Saturday 07/24/2021

I went out first thing to deposit a benefits check and pick up my usual Saturday goodie.

Then worked on STIP and other fun stuff until after lunch.

At 2pm I had a productive meeting with Mary and Lenny over the renaming and rewriting of the ERF. The Event Reservation Form was previously how somebody planning an event, would reserve a space and request help from Facilities, Housekeeping, Dining Services or, most important to me, the Audio Visual committee, of which I am now chair.

Except it isn’t actually used to “reserve” a space, that has to be done by staff. So the least thing on the agenda was to rename it to the EPF, event planning form. My suggestion, adopted.

The other thing was that I had done a rewrite job on the instructions for filling out the form, and Mary who is a good editor, had done a rewrite of my rewrite. (Da Noive! Actually she had improved it.) And Lennie is in charge of creating the “online ERF”, a web-based version of the form. It was a good meeting, we agreed on a lot.

Friday 07/23/2021

There was absolutely nothing in my google calendar for today, and after a busy four days I felt like I’d been given a day off. I went for the standard walk first thing. Then through the day I worked on STIP-IP, which is turning into a bigger and bigger project all the time. And on the 56 Chrysler a bit. And napped and read. At supper time I spurned the house menu and drove to Town & Country for a burger and shake. After that I drove to Bevmo expecting to get my favorite beer. Not finding it, I checked the brewery’s “beer finder” page and no, that isn’t at Bevmo in Menlo Park this week. Oh poo.

That was it.

Thursday 07/22/2021

Did the aerobics class, then hustled to get in the car and get to CHM Yosemite before 10am. We didn’t do much today. Well, we completed the search for the Ferranti plug-board. I first mentioned this a year and a half ago, Day 1.045, January 2020. The Science Museum in London had loaned a piece of an early computer and wanted it back. We’d no record of it, but instituted a search that involved opening every box of a certain size and looking. The search was interrupted by the pandemic with only one aisle to complete and today it was completed. No plug-board. So what does a museum do, when it has officially lost an artifact on loan from another museum? I don’t know.

The following is a picture I took yesterday, when I went to the Club Fox, which is on Courthouse Square in Redwood City. I went early and ate supper at a restaurant with outdoor seating, and from my table I was looking up past some succulents in a planter, at the old courthouse (now a museum).

Wednesday 07/21/2021

Today’s exercise was to drive to FOPAL at 8:30 and work there until 1:30, with a half hour break for lunch. I handled at least 10 boxes of books, moving about 8 boxes to the bargain room stack, shelving about 3 boxes worth. But I left my section neat and tidy and well stocked.

At 5pm I left via Lyft for Redwood City where I had a ticket for Blues Night at Club Fox. I didn’t like the band, Howell Devine, as well as I thought I would. Music started at 7pm. At 8:10 the band took a break and turned the stage over to local musicians for an ad-hoc blues jam. I came on home at that point.

Tuesday 07/20/2021

Between 6am and 8:30, after reading the paper, I wrote a short piece for the writers group.

Did the aerobics class. Killed time until the writers group. I’ll append the piece. The cue this time was “Water”. Just that, water.

At 12 I headed out for FOPAL where I found the computer section had been slammed with at least 10 boxes of donations. I processed four boxes which took all the time I had — I need to be gone by 3pm when they open up for donations. I will have to go back tomorrow and try to catch up.

Yesterday and again today I worked on a program for STIP. This was based on an exercise at the end of Chapter 2, which basically said, “rewrite the program in this chapter to do its work this completely different way.” So I did.

This evening I finished coding it before going down to supper. Then after supper, I ran it. The first test cases worked perfectly! This creates lots of good feelings. Some more complicated test cases revealed two bugs, which I fixed easily.

Here’s my piece for the writers.

---

The first mental image following on the prompt “Water” arose from my childhood. Here’s the setting.

Our farm was served by a gravel road which descended on a gentle grade past our driveway.

The road, like all county roads in western Washington, was flanked by ditches to carry the runoff from the frequent rain. A stream of clear water ran in the ditch all winter and spring, sometimes a trickle, sometimes a burly flow.

At our driveway the ditch passed through a 20-foot cement culvert about 14 inches in diameter. This introduced the magic of all culverts and bridges: water entered on the uphill side, disappeared, and emerged on the downhill side. A floating object could be released at the high end, would vanish, and then would — usually! but only after much more time than seemed appropriate — emerge at the low end. Is it coming? Too long… it must be stuck… there it is!

Right? Tell me you never played this game!

At the lower end of the culvert the water had eroded a little pool which I, aged 8 or 9, would enthusiastically enlarge. On a Saturday morning, after a rainstorm had cleared, I would put on my Christopher Robin-style rain boots and go out to the end of the culvert. For an hour or more I would tote rocks and pull up sods from the adjacent field, and build a U-shaped dam to hold the flow in the ditch. I could build up a couple of bathtubs worth of water. After running a few sticks through the culvert to fetch up in my new harbor pool, I would kick out the center of the dam and admire the heavy whoosh of water escaping on down the ditch.

And then build up the dam and watch it refill. The satisfactions of flowing water are endless.

Wow, Monday just vanished in the haze. Was there a Monday? I have no idea.

All I can remember is, I didn’t like the dinner menu, so I walked over to NY Pizza on Hamilton and bought a calzone. Which was delicious, and also huge so I saved half to eat for lunch tomorrow.

Sunday 07/18/2021

Went for a small walk in the morning. Really had good intentions to do the cyber cycle later, but never did.

Worked on the Chrysler model for an hour. Worked on STIP for maybe 2 hours, which is the most I can spend being intellectual and concentrating, although I love it. Also got online and bought two pair of 511/34-30 jeans in different colors, for half what Levis.com would like to charge.

Had a nice dinner with Jerry and Betty and Margaret.

Oh, and I processed the video I shot last night and uploaded it to YouTube. I made it Unlisted as I am not sure about the copyright status; but here you go. Enjoy a couple of numbers. Also admire my video technique with the iphone.

Stevie’s remark at the start, about “Watching Glenn’s fingerpicking is a freakout”? He is referring to the fact that Houston is left-handed, and plays a standard guitar “upside down”. He just flips it left to right with the result that the fatter bass strings are on the bottom and the higher, thin strings are on top, upside down to what every other player sees. Can’t quarrel with the results, though.

Saturday 07/17/2021

In the morning I headed out for a little retail therapy. First to Stanford Shopping Center, the Levi’s store, where I wanted to verify what I thought was probably true, that a Levi’s 511 jean, waist 34, would fit my somewhat reduced body. Certainly the 511/36-30 pair that I have are too big, but are they 2 inches too big?

I was very pleased to find that a 511/34-30 fits me exactly, like it was tailored. I bought one pair but I mean to buy a few more in different colors.

From there I drove across the bay to a hobby store in San Leandro. I had found it indirectly, when I was trying to locate US distributors for a particular line of Japanese car models. Hobbies Unlimited is in a tacky run-down mall just off the freeway. They have quite a large selection of model railroad stuff, and of aircraft models and military vehicle models. Not so many car models and a very weak selection of paints. But there was one model bought, to add to the pile of models in my closet: a highly-detailed model of an original 1960s-era VW beetle.

Back home for lunch and then, the CH Events Committee ran the movie Nomadland on Zoom. What a downer. Well, it had a kind of upbeat resolution at the end. Frances McDormond deserved her Oscar for this but my my. My book got criticized for being too slow, nothing happening? This was Best Picture of last year and my goodness does it unwind slowly.

At 6:30 I headed out to get a Lyft up to San Mateo to attend a house concert, for the first time since probably 2019? The Quitters, I shot a little video which if I get around to it I will post tomorrow. It’s past 11pm and I need to go to bed. I took a Lyft because I didn’t want to deal with parking or driving home in the dark. But goodness is it pricey. $30 going up, $40 coming back.

Friday 07/16/2021

Went for the standard walk. I thought about doing the cyber cycle instead, I really want to do more of that, but didn’t.

At 11 I met with the other 3 members of the long-form critiquing circle. Not very productive. Well, I was able to give some constructive thoughts to Pru and some minor edits to Peter. I don’t thing this group is going to last.

At 3pm I drove to PAMF (well, I had done a good walk in the morning). This was to meet with Dr. Lee, a urologist, to talk about my kidney cyst. Which when viewed in the CT images, is really awesomely large, like a balloon taking up quite a bit of space in my thorax, pushing my stomach and bowels around. 15cm on the long axis.

His advice, “What I would tell you if you were my brother”, is to let it be. But if it really bothers you, having it drained is a simple and pretty safe procedure. He showed me on the CT, just stick a needle in here in your back, no problem. It might refill in a few months. A much more serious option, which we would not do until you are off the Plavix, is to go in through the front, and cut the wall of the cyst away entirely.

I lean strongly toward having it drained. I just want to find out which of my current mild and variable symptoms would change. So I will be consulting an “interventional radiologist”.

Thursday 07/15/2021

Did the aerobics. Then immediately showered, dressed, and headed out for the east bay. At Shustek I spent my time cataloging donations. I cataloged two modules from UNIVAC-1, then jumped forward 70 years and cataloged a set of Spectacles from 2018. Finally I started on a little cardboard box that contains somebody’s collection of unusual chips. This was one of those donations where you couldn’t just catalog a whole collection as one object; each chip, or pair of them, in the collection was unique. I got through maybe 3 of them and it was 3pm and time to go.

I left early because I had to attend the CH board meeting at 4pm. The Strategic Planning Committee of which I am a member, was presenting its revised Mission Statement. This is pretty much all the work of a paid consultant, and I’m not happy about it. I feel like we committee members were pretty much asked to rubber-stamp what the consultant had done. Meaningful input from us, or at least from me, was not there. So the meeting was not very interesting. I never unmuted myself.

Somehow, writing about everything I did yesterday, I didn’t mention doing the laundry. Well, I did, in between everything else.