October 2007
Summary: Dinner with Tony Q at Ziryab. Dinner at Golden Era Vegetarian Cuisine with Mikey, Nina, Robert, Nate, Chris, Kelly, and BK. Dinner with Nate and Jen at Town's End. Brunch as Slow Club and 1st Annual Pacific Pinball Exposition at Marin County Civic Center Exhibit Hall with Chris, Nate, Jason, and Ryan. Breakfast at Boulevard Cafe and Day at Great America and Bryan's BBQ with Chris, Nate, Thom, and Jeff. Dinner at Phil, Danny, and Drew's with Phil, Danny, Drew, Paul, Quyen, Mom Ryan, and Tony Q. Pastries brunch followed by Preston Vineyards wine tasting with Chris, Nate, and Alex. Brunch at Herbivore then tour of Stanford University with Tony Q, Chris, and Nate. Dinner at Paxti's with Chris and Nate. Halloween Party at Phil, Danny, and Drew's. Dinner at at Phil, Danny, and Drew's with at Phil, Danny, Drew, Andy, JY, Adrian, Ron, and Fonsie.
Dates on this page
Mon Oct 1, 2007
Recent birthday celebrations at work: Carol and Scott. Cindy made quiche, I brought lemon poppyseed scones, Alyssa brought lefsa (potato tortillas), (Lucia?) brought mini muffins, Joel brought juices. Met with Eric and Susie: DAM. Dinner with Tony Q at Ziryab (415-522-0800, 528 Divisadero Street near Hayes). Chris and Nate would enjoy eating here. About $70 for 2. We originally wanted to eat at Nopa, but it was packed at 8 PM on a Monday—a 45- to 60-minute wait for a table for 2! Tony was in SF for about 30 hours coming from his (brother's?) wedding in Vietnam and going home to Seattle. We had a great time talking about medicine, monks, the president of Vietnam, philanthropy, flexibility, housing, Seattle, Buddhism, and Patrick in China. The food and service were both excellent. My computers at home are now achingly slow. Just waiting now for Leopard, which is due this month.
Tue Oct 2, 2007
Shower. Weight training: reverse incline crunch. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Weight training: shoulder press. Installed Skype at work. Student computing committee meeting. Staff meeting. Late lunch at desk: turkey sandwich with fat free cheddar, Triscuit crackers, dried tropical fruit, rice cakes. Helped Carol with a laptop emergency: the MacBook had a black screen, was still powered on, but would not respond to keyboard or mouse input. I did a cold restart and all was fine, but of course it was not clear to others how to resolve the problem. I have seen this behavior before with OS X computers running Boot Camp but don't know what causes it. Met with Eric to discuss hardware for our forthcoming DAM (digital asset management) server. We estimated that we will have about 300 GB of new digital assets to store per year. We know we need a server that will have plenty of drive space. The tricky questions begin when we consider whether we should have fault tolerant RAID and how to back up the data offsite. The DAM software we decided upon is called ResourceSpace by Montala. So far we are thinking a Ubuntu tower server with 1 terabyte of drive space to start out. We couldn't think of anything very good for the offsite storage solution. Online backup will be too expensive, and this data won't be changing very much—only growing. External hard drives are cheaper and hold more data than tapes, but tapes are easier to send offsite and smaller granularity will affect the frequency and method of whatever offsite storage we use. Also, most of the data we'll be working with will already be compressed and will not benefit from further compression. Eric will investigate our options, and I want to look again at Mozy Pro to confirm my suspicions that it will be more expensive. Account closures followup. Began setting up my new Mac Pro. I installed my RAM upgrade, but when I next turned it on the Mac did not detect it—it still says 1 GB and I don't know why. Joined OS X to the campus domain using the document that Erik W provided—no problems. LGBT viz work: finished posters batch 2 and handed off to Kevin and Christina. Dinner at home by myself: Healthy Choice Cafe Steamers Creamy Dill Salmon frozen dinner. I am planning to go with Chris and Nate to The Pacific Pinball Expo on Sunday, October 7 then to Great America on Sunday, October 14. If you're interested in either and want to join us, please send me e-mail. I forgot to mention that Patrick sent me this on Sunday: "I thought maybe I'd find you online, but you must be at Folsom. I'm leaving for another five days. This is the beginning of the week-long national holiday, so I'm going with Mr. Lee and Miss Xiao to Guansu Province in the west to a city called Tianshui, where Daoism was born. I'll probably be there til at least Friday night your time. I told my mom already not to worry, but I'm sure she'll worry anyway. I'll try to get a blog posting up before I leave today, but I might not have a chance. I put up the photos, though. I love you! Have a good week!" LGBT viz work. Weight training: reverse incline crunch. Changed frankfarm.org to be Class B compliant in regards to no-www.org. The site suggests a way of using Apache URL rewriting rules, but I implemented mine by inserting some simple code into my PHP templates:
<?
if ( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] != 'frankfarm.org' ) {
header( 'Location: https://frankfarm.org' . $_SERVER[ 'REQUEST_URI' ] );
}
?>
Wed Oct 3, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. I forgot to mention yesterday that at the staff meeting I received 2 spot awards—one from Deborah Petrie and one from Sue Abby. Woo! Each spot award is a $25 gift card to Macy's. Eric also received one for helping with the school retreat last month. Alyssa and Lucia also received spot awards. LGBT viz followup. SCC wiki organization. Purchasing followup. Archived receipts. Reworked a Cole Hall seating chart in InDesign for Cindy. E-mail closure followup for student SA. New computer setup for me. Dentist visit: cleaning and pick up new (replacement) mouth guard. Ran into recent graduate Terence. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers. LGBT viz work. Added cleanscores.com to my bookmarks—thanks, BK!
Thu Oct 4, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. This morning when I woke up I found a very mild dermatitis at the rear left and rear right parts of my neck. Could my skin have been sensitive to the cord used to hand the protection sheet at the dentist? If I see a pattern, I'll mention it to her. Unable to find the tie I bought on June 9, 2007. Patrick, do you know where my tie is? I forgot to mention that once while Patrick and I were eating a meal with Felice Picano he had said of men's fashion today—specifically saggers—"It can't get any uglier!" which I thought was funny. Boot Camp error while attempting to start Windows installation: "The installer CD could not be found." One solution: Log in under an administrator account—Boot Camp is not (yet?) smart enough to run under a limited user account and then prompt for admin password. "Error number: -2147024891" when attempting to change password in Outlook Web Access at UCSF—I believe at UCSF changing password through OWA is not supported—you must log in to a Windows computer in a computer lab and change the password there. Computer troubleshooting for student QT: LimeWire keeps starting up—seems like a virus. I uninstalled LimeWire, ran Norton uninstaller, installed Sophos and Startup Manager, let Sophos update automatically, disabled a bunch of things using Startup Manager, restarted, installed Spy Sweeper, restarted. No more LimeWire starting up problem. Restarted. Ran a Spy Sweeper sweep: clean. Ran a Sophos scan: multiple infections detected as Mal/Generic-A. Removed infections, cleared out System Restore. Seems okay. Spy Sweeper updated automatically. Installed Microsoft Update then all updates. Installed Win XP into Boot Camp on the Mac Pro, did standard computer setup. Lunch: leftover box lunch from the career fair. Computer setup took most of the day. Discovered that the Samsung SyncMaster 204BW does not rotate so I think I need to send it back. Dinner at Golden Era Vegetarian Cuisine (415-673-3136, 572 O'Farrell Street) with Mikey, Nina, Robert, Nate, Chris, Kelly, and BK. Mikey was in town with his sister and his brother-in-law staying at the Argonaut for a few days doing mostly touristy things. Afterwards we had drinks and talked at BriKel's. Chris and Nate gave me a ride home. When I got home the Brother MFC-845cw multifunction fax / phone / answeringmachine / printer / scanner was stuck saying Call Pickup—it must have been that way all day or longer, probably unable to receive calls. I couldn't easily unplug it because the cord was fixed (permanent) on the printer side and the other end went into the rack mount unit, which was locked and shoved into a corner. I tried pressing and holding the on/off switch, but that didn't turn it off, and pressing other buttons didn't work, either. I never thought I would ever have to cold restart a telephone. I pulled out the rack mount, unlocked it, unplugged the device, plugged it back in, and of course good as new—I pick up the phone and I get a dial tone whereas before it was silent. While I'm in there, I hook up a switch so that I can hook up a set of headphones with microphone and easily switch between it and speakers. I lock up the rack, push the rack carefully back into place, and then I find a connection problem—something got touched when I did my fix and the one change. Troubleshooting revealed the keyboard and mouse still worked but the display would not wake from sleep. A few minutes later I find the problem—a monitor cable got unhooked accidentally because I married two connectors that both have thumbscrews so they both have nothing to screw into—a kind of sausage party. Late meal: veggie stir fry (mushrooms, green bell pepper, chives, parsley, onions) over brown rice topped with chow mein noodles. Patrick didn't leave me any cornstarch, and I don't know any other way to quickly make a thick sauce. I tried Wondra but it was still runny. To bed very late.
Fri Oct 5, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. LGBT viz followup. Spent most of the day continuing to set up my new computer. Today the following error appeared for me when viewing a PDF file. "Warning: You have entered an invalid serial number. Please re-install Adobe EPIC_APP and enter in a valid serial number when asked. (OK)". The error appears about 7 seconds after opening a PDF file. In my Windows XP computer, I had installed Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard after having previously installed Adobe Acrobat 8.1 Professional. I suspected this was the cause of the problem since CS3 Design Standard includes Adobe Acrobat. When I installed CS3DS it told me that previous versions of Acrobat would be upgraded or something like that—it implied that everything would be fine ("At install, older versions get upgraded"), but it appears this was not thoroughly tested. I uninstalled Acrobat 8.1 Professional and restarted the computer. Opened a PDF file—problem still happened. I reinstalled only the Acrobat component via the Add/Remove Programs control panel item for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard. Opened a PDF file—problem still happened. Opened Acrobat and before the error message appeared I selected the Repair option. Opened a PDF file—problem still happened. Uninstalled only Acrobat via the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Restarted the computer. Installed only Acrobat via the Add/Remove Programs control panel. Restarted the computer. Problem solved. Today while rotating the Samsung SyncMaster 940T monitor I have on my desk the Kensington lock simply fell out of the the lock slot. I thought I must have put the lock on imperfectly or inconsistently, so I found the key and reattached it, but the slot which holds the lock is clearly made entirely of plastic and the edges had a little bit of wear to them. While the lock was (supposedly) securely attached, I worked the lock back and forth and within a few seconds it popped out of the slot. It really did not require any force—just a rocking back and forth. Maybe I will make a video and post it to YouTube kind of like that bicycle lock that could be compromised with a Bic pen. Reseated RAM in the Mac Pro—now it sees 2 GB instead of 1 GB, but I have 5 GB installed—weird. Helped Eric troubleshoot problems with his network connection. I figured out the RAM issue. I got OS X to see all 5 GB of RAM by rearranging and reseating the simms. On the Windows side, Windows XP is limited to seeing 2 GB of RAM, but if you edit the boot.ini file you can make it see 3 GB of virtual memory and that's the best it gets. Installed lots of apps. Uninstalled Netscape 9.0b3 and installed Netscape 8.1.3 for Lucia to resolve continuing Software Update Failed problems. Reported problems with Eric's network connection to OAAIS and Robert W. Dinner with Nate and Jen at Town's End (2 Townsend Street). Chris was home feeling ill. We talked about noisy children in public and the parents who ignore them, snack eating in movie theaters, Santa Cruz, instant message identities and usage, grantwriting, siblings, roller coasters, mono, Ketchikan, Jen's amazing newsreading habits, China, Hong Kong, significant others. Before driving Nate home, Jen dropped me off at Montgomery Station where luckily I caught the last direct train back home. Watched Heroes 201 on the web. I like the new player, but the sound was choppier than before in some places, especially in the last 2 minutes where it was critical. I'm also not able to watch full screen as smoothly as before but this might be due to my aging, slowing computer. Claire's mom doesn't have the same energy as she did last season—is it the same woman playing her? I'm beginning to think that one of the writers was emotionally scarred by the lead cheerleader in his/her (probably her) high school. This continuing concept that lead cheerleaders are one-dimensional and stereotypical cold bitches is rather tiring as well as Claire's new friend being yet another dopey-cute white male. Why couldn't it have been a non-Caucasian male? Or why can't they have a young proto-lesbo-or-bi-gal develop an interest in her? That would be a supernice twist which would generate controversy and pump ratings and further the gay agenda all at once. Or they could have the protolesbo be the lead cheerleader—that would make people stop and think for a few seconds. Maybe the writers are too fearful of identifying the show with gay culture because people who can't think will realize (be told) how many concepts in the show mirror what it's like to be a sexual minority and then (hollywood fears that) ratings will drop and civilization will end. The only clearly queer character in the first season was Claire's male friend who might have been gay or bi, but I doubt we'll see him in the show again soon just based on the storyline. We didn't even see him in a romantic relationship—he was only the geeky, supportive queer friend. My Halloween costume arrived. It's from the Gymboree 07 GY Fall 1 collection. I tried it on, and I like it; it will be quite fun to wear, especially in situations with controlled lighting. (sigh) Yes, I'm wearing clothes from Gymboree, and yes, I did say controlled lighting. You'll see, just wait. It's nothing too fancy.
Sat Oct 6, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. House chores: laundry, ironing, depilled the light green blanket. Got my headphones and microphone set up in case I want to use Skype to talk to Patrick—the microphone plug wasn't plugged in all the way and wasn't working properly. Lunch: leftover risotto from last night. Mended my black plaid cap which had gotten frayed at the bill corners. Errands: Bought a new shredder at OfficeMax. Dinner at home by myself: orzo feta salad from Safeway deli; baked potato with sour cream, chives, Smart Balance; brown fried rice; thin-cut peppercorn pan-fried steak (medium); mixed microwaved vegetables (onions, carrots, mushrooms, green bell pepper) with a bit of butter. LGBT viz work—got all the profile pages done.
Sun Oct 7, 2007
Drove to Chris and Nate's. We drove in their car to Ryan and Jason's. We all went to brunch at Slow Club. Basic breakfasts all around except Ryan who had french toast. Coffees all around except me who had a pineapple-strawberry agua fresca which was fantastic. Afterwards we took photos of The Shell Car—a car covered with seashells, sand dollars, and other objects you find at the beach. Nate drove us all to San Rafael to the Marin County Civic Center Exhibit Hall where we visited the 1st Annual Pacific Pinball Exposition. You pay $20 and get to play about 250 pinball machines and other mechanical arcade games for free all day long. We stayed about 3 hours before deciding we'd had our fill. They had my favorite pinball machine—Bally's Xenon—which was one of the first talking pinball machines. I also played Gorgar, Fish Tales, Twilight Zone, Penny Pitch, Crossroads, Chinatown, Terminator 3, Dale Jr., Ultrapin (Black Knight 2000 and Xenon), The Getaway, FunHouse, New York, Medieval Madness, Addams Family, Star Trek The Next Generation, Scared Stiff (with Elvira), Family Guy, Viper Night Driving, and Harley Davidson. My favorites were Xenon, Dale Jr., Fish Tales, Family Guy, Viper Night Driving, and Harley Davidson. I especially liked any game that had multiball play. Family Guy gets extra points for the miniature pinball game within your pinball game—brilliant! We caught some traffic on the way back. Everything was happening in San Francisco this weekend: Castro Street Fair, Fleet Week, some Burning Man party. If you have a dull moment in SF, it's your own fault, I'm convinced. After about 2 hours of driving we finally made it home. Chris needed to sleep, but the rest of the guys and I had dinner at my place: herb and mushroom risotto, steamed broccoli, and oven-baked, bread-crumbed chicken boobs. Dessert: fruit bars (me and Jason). We had the longest-sustained computergeeky conversation I've had in years. I gave them a Cyberguys catalog. A very fun, very draining day. Dishes, left a voicemail for Tina, journal, e-mail, bed.
Mon Oct 8, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast plus yogurt. Susie canceled our meeting today. Resolved a shortcut problem for Netscape for Lucia. Listserv troubleshooting for student JY. More computer setup. Software ordering followup. Provided an image to Sarah P and Cynthia M for the LGBT viz campaign. Change password problem for student GM. Block calendar updates for Cindy. Lunch: plum glazed chicken, grilled vegetables, dinner roll and Promise, POG juice. Met with Barbara S about her self-study requirements, showed her how to use styles and links in Microsoft Word. Chatted with Tony from ENS about Eric's network connection. I think they finally understand what we want and need. Furniture ordering. Hardware upgrades for the server. I installed a new spare hard drive with rails that I bought on eBay but I didn't have the right IDE cable. I will bring one from home—I need one with a certain amount of space between the two connectors. Tried to upgrade the graphics card, but neither of the ones I hoped would work fit—wrong format. Dinner at home by myself: ginger-glazed chicken boob with grilled onions and bell peppers, plum-cherry sauce steamed carrots, leftover mushroom and herb rice pilaf. LGBT viz work.
Tue Oct 9, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast plus yogurt. Furniture ordering followup. LGBT viz meeting: poster distribution. I brought a copy of Joel's poster back to the office. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Computer maintenance for Eric, also checked out his network connection. Restarted Retrospect service, installed Windows updates, configured firewall settings. Listserv maintenance. Installed Stickies for Cindy. Wrote a backup script to ensure Stickies are backed up twice (onsite and offsite). Chatted with Carol about a new proposed pathway web page or subsite. Lunch: panda express. My fortune: Nothing can keep you from reaching your goals. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers from last night. Chatted with Tina on the phone and with Patrick and Drew on IM.
Wed Oct 10, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast plus yogurt. Small pathway edits for Cindy. Lunch from the cafeteria: cornbread (which I shared with Joel and Scott), salmon, brown rice, grilled vegetables. Couldn't remember how I got sound schemes to load for limited users—now it says "Installation failed." No answers on the web. My solution: temporarily give the user admin rights, install the sound schemes (by right-clicking the INF file for jungle.inf, musica.inf, utopia.inf, etc.), then log in as admin again and remove the admin privs from the limited user. After that the limited user can change the sound schemes without problem. Met briefly with Alyssa who walked me through ICRD screens. Continued coding Pharm Sci resources page for Carol. Some LGBT work. Dinner at home by myself: ground cow burritos with grilled mushrooms, 4-cheese, diced green heirloom tomatoes, multigrain tortillas. Dessert: fruit bar popsicle. Worked on Danny's website. Installed Mozy Home 1.8.4.7 to resolve SnapshotError0 error messages beginning October 6. I really wish Mozy Home updated itself like nearly all modern applications. The update seemed to fix the problem—backups are working again.
Thu Oct 11, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Chatted briefly with student AP about how to buy a laptop and Apple laptop rumors. Lunch at You See Sushi with Ed, Eric, and John K. CSC meeting in the new Cole Hall, and many griped about the lack of wireless in our newly renovated, largest, near-modern, lecture hall on Parnassus. Finished the draft of the pharm sci resources page—now titled career research—and sent it to Carol for review. Helped Lucia with creating ZIP files and using yousendit to deliver. Dinner at home by myself: same as yesterday. House chores. Chatted with Patrick. Cut my hair, showered. Ironed my suit. Watched Hereoes 202 on the web. This time I had trouble with the player. I had to disable the IE7 pop-up blocker, install the Move player from abc.com as recommended in a forum thread talking about playback problems for Heroes, remove Mike's Adblocking hosts file, and—to counter slow frame rate problems from last time—run at 800 x 600. This is a weird coincidence, but my right pinky toe started tingling with a weird nerve sensation shortly after watching this episode. Jason and Ryan tipped me off to the Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard which appears to be very well designed except for the cut, copy, paste part—why waste 12 possible keys for functionality that way? Why make everyone learn something new when X, C, and V have been around for so long and still work? There's no advantage there. And if they attempt to accommodate such imprecision when typing ("so you'll never miss") why didn't they extend that to the rest of the key functions? Why aren't there 5 keys for Back, 5 keys for Forward, 5 keys for Select All, and so forth? An old Microsoft keyboard—I think it was called Microsoft Office Keyboard—had a nice idea that didn't seem to last. It had dedicated buttons for cut, copy, and paste grouped at the left side of the keyboard. A single keypress for each function, grouped and labeled properly. The only real disadvantage was that your hand had to leave the home row. Maybe you could do foot pedals instead? Still, I don't know any other keyboard that has labels for both Windows and OS X and has Command and Alt on the same key which is adjacent to the spacebar. Both Microsoft and Apple could learn plenty from the Matias design, and that alone might be reason enough to buy one. I kinda wish they made a split keyboard design as well.
Fri Oct 12, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast plus yogurt. Cindy brought bagels today. Met with Eric 1-on-1. Prep for the white coat ceremony. During the rehearsal we discovered that Cole Hall had a ceiling leak—water was steadily dripping in due to the heavy rain that passed through today. The leak eventually stopped, and we heard later from Steaven that facilities management was all kinds of crazy because one person was out, one person was on vacation, and one person wasn't in today until 3 PM. Leaks all over the campus, people stuck in elevators (including a pregnant woman)—crazy! The ceremony went pretty well, from what I could see. It was our first big event in the newly renovated Cole Hall. Ben from IRTS magically appeared and gave me a crash course in using the lighting controls which are brand new. Some of the spotlights are not aimed properly, and he was not very helpful in getting them fixed (adjusted). For example, the spotlight on the podium points at the foot of the podium rather than at the person at the podium. He seemed to indicate it was someone else's job to adjust the spots, and I didn't feel comfortable doing that since it was a cramped space and I was in my suit and it was really someone else's work. Some light controls do nothing, he acknowledged. But he did teach me how to program the presets if I wanted to. Other problems: the ID plates on the seats aren't sealed down with glue, so you can lift the plate right out of its holder—indeed some chairs were missing their plates already. Also, the doors were not renovated—one falls open after you close it, and none of the doors have built-in stoppers so they cannot remain open when you have 700 people entering or leaving. Someone found 2 rubber stoppers, but it wasn't enough as there are 4 doors. Still, the new Cole Hall is a big improvement over the old Cole Hall. Dinner at home by myself: sandwich I packed for lunch but didn't have time to eat, some orzo salad. At 8:51 PM on Friday, October 11, we received a phone call and I let the answering machine pick it up. The call was from someone with a female voice who claimed to be "Terry Falcone" (variants for the search engine: Terri Falcone, Terry Falcone, Terri Falcony, Terry Falcony, Terri Falconi, Terry Falconi, Terri Valconi, Terry Valconi, Terri Valcone, Terry Valcone). "The following message is for Patrick Ryan. My name is Terry Falcone, and I'm calling from the transaction review department for [name of our credit union]. Please return our call. We can be reached at 1-800-622-1361. We are available to help 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Thank you!" Our credit union doesn't have 24/7 service that I know of, so I was immediately suspicious and did a Google search on the phone number. In the results page, the word telemarketer appeared 5 times, the word security appeared twice, and the word fraud appeared once. Although this appeared to be a scam, I decided to follow up with my bank just to be certain. (See tomorrow for a followup.)
Sat Oct 13, 2007
Breakfast at home by myself: hash browns; 2-egg scramble with onions, mushrooms, and diced heirloom tomatoes; bagel with peanut butter. Archived voicemail messages. At 11:21 AM I received another phone call from "Terry Falcone" at 800-622-1361—this time it was a male's voice. Chatted with the neighbor about noise problems. Worked on Danny's website. Weight training: dumbbell bench press, woodchopper. Late lunch: vegetable stir fry (napa cabbage, celery, mushrooms, onion, garlic, parsley) with steamed rice. Archived documents. My credit union responded from yesterday's problem with "Terry Falcone" and 800-622-1361: "Hello, Yes, it was legitimate. That number is for our card security company, FRIS. Most likely they wanted to verify a transaction on your debit card to make sure that it was authorized. You can call them at the number they've provided. Please let us know if you have other questions. Thank you." but when I called to find out what they wanted to alert Patrick about they wouldn't give me the information because I said I wasn't Patrick Ryan. I explained to them that we are joint owners of the account and that he's traveling in China and that I'm calling from the phone number that they have on file for Patrick Ryan (which they can verify through Caller ID), but they still would not reveal the information. I also explained to them that if I called back and said I was Patrick Ryan they wouldn't know any different, and the manager agreed with me but again insisted that they could not reveal the information intended for him as the calls are recorded. The wonderful irony and hypocrisy is that FRIS is letting multiple FRIS employees claim to be "Terry Falcone"—the first call I received was a woman's voice, and the second call I received was a man's! I am convinced that people hundreds of years from now will look back on situations like these and consider this the dark ages of information security.
Sun Oct 14, 2007
I didn't know that Carla Marinucci, Joe Garofoli, and/or The San Francisco Chronicle think that Al Gore is at a crossroads. And I didn't know that PBS thinks that America is at a crossroads. And I didn't know that Robert O'Harrow Jr., Scott Higham, and/or The Washington Post think that U.S. border security is at a crossroads. Even [baby-making is at a crossroads][link defunct as of 2010.0709: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17937812/], according to Jacqueline Stenson and/or msnbc. So are gay unions at a crossroads, according to John Lewis and/or The Boston Globe. I have not yet fully investigated but I truly believe that the act of writing about coming to crossroads is at a crossroads, for We The People can take only so much tired writing and editing. At the end of the day, a revolution is needed to take newswriting and newsediting (and writing and editing in general) to a whole new level so that each and every writer can finally have a style he or she can call his or her very own. Will you join me? Today was a kind of boys' day out with Chris, Nate, Thom, and Jeff. We had breakfast at Boulevard Cafe (formerly Lyon's) in Daly City. Then we drove to Great America for some amusement park fun. Through UCSF we got tickets for $30 each—the normal web price is $37 per person. After having grown up so close to Disneyland, other amusement parks are general disappointments, and after some whining I realized I had to make a conscious effort to not bring the mood down with my comparisons to Walt's creation. Great America gets an A- for effort, though. I could tell they were really trying. Its strong point is its collection of roller coasters. They have old and new ones, wooden and metal, mostly looping but some non-looping. If you like roller coasters, it's a great place to visit. The park was essentially empty. About 80% of the rides had less than a minute of waiting time to board. We waited longest at The Survivor Ride and Eagle's Flight (aka the rubberband ride as Don Don calls it) and Carn-Evil. The Survivor Ride was extremely cheesy during the pre-ride, but the ride itself was fantastic because it provides rollercoaster-like sensations without steep-drop thrills or fast and rough turns. It's kind of like they crossed the Whip It! ride with a roller coaster. It gave sensations like I imagine Spider-Man feels when he's flying around. Here's the list of what we rode (that I remember): Whitewater Falls, The Demon (fun), Invertigo (very fun), Drop Zone Stunt Tower (only Thom and Nate rode and shortly after we saw one car on the ride got stuck and had to be lowered down very slowly—scary!), Survivor: The Ride (very fun and great for people who don't like roller coasters), Logger's Run (boring). Somewhere in the middle here we decided to ride Rip Roaring Rapids which was somewhat of a mistake because we all got soaked, miserably so, and although it was sunny it wasn't really a hot day at 72—not much warmer than "room temperature." (Indeed, Boomerang Bay, the waterpark-within-the-park was already closed for the season.) It took a long time for us to dry off. I think we rode Top Gun next, which we all liked. As we had no kids with us, it took us only about 90 or 120 minutes to ride everything we wanted to. We had a meal at the Food Festival food court—a teriyaki bowl with grilled chicken and steamed vegetables was the healthiest thing I could find. The employees working a nearby test-your-strength-with-a-mallet game amused us repetitiously. We rode The Grizzly (too rough for me) which had been closed earlier in the day. We took the Eagle's Flight across the park and waited a long time to get into Carn-Evil—a spooky funhouse that was done much better than The Mummy at Universal Studios. I recommend the 3-D glasses—it really provides an interesting experience. Someone handed Nate a couple of pairs because you don't really need them after the ride, so we handed ours back to others waiting in line after we were done—our good deed for the day. The park was decorated for Halloween which made it really strange because of the mixing of themes. For example, the carousel was themed with Americana probably because it was likely built at the park's opening in April 1976, but then it was covered in Halloween garb like spider cobwebs. It was like celebrating Fourth of July and Halloween at the same time. A kids outdoor foam party had haycubes and pumpkins. We encountered a talking pumpkin head. The decorations were beautiful, but they just seemed sort of random—I felt like I was in Safeway because that's what I expect when I go to Safeway approaching Halloween. Some of the children guests were dressed in costume—they have a parade in which the costumed children can participate. We happened to pick the weekend when a cheerleading competition was taking place at the park. The cheerleaders were all very young cheerleaders. We did not watch any of the competition, but I thought of Joel because he likes stuff like that. After we decided we had had enough fun, we picked up groceries at Safeway and went to Bryan's BBQ. We arrived a little early, and Eric graciously greeted us and gave the boys a tour. We watched A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila (awful) on Comcast. At the BBQ (as best I can remember): me, Chris, Nate, Thom, Jeff, Bryan, Eric, Phil, Timmie, Matt W, Carlos, BJ, Sally, Jacob, Matt and Toby, Ashley, housemate Sean. We watched Legally Blonde The Musical on MTV (realtime), which was entertaining but I was not impressed by the music.
Mon Oct 15, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped Scott with a PharmAdMIT question. Helped Lucia with determining process for Mission Bay ID access activation. Timesheet followup. Chatted with Tony H about Eric's network connections. Chatted briefly with Eric. Made a purchase at The Technology Store. Archived receipts. Installed software in OS X: iTerm, Growl, Burn (burn-osx at sourceforge), TextWrangler, VLC, StuffIt Expander, Office 2004, Adium, Skype, Fugu. I accidentally forgot to meet Susie and Eric in the afternoon—I feel so bad about that. Stayed very late to work on LGBT viz work. Very late dinner at Pluto's where I ran into student CB and chatted a few minutes. Dinner at Pluto's was extremely inexpensive—a large salad with roast turkey and peppermint tea for $8.84 after tax. Everything was delicious except the turkey was dry.
Tue Oct 16, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Student computing committee meeting: very short, only Kevin, Chandler, Heidi, and I showed up. Laptop troubleshooting for Chris. Listserv maintenance. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You will have fortune as you desire. Installed Boot Camp and Windows and some Windows software on Eric's computer. Eric and I noticed that Apple has pulled the Boot Camp 1.4 installer—it is no longer available for download from Apple. Fortunately I had the installer in my Trash and fished it out. Word on the street is that Boot Camp beta will expire when Leopard ships, so we'll need to upgrade pronto come October 26. Home. Had some trouble with code in my journal—fixed it. Dinner at home by myself: tacos, mostly the same as before. Watched Heroes 203 and 204 on the web. I think the Voyagersesque story line with Hiro and Sting is extraordinarily cheesy. Was that Nichelle Nichols in episode 203? Can someone say, "Wondertwin powers, activate!" please? Where did they find the Molly Ringwald look-alike? Well, there's a bit of a resemblance, I think. Recently my friend Domenica sent me the following message: "Hello to all my Bay Area friends! My dear friend Cat is searching for a place to rent long-term up there. She has dreamed of moving from San Diego to the Bay Area for a long time now and she is hoping to make it a reality. Currently, she has a temporary living situation up there for this month ONLY while she looks for (in her words) 'something really nice in Berkeley / Berkeley Hills / North Berk anywhere up to $1400.' She's a graphic designer who has no pets. If anyone knows of any possible rental situation(s) that meets her above criteria, please let me know and I will gratefully pass the info along to her. Craigslist is typically always a good resource for this kind of thing, I know... but I think that the BEST situations tend to arise from the word-of-mouth of mutual friends/connections. :) Thanks in advance for your help... Hope everyone is having a wonderful autumn!" So let me know if you know of anything and I'll pass along the info. One day last week I can't remember which now I had dinner at Chris and Nate's. They bought me herbs because our spice drawer had spices but no herbs. Nate made a very delicious pork roast with scalloped potatoes and fresh bread.
Wed Oct 17, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Mission Bay id card access work. Listserv maintenance. Reactivated an accidentally closed e-mail account for a student. Image processing for Susie and Robin. Chatted with Susie on the phone. LGBT viz and furniture purchase followup. Ordered 10-pin headers for USB. Watched the Final Cut Studio 2 training DVD. Chatted with Sue on the phone about the self study. Autorun and autostart research. Dinner at Phil, Danny, and Drew's with Phil, Danny, Drew, Paul, Quyen, and Mom Ryan. Tony Q showed up late, just in from Seattle and Vietnam.
Thu Oct 18, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stopped in to see Sue. Chatted briefly with Barbara on the phone. Continued installing software on Eric's computer. LGBT viz work: made the site live without the map. Collected student photos that Terence had sent. Updated the class officers photo sheet for Cindy. Warned Chris about Apple disabling Boot Camp beta after Leopard ships. Dropped off a payment at the dentist. Lunch at Ten by myself. CSC steering committee meeting with Tiki, John G, Erik W, Judith E, Dan F. Picked up Eric's temporary PC. Gave access to linkcheck scripts to Eric. Set up Eric's computer for remote desktop. Reminder to Tony H asking for a status report on Eric's network connection ticket. Continued installing software on Eric's computer remotely. Dinner at home by myself: cow taco (same as before).
Fri Oct 19, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Computer admin work: installed Java 6 update 3 and Firefox 2.0.0.8, remote desktop configuration, installed sqlyog enterprise. LGBT viz followup with Kevin. Gathered and filed remaining student photos batch from Terence. Eric returned his temporary computer so I did some admin work on it and moved it back to Joel's old office and locked it up. Got my free flu shot. Lunch: sesame noodle salad and pizza from the cafeteria. Troubleshooting a probable computer virus infection for a student. Coded a new grad fairs web page for Joel and Alyssa. Met briefly with Eric: VPN and port opening and firewalls. Listserv maintenance for a student. More laptop troubleshooting for a student. Turns out it was a bad hard drive, which I suspected when McAfee Stinger would stop on the exact same file and just hang. And because the computer exhibited really weird behavior even in Safe Mode and with no suspect processes running. I ran diagnostics and it quickly found errors on the drive. More computer admin work. Somehow when starting Retrospect 6.5 for Windows today the configuration file got corrupted and when Retrospect launched all the settings in my configuration were gone. Panic! I checked Mozy and realized I wasn't backing up my config65.dat file. Immediately configured Mozy to back it up. Started Retrospect again and had it rebuild a backup catalog which I think saved the file. The rebuild will take a while so I left work and will check it tonight from home. Dinner at home by myself: Nissin Choice Ramen Savory Herb Chicken noodle soup. I added napa cabbage, celery, parsley, egg, and shrimp. This ramen is much more expensive than fried ramen but much healthier for you. I won't buy it regularly, but it still tastes good.
Sat Oct 20, 2007
I had a realization recently and it goes like this: In the grocery stores of my childhood nearly everything in the store had price stickers on them. The one thing that didn't have price stickers then was fruit. Now, nearly everything in a grocery store is stickerless in the same manner, except for the fruit. Brunch with Chris, Nate, and Alex: pastries to go from Patesserie Phillipe (415-558-8016, 655 Townsend Street), which makes an astounding array of desserts. Ate at Chris and Nate's. Alex is in town from Honolulu and wanted to visit a particular winery in Healdsburg called Preston Vineyards aka Preston of Dry Creek, so we all went in his rental car. We sampled 4 wines: sauvignon blanc 2006, barbera 2005, L. Preston, and one more I can't remember. We ate a flax seed and blue cornmeal round of bread with some cheeses. We bought many bottles of wine. One good thing to know for next time: West Dry Creek Road is small and rough, so it's probably faster and more comfortable to continue on 101 past Healdsburg to Canyon Road before heading west along Canyon Road and Yoakim Bridge Road. Drove back to SF. We all went to dinner at Basil: chicken satay, coconut milk soup, panstickers, pad thai, ginger chicken. Home. Worked on Danny's website: prepped pages for facials and packages. Our upstairs neighbor Zach parked his motorcycle nearly obstructing the entrance to our home again after I had asked him to park in a different place, so today I left as polite a message as I could letting him know that next time I'll have it towed. Our upstairs neighbors continue to not do their share of handling the garbage can duties. I asked the landlord for access to some touch-up paint—he said he'll check and let me know in a few days.
Sun Oct 21, 2007
Cut my hair, showered, vacuumed. Chris and Nate came over. We left to pick up Tony Q. Brunch at Herbivore: breakfast burrito for Chris and Nate each, tofu scramble with spinach and mushrooms for me, ? for Tony. Drove to SRI to drop off books and papers at Nate's office. Nate gave us a little tour. Drove to Stanford University and walked around. I was in awe of the amount of resources available. We visited the church (I counted 73 stained glass windows), stopped at the library (but couldn't get in), visited the visitor center, went up to the top of Hoover Tower—nice view, visited the bookstore. Back to SF. They dropped me off before dropping Tony off. I went to Walgreen's for some supplies. Our landlord got back to me—we have touch-up paint now! Late dinner at home by myself: chicken in hoisin sauce with baby bok choy, onion, and garlic; basmati rice. Chatted online.
Mon Oct 22, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. I could tell it was going to be a hot day today because it was 62 degrees when I left for work in the morning—usually it's colder. When I got home from work, it was 70.9 degrees outside and 68.2 degrees inside! San Francisco weather is so crazy! Today at work: Telephone meeting with Susie. Windows installation for a student whose computer had a bad hard drive. Prox lock installation prep. Taught Joel how to scan documents remotely and also how to create placeable images from PDF files. Laptop troubleshooting for Chris. More laptop setup for the student. Lunch at desk: turkey sandwich brought from home, triscuit crackers. Phonechatted a long time with Sam. Chatted online with Tony Q, helped him with an HTML question. Chatted with Patrick, planned Thanksgiving dinner, spending a lot of time in Adobe Illustrator. Late dinner at home by myself: leftover sandwich that I didn't eat for lunch. Weight training: reverse incline crunch, lateral raise. Late meal: cow Chunky Soup.
Tue Oct 23, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Met with student TT—laptop maintenance. Another student stopped by to pick up her laptop which was done. Staff meeting. The big news was that Scott was in San Diego on outreach and is coming home early because many of the schools have canceled their grad fairs. He had been staying in a hotel that was also being used as for evacuation housing or an evacuation center. Things are really crazy down there, it seems. Finally received the 10-pin headers that I couldn't find anywhere except mail order. Replaced a 10-pin header on a USB cable—the one that did not work for me had 10 positions but one in the corner was blocked out so I was unable to use it on the 10 pins (2 rows x 5) that were sticking up from the motherboard. The new 10-pin header had nothing blocked—all positions were open. Lunch in the workroom with Joel and Alyssa: turkey sandwich with fat free cheddar brought from home, assorted snacks, water. E-mail management—this 100 MB limit of mail space is getting really annoying. Furniture ordering for Eric. Listserv work. Watched the OS X Leopard video tour. Prepared my orders for Leopard (including one for psychobauble). Gave Tina a heads up about Leopard. Met with Eric. I'm handing over homepage news coding responsibilities to him, and we sat down together while I walked him through my process and I was quite pleased when said no to my question of "Am I going too fast for you?" We also reviewed his linkchecking duties and worked out a solution for the Partners in D site problem of the share script coded by Ogilvy passing a URL to a form—just use HTTP_REFERER instead and handle offsite referrers appropriately. When I got home from work tonight at 7:10 PM the temperature read 69.3 indoors and 74.7 outdoors. Patrick would not be enjoying the weather now if he were here. Dinner at home by myself: cow stir fry with napa cabbage, baby bok choy, parsley, onion, garlic, leftover steamed rice. Watched episode 205 of Heroes on the web. This episode was very good. I particularly liked how the scene in Philadelphia ends—brilliant editing! And I also liked the telephone call that took place inside a vehicle.
Wed Oct 24, 2007
Discovered a problem with the home web server, took a few minutes to fix it—somehow my ip config got lost and I couldn't remember all the settings so I had to look them up. Breakfast at the cafeteria: scrambled eggs, potatoes, wheat toast, 2 sausage links. I thought the home webserver problem was fixed, but when I got to work, I realized it still wasn't. Gave Chris a USB printer cable. Helped Cindy with Powerpoint questions. Password issues and mysql account setup for Eric. Sent Eric Outlook tip #8. Troubleshot computer issues for Chris: unable to print to printer at home, Outlook connection problems, installed OS X updates including a BIOS update, fixed the printing problem, made changes which might resolve the Outlook connection problem. Had trouble installing Firefox 2.0.0.8 over 2.0.0.1 in OS X: "The operation cannot be completed because you do not have sufficient privileges for some of the items." Problem happens while logged in as domain admin and also while logged in as local admin. Currently unresolved. Attended late a performance by Marga Gomez in Cole Hall. It's always a pleasure to watch her perform her standup comedy. During the performance the fire alarm went off and I just rolled my eyes because this happened a few days ago during our white coat ceremony. I just left and didn't bother to stay for the rest—there was only 15 minutes left anyhow. Lunch: bbq pork with imperial rolls from Minh Tri, Snapple green apple white tea from Bear Snacks, sat in the library courtyard in the shade. It's very hot and sunny today. Made live winter draft schedules for Lucia. Self study work with Barbara. Network connection followup with Eric and Tony H. Made live our new news feed (RSS), sent an announcement to Cindy, Susie, Eric, and Public Affairs. Chatted with Susie. Began work on the self study. Helped Eric make his first homepage news story live. Chatted briefly with Susie about the intranet. Left work late. Home. Chatted briefly on the phone with Nate. Fixed the home internet connection problem. Dinner at home by myself: rice, leftovers, peppermint organic lemonade. Chatted with Patrick and Tony Q on IM. Planned Thanksgiving dinner arrangements with Patrick.
Thu Oct 25, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped Eric understand our guidelines for changing news stories. Opened dialog with Eric about version control now that we're both coding on the servers. Set up one of our soon-to-be-surplussed computers. It's one of our older computers and I needed a different computer to test behaviors of things in Office 2003 and Acrobat 7—our office has already upgraded to Office 2007 and Acrobat 8. Began work on the self study for Barbara. Visited Sue Abby again. Chatted with Chris briefly about Leopard. Lunch: fish and chips, a granny smith apple. Dropped off a monitor for return to vendor to Valerie's office. Ordered 6 copies of Leopard (including one for psychobauble and one for javaaddict). Helped Joel with questions about Office 2007 (paste special, compatiblity mode). Staged homepage changes for Susie (Les's symposium). Made live a special notice regarding admissions and southern california wildfires for Joel and Cindy. Installed IrfanView. Installed the RealPlayer patch. More self study work. CSC steering committee work. Dinner at home by myself: soba noodles in mushroom broth with napa cabbage, celery, mushrooms, onion, shrimp. Nothing on the web describes how the Matias Tactile Pro Keyboard 2.0 behaves with Parallels. I am guessing that it's not smart enough to automatically detect when you're in Windows within Parallels versus when you're in OS X—I'm not sure it even makes a difference with that keyboard, but this uncertainty is reason enough to give me pause in deciding to buy it. Maybe they'll have a booth at Macworld and I can try it out there. Well, since I wrote the previous sentence I read a little more about the Tactile Pro Keyboard 2.0, and I think I won't be buying it based on the many negative reviews. Matias has some right ideas but doesn't seem to have designed the right keyboard for me just yet. The Das Keyboard II is a curiosity, but it's also not for me.
Fri Oct 26, 2007
Favorite breakfast at the cafeteria. Self study work. Listserv management. More self study work. Reimbursements followup—my request had been accidentally not filed by someone who is not me. Bought flowers and a card for Lucia. Joel bought flowers for Cindy. WebCT help for DTK. Met with Eric 1 on 1. Dinner at Patxi's Chicago Pizza (415-558-9991, 511 Hayes Street). We had a large salad with bleu cheese dressing, and a large pizza with pepperoni and mushrooms. The pizza seemed really salty to me but was otherwise delicious. I think I ate only one slice—it was so filling. Cherry cokes for me and Chris, red wine for Nate. Afterwards we went to Citizen Cake for dessert. We each chose a different dessert and shared everything. Peppermint tea for me and Chris, a (latte?) for Nate. The place was empty while we placed our orders, and we chatted amiably with the workers behind the counter. One had on very red lipstick and was using a box cutter to cut halloween shapes out of small paper bags for tea light decorations. The other wore a t-shirt that said "I (heart)" followed by a depiction of hands describing intercourse in American Sign Language. (He wore this shirt underneath a long-sleeved black t-shirt that was more appropriate for a work uniform.)
Sat Oct 27, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Internet connection broken again—resetting the modem and the router fixed it. Website was down from about 1:30 AM to 5:55 AM today. Bleah! (Thanks for the monitors, monitorus!) Patched RealPlayer and Adobe Reader. Caught up on blogs. I forgot to mention that you can see the first of Thom's photos from Great America. Brunch with Chris and Nate at The Cove. Picked up costume supplies at Cliff's Hardware. They have a very nice selection of masks in both sides of the store, and Nate found a perfect one for his priest costume. Costco run. I bought a sewing machine—a Brother XR-7700 for $180 USD. It was the only sewing machine Costco had. Was relieved to see that it has a 4.5 out of 5 stars rating on Amazon. Chatted briefly on the phone with North Beach Steven. Phil, Danny, and Drew's Halloween Party.
Sun Oct 28, 2007
I forgot to mention that at Costco we bought a pair of fire extinguishers and split the cost. Ours is going in the second bedroom closet for now. I didn't have a good place to install the wall bracket for the fire extinguisher and I'm disappointed that for scenarios such as mine they didn't provide a wall bracket bracket so that I have a convenient place to store the wall bracket until I need it. Sunbathing in Dolores Park. While sunbathing I observed a man offering marijuana chocolate truffles for sale. Another man offered "ganja treats." The ganja treats man made several rounds. When I checked my timepiece one time it said 16:20 and I kid you not the next second the man said, "Ganja treats!" while he walked by. Errands in the Castro. Dinner at PDD with Phil, Danny, Drew, Andy, JY, Adrian, Ron, Fonsie. I brought pecan pie and cherry pie from Buffalo Grocery.
Mon Oct 29, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Student database updates. Figured out how to use Photoshop CS3 to automate certain tasks, but the photos that the police department gave us were so inconsistently sized and cropped that it would not have helped to automate the process. I consequently had to manually crop and color-correct each image by hand. Picked up 7 copies of OS X Leopard from the Technology Store. Two I paid for on my own—one is for psychobauble, the other is for Tina. Lunch: panda bowl from Panda Express. My fortune: You are admired by many. Met with Susie and Eric, made a lot of progress on the digital asset management project. Susie says she's interested in hiring psychobauble to help us catalog the data. Finished the student database update and announced. Stopped by BriKel's but no one was home. Dinner by myself at Azteca: flour tostada with carnitas, tortilla chips, water. Worked on Danny's website: made more services available. Installed Flock 0.9.1.3 for OS X.
Tue Oct 30, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Researched how to build a hybrid cdrom. We cannot do hybrid this time around—we have too many PDF files with long filenames that won't work because of truncation during burning. Coordinated with Susie and Laura S regarding cdrom opening instructions to be printed on the cdrom. Converted PDFs to JPG and inserted front cover and back cover images into the Self Study. Posted updated P2 and electives schedules for Lucia. Unhooked the 2-year-old Mac Mini on my desk to give to Eric for the DAM project. DAM server purchases shopping. Reviewed ECAP brochure materials from Cindy. Lunch at desk by myself: takeout from Palio Paninoteca: couscous and shrimp salad, half of a smoked salmon sandwich. Authorized our staff for business hours access to Parnassus in WeID. Prepared a Kensington lock for repair or replacement. The vinyl (?) shielding of one of our slim microsaver locks had worked loose from where it attaches to the lock, and I discovered this problem a few weeks ago because one of the wires in the cable had pricked my finger. (It was not a severe injury.) Called Kensington technical support, which I am guessing has been outsourced to India. The technician took my shipping address and e-mail address and ordered a replacement to be sent to me at no charge. Woo! Org chart update for Susie. Self study process management with Barbara. Updated special footer links so that Eric sees them. Sysadmin work for most office computers: RealPlayer patching, Acrobat patching, disk cleanup, defrag. Chatted with Patrick online. Home. Dinner at home by myself: salt-n-pepper pork chops with whole mushrooms; roasted fingerling potatoes with rosemary; sage, celery, and onion stuffing. Completed my absentee ballot for voting. Watched Heroes 206 on the web. Read season 1 Heroes graphic novels 1 through 6 on Wikipedia.
Wed Oct 31, 2007
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Telecommute day. Spent most of the day completing the online introduction to management training module that I started forever ago. Home page news work with Eric over IM. Chatted briefly with Susie on the phone. Helped student KB with questions about handling spam. Lunch: pork chop and stuffing leftovers, corn off the cob from the freezer. Played phone tag with Brian H. Patrick tells me in chat that there was an earthquake in the Bay Area last night around the time I was finishing dinner at home but I didn't feel it at all. I didn't even know about it until he mentioned it. Prepared a job description for the digital asset manager temporary position we plan to hire. Worked late. Chatted briefly with Mom Ryan on the phone. Dinner at home by myself: pasta with tomato basil marinara, steak fries, steamed broccoli with grated 4-cheese blend. Chatted briefly with Kiana and Rob on the phone. The swimming pool is finished and yesterday's earthquake displaced 4 inches of water in all directions. Chatted with Drew and Patrick online. Read Heroes season 1 graphic novels 7 through 17. Patrick says his microphone stopped working so he's unable to answer Skype calls but he is still able to hear voicemail messages.