Thursday, September 9, 2004
Helped Melissa and Ena resolve a problem with osaca e-mail messages. Well, we didn't really resolve it; we just made the problem go away by getting rid of the feature we think caused it. Linkchecking. Late breakfast: eggs, sausage, hash browns from the cafeteria. Compiled survey 1 results for Susie and sent them to her. Tried to resolve issues with Mike W and Joan M, but couldn't reach either of them today for very long. Lunch: leftovers from last night. Placed an order with The Source for 2 copies of Norton Anti-Virus. Computer Support Coordinator meeting. Discovered that I need to build a new computer by September 23. Got the probably final list of entering students from James. Prepared materials to explain the ps number mixup to students. Noticed a problem with recent backups—not enough space on the tape—but no time to fix it now. After work, I joined Melissa in a visit to the Asian Art Museum. The current exhibit is Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile. Essentially, someone said, "Hey, let's get every piece of art that has a geisha in it or has something to do with geisha and make a big show." Some of the pieces were 400 years old, but most of it seemed to be from the mid-1700's or later. I was fascinated with one large hand-painted vase which had very fine brush strokes depicting geisha in various settings. Patrick met us at the museum and brought with him Sam and Sam's mom Dianne, who was in SF visiting for about a week. Melissa's friend Laverne joined us at the museum as well. Afterwards we ate in the museum's cafe, which had pretty decent food for a cafeteria setup. I had BBQ sesame beef, Melissa had coconut chicken soup, and everyone else had pork of some kind. Laverne talked about how she made $100 for 4 hours' work one night in the Santa Cruz mountains (a crazy acting gig in a film for a filmmaker friend). Dianne talked about her relaxing day at the spa getting a manicure and pedicure and waxing. Everyone talked about Chinese (Laverne knows Mandarin, too). A fine time was had by all, I believe. (Patrick's meal and my meal and 2 fruit teas cost us $23.27 after $1.82 tax, no tip since it's a cafeteria.) After having brunch with Dianne at Baghdad Cafe and spending much of the day with her, Patrick somehow got a new Ben Sherman motorcycle-style jacket and nu shooz. And somehow we also ended up with 2 bars of soap: one banana-scented, another cherry-scented. (Thanks, Dianne!)