee, a trip to the City to see a concert, etc. In the course of this I killed several items on my to-do list.

I noted that today at 2pm was opening day for Stanford Baseball and decided to go. Then I thought to invite Dennis to join me. Which he was able to do. So we watched a ball game. Stanford scored one run in the bottom of the first inning, and that was all the scoring there was, all goose-eggs the rest of the way.

After a few more emails it was time to watch the Stanford Women playing at Oregon State. The Beavers hung around and hung around, Stanford leading by 7 or 9 or so through three quarters, never able to pull away. Then in the middle of the fourth, Hannah Jump hit two threes in quick succession and that demoralized OSU and Stanford ended up winning by 20 or so.

Thursday 02/17/2022

Went down to the gym first thing. Paced myself very carefully. It is really difficult doing exercises when you are on heavy beta-blockers because you get none of the usual signals of exertion, you don’t sweat, your heart doesn’t speed up. You just get a general sense of fatigue at a certain point, and you stop and wait a bit. Annoyingly, the machines usually keep a count of your reps, but if you stop for more than about 30 seconds, they zero the count. No no, I’m just resting, I’m not done…

Off and on through the morning I worked on doing the last bits of the VW model. You can’t work steadily. Once you glue a delicate part on, you have to let it sit and cure for a while before you pick it up to do another part.

Wanda came to clean my unit about 1:30, so I headed out for an hour. For lack of a better place I went down to FOPAL and processed two boxes of books out of six that were waiting. Headed back at 2:30 because I needed to read the material for the 4pm meeting of the Strategic Planning committee. This was where our consultant went through the slides she planned to show to the Board next week and got comments. I contributed a few comments although I mostly sat quiet.

After supper, though, I wrote up three pages of constructive ideas I had and sent them to Marcia, who chairs that committee. Don’t know if they fit what she wants to see.

Anyway, the VW model is done. Parts of it are really good. There are a number of flaws. But from 3 feet away, it looks alright. I will finish with some pictures.

Went for a shorter walk in order to be back in time for my haircut appointment in the again-reopened beauty salon.

After lunch I went for another walk to take care of a couple of errands related to the RA treasury.

Two years ago next month, I and the outgoing Treasurer, Martha Claypool, walked to Wells Fargo and did the paperwork to change the RA account over from her signature authority to mine. Wells Fargo did manage that, although they somehow combined it with my personal account, that is, in order to see the balance or other data about the “Channing House Resident Association” business account, I have to log in to Wells Fargo using my personal user id and password.

(As an aside, I don’t even want a WF account, but years back we acquired a Visa card through Alaska Airlines so as to get extra miles, and it is operated by WF, why I have an id and password–I don’t have any money or other business with the bank. Nevertheless, that’s the id and password that I use to see the RA account.)

Despite the seeming overlap with my personal business, the bank sends monthly statements for the RA account (only) to my address, so that seemed alright.

One part of the RA account is a debit/ATM card used to make deposits. Recently Martha told me that WF had sent a new debit/ATM card. To her. At her address. With her name on it, just like the old one. Not my name, or my address, where they send the statements.

Discussing it with Martha and Lennie we thought it would be a swell idea to move the account somewhere more organized, like for instance SFCU (stanford federal credit union). Marian and I went to SFCU a decade or more ago, when the first of the big banking scandals hit WF.

So today I walked past WF and use the new ATM card to check the balance. That was one of 3 ways the new card could be “activated”. With that done, I continued about 3 blocks to SFCU where I talked to a nice young man about accounts. Unfortunately their business account requires a $2500 minimum balance. Well, we usually have that much, but sometimes might not. If the balance drops below that, “you might sometimes be charged a fee of $7.50.” It wasn’t clear what actions would incur fees. Anyway I took his info on what documents would be required to open such an account, and how the change-over from one signator (is that a word?) to another would be handled. I can’t act on it today; I would need to at least inform the rest of the executive committee. And since I will soon be the former Treasurer, I think I will wait and hand the whole problem to the new Treasurer.

Tuesday 02/15/2022

For some days the sink in my bathroom has drained slow. Not the shower or toilet, just the basin. This morning I called it in to Facilities before heading out for my walk. The guy came a little after 10, as requested. He pulled the P-trap and ran the line with a snake. He was done just as the writers group was convening.

This time our leader, Connie, wanted a discussion about the way the group was run. Having to run it weekly was taking too much of her limited time. She’s trying to assemble and complete a collection of her own poetry and feels her age. We batted it around a bit and the consensus seemed to be, the group was valuable to everyone and should continue weekly, but (somehow, unclear) we could share the leader role.

I had written something this time. The cue was “your relation to numbers” and I wrote about Sudoku puzzles.

I got a call from Gloria; she wants to repeat her talk on Chinese New Year (see day 3.066) for the Palo Alto Women’s Club (an old and prestigious group who own a classic building a few blocks away). They want her to bring her own HDMI cable. She wants to show her powerpoint from her iPad mini. That means, a Lightning-to-HDMI adapter, the one kind of HDMI adapter I don’t have. No time to order one, her talk is tomorrow at noon. After discussion I sent her off to the Apple store to buy one.

After supper I took her my 12-foot HDMI cable and we tried the setup with her TV and it worked like a charm. I was relieved. It’s really incredible that you can just hook an old iPad mini to a TV and boom, there is its screen on the TV. And when you start a Powerpoint slide show and it automatically takes over the whole screen… so many layers of tech by so many different designers and it all just works.

Monday 02/14/2022

I didn’t go for a walk because the residents association meeting was at 9am. Instead I made up my mind I would attend the Spokane NCAA regional, to which Stanford will surely go, likely as the #1 seed. That’s March 25 and 27. I was pleased to find that Alaska now has a nonstop SFO-GEG (Spokane’s airport code). The 3 or 4 previous times I’ve gone there we always had to change planes either at SeaTac or at Portland. Anyway, I took a deep breath and booked an actual flight. I also decided that I would not attend the Final IV in Minneapolis. It’s likely but by no means certain that Stanford will be in that, and if they weren’t, it would be a dreary trip. Drearier because it’s the weekend after the Regional, so either you fly home and turn around two days later and fly out; or you don’t go home between but spend 2-3 days sitting around in a hotel not able to go out because of snow and temperatures of 8-10ºF. I’ll just sit home and watch the TV.

When I went to booking.com to get a hotel I found most Spokane hotels are full for that weekend (well, duh) but got a reasonable stay at a La Quinta.

This was all so fascinating I almost forgot the RA meeting but got signed into that only about 4 minutes late. No real news here, other than the announcement of the candidates for offices for next year. Next month they will be voted in. Nominally anybody can put themselves up for an office but there’s no competition. Instead a nominating committee goes out and solicits people to serve. So the slate the nominating committee puts up, is always the ones elected.

There’s a 2-year term limit so I am termed out as Treasurer. In March I will have to train my successor.

I did an hour work on the VW model. I took some pictures so I could brag on the fine detail. First I assembled the tail lights. Two tiny clear lenses, which I had to paint the insides of in two different colors, red and amber, and then glue onto two tiny chrome bezels.

There is an error in the model itself. They give us some nice license plate decals, but the license plate holder on the front bumper is sized for European plates and the decal doesn’t fit.

Probably I am going to cut that plate off, make up a new one from some scrap plastic and glue it on. Or possibly trim the ends of that one and add a 2-millimeter strip on the bottom. This is why these models take so much time, if you try to do them right.

Anyway, I also started an email conversation trying to schedule a time for me Jerry and Ian to go into the auditorium and once for all make the camera and audio work with zoom. Also with Joanne asking her to shift her Tuesday tray distribution from 5pm to 6pm. Also with Karen who wants help showing a movie on Saturday. So I feel like it was a busy day.

Sunday 02/13/2022

Did my usual Sunday morning things. Also paid a couple of bills and added a couple of bits to the VW. Also wrote a nasty note. I had received a mailed promotional “survey” from some outfit calling itself Trident Cremations (an obvious attempt to rip off the reputation of the Neptune Society), supposedly requesting opinions on cremations. So why not just trash it along with all the other stuff I throw away? Because the pricks had addressed it to “Marian Cortesi” at this address. So these creeps have probably been trawling through the Cal DMV records and picked up where her name is still on our car registration as one of the two owners. I hand-wrote on their form, Thank you so much for reminding me of the death of my wife who died in 2018 and never lived at this address. I’m sure if she were still here she would have scornful things to say about your sleazy marketing methods. When I put it in the business reply envelope I noticed that the return address was not Trident Cremations in California, but some crematorium association in Chicago.

At 11 I drove with Lennie to Maples pavilion for Stanford v. Colorado. Of the four or five who have been car-pooling, Martha likes to walk to day games, David G. went on his bike, and Patty opted to go to the ballet in SF instead. So just me and Lennie.

Stanford was bothered by the Buffaloes’ pressing and energetic defense. They maintained a slim lead until near the half when Colorado actually got ahead by 1 point. Whatever Tara said at half time worked, because in the second half Stanford re-established its lead and extended it to win by 20 or so.

This was the day of the Superb Owl but my interest in it was of a size that if you put it in the navel of a gnat, it would rattle around.