May 2008

Summary: Melissa's graduation; Matthew's pirate-themed belated birthday pool party; Memorial Weekend BBQ at Quyen, Dave, and Dong-yi's house; Bryan's BBQ and Cow-Monkey Birthday.

Dates on this page

Thu May 1, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Diversity meeting with Cindy, Susie, Joel, and Sharon. Computer training for Eric V. Lunch: teriyaki wrap from the cafeteria, 22-ounce juice. Scott and I met to discuss how to make out-of-state and private academic prerequisites more easily available and updatable on our website. We figured out a PDF solution for phase 1 that shouldn't be too tricky. Did some catching up on work e-mail, mostly telling people I'm too busy to answer their message but will next week. Prepared and delivered another short-notice HTML e-mail message for Susie and Mary Anne. Got coffee to go for me (tall nonfat almond latte) and Cindy (tall decaf half-and-half) at Starbucks. Met briefly with student AP who had computer purchase questions. Shared folder problems with Sue's computer, contacted Cesar about it. Computer maintenance for Eric V. Graduation banquet for the Class of 2008 at City Club on the 9th and 10th floors—very swank. The class gave our office a poster-sized copy of the cover of their yearbook—tiny photos of them they collected which when you stand far back looks like a bunch of pills. And we'll never forget the performance of Troy D and Curt A—a song with which I wasn't familiar. Joel and I took the N home. When we sat down Joel pointed out a small pool of water on the seat next to him. At the next stop, a man tried to take the seat, but we warned him it had water in it but he shrugged and sat down anyway.

Fri May 2, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow bench dip, superslow front raise. Stretches. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Forgot my wallet today, but the bus driver let me ride for free. I didn't feel guilty because far worse people ride Muni for free whereas I have a monthly bus pass for probably at least the past 60 months. Chatted with Cesar who helped me resolve the folder sharing problem I have with Sue's computer. This morning was very unproductive because a fire alarm went off and we hadn't heard of a drill for today so I grabbed the data safe and we all went downstairs 9 flights. A firetruck eventually arrived and it was very unclear if anyone with the University was in charge. We watched people walk in and out of the building. Joel mentioned that he eventually came back in and rode the elevator with a police officer who didn't prevent or caution him about returning to his office. We all eventually returned and the fire alarm was still sounding. After some time, it eventually turned off and an all clear annoucement was heard over the P.A. system. Then, not long afterwards, the fire alarm sounded again, so we all went downstairs again but this time I left the safe behind. Joel said he thinks one day a real fire will happen and lots of people will be hurt because it seems people either aren't prepared or they aren't taking it seriously or they can't take it seriously because there appears to be little organization or authority or accountability for false alarms. We have a lot of construction workers on site doing all kinds of work, and I think the construction workers accidentally set it off both times. Prepped all Flickr pages for final review and sent to Susie. Small web edits for Carol—encountered a database lookup problem because one of our faculty shares the same first name, middle initial, and last name with another similarly named person on campus. Wrote a workaround since it's not my database to fix. Prepared backing up archive files to DVD. Borrowed $10 from Joel for lunch. Lunch: Panda Express. Realized while paying that I had my cash clip so I gave Joel his money back and threw a quarter in for interest. My fortune: Resist a temptation to take shortcuts of any kind. Silverstripe is the first CMS I have seen that makes clean URLs simple to create and manage. Not to be confused with Silverlight. Web host shopping. Shopped for and placed an order for a replacement UPS for Carol. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken in 10-bean stew, foccacia roll, Smart Balance Light. Created a Facebook widget for OS X using the twistermc blog entry called "Create a simple, feature rich, Facebook Dashboard widget in 4 steps."

Sat May 3, 2008

Woke early. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Picked up Scott near his home in the Inner Sunset. On the way over a gaggle of elderly Chinese women surprised me by crossing on a red light directly after having gotten off a bus. I wasn't going fast at all, and I didn't even come close to hitting them, but all it takes is for one to get hit and then the community must suffer the burden of an education campaign directed at elderly Chinese people choosing to ignore both the law and common sense. Then, near the turn onto Judah 3 different drivers ignored my request to enter the right lane so that I could turn right even though I had left plenty of time to make the lane change, but I finally made it over. When we arrived at the Masonic Auditorium parking garage, no attendant was in the booth. Cindy had given the staff parking passes for parking, and I thought we were supposed to give it to the attendant as we came in, not as we left. An attendant walked over to the booth and I explained to him that I wanted to give my parking pass, and he was confused about it and pressed the button on the ticket machine and handed me the ticket but he also took my parking pass. It seemed obvious now that there was some miscommunication and I was supposed to give the pass as I left, not as I entered, so I asked for it back but he wouldn't give it back to me. Of course, when I left the garage, I think the same man insisted on me giving another parking pass or paying $11—he pretended to not know that he took my parking pass as we entered. We happened to have another since Joel didn't use his, so we gave him a second pass but feel we were—or the School was—cheated out of $11 by the Masonic Center. The graduation went smoothly. Assistant professor Conan MacDougall, PharmD, won the School's highest teaching award for the second year in a row. Graduate Troy Drysdale, PharmD, won the Bowl of Hygeia award. Joel was in a testy mood today, so I stayed clear of him as best I could.

Sun May 4, 2008

Read blogs. Learned what sartorial means after having read Off the Cuff. Set Facebook to be more liberal in terms of who can see what. Usual oatmeal breakfast. I forgot to mention that as of May 1 Joel is now the office's admissions director—a big step up for him. We learned last night from Mom Ryan that her sister's husband Domenic passed away peacefully. I am reminded today how much I dislike Google Desktop when I right-clicked on the Outlook 2007 toolbar and found dozens of items identically named "Google Desktop Toolbar." Grrr! Web edits for Danny. In Word 2007, with Track Changes turned on, you can change case using the Change Case command and the changes are not tracked—that's wrong. Dinner with Patrick: turkey parmagiana with fusilli, focaccia roll, Smart Balance Light. Edited a 12-page document for Drew. Watched Castle in the Sky on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Well, we made it partway through and then found an unfixable problem due to a damaged disc. It's the first damaged disc we've received from Netflix. The reporting process was fast and simple. We could have skipped a few minutes of the film, but we chose instead to wait for a replacement disc. We laughed at times at the simplicity of the writing and plot, but the film is entertaining and quite beautifully animated. Today psychobauble was supposed to raid a village or something like that, but it was canceled—how disappointing. Installed VMware Fusion 1.1.2 at home. Archived documents. Installed Apple Software Updates (Java).

Mon May 5, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Watered plants. Posted graduation ceremony news. Updated current students calendar. Watched a demo of Xobni after Eric V mentioned it to me—it looks interesting, and although I would rather not be locked into Outlook I must admit that there doesn't seem to be a better e-mail and calendaring solution. Outlook works the way I want more than anything else, and the gripes I have with it are put-up-with-able. Computer maintenance for Joel and another computer. Lunch at desk: leftovers. More calendar work. Made calendar live. Archived documents. Created a shareable project spreadsheet and entered all my projects and related metadata. Chatted briefly with Cindy. Got my inbox down to 17 items after moving a lot of items to my new project list. Management activities. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, superslow front raise. Stretches. Dinner at home with Patrick: farfalle with prawns and diced vegetables, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. No dessert. Watched The Simpsons (Bart the Mom) on library DVD with Patrick. I have a beige computer keyboard I no longer have use for, so if you're reading and you're a friend of mine and you want it, send me e-mail. Specifically, it's a Cirque Wave Keyboard 2 (GKB340). It has a split keyboard design and a built-in trackpad. PS/2 and serial port. A bit dirty but in good working condition (kind of like some people). If I don't hear from anyone in a week or so, I'm getting rid of it. It's probably not worth any money. Folded laundry.

Tue May 6, 2008

Woke up early and couldn't sleep, so I got up and did stretches and weight training: superslow leg lift, superslow concentration curl, plank, leg lift, crunch. Computer maintenance for Cindy, Lucia, Joel, my computers, and one other computer. More project list work. Installed BurnAgain FS even though it's beta just to see if it works. My expectations are very low (see April 9, 2008). Troubleshot no shared folders in VMware Fusion 1.1.2. Here's how I resolved a corrupted recycle bin in Windows XP SP2: Log in as admin. Set Windows Explorer so that you can see system files. Go to C:\ and find the file called Recycler. Rename Recycler to Recycler2. Delete any file you don't need. A new folder called Recycler should appear in Windows Explorer. Delete Recycler 2. Restart. Early lunch: small salad and half sandwich from the cafeteria. BurnAgain FS did indeed seem to work except all my modification and creation timestamps were set to either today (modification) or some date in 1903. It was also very difficult to use because I would select the Open button on the BurnAgain FS window and nothing would happen except a warning chime would beep saying I did something wrong. It took me several frustrating minutes to realize that I was supposed to click once on the disc icon and name before selecting Open before I could continue. I saw the disc icon and name in the window and presumed that was the thing I was supposed to open, so I clicked Open and nothing happened. Also, since there's only one item, it's not clear what an unselected item looks like—if 2 items appeared in the list it probably would have been more obvious. BurnAgain FS could be improved by having it automatically select the one item in the list so that when one selects Open something happens. Management activities. Archived backup data to DVD. BurnAgain FS seems to work, but the process is still not as simple as in Windows where disc burning software is copy/paste or drag-and-drop directly into Windows Explorer windows. With BurnAgain FS I feel like I'm always opening or closing windows that I would not have needed to open or close in Windows XP to do the exact same thing, but I'm not sure if this is a limitation of BurnAgain FS or of OS X. Fixed a dead mouse for Eric V. Added a shared calendar for Chris. Computer maintenance for Scott, Eric V, Carol. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled chicken boobs, wild rice, corn on the cob, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Finished watching Castle in the Sky on Netflix replacement DVD. Dessert: chocolate sorbet for me, chocolate and coconut sorbets for Patrick. Stretches.

Wed May 7, 2008

Stretches. Usual oatmeal breakfast. This morning at work when I attempted to start VMware Fusion 1.1.2, it listed 2 boot camp partitions when before I only had one. This happened to me before on April 4, 2008, and last time the fix seemed to be to reinstall Fusion and then opening one of the two listed VMs would work, though some of the earlier troubleshooting steps I had taken that day might have also been part of the resolution. This time, the error message is exactly the same as before—"Cannot open the disk '/Users /[username] /Library /Application Support /Vmware Fusion /Virtual Machines /Boot Camp /%2Fdev%2Fdisk1 /Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm /Boot Camp partition.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: Resource busy. (OK)"—but this time VM #0 opens and VM #1 gives the error message. This time the problem was not preceded by a hang in Windows like last time—nothing out of the ordinary this time, but yesterday I was trying unsuccessfully to change settings and the settings wouldn't stick and I posted about this in the VMware communities forum—no definitive answer after 2 replies from others. On a lark, I deleted my VMware file called Preferences (in /Library) and then attempted to restart VM #0 and it worked!—Win XP started without any problems. I shut down Windows, reopened Fusion, then looked at settings for VM #0—all my shared folders were missing and other settings I had changed before were now back to presumed defaults. I changed the Battery setting ("Pass host power supply status to guest") from unchecked to checked and clicked Display. A dialog appeared asking if I wanted to apply the change, and I clicked Apply. I changed the Display setting("Accelerate 3D graphics") from unchecked to checked and clicked Memory. A dialog appeared asking if I wanted to apply the change, and I clicked Apply. At this point VMware quit unexpectedly with no error or warning of any kind. Restarted Fusion. Looked at settings for VM #0. Battery setting stuck (was checked). Display setting stuck (was checked). I changed Memory from 512 to 768 and selected Apply. I selected Processors then selected Memory again—it says 768 as expected. I select Processors again and change the setting from 1 to 2. This time when I select Apply the setting reverts to 1 and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—I am expecting the setting to stay on 2 but it does not. I select OK. Quit Fusion, restart Fusion, return to settings for #0. I review settings for Battery, Display, and Memory—all as expected. I select Processors and again change the setting from 1 to 2 then select Apply. This time, the setting stays on 2 and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—as expected. I select OK, quit Fusion, restart Fusion, check first 4 setting categories—all as expected. I select Shared Folders. Both Enabled and Enabled at Power On are unchecked. I check them both and select Apply. Both checkboxes disappear and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—not what I expect. I select both checkboxes again and again select Apply. Again, both checkboxes disappear and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—again not what I expect. I change Enabled at Power On from unchecked to checked and select Apply—this time it sticks (remains checked). I then select Enabled and select Apply. The checkbox on Enabled disappears and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—not what I expect. (The Enabled at Power On remains checked as expected.) I again select Enabled and select Apply. Again, the checkbox on Enabled disappears and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—not what I expect. (The Enabled at Power On still remains checked as expected.) I create a shared folder by selecting the plus sign, specifying my home folder, naming it the same as my home folder, leaving Read-Only unchecked, and selecting the Enabled checkbox for this shared folder. I select Apply and all settings remain as I left them and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable) as expected. I select Shared Folders and change Enabled from unchecked to checked and select Apply. The checkbox on Enabled disappears and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—not what I expect. I again change Enabled from unchecked to checked and select Apply. The checkbox on Enabled disappears and the Apply button becomes grayed out (unselectable)—again not what I expect. I change Enabled from unchecked to checked and select OK. The dialog disappears. I reenter Settings. Shared Folders is still not enabled—not what I expect. Posted message to VMware communities forum. Archived backup data to DVD. Starting VM #0 in Fusion 1.1.2 asked for my password only once instead of twice—weird. Web host shopping. Decided on ServInt Essential VPS, reviewed TOS and other ServInt policies for any problems. Reviewed XP SP3 white paper. Sent ServInt decision to Susie for approval. Lunch at desk: leftovers. Helped student AP with a computer purchase decision. Submitted a calendar event for student IG to the campus calendar. I had a small panic attack today when Outlook 2007 did not show events that I could view as expected in Entourage 2008, and the cause was that I accidentally had the Details setting set to Low rather than High. In Outlook 2007, when creating a new message that has been explicitly set to plain text, AutoCorrect modifies URLs to be clickable and blue-underlined, and I think that's wrong. Listserv management—several of our listservs were deleted due to non-use but I thought Danica and I agreed she would let us keep ours for one more round. Student computing committee work. Updated my project list. Visited the Google I/O website to make a final decision about whether I should go or not. When I first looked a few weeks ago it seemed really interesting. Now, when faced with which sessions I might select, I realize that I have to narrow it down to several of 82 sessions, but Google's website doesn't make that an easy task. I sent them e-mail: " how can i print a list of all the sessions with descriptions so that i can easily review the entire list offline (e.g., while commuting)? or, can you send me a pdf of this information? the interactivity provided on http://code.google.com/ events/ io/ sessions.html is nifty, but it will take me too long to open each of the 82 triangles individually—i don't have time for that. even if i print with stylesheets disabled, i only get one page at a time (and it's ugly)." Patrick picked me up from work in the car. Drove to Chris and Nate's and planned a trip to Seattle with Patrick, Chris, and Nate. Dinner at Aperto (415-252-1625, 1434 18th Street, San Francisco, California, USA 94107) with Patrick, Chris, and Nate. Stretches.

Thu May 8, 2008

Stretches. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Listserv followup with Danica. Helped student CM with laptop questions. VPS order followup. Websteering lunch at Lime Tree with Julie, John, Abby, Erik, Ed. CSC meeting: ergonomics, residents and fellows, security updates, VMware ordering, SHI now in effect, UCCSC. Discovering then unchecking the option called "Use Microsoft Office keyboard shortcuts for editing text" has removed a longstanding gripe I've had with Entourage 2008, and I replaced it with the gripe that this should have been unchecked by default. Unchecking this option enables you to use standard OS X keyboard shortcuts while editing message text in Entourage e-mail messages. Chatted briefly online with javaaddict. Word on the street is that Windows XP SP3 is essentially harmless, meaning it does not seem to break anything. Well, not anything that I use, anyway. Had a fantastic dinner at Pacific Catch (415-504-6905, 1200-9th Avenue at Lincoln, San Francisco, California, USA 94122) by myself this evening. Unlike last time, I was not seated at a dirty table, and all the employees in the restaurant worked like a flawless machine. I had 2 tacos (bbq salmon and shrimp) and an order of coffee mochi ball ice cream which is really 2 mochi balls instead of just one ball as I had thought I would receive. A few photos to come. Patrick went to Brahms at the San Francisco Symphony with Sam and ran into Melissa H briefly after the performance. Read blogs. Did some catching up on e-mail.

Fri May 9, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow lateral raise, superslow wrist curl. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Listserv management followup with Danica regarding 2nd year pathway listservs. Created new binder covers for 2 binders. Mail organization and cleanup. Assigned Eric V a survey to build—he did a great job. Reviewed sessions for Google I/O and was surprised at how much they're doing that I didn't know about. I decided I am not going to go, however. Sessions for An Event Apart should be available soon, so I signed up to be notified. Sent Valerie updated info regarding our MCCA renewal. Flickr groups page updates for Susie. Visited briefly with Sharon Y and Claire L in C-151 before heading to lunch. I returned floral arrangement pieces from graduation bouquets to Claire. Students crowded the counter picking up their midterms results and checking them against the key. Lunch at Bistro 9 (415-753-3919, 1224 9th Avenue, San Francisco, California, USA) with Joel. It was our first time eating here and we were amazed at how charmingly decorated it is inside and also on both the front and back patios. We couldn't remember what was previously in this space, and we don't remember when Bistro 9 had opened its doors. We don't often venture this far out for lunch, but I noticed it after dining at Pacific Catch yesterday and decided it would be a good place to try. When we arrived, a sign asked us to wait to be seated. There was no one at the door to greet us, and it took perhaps 4 minutes before a waitperson seated us at a table. The pace of the staff seemed too leisurely. Eventually, I ordered a burger with fries, and Joel ordered a small salad and a chicken skewer with rice. When our food arrived, I had to remind our waitperson to bring us cutlery which she did promptly. There was some candle wax on the table, which was visually unpleasant upon discovery, but otherwise it did not bother us much. Our dining table was unstable. The restaurant was mostly empty when we ate around 12:30 PM on Friday. The table next to us remained uncleared and unwiped the entire time we were there, even while I peeked around a corner and noticed two waitstaff crouched behind the counter chatting together for several minutes with nothing else to do. (And this while our water glasses remained empty, too.) I ordered my burger medium but it arrived well done. And not only were some of my fries undercooked, but some were also undeniably room temperature and slightly cold—they had obviously been sitting for a while somewhere unevenly heated. The flavors in the food were delicious and a tad on the salty side. There was a long enough delay when waiting to pay our bill that we got up and paid at the bar to find our waitperson on the telephone. About $20 before a $2.50 tip. Our receipt said our server's name was Nina. Despite some problems primarily with the front of house staff and too few people working the front when we ate, I think Bistro 9 is worth at least one more visit, particularly if you want an alfresco lunch. If you go for dinner with a group of 6 to 8 try for the luxurious corner booth that dominates the rear of the front dining room. Over lunch, Joel encouraged me to watch Top Chef, a television show on Bravo he thought I might enjoy. On the way back we stopped at Sunset Stationers where I bought a gift and a card and where Joel bought new tip cards. We also stopped at Starbucks where I got a tall skinny hazelnut latte and I treated Joel to an unsweetened black iced tea and one brownie bite. (Thanks again, ML!) Chatted with Susie and Sue about Flickr. Sent Mark B suggestions on his new POP/IMAP instructions page. Down to 8 items in my inbox—how exciting! Left work a tad early because I've been working through lunch and also late many days this week. It has been very quiet in the office since a lot of people were out, and I got a lot done this week. On a sad note, Lucia's cat Cannibal passed away yesterday. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled chicken boobs, grilled squash with candied pecans, skinny french fries. Watched the current episode of Top Chef from the web—I didn't like it but endured to the end. Watched an old Star Trek TNG episode (Spock's Brain) from the web. Flickrd.

Sat May 10, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, crunch, advanced one-leg plank, side plank. Stretches. Breakfast at home with Patrick: I had maple pecan granola with cherry yogurt and sliced fresh banana and organic strawberries. Patrick had Grape Nuts with sliced fresh banana. Patrick made a banana cream pie. We joked today that the title for Patrick's next book will be Lesbians love Venus, Gay Men love Uranus. Did some tailoring. Began using MusicIP Mixer 1.8 beta to see how well it works. Discovered the manual Bounce feature in Apple Mail which purports to return manually bounced junk e-mail messages to the sender as though they had bounced—but won't the time delay give it away? Uninstalled MusicIP Mixer. It's kind of neat—like Pandora but you're snobby and saying there's nothing new you'd be interested in and only what I already have is good. MusicIP Mixer 1.8 beta also gave me the beach ball of death more than once and quit unexpectedly with no warning or error. Maybe I'll try it again when the beta is done and it's more stable. Cut my hair. Chatted with Tina briefly. Patrick fell asleep early so we didn't really have dinner.

Sun May 11, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow bench dip. Stretches. Breakfast: peach yogurt, mexican cheese omelette, apricot and orange juice. Google added a new feature to Google Maps called "Explore this area" which looks interesting but of course I'd prefer that it works with Flickr even though I haven't geotagged any of my photos. Installed Windows XP SP3 on 2 computers at home. Shopped. Laid out some rose petals to dry. Worked on header changes for Danny's website. Installed Office 2007 SP1. Exchanged e-mail with Johan J who found me because my journal had mentioned a problem using Slickr under a limited user account. Slickr does not seem to work properly under a limited user account, and that's one of the reasons I stopped using it even though I liked it a lot. Johan agreed there seemed to be no simple and secure workaround to this problem. Lunch at home with Patrick: artichoke ravioli with organic tomato sauce, ciabatta roll, Smart Balance Light. Dinner at PDD's with a whole bunch of people. Paul brought Beard Papa cream puffs. Nate helped Danny with cooking dumplings and also brought a delicious peach cobbler. I learned today a telephone number I can call for a good time. I had accidentally dialed a wrong number using the prefix of one friend's telephone number and the last 4 digits of another friend's telephone number. While the line was ringing, I realized my mistake and quickly hung up. I went to my address book on the computer to confirm the correct number and while I was doing that the telephone rang. I answered, and it was the person at the number that I had accidentally called. He said, "Who is this?" and "Were you calling me?" not creepily but in a friendly and curious way—he just wanted to know who was calling him and he didn't yet know it was someone who didn't know him. I was embarrassed at having made a mistake, so I told him I had dialed a wrong number, but I didn't want him to feel disappointed so I told him, jokingly, "...but you have a nice voice." He continued his friendly chatter and said, "So what are you doing?" and I really just wanted to get off the phone and call my friend, but I said, "Nothing much—just hanging out at home." And he said, "Well I'm lying on my bed naked watching a movie." I said, "Oh, I'm not doing that," politely said goodbye, and then hung up. I did not ask what movie he was watching. So if you're interested in calling this guy, let me know. I most definitely have his number.

Mon May 12, 2008

Woke up too early and couldn't get back to sleep. Usual oatmeal breakfast. 1-on-1 with Eric. ICRD refresher training, which was not very helpful since Doug and I were the only persons in the room who had only students to deal with in the system. Lunch at desk from the cafeteria: assorted fresh cut fruit with cottage cheese, hot carved turkey sandwich from the carving station, pog juice. Web team meeting with Susie and Eric at Laurel Heights. Got a tall nonfat chai tea latte at Starbucks. Dinner at home with Patrick: indian food delivery. Patrick picked his mom up from the airport; she has been in Boston the past week for a funeral. Finished reading Lirael borrowed from sneeper. Stretches. Weight training: side plank. Stretches. To bed early.

Tue May 13, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row. Stretches. Returned one box of graduation flowers to Claire by way of Jason. Installed TechTool Deluxe on the shared office laptop, but it won't start—it appears in the dock and then bounces once in the dock and then nothing else happens—weird. I don't know why this happens. Listserv management. Chatted briefly with Terry about the ICRD process for fall. He will check with Doug C about some questions and get back to me or the committee if necessary. Prox lock followup. Installed Fusion 1.1.2 on the shared office laptop. "Error 1606. Could not access network location." when attempting to start Fusion. This was because I logged in as domain admin which has my profile pointing to a network folder but Fusion doesn't have the network drivers installed the first time you launch it so this error appears. You can work around this problem by logging in as local admin or using the regedit workaround described in Microsoft KB 886549. Helped Eric V with mail merge and labels just by walking over to his desk. Ordered a new printer for Cindy—hers lasted an unusually long time—over 7 years! Reset password for student PT. Made live new homepage changes to pharmacy.ucsf.edu - new Flickr thumbnails and Flickr pages. Flash image slideshow forthcoming soon. Lunch: bun bo xao and vietnamese coffee from Minh Tri. It was an exceptionally warm day, so I got food to go and sat in the library courtyard in the shade to eat. Installed Office 2004 11.4.2 and Office 2008 SP1. Chatted briefly with Claire. Prox lock: Cindy and Chris authorized, so I followed up with (the other) Frank F and informed Rodney. Printer shopping—Hubert notified me that the LJ1022 I tried to order for Cindy has been discontinued. Helped student AP set up Outlook and understand working with Parallels and Fusion in OS X. Computer maintenance for Scott: turned off morning autostart, turned lower power mode on in the BIOS, installed XP SP3, then shut it down. Computer maintenance for Eric V: defrag. Completed UPS setup for Carol: added stickers explaining how to disable beeping. Down to 7 items in my inbox! The Millberry Union scavenger hunt answers are: 1897; 37; $14.99; City CarShare; 3; Cafe Bellini, Panda Express, and Carmelina's Taqueria; $1.50. Updated my listserv settings so that I don't receive mail for lists which have RSS feeds. It seems that the only ones that have RSS feeds are those that have archiving turned on. Now I just need to get in the habit of checking the feeds in Sage on a regular basis. This will cut down significantly on how much email I need to process as well as how many email filters I need to have in Outlook and Entourage in order to deal with the traffic. Regarding the usage of the word e-mail, I have been thinking lately that we are probably at the point where we can start saying email instead of e-mail. Wired Magazine a long time ago advocated the stylistic use of internet and web rather than Internet and Web, and although I didn't adopt that right when they said it, that style did grow on me and I find it acceptable and preferred now. Home. Finished taking apart one PC. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, green beans, leftover rice, bread, Smart Balance Light. Patrick and I watched Doctor Who borrowed from psychobauble. I didn't enjoy it nearly as much as he did, and I couldn't tell if he was laughing with or at some of the scenes. There were certainly many ridiculous ones, and I couldn't understand how others can go along with it when the science and story are so wrong in so many ways. I know it's not meant to be hard science, but they didn't even bother to explain how the air stayed in the room after explosions aboard a spacecraft blew 3 giant chunks of the ship away or how the ship didn't explode upon those impacts or how the engines were reactivated at the very moment they were needed again. At least Anakin frantically flipped switches to provide some semblance of direct cause. Patrick says, "You just have to go with it" and gave some explanation involving the word camp. Weight training: superslow front raise. Late meal: yogurt, chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Wed May 14, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Telecommute day. Worked on drafts for the strategic plan homepage promo. Our web hosting provider turned on our service yesterday so today I hopped into the control panels and started getting my feet wet. One of Flickr's servers seems to be slow loading images today. Made live homepage promo and fall 2008 computer requirements. Prepared handoff of passwords to Eric. Flickrd. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken goddess boobs, ristorante caesar salad, ciabatta roll, Smart Balance Light. Watched The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on Netflix DVD with Patrick. I was doubtful for the first part of the film that I would like it, but eventually it grew on me. Not your typical kind of film in a lot of different ways. Much to like in this one. Turned off Apple Address Book's sychronization features—I think it was not synching things correctly and causing me to lose data but I cannot prove it yet. Part of the weirdness was that I would occasionally but regularly see Conflict Resolver appear telling me that some entries had conflicts but it would show me 2 entries that were identical and ask me which one was correct. I still haven't manually migrated all my address book data from my custom Access database to Address Book. In fact, I forgot where I left off, so I'll need to start over and make sure everything got brought over.

Thu May 15, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Today is probably the hottest day I've ever experienced after moving to San Francisco in 2000. This morning before I left for work the thermometer said it was 74 degrees outside, which is unheard of in the Sunset at around 7:30 or 8:00 AM. Handed off passwords to Eric D. Help Desk Task Force kickoff meeting. CSC steering committee thank you lunch. I was surprised that Rebecca N bought us lunch out of her own pocket—so generous! Discovered a new problem with our September 2006 MacBook running OS 10.5.2 and Boot Camp 2.1. When starting into Boot Camp, the keyboard and mouse don't work at all. If I attach an external keyboard or an external mouse, they don't work, either. XP SP2 starts, and I see the startup dialog, but pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del does nothing, Spacebar does nothing, Alt+Spacebar does nothing, Tab does nothing, mouse does not make the pointer move. Every so often the arrow (pointer) icon for the cursor changes to an hourglass icon and then back to an arrow (pointer) icon, so I know XP is working. And, pressing the power button gracefully shuts down the computer. I install Fusion 1.1.2. The Boot Camp partition loads and starts successfully in Fusion. I successfully reinstall Boot Camp 2.1, but it does not help—no change in behavior. Very frustrating. No more time today to spend on this. Computer maintenance for Chris's MacBook Pro laptop: installed software for a broadband wireless card called AirCard that he will use but it works only in Europe. Also troubleshot a problem in which his mouse and keyboard would freeze for about 10 seconds often enough to be problematic. After some digging through possible software causes (checked Startup Manager—clean, page file was set too low but bumping it up to the recommended value did not fix this), I turned my focus on hardware. He's hooked up to a BookEndz and a Belkin USB hub. I swapped his hub for mine but the problem still happened. I powered down, unhooked it from the BookEndz (and unplugged the hub) and the problem seemed to have gone away. (See tomorrow for more details.) Board of Advisors edits for Susie. Small web update for Joel. News and homepage flash discussion with Eric D. Joel reports a problem with printing letters from PharmAdMIT 2008—error 1705. Chris F from PharmAdMIT tells us to try 3 things, and I know already before I read them that they won't work, but I try the easier ones anyway. Unresolved today, but see tomorrow. Spent longer than expected getting printing to work to the black-and-white laserprinter in OS X and Fusion. Today the California Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling was announced—an important moment in the continuing liberation and equality for same-sex couples worldwide. This is also a good time to ask all those who are upset by this decision: How does this hurt you, exactly? And why haven't The Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, and Massachusetts crumbled into ruin yet?

Fri May 16, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast and lowfat cherry yogurt. I called AppleCare this morning to fix the problem I had yesterday with the mouse and keyboard not working in Boot Camp 2.1. The first time I call I work my way through the voice greetings and the automated voice eventually says, "Okay, I'll send you to a specialist—hang on." I immediately hear a fast busy signal. Argh! I hang up, wait a few minutes, and then call back again. When I reach the same point as last time, I'm expecting to hear the fast busy signal, but instead I hear 2 really loud beeps that hurt my ear, and then I hear someone say something but there is so much noise and static on the line that I can barely hear him. I tell him that I can't hear because of noise on the line and hang up. Argh! I'm ready to give up and send an email to our Apple rep, but then my phone rings, and it's the Apple specialist I was speaking to before but now the noise is gone. We discuss the laptop problem, and his first suggestion is to call VMware, but then I tell him I had the problem before I installed Fusion—Fusion actually let me get back into Windows when Boot Camp could not—and that's when he suggested that there was nothing else we could do and I must wipe everything and reinstall OS X and Boot Camp and Windows from scratch. I say nothing for a few seconds in response and then ask him if reinstalling the keyboard and mouse drivers from by Leopard DVD might work. He says yes, that might work and could I give him maybe 4 minutes for him find out how to do that? I agree. While waiting, I perform the steps he went to go look up. I think I perform the steps successfully (the installers for the keyboard and mouse drivers don't indicate success or no success), but the problem remains. All this time he has my call on hold (!). Maybe 13 minutes after he placed my call on hold I give up on him and hang up. Within seconds, I receive email messages from Steve and Stephen at Apple with links to information that does not help. Apple Technical Support is very disappointing today. I start in OS X, start Fusion, start XP, then open the Device Manager in the System control panel. There are a number of items that say "Unknown device" or something like that. I uninstall all of them then restart XP (within Fusion). Upon logging back in, Windows wants to reinstall of the devices. I select Continue Anyway for all of them. For the floppy it had to automatically search for the correct driver, but eventually it found it. I logged back in to XP within Fusion and confirmed all hardware in the Device Manager appeared normal. I start up in Boot Camp, but the problem remains. I boot into OS X and back up data. I remove the Windows partition. Attempted to register for Adobe Reader distribution so that I can include it on our software cdrom for entering students, but when I clicked the email confirmation link, I received the following error message: "An Error Has Been Encountered - Configuration softdistribute4validateUNIQUECODEwwwadobecom not found! (check conf field or file) - We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. This error has been logged and we will be fixing it shortly." where UNIQUECODE was a unique code for me. More software licensing: Flash, Shockwave. Lunch with Melissa H and Joel at Pacific Catch: sweet potato fries, shrimp tempura roll, spicy tuna roll, hawaiian poke. Back to laptop maintenance: When I restart, I am surprised that Boot Camp is not smart enough to have reset the default startup volume back to OS X—I see a DOS screen complaining that there is no boot volume, but perhaps this is by design for some reason I cannot think of right now. I cold restart holding the Option key and get back into OS X. I select the only available option—Macintosh HD—and then OS X starts successfully. Back to Boot Camp Assistant to create a new Windows partition and install XP SP2. Regarding Chris's laptop problem from yesterday, I now believe that the mouse and keyboard freezes are due to heat. Back to the shared office MacBook laptop. During partitioning, I got the multi-language translucent black screen with power button saying I needed to restart. I restart. Upon logging in to OS X, a dialog appears asking to send a problem (panic) report to Apple: "hfs_lock: locking against myself!" I send the report. I reopen Boot Camp Assistant and click Continue on the first screen. I get an error message: "The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned. You must have at least 10 GB of free space available. (OK)." I quit Boot Camp Assistant and start Disk Utility. Capacity of my hard drive is 55.6 GB. Free space available is 4.5 GB. I know I had more than that before and after removing the bad Windows partition. I search Google on "The startup disk does not have enough space to be partitioned" and find a number of threads. The best thing to try sounds like to insert the Leopard DVD and repair disk, so I do that. Disk Utility finds "invalid volume free block count" followed later by "The volume Macintosh HD was repaired successfully." I restart. Back to Boot Camp Assistant. Gave Windows a 12 GB partition, leaving OS X with 12 GB free. Regarding the PharmAdMIT 2008 error 1705 from yesterday, Chris F sends another message today saying that the problem was caused by update 951207 from Microsoft on the recent Patch Tuesday. I worked around the problem by uninstalling the patch related to KB950113 (950113) and turning off Automatic Updates. Back to the shared office laptop: Partition succeeded, and Boot Camp Assistant properly prompted me to insert my Windows cdrom and click Start Installation which I did. XP installation proceeds. While waiting for XP to install, I work on web edits for Carol. Made live new Flash slideshow on the School of Pharmacy home page. Eric D did the Flash work for this, and I think it looks great. Continued Windows XP installation. Ensured Automatic Updates was turned off for Joel.

Sat May 17, 2008

Melissa's graduation from law school at Santa Clara University. Afterwards Patrick and I spent a little time at Valley Fair Mall. Melissa prepared a delicious lunch at her parents' home in Los Altos to celebrate her graduation. We brought a princess cake from Ambrosia Bakery. Matthew's pirate-themed belated birthday pool party. We got him 2 books and a (fake) dinosaur egg that hatches after several days in a bowl of water. We also brought a fruit tart from Ambrosia Bakery.

Sun May 18, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell bench press, superslow one-arm dumbbell row. Breakfast: Macadamia nut pancakes and yogurt at home with Patrick. Stretches. House chores: dusting, vacuuming, preparing old computer equipment for sale. Tailoring: modified 2 pairs of pants to fit better. One is green H&M boys corduroy jeans. The other is a pair of khakis from The Gap. Late lunch at Quizno's with Patrick. Dinner at home with Patrick: crispy oven-baked chicken, honey cornbread, boiled carrots, lentils with rice. Text editing for Danny's website. Stretches. Weight training: crunch, side plank, other exercises I can't remember now. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk, yogurt.

Mon May 19, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Continued shared laptop Windows XP setup. Small web edit for Joel and Eric V. Chris reported a problem with the OAAIS spam firewall and I confirmed I had the same problem when I logged in, so I reported the problem to OAAIS. Learned today that if you install Sophos 6.5 while logged in as a domain admin who doesn't have explicit local admin rights, the installer does nothing and quits with no warning or error message. Again encountered the problem in which when Firefox 2.0.0.14 starts it immediately and repeatedly opens new windows one after another—forever or until the lack of system resources causes Windows to hang (whichever comes first). In the past the only way I knew to respond to this problem was to quickly and repeatedly type Alt+F followed by X, Alt+F followed by X, over and over again, so that's what I did this time and got it to quit. Relaunching Firefox resulted in the same problem. I waited a few minutes before launching Firefox again and this time the problem didn't happen. Listserv management: restore (repopulate) 2sb, 2sd, 2dav, 2fn, and add special edits for Claire and notify all program directors of their listservs. Lunch at desk from the cafeteria: chicken marsala, carrots, brown rice, dinner roll, pog juice. Shared laptop: had trouble getting Microsoft Updates to work properly. Finished setting up Windows XP SP3 on the shared office laptop and confirmed that it works with projectors in the S rooms downstairs. Kraig K fixed the spam firewall—I think he said it was a problem with the new authentication mechanism they hooked up. Studied WHM and planned webhost setup. Dinner at home with Patrick: bacon-wrapped Niman Ranch pork chops, steamed asparagus, brown rice, honey cornbread from yesterday. I noticed recently that Adblock no longer seems to be compatible with Firefox 2.0.0.14 and it hasn't been updated in a long time. So today I downloaded and installed Adblock Plus, but it didn't work—I would specify something to be blocked and it wouldn't block it, so after several minutes of trying to make it work and failing I just uninstalled it. Fixed some encoding problems with my journal. Stretches. Weight training: superslow bench dip. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Tue May 20, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Minor web edits. Staff meeting. Updated CPanel/WHM to the latest version. Disabled antirelayd, exim, eximstats, imap, pop, spamd. Changed CPanel/WHM updates from Manual RELEASE to Automatic RELEASE. Lunch: ate Panda Express in the food court. My fortunes: Everything will soon come your way - and - Don't let unexpected situations "throw" you. Met with Eric D to review ServInt setup. Called ServInt to ask startup questions. Support was fast (no waiting) and very knowledgeable. We accidentally chose a wrong hostname, so once I hear back from Charles we can proceed. Dinner at home with Patrick: too-spicy cilantro parsley sausage from Trader Joe's with radiatore in bolognese sauce with sauteed mushrooms, cornbread. Folded laundry. Worked on Danny's website: text updates. Weight training: superslow hammer curl, superslow front raise, wrist curl. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk, yogurt. More laundry folding. More weight training: superslow dumbbell press, superslow dumbbell fly. Shower.

Wed May 21, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Printer ordering followup, switched to HP because I wasn't getting the answers I needed from Paul C at CDWG. Requested hostname change from ServInt. Assigned Eric V project to update Flickr group descriptions. Student SL reported laptop problems: pop-up windows appear unexpectedly. Computer is a Dell Inspiron 1200, Celeron 1.3 GHz, 768 MB RAM. Steps taken:

  1. Uninstalled Webshots Toolbar and Webshots Desktop.
  2. Turned ClearType on.
  3. Uninstalled Windows Live Toolbar and Windows Live Bookmarks for Windows Live Toolbar.
  4. Installed Startup Manager, which enables you to control what items start automatically when your computer starts up.
  5. Uninstalled Image Transfer.
  6. Attempted to uninstall Google Toolbar. Computer hung during uninstallation process.
  7. Restarted the computer normally.
  8. Opened Startup Manager. Disabled a bunch of startup items.
  9. Uninstalled AIM Toolbar 5.0 and AIM 6.
  10. Uninstalled Java SE Runtime Environment 6 Update 1.
  11. Restarted the computer normally.
  12. Uninstalled AOL Safety and Security Center.
  13. Restarted the computer normally.
  14. Installed Sophos Anti-Virus and Sygate Firewall.
  15. Restarted the computer normally.
  16. Set Control Panel > System > Advanced > Performance to best performance—this makes the computer faster at the expense of being less pretty.
  17. Installed Windows Defender anti-spyware and let it run its initial quick scan. Error: Windows Defender: The program can't check for definition updates. Error code 0x80070422.
  18. Opened services.msc. Disabled Smart Card, Indexing Service, Google Updater Service.
  19. Attempted to start Automatic Updates—Error 1058: The service cannot be started, either because it is disabled or because it has no enabled devices associated with it. (OK).
  20. Opened a command prompt and ran sfc /scannow, which ran completely with no errors or warnings.
  21. Opened Startup Manager and wrote down the names of suspicious files: fcc3267a, BMfff015e6, jqifqkaa.dll, uhycfdmv.dll, C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\lsass.exe.
  22. Restarted the computer in Safe Mode, logged in as Administrator.
  23. Successfully deleted or renamed all suspicious files.
  24. Opened regedit, searched for keys with the suspicious names. Found a key called IProxyProvider which was linked to jqifqkaa.dll—deleted it.
  25. Opened Startup Manager, deleted disabled suspicious items.
  26. Closed Startup Manager.
  27. Opened Startup Manager—deleted items stayed deleted.
  28. Restarted the computer normally.
  29. Ran a scan in Windows Defender even though it did not have the latest definitions.
  30. Attempted to open Sophos Anti-Virus. Error: You do not have sufficient privileges to run the Sophos Anti-Virus main application. You are not a member of any of the Sophos groups. [...] (Close)
  31. Opened a command prompt, ran regsvr32 wuaueng.dll.
  32. Opened services.msc, successfully set Automatic Updates to Automatic, but it was stuck on "Stopping."
  33. Restarted the computer normally.
  34. Opened services.msc. Automatic Updates is back to Disabled.
  35. Searched Google on IProxyProvider—found a blog that described the same symptoms but I had already tried all the things it suggested as a fix. This blog mentioned that the virus was called Vundo. Searching on Vundo pointed me to a description of the threat on the Sophos website.
  36. The virus copied itself to my USB drive after I had inserted it to copy troubleshooting software to the computer. When I inserted my USB drive into my own computer, Sophos on my computer alerted me to Mal/Generic-A and W32/AutoRun-CW viruses on the USB drive. These were resolved by removing autorun.ini and start.exe which had been copied to my USB drive.
  37. Restarted the computer normally.
  38. Opened Internet Explorer, deleted the browsing history, changed disk space to use from 801 MB to 50 MB and set IE to empty temporary items folder upon exiting.

At this point the student took the computer back to run a Maxtor backup one last time just in case we had to wipe it and start over. ServInt hostname change complete. I had to go in to WHM and update hostname again in "Basic cPanel/WHM Setup" on my own. Listserv administration. Helped Joel resolve mailbox too full problems. Small web update for Joel. Began work on a poster project for Cindy. Sold some old computer equipment. Dinner at home with Patrick: dim sum from Simmone. Uploaded photos to Flickr. Tailoring: edited a white dress shirt to fit better, made my first properly finished hems. I made a small error in the left armpit, and my hems were not perfect, but no one will notice. Shirt fits great now. Unfortunately it took me about 3 hours. The finished hems took the longest time.

Thu May 22, 2008

Maple pecan granola with organic nonfat milk and sliced organic banana and warm local wildflower honey. Lately I've been using full screen mode in Fusion in conjunction with the Spaces feature in OS X and finding it to work quite well. I'm also doing more and more in OS X rather than Windows. I still feel I navigate faster and more efficiently in Windows because of the superiority of keyboard shortcuts provided by Windows. Figuring out how to do certain things in OS X is unintuitive and difficult. For example, all of [to be continued...]—Student SL: laptop setup. Student AP: Fusion, Windows, Office, activation, Outlook 2007 repeatedly asks for password. Shannon: org chart. Student ML: EndNote. Shannon: org chart. Left work early. Dinner at Thailand Restaurant with Nate, psychobauble, and Patrick followed by Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull at Castro Theatre. I enjoyed the film a lot and found it to be very satisfying. Will this be the last film? Ran into and said hello to Peter on the train back home. Finally resolved some longstanding problems with the journal code with respect to decoding html entities so that they display properly and so that the code validates. To fix the problem, I had to write a regular expression that found all occurrences of & not followed by # and replace them with & after using html_entity_decode.

Fri May 23, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Finished reading Garth Nix's Abhorsen yesterday (borrowed from sneeper). I thought it was a little over the top at the very end, and I couldn't understand the motivation of the antagonist (what does he do after achieving his ultimate goal? with whom does he share his success?), but I enjoyed the trilogy nonetheless and think they would make great films. Learned today that VMware Fusion 1.1.2 has Windows and Office activation problems when users switch between Boot Camp and using the Boot Camp partition under Fusion—both Windows and Office keep asking for you to activate the software even if you had successfully activated it in the past. The problem only occurs with OEM and retail editions of Windows and Office and not with volume and enterprise editions. With Windows, it says it "detected changes." Messages in VMware's community forum say that if you activate Windows under Boot Camp, then install and start Fusion, then install VMWare Tools, then reactivate Windows under Fusion (possibly requiring a phone call to Microsoft), then reactivate Windows under Boot Camp, everything would then be fine, but we did all these steps and still the problem remained. People in the VMware communities forum sometimes recommend that they purchase their copies of Windows and Office from students in school, but they don't realize that not all students have access to volume editions that are immune to the activation problems. For example, UCSF does not purchase volume licenses to cover students because Microsoft doesn't make it easy or inexpensive enough for us to do so. So when our students buy Windows and Office from our campus computer store, they receive academic pricing, but their editions of Windows and Office still require activation. I never encountered these problems before because volume licensing is available to faculty and staff but not to students. Today I sent our student the following information:

So for now you have 2 choices:

  1. Use one Windows environment consistently—don't switch between them. This is the easy thing to do, but it affords you less flexibility than with volume-licensed copies of Windows and Office.
  2. Call Microsoft via their activation telephone number, explain—very slowly—that you paid for genuine academic versions of Windows and Office and can fax them your receipt and that you're using VMware Fusion, and tell them that you're retired and/or your vision and hearing aren't that good and so you have been getting the activation numbers wrong and so you have to call them each time the activation request occurs to speak to a human to fix the problem. (When you speak to a human, each of these calls costs Microsoft somewhere between $3 and $25. This is essentially a monetary battle between what your time is worth versus what their time is worth, so when you speak to a human at a software company from the company's perspective it's like putting the dagger in to the hilt and twisting. If you tell them you're retired or that you have vision and hearing impediments [they have no way to know, really] they will hopefully believe that you do have the time to call them to speak to a human and that every call will take a long time, costing them money.) Ask if they will give you a volume-licensed version of Windows and Office (as some people in VMware's forums have suggested Microsoft will do [but don't mention that]) and if they refuse tell them you could probably find and use someone else's copy of a volume-licensed version—without reselling your legal copies—but you'd rather remain legitimate (as you have already demonstrated by purchasing legal copies)—it's their choice. (I think the longer you keep them on the phone the more likely they will give you a volume-licensed version. e.g., a single 20- or 30-minute phone call could result in the desired licenses.) If you do get the volume licenses and cdroms, you still need to reinstall Windows and Office for those new license codes to be in effect—you can try dirty reinstalls first, but it's possible that you might need to do full wipes followed by clean installs, which would be painful but would resolve the problem once and for all.

Campus calendar item update for student IG. Traded e-mails with Michelle K about Flickr. Lunch: tostada from Carmelina's, ate in the back room with Joel and Eric V, we talked about movies and the two of them gave me a bunch of movies to add to our Netflix queue. Helped Joel with more problems with PharmAdMIT 2008 and KB950113, followed up with PharmAdMIT. Printer ordering followup - finally resolved the open questions. Listserv maintenance. ID card help for a student. Eleven items in my inbox. Went home early. Fixed more parse errors with the journal code. Napped. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Quick dinner at home by myself: leftover pasta with red sauce, hot nonfat milk. Dessert with Chris and Nate at Sweet Inspirations: tiramisu for me, cherry pie for Chris, lemon poppyseed cake for Nate, tea all around. Home. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, wrist curl, superslow lateral raise, superslow dumbbell fly. I also tried a few squats just to see how my knees would handle them, but they weren't a good idea so I stopped doing them. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Sat May 24, 2008

Slept in. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Recently I started reading Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys, borrowed from Chris and Nate, and recommended by Patrick. Folded laundry. Repaired a holey sock with some hand sewing. Patrick woke up with a severe hangover ("I'll never drink again!") after hanging out with Aaron last night at Powerhouse. Yesterday we received an automated message on our answering machine claiming to be from Kaiser Permanente and asking us to call 1-877-434-5379 to enter a 7-digit number which the automated message provided and answer some questions. This sounds like a phishing scam (or otherwise illegitimate) to us, and I could not find that phone number listed on a Kaiser Permanente website as being legitimate, so we ignored it. Late lunch by myself at Ono Hawaiian BBQ: seafood soup. Bought groceries at Lucky. Worked on Danny's website a bit. Napped. Dinner at home with Patrick: dim sum, chicken stir fry, lime rice. Showered. Patrick and I attended The Better Judgment Party at Mark's house in the Outer Mission (or possibly Excelsior). On the way home a lot of streetlights and traffic signals were completely dark—weird. Late meal at home by myself: steamed white rice, leftover chicken stir fry.

Sun May 25, 2008

Slept in. Breakfast: black cherry yogurt, 2 eggs scrambled, 3 pieces of bacon, cup of fresh cut fruit. Tailored a white dress shirt. This one took 2 hours and 40 minutes, and like before I did a decent enough job but still made a few errors which no one will notice. Lunch at home with Patrick: shrimp stir fry. Napped. Drove to the South Bay. Memorial Weekend BBQ at Quyen, Dave, and Dong-yi's house. Bryan's BBQ and Cow-Monkey Birthday. Accompanied the group to Hunter's, a relatively new gay bar in San Jose. Home late.

Mon May 26, 2008

Slept in. Breakfast: yogurt, ginger almond cashew granola. Lunch: leftovers. Dinner: pasta with carrots in a light tomato sauce. Spent the whole day altering clothes. Watched The Shawshank Redemption on Netflix DVD with Patrick.

Tue May 27, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Chatted with student AP: MacBook, Fusion. Web hosting followup. Student computing committee meeting. Chatted briefly with Susie. Chatted with student CN: laptop hardware problems. Lunch at desk by myself: leftovers. Computer maintenance: Apple updates. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Helped Joel with UCSF logo needs. Listserv configuration. Rebuilt Apache and PHP on the new VPS. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled albacore tuna, beets, french fries.

Wed May 28, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Took Muni to Laurel Heights—it took a little over 60 minutes door to door, much longer that I had expected. I took the L-Taraval to Castro Station then took the 24 Divisadero to California and then 1 California to UCSF Laurel Heights. Dean's breakfast. Fixed problems with the laptop and projector. Gave my Flickr presentation—it seemed to go well. Kim B gave Shannon W and me a lift back to Parnassus. Poster project for Cindy, submitted it to DMM for processing. Chatted with student CN about a laptop problem. This laptop was one of the strangest cases I've diagnosed in a long time. When powered on, nearly all indicator lights on the front panel lit and stayed lit. The hard drive light would light briefly and then turn off. The hard drive can be heard spinning up and then stopping very briefly. No fan could be heard. Nothing else happens. Windows does not start, and we don't even see the BIOS screen. Nothing shows on the display, no other noises come from the computer. But the power indicator and other lighted indicators on the computer remain on. Behavior was the same whether the battery was plugged in or not. Battery and power adapter were both genuine and had not been replaced or substituted. No physical damage, and the student says it was not dropped but sometimes it is carried in a backpack with no additional padded laptop sleeve. Vents were clean. Laptop was recently out of a 1-year warranty. Definitely a hardware problem, and definitely inside the computer, but otherwise hard to tell exactly what the problem is. Could be a bad motherboard or just one component bad. The student will seek service solutions. Attempted to duplicate a DVD of the graduation for Cindy, but encountered an error: "The disk inserted does not have enough free space" even though the disc is blank and is rated for 4.7 GB—much larger than the 1.77 GB disk image I want to burn. It took me awhile to figure it out, but someone had stacked a bunch of blank CD-Rs on my spindle of blank DVD-Rs. (!) Chatted briefly with John K about web hosting. Migrated mail archives from Outlook to Entourage by copying the folders to the server in Outlook and then copying from the server to Entourage. Lunch in the library courtyard by myself: Panda Express. Web server setup. Snack: Patrick's homemade cherry almond cookie. Dinner at home with Patrick: cashew chicken stir fry. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, shrug. Stretches. Realized that we have no more frozen juice, chunky soup, and nonfat milk and only one yogurt, so I went to the grocery late and bought more of all. Late meal: yogurt, chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Thu May 29, 2008

Shower. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, wrist curl. Usual oatmeal breakfast. I forgot to mention that either yesterday or Tuesday Eric V brought in a bunch of his DVDs—Joel and Eric V and I were talking about movies over lunch last week and it seems we're bringing back the idea of the DVD library in the office. Like Netflix except it's your office mates instead of Netflix delivering your movies. I also recently picked up a free pedometer provided by UCSF—it's an Oregon Scientific PE826. I don't really need it, but I think it might be interesting to see how it works and whether it's any use to me. Tim G suggested this solution to Spotlight not indexing a particular drive, but I tried it and it did not work for me: "You can force Spotlight to rebuild its database by adding the affected disk to the Spotlight Privacy exclusions in System Preferences, closing System Preferences, then removing it from the exclusion list. Spotlight will begin rebuilding the Spotlight database immediately. This may take a while!" I turned off the Mac firewall and tried the same steps and again they did not work. I also found on the Apple website that one of the 300 new features in Leopard is that it can search connected network drives, so it's supposed to work but it doesn't for me. I'll submit a problem report to Apple's discussion forums and see if I get a solution. Web hosting accounts setup and prepared and delivered 4 how-to-connect messages. Chatted with Brian H and (the other) Frank F about new door locks. Lunch: leftovers at desk. Took photos of Joel's floaty pen collection for Joel. Snack for the trip home: 2 veggie spring rolls from Panda Express. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza delivery with caesar salad. I forgot to mention that yesterday Patrick and I voted our vote-by-mail ballots. Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise, superslow lateral raise, reverse wrist curl. Stretches. Late meal: lowfat cherry yogurt, hot nonfat milk. Stretches.

Fri May 30, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Prepped more new website spaces with placeholder pages. In OS X, when a WebDAV File System Authentication dialog appears, it is currently impossible to paste from the clipboard into either the name or password field, making long computer-generated passwords very difficult to enter. Helped Carol with questions about moving files to and from the office laptop. Helped Scott troubleshoot a problem with Outlook in which an error appeared just after he created/opened a new message window. Computer maintenance: Cindy's computer and shared office laptop. Prepped and delivered access granted messages for a few new course websites for migration. Lunch with Joel at Ten. 1-on-1 with Eric: mostly reviewed ServInt stuff. When I start KeePassX now, it consistently quits unexpectedly and I cannot use the application anymore. Problem still happens after I remove 2 KeePass preferences file from my Library folder. Don't know how to resolve it. Shopping at Westlake Shopping Center: sewing notions. Dinner at Daphne's Greek Cafe with Patrick. Trader Joe's. Home. Watched The Golden Compass (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. The film was a butchery of the book—the ending didn't even match!—but I still watched the whole thing (talking bears and all).

Sat May 31, 2008

Shower. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Tailoring: used single-fold bias tape for the first time with the sewing machine to finish a hem on some green corduroy jeans to prevent the edge from fraying. My sewing is really bad, but the hem is on the inside so it really doesn't matter. I'll get better with more practice. Shopped with Patrick. More tailoring. Dinner at home with Patrick: pork chops, steamed green beans and carrots, grilled purple and beige potatoes with green onions. Patrick and I watched Groundhog Day on DVD borrowed from Eric V.