Tag Archives: San Jose

July 20, 2012 · 11:10 pm

Your Mother is Here to Make Robots

I love this sign over the kitchen sink at TechShop San Jose:

TechShop Members: Your Mother may be a member here at TechShop, but she’s here to make Robots, not wash your dishes. Please clean up any messes that you make. Thank you.

San Jose Airport Hands

We drive the the San Jose airport several times a month to drop off or pick up my mother on her trips to visit my brother in Southern California. I am always charmed by the huge “Hands” mural by Christian Moeller (2010) which wraps around the seven story parking structure. It is elegant, cleverly executed, and never gets old.

Thanks to Pierluigi Oliverio – Fire Hydrant in Willow Glen

In working with the City of San Jose, California, to arrange for building permits, I have been informed that our neighborhood of Willow Glen not only has very poor water pressure but also relatively few fire hydrants. A fire hydrant helps firefighters tap into the municipal water supply to help extinguish a fire. About a month ago, Willow glen ended up with one fewer hydrants when someone’s car ran over one of only two near our house.

As a native of San Francisco, I know that the destruction of the city in 1906 was started by a major earthquake but that the subsequent fires did most of the damage. Our area of Willow Glen being reliant on just one fire hydrant (located more than 400 feet from our house) made me nervous.

For a while after our local fire hydrant disappeared, I thought that the city would fix it on their own. After a month, I failed to find any information about fire hydrants on the San Jose website. So, I sent email to our local San Jose Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio to ask for his support.

I have met the energetic and intelligent Pierluigi at a variety of local and civic events over the years. He has met with our Willow Glen Lions club several times. Whenever I send him email, even very late at night, Pierluigi gets back to me very promptly. He asked his staff member Melrose to look into the missing fire hydrant. Over the course of about week, Melrose called the Fire Department, Transportation Department, and Water Department to try to figure out who was in charge of this. She finally was able to get a fix scheduled by the Water Department and we now have a replacement. Thanks, Pierluigi (and Melrose)!

31 August 2012 update – this week, the city replaced the asphalt around our new fire hydrant with concrete:

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Tagged as San Jose, Willow Glen

July 13, 2012 · 10:46 pm

Non-Travel Diary 2

John is still in ShenZhen, China. He takes the high-speed train to Hunan Province tomorrow. Here is what I am doing at home in San Jose, California, while my husband is traveling on business for Huawei:

Wednesday night, I went to the BarBQ dinner at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Saratoga, CA. I was partly there because it is a fun summer event, and partly representing the Board of the Santa Maria Urban Ministry to introduce our new Executive Director, Omar Torres, and Operations Manager, Alfonso Mendez, to St. Andrew’s parish. The parish has always been very generous to SMUM and the new staff wants to become better known.
Thursday was the big concrete pour day at home. The floor is now flat and smooth, the dry rot is gone, and my son Paul has a new pad in the side yard for his potter’s wheel. Everything is still drying today. Thursday night, I went shopping for jeans and summer clothes at Coldwater Creek.
This morning I got my hair cut – at the Scandalous Salon in Willow Glen. My meetings ran into each other at work, so I missed lunch.
Tonight, I went to a surprise birthday party for Mary, one of the most vivacious members of the Willow Glen Lions. Mary’s sister Sylvia planned the event in deepest secrecy. Mary was pleasantly shocked when a crowd of friends sang Happy Birthday from her doorstep.
Tomorrow, I am running errands with my mother in the morning. After lunch, Paul and I are going to the Palo Alto Clay & Glass Festival, then taking a wood working class together at TechShop San Jose.

John and I are encouraging each other to exercise by comparing number of steps registered on our Fitbit activity trackers. Thursday was my high day with 13,640 steps and 24 floors climbed. Today was my low day with just 5,468 steps and 16 floors climbed. The Fitbit also tells us about our daily sleep patterns. Once we have a month of data, it will be interesting to see what patterns emerge.

Non-Travel Diary

When I travel, I usually keep a diary, sometimes in a bound blank book and sometimes on my blog (depending on web availability and performance). My husband John left yesterday afternoon for a two-week business trip to China, so this is my non-travel diary. John texted me when his San Francisco – Hong Kong flight landed about 3 am this morning, then he called me at 7 am to say he had reached his hotel in ShenZhen. As usual, John is staying at the Hasee Paradise Hotel near the Huawei campus. I have stayed at the Hasee myself and it is a pleasant place – although the limited breakfast buffet every morning gets boring quickly.

Last night, a friend and I had dinner at the Great Khan’s Mongolian stir fry and then went to see the movie “Brave” which we both enjoyed. The Pixar animation, music, and story are all good. Paul (my usual movie-going partner) did not want to see “Brave” so Stephenie Cooper and I went.
This morning, the construction guys were outside the house early working on the new concrete base. The pour is scheduled for later this week. We are fixing some dry rot and a floor that shifted out of level in John’s model train room and workshop. Also, we are pouring a pad for Paul’s potter’s wheel – see picture below. This is part of Paul’s new clay studio in the side yard. See Paul’s ceramics at: Paul’s Element. I am in charge of construction oversight while John is traveling.
I noticed that one the Cereus cactus has a bloom bud (which now looks like a small black ball of fuzz) – see picture below. I will enjoy watching it develop during the next week – the spectacular flowers are often ten inches across.
Tuesday noon at work, Yingying Lu holds a class for us English speakers in conversational Chinese. In addition to working on basic vocabulary and pronunciation, we are collecting suggestions for helpful software. My suggestions so far include the following iPhone applications:
- Eng-Chi Pro (English to Mandarin Pro – talking translator phrasebook) by Medianet
- KTdict+ C-E, Chinese-English dictionary by Klaus Thul
- QingWen Chinese Dictionary by Karan Misra
John called by Skype during my late afternoon when he woke up – before he went to work in ShenZhen. He said it is raining and hot in China.
I noticed going to dinner that Tavistock Freebirds – a beer and wine bar – is replacing the (now being demolished) Baskin Robbins – Togo’s, formerly near the Pasta Pomodoro Restaurant on The Alameda in San Jose, CA. Business must have been very bad for someone to tear out an ice cream shop during the 95 degree San Jose summer.
I took one of the dogs for a walk in the neighborhood after dinner. Redda enjoyed her walk but I could hear Gilroy whining a block away – he did not want to be left behind. I can’t manage to walk two energetic dogs at the same time. Maybe I will walk with Gilroy tomorrow.
I am almost done reading The Night Circus, a fantastical novel by Erin Morgenstern. I have enjoyed it but the book could have been a third shorter to better effect.

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Tagged as China, Dogs, House Work, Huawei, John, Paul, San Francisco, San Jose

July 9, 2012 · 11:44 pm

Cactus Garden Redesign

I redesigned a section of my backyard cactus garden yesterday – moving a four-foot-wide succulent black-spined-aloe from the garden section next to WP 668 (our caboose) to another area. To make room, I had to remove a bed of smaller striped-aloes that were creeping onto a brick walkway on one side and slowing attacking a columular Cereus cactus patch on the other. My husband John had urged the removal of the invasive striped-aloes for some years, so he is happy. The striped-aloes are now colonizing our river bank in San Jose, California, where they have scope for expansion.

This project sounds like it required less work than it did. Aloes are covered in sharp spines and they fight back. The dirt was full of bits of aloe root – any of which can grow into a full plant given time – which had to be sifted out. About a dozen boulders needed to be dug out and re-placed. I am happy with the result even if I am scratched all over.

Before:

After:

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Tagged as garden, San Jose, Willow Glen

July 7, 2012 · 9:53 pm

Renewed Stained Glass

I have written from time to time about the large and elegant stained glass panel created by my great grandfather, Walter Van Gilder. Today, it came home: re-leaded and refreshed by Vincent Taylor Architectural Art Glass. This summer, the panel will be installed in our dining room here in San Jose, California. Its previous homes were Knoxville, Tennessee (where it was made) and San Francisco.

2012: