Today, I downloaded a few TV shows to my laptop for our upcoming trip. I have hopes of not actually taking the laptop, so I also want them on my iPad – that means copying them from system to system via WiFi.

Each episode of Benjamin Franklin is about 5.4GB – and that takes a while to transfer – 5-10 minutes each, longer than it took to download them from PBS initially!

I could upgrade to WiFi 6 – but I’m not sure it’s really worth it for the three or four times a year I download videos to the iPad or iPhone. I wonder when WiFi 7 will be available?

One of Diane’s former co-workers has been a friend of ours for a long time. We went on volksmarches with him; he even helped put together an outdoor play structure for Jeff, and that was no small task.

His health hasn’t been good for the last few years, and he’s been in and out of convalescent facilities several times, so I wasn’t completely surprised when his caregiver called us a few weeks ago to let us know that John had passed away.

He’d married a Russian who already had a son; the marriage only lasted a few years, but the relationship with the son continued, even after the son’s career took him back to Russia (where he’s founded a couple of businesses).

Today, we attended John’s memorial – his son had flown in to arrange it and take care of all of the things that need to be done after a death. The service was short and meaningful – the pastor asked us to think about ways in which John had touched our lives. The attendees included John’s family, neighbors, and co-workers, and we all chatted for a while after the formal service ended.

It was sad to think that we won’t be able to talk with John any more, but it’s good that his suffering has ended.

Rest In Peace, John; your memory is a blessing.

I read a lot of science fiction when I was in school; my favorite authors were Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein, but I enjoyed many others, including James Blish. Blish’s “Cities in Flight” series was one of my favorites (the protagonist of the last three volumes was the Mayor of New York, which, of course, was a city flying through the Galaxy), but I read much of his shorter fiction, too.

One story that stuck with me was called “Common Time.” It’s the story of the first semi-successful faster-than-light trip; successful because the ship and pilot return to Earth, but only semi-successful because the pilot nearly went mad due to time desynchronization. He survived, in part, by setting up a subconscious process that counted seconds no matter what he was doing – for months on end. When he returned to the Solar System, he was compelled to figure out how long had elapsed here (versus his subjective time) before he could stop counting.

He finished the figures roughly, and that unheard moron deep inside his brain stopped counting at last. It had been pawing its abacus for twenty months now, and Garrard imagined that it was as glad to be retired as he was to feel it go.

I’ve been counting days on this blog for more than twenty months now, and it’s time to stop. I’ll blog when I have something to say or photos to share, but each entry will stand on its own.

I had big plans for tonight’s journal entry, but I worked on the Spring Almaniac instead. That, and trying to figure out what’s going on with the network – we keep losing connectivity, but the modem (and the phone) are working. I’ve rebooted all of the networking gear with no success – maybe it’ll recover overnight.

We harvested our orange crop this afternoon – all five of it. We used to get a lot more production from the tree, but it’s been pretty scant for the past few years. I’m not sure what the lifespan of an orange tree is, but I know this tree is at least 40 years old and might be as much as 60 if it was planted when the house was built.

And we got our second boosters today; we stayed with Moderna, since we’ve had fairly mild reactions with the earlier injections. After we got home, I saw an article in the New York Times reporting on an Israeli study of second Pfizer boosters saying that the added immunity waned quickly, so I’m glad I resisted the temptation to switch to Team Pfizer for this shot.

I finished doing our taxes this afternoon, and both California and the Feds have accepted them, so that’s one chore taken care of for this year. My estimates were close enough to avoid penalties, so I’m happy.

That was the most exciting thing I did today, so I’ll stop here!

The Ides of April are approaching quickly, so I finally started working on our taxes this afternoon. I didn’t have enough time to finish them because we had tickets for Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s 8th annual 48-Hour Play Festival – live and in-person at Foothill College!

This year’s theme was “Shakesbinge” – each team chose a Shakespeare play and a TV show and had to combine them, along with a required line of dialog (“That’s all, Folks!”), the use of a remote control as a prop, and some kind of commercial, producing a short (and generally funny) play. The process started at 7pm Friday; the script was due at noon on Saturday, and then the director and actors took over.

There were six plays this year:

• StreamSpeare Pitch Meeting (The Merry Wives of Windsor + Friends)
• Star Rich III: The Search for York (Richard III + Star Trek)
• Slay All Day: A Midsummer Night’s Binge (A Midsummer Night’s Dream + Buffy the Vampire Slayer)
• Chapter VII: The Bounty (As You Like It + The Mandalorian)
• Tempest/Battlestar Galactica (The Tempest + Battlestar Galactica)
• Diced (Titus Andronicus + Chopped)

The audience votes for their two favorite plays – this year, Diane and I both voted the same way, and the audience agreed with us: Diced won, and Star Rich III was second.

It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to the three plays in Silicon Valley Shakespeare’s season: Romeo and Juliet, Measure for Measure, and Sense and Sensibility.

Another day, another hike.

We left Yosemite Blue Butterfly Inn for the last time (for now, anyway) this morning and drove into the park to go explore Mirror Lake. There was a lot more traffic today than yesterday, but we still had no problem finding a parking place in the main lot.

We took the shuttle to the Ahwahnee Hotel, then hiked the rest of the way to the lake; it was a pleasant walk, and not very crowded. The water at the near end of the lake didn’t live up to the “mirror” name, so I’m glad we went to the end to enjoy the prettier view there!

We walked back to the Ahwahnee for lunch (much better than Degnan’s Deli yesterday, and only slightly more expensive) and a little light shopping before hopping the shuttle to return to Yosemite Village and our car. But there was a TON of traffic on the road, so we got off at Yosemite Falls and walked back to the car.

Instead of coming home the way we drove up, we left on CA-41 and stopped at the Wawona Hotel; it was picturesque in a very different way than the parts of the park we’d spent most of our time in. We didn’t have the time or energy to walk to Mariposa Grove – perhaps next trip.

And we’re home again – it was a busy three days!

We must have been tired yesterday because we slept until 7am, even though one wall of our room is nearly entirely windows and sliding glass doors, without curtains or blinds (we’re on the third floor, facing the river, so there are no privacy concerns).

After breakfast, we left for Yosemite Valley; the park was a lot busier than it was last night, but still not very crowded. It was easy to find parking in the main Village lot, which is unlikely to be the case in a few weeks.

The Visitor Center is closed (they’re building a new one which should be open next year), but there was an outdoor “contact station” with Rangers, so we went there for suggestions and so Diane could get an official Yosemite pin from the store.

We walked down to Lower Yosemite Falls, then followed the Valley Loop trail to the cemetery.

After that, we visited the Ansel Adams Gallery and had lunch at Degnan’s Deli (not worth a special trip), then set out for Curry Village. We enjoyed views of Half Dome and the Merced River on our way.

It had gotten pretty warm, so after a brief stop at the Curry Village market to pick up T-shirts, we took the shuttle back to our car.

We planned to go to Hite Cove next, but on our way out of the park, we stopped near El Capitan for a closeup. There was a crowd just outside the parking lot passing along binoculars and marveling at the campers suspended halfway up the face (I circled them in the second photo).

We tore ourselves away and drove to the Hite Cove trailhead to enjoy the wildflowers there. I guess it’s still a bit early in the season, because the flowers were small and scattered, at least in the first half-mile of the trail, but we enjoyed the hike, the scenery, and the flowers anyway.

We returned to our B&B for dinner at the adjoining restaurant (real vegetables!), and then spent a little while on the deck meeting the other guests and watching hummingbirds. Oh, and eating more fresh-baked cookies. Can’t forget the cookies!

This morning, I was the first speaker at the Silver Tongued Cats and I decided to talk about my struggles with home automation over the years (and especially the past couple of weeks). Because I was using the speech for the “Understanding Vocal Variety” project, I chose “Home Automation Blues” as the title and exercised extreme vocal variety by literally singing the blues to start the speech – a capella and undoubtedly off-key. I wonder if a guitar would have helped?

After that, we took off for Yosemite (via Casa de Fruita), arriving at the Yosemite Blue Butterfly Inn just after 4pm. There’s a very nice view from the deck and lots of birds around – the owners told us that when the water isn’t flowing as briskly, you can see the fish swimming around.

We unpacked, got some advice, and headed off to the park to do a quick drive up to Yosemite Village before dinner. We stopped at several of the parking areas along the road and took lots of photos, mostly of waterfalls – but so far, I’ve only been able to get one of them uploaded.

Despite the technical difficulties, we’re off to a good start!

Tonight, the Shir Hadash Adult Education committee hosted “A Taste of Adult Ed”. Diane has been the leader of the Book Group, part of Adult Ed, for a few years, so she gave the attendees a chance to engage with a bit of a book (Rav Hisda’s Daughter by Maggie Anton).

I’m not on the committee, but I attended for four reasons: to learn, to support Diane, to look for synergy between Adult Ed and the committee I lead (Ritual), and to eat cheesecake (which is traditional to eat after studying on Shavuot – and Shavuot is only a couple of months away). I’m happy to report that the cheesecake wasn’t the best reason to have been there!

It won’t surprise anyone who knows us if I tell you that we like chocolate. And we usually have a few different kinds available so we don’t get tired of one particular variety.

Last year, we picked up a couple of bags of Dove Dark Chocolate Promises® at a post-Halloween sale. They’re not our absolute favorite chocolates, but they’ve always been good, if a little bit on the waxy side. I put them aside for later, and finally got around to opening one of the bags today.

It wasn’t worth the wait. The waxy mouthfeel dominated, and there wasn’t much chocolate flavor. It wasn’t just me – Diane had the same reaction. I tried a second piece just to make sure and couldn’t finish it.

The right thing to do probably was to unwrap each piece and put it in the compost bin – but I did the expedient thing and threw both bags in the trash.

Throwing chocolate away – what has the world come to?

I mentored Toastrix, the Toastmasters club at Citrix Systems, during the 2019-2020 Toastmasters year, which meant attending their weekly meetings in Santa Clara (until they had to move online).

I kept attending after my formal mentorship ended, but the frequency decreased significantly – meeting on Zoom wasn’t nearly as much fun as seeing them in person.

But today, I got to see many of the members in person – they held a get-together at DishDash in Sunnyvale and invited me. It was the first time I’d eaten with a group in a restaurant in a long time, and I don’t think I was the only one.

Over the last couple of years, the club became an open club – many of the members had moved out of the area, left Citrix, or both. One of the people who came today arrived with a suitcase – he’d flown into SFO and taken Caltrain to see us before going up to Palo Alto for a week of meetings at his new employer.

It was a lot of fun to see people and talk with them – and this makes two days in a row that I’ve had the opportunity to do that. I’m getting spoiled.

We went to a Shir Hadash “Gratitude Reception” today; one of the hosts is the person who got me started on the Indigo and Insteon home automation process. Their house is far more technologically sophisticated than ours; I don’t plan to emulate what they’ve done, nice as it is.

Perhaps it was appropriate that our house alarm went off while we were there. My watch told me that the alarm had gone off and that it was because the side door had opened – I figured it was because it was only closed by the latch, not the deadbolt, and the wind blew it open. And none of the motion detectors were complaining, so I ignored it – until my next-door neighbor called and said that the alarm was still sounding. I was able to turn it off, which I’m sure made her happier.

We made sure the door was well bolted when we got home.

We saw Vietgone tonight at City Lights Theatre. We’d originally planned on going to a matinée, but our schedule changed and tonight’s performance was the only one we’d be able to make. I didn’t know it was Opening Night until the Executive Artistic Director welcomed us just before the show began (I wondered why so many people were dressed up!).

I liked it – it’s funny, irreverent, and touching. There were a couple of moments where it was hard to hear one of the actors rapping because the background music was too loud, but enough came through to drive the story – and this was Opening Night, so there’s time for them to adjust the sound balance before the play closes in a month.

Go see it!

I went back to working on the home automation migration today – and made a little progress, despite my best efforts.

I’ve installed Home Assistant and Insteon-MQTT in Docker containers on my Raspberry Pi. Once I have everything operational, that’ll be great – it’s easy to update the software to a more recent version without messing up my configuration. But right now, it’s a pain because it’s not easy to see the actual code that’s running in the container.

Today, I wanted to check to see if the code that I was running had the most recent fixes applied – so I copied it into my configuration directory, which is shared with the actual computer so I can use an editor to look at it.

I didn’t want to keep the extra copy of the code around, so I issued the Unix delete-everything command: rm -rf *. Unfortunately, I was in the wrong directory, and I deleted my entire configuration. Which I hadn’t backed up.

Most of the files in the directory were created by the software, but there was one file that I had had to edit by hand to include information about all of my devices. I wasn’t looking forward to doing that, but I saw no alternative.

I opened my other text editor – it already had one window open, and I was delighted to see that the configuration file was there – so I saved it where it WILL be backed up, then got back to work and got another few automations converted.

Progress!

I was Toastmaster of the Day at the Silver Tongued Cats today. During last week’s meeting, our President asked me what I’d like as a theme for today; since it’s our first meeting of Spring, I chose “Spring Cleaning” and put it out of my mind.

Until last night, when I had to assemble and email the agenda, and I suddenly realized I didn’t have anything in mind to say about the topic. And it was late enough that I didn’t want to do any more preparation, so I went to bed.

But not to sleep, at least not well – I kept thinking of things I could talk about if only I had some information. And I didn’t want to get out of bed and do any searching. So I tossed and turned and eventually fell asleep.

This morning, I raced over to the computer as soon as I got up so I could do my research. Did you know that 78% of Americans plan to do spring cleaning this year, up 10% from last year? The American Cleaning Institute does! And Fantastic Cleaning told me that there’s an official Spring Cleaning Week in the UK and that 2-5% of the UK population are compulsive hoarders. They also talked about the Chinese custom of cleaning for the Lunar New Year, and that you’re not supposed to sweep for the first few days of the year to avoid sweeping away good luck.

The meeting went smoothly; I had things to talk about, and we had excellent speakers and evaluators (none of whom talked about cleaning, though our Table Topics Master did ask about various aspects of cleaning). Next time, if I pick a topic out of the air, I think I’ll do a little research before going to bed the night before the meeting!

Cartoon Vectors by Vecteezy

When I spend money on insurance, I hope I won’t actually get that money back. Ideally, I’ll never talk to anyone at the insurer – I’ll just send them checks and never have to fight my way through their claims process.

Once in a long while, though, I’ve had an insurance company offer a service that improves my life (and reduces the odds of me having to make a claim). IBM’s Major Medical used to encourage (and pay for) some preventative care, for example.

Last November, our homeowners’ insurer, State Farm, made me an offer I didn’t want to refuse – they offered free electrical system monitoring through Ting to reduce the chances of an electrical fire. The device was free, and they’d pay for three years of monitoring – and if there was a problem, they’d even pay up to $1000 to correct it.

I jumped on the offer – a lot of other people must have done so, too, because I didn’t get the Ting device until today. I plugged it in and it’s “learning” our electrical environment. In the two hours it’s been installed, it’s learned that the line voltage in the house has been as low as 121.5 volts and as high as 123.5. I hope its other learnings are as uninteresting.

This afternoon, we took a walk with the South Bay Striders in South San Jose. The walk started at a park we’ve never visited before – Shady Oaks Park, which is on the Coyote Creek Trail. We did the 5k version of the walk, which was basically an out-and-back from Shady Oaks to the edge of Hellyer County Park. It wasn’t the most interesting walk we’ve done – the 10k version adds the Hellyer Velodrome and some equestrian areas, as well as a walk around Cottonwood Lake. But there were a few wildflowers to be seen, and it was quiet and peaceful for the most part.

I didn’t work on home automation at all today; instead, I spent the afternoon at the dentist’s office.

When I went there for a cleaning last week, the dentist noticed that the implant I’d had done last year was a little loose, so she had me come in today to get it fixed. She thought that she’d have to tighten the screw, which shouldn’t be necessary but happens occasionally. That wasn’t the problem, though – the crown had “de-bonded” and has to be replaced.

So she removed it and did a new scan of my mouth; then she put in a “healing cap” to cover the hole until the new crown arrives. Fortunately, the crown is still under warranty!

We did manage to take a walk this morning on the Los Gatos Trail in Campbell and enjoyed seeing the birds.

And it’s a good thing we walked early, because today’s high was well over 80 degrees – spring has sprung!

I took a break from working on home automation software to work on home automation hardware – in particular, I installed a new Ring Doorbell 4 to replace the old first-generation Ring Doorbell we’d had since 2016. The old one’s battery had deteriorated to the point that we were barely getting a month between recharges – and there are no replacements available.

Of course, the new doorbell has a different mounting system than the old one, which meant I had to drill more holes in the house. And that meant finding the drill and recharging its battery. And so on and so on.

Eventually, I got the new doorbell mounted and removed the mounting plate for the old one. And I think I’ve convinced all of the software to use the new doorbell.

We decided to celebrate Purim and Norooz tonight by ordering takeout from a favorite Persian restaurant, Negeen. When I got home with the goodies, Diane told me that UPS had just delivered a surprise package from Green’s Bakery in Brooklyn.

I hope it freezes well, because we may not be able to eat it all before Pesach!

We went to the Farmers’ Market and took our usual walk this morning – it was a good way to start the first day of spring.

I continued to work on Home Assistant and Insteon; I made a lot of progress, but ran into a bug in the documentation page I found yesterday – the examples that I wanted to copy had a small indentation error which was enough to keep the Insteon-MQTT server from starting. There were fairly clear error messages, but they were in a window that I’d covered and didn’t uncover until after I’d figured out what was wrong and fixed it.

After that, I got a couple of automations set up before I ran out of time – it’s looking hopeful!

I did fix the TiVo problem I mentioned on Friday – I restarted the TiVo and it was able to successfully play the recordings that were blank before. I have no idea what’s going wrong, but I guess I should start looking at alternatives; I don’t want to buy another TiVo.

It’s been a low energy day today. We took a walk after Torah Study and got home just as it started drizzling, and that was the last time I left the house today.

I spent a while trying (again) to figure out how to get Home Assistant properly integrated with my Insteon devices. I’ve got everything more-or-less functional, but the UI is wonky (wrong icons for devices, names that are less than friendly), and I still haven’t tried to define any automations. As I was writing this entry, I found this page that describes the interactions between Home Assistant and Insteon-MQTT and how to tame some of them, so there’s hope for progress tomorrow.

The day started in the usual Friday way with a trip to the gym, followed by a short walk, a shower, and lunch.

After lunch, we planned to watch last night’s Late Show, but failed. The TiVo had recorded an hour of black screen and no audio. So I logged into Paramount+ only to discover that last night’s Late Show was a rerun – the next new show will be March 28th.

We decided to take another walk, but as soon as we left the house, we smelled acrid smoke. The whole sky was smoky, too, so I didn’t think it was nearby; I checked NextDoor and actually got information – the smoke was coming from a four-alarm fire in a vacant commercial building a couple of miles away. Fortunately, we had brought masks with us, and they reduced the smell enough that we could keep walking.

After we got home, the rest of the day was consumed by travel planning and home automation.

And so it goes.

We celebrated the overlap of Purim and St. Patrick’s Day today.

We had some of the goodies in the Mishloach Manot package from Shir Hadash after lunch; this evening, we made a new recipe from The New York Times: Whiskey-Glazed Salmon With Salt-Crusted Potatoes. The recipe calls for whiskey, so we bought a bottle of Tullamore Dew – we have plenty left, so we’ll try it again.

The recipe is for four servings, and we were only feeding the two of us, so I cut everything in half; next time, I’ll make more glaze – it was quite tasty. And I’ll keep a closer eye on the potatoes – I didn’t shake them enough in the final few seconds before all the fluid evaporated, so they didn’t get properly crusted with salt (which may make my cardiologist happier).

I don’t think there are any holidays tomorrow, unlike the rest of the week (Pi Day, the Ides of March, Purim, and St. Patrick’s Day). I guess we’ll cope.

It’s been two years since the initial “Shelter-in-Place” order was issued for the Bay Area. While I can’t say we’re back to normal, we are doing a lot of normal things, including taking volksmarches with friends, as we did today in downtown Campbell.

The route included the Ainsley House, across the parking lot from the Campbell Library. I’ve been to the library many times, but I’d never bothered to look at the Ainsley House – it’s an interesting place, with a bit of a history. It was built by one of Campbell’s first industrialists (he owned the first local fruit cannery) and was saved from demolition and moved to the Civic Center/Library complex in 1990.

After the walk, we came home and I did a little more work on the Home Assistant migration, and then we made dinner and watched the Shir Hadash Purim Service and Shpiel.

Hag Sameach and Happy Purim!

I got Home Assistant (HA) talking to the Insteon (which is what controls the lights and switches in the house) this afternoon. It was able to bring all of the devices into its database, and now I will put a human-friendly name on each one (recognizing “4C.13.AE” isn’t quite as easy as recognizing “Porch Light”). There should be some way to import all of the names I’ve already defined in Indigo, but with only 20 devices, it’s probably easiest to just do it through the menus in Home Assistant. Tedious, but easy.

I was even able to set up an automation to make pressing a button on a switch in the kitchen turn the Sonos in the living room on and off – just like I have in Indigo.

Despite spending too long on the computer, we did manage to take our usual walks; there are more flowers every day, like this sunflower.

Diane spent the afternoon working on a photo book for our 2019 Tulip Time trip with her brother and sister-in-law, and I spent the afternoon working on improving our home automation.

Today’s project was installing the latest version of Home Assistant on the new Raspberry Pi I bought last month. Yesterday, I’d tried installing the version that runs on the “Home Assistant Operating System”, which is their preferred Raspberry Pi setup. It’s based on Linux, but is locked down tightly; it was also painfully slow to boot up and shut down (to be fair, that might have something to do with running it from an SD card). So today, I tried installing Home Assistant in a Docker container; it was much faster.

I had a basic setup running with a few critical devices defined in just over an hour – and then I discovered I’d made a mistake in my Docker configuration. I wanted all of the Home Assistant configuration and log files to be in a directory on the host machine, but I hadn’t put that into the Docker file – so when I restarted the Docker container, all of that work vanished.

I fixed that mistake and started again; it was easier the second time. I still have to get the lights and switches into the system, expose everything to Alexa and HomeKit, and rebuild my automations, so there’s a lot of work ahead, but I’m hopeful.

I’m also motivated. Apple released Mac OS 12.3 today, which removes Python 2 from the system. That breaks Indigo completely – they’re working on an update to use Python 3 but it’s not ready yet. And then all of the user-contributed plugins will need to be updated, too, and not all of them still have owners. I suspect it’s not going to be smooth.

We went to Shir Hadash this morning to hear Mark Oppenheimer discuss the book he wrote about the effect of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting on the Squirrel Hill community in Pittsburgh; it was quite interesting, as were the questions afterwords. The session was recorded and is available on YouTube – be warned, it starts with a little over a minute of black screen!

After that, we had a quiet day with walks and travel planning. This morning’s Murky Nooz had a multi-page ad for Mariposa County and Yosemite, and we got inspired to plan a two-night stay there before tourist season really starts. The Ahwahnee Hotel was available for one of the nights we want to visit, but we’d have to move for the second night – and it’s pricey! So we’re casting a wider net and hope to hear from a nearby B&B when they open tomorrow.

We did something unusual this evening – we attended an in-person talk at Shir Hadash. The speaker was Mark Oppenheimer talking about the Newish Jewish Encyclopedia, which he’d edited along with the other two principals of the Unorthodox podcast – their goal was to touch on all aspects of being Jewish and to be funny in the process.

The entries he read during his talk certainly lived up to that goal; I’d hoped he’d have copies for sale, but I guess that would have been too much to schlep, so I’ve ordered a copy. And we’ve put Unorthodox on our podcast queue.

He’ll be giving another talk tomorrow on his most recent (and much less funny) book, Squirrel Hill: The Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting and the Soul of a Neighborhood, and I’m looking forward to hearing him again.

Beyond that, it was a typical Saturday – Torah Study and Shir Shabbat in the morning and lots of walks. The weather was pleasantly warm, and flowers are blooming!