Day 167, dish, movie

Saturday, 5/18/2019

I’d been aware since yesterday that Saturday was a blank on my Google calendar. Nothing scheduled. But I know how important it is to Get Your Butt Out Of The House And Do Something. An aimless day of sitting around feels awful. So, eating breakfast, I’m thinking what to do, what to do.

Bailed out in part by the daily event calendar from CH. At 3pm they are going to show The Green Book in the auditorium. That’s a movie I meant to see in the theater and couldn’t sync up with Dennis to go. Also I’m curious to see how good their projection system and sound system are. So that’ll be the afternoon.

For the morning, well, a walk. Where? Why not the famous Dish walk? I’ve only done it once that I recall. Marian and I walked up as far as the Dish and back (a 2.5 mile round trip) maybe 5 years ago. I know it’s very popular and parking around the trailhead is scarce. Still, it was only 8:30, so I thought there should be space.

There wasn’t a spot on the first pass but I looped back and got a spot on the second. In hindsight, it would make great sense to take a Lyft to the entry gate, especially starting from Webster street.

The walk is pleasant but not easy; there are several steep upgrades. I did a full loop, nearly four miles, 9000 steps per the Health app, and 19 flights of stairs to show I wasn’t wrong about the upgrades. There were lots of people, of all ages and physical conditions. And turkeys:

From there I came down to California Avenue and had a cappuccino and a scone for brunch. At home I played two hours of the game I’m exploring. Then it was time to head for CH and the movie.

The projection system is just OK. It’s a big video projector mounted to the ceiling, and with the lights dimmed its color and brightness are OK. But something was wrong either with the DVD or the projector settings because it was showing the image at the hi-def TV 16:9 aspect ratio, while clearly it should have been in the slightly wider, widescreen movie ratio. Everybody looked slightly skinnier and taller than life. It wasn’t a bad mis-match and I could it ignore it most of the time. The sound also was OK, although it seemed like mono; if it was stereo the speakers aren’t far enough apart for the size of the room.

The movie was OK. Viggo Mortenson did a wonderful job of being an ignorant Italian tough guy. Mahershala Ali was impressive as both an actor and as a pianist. The script tried too hard and unsubtly to push the audience’s buttons, but it was hard to resist the manipulation.

cadillac-deville-1962-5 I could forgive a lot because the film also featured a 1962 Cadillac Sedan DeVille. I have a history with this car. When I first came to San Francisco, a dropout from the UW, my sister Joyce let me live in her apartment and also got me a job as a flunky at the Cadillac dealership where she was the PA for the dealership manager. So for one long summer I had the job of parking customer cars and bringing them back when the customers came to pick them up. I hopped in and out of these pretty machines hundreds of times. I can remember exactly how the steering wheel and shift lever felt under my hands.

After the film I sat around in the lobby reading for a bit until the initial 5:30 supper rush had subsided, then had a decent supper and came home to watch the Warriors, for the second game in a row, come from behind to beat Portland.

Day 166, grumpy, map, docent

Friday, 5/17/2019

Today’s main activity is to lead a docent tour at the museum at noon. Right after breakfast I decided to follow up on something I’d noted by chance yesterday, that the

Hillbarn theater

is doing Mama Mia, which I’d never seen and should be fun. So I went to their website and tried to buy a ticket. Mostly sold out but there are seats for next Wednesday, fine. Advantage of being a widower (look on the sunny side…) I want only a single seat, and there were some scattered around in the center. Nice. Try to check out. It wants me to sign in or register. Sigh. Register. Wants name, email, address, age(!?), telephone number and of course a password.

You know what? Just sell me a ****ing ticket already! It so irked me I just closed the window and went for my run. But now, writing about it — nose biting for purpose of face spiting? — I went back and filled out their ****ing form and gave them a ****ing password. Nicely they present a menu of emails you can opt out of. Good! Opting outoutoutoutout. So.

Did my run, 37 minutes of jogjogjog and felt good (who’s old? Moi?). Showered shaved dressed in my red docent shirt and sat down to do another little chore I’ve been meaning to do: work out an equivalent to my current

jogging route

but starting at 850 Webster. Go to Google maps and map my present route. It turns out to be 2.6 miles from home to the coffee shop where I usually stop. About 2.4 miles of actual jogging; the tenth mile at the start and the last tenth I usually walk.

Then worked out a route of exactly the same length, but quite different terrain. Well, all flat like the present route, but different scenery. North on Webster street to San Francisquito Creek; follow a curving street along the creek; cross a footbridge into Menlo Park for a loop up Willow Road; cross a different footbridge back into Palo Alto (passing El Palo Alto, the town’s eponymous redwood tree), and down a back street to a coffee shop on University Avenue. Exactly 2.6 miles.

Got an email from Chuck, a slew of

realty disclosure

statements. My goodness there are a lot of different disclosure statements. Lead paint. Carbon monoxide detectors. Earthquake hazards. Some of them I couldn’t see how to fill out. Chuck had sent them as e-signature files, where you try to write your signature using the mouse. Instead I print out all eleven pages, look them over. Sign some obvious ones. Send an email back, need some guidance on these.

Then at 10:30 another email from Andrew, they have only the first of the four-page form that I’ve given them now twice. I get my copy from the pendaflex folder box and stop by their office on the way to the museum to drop it off.

I give my tour to about 15 people, get a round of applause at the end. E-chat more with

Chuck.

Of the two prospects, the Lawyer Lady’s agent has submitted an offer of $2.5M. However that was a misunderstanding. L.L. has just changed agents and the new one was not up to speed, didn’t realize that the latest ad had specified an asking price of $2.9. When Chuck pointed this out, she said she would consult with her client but didn’t know how much higher she could go.

As to the other prospect, the woman who works at Apple, Chuck has not heard back despite leaving several texts and a voice mail to the agent. That agent is a long-time Palo Alto realtor and Chuck thinks it is unusual for her not to respond. However during the showing the other day, she had commented to Chuck about planning a knee replacement operation soon, so possibly there is some health issue. Anyway, we left it that Chuck and I would meet Monday afternoon to talk about the disclosure forms, and hopefully one or both agents would have come back with something by then.

In the evening I combined an errand with supper. Earlier in the day, the

Prius

had popped up a message “Key Fob Battery Low”. Oh! Now, how do I open up the Prius key fob? I’m pretty sure I’ve done it before but don’t remember how. Youtube to the rescue; just click in the search bar and start to type “Prius key…” and “…fob battery replacement” pops up, and there are a dozen videos.

Turns out it is stupidly simple; Toyota did a great job on this design. The key fob contains a physical key that pops out when you press a button. I knew about that and actually used the physical key once when the 12V battery went flat. Turns out, they designed the key blade itself as a tool that exactly fits a slot at the bottom of the plastic fob. You pull the key out, turn it around, and use it as a lever to pop open the case of the fob. And there’s the battery. Nice!

I noted the number and went to Midtown where I bought a pair of the CR1632s and had supper at the Thai restaurant.

Day 165, Yosemite, CH

Thursday 5/16/2019

Drove through unseasonable heavy rain showers to Yosemite, the Museums warehouse for a day of work. Aurora, the curator, assigned me to work with Ken doing photography. She’d turned up a couple of boxes of previously cataloged artifacts that had never been photographed. We have a new volunteer, Tom, who spent a long career in Burroughs and its later incarnations as part of Sperry. Aurora had him sit with her all day as they went through every Burroughs-related artifact in the catalog and he added or clarified information in the descriptions.

At four I headed back toward Palo Alto but not simply home. In the daily CH schedule — which I now get in my email every morning — it said that there would be a ceremony in the lobby to welcome Rhonda Bekkedahl, our new CEO. She’s been acting CEO for a few weeks, and in fact it was she who conducted my signing day a few weeks ago. I sat across from her at her desk and she led me through each of the numerous documents I had to sign. She was warmly congratulated by the chairman of the Board, who noted that both the outgoing CEO (who retired last month) and the Board as a whole were unanimous in recommended Rhonda as his successor. She’s been an executive here for some time, COO for a year. So she knows the organization and is apparently liked by the staff and the residents.

Anyway this is the first time I saw the whole membership, or at least most of it, assembled in one place. The lobby is large and it was pretty full of a crowd of a couple hundred people. I was looking around trying to feel like I fit in, but I don’t really, which is due to a mismatch with my quite inaccurate self-image. When I’m not actually looking in a mirror, I fall into the habit of thinking of myself as middle-aged. Um, dude… that train pulled out 20 years ago.

OK, fair enough, but I think I am in better physical shape than most of the other residents. However it is easy to notice how many are tottery or have wheeled walkers, while overlooking the large minority who are walking freely, standing straight and conducting animated conversations. Like Colin at dinner the other night, 93 and plays tennis every day.

Anyway, nobody there uses an actual Zimmer frame type walker, thank the lord! All nifty three-wheelers. If I saw anybody pushing one of those aluminum frames with tennis balls on the back legs, I’d… I don’t know what I’d do. But I would be profoundly disappointed.

After the meeting the dining hall had opened so of course I had supper there. I ate alone. Should I have invited myself to join one of the tables with three or four other people? Yeah, probably. But I’m not going to beat myself up about this. It just isn’t going to happen that I learn a bunch of people’s names and faces right away. I feel like I’m desperately clinging to the five or six I tried to remember from the floor meeting last week.

On the drive home I conceived another route that may be more fitted to my nature. I will not try to learn all the names, and I will not go out of the way to socialize at meals. I will relax and be my nerdy self, but I will also volunteer for multiple committees, of which there are many. I will learn people in small numbers, by repeated exposure in committee meetings and volunteer activities. From that may arise invitations to sit with people at meals. Or not; I really don’t care about that.

Day 164, FOPAL, realty, mover

Wednesday, 5/15/2019

I have Deborah coming with someone to look at the furniture at 1:30, and Chuck is bringing the Lawyer Lady for her third look at the house at 12:30. That means I won’t be free to do my usual 2-4pm shift at FOPAL, so I decided to go and do that this morning instead. From 9-12 at FOPAL is the physical equivalent of a run, right? Wait, let me check. No, only 3700 steps as of 2pm. But it doesn’t record how many boxes of books I lifted and carried, does it.

I had meant to do a lot of sorting but discovered in fact there was a large collection of computer-related books already sorted, to be culled and priced. Actually, I recognized them. At least two weeks ago a chap presented himself at the usual donation time with a slew of small boxes of books. We loaned him our dolly to bring them from his car, and I remember showing him a narrow gap in the mountain of donations to stack them in. Only now, in the week past the sale, have they surfaced.

On examination, these were the library of a programmer who is now (I presume) retiring; anyway clearing out his collection. Maybe 200 fat paperback volumes on Java, JavaBeans, C++ and similar software platforms. Most published in 1998 through about 2008. Generally the older stuff goes straight to the bargain room. Nobody wants to buy, for example, a book whose cover proudly says “Current for Java 6” when a quick check on my iPhone shows me that Java is now at release 12, and support for release 9 was just discontinued.

Anyway I priced 50 or so volumes and ended up shelving 40 of them. Four boxes of books went on the cart labeled “H2”, the number of the bargain room, where they’ll sell for $1 or if not, eventually be recycled.

That brought me to 11am, and I did regular sorting for an hour more. I went around to the adjacent grocery store and stocked up on food so I would have something to eat in the evening. (But also told myself sternly, that I’ve paid for meal service at CH, and it is hardly any more distant than the restaurant I went to last night. If I don’t want to cook, I can just drive over there and have a nice nutritionally balanced meal.)

While eating a very tasty deli sandwich in the car I exchanged texts with Chuck. The Lawyer Lady had showed up with a contractor in tow, which surprised Chuck. She apparently wanted to get an opinion, either on the condition of the house or on the feasibility of some remodeling she has in mind. Was it OK with me to let a contractor look around? Yeah, why not. Nothing to hide. Then they had questions, relayed in texts. When was the furnace and A/C installed? etc. Hell, I don’t know, this century I’m sure. Later Chuck said they worked out from the maintenance record on the front of the furnace it was 2008. Apparently the contractor didn’t raise any red flags. We’ll hear more soon, I hope.

At 2pm Deb rolled up with Ron and Carol, a senior couple, in tow. They looked briskly at the furniture. Carol didn’t seem impressed. I don’t think it was what she wanted. I said goodby to them as my phone rang. It was Mr. Lunardi from the moving company. We agreed that his crew will show up at 10:30 on the 15th (ooh, exactly a month from today) to pack me up and move me. Actually there will not be a lot of packing-up. I’m betting they’ll have the truck loaded ready to roll by 12:00.

Day 163, Adobe, Suli, mover, bed

Tuesday, 5/14/2019

…and WordPress has lost me another 200 words. If you start a post, write a few nice paragraphs, then leave the window open for a few hours, when you come back and start editing it will say “error trying to save” and whatever you do, your draft is toast.

Well, what I said before was, in my email this morning was a warning from

Adobe

that my Creative Cloud subscription would soon renew. I’ve been paying for the privilege of using Photoshop and Lightroom, but with the end of slide scanning there is little need for either. I’ve got Pixelmator and GraphicConverter which are each capable image editors. I do make use of Adobe Bridge to organize images and search using metadata tags, but I think I have an older version that will still work without an annual rental. Or I can get used to iPhoto if I have to.

So I killed the subscription, and incidentally discovered that I also had a subscription to their web page editor, DreamWeaver. That must be a relic of when Marian used an earlier version of DreamWeaver for the FBC fan site. Anyway, killed that too.

Then walked to the YMCA for a few exercises, and back. At this point I got out the CH handbook, “Moving” page, and called the top name in their list of approved movers. Left my name for a callback. Then I waited (and waited) for Suli the housecleaner to appear. She didn’t come until 1pm; I filled the time in part by starting the laundry. And exchanging texts with Chuck: the Lawyer Lady wants to look at the house again, is 12:30 tomorrow OK? Oh heck yes.

Suli did her work, we chatted, and basically said goodby to each other. She’s been working for us for at least 20 years. She was pleased that just yesterday she had found a perfect new client to take the place of her bi-weekly visit to this house. I gave her the check, saying it was a little bit bigger than usual; she said thank you without actually looking at it. It was actually quite a bit bigger than usual.

Now it was too late in the day to go down to FOPAL, where I have been meaning to go today, to try to tackle some of the huge backlog of contributed books to sort. What else to do? Well, there was the matter of a

bed.

I’ve been going back and forth on the question of the bed for months now. First I was going to leave the Queen bed behind, get a new Full size one. Then I changed my mind, I’d keep the bed. But more recently I have flip-flopped again. It really feels stupid and annoying to be sleeping in one-half of a bed. Almost all my furniture in the new place will be new. The old bed would dominate the new bedroom. I want a cleaner break with the past.

On a previous visit to IKEA I selected the mattress I would buy; I have an iPhone picture of the label. But I didn’t actually pick a frame. So now I decided to go do that. I drove over to IKEA and went backwards on their route because I remembered that the bedroom stuff was last in the winding trail.

Of their frames, one jumped out at me right away as a perfect complement to the rest of my “midcentury modern” choices, the Trysil. It’s not expensive, it’s in stock. All I have to do is figure out how to get it, and the mattress, over to CH and assembled. I believe when the time comes, like a couple of days before official move-in, I’ll hire a TaskRabbit to do it.

I went home, and shortly noticed I was hungry, so went out, aiming for Armadillo Willy’s but as I approached it I noticed a restaurant I hadn’t eaten at in donkey’s years, Estrellita’s Mexican restaurant. We IBMers used to eat there back in the … eighties? So I went in, had a nice plate of Chile Verde.

While I was eating, the moving guy returned my call, but his news was that the CH resident notebook is out of date. The moving company he worked for closed up shop a year ago. He was friendly about it. But dang, now I have to find another.

On the way home I stopped for gas, noting it had been almost exactly a month since I last filled the tank. 80mpg, 791 miles on a tank; let’s hear it for the plug-in hybrid.

Day 162, Documents, FOPAL, realty

Monday, 5/13/2019

Watered the plants, then went for a run. On return I opened the big envelope of documents from the Lawyer, and brought the

fireproof box

out to the table.

The fireproof box was a purchase of a decade ago, when we were separating ourselves from Wells Fargo. This was actually before Wells Fargo got in so much public scandal; they just did a few things that annoyed us, and we moved our money to SFCU. That has worked out very well, the local Credit Union gives excellent service, and their web interface is very usable. But besides our money account at WFB we also had a safety deposit box. What to do with the birth certificates, car pink slips, etc. from there?

Turns out, you can buy a heavy box that will resist a house fire for 40 minutes or more. It probably couldn’t survive the kind of ashes-to-the-foundation fire we’ve seen in the major California wildfires, but it could stand up a typical single house fire where the fire department can give it its full attention. (It should certainly survive any kind of fire that might start at CH, a cement building with sprinklers.) We got one and gave up the WFB box.

The main tenant in the box is the Brown Binder, the binder of estate documents: the Trust, the Living Will, Power of Attorney, Burial instructions — basically, everything my successor Trustee needs to take care of me if I’m completely incapacitated, or to wind things up after I’m dead. Previously, these were all about Marian and me as a couple, with each of us naming the other as heir, conservator, etc. Now they have all been redone simpler to handle just my affairs as Survivor Trustee.

I went through the Brown Binder and replaced all the old docs with new ones. There were a couple of informal docs I write. One is the Document Locator, which explains all the others as well as listing things like credit cards and bank accounts and so on — key facts the Successor Trustee needs. Another is my Digital Directive, listing all the online accounts and passwords to be shut down. Both were much out of date and I spent an hour editing them and printing them and putting them in the binder.

Finally I went through all the contents of the box, moved a couple of things out; Marian’s birth certificate for example went to the Marian History folder elsewhere. And put it all away with a sense of accomplishment. I also paid the

utility bill

but was brought up short when looking at it, because there was a $36 balance still due, and a $0.70 late fee. What? Simple explanation: the prior bill was for $284, but when entering it in the bill-pay app, I apparently keyed in $248. Hmmph.

Anyway, off for FOPAL, where I spent two hours culling the Computer shelf. Sent books that had been there three or more months to the bargain room; lowered the price on some that had been there two months; moved some sub-sections around. Then went to help with sorting as a flood of donations were coming in the door. I could only do an hour because I got a text from

Chuck.

We were to meet at 4, but he asked if I could come earlier. Sure, no prob. I drove over to his office near California avenue. He had some news from the two showings yesterday but nothing firm yet. The Canadian Lawyer lady has been shopping, it seems, since 2016, and greatly regrets having missed out on some small cottage on Webster street nearby. Chuck knew that house and said mine is much better. Also the C.L.L. had brought her daughter and also a friend who is a decorator. This decorator friend, Chuck says, went on at length about how handsome the house is. She was still verbally pointing out its highlights when the next party arrived at 5:30, and Chuck says he was delighted because “she couldn’t have given a better sales pitch” for that party.

The second party is a single woman, 30-something Chuck estimated, who works at Apple. She came with her realtor and her mother, who is apparently ready to finance, or help finance, a purchase. They also went on at length about how charming the house is.

So the odds seem good that we should get an offer or even two this week.

I also talked to him about the IRS Form 706 that the Lawyer and the Advisors want me to file. The point of it is to preserve half of Marian’s Estate Tax Exemption so I, or more properly my heirs, can use it to shelter more of my estate. The tax accountants have quoted $3500 to prepare this form and I kind of choked on it. But with Chuck we penciled some numbers, trying to forecast what my estate will be if I live another 20 years. Would it be big enough to exceed my own exemption? Yeah, under some assumptions, as much as a third of it could be exposed to Estate Tax, which would represent a considerable tax bite on the final value of the Trust.

Home for a very casual supper (I’m getting pretty lazy about feeding myself) and some TV.

Day 161, disassembly, market, art

Sunday, 5/12/2019

I managed to sleep almost to 7am (and without getting up in the night, either). Yay me. Did the NYT puzzle and wrote yesterday’s blog post. As a result when I got to the coffee shop the almond croissants were just out of the oven, and that’s a good start to the day.

My plans for today were, first, to attend the Sunday Assembly, and then in the afternoon to drive to the City to look at the current exhibition at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. I figure to time that so I get back to Palo Alto around five, and find supper somewhere to kill the time until the potential buyers have cleared from the house.

Sunday Assembly is an international secular organization that sponsors Sunday morning meetings under the slogan “Live better, help often, wonder more”. They try hard to create the sense of community that is (I think) the main reason religious services exist, but without any supernatural trappings. I and Marian attended a couple of their meetings back in 2017. Marian didn’t think much of them. I attended once with Dennis, also. I haven’t been to one in at least a year, and I thought I’d try it again.

I’m afraid that Sunday Assembly is not doing well; there were fewer people in attendance than I remember from before. I don’t think they are setting up as many rows of chairs at the Masonic Hall as they used to, and there were a couple of empty rows anyway.

As usual the meeting began with group singing. The speaker today was a person who was a counselor and leader of the secular summer camp movement, Camp Quest. So the theme was “adventure” and we opened by singing summer camp songs: “There’s a hole in the bottom of the sea,” “If you’re happy and you know it,” etc. That was fun in a mild way.

Then came a strange episode that I’m still processing. This of course is all to do with me, not a reflection on Sunday Assembly. The next activity was introduced as “We always start with an ice-breaker and here’s <name I didn’t get> to lead it.” Well, I can live with an ice-breaker, at least, times I’ve attended a Mass, I could shake hands with strangers around me during the “kiss of peace” ritual. But in this case, the very enthusiastic <name I didn’t get> tried to explain this quite complicated thing in which people were to pair up and you would say your name and point to the other who would say “Yeah!” and say a sentence about yourself and point, “Oh, yeah!” and trade off — there was more to it than that, a really complicated three-stage thing.

Even as he’s explaining and demonstrating this supposedly fun ritual I am thinking (I may have actually muttered aloud) “I ain’t doing that.” I was just swept by a negative reaction, an instant “Nope” as they say on Reddit. Nope nope nope! I don’t want to do that, I won’t do it well, I’ll feel like an idiot: in just a few seconds these barely-coherent feelings came over me. Plus, I’m sitting alone in a back row, there’s nobody near me to pair up with. So I instantly apprehend that I’m not going to have a choice, somebody in the row ahead is going to come up unpaired and look back at me and I don’t want to do this but I’ll be stuck. So just as the leader is saying “OK, let’s pair up and…” I just swept up my hat from the seat beside me and strode out of the room. Out the door, to my car, and drove away.

In hindsight there’s something familiar about that instant, strong, emotional rejection of a group activity. I haven’t felt it in many decades I’m sure, but now, a couple of hours after, I think I can relate it all the way back to grade school. It’s like the awful feeling when you are required to participate in a sport that you are shit at, but have to go out on the field anyway, knowing you will only humiliate yourself. So, I guess I’m still in touch with my inner third-grader. I’m not sure that I want to be! But maybe I should start to think about how to nurture that pathetic little guy.

Driving home along El Camino from the Sunday dis-Assembly I realized that it being Sunday, the

California Avenue farmer’s market

would be on. I haven’t been to that in four or five years. Marian and I always did our week’s food shopping on Sunday, and for several years we always started at the California Avenue market. For the last few years we found it more convenient to go to DiMartini’s farm stand in Mountain View; so it’s been a while. Just for the heck of it I parked and walked the length of the market.

This Sunday market, I’m pleased to note, is thriving. Walking it made me a little sad, however, because I really have no excuse to buy. Well, today I bought a box of Medjool dates, half a pound of cherries, and a bottle of apple-pomegranate cider. These are things I can consume in my bachelor life-style. But looking ahead, living in a facility with full meal service really means having no connection to food prep at all. This isn’t a new feeling. One of my very first realizations, like within 24 hours of Marian’s death, was that I’d probably never cook a proper meal again. But this was a reminder, a cold wind blowing on the raw surface where that “shard” of the old life has fallen off.

Anyway, 2pm I headed for the city for the

Early Rubens

exhibit at the Palace of the Legion of Honor. Drove myself, it being a Sunday, rather than using the train and Lyft. Took a few pictures.

In an early “Annunciation” Rubens caters (no doubt) to the expectations of his Amsterdam audience, giving Mary a lovely head of blond curls.

This lady was I think not quite getting what she wanted. But I like my composition, the diagonal line from subject’s eyes to artist’s.

Here, the spotlights make Rodin’s “Three Shades” into six or nine.

So drove on back to Palo Alto, had a burger and a beer at The Counter, then over to Midtown for a dish of ice cream. Answering texts from Chuck all along this route, as he relayed questions from the clients. “How old is the roof” and so forth. Later he said both parties were very favorably impressed. I’ll meet him tomorrow afternoon to learn more.

Day 160, deck, tour, book sale

Saturday, 5/11/2019

Today was the originally-scheduled day for me to move into CH. Well, hopefully the new schedule of June 15th will hold. One item on my to-do list for Monday is to settle with a mover, one from the list in the CH orientation book.

But this was the day for the museum tour, the scheduling of which has been so fraught because I have not been getting any response from museum paid staff. Thanks to Steve, who took the initiative to email the 1401 docents on Thursday, it all went off very nicely. The students were to arrive at 11:30 and remarkably, most of them were there at that time. Kim and I chatted with the early arrivers about what they were actually studying: they had been lightly introduced to transistors and logic circuits, then machine design, and were currently studying the MIPS architecture. Whoa, that’s a 64-bit RISC machine, quite a step up from learning AND and NOR gates. Anyway, they knew the lingo.

I took the first group of 15 or so, while Kim waiting for the stragglers. When we finished, about 12:30, we led them into the 1401 lab where docents Jack and Bill gave them the 1401 demo, with special emphasis on what developing software was like in the 1960s. Bill remembers working for a bank when the 1401 was first installed, and writing their programs for checking and loans. (He didn’t mention having to work with the OCR check-reader, I forget its model number; must ask him about that.) Anyway the students got a good tour that meshed with their class pretty well, so that was good.

Back home to change clothes and chill for a while. I changed clothes twice, in fact. Out of my white chinos and red “Computer History Museum Docent” shirt, into work jeans. Then I put the oil on the two back stoops. It really only took half an hour to do this. They look much better, not so obviously dried out. But really, they should be sanded down and re-stained. Shameful neglect, but IOMISEP.

I changed to nicer jeans and out again to walk through the FOPAL book sale and see how it was going. Seemed well; people had as usual messed up the neat shelving of the Computer section and it looked as if some had been bought.

Home again and I got texts and then a call from Chuck. Tomorrow he will be showing the house twice, at 5:00 and 5:30. The second is the previous viewer, the Lawyer from Canada who is a single mom and this time will be bringing her daughter. The first is a realtor Chuck knows — he went out of his way to emphasize she is a long-time Palo Alto realtor who is really nice, “some realtors aren’t, but she is” — who is representing a woman who works at Apple and, he says, is the daughter of a well-to-do family. The other realtor told Chuck her client “has the means” to buy in Palo Alto. So. Good.

Day 159, FOPAL and house work

Friday, 5/10/2019

With nothing explicit on the calendar, I had a casual plan to go to FOPAL around noon to make sure the Computer section was ready for tomorrow’s sale day. But first, I started a chore that has been niggling at my mind every time I looked out the bedroom window or exited the kitchen via the back door.

A few years ago — wait a minute, let me look it up in the red book — oh no! it appears we never entered those receipts in the red binder of home repairs! Anyway, a few years ago we had a local craftsman, Alex Marshall, build nice wood steps at our back door and bedroom door. It was sometime after 2011, because I do find the receipt for the first time we used Alex, to repair and re-hang the back door, and that was 2011. So let’s say, 5 or 6 years ago, we had these very handsome steps built.

They are not varnished, but rather oiled, and Alex instructed us firmly that we had to re-oil them every year. I’ve done that job once before in the 5 or so years, and I can see looking at the wood that it needs it again. And what with showing the house, and wanting it to make a good impression, it really should be done. It’s not a clean job. The first step is to scrub the wood, getting off the accumulated dust, foot-prints, and leaf litter. It’s striking how over a rainy winter, the raindrops cause a mist of light sand to rise up and stick to the bottom 8 inches or so of wood.

So today I got out a bucket and filled it with hot water and glopped in some 409 and washed down the steps. I used a push broom so I could scrub without having to get down on hands and knees. Scrubbed down both sets of steps, rinsed them with the hose, and left them to dry. Monday I will do the oil — except oh no, I sent off the half-used can of oil with the other used cans of paint when I took two boxes of stuff to the household hazardous waste disposal on… aha, it was Day 146. Well, I know just which shelf to get it from at Orchard Supply … shit. Orchard Supply closed up last year. Amazing how often one regrets that.

Speaking of regrets: walking in and out of the garage I noticed what I had managed not to notice the last 50 times, Marian’s gardening shoes on the floor by the door. There’s nothing to do but put them in the trash. They won’t be worn again; and used shoes wouldn’t sell in the estate sale. Either I throw them away, or Deborah will do it after the sale. Better me. So I put them in the trash. Then I tidied myself up and went to

FOPAL

where I went through a couple of boxes of computer related books, sending most to the bargain room, pricing and shelving a few. Also shelved a few that had been priced, apparently, by Chuck (FOPAL volunteer Chuck, not realtor Chuck).

There were a lot of volunteers around, working on their individual sections, but they were also putting tablecloths out and serving implements, and, hello, we’re having a volunteer luncheon. I had no idea. It must be a regular pre-sale event, but I didn’t know that.

I talked to a couple of other volunteers while eating a section of a turkey wrap. But before that I acquitted myself very badly, like a

complete nerd

with another volunteer. I’m so embarrassed about this in hindsight. This chatty guy intercepted me as I was working and asked if I was the new Computer section, he was a former Computer section manager, he explained, but now worked in the Bargain room, partly shelving the computer books that I was rejecting for the main room. He asked my name, I told him, he thought for a second, and said, “Inside CP/M?” The title of my first book. He said he’d played around with old CP/M in the 80s and remembered my book.

Here’s my failure. The guy asks my name and remembers my book, and I did thank him and express pleasure. But did I get his name in return? I fucking did not. I just wandered off and kept shelving books. I am the most self-centered, obtuse…

I’ll see him again, I’ll make a point of it, and I will apologize.

So I went on home, then later drove to CH where I turned over my keys to #621 to Angela. She had requested them, saying residents are not allowed into their units while remodeling is in progress. She said the orders for my cabinets and so forth have been placed and June 15th is still a good date for move-in. Make it in the afternoon if possible, as another new resident will move in that morning.

I wanted to ask the Housekeeping manager if they were hiring, so I could tell Suli, but she wasn’t in. Angela, who shares an office with Housekeeping, took a note. Maybe I’ll hear back.

On the way home I swung by the hardware store and bought a small can of oil for the deck.

Day 158, Shustek and music

Thursday, 5/10/2019

In the morning I wrote a check to pay for income tax preparation, addressed and stamped it. Left a few minutes early for a day at the Shustek center in order to post it. I get tense about this, did I address the envelope correctly, put a stamp on it, will it arrive? Bleagh. (No, autocorrect, I did not mean “Bleach”. Since when has aggressive auto-correct been a thing? Here at WordPress, on Reddit, everywhere, it seems you can’t be cute any more without idiot computer telling you what it thinks you really meant.)

Cataloged a lot of stuff, most interesting being a collection of chips and a an actual lithographic mask (a beautiful thing, elegant pattern on a thick piece of glass) for the first Berkeley RISC chips. This grab bag of stuff was donated by David Patterson, who (according to that Wikipedia link) “coined the term RISC”. It was like old home week, it seemed, because another volunteer, Alan, still works for a company founded by Patterson’s student and co-author, and has met Patterson often.

Well, we have a message for Patterson; he’s been sitting on a CHM artifact for (presumably) years. In the donated collection of chips was one that had an old-style CHM accession number on the back, and was marked “ENIAC chip #3”. A quick check of our database, and yes: there it was, with a photograph and description matching this chip; its last known location a rack at Moffat Field. So sometime 15 years ago or so, when the CHM collection was mostly held in a warehouse at Moffat Field, this chip — one of a very small run of a student project to reproduce the WWII-era ENIAC machine as a VLSI design — was removed from the collection. It somehow made its way into the possession of D. Patterson, a highly-regarded professor at UCB. And here it was back home again!

This is what passes for excitement in the museum business.

Back home I had a simple supper and then went out again to hear a musical performance at CH. I mostly wanted to get a look and listen to the auditorium there. It’s a nice space, folding chairs for maybe 150 people, a low stage. Overhead, a large video projector and I could see where a big screen would roll down over the stage. Presumably that’s how they show movies on “classic movie night”.

The performance was by Bella Sorella, two sopranos that have been performing together since their college days. Accompanied by violin and piano, they performed light classical and some folk tunes and it was very pleasant, a highly skilled performance.

One of my interests in this was to watch how the sound system was managed. I’m thinking one way I might contribute at CH is to participate in the performance committee that runs this kind of event. The sound man, a resident, Herman, seemed kind of out of it. There were only two mikes in use (I could see several more on the sound console), one hand-held by the lady who introduced the show and one on a mike stand on stage for the performers to use introducing their songs.

Well, the mike on stage didn’t work, or its volume was set too low. There was an embarrassing moment when one of the singers went to introduce their first number, tap tap is this on? No, can’t hear you says the audience (this audience of oldsters was not at all shy about shouting “can’t hear you”). Herman just sits smiling. Performer takes mike off stand, looks at it, tries again, holds it close to lips — no amplification. Herman sits buddha-like smiling. Eventually somebody in the front row says, give her the mike Carla was using. The mike the introduction person used is handed up to the performer on stage, and it works. The dead mike is handed to Herman who accepts it with a smile, and the show proceeds.

I found this kind of baffling; Herman didn’t seem to follow what was going on at all, but he was in charge of the sound desk. Hmmm. Definitely some room for others to contribute here, but I do not want to come on too strong, or get myself responsible for a volunteer gig that is too demanding, either. Tread lightly as you enter a new situation.