Day 228, Yosemite, concert

Thursday, 7/18/2019

Thursday means a slower start, breakfast in the dining room, and a 9am departure for the East Bay, this week to the vast Yosemite warehouse of the CHM. My task this day was to take photographs of artifacts. Aurora, the collections manager, has embarked herself and her band of volunteers on what will be a years-long process, a 100% inventory of the collection. Unlike the prior cataloging projects I worked in during 2008-9 and 2015-16, which had the fun acronym of CARP, Collections Accession and Reconciliation Project, this much larger project has no cute acronym, nor does it have a grant to fund it.

Anyway, this involves bringing down each box of artifacts and checking that it contains what it’s supposed to. The check is easy because the Museum database, an app named Mimsy, allows searching for artifacts by box number. Then you have a list and a count of artifacts that should be in the box, and can quickly verify that they are there and whether they have photographs in the catalog. A visual check finds whether the packing is optimal, so artifacts aren’t crowded, and noting any wasted space that could be used.

Typically everything will match up and the box can be moved back to shelving under a new and more space-efficient stacking scheme. Space is a problem, as the warehouse that once seemed so huge, is approaching fullness, and the Museum continues to accept new artifacts. Aurora calls the problem of space-efficient box stacking as “museum Tetris”.

For various reasons, some artifacts had never been photographed, and maybe one percent will turn up, or not turn up, to be in the box they’re supposed to be in. Today I was photographing things that needed it. Normally photography is a two-person job, but it can be done by one, and I enjoy doing it by myself, so that was a fun day.

On the way home, responding to a text from Deborah, I stopped at Tasso street to verify that a large cabinet was still in the garage. She has a potential buyer. It is there; and I was pleased to see that there was also a painting crew busily at work prepping the interior. So that’s moving along.

I at supper with Rosina, Robin, Mel, Mary (another Mary, there are a lot of Marys around here) and Ed. Working on this.

In the mailbox was a letter from the TSA telling me “Congratulations!” my application for TSA Precheck has been approved for another bunch of years.

From supper I took a Lyft to Dinkelspiel for another Stanford Jazz Festival concert. This was a much-anticipated (by others, I’d never attended one) Evening with Victor Lin. Lin is an enthusiastic teacher and proponent of jazz and, based on what I heard tonight, a superb jazz pianist. He opened the show with two long numbers that were just lovely to listen to, and to follow him through all the variations he was doing. This was the 22nd “Evening” he’s run, where he introduces students and teachers from the festival, matching them in unexpected combinations, giving them things to do outside their comfort zone, and hilarity ensues. Like bringing out four other pianists and having all five of them playing blues on the two Steinways on stage, swapping seats and reaching over each other. Tonight some of the combinations didn’t work, and the whole second half seemed slow and a bit of a downer to me, and other people who’d seen previous shows agreed.

The “other people” in question were Jerry, Betty and Margaret from Channing House, who were sitting at the other end of the row I was in. I was able to get a ride home with them. During the ride Margaret, finding I was in the process of selling my house, went at length into her (fairly recent, I gather) home sale. She had an early offer for the house as-is, but the buyers wanted a contingency on the sale of their own home and 90 days to do it. Margaret’s realtor advised her they were unrealistic, and wouldn’t be able to sell their house at the price they needed, so she rejected the offer, and went ahead with the painting and staging routine, which she apparently found stressful. In the end, the best offer they got was from the original buyers, whose home had sold, but their new offer was $100K less than before. She felt aggrieved by this process, reasonably so.

 

Day 227, not much

Wednesday, 7/17/2019

When I don’t do a blog post at night before going to bed, I have to do it, as now, first thing in the morning. Even then I struggle: what the heck did I do yesterday? All that shows on my calendar is a normal stint at FOPAL. I went for a run; then I somehow whiled away two hours. I drove to FOPAL about 11am and worked there until 3:30pm. Came home quite tired, well that’s no surprise, after being on my feet, schlepping boxes of books, for more than four hours. Had a nap, went to supper, sitting with Rosina and Billie and Ed.

Watched some TV, went to bed. I’m pretty sure there was something else in there. Maybe it will come back to me.

Oh, right. A bit of grief. During the morning, looking at various internet sites, I saw an article on the use of an AI to restore old photographs. Which reminded me of a website I used to spend some time at, where amateurs shared their efforts at restoring old photos, around 2005 or so. I got a lot of pointers from it while restoring old pictures from an album of my own. But what was its URL? I’m pretty sure it was “restorationpro…something”. No such URL exists now.

Well, maybe at some time I saved a bookmark for it? I hardly ever look into my saved bookmarks any more, but when I went to Safari’s Edit Bookmarks menu, there they were, a couple of generations of them, imported at different times. I spent half an hour going through and deleting all the ones I’m no longer interested in, or that don’t exist any more.

Toward the bottom was a set of Marian’s bookmarks, imported into some browser sometime, and somehow imported by me and then carried along through generations of browsers. So I looked through and there were the links to all her enthusiasms, knitting sites, videos on how to quilt, various online retailers she liked to browse, and a nice collection of reference sites for projects she’d worked on. I got pretty teary-eyed seeing those. It really hurt.

Didn’t find the photo restoration site, either.

Day 226, book, lunch, money, concert

Tuesday, 7/16/2019

In the morning I drove to the YMCA for some exercises. This strikes me ever more strongly as a waste of money. Especially so when, in the evening, I found a letter from the Y saying they were unable to process my monthly payment against the credit card on file. When I logged on to their site, which is apparently a new one to which all accounts have been recently transferred, I found the records in some disarray. First, they had the user’s name as Marian Cortesi. Marian may once have briefly had a Y membership but I’m dubious about that; and the access to the account was via my email address, not hers. Second, when I tried to update the account info, I was able to change the mailing address, but not the name. The account showed a list of four credit cards, all out of date. I was able to remove three of them, but the fourth–actually Marian’s old BofA card which should never have been in there–could not be removed because, the site claimed, a charge was pending against it. Well, duh, you can “pend” against that card as long as you like; it was cancelled six months ago and will never pay.

Thinking about it, I speculate that when the Y set up their new website, they merged a very old, inactive account of Marian’s with my current and active account. That would explain all the dead cards in the payment method list, and the use of her name with my email.

So I paid the pending amount using a different card (one that I am almost sure I gave them the last time they couldn’t charge a dead card, but it isn’t in this diary). But with pending balance 0, it still can’t delete that old card because of “open charges”. Bad website. I really need to transition to things I can do here in the C.H. fitness center. But still waiting on C.H. management to select a replacement fitness director.

Back to the unit, and now I was able to actually order two proof copies of the book from Amazon. They won’t arrive until next week, but, yay. Looking forward to that. I spent an hour doing classifications on Zooniverse. Then went out to lunch with Scott at Gombei, where I haven’t been since… Marian and I might have gone there once in 2018 but I’m thinking it was probably 2017. We used to go there on an occasional Sunday night when we felt like eating out, and most of our regular spots were closed.

At 2:30 I went down to the lobby to meet Deborah. We went up to the penthouse and sat down and went over the accounting from the sale. It was a very successful sale, in her opinion, and in mine. My net take from it, including the money that people paid me directly when they picked up the bed and the desk, was just slightly over $2,000. Deborah had brought my share of the weekend sale in cash! So there I was holding a wad of $1650, feeling like a drug dealer.

I thanked her profusely. She was fun to work with, honest, good-natured. And she saved me a ton of effort and stress. If I’d tried to price and sell all that stuff, oh what a job that would have been. She earned every penny of her share.

At 6 I went out to Stanford for a concert, one more in the Stanford Jazz Workshop series. This was “Sarah Reich’s Tap Into Jazz”. Here she is in performance. There were a few problems with this concert, not her fault. I see in the video she is wearing the same mic, but at Stanford she had consistent problems with it, going dead, or crackling when she moved. There was a video to introduce the show and whoever ran the projector had the sound up way too far, unpleasantly loud and distorted on the highs. And the floor of the stage at Campbell Recital Hall was not as resonant as a good tap floor should be. She soldiered on. The band, only a four-piece group, was tight. It was an OK show but for a fan of Gaby Diaz, just OK.

 

Day 225, realty, FOPAL, book

Monday, 7/15/2019

After a run this morning, I passed time easily until 11am. Then I drove to Tasso street to meet with Amy and Chuck. I was early, and looked around the house. Looking at it now I see lots of worn and messy bits. It looks old especially the kitchen, and could definitely use upgrading.

Amy and Chuck walked around and Amy chose colors and decided how much of the woodwork should be painted over with light colors, something she likes to do to make a house look larger, lighter, and more inviting. OK, I can see how it looks “dark” in certain aspects owing to dark wood paneling and trim. But that’s in daylight, with the only source of light the windows. At night, furnished and lit up inside, it looks cozy. But buyers won’t see it that way; they’ll see it in daytime. I said to them, I don’t live here any more; you are the professionals; do your job. They deferred to me on a couple of minor points, but mainly I stood back.

One decision was that I would not have the fireplace converted to a modern gas insert. Buyers won’t even notice it, or be impressed if it were pointed out.

However, my idea to have a tree maintenance company trim the oak was seconded; and indeed Amy asked to have the other trees over the back yard cut back to not touch the garage or house roofs and let in more light.

From there I went down to FOPAL, stopping at the grocery store to buy some bread. I’m going to keep a loaf of bread in my room for those occasions when I just want a sandwich for lunch.

Back at C.H. I had a bit of a nap, then went down for supper. Sat at an open table with Rosina, Joanne, and (I think) Mary?

After supper I rebuilt the cover image for the book. I’ve gotten some help from the Affinity forum and solved another issue for myself, so I could do that. Then I started the lengthy Kindle procedure to process the book while I watched Jeopardy. And the Kindle site was happy with my new cover and book body, so it is ready to be published on Kindle, and to order a sample print book.

 

Day 224, coffee, book, movie

Sunday, 7/14/2019

I had a date for coffee with Harriet this morning. We met at Mme. Collette at 8, and had a lengthy chat over coffee and pastries. I had imagined she might want to see Channing House, so I tidied my apartment before going out. During this I thought of a name for the decorating style I’ve achieved here: MCMM, Mid-Century Modern Monastic. Really, the open, spare feeling, with plain walls and carpet, is reminiscent (alright, very slightly reminiscent) of a monastic cell. A very comfortable cell. The plain walls aren’t an affectation; it’s just that I’ve not hung any of the prints I brought from Tasso street. When I move back from purgatory in January, I will hang them.

Anyway, Harriet expressed no interest in seeing the place. So we parted about 9am. I worked a bit on the book, regenerating the PDF of the text to correct one of the two problems that Kindle Direct found in my uploads. The other problem had to do with the cover image, and I decided to remake two of the three parts of that. But I quickly ran into small issues with Affinity, and decided to post a request for help on its user forum. Did that and set the project aside until Monday.

I didn’t fancy the lunch menu at C.H. — nothing wrong with it, I just didn’t like the formality of sitting down in the dining room as at dinner. Some days you just want a peanut butter sandwich, you know? So I walked up Homer street to Whole Foods and had a smoothie.

After lunch I paid a few bills and organized a couple of files. Later I decided to see a movie, and went out to a 5pm showing of Toy Story 4. It’s cute. I found it dragged a bit, and just too many events. Could have used cutting IMO. Anyway, I just made it back to C.H. in time for supper at 6:59.

Day 223, tour, book, concert

Saturday, 7/13/2019

In the morning I worked on creating a proper cover image for a print book. This involved a fair amount of frustration trying to use Affinity Pro, which has most of the features of PhotoShop but just enough interface differences that I frequently ran into roadblocks where I just didn’t understand what it had done, or did but couldn’t see why it did that. Joys of learning a new app.

At 11am I drove to the museum and led the noon tour. A group of 14 college students from Taiwan attached themselves to the tour, making quite a crowd. The leader told me he had brought a similar group through last year and I’d been the tour leader then. I don’t remember; but I wish this time he had booked a private tour instead of just joining the standard one. Anyway it went ok, the group as a whole gave me a nice applause round and the Taiwan students insisted on a group photo with me in the middle.

Back home I did a bit more on the book, including uploading my cover image and having Kindle Direct generate a preview version of the completed book. This process takes something like half an hour — the software warns you, “you might want to go have coffee, or perhaps make a sandwich” while it runs. At the end of the lengthy process it found two issues that I have to fix. One, the cover image is about 150 pixels too narrow; I don’t understand why as I built it on top of their template image. And it found one place in a 270pp book where the text bled past the margin, in effect, finding a small bug in the Leanpub PDF generation. I’ll work on fixing those another day. But print publication is a few hours’ work away.

After a quick (solitary) supper (lamb curry, which was quite good) I headed out on a Lyft to Dinkelspiel for the first of the Stanford Jazz Festival concerts I signed up for weeks ago. This was led by Andrew Motis, with whom I was very impressed. Just a slip of a girl but she plays a mean trumpet and sings brilliantly. Maybe most impressive when she did an Ella Fitzgerald scat number and nailed it. She started with a small five-piece combo including Ken Peplowski, a great clarinetist whom I’ve heard in prior SJF seasons. For the second half they brought in another ten musicians, “Stanford All-Stars,” I think mostly faculty, and did big-band numbers. There are few sounds finer than a tight big band. A very nice concert.

 

Day 222, house, book, dinner

Friday, 7/12/2019

Started with a run; it was fine. Then I drove to the Tasso street house just to see it cleaned out. Sean was there, and I gave him permission to sleep there through Sunday. Everything is gone from the house except the dryer, and that is supposed to be picked up this afternoon. Some of the cabinets from the shop in the garage should also go today, according to Sean.

I drove to Summerwinds Nursery and picked up a bag of planting mix and a small pot. A week ago, walking down Lytton avenue at the end of my run, I was struck by a plant that was spilling out of a planter in front of an office building. Dark coppery-red leaves and small bright yellow flowers. I pulled a small cutting from it and stuck it in water when I got home. Now, after a week in water, it is showing roots, so I want to pot it.

I didn’t do that now, but instead worked on the book. I was trying to solve a formatting problem with a two-page appendix which was formatted using a table. The Leanpub code just couldn’t get it right. I kept changing one thing or another and re-generating the PDF over and over. Each generation took several minutes. Finally I realized that the software just wouldn’t do what I thought it did (spanning a cell across multiple columns) and I revised the data into nested lists instead. That worked so I now had a satisfactory print-ready PDF.

Then I downloaded the Kindle Direct cover template and turned to making cover PDFs. Problem: my lovely cover is not in the 6×9 ratio of the required book size. It’s a bit wider. As-is, bits of the title are cropped on the right, and there’s a gap top and bottom. If I drag it to the needed aspect ratio it looks wrong. I spent an hour trying to find a solution, then set it aside for tomorrow.

Dinner arranged by Patti with Craig, whose wife is off vacationing with their daughter in Cambridge, England, David, and Jean, neither of whom I’d met. Nice conversation.

 

Day 221, Shustek, book

Thursday, 7/11/2019

Woke early, and the paper didn’t arrive until 6:45. This kind of inverts my usual morning, with internet browsing first and newspaper after. Not now, but when I am permanently back to the sixth floor next year, I will try to work out an arrangement to get the paper by 6am. I wonder when delivery happens on the 4th floor, where I’ll be soon?

Anyway, I had some time to pass before leaving for a day at Shustek center. I passed it by starting to prepare the cover files for the print book. The first issue is, what to put on the back cover? I have a lovely illustration for the front, and the PhotoShop file for it (which Affinity Pro opens nicely, fortunately as I no longer have PhotoShop access).

ttbb_cover

So I opened that and considered. I had some notion I could make a back cover by copying the base image, clone out the hiker figure (I love how the hiker is androgynous, could be man or woman, but still projects confidence and courage), leaving only the mountains, darken them, and put them under a night sky. So the back cover would be the same scene, but hours later, at night and the hiker has moved on.

I started doing that, then decided to find my night sky image. Googled “royalty free night sky” and of course there are gazillions of them, among which the following caught my eye.

starry-night-small

It could be my hiker! Clearly this is my back cover. I’ll extend the sky upward into black to fill out a portrait-mode image, and put a block of text over the upper third with advertising copy. I’ll still have to work out a spine image, probably just a solid color with the title text.

So off to Shustek where Toni and I cataloged and arranged some of the multiple box donation of one Julia Wolf. (Not the mathematician in wikipedia, but a software security researcher.) Ms. Wolf has apparently attended every security conference and hacker conference held in the last 15 years, Black Hat, DefCon, ShmooCon and many others. At every conference she collected brochures and freebies like pens and backpacks, and bagged the schwag from each conference and labeled it. So now we were separating the artifacts (pens, badges, backpacks) from the texts (brochures, stickers, anything printed) because these classes are stored in different systems.

Sat alone at dinner; Patti (from my floor) came by and asked if I prefer to eat alone? Well, sometimes, yeah, not always. Tomorrow night, can you join me and some others? Of course! So dinner set for tomorrow night.

 

Day 220, moving, canceling, FOPAL

Wednesday, 7/10/2019

Today was the day scheduled for my relocation meeting. Angela, the boss of all the renovation logistics, and Gloria, the rep for Gentle Transitions, the moving company that executes the move-outs and move-backs, came and spent two hours going over my apartment and its contents in detail.

They had a floor plan of 621 and of 435, my temp location, on magnetic boards, and lots of little magnetic furniture tiles, and first built a detailed plan of my current arrangement. Then we went down to 435 and with my input, worked out where to put my furniture there. All recorded by arranging the pieces on the magnetic boards, and then photographing the final arrangements.

It was made easier because the two units are quite similar; 435 has one less closet than 621, but fortunately I don’t make much use of two of the three closets I have. So Gloria planned out which items from what closets and cupboards and drawers, would go to which others. Same for the bathroom, as the 621 bathroom has a few more drawers than 435 does. It took the full two hours, but is done. 435 is not as nice a place as 621 for sure, but it will do for six months.

Before they arrived I came to a decision and executed it, possibly to my cost. Before I knew the dates of the move, I had booked a tour with a departure date of 9/6. Then Angela told me that 9/6 was my move-out day, with no flexibility. I was anticipating moving out to a guest unit on 9/5, and returning 16 days later to my new apartment. That was barely acceptable but now I’m seriously worried about the house sale maybe not getting completed in August and running into September. It shouldn’t, but I don’t like the chance that I could be away and unable to sign stuff, and texting Chuck at all hours.

So I decided rather precipitously to change the date. I called Road Scholar and they agreed to change to the same tour but with a 9/25 departure date. Same price, but, sadly, since I am now less than 60 days from the original departure, they can only give me half credit for the fee. Fortunately I had bought all-reasons travel insurance as well, so I can get back the other half from the insurance company. So I was trying to arrange that while simultaneously talking to Angela and Gloria, and it was kind of stressful.

When the move conference was over I gobbled some lunch and headed out to FOPAL. This is the last day for arranging one’s section before the sale this weekend. I processed five boxes of computer books, sent four boxes to the bargain room (the bargain room guy, Frank, says there’s no room on the shelves there, either, but he’ll deal with it) and priced one box. But rather than shelve them, I set the box in the vast mound of boxes for all sections labeled “Hold”. Then I spent two hours sorting and boxing, and came home quite tired.

For supper I headed to the open table where Rosina usually sits. Ed and Colin joined me. During the conversation (much of it about Colin’s boyhood in South Africa before WWII, as Colin is rather chatty) it emerged that Rosina during her career in education traveled the world setting up links between classes in, she says, 104 countries, so that the classes can meet over Skype and converse.

Like I said, I’m surrounded by over-achievers. It’s quite shocking to me what an ageist I am. I just never expect an old person to be a distinguished anything. Old people don’t matter, as a matter of mental habit. It’s just like racism: automatically assuming less, or discounting the value, of a person based on physical appearance. Gray racism. I think it’s one factor in why I am having trouble remembering names to go with faces. Not the only factor; I’ve always been bad at remembering names. But to some extent, my brain doesn’t like to pay attention to old wrinkly faces, or distinguish between them. Of course the irony is, I’m one of them. Which I only remember when looking in the mirror.

 

 

Day 219, realty and book

Tuesday, 7/9/2019

Started the day with a run, which felt not just normal but actually good. For an hour I worked on the book. Then it was time to drive to Tasso street to meet with Chuck.

There I met Sean, a tall, gangly guy with a wild blond hair and a gentle manner straight out of the 1960s. He’s employed by Deborah to house-sit for security. He’s been sleeping on the used McCroskey mattress and really likes it, so I suggested he talk to Deborah and buy it. (If he doesn’t, I’d just have to pay somebody to haul it.) When not house-sitting, Sean lives in the warehouse of a music store. He’s got a ten year old son in Munich and would love to go back to Germany, but he’s only just managed to qualify for SSI (bad back) and would lose it if he lived outside the U.S.

Aside from the mattress, there is very little left from the sale. All furniture is gone. The refrigerator is gone, and that pleases me; I had come to hate that refrigerator over the past six months and I’m glad it’s gone. Apparently they had trouble getting it out, having to remove not only the back door, but the refrigerator doors as well. But there’s a dusty space where it was. There’s yet another possible buyer for the washer/dryer coming Wednesday.

The only real surprise to me was that nobody wanted the Rorstrand dinner service. I really thought… well, what do I know. It was back on Day 6 that I started restoring it by ordering replacements for all the chipped plates. Then Denise didn’t want it. Just a surprise to me that nobody wants such a handsome, complete set. Well, I suppose it’s that anybody with a household, buys their dinner service early on, or gets it as a wedding present. And they don’t need another.

Chuck arrived and we went over the next steps. In order they are: To get Amy to take a quick look and decide what paint colors she wants; then to get the painting contractor scheduled. When the painting is done, or while it is done, get the area rugs removed. After the painting, to bring in a cleaner to polish the wood floors and clean everything. And then Amy does her staging. Last or nearly last will be to get Richard to apply a new layer of garden mulch, and maybe get someone in to power-wash the brick walks and porch.

Can all this get done in July? Doubtful, I think. Can it get done in August? It damn well better had, because on September 5 I am out of here for two weeks. I really, really want the house sale wrapped before September 1, and I need to push everyone for that.

After Chuck left, the guys from the fireplace contractor arrived, Jose and Noah. They opined that the only way to get electric ignition and a remote control, is to replace the burner and grate that is in place now. Their boss, Eric, is to send me a quote. They didn’t say how much it would be, but I’m predicting it will come in over $1200. Less than $2K I hope.

Back at C.H. I spent a couple more hours on the book. I resolved a nasty problem with cross-references. The publishing platform I’m using supports x-refs but I’m trying to use them within my end-notes file to do op.cit. references, that is, cross-references from inside one note, to another note. Their software wasn’t quite up to it, but I found a work-around and reported it on their user forum.

I am just about ready to generate a final, print-ready PDF, which I can then use to build a book on Kindle Direct or one of the other on-demand publishers, Lulu or Blurb. But I also need to prepare a separate PDF of the cover. To now, I’ve only needed a front cover because that’s all an e-text needs. But a print book needs also a graphic for the spine and the back cover. It will take a bit of creativity to generate those, working from the nice front-cover graphic I purchased way back when.

Ate supper alone at a table for one, reading, like a nerd. But dammit, by comparison, it is stressful to sit with other people and make conversation. Not difficult while I’m doing it, but in the moment of entering the seating area holding my plate of food, faced with the options of, A, going to one of the open tables and smiling and saying, mind if I sit here? and B, going to a small table on the side and sitting down alone and bringing out my phone and opening Kindle to read while I eat, well, A is more stressful and B, more relaxing. That’s being an introvert.