Tuesday 05/08/2025

For the record I did not go to the gym this morning. I did go to the auditorium meaning to experiment with the new mixer board and get some pictures. I got the pictures but found a couple of issues, which I reported to our IT guy. But I can’t continue my writeup until those issues are resolved somehow. So back to clean up the apartment because it’s housekeeping day, and then spent some time working over some pictures. During the hours standing behind the table at the VCF I got interested in the women I was seeing. Women were (of course) a minority but they seemed to have a certain look. So I started sneaking candid shots with the phone. Phone camera is a great way to get candids, because, you know, everybody is always playing with their phone, right? Which happens to be an excellent camera. Here are a couple of the better ones.

Nerdy women, I love them to the bottom of my sexist old heart.

Then the writers meeting. And I went downstairs and was just going into the dining room with the Allens to sit down when I got a text from Joanne, saying, she was going to walk to the Edgewood market, did I want to join her. Well, yeah, so I told the Allens I had suddenly remembered a meeting, and zipped off to grab a hat and sunglasses and joined Joanne for what turned into a 3.5 mile walk. About 1:20 I remembered that I had a date with Peter and Brian for 2pm to teach them how to show movies. So we had to walk the 1.5 miles back faster than we might have done normally, but no problem, I can keep up with Joanne, barely.

So spent an hour showing Peter and Brian, who are the new self-appointed Tuesday Night Movie Committee, how to show a movie and run the sound system. Later I edited 2 more chapters of Joyce’s book; nearly done with it now. Then supper, and then to see the movie that Peter and Brian had picked to open with, The English Patient. Which is 2:45 long, so finishing at 9:45 which is my bedtime usually.

Monday 08/04/2025

First thing was to meet with the tech from the consultant as he installed our new audio mixer board. It’s an improvement on the old one in a couple of ways, mainly in that the features that were broken are fixed, Bluetooth input and effects. It’s a step back in a couple of minor ways. I need to go back and play with it a bit, and take some pictures, so I can document it for the team. But now I headed out for FOPAL where I knew there were a bunch of boxes of books waiting.

Sixteen of them in fact. It took four hours to go through everything and get my section all lined up and ready for the sale weekend.

Back in time for a short nap and then it was time for Poetry Out Loud, the monthly meeting led by Joanne. In the half hour before the morning meeting I had picked a poem to read, T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. It’s really long but I read the first page and a half, really a fun read. The one part really tells you what the air quality was like in 1920s London, when everybody burned coal for heat.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

Later I helped Patty run a DVD on the 11th floor. Which for once went properly.

Sunday 08/03/2025

Had a good night of sleep. Did my Sunday morning things. At noon, met up with Joanne for a walk. We went to the Stanford Shopping Center to find a nice place for lunch. Really bad planning on our parts! Stanford Shopping Center around 1pm on a Sunday is a zoo. I think every church service in Palo Alto let out at 12 and everyone headed for the shopping center to find lunch. Well we did finally get a decent lunch and had a nice long walk and talk.

Chilled out the rest of the day. Feeling very good.

Saturday 08/02/2025

Like yesterday, out at 8am to pick up Frank and go set up for the 9am opening of the Vintage Computer Fest. At the end they announced the attendance had be 3,800 for the two days. It was crowded and busy the whole time. We went down with 31 boxes of stuff, here’s Fred carrying 16 of them.

Here is Adrian and Frank minding the store, with a typical batch of customers.

We came back with only 13 boxes, so about 2/3 was moved on to new homes. We took in something like $1,400, the final tally isn’t in yet.

At 5pm we started clearing up, packing everything neatly and moving it to Allen Baum’s car and to Fred. Off to FOPAL, unload. I finally got home at 6:30. Rather than eat in the dining room had a PBJ and a coke in my room. So glad that’s over. I have to give serious thought to whether I want to do it again next August.

Friday 08/01/2025

Out at 7:30 to pick up Frank at his house and on to CHM to prep our sale table. Picture later.

Spent the day behind the table, watching people look through our array of old computer books. Took in about $800 for the day. From 4:30 to 5:30 I attended a talk about the very first meeting of the Home Brew Computer Club. Several of the people who organized it and went on to start businesses around making hobby computer hardware, were on stage.

At 6, tidied up the table, tucked a lot of stuff under the tables for the night, headed out. Drove to FOPAL to pick up some things for tomorrow, left Frank there because he wanted to do a couple of things — he is a true hero of that organization — and got home to CH just in time to catch dinner before the 7pm cut-off for ordering. And so to bed.

Thursday 07/31/2025

Hit the gym at 6:15am, so proud of myself. Later got a start on the final AV how-to document, on our microphone system. Then at 10 left for FOPAL where I met up with Frank and began packing boxes of books into Fred. Finally had 19 boxes, so the Forester really is an SUV. The Prius only held 16. (Prius is a stealth SUV.) With help from John and Henry and Jennie we got all the boxes down to the Computer Museum and schlepped them on hand-trucks up to the 2nd floor. Then Frank and I made a start at laying books out in some kind of rough organization, programming languages at one end, hardware at the other. Here’s a picture Henry took about half way done.

We’ve got way more books and boxes of software and shit to fit on the tables, but that’s all right. Oh and then Erik, who organizes the Vintage Computer Fest, came by with two large boxes of books that he thought we could sell. Surprise, one of his boxes had three books by some dude named Cortesi!

Anyway I was back to CH around 4, rather wiped out. Tomorrow we get an early start, finish organizing and laying stuff out for when the show opens at 10am.

Funny, the CHM volunteer guy put out an email looking for docents for this busy weekend. Sorry, dude, I’ll be busy upstairs.

Wednesday 07/30/2025

Tired of trying to think up titles. Also tired of not being able to remember what I did with the day. At one point this afternoon I remember thinking, damn, I have been busy all day and can’t remember what I was doing. Took a walk early. Stopped at Ace hardware to buy a teeny little battery to put in my oral thermometer, which finally died after like 3 years of daily use. Worked on documentation for the AV team, getting that folder of good stuff organized and editing things.

At 3 the Good Times group had a costume panic in the auditorium. My phrase. Stew and Lou brought up all the costumes that had been stored by a couple of decades of drama groups, in a locker in the basement. Lots of wigs and hats and masks and some clothes. The idea was for people to pick out things they could wear in the upcoming broadway show tunes thing. It was pretty funny, a dozen old farts trying on wigs. A picture was taken but not on my phone, thank goodness.

Lecture in the evening, ex-mayor of East Palo Alto, about its history and recent economic recovery. From “murder capitol of the nation” (murders per capita, not in absolute numbers) back in the 1990s, to recently a year without any homicides. New shopping center, new housing, etc.

The talk itself was ok but there were so many AV flubs I was squirming in my seat. Mostly not the fault of the volunteer who was running it. The guy doing the talking constantly fiddled with his mic, making scratching and thumping sounds. And he had a sheet of notes that he kept folding and unfolding, making more distracting noises. And he walked all over the place unpredictably, making the AV guy nuts trying to follow him with the camera. The guy who ran three videos for him had trouble getting the sound to come out, and he turned on these lame Youtube generated captions which lagged 30 seconds behind the voice on the video. We got to question time and turned on the audience mics and immediately there was feedback, at which point I left.

Tuesday 07/29/2025

In the morning I hit the gym at, believe it or not, 6am. Later, before and after the writers meeting, I edited two of my old how-to documents for the AV team, getting them all current and nice. I have one more how-to that I should write and then I will have put all my wisdom in the binder for all to read.

Writers meeting 11, I had nothing, several nice contributions from others, though.

Laundry started at 2.

At 4pm was the monthly AV meeting. Pleasant meeting, mentioned that John is going to do some of the administrivia now. Short meeting, allowing me to get the laundry wrapped up by 5, when I met with Joanne and we walked out to Tacolicious for supper. Our first chance to be together in days.

Monday 07/28/2025

First thing I took Fred and drove down to FOPAL. Stopped on the way to buy coffee. Then two plus hours processing 9 boxes of donations.

Filled the tank of Fred Forester for the first time. Drove home via Safeway to stock up on sandwich makings and gatorade.

At 2pm I had a meeting with a dozen other people to see a demo of a robot. The manufacturer, a French company, wanted input on it for use in senior residences. I had a poor opinion of this thing as I think my neighbors did. It basically can’t do anything useful except to hold a halting conversation. And the “ears” are just stupid.

Next was the Common Spaces Advisory group at 4pm. Nothing special to report there, except I got tagged with an action item, to come up with a furniture list to complete the green room, by the next meeting which will be 9/22.

Sunday 07/27/2025

Watered plants. I am not happy with my plants, or them with me. The Daphne is looking really bad; it had some bug infestation that I killed with Sevin, then some kind of mildew that I killed with copper mildew spray, but it just hasn’t come back very well. Plus the dragon wing begonias that I divided back in February (6.085) have really not come back like I hoped. Just barely hanging on, a few leaves on each.

Walked to the Cal. ave. street market just for exercise mostly. Took a Lyft back, so only 2.5 miles for the day. I have a plan to make up for that tomorrow.

Spent most of the day writing an illustrated how-to document on operating our whole video system. I’m quite proud of the result. This is all part of trying to get the writeups I’ve made over the past four years centralized and edited, so as to get myself out of a job.