Thursday, 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?