August 2008

Summary: An Event Apart San Francisco, Seattle Vacation

Dates on this page

Fri Aug 1, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Sara C visited and in about an hour I modified our cdrom build to work with a USB drive instead of a cdrom. Met with Eric D and he showed me Partners in D admin stuff. Added a link to UCSF Library's Facebook page to current students news. Had a surprisingly delightful lunch at Lavosh with Eric D. An Event Apart registration followup. 1-on-1 with Eric D. Orientation web pages followup. Reviewed MyAccess account setup process, sent feedback. Home. "Time Machine Error: Unable to complete the backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. (OK)" Same as before: "/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[41594] Copy stage failed with error:11" and "/System/Library/CoreServices/backupd[41594] Backup failed with error: 11". Console also showed and error -43 somehow related to attachments and IMAP mailboxes. I wasn't sure exactly how to resolve this, but I deleted some attachments in e-mail. Later Time Machine gave no errors, so perhaps it's fixed. It took a long time to figure out how in Apple Mail to find or search for all files with attachments. Here's how: Select Mailbox > New Smart Mailbox.... Name the new smart mailbox something like "messages with attachments". Select Messages, All, and Contains Attachments. Note the user interface hurdle one must overcome here—if you don't know what a smart mailbox is, you don't know you can use it to find all messages with attachments. Originally I went to the Search inputline at the top right corner, but I didn't want to search by keywords—I wanted all messages with attachments, and there seemed to be no way to do that using the Search inputline. I then went to Edit > Find > Mailbox search... and it simply put my cursor back in the Search inputline which I already knew was not helpful. Online help did not help. Dinner at home with Patrick: ravioli in marinara sauce, side salad, hot water. Dessert: leftover chocolate torte. Uploaded photos to Flickr. Uploadr hung at the end as in the past—photos upload but it fails to create the containing set. Installed Flickr Uploadr 3.0.5. Realized I didn't mention anything about the Chino Hills earthquake on Tuesday, so I went back and updated my journal entry for July 29. Stretches. Weight training: advanced weighted crunch, advanced one-legged plank, superslow lateral raise, superslow face outlines, superslow front raise, superslow sissy squats. (I think they don't make my knees hurt when I keep my feet close together rather than shoulder-width or wider apart.) Stretches.

Sat Aug 2, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Lunch by myself at Best of Thai Noodle: chicken in garlic sauce with white rice, thai iced tea. Errands and shopping on Haight Street and Irving Street. Napped. Dinner at home with Patrick: meatloaf with grilled onions, roasted potatoes with sea salt and chervil, fantastic-tasting corn on the cob from Mollie Stone's, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Dessert: 2 small pieces of cherry almond chocolate bar, 1 medium piece of coconut chocolate bar. Tagged while browsing a bunch of bk's photos in Flickr. I suppose Wired Magazine is dead at 15.05—I'm so late removing it from my bookmarks page. I've been enjoying the recent d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s redesign: http://delicious.com/help/whatsnew. Oh, I see now it's just delicious.com now—how convenient! The only thing I don't like so far is that the way they now display tags looks like breadcrumbs—but backwards! It's only a visual design problem, so it would probably be easy to fix.

Sun Aug 3, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Altered a tank top and a pair of shorts. Late lunch: leftovers. Archived documents. Edited templates for all home websites (Class C). Dinner at Nate and Chris's with Nate, Chris, Ludwig, and Patrick: pot roast, carrots, parsnips, salad. For dessert, Patrick made Jamie Oliver's two-nuts chocolate torte then added a hazelnut-kahlua buttercream frosting; walnut and almond meal on the sides; and almonds, walnuts, and coconut on top.

Mon Aug 4, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped incoming student DL with account info questions. Terry McC notified me today that our wireless access point upgrade was not going to occur today as planned. Helped student SH with computer problems by email—it's still not working as expected. Directed resident LT to Medical Center support for help with connecting to Exchange with Vista and Outlook 2007. Chatted with Cindy on her first day back in the office in 2 weeks. Followup with Frank F about 24/7 access for students to Parnassus perimeter. ID card access followup with Doug C. cdrom build followup with Gwen. ID card followup with Cindy. Chatted briefly on the phone with Melissa H. Followup with Joel regarding newly announced Blackberry security measures. Created new web space for the PSPG program, handed off connection info to Lisa C. Copied DLS documents to the shared network folder to make them available to the office.

Tue Aug 5, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Read faculty member Peter Ambrose's blog: My Olympic Journey. He's a volunteer doping control officer for the Olympic Games in Beijing, China. I was a little surprised to read this: "When urine specimens are obtained for [Doping Control], the voiding process must be directly observed." He has been assigned to National Aquatics Center (NAC) where he shall be testing swimmers and divers and will have a poolside seat at the games. His travel tales are quite interesting! Reported more cigarette smoke coming through my vent. This has been a frequently recurring problem, and it bothers me a lot because cigarette smoke gives me instant headaches—I'm more sensitive than most people. Last Friday I got fed up with it and the second I smelled new cigarette smoke coming into my office I went down to where I was told the air intake vents were located and found some men sitting in chairs nearby smoking so I took their photo. Today after submitting my problem report to facilities I attached the photo pointing out that 2 of the men in the photo can be seen partially concealing cigarettes. UCSF has had a no-smoking policy since July 1, 2005, and supervisors are expected to enforce the policy. We'll see. Today I was told by a different facilities person that the first facilities person was incorrect about where the air intake vents were for our office. He said the intake vents for us are actually in the northeast corner of Saunders Court—the same place welders are currently doing work. I never smell welding smoke in my office, but our front office staff says they sometimes smell it. Small edits to orientation web pages for Cindy. Mailbox cleanup—I reached the 100 MB limit we have on mail space for UCSF email. Yes, 100 MB! Last year at orientation when I told them how much space they have for email I added, "Google doesn't own us yet." UCSF is working on increasing it to 400 MB (I think) but the effort is not yet complete. Materials order followup with Lucia and Eric D. Participated in 2 interviews today for our student affairs assistant position. Made live web edits: the newly combined outreach and prospective students section, career services, orientation, updated schedules. Lots of linkchecking. Prepared cdrom duplication order for DMM. Redirected student HW to Eric D for help with setting up a class website. Sent a few reminders to myself of work that needs to be done. 14 items in my inbox—not bad. It was 12 earlier this week. Installed Apple Software Updates. Tried getting Spotlight to index my network drive. I thought this was working before but now it's clearly not working even in the way I thought it had—through Command+F at the Finder and manually indicating that it should search the network drive. I turned on indexing using mdutil but there's no blinking dot. I tried the add-then-remove method in Spotlight system preferences and that did not work, either. Time to post to Apple Discussions—tomorrow or Thursday, perhaps. Telecommute day tomorrow. Lunch today was a taco and enchilada special and chips at Carmelina's. Dinner: wonton soup, cashew chicken, brown rice, hot tea at House of Chen. While waiting for dinner I brainstormed ideas for new directions for the School of Pharmacy website. My fortune: From the floors of the ocean, the waves of the tide, a vacation awaits you far and wide. 04, 13, 24, 36, 40, 16. Bought some books at a bookstore. While I was in the store, I overheard an employee—a gay man—who retold over the telephone to a friend his visit to his lesbian doctor. Part of his visit included a prostate exam, and his doctor tried but failed to locate his prostate, then she proceeded to explain her embarrassment at the situation—she thought her fingers were too small. The man then told her the story of a male gynecologist who was examining a woman, her feet in stirrups. He says, "My God! You have the biggest vagina I have ever seen! My God! You have the biggest vagina I have ever seen!" And the woman said, "Okay, but you didn't have to repeat yourself!" And the gynecologist said, "I didn't! I didn't!" I don't know how his prostate exam ended, but he did say he told this joke during his prostate exam, which I thought was funny. Everything overheard is fair game for blogging, isn't it? Well, most everything. On the way to Castro Station, big and sparse drops of of rain fell from above and I feared getting caught in a downpour, but I didn't. When the train emerged at West Portal, there was no rain at all. On the way home a man got off at my stop and immediately began whirling in each hand a ball in what looked like a long sock. It was something related to juggling but I didn't know the name for it, and I thought it strange that he practiced while he walked, and he seemed to be in quite a hurry. Stretches. Weight training: concentration curl, superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow dumbbell press, dumbbell fly, advanced weighted crunch. Stretches. Late meal: organic blackberries, hot nonfat milk, organic raspberries with light whipped cream, leftovers from dinner with steamed white rice.

Wed Aug 6, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Telecommute day. I forgot to mention yesterday that I also approved a bunch of photos in the moderated Flickr stream which feeds photos to the School of Pharmacy home page. There doesn't seem to be a way for me to get an RSS feed of the photos in the queue awaiting moderation, so I will have to check manually which I haven't been remembering to do. Investigated some new online backup solutions. Most promising seems to be Zoogmo but I would wait for it to come out of beta at least and hear some reviews from the initial users. Sticking with Mozy at home and at work for now. Small web edits: backup, orientation. Read about tripit, plazes, fireeagle, dopplr, compfight, phorm, oix, webwise, wikinear, google static maps api, oauth. Google Maps printing feature got a huge upgrade which I like very much so far. I was a little disoriented at first because there was no warning that the interface had changed, but I kept plodding through my task and found the new behaviors and features useful. I still copied the link from Firefox and pasted it into Safari for printing—I wish I knew whether they yet fixed the bug in which printing from Firefox means your route doesn't show up on your printout. Lately when I try to install an update for Adobe Reader 8.1.2 for OS X, I receive the following error message: "Installation Incomplete. Installer Message: The patch has failed because the application has been modified since it was originally installed (for example, plug-ins may have been disabled). Please go to the Adobe support website for more information regarding how to re-enable disabled components prior to installing the patch. Or, you can uninstall and reinstall the application, and then reinstall the patch. Adobe Reader 8.1.2 Security Update 1 (KB403742) failed to install. (OK)" Solution: Remove (delete) Reader 8.1.2 from the Applications folder, then download and install Reader 9. Lunch: two turkey burgers, tater tots, hot tea. Read about Google Socialstream, Yahoo Mosh. Read about tumblr (again), streem.us, hi5, friendfeed, swurl, sphinn, davidhasselhoff.com (-- a social networking site, who knew?), sweetcron. Signed up to be notified about sweetcron's release, but I am not at all optimistic that it will happen anytime soon. Created text for new door lock signs. Dinner at home with Patrick: gemelli with marinara sauce, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Lots of traffic—took nearly an hour to get downtown. Saw The Dark Knight on IMAX with psychobauble, Nate, and Patrick. The film gave me chills right from the beginning and held my interest to the very end. I don't know that it deserves a 9.3 on imdb, but Ledger's performance is indeed disturbingly convincing. Worth seeing again? Yes, perhaps next time not on IMAX. The big screen is impressive, but it doesn't capture fast-moving action well—it's too hard to take in the giant blurs of motion. Late meal: chunky soup.

Thu Aug 7, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Small web edit for Eric V. Worked with Lisa C at BPS regarding bps.ucsf.edu. Staff meeting. I got 2 spot awards! Woo! Updated current students news and calendar, entering students calendar. Announced the postponement of the upgrade of the wireless access point in the student lounge: mailing lists, web, sign. Entourage 2008 (12.1.0) crashed when I attempted to create a new, recurring calendar item:

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS
Crashed Module Name: libobjc.A.dylib
Crashed Module Version: unknown
Crashed Module Offset: 0x000146e8
Blame Module Name: libobjc.A.dylib
Blame Module Version: unknown
Blame Module Offset: 0x000146e8
Application LCID: 1033
Extra app info: Reg=en Loc=0x0409

Entourage successfully restarted. Tried to create the same appointment—crashed again. Workaround: Opened Outlook 2007 and successfully created the appointment there instead. I have had this problem several times in the past, and although Microsoft later comes out with updates for Entourage and I install them, the problem is not yet fixed. Linkchecking: fixed up bps links. Chatted briefly with Eric D. Installed the Google Earth Plug-in (Windows only). Lots of email followup. Listserv deletions. Made a "how do i get in?" sign for the new cardkey door locks. Dinner at PDD's.

Fri Aug 8, 2008

Well I am glad to say that I was wrong about Sweetcron by Yongfook. I received word by email today that it launches in 20 days, but it's unclear whether this will be a beta or 1.0 release or something else. Nevertheless, how exciting! What makes Sweetcron interesting to me is: it's free (to use); it's PHP (we like PHP for a lot of different reasons); it's a bold, new direction for personal publishing; it's open-source (so if the boat starts to sink we can theoretically patch and keep paddling on our own); it looks pretty (a drop of eye candy doesn't hurt). Yongfook's writing reflects a fair amount of arrogance, which I don't like, but at the same time it can also make me laugh, so that balances things out some. His Sweetcron announcement, for instance, was cheekily intimate. Software developers generally aren't praised for writing words that make people laugh or feel comfortable, so I am intrigued by this uniqueness. He stands out without even trying, I think. Last night I watched 3 video clips from Jesse James Garrett and Mozilla Labs describing a potential future web browsing technology called Aurora. Garrett is undoubtedly one of the most important people designing technologies for the web, but I had a hard time believing that Aurora as presented would be successful. I like the idea of creating futuristic short videos to inspire people to create, but the designs shown don't work for me for a number of reasons. In Aurora, it seems that everything interesting you can do is hidden—there are very few obvious interface elements with which to interact except for abstract data objects. To me, this presents a challenging learning curve because it means there is very little to explain how things work—e.g., what can be done with the data objects. With an interface that is so very different than what we use now, I think it will be very hard for people to transition. Aurora might be successful with younger generations who have not yet started using computers, but older generations might be left behind because it seems that nothing in Aurora makes it easy to learn how to use. The video clips show a radial menu appearing over an object, but he doesn't say how it is invoked (right-click?). And why are the possible actions presented with mystery meat navigation? Also hidden are the drag-and-drop actions. How are people supposed to know what to drag and drop where in order to perform the desired action? How would you build teaching tools into the application or online help to accommodate that? What behavior do you get with a table that doesn't support the chart presentation object? Would I have to drag different presentation objects over a table one by one just to find the one that works with it? The clip with the older couple performing multiple, complex information processing actions was interesting, but I had to laugh on the inside—nearly all the people I know older than me would struggle to perform such complicated actions on a desktop computer, and they probably wouldn't be able to do so on an index-card-sized handheld device as easily as depicted. The video doesn't seem to account for dexterity or visual acuity issues which are common with older users. And where did undo and the Back button go? How do you search your history using a method that isn't linear or iconic? Are "temporary" objects stored forever? If not, what happens to them? If the Z axis represents time, what do X and Y represent? I guess the problem with these videos is that they only show the result rather than the path to the result, and that might be okay if the path to the result really won't be as difficult as it seems. Perhaps Garrett really has thought of everything and these kinds of questions will be answered in future clips. Let's hope so. For example, perhaps in a learning mode, when you move your cursor across the left side of the screen the word History briefly appears and then fades away. But right now it seems that Aurora emphasizes object-based, visual simplicity with few explicit command elements at the expense of a steep learning curve, and I fear it will be too abstract to be successful. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Pointed links to the ASSP calendar to a new location provided by student DS. Gave permission to Kate V to use my UCSF photos for UDAR communications. cdrom build followup with Jon J and Albert H. Lunch with James, Ena, and Joel at NKRB. Followup with student EC about the Rho Chi website. Began adding info about the SHS insurance waiver option to our website. Followup with Sierra A and Barbara S regarding RCO websites and ExpressionEngine. Troubleshot a network problem with Cesar and Scott. Read about AOL's buddyupdates. Began coding the entering students update web page. Updated my Flickr profile to grant UC employees wider permission than before to use my UCSF-related photos for business purposes. Patrick picked me up from work. Read about SimpleLife, ComplexLife, quotably. Dinner at JY and Adrian's: delivery from Red Jade, watched the 2008 Olympic Summer Games Opening Ceremonies on HD TV. I found the show to be stunning in scope, precision, beauty, elegance, and execution; I was very impressed. It was very strange to see Taiwan represented as Chinese Taipei and carrying the Olympic flag. We all got a laugh when the athletes representing Iraq entered the stadium and the camera cut to Bush's reaction. It was a long show, but the ending with the lighting of the giant torch was worth it to me. Show ended at midnight, and we drove home not long afterwards. Thanks, Adrian and JY!

Sat Aug 9, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: advanced weighted crunch. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Cut my hair, showered. Took care of The New Yorker paperwork. Prepared gifts and cards. Read about Twinkle. Just happened to notice that tinkle.ws is an available domain name. Processed and uploaded photos to Flickr. Read in bed while Patrick napped. Helped Patrick with a file conversion process that took some figuring out, and I reminded him that he shouldn't be buying music from the Apple iTunes Store. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow lateral raise, superslow dumbbell press, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl. Stretches. Late lunch at home: chunky soup, tater tots, hot water. More photo editing. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, mashed potatoes with gravy, roasted corn off the cob. I fell asleep while Patrick and I watched the remainder of Wings of Desire on DVD. Woke up late at night, did computer things. Snack: popcorn. In looking at the popcorn box, I thought how strange that popcorn manufacturers include nutrition information on the box for the popcorn as unpopped. They also include the values as popped, but why for unpopped? Who is going to eat unpopped popcorn AND wonder how nutritious it is for them? Who envisioned people all over the United States comparing different popcorn boxes and making very educated buying decisions based on the unpopped values? Maybe it's the FDA that requires it—that would explain everything. Went back to bed.

Sun Aug 10, 2008

Facebook's Flickr option in the mini-feed doesn't show thumbnails in my profile. I looked for a competing Facebook app that would but couldn't find any that automatically refreshed and also didn't have bugs. Today Patrick and I drove to Corte Madera to spend a few hours with Melissa who was housesitting for a friend. We got there a little early and enjoyed morning coffee at a nearby Peet's—it felt strange to sit outside drinking coffee when the weather was sunny and warm. We had some difficulty finding the right house since the house numbers were out of order. We eventually found the right one, and after being invited in for a few minutes we stepped out again to get some brunch and explore the area. We ate at a nearby diner then checked out the Marin Civic Center Farmer's Market where we bought fruits and vegetables. Afterwards we returned to the house and drank cold flavored iced tea. Despite the hot weather, we enjoyed our time with Melissa. Drove home. Patrick napped. Dinner at Buca di Beppo with Ludwig, Dave, Dave, Phil, Drew, Danny, Jen, Patrick, Chris, and Nate. Patrick and I gave Nate an eraser shaped like a Delete key (from Giant Robot), MON-KEYS (key identifiers shaped like monkey heads), and The River Cottage Meat Book (hardcover) by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Home. Archived documents. Prepared an anniversary card. Completed and prepared for mailing a thank you card. Found Patrick's Chinese character signature stamp (#1) which we had been looking for earlier. It was in my desk drawer with the stamps and envelopes.

Mon Aug 11, 2008

Web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. We went over our hour meeting time by another hour! Helped student JE with password change. Helped student HY with Outlook 2007 configuration. Web edits: health insurance waiver, August entering students update. InDesign work: cardkey reader sign. Followup with (the other) Frank F and TBS about cardkey installation. Requested a key to an office down the hall. Websteering lunch coordination. Very late lunch by myself at Bistro 9. It was the first time I ate on the back patio, and I found it surprisingly charming because of all the flowers and greenery. If only nearby Park Chow or Pasta Pomodoro could be as lush. Service by Talia was mostly very good—just a little inattentive near the end, and no one checked after my first bite to see if everything was okay (which it was). Burger and fries were very delicious and perfectly presented. Tea was served loose in a pot with a strainer for the cup, which made the 2nd cup undrinkably bitter. The first cup was delicious, though. My $4 pot of Moroccan was also served with freshly chopped mint—perfect, but again it's only worth the first cup for a single diner. Back to work. Secret work. Flickr photostreams review. Scheduling. Home. Installed a small fluorescent light bulb over the stove. Dinner at home with Patrick: naan and yellow chicken chicken. Watched Who Killed the Electric Car? on Netflix DVD with Patrick.

Tue Aug 12, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Site review for BTS. City tours and app workshop updates. Followup with students HY and DS about different issues. Lunch: leftovers. Posted notices about the office closure tomorrow. InDesign work: Albert needed edits due to font issues. I sent him revised copies and he says they are good. Picked up my key to the office down the hall. Snack: taco #11 from Carmelina's. Generated requested student data for Lucia using the staff portal reports feature. Gave Eric V some tips on selecting an internet service provider. He doesn't currently have a land line, so I recommended (in order of trustworthiness): sonic.net, dslextreme.com, speakeasy.net, comcast, att. I also reminded him to remember to ask for promo pricing after his first year was up. Interestingly, comcast had 6-month promo pricing on their website but it's website only—Eric V had called them on the phone and the price was much higher. Home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover garlic bread with tomatos, marinated chicken, steamed asparagus. Paperwork for Wayne K. Installed Office 12.1.2 for OS X update. Ordered a yellow ink cartridge for the printer. Caught up on journaling. Archived documents. Stretches. Weight training: lots of upper body: superslow concentration curl, face outline, superslow lateral raise, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl, shrug. Stretches. Late meal: black cherry lowfat yogurt, hot nonfat milk, leftover penne with tomato sauce from Buca di Beppo.

Wed Aug 13, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Linkchecking: we have a bunch of websites that others in the school or university own but they don't seem to be paying any attention to the linkchecking scripts that I have set up which enables them to identify broken links easily for resolution. So, to encourage broken link resolution, today I added the owners' names to the linkcheck table. I figure that people will not like to see their name associated with a website that has, say, 411 broken links. And this is simply a clearer communication than we were doing in the past. The next step is to get the broken link counts directly on the table—right now you have to click in (or pogostick) to see them. That will require more work than I have time for right now, so it will have to wait at least a few weeks. Today is staff appreciation day at UCSF School of Pharmacy. A picnic in Golden Gate Park and your choice of de Young Museum general admission, or Chihuly exhibit with general admission, or paddle boats, or volleyball (or all of the above). I volunteered to help out with the event's administration, but it was not much work at all—Sue and the others were very organized. Lunch: bbq chicken, baked beans, cornbread, cole slaw, water, one peanut butter cookie. Surrey ride with Shannon, Lisa, and JWG. The surrey is a lot of fun, and I would like to return to it again some day. (If you want to join me, please send me a message.) Chihuly with Joel. Camera batteries died in the first room, no spares. I plan to return with Patrick anyhow. I found the exhibit really amazing. My favorite part was the room with the glass ceiling. After observing the room a while, I stood for several minutes just watching the facial expressions of people as they entered the room—it's a magical space. Back to the picnic. Ate more food: 2 chicken drumsticks, 1 large spare rib, small salad, water. Eric D thought the Chihuly exhibit was so powerful as to be visually overwhelming, and I agreed. The day's event seemed to go very smoothly, and it seemed everyone enjoyed this a lot more than the previous Giants game staff appreciation days. I was very impressed overall. Walked with Eric D. Napped briefly on the bus ride home. Helped student CHK with change password. Dinner at home with Patrick: cow burgers with muenster and green bell pepper, french fries, tater tots, corn on the cob. Music: Temperamental (1999) by Everything But The Girl. Processed and uploaded photos. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, wrist curl, advanced one-legged plank, advanced one-legged side plank. Stretches including arch. To bed early (21:58).

Thu Aug 14, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Linkchecking work: more of the same from yesterday with script adjustments. Followup with students with full inboxes. More helping of students with password change. Chatted with Eric D about some new Flash that he has produced for one of our web pages. Followup with La'Trece about a check for Monday. Reported a problem with ph.ucsf.edu to OAAIS. Web steering lunch at Crepevine with Julie B, Dave H, Abby S, Ed C, Eric D, Kirk F. Dave H made my day when he said, imitating Arnold Schwarzenegger's voice, "My Hummer runs on Crocs." Dave is really quite funny, I only just realized. CSC meetings are now called IT Services meetings. More linkchecking. Chris C is going through boxes of old stuff wondering what to keep, and he let me select some old media that might be interesting to save for posterity. Responded to student CHK who wants Outlook to connect to 2 different Exchange servers—this question doesn't have an easy answer; I need the answer to 6 questions, and then there are 5 possible scenarios. Questions:

  1. why do you need to issue a separate account?
  2. do you use calendaring features (or other features provided by exchange and not pop/imap)?
  3. are your people listed in the UCSF global address list?
  4. is there any connection with the UCSF forest?
  5. will the student be sending or receiving any confidential data in e-mail?
  6. what computing support services are available to the student in her role with your unit?

Possible solutions:

  1. use outlook profiles
  2. connect to one server as POP/IMAP
  3. use OWA for one account
  4. add alias to existing account
  5. transition all mail and close @ucsf.edu account

On the way out from work I ran into student RY who told me he's a friend of my cousin Fletcher. Dinner at home with Patrick: mini farfalle with shrimp and vegetable marinara, dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light. Watched Shortbus (2006, unrated) on DVD borrowed from psychobauble and Nate—we both liked the film a lot. I think there hasn't been a film as sexpressively humorous as Shortbus since P.J. Castellaneta's Relax It's Just Sex (1998), and it is in many ways a pioneer in filmmaking. Soundtrack was excellent, too. Why doesn't Apple iCal let you delete a calendar item? You can use the Cut command, but it's not intuitive (because probably every other calendaring application ever made lets you Delete an item), and maybe I don't want the calendar item on my clipboard displacing whatever was there already, huh? What happened to "it just works"? Late snack: leftover chinese chicken salad from lunch today. Stretches.

Fri Aug 15, 2008

Been thinking about Who Killed The Electric Car? which we watched on Netflix DVD recently. This film should have been called Who Killed the GM EV1? I didn't like some of the standard documentary style (e.g., cue the strings during the part you're supposed to be sad) and that it told you what you were supposed to think while glossing over what is probably a much larger body of evidence than they showed, but I thought it was informative nonetheless. The part that didn't seem to ring true for me, though, was why bother beating up on GM? Why force a company to do something it so obviously didn't want it to do? Those passionate people should have instead gone to another auto manufacturer or started a new company instead of wasting so much energy on GM. (Ironic, since their concern was ultimately an energy debate.) Why couldn't the battery genius have developed a new and better battery than the one he sold earlier to GM and then sell that to one of GM's competitors? Or if they knew that demand was strong, why couldn't they have started their own car company?—very difficult from the ground up, probably, but not impossible. From the EV1 entry in Wikipedia, it seems clear that GM now realizes their mistake. For not only could they have had a 10-year lead on electric cars, but now, knowing this history, who will trust GM enough to buy an electric or hybrid car from them? The damage done to their reputation is probably much worse than whatever short-term gain they thought they might have had by taking the actions they did. Companies really do need to listen to the customer, and it really is true that the most important thing is the relationship—not the product or service. For me, Who Killed The Electric Car? is more a lesson about how—at a certain point—passionate people need to let go and find new directions than it is about who was right or wrong about the EV1. I firmly believe that sometimes you just need to let people and corporations make their own mistakes. You don't control the birds (3F22). 2-hour web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. Cindy announced recently that Eric V has accepted the position of student affairs assistant—his first official day is Monday. Congrats, Eric! Small web edit for Eric V (admissions deadline error). Followup with various students: password change. Helped Joel get word- and character-count estimates for our supp app questions. Lunch: carving station pork sandwich to go from the cafeteria: $4.39. Met with Kirk F and Sierra A about Kirk's replacement for calendar.ucsf.edu. We tossed around a number of requirements, samples, and ideas. More work with Eric D on the slideshow. Scanned documents for Cindy. Followup with Albert H about cdrom duplication. Small web edits for Susie: Board of Advisors. Eric D made live the slideshow he's been working on, and I announced. Followup with Brandon A for student CKH. Followup with Sierra A about the test account she created for us. Dinner at home with Patrick: Mollie Stone's Italian meatloaf, Annie's organic macaroni and cheese, peas. Watched extras from Shortbus (2006, unrated) on DVD borrowed from psychobauble and Nate. A really good call to cut a number of Peter Sickles' scenes—they really didn't fit the film writingwise or plotwise.

Sat Aug 16, 2008

Slept in. I realized yesterday my profound disappointment and continuing decline in faith in Apple. I had been searching for files on my computer using Spotlight and it didn't find the files I expected it to find. So then I started searching for filenames that I knew existed, and it still wouldn't find those! All these files were local to my computer. At work, sometime within the past few days, Spotlight wasn't finding files on my network drives, even with the Command+F method of finding that I previously thought had worked. (I am already resigned that top-right-corner Spotlight will not find files on network folders no matter what you do.) So now, in my mind, I have added Spotlight to my list of Apple Features and Technologies Which I No Longer Trust, which includes FileVault, Active Directory, cd and dvd burning (especially multisession dvd). In the short time that I have been using Apple hardware and software daily at home and at work, I find it impossible to understand how some people have unrestricted faith in Apple. Yes, some things work very well, but a surprisingly large number of things do not. If you really use Apple products, you have to know, deep down at least, that Apple isn't everything it claims to be. Blocked benlance1 on twitter—spammer. Two requirements that I am guessing have been missing from all calendar application functional specifications in history: (1) I will never see duplicates. (2) I will never have all—or nearly all—my calendar data deleted without a guaranteed-to-work, easy, and immediate recovery process. Someone add these to the list today, please. It's time. Spent the morning doing nothing at home. In the afternoon I drove to my sister's family's house in Sunnyvale for a birthday pool party for my niece Kiana who turns 3 this year. Shawn, Lance, Grace, and Drew were there, too, as well as Dexter, Chika, Johnson, Samantha. We all admired the new poolside bbq station, complete with fancy grill, sink, and refrigerator. Played a quick game of chess with Jeremy.

Sun Aug 17, 2008

Slept in. Created a TokBox account, but upon logging in it said it could not connect to IM—try again later. I tried again later and it said the same thing. Not a favorable experience. Today I stopped following the Flickr group called Top 20 Seattle because I realized far too late that I had been misled. From the group's description: "These are the top 20 shots that embody the spirit of the great city of Seattle. Pretty open-ended, but that's kind of the idea." But nearly all the photos lately have been photos with the Space Needle or Pike Place Market in them. Come on, Seattle Flickrites—you can do better than that! The group should have been named Almost All Space Needle Photos. I learned today that there are actually a whole bunch of lawyers who specialize in cases involving Muni, e.g., muniaccidentlawyers.com, muniaccidentdeathattorney.com, and cartwrightlaw.com. With as many accidents as Muni has, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. Photoshopped and flickrd. Flickr Uploadr repeatedly failed (Houston, we have a problem) while attempting to upload photos. Did some housecleaning. Dinner at home with Patrick, Dave, Ludwig, Danny, Drew, Phil: auvergne salad with ham, candied walnuts, aged cheddar; pommes anna; chicken fricassee with morels and fin sherry. Dessert: chocolate chip cookies, assorted sorbets. Cleanup. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow lateral raise, shrug, crunch. Monday and Tuesday I'll be with Susie at An Event Apart in The Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco.

Mon Aug 18, 2008

Yesterday in OS X I saw some weird hover redraw issues with the Dock. When hovering over icons in the dock, some icons would disappear completely and others would be only partially drawn with horizontal strips entirely missing—weird! I logged out and logged back in and now the problem is gone. Not sure what caused it. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Attended An Event Apart San Francisco in the Palace Hotel downtown. Susie L also attended, as we had planned, and I hadn't expected it but so did Jeff M. The 3 of us stuck together throughout the day. Day 1 of the event was mostly excellent. I took lots of notes and will have lots to think about afterwards. Ran into Jayson J who said he was there with Ricki-Ellen B, but after that break ended I couldn't find him again. I stayed for a few minutes of the Adobe presentation (Responsible Web Design) but it seemed like stuff I already knew and was going to be focused on Dreamweaver, so I left. I thought I might have gone to the mediatemple party, but I didn't want to go alone, so I called Patrick to let him know I would just come home. Here's the feedback I later provided for today's speakers at An Event Apart:

  1. Zeldman: Amazing speaking skills and tho I disagree with him on the greatness of Douglas Bowman's WordPress template as a specific example, I understand what he means. Did not know about NO!SPEC, thx for putting tips 9 & 10 out there!
  2. Meyer: Saved me a lot of time if I were to evaluate these on my own, I think I will try WYMstyle on my next big project and—as they suggest—customize to make it my own.
  3. Santa Maria: I got really hungry at 11:13, but that's just me. *loved* the wired examples (print vs web), and i like that he's encouraging us to think about this tho at some point you have to accept that they are different media - they can't be the same. check out fantasticsmag.com for a website that tries to be more like a glossy magazine. it's not as polished as i would like, but you have to admit the giant photos are relatively unique. some of their issues also integrate video in creative ways.
  4. Wroblewski: Excellent info and great collection of examples—very efficient telling. I don't think the Moonlight 3 example is a very positive one, though—I see the layout shapes more than I see the data. Great job!
  5. Champ: Great lessons and examples. Naughty words did not bother me, but thanks for the warning anyway.
  6. Danzico: I don't know jazz very well, so this was hard for me to understand but I did find it fascinating and mind-stretching. A little frustrating that she could not name examples of websites that incorporate improv. Laptop sound was an unfortunate problem.
  7. Cederholm: Would have been better without the A-Z sham. Worth it most especially for the easy-clearing floats. The rest was part good-to-hear and part "i know i'll never use it". Thx for confirming that I'm doing things right (like relative units and .last).

Muni was awful for the ride home. I'm too tired to provide many details, but in a nutshell I didn't know that Muni can switch the trains without warning—you can't trust that the announcements saying what trains are coming will be correct when they actually arrive. That and poor train spacing (or bad headways) made it challenging to keep the inner peace. I don't usually take a train from downtown to home during rush hour, so I'm not familiar with these patterns as probably many others are. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover chicken fricassee, corn on the cob, french fries, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Worked on The New Yorker paperwork. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, crunch, superslow front raise. Stretches.

Tue Aug 19, 2008

I woke up unexpectedly at exactly 4:00 AM, got up at exactly 4:08 AM, and typed some thoughts that I will probably share at a later time. An Event Apart San Francisco Day 2. I had a great time at An Event Apart. A lot of it was review, and a lot of it enabled me to confirm that I've been doing things mostly right all along, but I also learned a lot and have a ton of things to look up later. I highly recommend it for anyone who builds websites. Here's the feedback I later provided for today's speakers at An Event Apart:

  1. Meyer: I don't ever need to do such heavy-duty troubleshooting but can come back to this if I do. Still very worthwhile.
  2. Featherstone: Timing got a little off near the end, but what fantastic examples! I'm not doing AJAX stuff yet, but this will be helpful when I do.
  3. Celik: No printed slides - wah! :-( Links called "Add to my Outlook calendar" or "Add to my iCal calendar" all seemed to point to (technorati?)—would have appreciated how we would do this ourselves without relying on a technorati generator.
  4. Goto: Was not useful to me since we have only 2 coders on our web team, but I can see it would be useful for larger teams.
  5. Veen: Did he speak about the next gen of web apps? Mostly not, but I don't mind since he still had plenty other interesting things to say. A pleasure to listen to, probably on any topic.

Also:

Q: Would you advise a friend or colleague to attend? Why or why not?

A: Absolutely! It doesn't matter if you're a beginner, intermediate, or expert web worker—An Event Apart unquestionably brings you the sharpest experts in the field discussing the latest topics. You'll learn more than you expected, and you won't be disappointed!

Q: Any other thoughts you'd like to share with us?

A: Thanks for starting/ending on time, having presenters repeat the question (most of the time), great sound & video (except for the laptop sound), presuming we know stuff—not explaining every acronym or thing. I wish you had a Facebook group set up before the event so we could identify others with common interests and meet up during the event - e.g., if I knew who else was a Bay Area higher education web developer I would probably have arranged to sit with them at lunch. Some slides didn't match the conference notes—I was lost during Liz Danzico. Ask everyone to use tinyurl *everywhere*—even the followup AEA email had long URLs that got broken in Entourage 2008. Some slides with black backgrounds did not reproduce well—e.g., Meyer (Debug/Reboot). Cigarette smoke drifting in from the sidewalk was a small problem—it gives me headaches almost instantly, so I am ultrasensitive. Conference notes could have included headshot photos for speakers *and* thumbnails of those photos next to their names on the page headers. Room was too cold, but could just be me.

Dinner at Tony Roma's (415-374-2733, 2 Embarcadero Center, Promenade Level, San Francisco, California, USA 94111) with Patrick: small caesar salad, bbq burger with onion rings, newcastle for Patrick; bbq chicken sandwich, hot water for me. $28.72 after a $5 tip. Dining experience was just okay, but we went because Patrick had never been and we didn't know what better there was in the area. (I wasn't in the mood for Schroeder's.) Stretches.

Wed Aug 20, 2008

Followup on cdrom dupe with Albert H. Helped Mike L with password change. Followup with students KT, MM, and AP about mailbox too full. Followup with Brandon A about student CHK's email. Followup with recent grad CJ and Development about email services for alums. Cardkey lock sign followup. Lunch: takeout from the cafeteria: turkey sandwich, chicken and rice soup, water. Interview. Flickr work. Set up a meeting for the cardkey lock sign issue. MyAccess followup with Jann F and Heidi S—sent them a link to Chris Messina's collection of login form screen snaps. Set up new recurring meetings using Outlook 2007 because Entourage 2008 always crashes when I set up a recurring meeting. BPS website followup. Answered a question from entering student JZ about computer requirements. Forwarded Susie the job description for the digital asset manager position that are soon to hire. Dinner at home with Patrick: stuffing-stuffed chicken boobs, steamed baby bok choy, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Caught up on email, etc. Ordered Chihuly tickets for 9:30 AM on Saturday, August 23—join us if you like. Took care of final The New Yorker paperwork. evite is screwed up today: "We're sorry. Your session has expired." and also when I add info to my profile and click Save it isn't saved!

Thu Aug 21, 2008

Cardkey lock sign followup. Posted a new P1 schedule for Lucia. Got run in a circle trying to find the owner of the web page that describes our PharmD/PhD program. Decision is now pending with Lisa C. 1:1 with Cindy. Small course subs edit for Cindy. Lunch: (can't remember). Interview. (Can't remember other details for today, including dinner.)

Fri Aug 22, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Windows XP maintenance for me, installed Microsoft, KeePass, VLC updates. Disk Cleanup. Prepared for defrag. Prepped the old OSACA server for shutdown, then shut it down. Helped recent grad JH with the alumni email signup. Post-GALEN wireless meeting. Coded a static replacement for a page which had broken because ph.ucsf.edu was running on itssrv1 which had shut down a few weeks ago. Alumni email followup. Updated staff page to reflect Eric V's permanent status. Supp app workshop update for Scott. Did some checking to see if we can support some kind of formmail script. Lunch with Joel at Ten. We had a long talk in a good way. Cardkey lock sign meeting. Coded the new grad fairs web page. Added link to School of Medicine electives. Filled out the An Event Apart 2008 survey.

Sat Aug 23, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Cut my hair, showered. Chihuly exhibit with Patrick at the de Young Museum. Lunch at San Wang. Home. Processed and uploaded photos. Flickr Uploadr failed again when uploading. "Try again" worked, but I had to create my sets manually afterwards. Patrick took a bath then a nap. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow dumbbell press, superslow lateral raise, superslow front raise, wrist curl, crunch. Stretches.

Sun Aug 24, 2008

Lunch at Remi's with Remi, Jesse, David, Bruce, and Chris G. Remi and Jesse prepared a fantastic Vietnamese spring rolls lunch with rice noodles and a variety of meats and vegetables. I'm impressed every time they cook. Afterwards we didn't have any immediate plans, so Chris invited us over for some sunbathing. Stopped at a Chinese restaurant on the way home, where we watched part of the hour before the Olympics closing ceremonies. Home. Ate dinner. Tried to find where on NBC's website we could watch the Olympics closing ceremonies from a live stream of NBC11, but were unsuccessful after about 15 minutes of looking, so we didn't see it. Instead we watched The Cho Show on vh1.com which worked but was an unpleasant experience not because of the show but because of all the WaMu and Microsoft commercials and because the video wasn't completely smooth. Nonetheless, the show had us laughing, and it's probably much better than what All-American Girl ever could have become. Margaret did this right—I'm so happy for her and hope the show does well. Caught up on journaling.

Mon Aug 25, 2008

Jon released the Sweetcron admin panel video on YouTube, so I checked it out this morning. It looks good! Changed password for our ExpEng test account from Sierra A. More server decommission work. Ran DBAN on one old server and one old computer. Linkchecking. Lunch: leftovers from home. Cardkey sign and procedure work. Reviewed the DMM draft of our cdrom dupe. Forms maintenance—removed deprecated code that adjusted field widths for browsers that were popular in 2001. Downloaded and installed Winclone. Prepared to upgrade my Win XP VM to a Vista VM. Overnight defrag before running Winclone tomorrow. Scrubbed and rinsed the car windows to remove grimy residue. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, steamed broccoli with Italian dressing, brown rice for me, white rice for Patrick, large dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Worked on Danny's website. Stretches. Weight training: superslow shrug, superslow dumbbell press, superslow dumbbell curl, concentration curl. Late meal: leftover pasta in red sauce, lowfat yogurt, hot water.

Tue Aug 26, 2008

Posted the following question to VMware communities forum: "On hard drive #1 I have OS X which is taking up about 85 GB with about 150 GB available. On hard drive #2 I have Win XP as Boot Camp which is taking up 22 GB with about 475 GB free. I would like to install Windows Vista as a VM but still keep Win XP in case I don't like Vista. Is it possible for me to create a duplicate of the Win XP (image?) and then upgrade that to Vista so that I don't have to reinstall all my apps? I hardly ever use Boot Camp anymore, so if necessary I can give that up for both XP and Vista. And, I'm not picky about where the Vista VM will live as long as any partition resizing or restructuring is relatively easy and reliable. Or, am I expecting too much with Vista's ability to upgrade XP reliably and I should do a clean, separate install of Vista? What do you think? Using Fusion 1.1.3. Thanks!" Old server finished dbanning, prepped it for decommission. "windows cannot locate the server copy" after a long delay while attempting to log in as admin—fixed it by opening ADU&C in MMC and removing an old path for the profile path. Cardkey door lock installs are proceeding on schedule. cdrom dupe is a little late, but should be done by the end of the week. Said hello to Eric D. Dropped off MacBook Pro cdroms to Rodney. Installed Adium 1.3. MyAccess review. Lunch: leftovers. Prepared id card spreadsheet for Terence. MyAccess review took the rest of the day. Home. Snack: nonfat mixed berry yogurt. Blocked kravelasvegas on twitter - gay spam. Installed Michael Kaply's Operator both at work and at home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Did some scripting for Danny's website. Marked up the frankfarm.org contact page with microformats. The microformats specification and cheatsheet for hCard is really hard to understand. It took me a really long time to figure out that you can't have something with class="fn" that's more than 2 words. If you do, then it won't be imported to, say, Apple Address Book properly—it comes in with no name at all. To make it work, you need class="fn org" but then I don't know if my use of it is correct, and the microformats wiki doesn't provide any obvious guidance on this matter. I'm wanting to mark up an email address that sends email to 2 people—like a really tiny mailing list. Should I use org for this? I don't know. Stretches. Weight training: advanced one-legged plank, advanced one-legged side plank. Stretches. Late meal: leftover pasta pomodoro. More work on Danny's website. Shopped online for shoes and for backpacks for kids—bought nothing. Noticed that Zappos now has clothing including kids' clothing, but it's mostly priced much higher than I'm used to paying at H&M Boys. I decided today that my backpack is too big for me, so I'm going to find a kid-sized backpack instead and see how that goes.

Wed Aug 27, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Revised the ECAP brochure for Grace C. Reported network permissions problems to Cesar for Eric D. MyAccess followup. Content Capture & Delivery Working Group meeting. Chatted briefly with Eric V about IRC orientation and ID card appointments. Lunch with Joel at Cybelle's: hawaiian monster slice for him, deluxe hawaiian monster slice for me, we split a large garden salad. Home page edits: image credit for Eric D. Began coding a new update from the dean. Muni was terrible again today: 1 hour to get to work, 30 minutes to get home. There were 3 L trains in a row with a 4th not far behind at 6:55 PM. Dinner at home with Patrick: breaded baked chicken, steamed green beans and julienned carrots, ovenbaked scalloped potatoes. Added microformats (vcard) to the Recharge Spa website.

Thu Aug 28, 2008

I haven't updated the journal in a long time because my computer crashed on September 1, right after I returned from a trip to Seattle. I had to get the computer fixed (hard drive failure), and I had recorded journal entries offline. Now I am backpopulating those entries—it will take some time. Helped Aaron by email with computer trouble. Recently I had to decide how to implement a replacement for formmail from Matt's Script Archives. One site affiliated with the School had previously used a web host that provided it, and now they're with us but no formmail. I contacted the authors of nms to determine if it was still current, still trustworthy—the last updates to the code were, I believe, in 2004. The response I received from Greg McC gave me an indication that although the code still worked it was probably at least a little out of date and could be improved. I thought for a while that I would use nms temporarily while seeking another solution, but we decided instead to use Tectite's formmail script, which Eric D found, as well as reCAPTCHA for additional security. Staff meeting. Followup trying to find out who was responsible for the PharmD/PhD program in our School. Helped student SL with passwords. Followup with Garrett about advertising computer bundles. Followup with Terry McC about wireless. Coded and published new update from the dean. Saved my link to the Sweetcron download. (No time to install it soon.) Posted holiday closure notice. MyAccess followup. Link update for financial aid office. Cardkey sign and troubleshooting steps followup. Podcast page followup. Can't remember any meals for today. In the evening, I packed for our Seattle trip.

Fri Aug 29, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Vacation day. Took Muni and BART (L to K to Glen Park) to SFO. Met psychobauble and Nate at the airport. Flew Alaska Airlines. Picnic pack for $5—worth it. Picked up Advantage rental car—the office where you pick up the cars is a long shuttle ride from the airport. Drove to Kingfish Cafe for lunch: bbq pork sandwich and fries for psychobauble, red beans and rice and tasso and andouille sausage for Nate, Nate and psychobauble split a garden salad, cup of seafood gumbo and shrimp po'boy and ginger beer for Patrick, grilled chicken burger with fries for me, passionfruit iced tea for psychobauble, extra side of cornbread for Nate. I realized after I had ordered that I ordered the most soulless food on the menu, but I wasn't in the mood for anything else and there was so much I couldn't eat because of spiciness. Dessert: coconut cake. Drove past Steve M's place, saw psychobauble and Nate's old house, checked in to the Westin, everyone napped except me. We all got coffee at Monorail Espresso, walked through parts of downtown. There was some gamer convention going on, so we saw lots of teengeeks wearing gamer t-shirts and carrying plastic tchotchke/convention bags on the sidewalks. Everywhere we walked, it seemed that there were a lot more smokers than on sidewalks at home in San Francisco. Missing California anti-smoking laws. We walked to Freeway Park so that Patrick could figure out where to practice tai chi in the morning. Bartell's on the way back to the hotel. Freshened. Went to Steve's party, which included Tom S, Mike, Bryn, Andy, Mike, and many others. I hadn't seen Steve in years, so it was great to see him again. We got a tour of his house. Dinner with psychobauble, Nate, and Patrick at Cafe Soleil (206-325-1126, 1400 34th Avenue, Seattle, Washington, 98122). psychobauble and Nate had introduced me to this restaurant years ago, and it was comforting to see and taste that it hadn't changed all that much. This was my favorite overall dining experience of the 4-day Seattle trip. Pretty exhausted. Hotel. Checked e-mail.

Sat Aug 30, 2008

Woke at 4 AM, couldn't sleep. At around 5 I decided to see if they gym was open and ran in to psychobauble in the elevator—he couldn't sleep, either. We checked out the gym together and he decided to walk around outside. I worked out. Stretches, light cardio (running machine), superslow leg curl, superslow shoulder press, superslow bench press, superslow lat pulldown, tricep kickback, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl. Stretches. Back to the hotel room. Patrick had left to do his tai chi then returned. He hadn't seen the gym so we went together so he could see it. On the way, a beautiful woman wearing pearls on her way to the 40th—no 46th—floor said hello to us at the elevators. psychobauble slept while Patrick, Nate, and I ate brunch at Julia's in Wallingford (206-633-1175, 4401 Wallingford Ave N, Seattle, Washington). Hotel. Pepper upper. psychobauble woke. Tried to ride the bus tunnel to Pioneer Square but it was closed—they're installing light rail due in 2009. Caught a street bus and rode it partway, walked the rest. Stopped at Zeitgeist for refreshments. Looked in at Cafe Hue, but it was closed. Took portraits at the UPS waterfall park. Walked to the Seattle Public Library, which I loved. I could have spent all day inside taking photos, and I didn't want to leave. Late lunch at Mae Phim—my meal ordered as "not spicy" was of course spicy, as I had expected, but it was still good to eat there again. Back to the hotel. Drove to Fremont, walked around. Back to the hotel, rested, freshened. Dinner at La Fontana with psychobauble, Nate, Patrick, Phil, Danny, Drew, and ?. Tony Q's housewarming party, met up with Mikey. Walked back to the hotel.

Sun Aug 31, 2008

Brunch at the marina at Chinook's with Eric, Maia, Griffin, Violet, and Mikey. Saw the Sea Star, which was stinky of cigarettes and was interesting for about 5 minutes. Eric and Maia dropped me off at the hotel. Patrick, psychobauble, Nate, and I walked to Capitol Hill and walked around. Saw Rebar. Mikeob and Brian met up with us along the way. Went up the water tower at Volunteer Park. Lunch at El Jalisco (206-325-9005, 1467 E Republican, Seattle, Washington 98112). Back to Broadway. Back to the hotel. Nap. Got drinks at Purr, which we liked a lot. Dinner at McMenamin's Six Arms with Patrick, psychobauble, Nate. Mikey met us there lateish. Met Bubba.