Thursday, October 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.