Tuesday 08/24/2021

Aerobics class was slightly delayed owing the leader being a bit late. From that I sat down to the monthly concert by Stephanie Trick and Paolo but had time really for only half of it before it was time for the writers group. I didn’t have anything to read, but was entertained by some of the others.

Straight down to FOPAL for a long stint, processing several boxes of books and getting a start on a planned triage of several shelves, prior to rearranging some shelves when I have a little more room.

The dinner menu didn’t appeal (two dishes with beets, give me a break). I debated going out for a calzone but eventually settled on a sandwich and beer in my room. I see that breakfast tomorrow features waffles, so I may go down for that, contrary to my usual habit.

Monday 08/23/2021

First thing I walked to PAMF for an 8am appointment with an endocrinologist. This was set up because the person who analyzed my recent CT scan noted a nodule on the adrenal gland, “probable adrenoma”. Dr. Yalamanchi turned out to the the cutest person, a south-Asian (no idea what country that name indicates, maybe Sri Lanka?) woman, small, soft-voiced, but very willing to listen to the me and careful to make sure that I understood everything she had to say.

The “adrenoma” is almost certainly a benign growth, common, not really a concern except that sometimes they can start making extra adrenaline or other hormones. She asked me a ton of questions about conditions that might indicate this was happening, and I was able to answer “no” to all of them. She ordered blood tests, so when I left her, I went down to the lab in the basement and had that blood drawn.

Then off to Peet’s for a nice coffee-and.

Back home I worked on the Chrysler model. I have some new, skinny masking tape which I applied around all the chrome areas on the body. The plan is to apply liquid-rubber “frisket” to the chrome, with the tape keeping its edges nice and neat. Then I pull off the tape and spray primer and color. Then remove the frisket and apply tape again; and apply liquid chrome, restrained by the tape. Then spray clear coat over everything. I can’t really start on that until Friday; the next three days are going to be busy.

I worked on STIP but I am wondering if I really want to continue. It’s turning into a proper book, of which I have completed a first draft of maybe … fifteen percent? In other words, a year-long project at least. For what? Who in the world would want to read a commentary and re-coding of a 40-year-old text?

Sunday 08/22/2021

Morning brought an email from the tech squad, would I help Barbara with a dead Macbook Air?

Around 9am, after I’d read the paper, watered the plants, and done the big crossword, I called her and we met in her lounge, the 10th floor. The Air was completely dead, unresponsive. She said when she plugged it in, the green light came on, indicating a full battery. It didn’t respond to the one trick I knew, to hold the power button down for a long count of 5, which if the CPU is doing anything, will force a power-down, and then you can hit the button again to start it booting up. Nope. So I advised her on where to take it.

Later in the morning Peter called, reminding me I had agreed to help him get a new printer online. So I went to his place and between us we managed to get it properly identified to the system and showed it would print and scan. So that was a success.

As I mentioned the other day I’ve been testing paint on the hood of the Chrysler, and found I need to use primer before the color. I stripped off the paint I’d put on, and sprayed it with a coat of primer. To do that I had to fiddle around with my airbrush, look at couple of YT videos. But got it all working.

Spent a couple hours on STIP. The next program to translate from Pascal to Python is the first really big one. It’ll end up a couple hundred lines of code, I bet. But thinking about how to do it revealed a problem in Kernighan’s design. Well, not so much of a problem in 1980, when things were simpler. I don’t feel like trying to explain it here, partly because I don’t fully grasp it myself yet.

Saturday 08/21/2021

As planned I went down to the southern entrance to the baylands and walked a mile in and back. Lots of pelicans. I had texted Dennis last night but he had to take his car for service so couldn’t join me.

Back at the apartment I continued some experiments with painting the Chrysler model. Learned a bit, in particular I learned that I absolutely must put on a primer coat or the color won’t stick well. I had nice layer of red on my test piece but when I tried using my skinny masking tape on it, up it came. Also learned that I need better masking tape. The Tamiya 5mm (1/5th inch) tape, although made for modeling, does not curve or conform as well as I would like. Ordered some 1/16th inch pin-striping tape.

There was a movie today which I didn’t watch, Marshall, about the early career of the Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall. At dinner I was talking to Helene and Ilse about racism. One grew up on the south side of Chicago, one in Tennessee, so they had seen racism. Helene commented that in her part of town there was one exclusive suburb where you couldn’t buy in if you were jewish, which her family was.

Meanwhile I grew up in white-bread rural Washington. There was nobody of color at Bethel, as of the 1960 Annual (which I just checked; all white faces in all four classes). However I recalled for them how there was, for one year only, I think my sophomore year, a girl from India. I remember her as very attractive, as Indian woman often are, with the big dark eyes and hair. I also remember thinking I would ask her out, and my mother talking me out of it. Or did she turn me down, and Cecil thought that was good and I shouldn’t pursue it?

Friday 08/20/2021

Nothing on the google calendar at all, and no errands to run. Huh. Went for the standard walk first thing. And pretty much played the rest of the day. Did a bit of work on this and that.

I had been looking forward to a bit of an adventure tomorrow. After weeks of tentative emailing, I had agreed to meet Ann for lunch again, and to walk around Marin Art and Garden Center. At the last minute this evening, she begged off as not feeling well. Postponed to 9/4 maybe.

So instead of a nice drive and visit I have an open Saturday ahead. Decided more or less spur of the moment to walk the baylands, with an early start, say 8am.

Thursday 08/19/2021

Ordinarily I would have tried to do the 8:30-9am aerobics, but I had that 9:30 appointment for dental hygiene, you know, rescheduled from Tuesday because I forgot the pre-meds? Which would uncomfortably tight, given the dentist office is a 10 minute walk away. But no problem because the instructor emailed last night that he couldn’t be there this morning. So an easy start to the day.

Dental hygiene went nominally; no new issues with my teeth. I did some good work on STIP if I do say so myself; this project just calls on my two creative talents, writing and programming, so is always fun.

At 1:30 I joined Bert in the auditorium where we went over in detail all the stuff that we wanted gotten rid of so the auditorium could be used for performances again. At the start of the pandemic, and all through it, as staff kept re-purposing spaces, turning rooms into COVID wards and into impromptu office space so staff could be isolated and so forth — every time they had something to move out of a space, it seemed they tucked it into the auditorium somewhere. Now, nobody knows where the stuff came from any more. For example a really nice white-board on wheels, or five (5) floor lamps, all different. A foam mattress.

A little after 2, Victoria, head of housekeeping, joined us as scheduled and we went over all the stuff with her. She’s a very cheerful, can-do kind of manager and didn’t see any problems. She will get some “muscle” to help and meet us early next week some time to move things.

At 5 we had a 6th-floor get-together, mostly to welcome our new “camper”, Jan, who has been displaced from the 2nd floor for the on-going improvements. Wine was provided by Oliver, who doesn’t live on the 6th floor but who has been collecting wine for years, and is now down-sizing, and giving his wine collection to other floors to be consumed. I had a few ounces of a wine bottled in 1970, which turned out to be a dessert wine, lighter than a port but still quite sweet. Two other people tried it and didn’t like it, so everyone insisted I should keep it. So I have this bottle I’ll probably never drink in my pantry closet.

Jan, it turns out, was born in the Netherlands, and came to the US on a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Oregon. Where in Spanish class he met his wife, who was on scholarship from Australia. For a decade around the 60s he managed his father-in-law’s men’s clothing store on University in Palo Alto, and then went into real estate until the 90s, in partnership with one of his daughters the last few years.

Wednesday 08/18/2021

I started my morning walk early-ish and was back by 9:30. Then I went down to FOPAL, figuring there should be some books waiting for me. There were, but not many.

From there I went to IKEA. Over the weekend, there had been an IKEA desk chair up for sale. There are often sales of furniture left by departed residents. This desk chair didn’t suit me, but it inspired me to look at the IKEA online site, and there were some simpler chairs, basically cups on a stalk, that might substitute for the stool I use at my desk. So I found the office chair section and checked them all out and they were not to my taste. So that was a wasted trip.

In the afternoon I added more to STIP. I’m doing good work there but nobody will ever see it, probably.

Tuesday 08/17/2021

Did the aerobics class. Then about 20 to 10 I walked out and 4 blocks north to my dentist’s office, precisely on time for a tooth cleaning. “Mr. Cortesi, have you taken your pre-meds?”

Oh crap. I’m supposed to take 4 caps of Amoxicillin, an hour before any dental procedure. It’s serious business, because my artificial aortic valve is vulnerable to infection, and dental scraping can introduce bacteria from the mouth into the bloodstream. I know this; and I’ve been taking the pre-med before semi-annual cleanings for what, literally the last 20 years. But not this time.

They very nicely rescheduled me for Thursday. Fortunately this week there is no Thursday volunteer day for CHM, so I’m free for it.

This is really a week off; Connie is away so no writers group today either.

I added a new section to STIP. I worked on the Chrysler. I finished (I thought) detailing the dashboard complete with little decals for the instruments and clock. I took a picture

Looking at it with the sharp eye of my iPhone (with a close-up lens) I can see so many flaws. Yeah, sure, the whole thing is about 2.5 inches wide, yeah sure it will be inside the model, only visible if you put your eye up to a side window. Just the same, that’s crap, that is.

Monday 08/16/2021

In my email at 7am I found a tech squad dispatch. Gigi has a problem with email, and wants help right away. After I shower and dress I call; is this too early? No, come right up.

Gigi gets her email using Gmail in the browser (Safari). Sometimes when she clicks on a message title in her inbox, the message opens in what to me is a very familiar format, because I too use Gmail in the browser and have for more than a decade. But sometimes when she clicks on a title, it opens a modal dialog that I have never seen before, a white text window with no controls, no way to reply or delete or print, and no clear way to exit.

I can’t explain it. However I found that if you just click outside the text area, the damn dialog goes away and you are back to the normal inbox display. So that’s her work-around, just click the thing away and try again. Likely the next time you click on message it will open normally.

So then I could take my walk. After lunch I drove down to FOPAL and took my post-sale inventory count. Sadly it appears that my section only sold 16 books over the sale weekend. Over the next couple of weeks I plan to get rid of a lot of non-selling books.

In the evening I got word that T-Mobile has had a major data breach, with stolen data including everything needed for identity theft: addresses, SSNs, phone numbers. I spent an hour going around the three credit agencies ensuring that my credit records are frozen. I knew I had done that, but couldn’t find any paper record of it, or the passwords etc I would have used to set up accounts on Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. Could have swore I had info on that in the fireproof box? I got the first two squared away before supper. TransUnion appears to be down.

Sunday 08/15/2021

Did my usual Sunday morning things: watered the plants, all of which are thriving; did the Sunday puzzle. Then drove to FOPAL to check things out. This is the weekend of the first public book sale in a year. From past experience I know that shoppers usually make a mess of my shelves, pushing books around and reshelving them in the wrong places. So I like to go in the morning of the 2nd day to tidy up and see if there has been some sales.

Well, for the computer section, it looks like a pretty quiet sales weekend. Only a couple of shelves needed arranging. Some gaps, so there have been a few sales.

In the middle of the day I played around. About three I got off my ass and went for a walk. That’s about it.