Monday 01/03/2022

The big event for today was a “book talk” that was originally to be a zoom simulcast, with the speaker in the auditorium but also on Zoom. However with new restrictions setting a max of 20 people in the auditorium, the event organizer George opted to go pure zoom, which frankly was a relief. That came off very smoothly.

Before the event I finished polishing my proposal for the RA exec committee and sent it off to all committee members.

Which took us to lunch time. This is the first week of a new recipe regime in our kitchen and the chef is trying, I will admit. Despite a critical lack of staff, owing to now three staff members testing positive and quarantining at home. Today was Mexican day with a choice of a tostada and relleno at lunch (two entrees, which is another improvement).

Next down to FOPAL where I didn’t expect to find much, holiday week and all, but in fact found something like 14 boxes of books. I processed about half, and will have to go back tomorrow. But: a big strike! A donor had tossed in a copy of the Bell System Technical Journal Vol. 57 No. 6 (July-August 1978). This was the issue of that journal that announced the availability of the UNIX system and described it in detail. It includes papers by Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson, a paper describing the shell by Bourne (the Bourne shell?) and so on. All the now-famous programmers who created UNIX. I found a single copy on Amazon priced at $2,999. (OK, settle down, it is available from other used book sellers for as low as $60.) That one went in the “high value” box for sure.

In the afternoon arrived an email about a new county health order; visitors must now show proof of a negative covid test, just like for boarding an airplane. A separate email told about the third person testing positive — fully vaxxed and boosted, and having symptoms, just like the prior two. Rhonda is having a special meeting tomorrow. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to hear we are closing the dining room and eating in our rooms again. I hear the Sequoias (senior residence where lots of my neighbors have friends) has closed their dining room.

Regarding restrictions and Omicron, I asked the usual people if they want to ride to the SWBB game Friday night, and two of them expressed doubt about going into a crowd. “May give this one a miss” said one and the other thought likely Stanford would close Maples to audiences entirely.

In the evening I had supper with 6th floor neighbors Margaret and Leon Beeler and Cindy.

Sunday 01/02/2022

Boy I can hardly wait for February 20. Well, after watering the plants and doing the crossword, making it a proper Sunday morning I went for a bit of a walk. First I ordered my lunch for takeout, which we can do. At 11:30 I picked up my lunch and took it to the 11th floor where I put the PAC-12 Network on the big TV.

The Stanford Women had had a quiet weekend. They were to play at UW in Seattle on Friday but the Huskies had to cancel the game because they had too many positive COVID tests to field a minimal team. So now Stanford was in Pullman to play WSU. We soon learned that the Cardinal, too, had five players who weren’t available and didn’t make the trip, among them all of the “bigs”. Nobody on the team over 6-1 could play.

Didn’t matter. After a slow start, giving WSU hope that after 69 consecutive losses to Stanford, they finally might get a win. Nope. Stanford pulled ahead by 10 in the second quarter, and in the third exploded out to a 30-point lead for their 70th consecutive win.

Last week Channing House had announced that, owing to staffing shortages, they would no longer provide hot suppers on Saturday and Sunday. Instead, we could order sack suppers and pick them up at lunch those days. This had been the standard for holidays and holiday eves, so that employees could get off early, but now it would be standard weekend fare for the foreseeable future.

Faced with three sack suppers in a row (Friday being a holiday eve), I had proposed to my sixth floor neighbors that we order in pizza Sunday night. Seven had responded. I placed the order for five pizzas and two calzones right after the game, for delivery at 5:30, and it came right on time. Jerry and Betty had invited me to eat with them and Patty in their apartment, so I did and that was nice.

Everybody paid me in cash so now I don’t have to visit an ATM for another six months.

Saturday 01/01/2022

I fiddled around until about 9:30 when I stupidly decided, oh, I think I will go walk in… where… not the baylands, it will be crowded by now… oh, nobody goes to Rancho San Antonio park. So I drive down there and of course, all their car parks are full and there are cars circling the lots. What a dope I am. Of course everybody in the world has started out for a family walk on new year’s saturday morning.

I headed back. Had lunch with Carol Lois and Randy (I think I’ll start mentioning my “social” meals, which I haven’t done before). After, did a bit on assembling the VW. Consulted for a short time with Jerry about his and Bert’s proposal for video equipment.

That’s about it. Mad a sandwich in my room for supper.

Friday 12/31/2021

Went for a walk. Put in good time finishing one of the two proposal documents. Lolled about reading the internet.

At lunch when I should have picked up my sack supper for tonight, I didn’t because I had never turned in my menu selection. Not a mistake; I had deliberately not, figuring, I’ll feed myself, thanks.

About 5:30 I went out in the car to a drive-in restaurant and ordered a large shake and an order of fries. That was supper, eaten in the car. I am not complaining! Nor trying to appear pathetic. It was what I expected and wanted.

Tomorrow starts another year. 2021 was not horrible for me; no need to kick it out and slam the door behind it, like 2020. But no need to weep at its passing, either. Weep at Betty White’s passing, maybe. Not the year.

Thursday 12/30/2021

Started the day with resistance exercise in the gym. Spent much of the day studiously ignoring the two different proposals I started yesterday. However, I had lunch with Lennie to talk about the subscription proposal, especially the Vimeo one. And at 2 I met with Bert and got more understanding of what we should hope for in replacing the mics on the 11th floor.

I forgot to mention that yesterday evening came an email saying that, due to the current spike in covid in the area, we are tightening up. First off, the New Year’s Eve party has been canceled. Also capacity limits are back on the common spaces, max 20 people in the auditorium. Due to that, two events planned for the following week are being postponed.

Then, today came news of a staff member who has tested positive. Fully vaccinated and boosted, has symptoms, however probably no resident exposure.

And an hour later came another surprise: an email stating that owing to staffing shortages, we will no longer have dinner service in the dining room on Saturday or Sunday. Instead they will do what until now, they have only done on holidays and holiday eves: pass out pre-made sack suppers at lunch time, for consumption in one’s room. This will be the routine for weekend suppers for the time being.

Finally, as I was writing this, came an email from Janette at FOPAL saying that the January sale has been canceled owing to the surge.

Wednesday 12/29/2021

We’ve been having an extended period of rain showers. Looking outside at 8am I wondered if I could go for my usual walk and stay dry. I looked at the radar map at wunderground.com and decided that there was a wide enough break between one blob of green pixels and the next blob, so I went, although I carried an umbrella (first time it had been off the hook for a long time). No rain fell upon me. In fact none fell until the late afternoon.

I spent several hours today writing, divided between two proposals. Both arose from my committee meeting yesterday. One, a proposal to replace the obsolete and damaged microphone systems on the 11th floor. That will go to the IT department when I’m done.

The other is a proposal to the Resident Association Executive Committee, that the RA take on the ownership of several related media subscriptions. The XFinity account for the big common TV on the 11th floor is one. Another is the official Channing House Zoom account, the paid one that allows over 100 attendees in a meeting. Third is the CH Vimeo account, where over 100 video recordings of presentations and past Zoom meetings, and a bunch of Fitness class videos, are kept.

Ownership of these accounts is scattered through different departments of the administration. I really don’t know what department or person is paying the Xfinity bill. The Fitness department owns the Vimeo account and has recently decided that residents can’t upload any more videos. This scattered ownership makes it practically impossible to do upgrades, for example adding channels to the community TV system. I’m going to propose that the RA take ownership of all these resident-facing accounts, pay for them (we have more than enough money to do this) and then be free to manage and expand them without having to go through a staff bureaucracy process.

But there are lots of subtleties and gotchas, so I need to talk to some people first.

Oh, and I did the laundry.

Tuesday 12/28/2021

Started the morning with resistance exercises. I have increased the resistance about 5% on several of the machines.

The big event of the day was meeting with my AV committee. We agreed on a lot of things, a very productive meeting although I don’t feel like detailing all the background now.

One conclusion was that we needed enough copies of three keys so that everyone could have them: the key to the storage cabinet in the stage right wing of the auditorium, the key to the green room behind the stage, and one other. I took the action item to get that done, and after the meeting, I went out to do it.

Not so easy. Where do you get keys made these days? As one does, I got out my phone, Maps app, search for locksmiths. First option: there is a chain called KeyMe that has automated kiosks in stores, and one in the big Safeway in Menlo Park. So I went there. Of my three keys, the machine said that two were “unusual” and not stocked in the machine. They could deliver a dup by mail in just a few days. Nah.

Back to the maps app. I went to the next nearest locksmith, on High street. Nope, gone as if it never was. So to the next nearest, on Homer Ave. Again, no sign of it. How often do they update Apple Maps?

OK, two were in Menlo Park, one on Santa Cruz ave and the other around the corner on El Camino. Walked past the address of the first, no sign of it. That’s three locksmith shops that existed recently enough to be in Maps, that aren’t there now. But the next, on El Camino, did exist. They made four copies of each of two keys, but balked at the third, saying keys of this type (the green room key, a proper door key from Channing House) required one to present a letter on letterhead stationery authorizing a duplicate. Oh well.

Walking back to the car I was passing a big Ace Hardware and thought, why not? Do you make keys? Sure! Can you make me two copies of this one? Sure! Nothing about authorizing letters. Just zip zip make the keys, take the money. The moral? Locksmiths follow rules, hardware stores don’t.

Monday 12/27/2021

This morning I went straight to FOPAL at 9am, no walk, shame on me. I finished renewing the shelf labels and process the single box of books that was waiting.

I had a restless night, thinking about the various problems with the A/V equipment around here. This job is turning into a very demanding gig. What with stuff that doesn’t work, stuff that goes missing, and hopeful but unrealistic requests from event planners, and a complete lack of staff communication, I’m feeling a lot of stress. Anyway I went on a tour of inspection, checking out the stuff used for the 11th floor and for the lobby, and finding missing and not-working things. Anyway I am resolved that I am not going to hold this job for more than a year. This time next year I’ll be a committee member but not the chair.

Tomorrow I am holding a meeting of the AV committee, mainly to dole out different events to members, and also to talk about some of these equipment problems. The next event in time is the New Years Eve party, on the 11th floor Friday evening. The committee has some capable members but the most capable are, unsurprisingly, the ones who are also already loaded up with other volunteer activities.

This place runs on volunteer work. OK, seriously, the real stuff like housekeeping, food service, back-office, and building maintenance, yeah, there is highly capable paid staff to do. But there is a whole suite of what in high school would have been called extra-curricular activities, that wouldn’t happen without volunteers. So, whinge whinge.

Sunday 12/26/2021

Quiet Sunday. Hardest work was refilling the hummingbird feeders twice. I finished polishing the VW body and set it aside as “done enough”. I can see lots of flaws in it but when it is dressed up with chrome handles and wipers and bumpers, they won’t be noticed. So I started assembling the rest of the kit.

Mid-morning I went for an easy walk, and got lightly rained on.

Saturday 12/25/2021

I cannot believe I went to bed last night without blogging. Friday just went by in a happy daze, I guess. Nobody will ever know what I did. Including me.

Today being Christmas I actually slept in an extra half hour, til 6:30. Puttered around for a while, then called Laurel and then called Dennis. Dennis had the more exciting news, since he had opted to go to join his various sons in a house at Tahoe Donner, which was being snowed on heavily. Blizzard conditions, power off and on. I’m good with just some rain; no desire to venture into the mountains.

Afternoon, bored, got the car out and went for a drive. At one point I saw the following pitiable sight and just had to circle back and take a picture.

I call it “The Great Christmas Massacree of 2021”.