Friday, February 22, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. itssrv1 diaspora preparations. Lunch at Pasta Pomodoro with Joel and James (and not Ena, unfortunately). Went to a Hurricane Katrina talk by Dr. John Lawson, CIO at Western Washington University, who talked about his experiences at Tulane University where he was CIO during Katrina. More laptop maintenance for student ML. Posted and announced updated schedules for Lucia. Backups management: wrangled with DVD-RWs. I finally recorded the BSOD I've been receiving consistently now: TERMINAL_SERVER_DRIVER_MADE_INCORRECT_MEMORY_REFERENCE, STOP: 0x000000CF in ati2dvag.dll. This blue screen of death occurs every time I connect using MMC 3.0 to another computer (remote desktop), do some work, then shut down or restart Windows on the remote machine. I don't know how to resolve this problem, and information on the web is currently inconclusive. Talked to Mozy Pro support about Mozy not working. They somehow didn't receive the e-mail I sent them 2 days ago so I had to resend it twice before they got it. They have a problem to fix on their end. DVD burning is such a headache. After erasing a disc I attempt to use it only to be told that it's full or not writeable. Or, when attempting to format a disc, the computer BSODs with IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, STOP: 0x0000000A. Oops—that was only our server. Fortunately it was after hours, and it caused no problems. I hate disc burning! Grr! I think this time I resolved the first problem by formatting the disc after erasing it. It's not clear that after you erase a disk you must format it before copying files or renaming the disc (Roxio). Gathered SSH settings for backup. Dinner at home with Patrick: Safeway Organics pizzas, leftover pasta and chicken. Dessert: heavenly hash from my sister. Today was the first in 4 days that I've used Fusion and Windows XP at home—perhaps the longest I've gone without using Windows at home since I started using Windows (and not counting computer downtime or moving or things like that). I needed to scan a PDF preferably with OCR and I only have a Windows version of Adobe Acrobat Pro. The cdrom that came with my Brother MFC-845cw printer might have something that does the same thing—maybe I can look into that. Once I finished the scan, I shut down Windows and Fusion. Unfortunately, I currently can't see a way for me to stop using Windows at work completely or even on a mostly daily basis. I need to start using more of TextWrangler's features to see if I can be as efficient in it as with HTML-Kit. Watched actors commentary on the Ocean's Eleven DVD with Patrick. I'm still getting used to Mac-only e-mail and calendering. I've stopped using Windows XP at home on a daily basis, but that doesn't mean I'm Microsoft-free. I decided I couldn't get away from Entourage—the alternatives are just not quite ready yet. However, Entourage 2008 has a nice feature which syncs with iCal. So I have my work e-mail and 2 home e-mail accounts going in to Entourage, and Entourage seems to better handle IMAP than Outlook 2007. At least I'm not bothered by messages saying it can't perform a task because it's not connected to the server—it just connects and does the task and there's a brief pause, which is acceptable to me. Entourage has a rather cluttered interface, though, when you have that many accounts—too much opening and closing of tree branches is required, and nothing makes the different accounts visually distinct (e.g., color). I'm using the Favorites bar to counter some of that, but you can't name the things on the Favorites bar what you want, and that's annoying. Entourage crashes consistently when I attempt to create certain recurring To Do items, so I've been keeping personal (non-work) To Do items in iCal, which I believe does not backwardly synch to Entourage but I'm not sure. Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row, front raise, lateral raise shoulder shrug. Both yesterday and today while we were watching the Ocean's Eleven DVD Patrick said, regarding Julia Roberts, "Are those her real lips?" which struck me as odd because it's not like she required prosthetic lips for this film. Netscape The Browser dies in one week, I just learned. At work I think there's at least one web application (not mine) that only works in Netscape. Will have to investigate that later. Late meal: chunky soup, nonfat milk.