Friday, March 9, 2007

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Read the new UCSF identity guidelines, which were announced today and which appear to consist of years of work. Some of it I'll never need, but parts are very useful to me, and I think it's a job well done. Fixed our copyright notice. Met with student GR, tried to set up e-mail but GR is using Outlook XP (or maybe it was an older version?) and I couldn't get it to work. We aborted the attempt since GR is planning to get a new laptop anyhow. GR brought me some fresh blueberries as a thank you. Met with student SH—computer was really slow. SH had two anti-virus applications running. We uninstalled one and did lots of other optimization and upgraded several apps and Windows updates. Much better now. Snack: Trader Ming's wonton chips. Lunch at Minh Tri by myself: bun bo xao, hot tea. Met with student YW. YW was unable to shop at certain websites. We did some troubleshooting and this is probably related to Webroot Spy Sweeper blocking certain ad sites. This is disableable in the Spy Sweeper configuration by a checkbox. Job description work. Met again with SH—pickup. Manual PharmAdMIT backup. While with a student today, I tried out pandora.com for the first time. Student GR had told me about Pandora a week or so ago, and it's been on my to do list. However, yesterday over lunch, I discovered that I was the only person at the table who was not using Pandora. I asked for the student's favorite artist—Snow Patrol—and within seconds we were listening to a song by that artist. The interface seemed to have many options worthy of further exploration. Later during the day, however, when I revisited the Pandora website I couldn't get it to work—only a blank space appeared where the Flash interface used to be. I viewed the same page in IE7 and the same thing happened. Leaving work, I bought a package of Thin Mints from a Girl Scout for $3.50. After I bought them I looked at the ingredients—so unhealthy: lots of saturated fat and they include trans fats—but I don't buy them every year so I'm not too worried. Patrick cooked dinner while I drove to the video rental. Dinner at home with Patrick: shrimp and scallops in a scallion-based mojito sauce, watercress, steamed rice. Watched Best in Show on DVD with Patrick. I found this film funny, but I am not as enthusiastic about it as others on IMDB which currently gives it a 7.4 rating with 15,910 votes. There were many funny parts, but the funniest part for me was the first shot of the gay couple in their hotel room after the pan (tap, tap, tap, tap, tap).