July 2008
Summary: Bastille Day Party; Vanessa and Robert's Wedding; Dinner at home with Patrick, Thomas, Hao, Sandip, and Conrad
Dates on this page
Tue Jul 1, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stopped at Posh Bagel for bagels and cream cheese for the office. Minor web edit for Joel: About the Students. Uninstalled and reinstalled Sophos on the server. Permissions adjustment granting DLS access. Executed listserv rotations. Joel helped me test Subscriber's Corner in the Listserv website. Chatted with Joel about the supp app. Lunch at Taboun with Eric D, Susan H, Amanda S. Susan H baked Eric a delicious vanilla bean cake with chocolate frosting. More listserv rotations and updates. Friday's weirdness followup. Delivered a birthday card to Eric D. Chatted with Eric D about Twitter. Helped volunteer faculty Chris N with a problem with email. Helped student LT with a question about the authenticity of the site cert on vpn.ucsf.edu. Web: podcasting and recordings policy—asked Cindy if we can make the recordings policy live. When setting a calendar item to be recurring once every year, Entourage 2008 crashes consistently. Yeesh! Worked around it by opening Outlook 2007 and successfully setting up the same recurring item. Added a page in our e-mail section about how to configure an external e-mail account such as GMail or Yahoo! to connect to UCSF e-mail using POP or IMAP. DLS followup with Kurt. 26 items in my inbox—ugh! Dinner at home with Patrick: fried chicken, mixed vegetables, french fries. Switched from extra long pony rides to my life as far as i know—the transition was easy. Worked on Danny's website: put in new prices. Stretches. Weight training: advanced and super advanced bridge, crunch, advanced and super advanced plank, advanced side plank. Stretches.
Wed Jul 2, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. It's not clear that the word enaction—to mean the action of enacting—is a word recognized by popular dictionary references. Google finds only 462 publically accessible web pages in the world that use it. My attempted usage: "It only protects data since the enaction of the law." I felt this should be okay, but nonetheless I changed this to: "It only protects data since the law was enacted." Quick phone conference with Susie and Eric D about Sharon Y and Malawi and blogging. Linkchecking. Computer administration for Chris: installed OS 10.5.4, ensured QuickTime and iTunes were current, installed other Apple software updates, attempted to upgrade to the latest Flash in OS X but encountered an error: "Error creating file. 1008:5,-5000 Access denied error (OK)" and when I select OK, I encounter another message: "Install Flash Player 9 UB: You do not have enough access privileges for this installation. (OK)" but I am logged in as local admin. I've encountered this problem before and previous attempts to resolve it had failed. Low priority. On his laptop on the Windows side: installed XP SP3, restored an NK2 file from backup for Outlook, confirmed that QuickTime, iTunes, and Boot Camp were current, rechecked Microsoft Updates after restarting following the SP3 install. Installed Firefox 3.0. Followup with Devi, Susie, and Eric D regarding Flickr groups for alumni. Created and shared a web to do list in Google Docs. E-mail on your smartphone survey work for SCWG. Dinner at Danny, Phil, and Drew's with Patrick and ?.
Thu Jul 3, 2008
Last night I dreamt about 2 different things. One was that someone had given me and Patrick a chihuahua and we liked it. The other was that I looked at the supplemental application changes that Joel gave me and although he said there were very little changes the layout of the page was completely different and meant a lot of work for me and I felt exasperated. After waking up, I felt better. Joel gave me the changes a few days ago, but I know it won't be as difficult as in the dream. Chatted with Nick M in the hallway on the way in to work. Helped Ena install anti-virus on her new laptop and do a few other tweaks—it was quick. Printing problems in the computer lab. I investigated but could not resolve them all. Posted signs saying printing was unavailable. Helped Chris with a variety of small computer issues and with questions about poster production. Lunch: Ena dropped off a burrito for me. I was so busy today I didn't even get to see her! Listserv maintenance. Shared some Google docs with Nick. Gathered feedback from resident Terrill T about what kind of computing support they receive. (Answer: the computers are managed, but beyond that no support is offered.) Learned from Danica by way of a question from Joyce A that @itssrv1.ucsf.edu will stop working after July 2008 and that people should use @listsrv.ucsf.edu or @listserv.ucsf.edu instead. I've been telling everyone @listsrv.ucsf.edu because I believe that's the name of the actual server now and that @listserv.ucsf.edu is merely an alias (which is expected to work indefinitely). Web updates: org chart, Installed OS 10.5.4 for me. Home. Napped. Dinner at Osha Thai (819 Valencia Street, San Francisco, California, USA) with Patrick. Someone told me about Yoox recently, so I checked out the site today and was disappointed. Why can't I search on a particular waist size for pants? They think I'm going to wade through 239 items to pick out the ones that match my waist size. It's also quirky due to language or regional differences—I don't know what "Turn search results into a Première" means, and "8,5" is not a shoe size in my country. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow front raise. Late meal: leftover pad thai. Weight training: tricep kickback, wrist curl. Stretches. Looked for the equivalent of Workrave for OS X (aka Workrave for Mac or Workrave for a Mac) and only found AntiRSI but I'm rather not install 2.5-year-old software on my computer, thanks. Especially when the download page doesn't list the system requirements.
Fri Jul 4, 2008
Velcro maintenance. Repaired the sliding glass door to the bathtub. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Errands with Patrick, mostly picking up party supplies and sewing supplies. Ran into and briefly chatted with Patrick P at BevMo! Lunch at Burgermeister Daly City. Home. I napped. Dinner at Ali Baba's Cave with Patrick, psychobauble, and Nate. Recently returned from his first trip to Europe, Nate gave us two fridge magnets from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. After dinner we got ice cream at Bombay. Cardamom rose for psychobauble, coconut for Nate, and almond fudge for Patrick. Danny and psychobauble each separately asked me if I could do alterations for them today. Candle maintenance. Late last night I found and installed Time Out 1.5.3 for OS X by dejal.com—I've tried it for the past day and like it enough to keep it. It seems to work like Workrave but with a Mac aesthetic. Chatted briefly on the phone with Will W about having brunch on Sunday.
Sat Jul 5, 2008
Yogurt parfait for breakfast with banana, nectarine, black cherry yogurt, granola for me and grape nuts for Patrick. Archived documents. Saw Wall-E at Cinemark Century 20 Daly City with Patrick, Sam, Nate, and psychobauble. Before the film started, we were treated to a very delightful Pixar short film involving a magician and his rabbit. We all enjoyed Wall-E. Home. Archived documents. The Twitter application in Facebook doesn't seem to synch status updates like it's supposed to. I set status in Facebook, but these do not appear in Twitter automatically like I believe they are supposed to. Altered 2 shirts. Dinner at Miss Saigon Restaurant (100 6th Street, San Francisco, California, USA) with Will W, Nate, psychobauble, Danny, Drew, Nam, and Patrick. Gave Will a ride to his mom's so he could drop off his bag and then dropped him off at Castro and Market.
Sun Jul 6, 2008
Half order of my usual oatmeal breakfast. Brunch at Citizen Cake with Will, Mike, Kan, Edward, Patrick. Stephen showed up late and did not eat. On the way out we met Will's friends Stacy and Sophia. Will had planned to go to the Asian Art Museum. It was the first free first Sunday, and the line was around the block, so we said no to that. Funk left us to help a friend move furniture and Stacy and Sophia also took off. The rest of us walked to the Fillmore, picking up Sigmund, Eric, and Lee along the way. They wanted to stop at a liquor store, which seemed strange to me. While waiting Will and I observed a man in a wheelchair fall out of his chair while attempting to make it up the sidewalk ramp from the crosswalk. The man did not seem hurt, and bystanders and Will helped him back into his chair. A woman who seemed to know him came by while this was all happening and helped him get to where he was going. I think we walked up the entire Fillmore Jazz Festival—my first time. The music was excellent. Will was trying to find his friend Lisa who had a jewelry booth at the fair, and it took hours but we finally found her in the second-to-last block of the fair. Along the way Will introduced me to Marcus Books where we stopped for a short bit to listen to some great music which included two very young musicians, one playing drums and another playing saxophone. After the fair, we took Muni to Stephen's apartment, where we met Stephen's friend Star and Stephen served nachos and I drank lemonade and everyone else drank margaritas. We looked through a big book that Stephen says he won in a contest, listened to Madonna's latest album and other music, checked out the view from the roof, discovered Stephen's snake scarf. Home. Dinner at home: chicken and white bean soup, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Processed photos.
Mon Jul 7, 2008
Brunch at home with Patrick: veggie scramble, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Sunbathing by myself at Dolores Park reading the current Lego mailer and The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin which Patrick received as a gift from Aaron. Lunch with Patrick and Mom Ryan at Dolores Park Cafe. Mom Ryan and I split a turkey, bacon, avocado, and swiss sandwich, I had the side salad that came on that plate, Patrick had a vegetable sandwich with side salad (all vegan), water for Mom Ryan, iced teas for me and Patrick. Dessert: ice cream at Bi-Rite Creamery (415-626-5600, 3692 18th Street at Dolores, San Francisco, CA USA): almond cherry and cinnamon snickerdoodle for me, mexican chocolate with salted peanuts and butta pecan, cherry almond and coffee toffee for Mom Ryan. Walked Mom Ryan home. Gasoline. Home. Shower. Repaired the mounting of the light fixture above our kitchen sink—the previous mounting solution had partially failed. Removed gumminess from the fridge magnets that Nate gave us. Laundry. Processed photos. Dinner at home with Patrick: veggie stir fry, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Uploaded photos. Watched The Royal Tenenbaums on DVD borrowed from Eric V at home with Patrick.
Tue Jul 8, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Checked in with Rebecca about the location of the CSC meeting on Thursday. OAAIS has been giving only 2 or 3 days of notice about the location, which makes planning the web steering committee meetings difficult since we time them to occur before the CSC meeting. Rebecca says they should be able to give notice of the location at least 2 weeks in advance from now on. Troubleshot a problem with the preview session web form: the message sent to @pharmacy.ucsf.edu addresses fails whereas the same message sent to other e-mail addresses works. Not caught by server-side or client-side spam filtering. Logfiles show the messages are getting sent. I submitted a problem report to OAAIS. Minor cleanup of various web pages. Web steering committee notice. Gave Shane a heads up about redirects. Cardkey installation followup with the other Frank F. Confirmed student codes needed for the ID cards cardkey access. DLS support followup with Quinn and Kurt and Cesar. Room reservation with Kim. Sent the DLS notice to my unit. SCWG: wrote a proposal for identifying people in the GAL. Began edits for the supp app. PHPM course description edits for Carol. More work on the podcasting page. Preview session web form followup with Alex R—the e-mail messages seemed to have sent but did not actually leave the server since our hostname is schoolofpharmacy.ucsf.edu, our domain is pharmacy.ucsf.edu, and our web server is not the same as our mail server. Still trying to find the best solution for this problem, but Alex seems to have isolated the cause. Lots of e-mail followup on different things: blogging, podcasting, DAL, completed photo release forms. The inbox was particularly difficult to keep slim today. Left work with 16 items in the inbox. Lunch at desk: leftovers (mostly worked through lunch). Dinner at home with Patrick: TJ's lasagne, steamed broccoli, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Processed and uploaded photos. Dessert: one teaspoon of melon sorbet. Patrick has already begun cooking for next Sunday's party. For the past several days he has been letting bread get stale. I think it's ironic that we buy a large quantity of fresh bread in advance so that he can let it get stale with exactly the right timing so that it's perfect for preparing bread pudding. He also began soaking large bowls of red beans for red beans and rice. This is likely to be our biggest party ever, and we are looking forward to it!
Wed Jul 9, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Telecommute day. More troubleshooting of forms. More supp app web pages updating—today it's all writing code and updating pages so that the start and end dates of the filing period are automatically calculated and display correctly no matter what time or day someone visits the page. Tomorrow I can get started on the other web page changes, then probably the PDF on Monday or Tuesday. Need to also continue work on the cdrom. I feel like I'm behind on things. While I worked at home, Patrick and Mom Ryan cooked all day. Three large pots of red beans and rice, one pan of fudge, and about 2 dozen pralines. Lunch was a turkey sandwich and chips. Nick M left me a voicemail saying that he suspected that XP SP3 breaks wireless at UCSF—I cannot yet confirm or deny it but it is interesting to me and I do have at least one laptop that unresolveably does not work with wireless.
Thu Jul 10, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow front raise, modified preacher curl, superslow dumbbell press, advanced one-legged plank, advanced side plank. Stretches. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Checked on a security issue from a week ago—all is well. Helped graduate CJ with a question about post-graduation e-mail. Sent Julie, David, and Ed the websteering lunch rsvps. SCWG followup: MyAccess and VPN. Formmail problem followup. Ordered a rolling computer case for Chris. Administration web pages followup for Susie. Mary Anne asked Susie who asked me if the news3online was a threat or a joke. It seems harmless to me and clever as well, but I'm glad people feel wary about it. Formmail problem followup. Quick lunch from the cafeteria in the work room: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, steamed zucchini, corn muffin, POG juice. Meeting: introduced the OSACA to the DLS team for the computer support transition—the meeting went well. Afterwards Cesar and Quinn and I met briefly to discuss mapped network drives. Formmail problem followup. Backup role meeting with Eric—we're starting regular meetings to train each other on the things we know that the other doesn't. Formmail problem followup. Reposted P1 and elective schedules for Lucia. Approved our first real photo for the Flickr slots on our home page. Asked OAAIS how to configure BlackBerry to UCSF Exchange for students—I didn't know how and there are no instructions. SCWG: edited the Identifying People in the GAL proposal for Doug. Reviewed supp app web pages and issues with Joel. Home. House chores: garbage management. Patrick was too busy cooking party foods to cook dinner for us tonight, so I ordered Chinese food delivery: wonton soup, mango chicken, combination wide noodles, steamed rice. Our fortune cookies were too stale to eat. My fortune: Your home is a pleasant place from which you will draw happiness. On my iMac running 10.5.4 at home, when I verify permissions in Disk Utility, I get several occurrences of "ACL found but not expected on..." and after I repair permissions, the problem remains. I don't know how to solve these error messages yet, but so far it doesn't appear to be causing problems. Helped Patrick make fudge and pralines. He bought a candy thermometer earlier today, so he was blinded by science when making the pralines this time. (The behavior is pleasingly more predictable when you have a thermometer.) Took a bath. Processed and uploaded photos.
Fri Jul 11, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Question about popcorn and cellphones from Marie—it's a clever hoax. Logo distribution for Susie. Ellie V lost files issue for Rob. Met 1-on-1 with Eric. Sharon's blog followup with Susie and Eric. Supp app work: web pages all done, got started on the PDF. I found a package from Cyberguys in my inbox today, which I wasn't expecting. Ted C of Cyberguys sent me a letter and a t-shirt thanking me for mentioning them in the description of one of my photos on Flickr which describes how I'm using their color-coded ethernet cables at work to quickly identify how long a cable is. I searched for Cyberguys on Flickr and found only 3 images—mine was the first one. Cyberguys has always been good to me, and this action of theirs only improves my relationship with them. The t-shirt was size large and I wear size XS mens (or L boys), but I'm not much of a geek t-shirt wearer anyway and gave it—and the Cyberguys catalog—to my pal psychobauble who has never ordered from but will soon be ordering from them, I am certain. Thanks, Ted! Left work at 6 PM. Took the N-Judah to Van Ness, sitting and chatting with Ann D on the train. Walked to the next bus stop because the NextBus sign told me I had the time and because it's healthier than standing and waiting in one place. 47 to California Street and arrived at Recharge Spa on Nob Hill at 7 PM—why should this trip take an hour? Danny, Phil, and Drew hosted the spa's one-year anniversary party with food from Miss Saigon Restaurant. Met a friend of Ludwig's named Joel, and we chatted about Shane S, UCSF's out list, and digital cameras. Also in attendance whom I knew: psychobauble, Nate, Paul, Quyen, Ludwig. Danny gave me a ride home. Google Maps recently added and is now advertising on buses that Google Maps now includes transit directions. When I tried it today for my route from UCSF Parnassus to Recharge Spa, it told me to take the 6 then the 49. However, I thought it would be faster to take the N-Judah since it travels in a tunnel for part of the trip to Van Ness and presumably has fewer stops. Also, Google Maps failed to say that for my trip I could take either the 49 or the 47 bus to California Street. Also, with Muni's poor on-time performance, the scheduled times really make Google's information not that reliable, but that's not Google's fault. What's there now in Google Maps is really quite amazing nonetheless, and I fully expect it to only get better with time. Maybe Google Maps could add a past-fortnight snapshot of Muni's on-time performance for your trip segments as well as some kind of measurement of the public's recent confidence rating, which could be easy to gather with, say, Google's new Mobile App for iPhone. For any given bus stop, I think it would be helpful to see an analog clock face with markers showing the scheduled times and the actual times the bus is to arrive or arrived at the stop. For example, one view could show the current hour's clockface with red markers indicating the scheduled times and green markers indicating the actual times. To show past performance, say, over the past 14 days, you could include the actual times from those previous 14 days in green but with progressively increasing transparency the older the markers are. The more green you saw at a particular time means the more likely the bus will arrive at that time. This kind of visual depiction enables you to see at a glance more accurate information about when a bus is expected to arrive, especially with a system like Muni which often isn't on time.
Sat Jul 12, 2008
Archived documents. Breakfast at home with Patrick: quick bagels and cream cheese. Helped Patrick prepare potato salad and other dishes for Sunday's party. Party supply rentals got dropped off from Abbey Rents—very reliable and easy with which to work. Unloaded photos from the camera. Printed and framed a photo of PDD. Processed photos. Blocked joinalbert and macey121 on Twitter. Found a fortune from some previous meal and don't think I entered it here: You are going to have a very comfortable life. Patrick and I drove to Miss Saigon Restaurant where we are storing food for the party in their large walk-in refrigerator overnight. Sat and chatted for a few minutes with Drew and Nam. Home. I made us lunch: bagel sandwiches with ham and cheddar, Sun Chips, Triscuit, hot water, guava chocolate. Continued preparing for the party and helping Patrick cook. Washed out PDD's ice chest. Processed and uploaded photos to Flickr. Small web edits for Drew: made the community page live. Dinner at home with Patrick with me cooking!: leftover wonton soup for me, pesto tortelloni in marinara sauce, hot dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light. Archived documents. Yoga stretches. Unsuccessfully troubleshot a permissions problem on my iMac: the guest account can see my files and so can new accounts. I successfully manually applied the correct permissions, but when I look from the guest or test accounts, I still see my files. The weird thing is that I cannot see the files I explicitly shared (like Music). OS X is rBoKeN!
Sun Jul 13, 2008
Today Patrick and I held a Bastille Day Party to celebrate summer, Patrick's cooking, and the French national holiday. The party was not strongly themed, but Patrick cooked old and new New Orleans food dishes, I used a French flag for the food name cards, and I heard people speaking French here and there throughout the afternoon. As people arrived, I took portraits in the back yard, but after a bit people arrived too quickly for me to keep up, and I took shots whenever I could, not necessarily portraits. Things moved so quickly that I didn't even get many photos of the food! Our apartment is tiny, and Patrick and I together know perhaps 3 times as many people as will fit in our place, so we weren't able to invite everyone we wanted to invite. Also, we didn't want the food to run out, so the chef enforced a fairly strict cap on the number, and about 60 people said yes to our evite. Patrick essentially cooked continuously since Tuesday (except for sleeping), planning carefully so that dishes like red beans finished earlier got better with a day or two of storage. Mom Ryan came over and was a big help chopping vegetables, and I also did some chopping, too. I made food name cards with the French flag as a background. One of the sacrifices people don't realize we make when we do parties like this is that we have to adjust our regular dinnertime meals during the days he cooks. Some days he is still cooking into the evening so we don't have the stove or oven or microwave or fridge space to spare. Other days he's exhausted. So we either eat out, which costs money and isn't all that healthy, or we eat in, trading quality for ease of preparation. The party went really well despite problems with the toilet and a light fixture. We both had a great time, and we think everyone else did, too. Patrick jokes that he will only do this once every 4 years, but I'll get to work on changing that idea after he's had about a month of rest. Thanks, everyone, for coming and bringing your favorite beverages. Photos at <a href="http://flickr.com/photos/frankfarm/sets/72157606272157321/">Bastille Day Party</a>. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/5vqwyj">Tony's photos</a>. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/5gpv32 ">Conrad's photos</a> (requires a Facebook account and you might possibly also need to be Facebook friends with him—I'm not sure).
Mon Jul 14, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. 1-on-1 with Susie. Listserv maintenance. Supp app work. Answered a question from entering student BA. Admissions web pages. Chatted with Cesar about DLS migration. Lunch by myself at NKRB. Chatted a bit with Sue about a new blog project. Supp app work. Continued DNS troubleshooting. Dinner at home with Patrick: stuffing-stuffed chicken boobs, steamed carrots, biryani, hot water. Sent party thank you messages.
Tue Jul 15, 2008
Weight training: advanced weighted crunch. (Advanced here means legs at 90 degrees.) Usual oatmeal breakfast. Went in to work early because today was our first day under DLS computing support. This means the 8 other people in my office will now contact the Desktop/LAN Support team at OAAIS for nearly all their computing support issues. This frees me to All seems well with the transition. An Event Apart payment followup. Followup with entering student BA. Supp app work. Sent supp app to Joel, Scott, and Eric V for review. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You are a leader in your own way. Answered an ICRD question for Cindy. Listserv administration for student TA. Tested my access to the ProWatch system that Brian H set up—looks good. WebCT admin work for Tim F in classroom support. White Coat Ceremony updates for Cindy. Pharm Care edits for Cindy. Created a data export for Eric D. Web form email problem followup with OAAIS and ServInt. Met 1-on-1 with Cindy. Checked with Deborah P about transitioning grads to Med Center support. Supp app feedback came in from Scott and Eric V—so far so good. Now just waiting to hear from Joel. More An Event Apart payment followup. About administration updates for Susie. Checked in with students MAM and PF about orientation web pages. Dinner with Patrick at Holy Grill. psychobauble and Nate joined us unplanned. Dessert party at psychobauble and Nate's with Jen, Danny, Drew, Patrick, Nate, psychobauble. Nate made 3 delicious desserts: chocolate galette, rosemary pound cake with stewed apples, limoncello-soaked spongecake. Patrick and I brought some leftover bread pudding with southern hard sauce. psychobauble gave Patrick a brand new shirt from Zara that he no longer wanted. Thanks, psychobauble!
Wed Jul 16, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row. Usual oatmeal breakfast. HIPAA training updates for Cindy. Med Center support followup. DLS migration followup. Web form email followup and testing—a solution seems near. Troubleshot connection to the DLS server from OS X. Lunch at Reverie Cafe, which had a very slow chef who was made even slower by an order taker who was not very careful entering whether the orders were for here or to go and had erred on my order and an order before mine. Met briefly with Cesar. Podcasting web updates, and sent them to Susie, Eric D, and Candy for review. Web form email testing. WAP installation followup with Terry McC. Med Center computing support followup with Darlena T. Susie confirms our Flickr announcement was finally sent out to all parties in the school. Med Center computing support followup with recent-grad requestors. Notified staff of web form email problem cause and solution. More WAP install followup. More Med Center computing support followup. When I got home from work, I encountered the following error message on my iMac: "Time Machine Error: Unable to complete the backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. (OK)" No time to resolve this now. Dinner at home with Patrick: giant 4-cheese ravioli with sliced italian sausage. Saw Iron Man with Patrick at Century 20 Daly City. We both liked the film even though the plot was often ridiculously unlikely. Troubleshot a file sharing problem between Patrick's computer and my computer. Began repairing the kitchen lamp mounting. Updated my journal. Attempted the Time Machine fix found when you search on [karinlord Jan 15 2008, 11:01 AM] in Google. I could now ask Time Machine to Back Up Now to see if it resolved the problem, but I prefer that only time will tell. Logo color conversion for Drew (rubber stamp). Processed a few photos from the party. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, crunch. Stretches. Late meal: leftover pasta from earlier tonight. To bed late.
Thu Jul 17, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Processed photos. To work. Helped student LC with a question about wireless access. Posted a new e-mail help topic regarding the error message "Outlook is trying to retrieve data...". Helped faculty member Mitra A with a question about uploading photos to Flickr. Wireless upgrade followup with Terry McC. Current students news updates. City tours and out-of-state packet review for students MAM and PF. Encountered the following problem while attempting to start Windows XP SP3 in VMWare Fusion 1.1.3: "STOP: c000021a {Fatal System Error}—The Windows Logon Process system process terminated unexpectedly with a status of 0xc0000005 (0x00000000 0x00000000).—The system has been shut down." I shut down the VM cold, restarted pressing F8 during startup and choosing last known good. This solved the problem; Win XP started successfully. I did not log in. I did a full shutdown, quit Fusion, restarted Fusion, restarted the VM normally (no F8)—Windows XP starts successfully. I log in successfully. All seems well. Worked through lunch, which was leftovers from yesterday. Installed Firefox 3.0.1 on my Mac Pro and on one Windows XP laptop. Installed Sun Java 6 Update 7 on one Win XP laptop. Identifying people in the GAL followup with Doug C. DAL feedback followup. Core curriculum web update for Cindy. Info gathering for cardkey lock installation for Brian H. Lots of other updates for the old Win XP laptop. Organized my physical desktop, got rid of a lot of post-it notes and stuck them as messages in my inbox. Home. Got the Time Machine error again: "Time Machine Error: Unable to complete the backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. (OK)". Log file in console shows "Copy stage failed with error:11" and "Backup failed with error: 11". Weird thing is that backupd messages continue to say "Backup completed successfully." Changed computer name to include only alphanumerics. Dinner at home with Patrick: filet mignon, mixed vegetables, thai lime rice. Processed photos. Installed Firefox 3.0.1 on OS X at home. 28 party photos processed, 96 to go. The Website is Down - loved it!
Fri Jul 18, 2008
I forgot to mention that yesterday I repaired the mounting for the lamp above the kitchen sink. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow modified preacher curl. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Defrosted the fridge over the course of 5 hours today. Received error messages when attempting to start VMware Fusion 1.1.3 today: "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)". Logged out of OS X, then logged back in—did not fix it. Now when attempting to start Fusion it says: "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: Insufficient permission to access file. (OK)". I get info on the Windows partition and it tells me I only have read access. Restarted the Mac into Boot Camp. After getting the Mac/Windows selector, I got to the login screen. My Apple Mouse worked, but my Apple Keyboard did not, so I was stuck, unable to press Ctrl+Alt+Del. I plugged in a Dell USB keyboard, and that worked—I was able to log in to Windows successfully. I restart the computer, choosing to start in OS X. I realize after a few Google searches that it's normal for the Windows partition to be read only if you chose NTFS when formatting it. Deleted the file called Preferences in my VMware Fusion folder in my Preferences folder in my Library folder. Restarted Fusion—it lets me start VM#1 successfully. I log in as admin and reinstall VMware Tools (choosing Repair) just in case. Settings seemed to have been saved even though I deleted preferences. Shut down the VM. Quit Fusion. Start Fusion. Restart VM#1. All seems well with Fusion now. When it works, it's great. When it doesn't, it's awful. Supp app followup. Just about ready to make it live. Lunch by myself at Andy's: cashew chicken. I did not enjoy my experience eating at Andy's. It's not awful, but there's nothing that makes me want to return. The cashew chicken was the best part of my meal. The egg roll, which was unusually greasy, was the worst. (It was so greasy that when I pressed it with the edge of my fork it caved in like a wet pillow rather than breaking in two.) Service was not rude but not polite, either. Loudly curt was more like it, and I chalked it up to cultural differences. My meal was unusually slow to deliver from the kitchen, especially since there was only 1 other person in the restaurant waiting for food to be delivered, but other patrons who ordered after me got their meals unusually quickly. I must have caught the only cook's break or something like that. My fortune: Keep your feet on the ground and your thoughts at lofty heights. Posted new news on the current students page regarding the student lounge wireless upgrade. Posted a corresponding sign in the student lounge. Wrote a long e-mail about 802.11n wireless. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig loin, steamed broccoli, brown rice. Edited 3 party photos. Watched A Scanner Darkly on Netflix DVD at home with Patrick. Dessert: leftover desserts from the dessert party. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback (the ones I did this morning were rather half-ass), superslow front raise, reverse wrist curl, superslow dumbbell press. Edited 8 party photos, 71 to go.
Sat Jul 19, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Cut my hair. Went to Vanessa and Robert's wedding—a beautiful ceremony in a Greek Orthodox church not far from where we live. Since Patrick and Sam are close friends with Vanessa, they helped out with portions of the wedding. Met Ben W from Austin, Texas. We sat at table 8—the young(er) music geeks table—and enjoyed the company of Carrie, Dennis, Zachary, and Lydia during the delicious reception luncheon. Patrick, Sam, and I helped break down the wedding—mostly collecting the gifts and flowers and extra food and other things that needed to be taken away from the church. Helped with transporting Vanessa's parents back to their home. Home. Processed photos. We were both still full from the luncheon, so I ate an apple for dinner. Processed photos. Late meal: leftovers.
Sun Jul 20, 2008
Woke around 6:30 AM. Got myself a tall glass of hot water. Started adjusting Flickr tags. Late last night I finished processing the 104 photos from the Bastille Day Party last weekend and let it upload overnight. But this morning I realized that I had some inconsistent tags—e.g., I know more than one person named Steven, so I had to figure out some tagging scheme to keep the tagging of the photos distinct. Discovered a blog from Feb 2008 that my friend Steve M in Seattle started. Only one post, though—what's up with that? Titled and tagged Flickr photos. Usual oatmeal breakfast. When I uploaded the 104 photos, I made the set private so that I could title and tag them before changing the photos to public and making them live. Patrick's brother Gery called just before 8 AM and asked for directions to the Golden Gate Bridge. He's in the Bay Area with his military buddies. Set up Danny, Phil, and Drew with a new mailbox account for the spa. Created a non-transparent GIF for Patrick who is creating a group on Facebook for Lodestar Quarterly so that people can say they are a fan of it. Lunch at home with Patrick: frozen pizza, small bowl of corn soup for me, orange cream soda for Patrick, cream soda for me. At 14:22 today, Twitter seems to be partially broken. Pages don't load completely, and I'm unable to submit a new tweet from the homepage—it spins and never finishes. Learned about twhirl and twurl. Planned to meet up with Nate and psychobauble, but instead napped for a few hours on the couch. Tagged photos in Geni. Dinner at home with Patrick: boneless skinless peppercorn chicken boobs, asparagus risotto, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Read about Brightkite, Loopt, Dodgeball, oneConnect, Fire Eagle, and YokWay!. Added Definr to Firefox as a quick search. Dessert: Nathan's rosemary pound cake, peppermint tea. Stretches. Weight training: advanced weighted superslow crunch, advanced one-legged plank, advanced side plank. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.
Mon Jul 21, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. MacBook: installed KB953761, OS X updates, Win XP updates, other maintenance. Prepared to hand off data for Brian H regarding who is authorized to use S-918 and S-956—Rodney was a big help in providing data for our students. Began final gather and build of the software cdrom for students entering in fall 2008. Followup with Randy J about transitioning computing services for grads who later become employed by the Medical Center. Installing KB953761 resolves a problem at UCSF in which wireless stops working in Windows XP after you install Service Pack 3 (SP3). With 69,135 votes, The Dark Knight (2008) which opened last weekend has the highest rating for any film on imdb—9.5. Very late lunch: taco from Carmelina's. I noticed today that at Carmelina's if you ask for #11 they'll give you #12 and see if you complain. #12 has more stuff than #11 and it costs more. I think they think people won't complain and so they make more money that way. cdrom work all afternoon. Dinner at home with Patrick: mini penne with vegetables and roasted pig loin, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Dessert: one mini scoop of melon sorbet. To bed early, very sleepy.
Tue Jul 22, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: advanced weighted crunch, superslow front raise. Usual oatmeal breakfast. SCWG meeting. Spent most of the day working on and announcing for review a final draft of the cdrom for students entering in the fall. Lunch: leftovers. Afternoon snack from the cafeteria: super protein odwalla, fresh cut assorted fruit. Lately at work I've been doing leg raises during Time Out breaks. Dinner at home with Patrick: cheese and arugula tortellini with garlic chicken breast and diced heirloom tomato. Dessert: one mini scoop of blackberry sorbet. Investigated calendar sharing options. I have a calendar idea that it seems no one has implemented yet. I noticed Spotlight wouldn't work for me today when I know it should've. Didn't have time to troubleshoot. Hopped into XP and did a search and it took a while but it worked. Spotlight is not reliable for data on network drives even from the separate search window, contrary to my earlier beliefs. Weight training: leg raise, superslow shoulder shrug, advanced superslow pushup, superslow modified preacher curl, superslow concentration curl. Snack: black cherry nonfat yogurt.
Wed Jul 23, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast plus peppermint fruit salad. Listserv management. Password management. Web edits: wireless and XP SP3 notice to continuing and entering students, curriculum instructors, closed a preview session for Eric V, graduates continuing at UCSF. Learned today that the VA network blocks Flickr so our homepage looks crappy to VA people. Continuing students followup with Randy and Darlena at the Medical Center. Dinner with Patrick, Nate, and psychobauble at Barracuda.
Thu Jul 24, 2008
Woke up this morning and found I had some left knee pain but only when I put weight on it. Called in sick to Scott, canceled or rescheduled appointments. Nurse on the phone says I should come in and I agree to even though I think it's not necessary. Patrick took the car, so I'm stuck on Muni, but it's not bad—the worst of the pain was mostly gone by the time I had to leave. Doctor says to take it easy the next few days, it should resolve by itself within a week. Took the 24 to the Castro. Ran into Andy M just outside of Harvey's, said hello. Lunch: Harvey's by myself: a sinfully delicious ranch wrap with crispy chicken, side of fries, iced tea, $15.00 after a $2.30 tip. Stopped at Cliff's and picked up a few supplies and a small gift for Joel. Repaired the remote control for the bathroom heater with some electrical tape. Vacuumed. Repaired the vacuum cleaner cord with some electrical tape. Worked on a design project for Brendan F, a friend of my brother's. Installed Skype, chatted online with Tina. Dinner at home with Patrick: goddess mahi mahi fillet, corn on the cob, shells and cheese. Watched Across the Universe (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Paid bills.
Fri Jul 25, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Continuing at UCSF followup for grads TT, DS, and WO. Listserv management: ensured that recent grads were added to our graduate jobs mailing list. Chatted with Lisa C about disk quotas, followup with ServInt. Updated projects list with new statuses. Troubleshot cigarette smoke coming through my vent at 9:00 AM and again around 10:30 AM. Oscar came up to sniff but the smell had gone by the time he arrived around 10:00. ServInt replied and set up quotas like I wanted by switching our ftp daemon from proftp to pure-ftp. Followup with grad HB about e-mail and forwarding. Followup with Quinn H about the server folders transition next week. Lunch by myself at Kiki (415-661-5522, 1269-9th Avenue, between Irving Street and Lincoln Way, San Francisco, California, USA 94122). OS X Leopard 10.5.4 hung on me today while I was coding in SSH in Win XP in Fusion 1.1.3. Had to cold restart the Mac—that doesn't happen very often. Cause unknown. Announced Continuing at UCSF to office staff. Lots of web edits: restructured (or combined) 2 sections: Programs for Prospective Students and Information for Prospective Students, linkchecking. Let Joel borrow a movie. Dinner at PDD's with Patrick, psychobauble, Sandip, Phil, Drew, Danny. Phil cooked herbed, foil-wrapped salmon with carrots; cheese ravioli in pesto sauce; tossed mixed salad.
Sat Jul 26, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Chai tea. Made changes to the price list on the web for Danny. Shower. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow dumbbell press, superslow front raise. Midafternoon meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk. Flickr Uploadr 2.3.1 for OS X failed twice today to complete an upload—it uploaded all the photos but didn't create the set I requested. Workaround: force quit and then manually create the set and add the photos to the set. Sunbathing. Dinner at home with Patrick: roasted herbed lemon chicken stuffed with proscuitto and garlic; Pasadena salad with toasted almonds, rice noodles, and sesame seeds; Italian country bread, Smart Balance Light. Dessert: one Jordan almond. Watched All About Eve on public library DVD with Patrick.
Sun Jul 27, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Realized this morning that Wired Magazine no longer seems to be available online. Altered a shirt. Napped. Small web edits for Drew. Late lunch with Patrick: leftovers. Went to Up Your Alley Fair with Patrick. We had planned to go earlier in the day, but we could tell the weather today was not going to be ideal despite the 67-degree forecast. The reality: it didn't get above 60 degrees in SF all day. We got to the fair at the very tail end—maybe just past 5:00 PM and it was still cold-breezy and overcast with very few sunbreaks. I was surprised at the rather large turnout and couldn't understand how people could wear shorts and go topless in this weather. I took a few photos, and we didn't see anyone we knew. We had to be at Buca di Beppo at 6, so we didn't stay long. Jen's birthday dinner at Buca di Beppo. Gary organized, with Lou, psychobauble, Steff and Steven, and Karen. The servers aren't sassy anymore at Buca di Beppo—I miss that. Home. Goofed off on the web. Stretches. Weight training: superslow concentration curl, superslow modified preacher curl, superslow shrug. Stretches. Late meal: leftovers from dinner tonight.
Mon Jul 28, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. The car yesterday had a sticky clutch I noticed so I asked Patrick to take the car in to the shop today. Patrick drove to the place we've been getting work done at lately, and the car just gave out 3 blocks before he got there. He called AAA and they said the BMW dealer would charge twice what it ought to cost and they recommended a AAA-certified dealer nearby instead. The car needs a new hydraulic system. We had already planned to get the brakes fixed. And they also found a leak of something. Total estimate is about $2,000 and a few days. Could be worse, I guess—I get to celebrate my car's 10th birthday in December! I took a vacation day today. Did some clothes shopping in the Castro and downtown. Injeanious, Body, That Underwear Store on Castro Street, Way Out West, Clobba. Got a slice of mushroom pizza at Escape From New York Pizza on Castro Street. Train to downtown. Stopped in the Apple Store. All I wanted to do was use a Mac to find out where the Zara store was since I forgot the address, and when I got to the store I realized what Thom had said earlier—they've commandeered practically every demo Mac in the store for iPhone 3G activation. The one Mac I could find wouldn't even let me get to maps.google.com—it wasn't allowed by the parental controls set. Fortunately there were lots of demo iPhone 3Gs so I used one of those and they are slow. I know there is probably a faster way to find that information on iPhone than the way I did it, but nonetheless I couldn't help thinking how slow 3G is or maybe it was the store's wireless? Whatever the case it was not very easy to get the directions to Zara. And once it found it, I had to laugh because it drew a route for a car instead of walking—Zara was about 2.5 blocks away. I visited Britex Fabrics for the first time. I climbed every floor and was stunned by the overwhelming number of choices of fabrics, ribbons, buttons, buckles, and more. I'm not anywhere near the point where I can make use of a place like Britex, but I'm glad it exists. Stopped by Neiman Marcus to see if Nico was around but I couldn't find him in either the men's or women's shoe departments and now I'm not sure if I got the store right. Visited the men's department of Zara but the sizes weren't exactly right for me. I found a properly sized tie for $8 in the boys department of Zara, however. Late lunch by myself at mr hana—teppanyaki which was tasty except for the shrimp which seemed like it came from a freezer bag—the flavor was not fresh and one of the shrimps was cold. Back in the Castro I saw Karl S on his bicycle and he noticed me—I got his name wrong and said, "Hi, Kurt!" but it was noisy on the street so hopefully he didn't hear me anyway. Getting on the train home I ran into Steven Z, said hello briefly. Fortunately I remembered his name right. Dinner at home with Patrick: cow burgers topped with grilled vegetables, french fries, corn on the cob.
Tue Jul 29, 2008
Breakfast: a banana. Partners in D intranet training session. Near the end of the session, our L.A.-area conference callers said, "Earthquake!" and (we presume) left to duck and cover. Since we were all at computers already, within seconds we had the USGS California-Nevada map up looking for data, and I posted data I had found to Twitter. It made me realize that I needed to make the password simpler to the ucsf911 account that I had set up—it had a non-memorizeable password generated by KeePassX so I changed it later to a simpler password. Laptop troubleshooting for student SH. Got an error message while running sfc/scannow in Safe Mode: "Windows File Protection could not initiate a scan of protected system files. The specific error code is 0x000006ba [The RPC server is unavailable.]". Many solutions pointed to Microsoft KB296241, but the No Liability Accepted certificate was present (not missing) and I was using Windows XP—not Windows 2000 as mentioned in KB296241. In Safe Mode, I ran "netsh int ip reset c:\resetlog.txt" which seemed to fix it. Late lunch by myself at Palio: half San Martino sandwich, orzo salad, raspberry button cookie, water. More laptop troubleshooting for SH. Prepped changes to /pharmd/employers/ for live, sent Cindy the review. Dinner at home with Patrick: penne with chicken, shrimp, and sliced red and yellow bell peppers in a light tomato sauce. Dessert: 2 circus animal cookies. Uploaded photos to Flickr. Twitter won't load—I got the whale error message: "...too many tweets!" Stretches. Weight training: advanced one-legged side plank, advanced one-legged plank.
Wed Jul 30, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work early. Quinn and I did a sweep following DLS shared folders migration to make sure everything worked properly. We identified a few issues and Quinn worked with the server team to get them resolved quickly. PharmAdMIT is looking good. More laptop maintenance for student SH. Installed Office Pro Plus 2007 for Chris. Laptop maintenance review and pickup with SH. Web edits: outreach branch reorganization, made live supp app workshop and preview session updates. Dinner at Blue (2337 Market Street, San Francisco, California, USA) at table 6 with Patrick: panko fried chicken and hefe for Patrick, steak sandwich and onion rings, hot water for me. Clarke was our server who was great but he forgot the ketchup he said he would bring but I didn't mind at all. $35.09 after a $5 tip. Took a bath.
Thu Jul 31, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Sent outreach restructuring to Cindy for review. Mid-morning snack from the cafeteria: couscous salad, V8. Chatted with Susie about a request from an AVC. Chatted briefly with Frank M about a computer (not mine). Web edits: city tours, camping trip. Installed PharmAdMIT 2009 on 4 computers, configured it on one. Late lunch: roast turkey, stuffing, gravy, stir-fried vegetables, dinner roll, Promise, POG juice. James joined in unexpectedly, and we had a pleasant, short chat. Installed Cyberduck 3.0.1 for OS X. It now claims to support WebDAV but I couldn't get it to connect to our WebDAV server. Web edits: CP 147 and intern licensing links for Chris. Prepared for Mozy Pro renewal: got a quote from Ed F, prepared an RFO for Cindy to sign. Helped Peter L with his server connection. Followup with Kraig K and Sergiy P about changing display names in Active Directory (I can no longer do it—not authorized). Discovered some visually beautiful but semantically empty (or meaningless) diagrams of Web 2.0 concepts at futureexploration.net. Dinner at home with Patrick, Thomas, Hao, Sandip, and Conrad: fantastic roast chicken; mixed green salad with mozzarella, mint, peach, and proscuitto; baked carrots with cumin, thyme, butter, and chardonnay; assorted breads; flourless, Jamie Oliver's 2-nuts chocolate torte with organic vanilla bean ice cream. We talked about solar science, cellphones and cellphone behaviors, strange eating habits, Catholicism, Jewish families, couples interaction, the effects of technology on social behaviors, and so forth. I didn't know Usenet died until I read psychobauble's blog.