October 2008
Summary: Danny, Drew, and Phil's Halloween Party
Dates on this page
Wed Oct 1, 2008
Usual granola breakfast. To work. I thought I had a 9:00 meeting this morning, but turns out I don't. Discovered in the listserv admin panel some messages requiring moderation—don't know how they got there. Fortunately they were only a few days old, and I reviewed and approved them all. Student ML stopped by, laptop problems, "LogonUI.exe - Corrupt File—The file or directory \Users\Public\Desktop is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility. (OK)" Troubleshooting with ML's laptop. Listserv work. Reviewed Mozy Pro situation. Helped student SL with email lockout. Signed up for Fastpay, the new payment system for our cafeteria and other places on campus. 5-minute lunch: Panda Express, ate in the library courtyard. My fortunes: You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems—and—The rainbow's treasures will soon belong to you. Content capture and delivery working group meeting. Web edits: podcasting, mscr. Got chicken boob sandwich at Subway. Went to Skit Nite, which was extraordinarily short this year. Processed and uploaded photos. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow curl. Stretches. Running in place. Calf raise. Stretches.
Thu Oct 2, 2008
Cut my hair. Telecommute day. Followup with student DL about problems opening PDF files in Moodle. Followup with student JK about POP settings for Exchange. Listserv work. Web edit: El-Ibiary new co-chair for pharm care. Investigated how to configure Entourage 2008 to view our global address list. (I think you can't without VPN and Network Connect.) Followup with Cesar about mozy and encryption and Sophos and Windows Security Center. Helped resident YK with accidental email closure. Followup with John F about OSL websites for RCOs. Investigated a problem reported by a student in which Firefox 3 in Vista says that the RealPlayer plugin is not compatible. Must test this later. Lunch: ramen noodles with mushroom, bean sprouts, egg, basil, parsley, onion. Web edits: homepage special boxes, mscr. Helped student CT: cardkey. Helped student AP: listserv questions. More YK followup. Chris C reported that students reported a problem in which Acrobat 9 or possibly Reader 9 takes a long time to launch. Need more data. Helped student BP with questions about email. Helped student RG with questions about email. Made live the podcast pages. Followup with AP about listservs. Chatted briefly with Nick M about ActiveSync—I have no ActiveSync instructions on our website. More followup with AP. End of work. Ran Plex for a few minutes today. This time my cursor disappeared and I couldn't do anything useful in Plex. Quit it. Worked in a lot of weight training throughout the day. Dinner at home with Patrick: bucatini with ground cow in marinara, bread, olive oil with balsamic vinegar. Watched part of the Biden/Palin vice presidential debate on BBC's website during dinner. Watched episodes 11 and 12 of Heroes Season 1 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Uninstalled the Blog/RSS importer from Facebook—it doesn't work anymore and I couldn't figure out why. Web work for Danny's website.
Fri Oct 3, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Worked with Charles K to switch dns for the forthcoming bts website. Sent Susie and Eric D info for An Event Apart in December 2009. If you receive an error message similar to: "Reporting-MTA: dns;tbwmcb02.ucsfmedicalcenter.org—Final-Recipient: rfc822; <listnamegoeshere@itssrv1.ucsf.edu>—Action: DELAYED—Status: 4.4.0 (Delivery attempt failed)" then it probably means you addressed a listserv using itssrv1 rather than listserv or listsrv. itssrv1 is no longer a valid domain for listservs at UCSF, but the resulting behavior when you accidentally do does not help you figure out the problem on your own. Followup with YBK about email not working. Helped student QP with Sophos not working properly. Learned how to use the Match Color feature in Photoshop CS3. I had never used it before and it was a little confusing figuring out how to get it to do what I wanted, but I got the hang of it after a few minutes. Blogger template work. Chatted briefly with student JY about email setup. Scanned a document for Cindy. CTSTF work: prioritized needs. Updated Mary Anne's photo everywhere on our website. Discovered that the Partners in D website is no longer active because our accounting team did not pay our invoice in time. Management work. Helped grads PE and JH with post-graduation email. Went over to Phil, Danny, and Drew's. Drew was home. Waited for Phil to get home. Went first to Yo Yo Sushi and was seated quickly but the table next to us was unbearably noisy, so we left without ordering. Went to We Be Sushi, waited about 15 minutes. Ordered 5 maki. Sushi was good and inexpensive. Hung out with PDD at their place for a few hours. I think they're ready to buy an iMac. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell overhead tricep extension, superslow dumbbell curl, advanced one-legged plank. Stretches. To bed late.
Sat Oct 4, 2008
Tried to use Automator to print a large number of PDF files from paperfoldables for the kids but when the first ones came out I noticed that they weren't printed to fit. I could see no easy way to fix that in Automator, so I gave up on it. Uploaded photos. Treated the car windshield with GooGone in hopes of reducing smudgy residue buildup when the wipers run. Small updates for Danny's website. Left for Sunnyvale to visit my sister's family and meet Akemi. On the drive down I listened to a great explanation of the current financial crisis on This American Life on NPR. When I was ready to leave, we noticed one of my tires had a flat. We tried calling nearby Big O shops but they had all closed. Called AAA and had it patched for $20—a little pricey for just a patch but probably worth it since I wanted to get back to SF safely tonight. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled and herbed pig chops, corn on the cob, Annie's bunnies and cheese. Watched Heroes Season 1 episode 13 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. We actually started out watching the commentary for episode 12, but after a few minutes we decided that it was not worthwhile. Patrick starting blogging in the style of me, and it's weird and fun for me to read his entries because they're in parts sort of a mirror of mine. If you read them in parallel, you'll find bits of his life that aren't mentioned in my journal and vice versa, and things he describes differently even though we both experience the same thing.
Sun Oct 5, 2008
House chores. Bath. Installed Foxmarks at home in OS X and Vista. Processed and uploaded photos. Worked on Danny's website. I'm having trouble putting together a self-service mailing list feature because—I realized—I'm trying to do too many changes at once. I'm using a new formmail script, trying to implement reCAPTCHA, and do coda sliders all at once. I've decided I need to drop the formmail script—it's not really needed here. The coda sliders part is done, so I just need to do the reCAPTCHA and other form work and test and hopefully I'll be done with this. Lunch: potstickers. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: cow stir fry with vegetables, steamed rice. Did some catching up on journaling—posted some new entries. Resolved a problem in which my script which mirrors my website from my computer to our web server was not restored when I got my iMac back from Apple repair. To bed late.
Mon Oct 6, 2008
Usual granola and yogurt breakfast. Door locks followup. Reported new info for the problems I've been experiencing in Entourage: "On my calendar (Frank Farm), I now see items on Sunday, October 5, but these were recurring items that were originally created to appear on Mondays only, so why do they now appear on Sunday? If you open the Sunday items choosing to open the series, you can see that the item is described as recurring on a Monday—weird! I now suspect that Entourage 2008 has bugs with handling recurring items simply because when Office 2008 for Mac was initially released Entourage 2008 would consistently crash when I created any recurring calendar item. As a workaround, I will attempt to remember to use Outlook 2007 instead for the creation and updating of all recurring calendar items, but this is a problematic workaround—I probably won't always remember to switch, and it's not clear how extensive the problem is. Please report this problem to Microsoft for further investigation if you have no immediate solution. I will leave the calendar items on Sun Oct 5 in place in case you need them." Tried finding photos of a particular student but could not; asked Eric D for info. Added clearfix to our stylesheet. Chatted with graduate CA. Entourage 2008 tells me I need to quit and restart to fix some problems. I did that, but the error keeps returning, so I restarted Entourage while holding the Option key and did a verify of the database. Chatted with fellow PC. Handled an image request from Steve B and Cathi D. Reactivated an accidentally closed email account for student MG. Followup with grad SC about closed email. Came up with ideas for a name for our forthcoming digital asset library. Created 2 additional Blogger templates, sent them to Susie and Eric D for review. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled lemon pepper talapia, seasoned new potatoes, steamed spinach with boiled egg, bread, smart balance light. Watched episode 14 of season 1 of Heroes on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Worked on Danny's website: mailing list self-service forms. Investigated remote access and home VPN options.
Tue Oct 7, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly. Stretches. Usual granola and yogurt breakfast. To work. Facilities took care of door #2 at the IRC—holes patched and painted. Door #1 still needs a hole in the wall patched and painted. Having trouble the past 2 days creating an external archive of our website using HTTrack—I think there is some loop that is causing a problem in which lots of files that shouldn't be downloaded are downloaded. Got it fixed, but don't know exactly how. Redirected a Lexi-Comp support request to Rodney. Sent Rob another example of account coordination problems. Meeting with Susie and Cindy. Sent Cindy's feedback about the ID card process to SCWG. Reminded most students that they need to renew their GALEN accounts. Email account closure question from grad SC. Diversity website followup with Sharon Y and Susie. Reported a cardkey access problem to WeID for student DB. Dick S posted some comments describing the photos I took in his class when he did the 3D stuff, so I copied the comments to the image description field and then deleted the comments. Submitted my computer technology support task force work to Jilian. Small web update for Carol. Discovered through Chandler M a blog by the UCSF School of Medicine. Sent Susie and Eric D more ideas about naming our forthcoming digital asset library. Schedule update for Lucia. Followup with Susie about faculty awards web pages. Redirected student HC to IRTS for projector rental. Began work on the hiring paperwork for the digital asset manager we plan to hire soon. Current students calendar updates for Cindy and Joel. Answered questions from Michelle K about Flickr and copyright (ownership) and personal versus school accounts. Spent 17 minutes on the telephone with an applicant who had trouble with one of our supp app forms, but she downloaded a fresh copy and now it's working fine, so I suspect PDF corruption somehow. Joel gave me some childhood photos of his to scan. Chatted with Susie on the phone about pharm chem wanting to redesign their site. Updated current students calendar and news. Chatted with Thomas G. To home. Dinner at Ono Hawaiian BBQ, shopped for Halloween costume supplies but found a small backpack instead. Home. I happened upon the Flickr group called '"Quotation Mark" Abuse' and within a heartbeat I knew I had to join it despite probably having nothing to contribute yet. Well maybe I might have one or two photos which would apply, but even if I don't—what fun! Just a note: Where Patrick and I have recorded different things for dinner meals at home, he will always be more accurate since he's the chef. Repeatedly received "element not found" error messages while attempting to install drivers for a Brother MFC-845cw multifunction device (printer, scanner, fax) into Vista. No obvious solutions on the web. Finally got it to work installing the full driver and software package. When restarting Vista, a popup balloon said that my password was going to expire in 14 days—weird, since I'm at home—maybe Vista has a default password policy that's more stringent than XP? Also, at home I have the same problem a student reported and which is still unresolved by OAAIS—Windows Security Center incorrectly reports that Sophos is out of date when Sophos appears to correctly be up to date. "please wait while windows configures adobe acrobat 8.1.2" error message appears for about 20 seconds unnecessarily at the weirdest times: launching Acrobat, right-clicking a file in Windows Explorer or on the desktop, etc. Have not found a solution to this yet. Installed iTunes 8.0.1 for Mac. Patrick bought new tires for the car today. Archived documents. Edited photos. Installed Winamp into Vista recently, and today I changed the priority setting in it to high in attempts to prevent occasional sound jitteriness. Turned AutoProtect back on in VMware Fusion. I had previously turned it off because I thought it was a resource hog—we'll see how it goes. Paid a bill. Shopped online for what I needed for Halloween. Archived more documents. Edited more photos. Uploaded photos. Stretches. Weight training: superslow overhead tricep kickback. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup.
Wed Oct 8, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. I noticed today that RSS feeds that require authentication now seem to be working again, and I don't know why. They weren't working for a long time and I reported the problem as a bug to the Sage development team but I wasn't really certain it was a bug with Sage. The problem could have lain with Sage or Firefox or LISTSERV or possibly even something else—too many variables. I never got a response from the Sage team, but I guess I can close that bug report now. Followed up with Tamer S. Followup with Susie on key organizational issues. Chatted online with Julie B. Sent out websteering lunch reminder. Cardkey followup for student DB. Computer Technology Support Task Force meeting: room mixup, Kirk H and Tom F and I chatted afterwards and Jilian joined in at the end. Worked on CTS needs document. Sent Jon J css frameworks info. More key organizational issues followup with Susie. Partners in D web hosting followup with Susie. Helped grad NN with email account closure. Helped student JT with a question about how to mail certain students (listservs). Very late lunch: chicken sandwich and curly fries to go from the cafeteria. Found my old Flickr announcement for Susie. Small current students calendar update for Cindy. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken boobs and farfalle with lemon garlic sauce, mixed bell peppers, and chopped beefsteak tomatoes. Dessert: peach halves with a mini scoop of apricot sorbet. Watched extras from Hedwig and the Angry Inch on DVD borrowed from psychobauble and Nate. Uploaded photos. Posted a few journal entries.
Thu Oct 9, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Email transition followup for student GL. Chatted briefly with Scott about voting, learned that SPUR has a voter guide on its website. Content capture and delivery meeting. Websteering lunch: Crepevine. Julie had news to tell. I had a garden burger, grilled potatoes, side salad, plain water—about $10. IT services meeting: 2nd annual state of IT. Applied a Stop Theft plate to Chris's laptop. Email transition followup for student GL: gave up trying to get this issue resolved, sent an email to Heidi S and Opinder B for assistance. Helped student AY with listserv questions. Requested all listservs I own to have notebook=yes, which (I believe) effectively enables RSS feeds. My secret plan is to pull the School out of the interweb dark ages and into roughly 2002 by showing them all the cool things you can do with RSS: follow mailing lists without opening an email client!, view archived messages on the web!, combine mailing list traffic with your other daily news! It's going to take me about 12 years, but I am confident I will succeed. Blogging followup with Susie, Lisa, Eric D, and Sue: how to deal with comments. Flickr followup with Eric D and Susie: realized we need to tell faculty and staff more explicitly what legal responsibilities they have when posting photos and the options they have for posting stuff. Forwarded Cindy feedback from nursing on orientation. Reported wiki problems to Jilian. Updated current student news about the forthcoming Teaching and Learning Center at the library. Followup with student CL: in order to use the global address list in Entourage 2004 or Entourage 2008, you need to be connected with VPN and Network Connect. (This is yet another way in which Entourage does not have feature parity with Outlook—Outlook users have no problem with doing this without VPN.) Dinner at home with Patrick: fettuccine with Italian sausage in marinara sauce. Watched Heroes Season 1 episode 15 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. After reading Short Shrifted today, I wrote the following: I remember shopping once in I think it was Nordstrom's for a dress jacket and all the smaller sizes were on the upper rack (which I couldn't reach) and all the larger sizes were on the lower rack, presumably because someone thought it looked better that way. I simply walked out. I wouldn't care if the store manager were my best friend—a store doesn't get my business if they make it that hard for me to shop there. For a long time I simply stopped shopping in meatspace stores because it's not easy to even tell if they carry small sizes, and when I ask more often than not I am told, "Sorry, but we have your size online..." My measurements fall pretty much at or just below sizes you find in mens departments and often too big for boys departments, and I find that most department stores have this huge gap between boys and mens sizes. If they have anything at all it's severely oversized and styled too urban for my taste. It's much easier to find, as Josh says, a vintage tie—or anything really—online where the dimensions are stated exactly or where you can ask the seller a specific question on dimensions and get a specific answer the next day. Even if meatspace stores carried my size, they still don't organize from the customer's perspective. Why can't they put all the clothes that fits me on a few racks next to each other rather than sorting it by what makes it easy for them to stock? I want to be in one area and be able to pick out a complete outfit where everything fits me rather than go to the boys pants, find my size, go to the mens shirts, find my size, go to the boys belts, find my size, go to a different rack in mens shirts, find my size—I don't have time for that. I got a bit back into shopping after I discovered that the boys department in H&M has a lot of things that fit me, but unlike the mens and womens sections, the boys department at H&M does not change much—I feel like I only need to go 2 or 3 times a year and I can still see everything that comes through the boys department. So it's a mixed blessing—yes it fits, but instead of new looks 52 times a year in the mens department you get only 3. And you still have to ignore the stuff that has soccer balls and dinosaurs on them. H&M boys is the only serious meatspace clothes shopping I do anymore simply because H&M doesn't sell online and because I no longer trust other stores to deliver anything in meatspace I can use. To bring me back will require a revolution. To me, that means: (a) shop by size (like I can do increasingly online), (b) no separate boys and mens departments—just run everything together instead of creating an arbitrary dividing line between XL 18-20 and S (and that will make the size gaps that much more obvious), (c) stop presuming that XL boys also means heavier. I do not anticipate that such a revolution will occur anytime soon, but I hope I am wrong.
Fri Oct 10, 2008
Regarding yesterday's rant about the problem with meatspace clothing stores, I remembered one more thing they need to do: admit that sizes don't mean much of anything anymore. Serious clothes shoppers know that sizes vary widely, sometimes even within the same store and sometimes even within the same clothing line. If clothing retailers want to increase satisfaction they need to start telling people more exactly what they're getting in terms of size. For example, when I buy a short-sleeved shirt such as a polo shirt, I measure a minimum of 3 dimensions to determine if it's going to come close to fitting me. When I buy a dress shirt, I measure a minimum of 6 dimensions. This is hard for clothing vendors to provide in meatspace because there isn't enough room on the tag, but clothing stores have been pushing me to the web anyhow, right? Once I get to their store on the web, I expect to see things they can't offer me in meatspace but which are possible or easy on the web, such as shop-by-size and multiple measurements per item that mean more to me than XS, S, M, etc. American Apparel is a good example of a vendor that provides more measurements online (they provide chest and waist measurements for shirts), but they don't go far enough. Of course accurate measurements requires consistency in production, but I feel that they need that no matter what if they're going to keep their customers. The world's problem of clothes not fitting properly is due to (a) a lack of data, (b) a lack of inexpensive customization options, and (c) a lack of education—teaching people what it means for clothes to fit properly (yes, male generations that followed mine, I'm looking primarily at you). (a) can be solved simply by gathering and distributing the data. (b) can perhaps be solved by exploiting—I mean using—inexpensive labor in Asia. I'm not sure if (c) can be solved.—Mozy still hasn't resolved the problem I reported on September 29. They gave me a few things to try and I tried them but they still didn't fix the problem. We've been going back and forth since then. This is the longest I think it has taken them to resolve an issue—11 days now and counting. Right now I'm waiting for their Mac developer (only 1?) to investigate the bug they found using my logfiles. I think I've said in the past that people need to have more than one backup solution simply because no single backup solution is completely infallible. Here's my proof. I currently use Mozy for offsite and Time Machine for onsite. So my Mozy backup is down right now, but Time Machine is still working. With VMware 2.0, I now also have AutoProtect enabled, which regularly takes snapshots of my Vista VM—an additional layer of protection for those VMs. CTS survey review. Helped student VD with how to send messages to all students. Helped student JY with Apple Mail configuration, Entourage configuration, iPod Touch wireless configuration. It took a long time because there are old instructions for Apple Mail and Entourage setup online and I happened to find the old instructions rather than the new ones. Scanned childhood photos for Joel. Web updates: board of advisors for Sue A, class profile for Scott E. Very late lunch: salmon burger, fries from the cafeteria. Used—to the penny --the remainder of my prepay card balance—weird! Content capture and delivery working team work. Chatted with students KS and PF on the bus ride home. Dinner at home with Patrick: Chinese food delivery from a place new to us. It took 90 minutes and didn't taste all that great. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 16 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Edited photos. Backpopulated some journal entries. I'll be all caught up in a day or so.
Sat Oct 11, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Worked on Danny's website a lot: mailing list self-service forms work. Edited and uploaded photos. Lunch at home with Patrick: homemade Italian-style chicken tenders, vegetable and potato hash. Cut my hair, showered. Patrick and I stopped at the grocery and then visited Mom Ryan. Errands. Long nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: Chinese food leftovers. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 17 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Edited photos. Posted recent journal entries live. Uploaded photos. Edited photos.
Sun Oct 12, 2008
Changed permissions on a bunch of photos in Flickr. Uploaded one video and photos. Edited and uploaded photos. Patrick took a nap. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, superslow decline dumbbell press. Stretches. Fixed printing to the laser printer. Folded laundry. Halloween costume preparation. Wrapped a gift. Bought gardening supplies. Repotted several house plants. Swept in the back yard. Showered. Stretches. Weight training: dumbbell curl, dumbbell raise. Stretches. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken cacciatore with whole wheat linguine, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light, hot water. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 18 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Edited and uploaded photos. Worked on Danny's website.
Mon Oct 13, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Worked on Danny's website: online booking via Spa Booker goes live at 7:51 AM. To work. Forwarded a pubmed help request to Kirk H—I don't know who should handle it and the library doesn't provide an e-mail address for support requests—only a web form. Realized that our website was the first school homepage to validate against W3C, so I added that to our private list of web firsts. Even today, nursing is the only other school whose homepage validates, and grad division is oh so close—they just need to put in 3 alt tags for images and then I think it's good. Tried to make photocopies for the first time in years, and someone is using it when I get there—not a big deal, I can wait. Reposted fall elective final schedule for Lucia. Followup on IRC orientation headshot photos with Eric D. Noticed today that Google Maps Street View now covers our home—it hadn't before when Street View first launched. In fact, it appears that Street View now has almost all of San Francisco covered. Some chunks are still missing—parts of the Richmond, India Basin, Hunter's Point. Nice job, Street View team! Quick lunch at the cafeteria by myself: chicken marsala over noodles, steamed carrots, dinner roll, pog juice: $6.44 after 66-cent Fastpay discount. Listserv management. Email address change process followup. Flickr group management. Web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. To home. Took photos of the full moon over Parnassus. Small web edit for Danny's website. Couldn't figure out why my mouse doesn't work in Plex. Found the release notes that say it's disabled by default, but couldn't figure out how to reenable it. Weird and annoying. Dinner at home with Patrick: orzo with corn, broccoli, and Italian herbs; grilled pig chop; baby beets. Used iTunes 8 for the first time to burn Patrick a gapless CD of his music—it worked! But then I tried using Genius and it told me over and over like 20 times "Genius is unavailable"—no matter what song I selected Genius was unavailable, even after I updated using Store > Update Genius. The Genius sidebar works, tho, and is interesting.
Tue Oct 14, 2008
I forgot to mention yesterday that I got my flu shot for this year. UCSF gives flu shots for free to employees, and there was no line when I walked by the flu shot station on my way to the cafeteria, so I stopped—it took about 6 minutes. They did it with a needle this time, and I forgot to ask what happened to the needle-free method. Student Computing Working Group meeting. We learned from Terry McC and Peter L that ENS did not do independent testing following wap installation and that Chandler can keep the group focused in a positive manner beyond my expectations—how does he do it? Forwarded more info from student DU about yesterday's pubmed help request. Followup with student MK about Windows Security Center reporting that Sophos is out of date when Sophos appears to be current. Followup with Danica about my request to turn on notebook for all our listservs. I didn't realize that notebook was separate from web archives, so I asked her to also turn web archives on. Lunch at desk: leftovers from home. Went to the Millberry Union 50th anniversary party, got my memorial pin. Followup with Kenny M, our photographer for the forthcoming white coat ceremony. CPFM followup with Eleanor E. Missing photos followup with Cindy and Eric D—we'll gather those after Eric V has culled and renamed our existing photos. BTS website content edits for Susie. Worked with Nate on expand all and collapse all javascript for one of our pages—thanks, Nate! Web edits for Eric V and Cindy. Followup with student GL—problems setting up Outlook. Late afternoon meal: burrito from Carmelina's. Watched and read about the new MacBook and MacBook Pro. Followup with grad CG—how to set up email forwarding. Listserv management. More followup for student GL—notifications. Read about the new MacBook and MacBook Pro—cool! I'm not planning to buy a new laptop for home or work soon, but this looks like an obvious next step for Apple. Installed Apple software updates. Walked home just to see if I could do it, and I did it in 50 minutes—exactly the amount of time I had said it would take. I even stopped to take a few photos along the way. It's about 2 miles. I was inspired by one of my co-workers. Dinner at home with Patrick: cowloaf with sauce, leftover orzo with corn and broccoli, boiled peas. Worked on Danny's website: mailing list self-service forms. Installed Apple software updates. Still troubleshooting with Mozy. Latest install 1.1.1.0 still crashes upon launch—not good. 2 weeks without Mozy now. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Stretches.
Wed Oct 15, 2008
Shower. Weight training: advanced one-legged plank (1:00 each leg). Usual oatmeal breakfast. Walked to work to see if I could, stopped to take a few photos along the way. Took about an hour. I had the pedometer with me this time, and it calculated the route I took as 1.4 miles instead of 1.8 as calculated by Google Maps. Web updates: internship info sessions, board of advisors, added a link I discovered to the entering students finding a home page. Cleaned up bits of /ccsc/ since I learned last week that it had been moved to clin pharm's server. Recently made live the expand all collapse all code that Nate helped me with for our Flickr groups page. Lunch: leftovers from last night. Gathered web archive documents for a request from our legal team. Linkchecking. Management work. Reviewed the final survey for the computer technology support task force. Shot additional photos of Saunders Court. Discovered today that Flickr Slideshow can do full screen in Firefox 3 even though Firefox 3 cannot do full screen on its own—weird and cool! I guess YouTube and others have been doing that for a while now, but it was just so surprising to me because Flickr's slideshow has not been able to do it until recentlyish. When did that happen? Uploaded photos to Flickr. CTS followup—sent (non-)prioritized needs report to Jilian then to the group. CCD followup with Kristin K. Dinner at Thai House Express with Patrick. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 19 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Worked on Danny's website. House chores: recaulked 2 squeegees, tidied. Got tired of twitter spam, turned on protection for updates, turned off all email notifications. Consider it SexyAmy's fault and all her friends, too. Goodbye public timeline! Shopped for a replacement for Mozy for Mac.
Thu Oct 16, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. The bus took a wrong turn today off its route. I think a new driver was in training. Added 10 minutes to my commute, but otherwise not a big deal. Today I receive a notice from the UCSF support team to which we began outsourcing desktop and lan support warning us that they were planning to install IE7 for all their clients. IE7 was released on October 18, 2006—2 years ago—and they're only now getting around to deploying it? CTS followup—needs. Met with Luis T and Susie L about pharmchem's website. Lunch: leftovers. After reading "Where's my car?" I realized that Richard Crowley is an ubergeek. Learned about OpenDNS, didn't realize people had DNS problems enough to build a separate service just for people to flee to. Email address change followup with Jina S and student SL. Helped student AM with cardkey problems—no codes on the record in the system at all—weird. Mozy followup with Cesar. Faculty teaching awards project followup with Susie and Eric D. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Watched Heroes Season 1 Episode 20 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. To bed early.
Fri Oct 17, 2008
Last night I dreamt I was eating and enjoying a brown-sauced-covered biscuit wrapped with bacon (wrapped in the style of filet mignon). Yesterday Mozy unsolicitedly offered to extend my subscription 1 month at no charge. I was planning to ask anyway, so I'm glad they made the offer. Someone there must be reading my blog! (joking) Despite much back and forth troubleshooting, they still have not resolved the problem I reported on September 30 in which Mozy crashes upon startup or otherwise simply doesn't work. Their action restores my faith in Mozy, but only partially. It still remains that if there were an earthquake today and both my computer and my local Time Machine backup were destroyed that Mozy would be unable to restore my data even though that's what I paid them for. Today I got sick of seeing the reminder in my system tray for the past several days that said I needed to change my password in 9 days... 8 days... 7 days... 6 days...—I don't have a password set on Vista because it's running inside of VMware Fusion and OS X has a password on it so I feel I don't need one for Vista especially at home and especially since I don't store documents in Vista. To resolve this problem, I pressed Ctrl+Alt+Del (not CTRL+ALT+DEL or CTRL+ALT+DELETE [for a domain-joined computer, why does the Vista login screen shout like that? that's rude!]), left all the password fields empty, and clicked the right arrow button (what happened to OK?)—now it seems that Vista is happy that I changed my password. Woke early. Stretches. Weight training: side plank (2:00 each side). Stretches. Breakfast: granola with raspberry yogurt and diced peach. Shower. To work. Followup with and about student SL about email address change. Followup with student JN about Sophos reportedly slowing down Vista especially at startup. Followup with Cindy about career services external links. Followup with a student about cardkey access. Followup with DC and TBS about cardkey access for late admits. Reviewed the office's disaster plan that Lucia distributed. Our office held our annual white coat ceremony. All went well except the photographer we hired (KM) was late. We stalled for about 10 or 15 minutes telling jokes and then got the students grouped in the courtyard in case KM showed at the last second. We also asked one of the guests who had a serious-looking camera to take the photo for us. Student JU showed up just before the group shot to take photos for the student newspaper. And KM did finally show up at the very last possible moment to get the photo we paid for. During the ceremony I was asked to run the lights. During the light check, Doug from IRTS stopped by to check on things, and he helped me configure the presets as we want them. The spotlights were not pointing to the right places on the stage—we did not need to put the spotlight on the base of the podium—so I asked him to adjust at least one of the two right spotlights. He agreed. Joel and I got sandwiches at Subway. When I returned the spotlight was adjusted exactly as I had asked—to light the speaker standing at the podium. Joel and I ate lunch in Cole Hall. At one point, student PE asked how we could switch over the entire campus to Open Office and/or a UNIX- or Linux-based mail system. I told him that I thought the order would have to come from the top down either from the Chancellor or from UCOP. There are a lot of reasons why our current situation exists, and there would be a lot of challenges as well as benefits to a change. The ceremony went very well. Just a little feedback on the microphone throughout, but I was not in a position to be able to fix it. Joel later mentioned that stage right was not bright enough during coating—he's probably right. When I had set the presets at the light control panel I could not see well past the podium to determine how much light was falling in that area. Afterwards, we didn't even visit the reception—Cindy went, and we knew it would pretty much took care of itself. Joel and I left on Muni—him heading for a documentary (Hi my name is Ryan) at the Roxie, me heading for dinner in the Mission. We rode the N-Judah train to Church along with Eric D who was heading to the East Bay for climbing. Joel and I walked to BriKel's, stopped to say hello, chatted with Brian a bit. We continued on our way. It was unusually warm this evening. Left Joel at the Roxie, walked to Janitzi (1152 Valencia Street, San Francisco, California). The restaurant opened only 5 weeks ago. When I arrived, a man was handing out flyers that included a 10% off coupon. Eventually Patrick, Tony Q, psychobauble, Nate, and David arrived. The restaurant doesn't yet have its license to serve liquor, so we were welcome to bring our own and they would—for now—charge no corkage fee. We tried a large number of dishes, and the consensus at the table was mostly favorable. I most enjoyed a beef dish with a deep-fried coating, and a fish taco. A side of cactus tasted mostly like bell peppers to me—I had never had cactus before. A side of polenta tasted like polenta—I'm not a fan of polenta. We also had turkey-bacon-wrapped chicken. I don't remember it specifically—I think it was good. (This isn't a very good review—sorry!) We were surprised when we received the bill because it seemed extraordinarily low. I don't think they applied the 10% off coupon, either. We ended up paying much more than the bill stated, a show of support for this new restaurant with satisfying dishes. psychobauble and Nate brought 2 bottles of wine—thanks!
Sat Oct 18, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: one-legged advanced plank (1:00 each leg), advanced plank (3:00), superslow dumbbell press. Breakfast: 2 eggs scrambled, 2 sausage links, raspberry yogurt with fresh mint. Decided voting. Cut my hair, showered. Lunch at Daphne's Greek Cafe. Errands: Beverly's for Halloween costume materials, the party store next door, Trader Joe's for groceries. Home. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: baked chicken, steamed carrots, baked potato. Dessert: root beer ice cream bar for me, chocolate for Patrick. Watched Heroes Season 1 episode 21 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Edited Folsom Street Fair and other photos. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow shrug, superslow tricep kickback. Stretches. Late meal: chicken boob sandwich, mixed berry yogurt.
Sun Oct 19, 2008
Slept in. Brunch at home with Patrick: blueberry pancakes. Made live Folsom Street Fair photos. Prepared to send my camera in to Canon for service. Just in case it cannot be fixed, I browsed the current cameras on Canon's website and realized with surprise that there are only 2 cameras in the lineup with the fold-out variable-angle screen—the PowerShot S5 IS ($350 street) and the Powershot SX10 IS ($380 street). Canon calls this feature the "vari-angle lcd monitor." But both the S5 IS and SX10 IS have fewer pixels and smaller zoom than my A650 IS. I might have to start looking for a non-Canon camera next. Mid-afternoon meal: chicken boob sandwich. Watched Heroes Season 1 episode 22 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops with honey mustard and parsley, steamed green beans, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light.
Mon Oct 20, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. The bus didn't show up today, so I walked nearly the whole way to work. Continued work on the job postings form. We're trying to streamline our process for having employers submit job postings to our students. Right now we accept plain text messages in email and our student affairs assistant manually reformats the message into an email which is distributed to the students. Web team meeting with Susie and Eric D: BTS, blogging. Continued work on the job postings form. Dinner at home with Patrick: vegetarian pizza, chinese chicken salad. Have been investigating how to set up VPN or remote desktop at home so that I can log in to my home computer from work. Was almost going to use Hamachi, but the dealbreaker for me was that their OS X version is from 2006—that's so 2 years ago! And there's no GUI support—you have to use the unofficial, still-beta HamachiX for a pretty interface. Tried Tunnelblick, but couldn't figure out how to install and configure it. It wasn't clear to me whether I needed Tunnelblick and OpenVPN or just Tunnelblick. No DMG for OpenVPN and all the instructions I found on the web were old, therefore untrustworthy. Tried Viscosity but couldn't figure out how to configure it—no quick start guide and no user manual. Gave up for now. Worked a bit toward setting up sweetcron, realized I need to put the head on my Mac Mini so that I can reconfigure Chicken of the VNC (or something) so that I can see what's happening over there. No time right now. To bed earlyish.
Tue Oct 21, 2008
A haiku I thought up this morning:
Yesterday freezing
Today's forecast very hot
It's San Francisco!
Quick breakfast at home by myself: cup of yogurt and granola. Walked about halfway to work. Staff meeting today was canceled. Helped a student with a question about why there's no Back button in IE7. Sent CTS prioritized needs final work to Jilian. Calendar management. Added to our Flickr pages a YouTube video that introduces people to Flickr, sent it to Susie for review. Management work: gave Susie requirements and preferences for the digital asset manager position we want to hire, chatted with her a bit on the phone. Installed Viscosity, but again did not know how to make it work because there's no user guide. Am thinking now that Viscosity and OpenVPN are not really what I'm looking for. Might go back to Hamachi or try something else. Shared with Susie and Eric D my ideas about what makes an official blog versus a non-official (or personal) blog at UCSF. Met 1-on-1 with Cindy. Updated our Flickr guidelines to be a little more compact and to clarify what faculty and staff need to know about using Flickr. Followup with Doug C and Terence BS about ensuring proper cardkey access for late admits, posted the issue to the SCWG wiki. Followup with Sarah P about Montala ResourceSpace and our digital asset library project. CCD and CTS followup work. Helped student TL with legitimate email messages not going to the inbox. Job postings form work. Walked home. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers. Vacuumed. Performed alterations on part of my Halloween costume. Mail management. Did final testing for Danny's website's self-service mailing list subscribe, unsubscribe, and update feature. Sent to Drew for review. Stretches. Weight training: superslow lateral raise, superslow dumbbell press. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, yogurt, hot nonfat milk.
Wed Oct 22, 2008
Weight training: advanced one-legged plank (1:00 each leg), advanced side plank (2:00 each side), advanced plank (3:00). Stretches. Breakfast at home by myself: dried mixed berry granola with vanilla yogurt and fresh sliced banana, orange juice. To work. Minor web edits. Helped the new class president with setting up a wiki. A student reported a cardkey not working as expected. Joel and I picked up lunch in the food court and took our lunches to the LGBT event in which Judy Shepard was invited to speak. It's been 10 years this month since Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered near Laramie, Wyoming. After his death, Dennis and Judy Shepard founded the Matthew Shepard Foundation which has been promoting diversity and tolerance through a variety of programs. The room, HSW300, was packed—I had never seen it fuller. A short introductory video preceded Mrs. Shepard's talk. She claimed to be an introvert and not good at public speaking, but she seemed a pretty good speaker to me, frequently using very effective humor to set the audience (and perhaps herself) at ease. The heart of her talk was her statement to the court that explained how her life had changed after Matthew's death. As she described the scenes from her life, particularly in the hospital room with Matthew, we all felt like we were there. Many in the audience were moved to tears, myself included. For a moment, she was overcome with grief and could not continue, and we all shared her pain. No apology was necessary, but she gave one anyway, and with effort she finished the retelling of her statement. A reminder about how important Proposition 8 was, then a few minutes for questions, and then time was up. Another class needed the room after us, so everyone had to leave. Several times during her talk she mentioned a desire for simplicity, which to me seemed fitting because the issues surrounding intolerance and bigotry are both simple and not simple at the same time. Chatted with and sat next to Kirk H before the talk. Checked out the CTS wiki, which Jilian fixed so that we all could edit it. Dentist appointment. Just a checkup—all is well. Had a chipped tooth about 2 months ago but no pain, so I had Dr. Lee grind down the sharp parts. Our dental insurance only covers one visit per year, so I had to pay out of pocket for this visit. I can't remember when that had started, but I think it used to be that the insurance would pay 2 times per year. Bought seeded sourdough bread at Arizmendi Bakery. My fortune from Panda Express at lunch: Your magnetic personality will draw people to you. Walked home. Refreshment: ginger orange juice. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken and mushroom stew over farfalle, bread, Smart Balance Light. Watched Heroes Season 1 episode 23 and the "making of" documentary on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Updated entries for August 18 and 19 to include the feedback I gave to An Event Apart.
Thu Oct 23, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Walked part way to work. Cardkey followup for student DB. Responded to a request from Susie and Mary Anne for guidance on responding to a media story which turned into a discussion about blogging. Lunch: leftovers. SCWG work: RCO migration followup. Today Excel 2008 repeatedly gave me annoying "Not enough memory. (OK)" error messages. This is the only application in OS X that ever tells me I'm out of memory, and I'm only working with a simple spreadsheet with simple data. To work around this problem I opened the same spreadsheet in Excel 2007 for Windows. More cardkey followup for student DB. CCD work: incorporated info from Matt E. Web updates to PHPM for Carol. At the suggestion of student RE, I created a new web page which lists conferences of interest to PharmD students. More cardkey followup for student DB. Asked Kirk H and Nick M for Outlook 2007 setup instructions because OAAIS is not able to provide them. Followup with student NG about ZoneAlarm. Reported the following problem to OAAIS:
The Back button does not appear when using IE7 with vpn.ucsf.edu. Steps to reproduce: Open IE7. Visit vpn.ucsf.edu. Log in. Select the link called UCSF Library. Actual: A new window pops open but no Back button is available in the window. Expected: A new window pops open which includes a Back button in the window. More info: The problem does not happen with Firefox 3.0.3 in Windows, Firefox 3.0.3 in OS 10.5.5, or Safari 3.1.2 in OS 10.5.5. This is problematic because after browsing links in the new window users who aren't familiar with keyboard shortcuts for Back (Backspace and Alt+LeftArrow) don't know how to go backwards in their browsing history. Thanks!
Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled pig chops, steamed string beans, ciabatta. Worked on Danny's website. Weight training: superslow modified preacher curl, superslow hammer curl. Stretches. Attempted to but failed at resolving a problem in which Sophos has normal status (all current) but Windows Security Alerts in Vista reports that the anti-virus software is out of date. Removing and reinstalling with the latest installer did not resolve the problem. Organized bookmarks. Have gotten to love the Foxmarks bookmark synchronizer.
Fri Oct 24, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Walked 0.45 miles toward work, took the bus the rest of the way, chatted with students PF and LS on the bus. Downloaded and installed Chicken of the VNC but didn't use it—need to figure out how to use it with SSH. CCD work. Conferences web page work. CCD and CTS work and followup with Jilian. Helped Marie P with questions about photos, helped her print a Science Cafe web page single-spaced instead of double-spaced. Lunch in the library courtyard by myself: sandwich and fruit salad from Palio. Followup with Kirk F and Tony T about the A to Z list—we're still waiting on a one-month-old request. Scanned a document in XP—I still keep forgetting that my scanner works only in XP and not in Vista. (I never figured out how to scan in OS X.). So I now have a sticky on the scanner that says XP ONLY. Followup on submitting an RFO for iStockphoto. Sent email to Kevin C about the transit benefit. Conferences web page work. 15 items in my inbox! Break: Ate a watermelon sorbet bar on Parnassus Avenue. Was about to install Mozy Pro for Windows when I realized that in the past 3 (?) weeks they now have a Mozy Pro for Mac client—super! Had trouble during the install because one dialog asked for a password but it didn't say which password, so I kept entering my OS X password but what it really wants is your Mozy Pro account password. Got Mozy Pro set up and working. Sent feedback on that password problem to Mozy. Sent psychobauble instructions on how to create shortcut redirect URLs like I use on pharmacy.ucsf.edu. Followup with Cesar about whether he will or won't use MozyPro for Chris's laptop. psychobauble met me at work. We walked to the Haight and on JWG's suggestion we ate at Citrus Club, an inexpensive pan-Asian restaurant which we enjoyed. We then walked to the de Young Museum and I got us in with my (Patrick's) charter membership. When we received our tickets we each received a coupon for one free drink—an unexpected bonus. We got our drinks in the mural room. We didn't have much time before the museum closed, so we quickly went through the current exhibit Asian/American/Modern Art: Shifting Currents, 1900-1970, which I later learned opened tomorrow, which explains the drink tickets. I most enjoyed Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes and seeing the results of her ability to see and create beautiful and interesting landscapes using a wide variety of spaces, sizes, and materials.
Sat Oct 25, 2008
Signed up with Scribd. Relatively speaking, as web form design exists on the web today, the account setup process had an unusually high amount of attention to detail in programming and was very pleasant to use. However, neither after signing up at work nor after signing up at home did I receive the confirmation emails it said I would receive. I tried sending them more than once and also waited hours—nothing. Not replying to the confirmation email doesn't seem to prevent one from doing things in Scribd, so maybe it doesn't matter? Unknown. Weight training: advanced plank (4:00—new personal best—why is this exercise so easy now?). Yesterday I started investigating problems with the Lodestar Quarterly website. It seems we had been sending billing notices to an email address that Patrick had stopped using in the past year, so the account went accidentally unpaid and now I'm trying to figure out how to turn it back on. The site only had archived material on it, so the web hosting part of it was not the big concern, but Patrick uses that domain for his primary email, and now he's upset that he doesn't have his email, of course. I submitted a request to the provider and after 2 hours received a response which clued us in to the defunct email address, but after that there was no response and I don't know why. It's not like them to not respond for this long, so I'm now shopping around, wondering if I can move all my domains from them to another provider and possibly also save me and my friends a total of a few hundred dollars a year at the same time. Weight training: side plank (1:00 each side). Usual oatmeal breakfast. Cut my hair, showered. Prepared my Halloween costume. Uploaded photos to Flickr. House chores. Late lunch at home with Patrick: chinese bbq cow, boiled peas, steamed rice. Nap. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, superslow lying-down overhead tricep kickback. Stretches. Backed up all home websites. Went to Remi and Jesse's Halloween party at Remi's place.
Sun Oct 26, 2008
Woke early. Organized bookmarks. Weight training: advanced plank (4:00). House chores. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Voted by mail. House chores. Drove to Chris and Nate's. Brunch: burritos and tortilla chips at Dos Amigos. Drove to the Marina. Did a walking tour using a guide book that psychobauble and Nate had. Walked somewhere between 2 and 4ish miles. The walk itself was pretty easy—just one steep hill at the beginning, but it was freezing and we all weren't very well prepared for that. We stuck it out and it got warmer in Cow Hollow. We stopped for pepperoni and mushroom pizza at Extreme Pizza. Firm, 5-millimeter-thick crust, a little heavy on the cheese for me, tasty. Home. Got Lodestar Quarterly running again, Patrick has email again. They told us his mail would bounce but it actually got saved in a queue and he didn't lose any messages. Watched The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD borrowed from psychobauble and Nate. Error 0x80240016 when attempting to manually update definitions for Windows Defender in Windows Vista in VMware Fusion 2.0. My solution: Open IE7, disable the item called "Launch WinHTTrack." Late meal: leftover pad thai.
Mon Oct 27, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Walked to work. Followup with Jina and student SL about an e-mail address change request. Chatted with Kevin C from Transportation Services. He says I can claim April along with my next claim and it won't be a problem—whew! Job postings html email template work. Dismantled my KVM, which I no longer use now that we have outsourced server resources to DLS and my spare Windows machine is no longer in use. CTSTF meeting, chatted afterwards with Kirk H and Jilian P. Late lunch: chicken burger on hoagie with pickle at Good Earth by myself. Job postings html email template work. Prepared equipment for surplus. Linkchecking. Reported printing problems to Scribd. 20 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover yellow curry chicken, steamed rice. Windows Vista hung for no clear reason, so I used the rollback feature in VMware Fusion 2.0 to roll back to an AutoProtect state. All fixed now. Watched Yongfook's The Blog is Dead! video. Helped Patrick burn a cdrom for Sam. Found Scribd welcome emails in my junk email folders. I think I might have resolved the problem in which Sophos has normal status (all current) but Windows Security Alerts in Vista reports that the anti-virus software is out of date by rolling back Vista in VMware Fusion to October 22. Other computer maintenance.
Tue Oct 28, 2008
Stretches. More computer maintenance. Weight training: superslow lying-down overhead tricep kickback. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Sent a birthday card to Sam. To work. Today was the first time I used NextBus to view an arrival time for my bus. A long time ago NextBus only worked for the light-rail trains and one or two bus lines, and I never heard when Muni added more busses to the system. I saw it say 4 minutes and knew I had to run, so I did. As I neared the bus stop, the bus slowed down, so I slowed down, too, thinking the driver was going to stop. Within a second, the driver accelerated again, so I started to run again, and then he stopped again. This is the kind of thing that Muni drivers get away with all the time because you can't ever prove that it was purposeful. I got on the bus, and it turned out to be the driver who wears dark glasses and never, ever smiles. I can't figure out his motivation, though. As far as I know, I've never done anything to hurt him. Why me? Arrived at work. Converted a document to Office 2003 format and sent it to the person who requested it because that's easier than asking all the information technology support people in my organization who have not yet deployed Office 2007 (available since January 30, 2007) or Office 2008 (available since January 15, 2008) to install the compatibility pack on all those computers. And it's better than blaming the user for the poor practices of the IT support people upon which they rely. Reviewed and provided feedback on the VPN bookmarks and settings transfer instructions for Quinn H. Followup with student RE about Scribd and how to send an announcement to all students. MSCR web page work. Notified Susie of numbers on our website that need updating. CCDWG and CTSTF report review. Made live the MSCR page. Listserv maintenance. Followup with Danica—we have RSS feeds now! Woo! Linkchecking. Viewed videos from Sun Microsystems about MPK20 and WonderlandPhone, which were sent to me by way of important people, but I couldn't help occasionally laughing to myself as I watched the videos. Sun has obviously spent a lot of time on these projects, but I just can't see them being very useful, especially if they plan to keep using Courier and Times New Roman. I kept expecting the scenes to turn either salacious or comedic—or both! It's ripe for parody, if you ask me. If you're interested, let me know—I'll write you a few scripts. psychobauble today sent me the link to a story on Ars Technica about the Windows 7 preview. Here's my reply: "Thanks! I think most everything looks good so far except that with Libraries they fall into the same pitfall that OS X does by presuming people want to sort data primarily by content type. This is problematic, for instance, with a digital camera that takes both photos and video—when you download your session, photos and videos automatically get put into separate folders based on the content type rather than keeping them together because they were part of the same photo/video session. Still, so far Windows 7 seems like incremental improvements that resemble things OS X has had for years rather than anything groundbreaking from a UI perspective." Dinner at home with Patrick: turkey meatloaf with marinara, corn on the cob, sourdough breadsticks, Smart Balance Light. Watched extras from Heroes Season 1 Disc 7 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. I heard back today from Canon—they're going to fix my camera it sounds like at no charge, and I should have it back within about another week. Hooray! Uploaded photos. Printer maintenance. Archived documents. Downloaded JanusVM. Stretches.
Wed Oct 29, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: advanced plank (4:00). Usual oatmeal breakfast. CCD meeting: draft report review. Followup with Sarah M about an old ticket. Followup with Danica about RSS feeds. CTS meeting: draft report review. Lunch: got a packaged taco chicken salad and POG juice to go from the cafeteria—the salad was surprisingly good. Ate while watching the No on 8 rally in Saunders Court. More Windows 7 review from link sent by psychobauble. Followup with Kirk F and Tony T about CCB and the A to Z list. Added Cesar as an admin to our Mozy control panel, gave him instructions on how to set up Chris's laptop with Mozy. Followup with NJW and Susie about a faculty member suspected to have left the university—confirmed. Packed up the Panasonic LC-50 monitor that I bought about 8 years ago, have to figure out how to give it away. Do you need an old but still working LCD monitor? If so, let me know, but note that it is really only good if your computer can handle a lowish resolution (I think it's 1024 x 768). Updated links to new CCB website. Posted and announced draft winter schedules for Lucia. Wiki work. Updated my project list. Annoyed that there's no way in Google Docs to create a hyperlink from one Google Doc to another. 11 items in my inbox! Updated the Change Your Password page to account for Kraig K changing the Change Password button in OWA to go directly to pwmanage. Read tech news. Began investigating Google Webmaster Tools. 10 items in my inbox! Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover turkey meatloaf, beets with sliced almonds. Dessert: root beer float ice cream bar from Lucerne (Safeway). The color of the root beer part is not right—too pale, and the root beer flavor is weak. I can eat the rest of them, but I wouldn't buy them again. Stretches. Patrick watched Army of Shadows on Superstar DVD. I couldn't watch it—I was too tired and the film was too slow for me. To bed early.
Thu Oct 30, 2008
Woke up in the middle of the night, couldn't sleep. Laughed uncontrollably at postings on Fail Blog. Back to bed. Woke again around 8. Usual oatmeal breakfast. I'm still laughing to myself while imagining scenarios for WonderlandPhone, and I realized today that one could also do horror or horror comedy situations. A more lampoonish but business-appropriate example: the virtual workplace caught on fire because someone was smoking a virtual cigarette in the virtual copy room, but of course every virtual employee has studied his or her virtual disaster plan guide and the demo can show how everyone got out of the virtual workplace safely. In particular, I envision graphic designer Marc with a brand new Mac Pro needing to help administrative assistant Arturo with the 6-year-old Dell Optiplex GX240. Sun has figured out how Marc can share his CPU cycles to enable his virtual self and virtual Arturo to both exit the virtual workplace just before the building virtually crumbles. Something weird is happening with my email (still?). At work, I left yesterday with 10 items in my inbox, but when I open Entourage 2008 at home, I see hundreds of messages in my inbox. I think it's a problem with Entourage 2008 at home, so I clear the cache and even rebuild the Entourage database, but the inbox still keeps filling up with hundreds of messages. So then I log in via OWA and there too I see hundreds of messages. So I think now the problem is that Entourage 2008 at work is not properly synching my changes with the server. I see them as I expect locally at work, but they clearly (now) aren't synching. Finally was able to figure out the setup instructions for Outlook 2007 on my own and took screen snapshots of them. Next step is to revise my web instructions. SCWG work. Linkchecking. 10-minute lunch: TJ's tri-tip wrap, crackers, hot water. Returned a phone call from an applicant who had trouble printing form E. He or she had figured it out on his or her own. Outlook 2007 setup instructions work took all day, and I made them live. Chatted with Cesar about full paths to folders in VPN. Helped Chris C with a question about Word templates. OWA having problems responding. I am thinking we'll be running into crippling problems with OWA and Exchange before our Exchange upgrade due early next year in February. Went to Julie B's going away party at Solstice. Met Jason, Michelle, and Shan. Present for the celebration: Jeff M, Jeff T, Thom W, Ziggy T, David H, Rich T, and more, I think. Dinner with Patrick at Fuzio. Home. Stretches. Weight training: superslow advanced one-arm dumbbell row. Stretches.
Fri Oct 31, 2008
Stretches. Weight training: advanced side plank (2:00 each side), advanced plank (4:00). Stretches. Usual granola breakfast. To work. It's wet outside, light rain. Chatted with Joel about his blog. He wants to go live but we're still waiting on our purchasing team to resolve the problem of how to purchase the license to the image we want to use. The license costs only 1 credit from iStockphoto, and you can buy credits only in a minimum of 10 for $14. Since they aren't an existing vendor with the University, we would need to have them fill out paperwork and then have purchasing send them a check—a process that would likely take 4 to 6 weeks. Yes, we could charge this to a personal credit card and later be reimbursed (which is what Valerie S in purchasing recommended) but I personally have grown tired of giving the University what is essentially a free loan at my expense, and Susie actually forbids us to do so because she too believes that practice is unfair. Realized today that I'm tired of having to rebuild my Entourage 2008 database all the time. I don't even believe that it resolves any of the problems I'm having. Back to Joel's blog. The other choices we have are to launch now and to leave the image's spot blank and insert it 6 weeks from now or find a different image that is licensed, say, with Creative Commons. I remember looking for CC images when I did my initial design and didn't find anything that I thought worked well, but perhaps now we just need to spend more time looking. Added a reminder about daylight saving time to the current students calendar. After clearing the cache and rebuilding the database in Entourage 2008, it now correctly reflects the same inbox view that I saw in Entourage 2008 at home and in OWA. Now I have to go back and reprocess hundreds of messages in my inbox, refiling ones I want to keep, redeleting those I don't. Okay, it took a few hours, but I'm done now. I quit Entourage 2008. Log out of OWA, log back in to OWA, and now—phew!—the problem is gone! Hooray! Tested my repaired camera—all seems well. Hooray! Linkchecking: changed all occurrences of www.campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu to campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu, made edits due to the move of the Technology Store to the University Store. Update the detailed directions to our office to include links to Google Maps Street View—very helpful. Chatted on the phone with Nick M about collaboration tools. Helped an applicant download and install the latest version of Adobe Reader (version 9 replacing 5) and print form E (one checkbox was accidentally not checked). Very late lunch: Panda Express by myself in the food court, watched the rain fall down. My fortune: Pleasures await you by the seashore. Notified Michelle K and Steve B about updated Flickr guidelines. Helped student HW with a question about spam. Joel decided to not wait for purchasing and purchased the 10 credits from iStockphoto on his personal credit card. So I pasted in the template, tweaked a few settings, and now we're ready to set up our custom domain with OAAIS. Notified Susie and Valerie that they can throw out the RFO. Valerie bounced my request to La'Trece for reimbursement processing. Listserv management. Was asked to help Cesar with Mozy setup but I ended up not helping—he figured it out on his own—confusion over "activation key" versus "license key"—they're not the same thing, and we didn't yet know there were 2 kinds of keys. Gave Michelle K some blank cdrom and dvdrom media that she needed. SCWG work: reviewed MyAccess info flyer for Rebecca and Jann. Home. Went to PDD's Halloween party. On the way I accidentally got stuck in Critical Mass at 18th and Collingwood. Turned off my car and waited about 20 minutes as hundreds of bicyclists streamed by followed at the very end by a police motorcycle escort. The night was unusually warm, and lots of people were out showing off their costumes. Patrick decided to not go to the party and spent the evening with Aaron watching old films. Home late, shower.