Day 55, cataloging

Thursday 1/24/2019

Nothing remarkable today. It was the day for spending all day at the Computer Museum work site, the Shustek Center in Fremont. Spent the day working with Steve Madsen cataloging old stuff. Oldest thing, no doubt, was a Hewlett-Packard Audio Oscillator model 200C (the link is to a model 200B; the one we cataloged differed only in being wider with holes to mount in a 19-inch rack). On the bottom of the case somebody had written in marker pen, quote,

RETUBED 11-12-57

Nice, huh? In 1957 somebody renewed the vacuum tubes in that machine!

Certainly the oddest objects were the parts of a prototype game from 1975 called “WillBall”. It was intended to be a game in which two players competed to control the position of a ball using mental powers through biofeedback headbands. The ball was controlled by a magnet under the game table which was moved by a Rube Goldberg lash-up of rubber belts pulled by stepper motors. The whole thing was meant to be driven from a program written in BASIC running in an Apple II. Don’t imagine it worked too well.

Anyway, a nice day working with a friendly crew of folks. This is one of my main sources of socialization. Home to do a little programming and watch some TV.

Day 47, not in hot water

Thursday, 1/17/2019

Today I was scheduled to spend a full day (10-4) doing cataloging at the CHM Shustek Center in Fremont. Prior to leaving I took a shower and… noticed the hot water wasn’t, or at least was only warm. I immediately knew the water heater wasn’t heating. It was familiar because, I dimly recalled, we just recently had that same problem fixed. So once dressed, I pulled down the big red three-ring binder in which we have kept all receipts for household repair for the last oh gosh, since the 1980s? Earlier maybe. Flip flip flip to the tab for “plumbing”, wondering did I file that receipt last fall, or just scrap it? Yes! I had. On 10/18 we had a repair person from “Water Heaters Only” in to fix the temp sensor so the pilot would light.

Called them. They could come today; sorry, I can’t be home today, tomorrow? Sure, 12-4pm; great, tx bye. Off to work. Cataloged some old stuff: parts of a Motorola EXORciser, a microcomputer development system from 1975. M6800-based box with a motherboard and a bunch of cards plugged into it, oh, a mighty 32KB memory card there. And a heavy (52 pounds, we weigh these things) dual 8-inch floppy drive box. This was a donation from the California Department of Transportation. What the heck was CalTrans doing with a Motorola development system in 1975? Perhaps developing some piece of embedded traffic control hardware based on the M6800. But why had they held on to it until now? Maybe because they only just retired the last of their whatever-it-was embedded traffic light controllers, who knows?

Back home, I just had time to snatch a bite and a quick nap and then had to head out to a house concert that started at 7pm in Santa Clara. Concert was OK, a trio of people doing bluegrass and old contra-dance tunes on fiddle, banjo and guitar. I’d expected more bluegrass, but the lead guy was big into work songs — he gives workshops teaching people to how to sing during manual labor, didn’t think there’d be a lot of demand but, well — and we the audience got coerced into singing some sailor rope-pulling songs a capella. A lot of the audience were into contra dancing, which is apparently quite a thing in this area, to judge by the long list of upcoming contra dance events that was circulated at the break. Come to First Methodist Church in Palo Alto Saturday evening and if you don’t know how to dance, we’ll teach you. Um, nunh-unh, thanks.

That was implementing part of my “being a bachelor” plan that I’d worked on last fall. One of the bullet points is, “attend at least one performance event per week”. Well, I’m over-achieving because, movie last Sunday, concert tonight, basketball game tomorrow. The unwatched TV is stacking up on the DVR. That is not a problem.

Day 40, Back to Yosemite

Thursday 1/10/2019

Today I was scheduled to work for CHM at the warehouse where 98% of the collection is held, a big climate-controlled, secure box in Milpitas, off Yosemite avenue. For long months around 2008, and again in 2015, I spent a day a week working there helping to store and catalog hundreds of items. In 2008, it was a huge collection, two tractor-trailer loads, from Germany to process. In 2015 it was a campaign to catalog and photograph thousands of items that had been incompletely catalogued when the Museum moved from Boston to Mountain View. I hadn’t been in the Yosemite warehouse in three years. It hadn’t changed much, and the volunteers and staff who I worked with were all old friends from previous days.

The work was familiar but strenuous. We were moving a group of large chunks of a DEC KL-10 and a VAX, which were sitting on the ground floor, and putting them up on pallets so they could be fork-lifted to one of the upper levels. It was part of a game that Aurora, the site manager, called “museum tetris”, moving things from level to level to optimize space. Each heavy box had to be rolled on its casters up a ramp onto a pallet. Then its screw jacks could be lowered to stabilize it, and compression straps wrapped around it to lock it to the pallet. I worked on that with three others, while three more worked at moving dozens of storage boxes and placing restraint straps to ensure they wouldn’t fall in case of an earthquake.

About suppertime, my niece Denise returned a call and I finally got a chance to offer her our china service. She’ll consult with her partner and get back to me.

Day 33, a full day

Yesterday evening, coach Amy Tucker came through in spades, saying comp tix for my party for the Sunday game would be at the player window. I’m sure my relatives will be impressed with their seats. But somehow this exchange got into my brain and kept me wakeful much of the night. Anticipating this party, completely inane and unreal worry that I’d offended Amy, who knows? Worry worry and toss and turn.

Thursday 1/3/2019

The middle of the day is filled with my first cataloging shift at CHM in over two years. I’ve spent many hours over the last decade cataloging objects, but stopped doing that activity in favor of leading tours. A few weeks ago I was invited to schedule myself for cataloging sessions again. So today I was to show up at the museum’s Shustek Center at ten. One little problem: I’d been to the Shustek Center only once before, for a tour when it first opened a couple of years ago. I knew it was near Milpitas, but couldn’t remember exactly where.

Well, no problem, I’ll just get it off the CHM website. Um, no, I won’t; the site absolutely does not give that info. I’m pretty good at using search engines, and I could not find the address of this building. After an hour I did turn it up, using the online equivalent of brute force. I opened the online PDF of the Museum’s glossy annual magazine for the year the Center opened. There was an article about the creation of the new site, and buried in it was the address. Apparently that PDF wasn’t being indexed by Google.

Everyone at the site was very welcoming. I did some good work cataloging a rack of 1950s-era plugboards for IBM unit-record machines, and enjoyed lunch with a cheerful group of 8.

Back home by 3pm, just time for a little rest before heading out for the day’s second activity. One of the Stanford WBB fans, Harriet, had organized a group to go to Pinewood high school and watch a Stanford recruit, Hannah Jump, play. Five of us met at Harriet’s house for a good, simple meal at 5, and then off to the Pinewood campus in Los Altos Hills. I rode in Arlene’s Tesla, the first time I’ve ridden in a Tesla. We were all impressed by the quality of play in the game between the Pinewood Pumas and Sacred Heart Prep: the girls are fast, athletic, and intense. Pinewood won, and Hannah looked like a college-ready player.

Back home at 8:30 to find lots of watchable TV programs on the DVR. Quite a nice day.