Day 285, paperwork, activities

Friday, 9/13/2019

Despite a forecast of high hot heat — and it did top 100 on my balcony later in the day, as reported by my totally accurate indoor/outdoor thermometer — I went for a run. I was out before 7:30 and back before 8:30 and it was very comfortable. Next I went to the Financial Advisors’ office to sign a bunch of papers. When we met on Monday we decided to put 1/3 of the house money with one of their favorite brokers, Kahn Bros., and 1/3 with another, Robotti. This requires opening two new Schwab accounts.

My IRA account has been managed by Kahn Bros. since forever, but you can’t just randomly add money to an IRA. So I have to create a new account to receive the money to be managed by Kahn. We had not had money managed by Robotti before, so that meant setting up yet another new account for them to run. Each of the brokers that my F.A.s use follows the Benjamin Graham “Value Investing” paradigm, but each has different methods and favors different parts of the market.

Anyway the Schwab paperwork to create an account takes at least four signatures and a couple of “initial here” items, and each brokerage has a disclosure agreement that takes a couple more. Then, the package needs to include proof that I’m the trustee of the family trust. The “Statement of Trust” document that the F.A.s had on file was out of date, superceded by the revisions following Marian’s death. So I went home and scanned the relevant pages of the current documents to PDF and emailed them. This was all managed and handled by the supremely competent and cheerful Cindy, who is the soul of that office.

Paperwork done, I put in an hour or so working on the novel. I’m in an easy part, basically doing a careful edit and slight modification of the parts I’ve already written. Removing one particular SF gizmo that I decided I didn’t like, while inserting a couple of clues that will be relevant to the ending I’ve outlined. And generally tidying up. I’m also reading Show Don’t Tell, one of the most practical and useful books on writing fiction I’ve read (and I’ve read a few). That motivates some of the edits I’m making.

About 2pm I started getting phone messages and emails from C.H. staff alerting us that the “chiller” that cools the ground and 3rd to 6th floors had broken down. We were advised to hydrate and if we felt any distress, to go to an upper floor lounge. Then there was a knock on the door, one of the nurses from the nursing wing was checking on each apartment on the floor to make sure we were OK. Actually I was quite comfortable. I had closed the drapes earlier and I don’t think the temperature got above 77 in my unit.

Today was the much-advertised Activity Fair, at which all the volunteer organizations have tables and try to get new members. I was interested in the A/V committee, who mainly provide people to run the sound (and video when necessary) in the auditorium. I’m supposed to get an email scheduling a training session.

I was accosted by the Chorus group who want me to come sing with them. Dubious, but I may try it. And I was hit on by Betty of the Writing group. They do a weekly thing where they send out a “prompt” — a sentence or something — and everyone writes something based on it, and they meet to read their creations. Hmmm. And by the editors of Scribble and Sketch, the in-house magazine, wanting contributions. Hmmm.

Because of the A/C breakdown, the Activity Fair in the Auditorium was managing attendance. They were monitoring the temp and if it got over 85, they’d have to cancel it. Meantime you had to wait at the door for someone to come out before going in, to keep the crowd small.

By 5pm the A/C was back online. At six I went down and didn’t like the look of the menu so I went out in the car to find supper. I was thinking of the restaurants at the Town and Country shopping center, but on the way I noticed Whole Foods, and said bleep that, I’ll just get a smoothie. And did.

Day 283, writing, FOPAL

Wednesday, 9/11/2019

Went for a run. After that I spent an hour on the YA book, and worked out the general outline of an ending. The problem had been, that I’d allowed my party of protagonists to split up and I needed a convincing reason for them to get back together in time to figure out and thwart the disastrous action planned by the villain. And I did, I see how it can all go down now. This was very satisfying. There is a positive endorphin rush that comes from working out a creative problem.

Then I spent another hour on Lisp. Then it was 11:30 and I went to FOPAL for a pleasant afternoon of sorting. I had meant to do four hours, but at 3pm my feet and back were hurting, so I called it a day.

In the evening I cleaned the interior of my printer, which has been smearing ink on printouts. Emboldened by a couple of youtube videos I got in there with tissues and paper towel and alcohol and sopped up the excess ink and cleaned the bottom of the print head.

Day 282, quiet Tuesday

Tuesday, 9/10/2019

For exercise I ran my series of this and that, but I need to either increase reps or add things. Then I had breakfast here, apparently for the first time ever on a Tuesday. I know that because at supper last night, we were talking about the meal service and I mentioned that I never see pancakes or waffles at breakfast. Nobody then at the table had any thoughts other than “they do sometimes — I think?”

But this morning there were waffles on offer. I said “oh boy, waffles” to the guy in front of me in line, and he confidently informed me, there are always waffles on tuesday and pancakes on wednesdays. Well, Wednesday I usually run, and have breakfast in my room for an earlier start. But I guess on Tuesdays I’ve always done that also.

During the morning I spent an hour and a half on Lisp, doing the exercises at the end of a chapter of the book I’m using now. (It is a print book, ANSI Common Lisp by Graham, not the tutorial etext I mentioned earlier. Graham’s is a college-level text and quite challenging.)

I also spent an hour working on the outline of my YA novel. I started this back in 2016 or so, and have over two-thirds of it done. When I re-read what I’ve written, I like it a lot; it’s really good writing, and for tone and character it accomplishes just what I wanted to do. But there are structural/plot issues that I need to correct, and in particular I need to work out a clear outline for the ending.

In the afternoon I thought about actually buying some things. I have a list of things I’d like to splurge money on: a TV, a sound bar, and a printer. I went to the local Best Buy to eyeball some of these things. I was able to see the particular TV model, but mounted about 8 feet up on a wall in a dark room; and actually listened to the sound bar, which sounded good. I almost bought that, but couldn’t quite pull the trigger on it. They didn’t have the printer on view, although I think their website said they did.

At 4:30pm was the monthly fourth-floor residents’ meeting in the lounge. Everybody welcomed me and Patti, their new 6th floor “campers”. After the meeting, the floor rep, Mary Beth, had reserved a big table for 18 in the dining room. Made pleasant conversation with people until almost 7pm.

Day 268, fever, lunch, tech squad, financials

Tuesday 8/27/2019

I had a tossy-turny night, awake for a couple hours from 1am to 3 or so. But then slept right up to 6:10 and really didn’t feel much like getting out of bed. My arm is mildly sore around the vaccine site, nothing serious, but I just didn’t feel 100%. Took my temp: 99.1º, or a full degree above my usual 98.0. So, shingles-shot fever? I decide to take it easy for the day.

In case I had something contagious I got a banana and a bagel from the to-go refrigerator and ate in my room. I canceled my lunch date with Scott. I generally puttered around, although I put in an hour at the main computer starting to organize my notes for the rewrite of my YA novel. Feeling somewhat better around 12, I went to the dining room for soup and bread — they have been setting out really good, dark-brown bread at lunch times, and two slices of that and a bowl of the day’s soup is a good lunch.

At 2:30 there was a meeting of the Tech Squad. The main topic was a presentation from the two principal founders of a startup, park.com. (Website clearly not finished as of now.) They have an app that will supposedly allow re-use of the numbered parking spaces here, for staff and visitors. If I’m going out for the day, I would use the app to say my space is available. I could charge for it, or not. Someone needing to park, staff or visitor, could reserve the use of my spot. Bert pushed them pretty hard on the fact that there are many, many parking-space air-b&b-like apps. But it appears the facilities team is willing to give it a trial.

At 4pm it was the semi-annual Board of Directors Financial Committee update. The auditorium was set up for max capacity, where they open the folding doors into the dining room, and probably 120 or so residents turned up to hear a presentation on the financials for the 2018-19 fiscal year and the status of the current year. Bottom line, CH has plenty of funds, but the operating budget is losing around $1M a year (on a $20M budget) mostly owing to the fact that 20 units have been taken “off-line” to use for temporary locations during the Upgrade. When that finishes in two more years, a return to profitability is expected.

This was followed by a soiree in the courtyard. I sampled a couple of the foods on offer, did not take a glass of wine even though it was free, and went on back to my room where I dined simply on cherries and a PBJ. However by 9pm my temperature was back to normal (for me) of 98.1. So hopefully tomorrow will be ok.

Day 237, docent, sonnet, book

Saturday, 7/27/2019

Did nothing much between breakfast and departing for the Museum at 11am. Did my docent round, people liked it.

This morning I remembered the window handles at Tasso street. They are brass, and I think three times over the 40+ years I lived there, I polished them. They come up with a lovely warm shine, then over a decade or so, turn dark brown again. Which they are now, and I really would like them shiny. It’s not that bad of a job, especially if I were to use some kind of power tool. I have a good cordless drill, but I don’t have a buffer attachment for it. That’s a rubber disk on a spindle; you chuck it into the end of the drill and tie a lambs-wool pad over the disk, and then you can whizz away with your tool.

So I stopped on the way home at the hardware store intending to pick up a buffer disk, and to my surprise they didn’t have them. So at home I opened up Amazon and ordered one. It will arrive Monday, but that means I can’t, as I’d sort of planned, go do any buffing of window handles tomorrow. Well, I can, but I’ll have to do it manually, no power assist. Looking ahead, I’m hoping that the house will be full of painters next week, and I might have a hard time working in around them. Well.

In the afternoon email is a notice from Amazon that my book is now available for sale. I ordered three copies, although I’m not sure on whom I will bestow the third.

Sitting around in the afternoon I recalled a thought that drifted through my mind a couple of times lately: recalling Emma Lazarus’ famous sonnet about the Statue or Liberty, The New Colossus, I wondered what kind of sonnet she might write about today’s immigration policy. Well, how about me, could I write a sonnet? And over about 90 minutes, I did, complete with proper sonnet rhyme scheme (mostly) and iambic pentameter (ok, ok, there’s one extra foot in one line, sue me).

(Removed, so as to meet the rules of most poetry magazines which don’t want anything published before, even in a personal blog.)

Since I’d never written a sonnet before, I think I’ll call this a day.

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 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.