Thursday, January 3, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Downloaded VMWare Fusion evaluation version. Uninstalled Parallels Tools thinking that I was ready to stop using Parallels and start using VMWare Fusion. Did not successfully receive the activation e-mail message from VMWare even though vmware.com is in both whitelists and the message did not appear in junk e-mail folders or server-side spam filtering. Changed VMWare account settings to a new e-mail address, but resend still used the first e-mail address I provided. Restored a file from backup for Scott. Laptop troubleshooting for student NG. Chatted with student RE about laptop issues. Helped Joel with a PDF printing problem. Sent feedback to Public Affairs about a 26 x 26-inch PDF file. Monthly website backups. Logged out of vmware.com. Tried to log back in and now it seems to recognize the 2nd e-mail address I provided. However, a resend of the activation e-mail message still does not come through. Reinstalled Parallels Tools to continue working with Parallels until VMWare gets their act together. Two hours after I first signed up and the activation e-mail message was supposedly sent, the message arrives. Almost simultaneously I also hear from Sandy saying that she was able to reproduce the same problem. I now have an activation key. Uninstalled Parallels Tools. Late lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You enjoy playing to a crowd. (!) Chatted on the phone with Rob S. IRC page edits for Chris and Susie. More software installation and updates for student NG's laptop. Installed VMWare Fusion, got it working. So far, so good. Interestingly I occasionally see the exact same redraw problems that I did with Parallels—sometimes when I use Alt+Tab to switch among applications in Windows a transparent ghost outline and drop shadow of that box remains behind, and this is not a significant problem. Fusion does seem a lot faster than Parallels. I configured it for 1.5 GB of RAM and to use 2 virtual processors but I don't know how much of a difference that will make—it's only XP. The Apple battery replacement I had ordered yesterday with AppleCare arrived today—now that's service! Popped the old one out, tested and labeled the new one. The hardest part was the return shipping label which was difficult to expose—I didn't even understand how it was supposed to work at first, but essentially you get a knifelike object and break the perforations along the edges of the existing label, but it's not really clear where you need to cut. I recently discovered some weird keyboard issues. I have an Apple Keyboard (A1048) plugged directly into a Mac Pro, and I also have a Dell keyboard (SK-8110) plugged into an Avocent SwitchView PC KVM via a USB-to-PS/2 adapter. The KVM is connected to a USB port on the Mac Pro using a Ziotek PS/2-to-USB adapter. Most everything works as expected. However, sometimes certain key combinations will fail to work on the Dell keyboard but if I try the exact same (corresponding) key combination on the Apple keyboard, then it works. It's either that the Dell keyboard is somehow wired incorrectly or the KVM is screwing with the signals somehow and not passing them along cleanly. My guess is the KVM. But another weird thing I've witnessed is that on the Dell keyboard sometimes a keyboard shortcut will fail using the modifier keys on the left side of the keyboard but then if I try the same keyboard shortcut using the modifier keys on the right side of the keyboard it will work. I have yet to find a reproducible circumstance, and consequently it's taking some time for me to understand these things. It's just supposed to work, but I don't know if it's the PC keyboard, the USB-to-PS/2 adapter, the KVM, the PS/2-to-USB adapter, the VM's capabilities, the VM's settings, Mac OS, my settings in Mac OS, or the fact that I'm using 2 keyboards at once or any combination of these that is causing the problem. More troubleshooting is warranted. Today I asked Joel to type in a URL I received on a postcard at work, and it goes like this: campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu/documentsmail (41 characters) which is the website for the unit called Documents, Media, & Mail within the unit called Campus Life Services at UCSF. He declined. I think there should be a website called services.ucsf.edu with the home page describing/listing all services which are available to all UCSF and non-UCSF customers, regardless of whether this particular unit owns them or not. Even shorter than services.ucsf.edu would be 311.ucsf.edu, with a nod to the recently new 311 telephone number to dial for all San Francisco city services. I think both domains should exist and point to the same data. Top-level nodes could perhaps be /print, /copy, /docs, /web, /design, /mail, /food, /beauty, /health, /money, ( /join or /apply ) and you might also have a top-level node for each campus so that people can find all the services available at, say, /parnassus, /laurelheights, or /missionbay. I've provided similar feedback to this unit years ago when it was solicited in an annual survey, but my comments didn't seem to have any effect so now I just don't bother filling out the annual survey. (This wasn't the only thing I mentioned that still hasn't been fixed.) Aha! That didn't take long. In OS X with the Finder in focus, Command+Shift+h to open the home folder works on the left side and right side of the Apple keyboard, but on the Dell keyboard only the right side works. I will switch now to a Logitech keyboard (CLASSIC KBD 200, 968019-0403) and perform the same test. The Logitech keyboard was not detected after plugging it in to the KVM, so I plugged it into a Belkin F5U237 Rev. 3 USB hub which was plugged into the Mac Pro and it worked as expected, but there's only one Windows key (on the left side) and it wasn't the same test. Home. Dinner at home with Patrick: snow crab ravioli in vodka sauce with carrots and red peppers. Noticed that the Office 2004 Service Pack 2 is no longer available for download. Downloaded VMWare Fusion. Weird thing about Fusion is that upon first launch it doesn't seem to detect the Boot Camp partition, but if you close the Virtual Machine Library window that first appears, then reopen it under the Window menu, then the Boot Camp partition appears. It's not a major problem, but it's disorienting, particularly for first-time users. Updated DNS for website migrations. Fixed Google Analytics code which broke validation. Fusion is working properly except some Windows keyboard shortcuts don't work as expected (which I expect to resolve by adding a miniature PC keyboard) and Netflix Instant Watching is really low quality—lower than we were watching when in Boot Camp. I tried all kinds of settings in Fusion to fix this, but nothing worked. The need to repeatedly select the Apply button in the settings interface for Fusion is annoying, but really just a minor problem. I've started a list of things which I find are broken in OS X. So far: playing dvds in Front Row, and icon in the dock has a question mark over it; it used to work but now it doesn't—nothing happens when you click it. Installed Adobe Reader for OS X because neither Skim nor Preview were opening some of the PDFs I downloaded. arstechnica is painfully slow to load just past midnight tonight. I stopped using iTerm because I could not figure out how to make the Font palette do what I want to configure the screen the way I like. This is more likely a problem with how Apple designed the Font palette, but I got what I needed to work in Terminal and not in iTerm and I don't care if there's a difference. There's a big storm coming, must shut down the web server now.