The L.A. Report – Part 36
02-06-2025
After my contract with L.A. County ended in August, I was out of work for six months but I finally got a call from the manager I worked for at UCLA (2018-2022), asking if I was available for a contract, so I jumped at the chance. I just started yesterday. It's 100% remote (working from home), which is nice, and it's with the same team and system I worked on last time I was there, which is also nice, because I really liked them. There are ten people on the team and I had already worked with seven of them.
When you work for UCLA, you have to sign a form saying, essentially, that any patents you are awarded from your work at UCLA belongs to them. But tacked onto the top of it is a really bizarre State Oath of Allegiance form that says "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter."
In my time off, I did a lot of "spring cleaning", going through stuff, taking a lot to Goodwill, etc. As I was going through stuff, I discovered a VHS tape of my very first film performance. I thought I had it somewhere but I mistakenly thought it was damaged beyond repair. I tried playing in my aging VCR, and it played just fine. Subsequently, it was intermittently jumpy, but not every time. So I transferred it to an MP4 file and a DVD. I also fixed one audio sync problem and redid the credits because the lead actress was inadvertently left off of them. Finally, I uploaded it to YouTube: https://youtu.be/yzQAkXMlMHU Be kind, it was just a student film!
I also unearthed my 1976 passport:
Also, I went through my 9 boxes of books. I threw one away (mostly out-of-date computer books, etc.) , kept three, and am donating five.
JAY'S LATEST ADVENTURE
Last night, I was going to go to the grocery store, but first I had some stuff I wanted to throw directly into the dumpster. I walked out to the dumpster in the light rain, but I had a bunch of stuff in my hands, like my umbrella and my keys (you see where this is going?). Without thinking, I tossed the garbage into the dumpster and then realized my left hand was totally empty. Hey, wait a sec, weren’t my keys also in my hand? You guessed it – I threw my keys into the dumpster along with the trash.
Normally that’s not a big deal – you can just reach in and retrieve them. But they had just emptied the dumpster that day so the keys were sitting at the very bottom – way out of reach. Oh, well, I thought – I’ll just get a chair and a flashlight from my apartment and climb in there. Then I remembered that I had already locked my door in preparation for my grocery run, so I had no way to get in to get the chair or the flashlight! Luckily, I hide a spare key in the stack of plastic chairs just outside my door. I HOPE it’s still there! I took off the top chair, then the second, and it SHOULD be there. There was a key-shaped clear spot in the layer of dust and I didn’t see the key! YIKES! Luckily, it was just moved a couple inches to the side. WHEW!
So I unlocked my door, took my chair and flashlight out to the dumpster, and climbed in (which is kinda hard because you also have to hold the lid up!). I found my keys, grabbed them and climbed back out. When I brought the chair in, I had to flip it over to dry out the felt pads on the bottom of the legs and they were dry by morning.
Of course the biggest news in L.A. is the fires – the worst in history: at least 28 people died, thousands of acres and thousands of homes were burned. Entire communities have vanished. One of my acquaintance/friend's home burned to the ground in the Eaton fire. I can't even imagine it. Losing your home is bad enough, but to have every one of your worldly possessions – accumulated over your entire life – destroyed, has got to be one of the worst things that can happen to a person. Her two cats are also missing. None of the fires got very close to me – one got within 4 miles but that was as close as they got. And even then, one of the evacuation centers was 2 blocks from my apartment so I wasn't too concerned. My neighborhood was a little smoky one day, but just that one day. Continuing to count my blessings!
Jay