I have some family photos in which I know who is who in them. I have some other photos where I know the names of some people in it, but not who is who. And some photos with a mix of both. The latter photos may include other people for whom I have no names and am not concerned with at this time. It would be useful to have an AI tool where I could enter the names I know, matched to some faces, and have it figure out the other names and faces for me. I'm sure there are tools that can do that already. But would they be available to end-users like me, and are there ones that would run only on my computer without leaking any personal info to online companies?

I'd also find it very useful to have an AI tool that I could train to edit & rename my other photos like I normally do. I am so behind in doing that, making it hard to find photos from the last 4 years or so that I know I have. Even if the tool didn't do it perfect, it could make it easier maybe. But again, I want my photos and related data to remain private, not end up on the web somewhere.

I've been letting my niece and her daughter M, who is now 5 years old, stay at my place again.

M, after talking to her dad on the phone, walked over to her mom and said, "I know he didn't just hang up on my face." "I know he wouldn't do that."

On a whim, I bought a ticket to an online stream of a symphony being held tonight at our local arts center:

HAYDN - Symphony No.88
SHOSTAKOVICH - Cello Concerto No.1
RESPIGHI - The Pines of Rome


Thoughts:

The discordant noise of an orchestra warming up is horrible to have to listen to! At least here at home I can turn the sound off. Sitting in the audience, I wouldn't be able to.

Here at home, I can dance and sway, and do hula hoop while listening to the music. And eat dinner. Those poor people in the audience have to just sit there. I remember the last such symphonic event I attended in person, which was a performance of music from Star Wars. I remember disliking that aspect of it, feeling the pressure to sit quietly and unobtrusively in your seat while listening.

Other than that Star Wars and possibly another Sci-Fi music performance, I'm not sure I've ever been to any other symphonic/orchestral style performances. I remember hearing the "Peter and the Wolf" music when I was in elementary school, but am not sure if that was a live performance somewhere or a recording.

All of the performers are wearing black face masks. The wind/brass instrument players push down the masks while doing their parts. Then they put the masks back in place. I'm impressed by that.

I wonder if there are any orchestras that wear a color other than black.

Do cellos come in different sizes? One is huge, 2 others are smaller. Or are they different instruments? (Looking it up, it must be a double bass.)

I am reminded of my brother's first wife. She had a cello and would occasionally play it. That was so long ago. I wonder sometimes how her life is going. Did she become a doctor or a scientist, as she had planned? Germans don't use Facebook much and seem to have more privacy protections, so you can't just do a search and find much info.

They've finished the first piece and switched out and rearranged some players. This cello player now in the front on a small riser must be a star performer. She is not wearing a face mask, but is making up for it with entertaining facial expressions. I like how she has her hair done up, and the muscles in her arms. It's an interesting combination together with the glittery black gown.

There's an unmanned "Zildjian" gong in the back of the hall, tantalizing.

Another switcheroo. The cellist bowed and left and came back and bowed some more, and bowed and left the hall.

More performers now. More discordant noise, but a nicer sort. Maybe the gong will get gonged!

They must have several cameras in place; they've been giving a good view of many different angles.

Oh I see, the gong is being gonged lightly in this piece.

Well. That was that. Wasn't really much my kind of music; only a few parts that spoke to me, possibly they reminded me of other music from my past. Of course, this was playing it through my TV speakers; I'm sure it sounded more impressive in person.

My plan was to simply go for a walk around the neighborhood with my mom, both of us wearing face masks and keeping some distance between us. I did not plan to go inside her house, to avoid bringing germs in or out.

.

In between me having ordered cloth face masks, and Qiao having ordered regular surgical style face-masks which were delivered yesterday, we have several now.

The first cloth face masks I got are the rectangular, pleated/fold style. They don't impede my breathing very much as they aren't snug against the face. They tend to ride up and start rubbing the bottom of my eyes, which bothers me. Using a chin movement, I can pull it downwards without touching it with my hands, but then it feels too low on my nose. The elastic ear loops become uncomfortable after a while.

So last week I ordered some of the other kind of face masks which are contoured upwards over the nose, without pleats. Their elastic goes around the back of the head instead of around the ears. I tried one of these on today, after having washed it. It is much snugger against my face than the other ones! One can even see the cloth moving in and out from my breath. It also has a pocket into which one can put an extra filter.

I decided to wear one of the surgical masks for the walk.. it's snugger than the rectangular cloth mask, but easier to breath in than the contoured cloth mask. But I took the contoured cloth mask along too, just in case.

My mom has the N-95 mask which I gave her a couple months ago, and some surgical masks a friend gave her.

.

The walk was fine and lovely. A very nice day for a walk. Sunny, not hot, not cool.

The problem was that my mom's internet had stopped working, and she wanted me to fix it. She was bothered that I didn't want to go inside her house to fix it. She needs the internet to work for her census job that's she's doing online training for.

My first approach was to stay outside while instructing her on what to do. She unplugged and plugged the surge protector back in. She took a photo of the cables and surge protectors, which looked fine to me.

I had her bring her laptop outside to help her with another problem (she'd accidentally switched it to high-contrast mode), pointing out to her what to click on to fix it. The laptop showed a wi-fi connection, but it was very slow and disconnected.

My phone was able to connect to the wi-fi, but only when I held it up right by the windows outside of the room with the router.

I finally had to go inside her house to troubleshoot further. I put the snug cloth mask on over my surgical mask, and still tried to avoid touching anything inside the house. But eventually that failed too (my mom couldn't figure out how to insert the ethernet cable into her laptop), and I had to start touching things.

There must be something wrong with the AT&T router, that it's signal strength has dropped such that it doesn't reach my mom's office room anymore. Per the router settings, it's already set to the max signal strength.

There may or may not be something else wrong with the router. I had trouble getting it to work even with a direct ethernet cable connection to the laptop, but after swapping cables around it finally, inexplicably, worked.

In the end, I touched her laptop, mouse, phone, flashlight, router, ethernet cables, doorknob, sink faucet handles...

I eventually lifted the mask in order to blow my nose into my pocket kleenex, because doggonit, by then, why not. It had been several hours since I first put on the mask. I felt bamboozled into having to go inside my mom's house and touch her things. And if she doesn't care... bah. It's no worse than what an AT&T tech would have to do, coming inside to fix it.

For a while I was very frustrated that everything I tried wasn't working, and it felt like I was starting to slowly asphyxiate under the face masks. I had to step outside and take the masks off to breathe. When I went back in, I put the surgical mask away in my backpack, and only wore the cloth face mask.

.

My mom had mentioned seeing a fox in her yard before, and we both saw it today. It's a gray fox, grayish on the back, but with reddish legs.

The cassette from 1972 still plays fine! I remember now that my mom played me some of it at her house, which is when I asked to borrow it in order to record to my computer. I was able to record & save the audio from both cassettes today by means of a better-working cassette player and Qiao's desktop computer. Now I want to ask my mom if she has any more old family cassettes like that.

48 years ago before I was even born, my relatives' voices still sounded the same as I remember from my childhood. Only one of them, I didn't recognize; her voice was slightly different than I remembered. All the relatives who spoke on that cassette have passed away over the years, except one aunt who is my mom's age

100 years ago, one of my grandmothers hadn't even been born yet. That seems sort of amazing; somehow 100 years doesn't sound so long ago right now. That might be because I was reading about the flu pandemic of 1918. My grandma was born in Boston in 1920. The family tree records I'd downloaded a few years ago show that one of her uncles died in October 1918, of "influenza pneumonia", after being sick for 9 days. Of the other 12 death entries on that page, 8 others were also from influenza and/or pneumonia.

words swirl
anger spreads

music doesn't distract well enough
but time will flow

on and on

As someone else wrote, Spring sprung! Spring sprung! Spring sprung a rung a rung!

Asteroid!
Small asteroid to sweep closer than moon’s distance. It was at its closest a few hours ago. I tried to find out where in the sky it would be, and if it's visible to the naked eye or not, but couldn't find any mention of that. The sky is rather hazy here tonight; can only see the brightest stars anyway.

I've got a boom boom drum. Got it for my birthday a while back. It goes Boom! Boom! Boom boom boom boom...

Last week on the way to work, while stopped at a stoplight, it was breezy and I saw a cloud of yellow pollen pluming outward from the pine trees up ahead. I'm glad pollen doesn't bother me.

Baby got a cold. I accidentally poured the cold "medicine" down the drain, thinking it was water in the bottle (too thin and clear for cold syrup), already rinsed out. Then I saw that it was labelled as a homeopathic brew, and realized my likely mistake. Ooops. I told the niece about my mistake, and also about how homeopathic items aren't proven to work and are diluted and wacky. I probably could have worded it better, but that's how my spur of the moment verbal skills are.

I checked the cold syrups in my medicine cabinet, but all were labelled as not for infant use. Checking online, I read that it's not recommended to give babies any cold medicines. Maybe that's why the niece had bought something homeopathic; maybe that's the only thing available marked as safe for babies. (Because it's basically water!)

Driving to work, I continued feeling slightly bad, thinking the niece would suspect I poured it down the drain on purpose. I decided to stop by the store on the way home to get some replacement, even if the only thing I could find was another homeopathic one. But I did find some non-homeopathic remedies (though I'm not sure that one is really any more effective); they even had ibuprofen drops labelled for infants.

Spring a ding ding.

Grey's Anatomy had a genderqueer character on tonight's show, using the "they" pronouns. I was watching it with Qiao, and was inwardly pleased (they're like me!), yet didn't feel like saying anything out loud about it to Qiao. I wondered if Qiao even remembers that I don't identify as female. What difference does it make, sigh. I have a boom boom drum.

Boom a doom doom.

Reading Facebook posts by people in my family and by acquaintances I've met in person mostly leaves me feeling annoyed, upset, disappointed, or down. Not all posts are like that; some are good, but there are enough of the other kind so that I don't feel like I'm missing much when I go for weeks without checking Facebook. (This is in contrast to my other FB account which is connected to people like you, whom I know from online; although I don't read it very often either due to time constraints.)

But my dad's FB page is a pleasant exception. I've found that he shares a lot of my views, and he seems so sane and wise compared to most other people on FB.

I suppose maybe I got my views from him to begin with, through some kind of osmosis. Though I never realized that while growing up, as my family never talked about politics or history or things like that back then, that I can recall.

I bought some eclipse sunglasses on Tuesday. Seems like I did it in the nick of time, as they are becoming scarce around here. I got some cheap cardboard ones, and some slightly less cheap 2x magnification cardboard ones (I ordered the latter from Best Buy in the morning, and picked them up after work. When I checked the website in the evening again, they were sold out.) The glasses are neat! You can look at the midday sun while it's high in the sky! What you see is a nice orange disk. That may not sound special, but it's neat to be able to look straight at the sun without it being sunrise or sunset. I'm not sure I could see any sunspots or flares with these glasses, but they should be fine for watching the eclipse. As long as we are lucky and have clear skies. The forecast isn't looking good so far... a 50 to 60% chance of thunderstorms all day on the 21st till 8pm. But things may change, and even with thunderstorms, there might be a break in the clouds. (please, pretty please, at least during totality, please?)

I've been debating whether to work from home that day, or go in to work like usual and take my lunch break during the total eclipse. Now I think I'll work from home... that way I can occasionally check what is broadcast from the other parts of the country that experience the eclipse before we do.

I replaced the pull-chain light switch for the light fixture on Qiao's ceiling fan with a 3-way pull switch. Now we can turn on either 2 or all 4 lights, where before you could only turn on all 4 at once. Now while sitting on the sofa, we can turn on only the 2 lights which face towards the other direction, so that the room isn't uncomfortably dark, but without as much glare from above as before. When we want more light, we can turn them all on. Previously, I had replaced the lamp shades and bulbs, but it was still too bright for me.

One of the metal spines on my umbrella broke. I can't think of any simple way to fix it. It's a fairly new umbrella which my neighbors gave me recently, as thanks for looking after their dogs while they were on a trip. A nice lime-green color with reflective edging. I can't bear to throw it away. I couldn't even bear to throw away my old umbrella yet.. On it, the fabric had worn out and had holes. I cut the fabric off that one, and still have the metal umbrella skeleton. It's pretty useless, slightly dangerous, but looks neat in a goth-steampunk kind of way.

My dad has been researching his side of the family tree. It's amazing what you can find in old census records. This FamilySearch website is run by the LDS church, and lets you search records for free. There's an 1885 census from the state of Nebraska, with an entry for my grandpa's father and grandfather. We also found 1870 and 1880 census records which seem to match, but there are some discrepancies which we haven't been able to explain yet. We found that the Nebraska Historical Society has microfilms of church records from the area my grandpa's grandpa lived. Those records don't seem to be online anywhere. My dad contacted them, and they have a volunteer who will check the microfilms for us, even translating from Latin! How nice is that?

My mom sent me a cassette in 1986, back when I was living in the U.S. with my dad, and she was in Germany. She spoke on it, and let several of my German relatives speak on it too during a family gathering over there, and then let it record in the background while relatives were chatting with each other. She and my aunt sent me a few such tapes during those years, and I likewise recorded and sent a few to them. When we ran out of things to speak about, we recorded music on the remainder of the tape.

I must not have listened to this tape in a long time. Six minutes into recording the first side onto my computer, the tape got stuck in the player. I managed to pull the tape back out without breaking it. I twisted the tape back into the shell. The reels weren't turning smoothly or easily, which is why it got stuck. The part of the tape which had been stuck was crinkled up, and I worried that it might get stuck again.

This page: FRUSTRATED by old cassette tapes binding my decks
suggests:

Try slapping the sides of the cassettes firmly against the palm of your hand (do it on both sides.)
This does help in many cases in freeing the layers of tape, and in my case I am talking tapes that go back to 1972.
If the rollers in the cassette are sticking, this could also help loosen them
Then after that, wind them through.

So I tried that. After slapping the cassette, the reels *did* seem to turn more easily. I then fast-forwarded and rewound the whole tape, and started the recording over again. This time it is playing fine.

There are voices on this tape from aunts and uncles who are no longer alive. I didn't even remember that they had spoken on the tape, and that I had any recording of them. What a precious treasure to find.

Update. Ok, while recording the 2nd side, towards the end, the tone started shifting between low and high. So I had to slap the cassette some more, but that fixed it.