Wednesday, July 17, 2002
Finished setting up Ena's computer. She called in sick again today, so there was no trouble getting in to work on it. Web meeting with Susie: the School's forthcoming web workers meetings, PSPG, images for the units. Another productive meeting, as usual with Susie. James had some of Patrick's bread pudding. Showed Melissa how to shop for a laptop. Lunch with Patrick at Park Chow: he had pepperoni pizza which was surprisingly very good. I had the special: a salmon sandwich with minestrone soup, also delicious. We shared the ginger cake and pumpkin ice cream—divine! UCSF Web workers meeting today. Ren Bucholz from EFF came and talked about deep linking, Microsoft Palladium, privacy, copyright, trademark, patent, and other privacy- and security-related topics. Paul Norris demonstrated Dreamweaver MX. Julie Bernstein announced web workers survey results. Made Web changes for James. Today late in the afternoon I was returning from the bathroom and I heard a bomb or a gunshot sound explode very loudly as though it were right next to me. It was so loud that I literally jumped in surprise and automatically put my fingers in my ears. It turned out to be the giant nitrogen tanks that normally sit in our hallway outside some laboratory. There's a sign that warns that these tanks sometimes vent gas and that's normal behavior. But what happened today has never occurred before in the year I've worked at UCSF. Indeed, when it happened, someone from the laboratory stuck her head outside the door to find out what had happened. I thought the thing was going to blow up, so instead of talking to her I decided to hurry away from it. I decided I'd complain to my manager Cindy about it, as I no longer feel safe going to the bathroom or even being inside the same building as these tanks. They look large enough that, if exploded, everything in a radius of at least several hundred feet would be decimated. Dinner with Patrick: a meal of leftovers, which we called "The 3-2-1"—three starches (cooked potatoes, mashed potatoes, various pastas with cheese), two meats (Chinese roast chicken and boneless pork ribs), and one vegetable (cooked carrots). It was really more food than either of us could eat, so we took what we liked and left the rest. We played Riven for about 2 hours. Our Riven total hours is now about 5 hours—I'm keeping track of how long it takes for us to figure out this game. It's not encouraging that I never figured out Myst on my own. I got stuck on one of the islands and couldn't figure out how to get off the damned island so I just gave up, cursing Atrus for putting me there.