Thursday, September 15, 2005
Power outage last night for about an hour from 11:00 PM to 12:10ish AM. The 8:08 AM bus 66 did not show up at all. The 8:30 AM bus 66 showed up at 8:39 AM. Consequently, I was unable to get breakfast before starting work, I was 5 minutes late for an appointment, and I didn't have time to pick up drinks for the party today. Met with a student—this one didn't take very long. Learned that today's party is postponed until tomorrow. Usual breakfast at the cafeteria. Met with two students getting their laptops working with wireless and VPN and other setup stuff. After about 90 minutes trying to get wireless and other things to work, I called the helpdesk and Johnny F answered insisting that there was no wireless on the 9th floor. I told him the map he was using to determine that was out of date. He again insisted that there was no wireless on our floor and that there might be no support for us. He asked me to type up a report describing the issue and e-mail it to him. Furious, I instead wrote an e-mail to the director of his unit who e-mailed someone else who e-mailed someone else who e-mailed a wireless tech who called me back in a few minutes. By this time, the students in my office had to leave for a class, so they left their laptops with me for continued troubleshooting. The wireless tech—Ian Gwin—is super nice. He too spent 40 minutes just on the wireless problem, so I know it wasn't me doing something wrong. Together we determined that the instructions which used to work for wireless at UCSF are not working as we expect. He's not certain what the problem is—he suspects a problem with DHCP. He asked Charles Kohler to have a look and Charles got back to me saying our instructions were incorrect. I asked him why have they been working for us for years and he said he didn't know. I suggested that it might be something introduced with Windows XP SP2 (even though I still truly suspect DHCP) and he said maybe. Rodney stopped by to pick up Chris's laptop for testing. No evening bus 66 from 6:05 to 6:35. I got home at 7:15. Dinner at La Mediterranee with Mom Ryan and Patrick: We started with a combo appetizer of hummus, tabouleh, and (the eggplant stuff). Mom Ryan and I had pomegranate chicken. Patrick had lamb moussaka. We shared a slice of the chocolate cake for dessert. After dinner, we picked up 6 (six!) big bags of clothes which Aaron had gotten his family members to donate to Mom Ryan. The REI package mentioned yesterday actually arrived today, but the TO zip code on the UPS shipping label said 94143-2205! *And*, a second shipping label on the box had a zip code of 94143-99?1! (The question mark indicates an illegible character—the ink was running low, I guess.) The packing slip inside the box said 94143-2205. I learn today that Mom Ryan's move-in date is delayed until Monday.