I was walking to the doctor about three weeks ago, enjoying the beautiful weather and the scenery – until I tripped over a discontinuity in the sidewalk and fell down hard enough that my watch wanted to call 911. I was mostly OK (though my pants didn’t survive the experience), so I picked myself up and continued on my way.

While we were visiting our son Jeff in Boston last week, we saw a dead rat in the Public Garden. Jeff stopped and took a picture, then he fired up Boston’s 311 app and reported it – the rat was removed the same day (and they told him they’d done so). I was impressed.

Today, Diane had to go to the same doctor I visited three weeks ago. We had to be out of the house this morning, so we walked there together. She asked me to point out where I’d fallen so she could avoid it on future visits. When we got there, I saw that the sidewalk hadn’t been repaired and was still a danger; I thought about Jeff and looked for a San Jose 311 app. I installed it and reported the problem, complete with picture.

I got a response within hours, telling me that my request was being forwarded to the city Department of Transportation. Not quite what I was hoping for, but maybe it’s a first step.

If it weren’t for the honor of the thing, I’d skip writing anything today – it’s been busy and I’m exhausted.

The high point of the day was lunch with our friends at Eric’s Deli Cafe. The food was, well, it was Erik’s – we’ve been going there for more than 35 years, and it hasn’t changed much in that time. Good, filling, and simple. But seeing our friends in person instead of on-screen was a nice change!

I decided to resume ripping my DVDs to put them on my Plex server, so I spent a lot of the day fighting Handbrake. So far, even though I’ve installed libdvdcss according to the best instructions I’ve found, Handbrake doesn’t see it, so I have to use MakeMKV to actually rip the DVDs. And I haven’t been able to get subtitles properly included in the MP4 files that Handbrake creates. The good news is that using my M1 Mac mini to do the conversion to MP4 is fast – if I use “Super HQ” mode, it converts at 4x speed; if I use “Fast” mode, it converts at 12x speed. I’m hoping to figure out what’s up with the subtitles tomorrow when I’m awake!