Spent some parts of the day editing the video of the concert. Spent larger parts napping. At 5pm my temp was 98.6, so while high for me, not a fever. I was able to proceed with a commitment I had made last week.
UNAFF.org is a film library and annual festival of documentaries. The people behind it are a couple, Mischa and Jasmina Bojic and they bring a documentary to show at CH every month. Usuallly Ian runs the AV, but today he had a medical issue and last week asked me to stand in. I would have to host the couple to dinner, turn on the auditorium, let them run their film, done. I had scheduled three other people, Joanne, Martha, and Terry and booked a table. But should I actually show up and host? Doctor Internet said I probably wasn’t contagious if I didn’t have a fever, defined as +1.5ºF. So I was ok and I did host. It was a pleasant table, nice convo.
The film they brought was Tax Wars about the decades long effort to begin taxing multinational corporations. It was nicely produced and made good points, but IMHO ran about 20 minutes too long. Anyway, jobs done. And so to bed.
Two things to do today, that is, two performances of the Christmas concert. I had already bowed out of performing, my voice is a wreck and when I try to sing, I cough. But at the last minute, i.e. yesterday about 8pm, Jerry contacted Craig and got him to perform on his harmonica in my place. So all I had to do was sit behind the AV desk and operate the video cameras trying to get good videos of my neighbors performing. Which I mostly did.
The 10am performance, mostly attended by people from the AL and nursing side, went well. Then I spent from 11:30 to about 6 just lying around napping and reading. Still running a degree-plus of temp. Didn’t feel like eating.
Evening show at 7 went even better. I have good video now on my laptop which I will be editing tomorrow or maybe Friday.
Writers group in the morning. It had been like a month since I contributed anything so I felt under the gun to get something done, so I did a little thing for the prompt “Winter memory”. I’ll paste it in below.
The afternoon was filled with the tech rehearsal for the christmas concert, the one I was going to perform in but now am sure I will not. Kay had requested that I be sure to mask up as she and others have travel plans and don’t need a cold to go with, and I totally sympathize. I wore a good n95 mask and also put on vinyl gloves so I wouldn’t be leaving an germs on the microphones. I took video and after supper I edited the video and put it up on dropbox to share, and notified all the performers.
So that was about four hours sitting in the auditorium, after which I had some supper and did the video work. Checking: temp 99.7, or 2 degrees above my normal. I am still sick, darn it.
Going to bed early.
Oh, here’s the essay. Any of you guys remember “the blizzard”?
My eyes popped open at 6:30 and my first thought was, “I’m better”. The feeling of “being sick” or feverish was gone. Well not completely, I am still running about 1 degree of fever this evening, but I felt way better than yesterday.
Except for my voice. This whole infection has been deep in my throat, deep cough, soreness. And this morning I have a bullfrog croak, and it stayed all day. Talking I sound like Johnny Cash, so naturally I tried singing “I walk the line” and got 3 notes in an fell into a coughing fit. I cannot sing.
Tomorrow at 3 is the rehearsal for the winter concert and I let Kay the producer know that I likely would not be singing. Probably I can do the AV, if I feel no worse than I do today.
Went for a short walk in the afternoon; glad I did because it was the most spectacular beautiful autumn day, with the gingko and maple trees in full color, temp about 60f, brilliant sun shining through the leaves. Gorgeous.
Last evening I noticed that I was coughing, deep horky coughs like a cat trying to eject a hair-ball. But I didn’t feel bad.
Then during the night I woke up often, and coughed.In the morning my temp was slightly elevated, 97.8 versus the prior three days of 97.0; and I definitely felt sick. I emailed Joanne to call off the walk we had planned for this afternoon.
Kept feeling crappier. My temp reached 100.9 in the middle of the afternoon, e.g. almost 4 degrees above the typical morning temp. Although I don’t know what typical should be for the middle of the afternoon. Probably higher. But still, a serious fever.
I used one of my “Flu-Covid” test kits, it came up negative. So I just coddled myself and rested all afternoon. Called the nursing office to report my condition. Ordered dinner for delivery.
This is the first actual sickness I’ve had since returning from London on Day 1-80, February 2020. Never caught Covid, or anything else, in five years.
Not totally idle. At 10 I packed up all the Palm devices, 3 dead and one that worked, and took them back to FOPAL. I put the working one on the shelf with a $20 price on it. That’s for the original box, the device, a leather case for it, a dock/charger, manual, software CD.
Then we had a section managers meeting. Main thing there was it clarified for me how we should evaluate “high-value” books. I had been told they were “high value” if they were on Amazon at $30 or more. But no, the lowest online price, at ABEbooks, Alibris, wherever, has to be $30 or up. That will reduce the number of high-values I turn in, because I see a lot of books that are $35 on Amazon and/or eBay but $19 or so on other sellers.
Took a nice walk with Joanne in the morning. Passed the middle of the day quietly. Oh, I got one (out of 4) of the donated Palm devices to actually charge up and boot up. So I will put it on my shelf at FOPAL and hopefully sell it for $20.
At 2 I went to set up the auditorium for a rehearsal of our Christmas Concert. This was an optional rehearsal, so Kay the director said, any of the performers in the program could come, do their thing on the stage in any order. Since I was there with the mics all set and nobody there yet, I did my rehearsing by myself. Everybody else sounds fine, we got the mics at the right levels and so on. DG who is designated stage-hand, i.e. the guy who moves the mic stands to where they are needed, made lots of notes, and a good time was had by all.
I also helped Susan with another tech call. Her little external backup drive wasn’t doing its thing any more, and it has basically died. So I gave here links to where to get another one on Amazon, and she asked could I please send her to any other retailer than Amazon so I did that. Several people around here have sworn off Amazon as a matter of policy.
Had a quick planning session with Joanne in the morning, to check on the availability of the car, and her preferences for a couple of possible outings. Then I headed down to FOPAL where I spent 3+ hours finally getting everything settled down in my section. I put up the “Hold” sign in the sorting room, meaning, “Computers” could not take any more donations until after the sale, which is a week and a half away.
I put special labels on some shelves that I populated from this last donation, and I priced at least 100 old software discs. What is an AOL CD worth, still shrink-wrapped in mint condition? You go on eBay and check. Price it at half that or less. What is a set of install CDs for MacOS 10.2 “Jaguar” worth? On eBay, $14 to $30 depending on how complete it is. $5 sticker. All these filled two boxes that will be put away for the vintage computer fest next summer.
I took home the Palm, what I’ve been calling the sweaty palms. Palm Pilot was the original hand-held personal digital assistant, starting in the early 1990s. Somebody donated four of them and a couple of the docking stations they need to charge on. Two were a pair of early ones, M500 models. These had been in this box in somebody’s closet for who knows how long, probably 20 years. So I plugged in the docking stations and set them on to charge.
After an hour I pulled one off to see if it would boot or show something on its screen, but immediately I noticed — it was pregnant. The battery had swole up. Checked the other: same deal.
Lithium-ion batteries fail this way, and it’s a bad sign. It means the battery is generating gas. It could burst, it could catch fire. I put both of them out on the porch in a flower pot. If they want to catch fire, go ahead.
That left two of the much later Tungsten model. In their original packaging, no less. Unfortunately the first of these I opened had a ruined screen.
So that’s a goner. The remaining one has some blemishes on the screen but might be usable. I will try to charge it up tomorrow and see.
Anyway after all that fun I went to dinner, I’d been invited to a table of 7 by Karen Morrison. And immediately after, at 6:55, I joined Joanne in a packed auditorium to hear the Gunn H.S. choir singing holiday music. Massive group, at least 50 highschoolers in tuxes and black gowns, singing very good arrangements. Nice show.
OOPS, Scott is correct, the Apple Newton MessagePad was released in 1993. The first Palm Pilot was released in 1996s.
Joanne had other commitments and couldn’t lead what has become a customary Wednesday hike, so I took a solitary walk on my usual route. Then at 11 I “attended” a zoom webinar on Auracast, the bluetooth standard extension to allow broadcast of audio in public spaces. (I wrote about it back last month, 6.344.) The panel of experts backed up what I had picked up for myself: someday this will be common and widespread, because it is easier and much cheaper to deploy it, than the old T-coil technology. However, that won’t happen quickly because people don’t turn over their hearing aids that fast. There will be people with old aids expecting T-coil for, well, at least 5 years more, but the new hearing aids with auracast support are phasing in even now.
So we should probably install it if we are remodeling (which is very much in-plan). It should be part of any remodel of a public space that includes a sound system.
I didn’t do much else the rest of the day. Practiced a little music. Watched another episode of a Stanford lecture series. Ate dinner in my room consisting of the leftover goulash I brought home from last night’s dinner.
Yeah, I don’t know what happened with the numbering. All I know is, Day 1 was Sunday 12/2/2018. Like a good programmer I numbered the years from zero. Or maybe when I started I didn’t think the blog would last more than a year. Whatever, yesterday should have been day 6.365 but something slipped somewhere in the numbering. Never mind. Here we are, starting the eighth year of this blog. Probably my proudest achievement, keeping this going.
Several people wished me happy birthday, and Joanne took me out to dinner to celebrate. A really good dinner it was, at a place called Nachtmarkt (“nosh-markt” the owner said). Goulash and it was very good.
In the morning the Good Times executive committee, me, Stew and Lou, met to map out the next year. We’ve done six shows now, two a year, but decided to skip a spring show this year. In September we will do “The British Invasion” celebrating the Beatles and Stones etc. In the meantime we will occasionally show a great concert off DVD.
Codgerville 