Thursday 06/26/2025

(Forget to click “publish” last night)

First scheduled activity today was to board the Channing House bus with 20 other residents to go for a trip to the Computer History Museum. I was the docent for this tour. Unfortunately the museum had scheduled three other tours to start in the same hour. Fortunately I know my talk well enough that I could stall, or speed up to keep from colliding with the other docents. At one point we just skipped around one. Anyway my 20 neighbors seemed to have a good time.

In the afternoon I conferred with Joanne about an insurance issue that threatened our car share deal, but we figured out a satisfactory solution.

Then I joined Gwen and Betsy, mainstays of the Entertainment committee, in going through the two-drawer file of old Entertainment Committee documents in the Green Room. We filled a large box for recycling, saved maybe 5 pounds of paper for Diane the archivist to sort through. She wants the 2-drawer file; she’s going to get it with some possibly valuable material to sort through and discard.

Wednesday 06/25/2025

Took a standard walk in the morning. Did some good things in the rest of the morning and I can’t remember what. At 2 we had the monthly AV meeting. One highlight was the introduction of a new IT staff member, Andrew, a pleasant young man. Another was Tom, who demonstrated that you could get a movie going on Netflix, and project it on the auditorium screen. I had thought you couldn’t; apparently I was wrong, and glad to learn that.

This evening we had a talk by long-time local politician, now retired, Joe Simitian. He gave his analysis of the state of the nation now and how it came about. In a nutshell: 50 years during which

• only the top 10% (never mind the 1% or the fabulous 0.1%) made economic gains, 90% of the population has at best held their position;
• the foreign-born population increased from 4% of the population to 15%

and one party found a way to capitalize on the resulting discontent. In 1970, senators from the poorest 20 states, he said, were mostly Democrats, and senators from the richest 20 states were mostly Republican. This has inverted; today the poorest states are mostly represented by Republican senators, and the richest states, by Democrats. In politics, the candidate that says “I hear your pain, and here’s what we’re going to do about it” has the edge. Interesting and amusing talk by a skilled presenter.

Tuesday 06/24/2025

First scheduled thing today was to meet with Leah Lin, my medical communicator, at 9:30. Before that I tidied the apartment, made up a batch of breakfast shakes, and did a little gardening on the patio.

The meeting with Leah was a regularly scheduled thing, she likes to actually see a client every 6 months. We met at Mme Collette’s coffee shop for a pleasant chat. Then back for the writers group zoom. For various reasons the group was smaller than usual and only three people had contributed any writing.

After lunch I met with Gwen in the green room. She’s the Entertainment Committee treasurer, and wanted to have a look at the two-drawer file of old Ent.Com. files. She will check with staff to see what if any needs to be kept. Seven years for IRS docs, right? That would be 2018; there are things in that file dating back to the 1990s.

Then I edited the video of the book talk the other day. This was very frustrating. Something was wrong with Professor Chang’s microphone. It wasn’t apparent at the time; everybody could hear him fine. But in the video his voice drops to inaudible every couple of words. Makes the video very difficult to listen to. I apologized to Gigi, the book talk producer. She watched it and said it is still good enough to keep on our Vimeo page.

Monday 06/23/2025

Just a packed day. First thing I filled out the DMV form for release of responsibility for the Prius, put it in a stamped and very carefully addressed envelope, and mailed it as I headed out for a walk (3.8 miles for the day, yay). Picked up a prescription on the return leg.

Then down to the auditorium to run an event, a book talk by Prof. Gordon Chang, about his book Ghosts of Gold Mountain: the epic story of the chinese who built the transcontinental railroad. Good talk, it went off smoothly and I think I did a good job capturing the video, although I haven’t edited it yet.

Then immediately off to FOPAL to process 7 boxes of computer books (first solo drive in Fred the Forester). Back at 3:30 just in time for the 4pm Common Areas committee. Which is progressing.

After supper I put a half-hour with the guitar. First time I’ve played anything for a week, tsk tsk.

Sunday 06/22/2025

Spent the morning getting the Prius washed and assembling all the documentation, maintenance history, etc. Darlene and Jessea arrived about 2 and we did the handoff. They are super happy to have the car.

After they left I moved Fred, Joanne’s Forester, into my parking spot in the garage. Hope being indoors at night isn’t too much of a shock for him. It’s been a bit of a shock for me. Being without a personal vehicle for the first time in, oh, 60 years? Yeah it would have been 1964 or 65 when I owned a car, as opposed to driving one of my parents’ cars.

Saturday 06/21/2025

Went on a nice morning drive in Joanne’s Subaru Forester, whose name, I have learned, is Fred. While enjoying the sun at Filoli, we signed an agreement we have been working on: a car-sharing agreement. This was initially Joanne’s idea: she uses Fred only a couple of days a week, and parks it in the surface lot at Channing House. Often there is no space, so she has to park on the street. I only use my car 3 or so times a week, and I have a spot in the underground garage. Joanne said, why don’t we share Fred and you can sell your car? We considered all the ins and outs carefully, and spent some time writing an agreement that we both signed this morning. She retains full possession; but I have been added to her insurance as an authorized driver. We will be splitting costs of everything, insurance, fuel, maintenance, going forward. I will keep my spot in the garage and we will park Fred there, safe under cover.

With the agreement signed, I called Cousin Darlene. She and her partner Jessea wanted to buy my car some time ago, and have been dithering about what to do with their aging Prius which needs a new engine. So I offered my car to them for a very favorable price, about half the book value. Darlene was delighted! They will come over tomorrow to sign the pink slip and take it away. And I will be car-less. Which is very scary: not owning a car for the first time in 60 years or so.

That settled, I drove the Prius for the next to last time down to the Museum to lead a nice tour on a busy afternoon.

Friday 06/20/2025

Had a meeting at 10 with a couple of people to look at boxes of old “entertainment committee” files in the green room. One box turned out to be all about dramatics, and that got shipped off to the one person who is self-identified as organizing amateur dramatics. The two-drawer file proved to have records about entertainment events going back more than 25 years, including neat bundles of canceled checks for 2002 and other years. I hadn’t brought boxes to dump stuff into. I will come back with some boxes and try to separate out genuine historical stuff and stuff to recycle.

Then the AI interest group met, and we kind of went down a rabbit hole of bitching about the internal website, familiarly known as ResWeb. And coming up with all kinds of things that staff “should” do to take advantage of AI. I put forward a minority opinion, saying how about we talk to the senior staff, find out what THEY are interested in, and offering our time and smarts to do research for that. Not sure if I made a dent.

Spent too much time walking to the hardware store to buy a nut, to fix a loose bolt, in the stand for the electronic keyboard we put on sale yesterday. Also edited 3 more chapters of Cecil’s book.

After supper attended a show by “The Great Thomsonini” an amateur magician. He did some pretty clever tricks, and I could not see how any of them worked.

Thursday 06/19/2025

First thing I took care of some bookkeeping for the Treasure Trove, documenting the items we had put on sale. Then off for a standard walk. Edited another chapter of Cecil’s biography and was so impressed I sent a couple of dramatic paragraphs in an email to the Fam.

Then at 1 down to the Museum to lead one of two, 2pm tours. It was Juneteenth and they expected a lot of people, so doubling up on the tours. In fact, the first tour went with 20+ and then I had another 20 when I started at 2:20, so yeah.

Took a tech squad call in the afternoon. Person complained that their Mac’s keyboard had gone nuts, when they tried to type a @ (upshift 2) they got a double-quote instead. I suspected an issue with keyboard mapping. MacOS lets you map your keyboard to the layout for your country. I did some deep research… ok, no, I asked Claude.ai. Literally asked: what MacOS keyboard mapping replaces @ with “? and got an immediate answer, probably the U.K. English keyboard, maybe the Australian English one. AI takes all the challenge out of researching tech questions but it sure is quick.

Went to the lady’s apartment, checked system settings, keyboard, and sure enough. I can’t explain how she managed to do it, it isn’t a single function key thing, you have to take some pains to change your keyboard mapping, but her iMac had been set to U.K. English keyboard. In and out in under 4 minutes.

Wednesday 06/18/2025

In the morning I worked on moving unwanted items out of the Green Room and into the gift shop’s third-floor furniture showroom.

Sidebar: gift shop, properly known (since a naming contest a year ago) as the Treasure Trove, is one of the most successful resident-run programs, routinely generating large amounts of cash for resident activities. When a person dies or moves permanently to the nursing wing, they or their relatives decide what to do with their stuff. Often, the choice is to just give it to the T. T. for resale. Residents and staff alike shop the T. T. for all sorts of stuff, from jewelry to housewares, and some furniture. Mary Beth, who runs the resident volunteer staff of the T. T., has set up a room on the 3rd floor where furniture and other large items are displayed for sale. She uses an open-auction system, where each item has a bid sheet, you enter your bid, after a month whoever posted the high bid gets to buy the item.

So this morning I moved a large Casio electronic keyboard and stand up there, and posted its bid sheet. That took some fussin’ because I discovered the stand was falling apart. I had to make trips to the resident workshop to find an allen wrench and so on.

Then I took a nice break and took Joanne out for a drive. She can only walk limited distance, like across the car park, so she was glad to get outside. We drove down to the old Palo Alto duck pond and watched birds and talked.

At 1 I joined the FOPAL monthly volunteer zoom meeting. No big news there. Then at 2 I met with Sandy and we moved the remaining items from the Green Room to the 3rd floor showroom and I made bid sheets for them using Mary Beth’s template as a guide.

And at 4 I met with the Good Times committee, another hour finalizing plans for the September show.

I completed editing two more chapters of Cecil’s autobiography. By editing I mean, reading it and correcting the minor errors the scanner software made. She told quite a story. Miserable. I really feel for my mother.

I also worked on a project that Joanne and I are cooking up, more on that later.

Tuesday 06/17/2025

Did a couple things in the morning: there’s some old equipment from the green room that I wanted Sandy to get rid of by giving away on NextDoor, so I organized the info on those and took some pictures of them and got it to her on a USB drive. And scheduled the next AV team meeting for next week. And wrote about 1000 words for the writers group.

Then the writers group meeting, and then it was lunch time. One medical item; when I got blood tests the other day they gave me a stool sample kit, and today I got around to getting that sample, so after the writers group I drove up to PAMF and turned the sample in. Then I started my laundry, which I have moved from Wednesdays to Fridays and now to Tuesdays.

While the first load was running I went to the auditorium and ran an experiment with zoom that I have been wanting to run. I put a monitor speaker on the stage and drove it from my phone playing music (Benny Goodman, actually). Then I started a zoom event and took my second laptop out to the lobby to be a remote attendee at this musical event. And like I feared, the music sounded like shit. Zoom does horrible things to audio, I presume to compress the bandwidth? Whatever, though the music sounded great in the auditorium, it was not fit to listen to, remotely.

This is not good as we have requests to send Auditorium events to our nursing center across the campus, using zoom.

Well if you look at the audio settings in the zoom app on your laptop, there are some options that should fix it, like the option “Use original sound for musicians”. But in our situation the sound from the microphones in the auditorium is funneled through a Zoom Room box. That’s a special automated client meant for remote meetings. I searched its menus and I could not find any sort of audio settings like that.

Then it was time for the Car Free meeting and I helped Lou the orgqnizer, set up his slides on the big screen. And then back to finish the laundry.