February 2009

Summary: Valentine's Day John Cameron Mitchell and Shortbus with Patrick; Bong Su Evening with Glenn, Bill K, and Wade

Dates on this page

Sun Feb 1, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: leg lift, reverse leg lift. Stretches. Put items for sale on eBay. Late lunch: leftovers. Patrick and I went to funcrunch's karaoke party at The Mint, had sushi from next door, enjoyed chatting with Thom W. (Jeff T was not feeling well and could not make it.) DDP's for dinner with Danny, Drew, Phil, psychobauble, Nate, Patrick, Tim. Stretches.

Mon Feb 2, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Job postings form DNS problem troubleshooting. CCD policies and procedures summary write-up. More job postings form DNS problem troubleshooting. Edited and made live privacy of patient medical records in the about privacy section of our website. 14 items in my inbox! Tested ethernet ports and power in Eric D's new workspace after CP had moved out last Friday. Pruned unneeded paper documents. Job postings form DNS problem troubleshooting. UCSF comm followup for Sarah. Chatted with Julia S and Sue A about Eric D's new workspace. Prepared an OAAIS ticket for ordering new lines. A-Z list followup. 12 items in my inbox! Dinner at home with Patrick: thin pork chops, rice pilaf, steamed spinach, boiled egg, hot water. Rested. Grocery shopping. Baked several loaves of chocolate chip pumpkin bread.

Tue Feb 3, 2009

Breakfast: running late, so I had only a short glass of grape juice. Staff meeting with a celebration for Cindy. I baked chocolate chip pumpkin bread, Lucia brought cinnamon pastry bites, Eric D brought pigs in a blanket, Joel brought napkins and cute animal head plates in the style of Arthur, Carol brought a tray of fresh fruit, Shirin brought "puppy chow"—chex mix coated with sugary peanutbuttery goodness, Eric V brought Noah's bagels, Scott brought orange juice. Followed up with Tony T on an A-Z list request from October—he fixed it up after a few rounds of email—just a misunderstanding, I'm sure. Lunch at desk: I got sandwich fixins from the cafeteria and made a bagel sandwich using a bagel left over from the morning's celebration. Eric D and I met with Jann F about how to hook in to MyAccess—a good meeting. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Met with student SK who had a question about an IP address conflict. Announced to OSACA staff AB 211 and SB 541 info available on our website. Printed and filed imagery provided by Maria F. Sent my CCD work to the team for review. Reported a weird search problem on the OAAIS website to John K. Reviewed and rewrote a proposed OAAIS communication about the new wireless SSIDs. Chatted with Susie. Helped JWG remotely with laptop troubles he was having at Mission Bay. His experience is a great example of how computer support failed at UCSF. I should write it up. To home. Snack: warm chocolate chip pumpkin bread, apple juice. Dinner at home with Patrick. We had a proscuitto pasta from Trader Joe's called perline—a shape I had never seen before. It's like little bags of stuff. I liked it. Dinner roll, smart balance light, hot water. Watched The Celluloid Closet (1995) on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. I loved this film. It's excellent, and I'm embarrassed that I hadn't seen it sooner. In Netflix, it's really hard to find the place where you can change your profile picture. Currently, it's like this: Visit the home page. In the navigation under the Browse DVDs tab, select Friends. Select Invite Friends from the dropdown menu that appears. Your profile info appears on the right side of the page. Select the Profile link in this section. A profile picture section appears, enabling you to select and upload a new picture. Again, to recap, to change your profile photo in Netflix: Home > Browse DVDs > Friends > Invite Friends > Profile > Profile Picture. It's not where you think it might be—in Your Account > Account Profiles (which is really My Account > Account Profiles). It's also not under the link which is your name, which appears at the top of the page. It's not intuitive to find it under Browse DVDs or Friends or Invite Friends, but that's where the info architects at Netflix have put it. Aside: I wish Netflix had RSS feeds for notes and reviews my Netflix friends have posted. And I wish Netflix pulled ratings data from IMDB because IMDB ratings would be very helpful to see while browsing Netflix so that I can compare it against my pretty reliable threshold of 7.2—essentially all films that rate 7.2 or higher on IMDB are films I like and essentially all films that rate 7.1 and below on IMDB are films I don't like. I love Netflix, but sometimes it feels more like Web 1.5 rather than Web 2.0. You can't search for friends in Netflix like you can in social networking applications like Facebook. Consequently, it's not easy for friends to find each other in Netflix. Aside: In Firefox, I prefer Zoom Text Only (under View > Zoom). I understand why it's off by default, but Zoom Text Only often works better for what I want than when it's off. I also think that "search for text when I start typing" should be on by default, but what do I know? Eric V at work let us borrow his DVD sets of Arrested Development, which I've never seen before, so I guess I'll try it out and see if I like it. Stretches. Weight training: various upper body. Stretches.

Wed Feb 4, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Mailbox too full notice for a student. Calendar management. Submitted to OAAIS the order for 3 new 100 Mbps lines for Eric D's new workspace. Reviewed CTSWG documents. CTSWG working meeting. Management activities. Listserv management. Mailbox too full followup. Lunch: leftovers. Job postings form troubleshooting (reCAPTCHA and AAAA and IPV6 queries). Late afternoon snack: bagel sandwich. Job postings form troubleshooting (reCAPTCHA and AAAA and IPV6 queries). Prepped rebuild of MySQL student database. Home. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: steamed asparagus, lemon chicken, bread, Smart Balance Light. Nap. Went to psychobauble and Nate's where we held a celebration for Brian D. I was so tired I fell asleep despite my two naps.

Thu Feb 5, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. CCD working meeting. 1-on-1 working lunch with Susie: BTS photos. 1-on-1 with Eric D. Met with student MK who needed advice on backup solutions. Troubleshot problems with the white MacBook connecting to an external monitor. I found settings that were incorrect both in OS X and in Windows XP, made adjustments, showed JWG what was wrong and how to resolve it if he sees it again. Began rewriting the web page that tells students how to set up email. It needs a rewrite because we get a lot of questions of how to set up email on devices we don't officially support. A long time ago our page listed only the ones we support and nothing else. Then at some point I added information about how to use the unofficial, unrecommended way of connecting using POP or IMAP, but it wasn't very prominent and the links weren't using the right terminology. My new design removes a lot of information that is no longer necessary and just gets them to the answer they need more quickly and with better, bigger visuals. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza, hot water. Watched Grindhouse: Death Proof (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Loved it. Two days ago I said that I was embarrassed that I hadn't seen The Celluloid Closet (1995) sooner, but after that I learned that Steve M says we saw it together when it came out—I must have forgotten. Tomorrow I don't work but I work on Saturday instead—helping JWG and Scott E with admissions interviews. Late meal: ramen noodles with shrimp flavoring, egg, dumplings, mushrooms.

Fri Feb 6, 2009

Stretches. Weight training: various leg lifts and kneeling kickback. Late breakfast: oatmeal. Chatted with Thomaso on the phone. Snack: lowfat yogurt. Spent most of the day preparing an email. Cut my hair. Dinner at home with Patrick: sesame-glazed chicken, thai-style lime pilaf. Browsed extras on the Death Proof Disc 1 but there weren't that many. We later looked it up on Netflix and there's a disc 2 with more stuff, so we put that in the queue and topped it. We both think it's regrettable that Netflix doesn't yet automatically suggest the disc 2 when it's available. It means we have to think about it and seek it on our own, which we might not always remember to do. Watched the fake trailers at the beginning and the middle of the Grindhouse double feature with Patrick on Netflix instant watch.

Sat Feb 7, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Admissions interviews. Eating schedule was very different for today. My "lunch" was at 9:30 AM, so I had my favorite breakfast in the cafeteria. The interviews went very smoothly—Scott did a great job again getting everything organized. Not a single problem that I could tell. After Scott said I could leave near the end of the day, I ate a small salad at the cafeteria. Home. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: pan-fried hoisin salmon, rice pilaf, steamed asparagus and yellow squash. Watched Heroes season 3 "Clear and Present Danger" on Netflix instant watch with Patrick.

Sun Feb 8, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Removed the OWC/Newertech ministack from the rack to troubleshoot its noise problem. With the drive powered off and several blasts of compressed air up its rear air vents, it seems like it's back to its normal quiet self again. Began setting up Time Machine again. For a few days there I thought I would have to send it in for service and be completely without a backup. Stretches. Weight training: shrug, superslow one-arm dumbbell row, dumbbell fly. Stretches. House chores and home improvement. Prepared packages for shipment. Dinner at Loi's with Patrick: bbq cow and shrimp pho for me, bbq chicken and shrimp pho for him. $18 after tip. Began preparing my taxes. Some documents have not arrived yet, so I can't finish yet. I realized today that Goldstar had half price tickets for John Cameron Mitchell's show coming up, and I hadn't seen the Goldstar email before we bought tickets at regular price. Wah! Oh, well. Stretches. Warm-up cardio. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow concentration curl, superslow dumbbell press, crunch. Cool-down cardio. Late snack: lowfat yogurt, hot nonfat milk.

Mon Feb 9, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Notified applicants to our digital asset librarian job posting that the posting has been withdrawn. Faxed a document to Susie and Eric D. Removed references to San Diego APPEs from our website. Attempted to sign up for a class through the UCSF training website but failed because I couldn't figure out how to specify budget numbers other than the default. (I couldn't even tell what the default was set to.) Minor web edit for JWG. Flickr work. Blog and Flickr work. Helped student VT with login problems. Worked on the email setup page: icon generation. Dinner: mac and cheese, pig chops, steamed peas. Dessert: chocolate sorbet, peach sorbet. Watched Arrested Development on DVD borrowed from Eric V: Extended Pilot, Top Banana. These two shows had some very funny parts, but it mostly fell flat with me. I couldn't understand the shaky camera work. Jump cuts used to create humor felt like a frequent crutch. Situations were too absurd—e.g., in Top Banana when the housekeeper rode the bus with her cargo, what happened to the hot dog stand. In Top Banana, both Patrick and I knew what the man in prison meant long before it was revealed. The show has unbelievably superlative ratings on imdb, but this show isn't really for me or Patrick. Not recommended.

Tue Feb 10, 2009

Prepared packages for mailing. Breakfast: granola and lowfat cherry yogurt. Met with student AD about recording lectures. Worked with Susie on BTS content photos. Patrick mailed the packages. Lunch: Panda Express at desk: broccoli beef, orange chicken, chow mein, hot water. My fortune: You have a talent for all that is artistic. Revised and delivered our school org chart for Sue A. Updated the office computer hardware list for Cindy. Signed Eric D and me up for a Javascript class at Academy X on Friday, February 20. Worked on the email setup page: icon generation. Chatted briefly with Majed. Home. The iMac was running at 100% CPU for no good reason even after closing all apps, so I restarted it and that fixed it. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled chicken breast tenders, biryani, hot water. Dessert: chocolate sorbet, peach sorbet. Watched the first half of Death Proof: Bonus Material on Netflix DVD with Patrick. It's essentially a couple of hours of everyone in the film saying how great everyone in the film is. Left this comment on "my life, as far as i know.": "The no vulgarity rule is really weird—why should they care? No one is supposed to see, hear, or communicate the password anyway. I've found similar kinds of strange requirements, too. One site for some reason didn't use the same validation upon account creation as it did for account login, so, for example, I created a 20-character password which was not accepted when later attempting to log in. On a hunch, I trimmed down the length of my password one character at a time and eventually discovered that it thought my password was the first 16 characters of my 20-character password—upon creation it was trimmed by 4 characters then stored (no warning of the trim action), and when attempting to log in with a 20-character password there was no warning that I had exceeded a maximum length. In a few other cases, I've discovered websites which have no ability to change passwords, which theoretically means that brute force attacks could be more successful against them. Some sites, if 'asked' by entering a wrong password, tell people exactly what the password requirements are, but I think a better strategy is for website owners to accept the largest set of characters feasible and a length larger than most people will use without revealing the exact password requirements. e.g., Say you are a system owner and your system stores up to 32 characters in a password but when someone creates an account or attempts to log in you accept up to 100 or 1000 characters. If someone has created a password that's 60 characters long, it should be accepted at creation and at login even if the system stores and checks only the first 32 characters. For if someone attempts to log in and gets the first 32 characters of a 60-character password correct, do you really need to check the remaining characters to know that's the same person? Probably not, and so you also probably don't need to reveal that you store only the first 32 characters. This is kind of like the problematic situation I described above, except that they should have let me in after checking the first 16 characters of my 20-character password. To see how crazy password management is where I work, see http://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/go/passwords and for password management solutions I recommend see http://pharmacy.ucsf.edu/go/managepw ." Stretches. Warm-up cardio. Weight training: dumbbell fly, superslow tricep kickback. Late snack: lowfat peach yogurt, V8 high fiber juice.

Wed Feb 11, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Confirmed that I'm unsubscribed to library job listservs that I had gotten subscribed to because of our recent job posting, confirmed that those postings had expired or were removed. Appointment scheduling. CCD work: policies and procedures. Lunch: tri-tip cow sandwich from the chef station at the cafeteria, added lettuce and tomato from the salad bar. (It's not clear at all that you're permitted to add salad bar items like that without being charged extra.) Job postings form work: ripped out reCAPTCHA and inserted another captcha system. Today ends a long saga of me trying to get reCAPTCHA working. The problem was that upon submitting our form with the reCAPTCHA there would be a long delay of about 30 seconds before the form was successfully processed. When I removed reCAPTCHA, the form took 2 to 4 seconds to process. I went back and forth among reCAPTCHA support and my web host support and UCSF OAAIS DNS support. reCAPTCHA support claimed that the web host DNS was configured incorrectly which caused the delay, web host support insisted the DNS was configured correctly and claimed the reCAPTCHA code was making an incorrect request, and UCSF OAAIS DNS support claimed that we failed to prove that the problem was on his end. I would have loved to have been able to support reCAPTCHA, but I could not get it to work without the long delay, and I found that unacceptable. I was not able to conclude who was wrong or right. If I had more time or began another project on a different web host then I might try reCAPTCHA again. I switched over to the new captcha in about an hour. It does audio and doesn't visit outside servers like reCAPTCHA does. It seems to work fine, and it's open source as well. For security, I won't say which one I'm using, but if you ask me privately and if I know you, then I'll tell you. Now we're back to 2 to 4 seconds—much better. Sorry, reCAPTCHA! Met Kaiser recruiters to help them set up for an informational meeting for students. They forgot to bring their laptop, and our tables were set up in the wrong place, but I moved the tables and everything else seemed to go smoothly. Dinner at India Garden with Patrick. We attempted to go to the free event called Lost Landscapes III: Film Fragments of San Francisco, but it was sold out and we were turned away at the door. Home. To bed early.

Thu Feb 12, 2009

Woke early (5:00 AM). Stretches. Warm-up cardio: 15 minutes. Weight training: leg raise, sidelying inner thigh lift, sidelying leg lift, kneeling kickback, crunch. A few weeks ago I started working in a 20-pound ankle weight and doing more lower body routines. I need this because I can't do a lot of lower body exercises due to my occasional knee pain, so the ankle weight can be secured above the knee and not provide too much stress to it. 20 may seem a lot for an ankle, but for a thigh it's just about right, and it can be adjusted if needed. Very happy with it so far. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Shower. To work. Removed job posting document from scribd. CCD meeting. CCD work. For lunch today I took the N-Judah to 19th Avenue and walked to Underdog, an organic hot dog joint at Irving between 17th and 18th. It's tiny—maybe 9 seats indoors and a bench with TV dinner trays outside. I ordered an underdog (the standard organic cow hot dog) and tater tots, about $7.50 total. About 10 or 15 minutes later the woman comes to my table and wants to check—did I order an underdog and tater tots? I say yes. A few minutes later I have my food. The tater tots taste different than the store-bought tater tots I'm used to. I guess it's the organicness of the potatoes. Different, but not clearly tastier or better. The dog tasted like a hot dog to me. Nothing particularly amazing about it being organic that I could tell. I'm glad I tried Underdog, but I don't think I'll return again anytime soon. If only they could serve the same thing in 1 minute instead of 12 or 15—that would bring me back. Updated vice chairs listings for Debra H. Updated associate deans listings for Susie. Posted and announced updated P1 schedule for Lucia. More CCD work: reviewed Doug C's notification message of testing in 301. Posted updated org charts for the school for Susie. Styled tables on the BTS faculty page. Wrote a new function to simplify the process of creating links to Joel's blog from our admissions web pages, inserted calls to the function for every blog post of his that made sense. Listserv maintenance: added a student back after dropped due to mailbox too full. Answered a question about how names appear for student JY. To home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Watched Jesus Camp (2006) on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. Weight training. Installed some new night lights.

Fri Feb 13, 2009

Usual granola breakfast. Job postings form testing. Reviewed rental housing data for Cindy. MyAccess followup with Jann F. Downloaded Fusion 2.0.2. Windows Vista crashed. CCD meeting: Accordent demo. Lunch: half sandwich, mac salad, latte from Palio. Met with Susie to select content photos for the BTS website. Job postings form testing. Listserv management. Archived data to WD My Passport drive. Dinner at home with Patrick: spinach ricotta ravioli in marinara sauce with yellow and red bell peppers, bread, Smart Balance Light. Watched the second half of extras from Death Proof on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Watched Heroes season 3 "Trust and Blood" on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. Organized some stuff.

Sat Feb 14, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Patrick took a nap. Watched Coraline in 3D at Century 20 Daly City using the gift card that Mom Ryan got us for Christmas. Thanks, Mom Ryan! We enjoyed Coraline even though the game resulting in the denouement was rather hokey. I thought the 3D was done particularly well. Stay through the credits for a little bonus at the very end. Afterwards we had lunch at Jitra Thai Cuisine followed by a chocolate dessert whose name we can't recall at Ambrosia Bakery. We hadn't been to Jitra in a long time, and we recalled with smiles a previous Valentine's Day upon which we had dined there. The leak in the closet is back. We had old towels on the floor still, just in case. I notified the landlord. Patrick did some house chores. I did some labeling of stuff and organizing. While installing VMware Tools for Fusion 2.0.2, I encountered an error saying that files were in use—Print Spooler and something called TP AutoConnect and TPAutoConnect. To resolve this problem, I ran services.msc and manually stopped these services then clicked Retry on the error dialog. VMware Tools proceeded, and several minutes later it appeared to finish successfully. Discovered what had been causing the Apple home page to appear empty of main images in Firefox 3.0.6 and Safari 3.2.1 for OS X: some weird cache problem. Clear the cache, quit the browser completely, restart it, problem solved. Printing fails to work in both Windows Vista and OS X on my iMac at home. It coincidentally happened after installing VMware Fusion 2.0.2, but I'm certain that Fusion is not the problem. More troubleshooting later. Patrick took a nap. Downloaded photos from the camera to the computer. Uploaded screenshots to Flickr. Fixed the printer—turning it off and then on again fixed it. Archived documents. Warm-up cardio, 20 minutes. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback, superslow lateral raise, crunch. Cool-down cardio, 5 minutes. Dinner at home with Patrick: steamed dumplings made by Simmone. Shower. Nap. Attended Marc Huestis and John Cameron Mitchell's "The Origin of Love" (Shortbus show). We arrived around 9:48 PM and were pleasantly surprised to learn that we were two of the first 40 ticket ticketholders which received priority admission to the theatre. (The ticket was gold, and I was disappointed to find that it didn't come with a chocolate bar.) There was only 1 pink ticket ticketholder in line, so we were first in the gold ticket ticketholder line. While we waited we chatted with a woman from Tampa, Florida who had flown to San Francisco just for these shows. She and her man friend were attending both tonight's Shortbus show and tomorrow's Hedwig show. Finally we were let in. The theatre was packed—sold out. We sat in the 2nd row in the center section on the stage left aisle. Anita Cocktail and the Lovers opened with an energetic performance of "Angry Inch." A short break. JCM took the stage, apologized for being slightly under the weather, and began by asking for jokes from the audience. The woman from Tampa sat in the front row and offered two hilarious and well-received jokes, one which asked, "What's the difference between Sarah Palin's lips and her vagina?" and another which asked, "What do caviar and Michael Jackson have in common?" JCM sang "My Funny Valentine" followed by "Wicked Little Town." He read a very short poem written by (a friend?), and the entire poem went something like this: "A poet can't change the world. But a poet can ruin your evening." He told the story of his visit to Russia to attend a screening of one of his films at a film festival. He finished the story with a short Russian lullaby. He performed "The Origin of Love." During this song, there's a quiet part in the middle, and some people who didn't know about that began clapping, thinking that the song was over. The music continued while JCM, deadpan, looked in their direction, smiled, and said something like, "Let that teach you a lesson," and continued the song right on cue. He has a cuteness, a charm, a humor that I found entrancing. I was watching someone who was so comfortable on stage that you could feel his inner peace radiate. Intermission. Two armchairs were brought on stage, JCM returned to the stage, invited Shortbus star Raphael Barker (Rob) to join him from the audience, and we watched Shortbus (2006) while they provided commentary. At my favorite part of the evening, JCM told a story about his encounter with a stranger who put a piece of paper in his hand while he was waiting at a train platform in (I believe he said) New York City—on the paper were the words, "Shortbus saved my life." He said he carries that slip of paper in his wallet.

Sun Feb 15, 2009

Grocery shopping at Safeway with Patrick. House cleaning. Organized the music library some. Dinner at home with Patrick, psychobauble, Nate, Drew, Phil, Quyen: chicken cordon bleu, salad, bread, Smart Balance Light. psychobauble and Nate brought a delicious chocolate cake.

Mon Feb 16, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Took Muni to psychobauble and Nate's. The 3 of us drove to Ikea Emeryville and shopped. Lunch at Ikea: pasta combo, water. They bought some bookcases, and it was a tight squeeze for the ride back. I bought some housewares. They assembled and set up their bookcases. They let me borrow their copy of the graphic novel Watchmen. Nap. Stretches. Weight training: kneeling kickback, sidelying inner thigh lift, sidelying leg lift, leg raise. Stretches. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza, salad. Made rice krispie treats with Reese's Pieces. Made muffins with organic blueberries.

Tue Feb 17, 2009

SCWG meeting. Lucia's birthday celebration. I brought rice krispie treats with Reese's Pieces. Eric V and Scott brought doughnuts. Others brought fresh fruit and other foods. Handed off the job postings form project to Eric V for testing. Made live and announced new web page describing the new wireless network. Management activities. Met with student MK: Spy Sweeper uninstall, Defender install, disabled unneeded startup items, set up My Passport backup, prepped PDA for MicroMedex install. Reported problem downloading Sygate installer to OAAIS. Lunch: chicken noodle soup, lunch meat from the cafeteria, made a bagel sandwich using a bagel from this morning's party. Resolved mailbox too full problem for myself. Edited and made live a new web page describing the new wireless networks on campus, announced to students. Chatted on the phone with Susie. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, boiled herbed yellow new potatoes, bread, Smart Balance Light. Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row. Stretches.

Wed Feb 18, 2009

Breakfast at home by myself: fat-free cottage cheese, lowfat cherry yogurt, muffin made with organic blueberries, cheese bagel with onion and chive cream cheese, orange-peach-mango juice. Telecommute day. Green and white tea. Reviewed and edited CTSTF documents. CTSTF meeting. Edited and submitted a CTSTF document (Summary) for our final report. Lunch at home by myself: turkey sandwich on high fiber wheat, tortilla chips, fruit bar, hot water. Chatted with Susie on the phone. Installed SSH for Windows at home. Worked on the redesigned set up email section: completed all versions of Outlook, completed draft of iPhone. Edited and posted live the wireless page following new information from Kirk H regarding the Faculty-Alumni House. Dinner at home with Patrick: dim sum from Simmone, leftovers, hot water. Watched Heroes season 3, "Building 26." I'm getting tired of Heroes, but Patrick is not. Uploaded a screen snapshot to Flickr. Realized my past few journal entries were put on the wrong days, so I fixed them.

Thu Feb 19, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Fire alarm. Thought I had a meeting at the Faculty-Alumni House but I entered the meeting on my calendar incorrectly somehow. Chatted there with Mary about wireless. Attempted to find out more info about IDAF affiliate screens (Doug C). Set up e-mail edits. Lunch: leftovers. Photoshop and stylesheets work for BTS. Met with Sue A, Eric L, and Shannon W about new data lines for Eric D's workspace in S-926. CTSTF work. Troubleshot laptop problems for student AP. Updated the wireless page. Snack: mixed berry parfait from the cafeteria. BTS content image selection with Susie. Troubleshot laptop problems for student AP. To home. Dinner at home with Patrick: crab-stuffed flounder, asparagus risotto, bread, Smart Balance Light.

Fri Feb 20, 2009

Breakfast: lowfat yogurt, fat free cottage cheese, fruit bar. Went to a Javascript class at Academy X (601 Montgomery Street). I got the time of the class wrong and arrived an hour early, had trouble finding a payphone nearby. (Closest one was the Montgomery BART station.) I've been working the web a long time and have poked around with Javascript but never took a class. Rob H taught the class. He was a pretty good instructor, and I gave him a good evaluation at the end of the class. We didn't really cover that much material, but I did learn things and he answered all questions well. Academy X doesn't seem to have an advanced Javascript class, but they do offer an ajax class. I think there are some classes in between that are missing, though. For example, we didn't cover any animation today—that could be a whole day. Another class could talk about Javascript libraries and how to use them. Another class could identify cool and useful Javascript things and deconstruct them, show you how to use them on your own for your own stuff. Another class could cover unobtrusive Javascript, which was only mentioned briefly in today's class. I learned what camel case was. I successfully completed all the labs (except #4, which I think we somehow skipped) including all the extra credit and the extra extra credit, but he never came around to check our work! Rob H recommended Regular Expressions in 10 Minutes by Ben Forta and Javascript: The Missing Manual and Javascript: Your Visual Blueprint. I learned that innerHTML is used to modify the contents of an element. More notes: tacosw.com, regexlib.com, krook.org/jsdom, Tamper Data plug-in, PRACTICE. Don't use "#" in an href element—instead use "javascript:;" or "javascript:void(0);" or (I think) "return false;". Lunched with Eric D outside the Transamerica Building. After the class, Patrick and I had burritos at Gordo on 9th between Irving and Lincoln, then we went to Friday Night at the de Young Museum. Recently I've been wanting to do things on Friday night instead of staying home. I can't tell yet if I'm really always tired at the end of the work week or if it's simply all in my head. Free drink tickets for members today! Woo! We walked the Andy Warhol exhibit, and although there's no denying his popularity, influence, and production, we were both rather unimpressed with the whole. From the exhibit, he seemed to me to be a man with a small number of good ideas that were repeated over and over and over and over and over again, often on the same canvas. Patrick and I were not familiar with some of his illustrations, and these were more interesting to us than his popular silkscreens and paintings of celebrities. I had never seen the record album with the zipper on it—that was neat. DJ Juanita More glammed the turntables with hip and groovy classics and non-classics from the 1960s. The art table encouraged visitors to recreate Warhol's multicolor portraits outlined in pen. We were exhausted afterwards. To bed earlyish (8:00 PM).

Sat Feb 21, 2009

Woke too early (4:00 AM). Patrick woke at 4:30 AM and went to his usual martial arts practice with Simmone and Sam. Made my favorite breakfast. Nap. Woke at 11:30 AM. Had some lowfat yogurt and 2 muffins with organic blueberries. Cleaned my miniStack Time Machine backup drive again since it began making noise again. This time I opened up the case. OWC said I could and implied that I wouldn't be voiding my warranty by doing so. The procedure: first remove the 4 screws on the bottom, then use a flat head screwdriver on the 2 side slots, carefully remove the white lid. Be careful to not force anything too much—the plastic tabs could break easily. (They did not for me.) Once open, I used compressed air and a vacuum cleaner to get as much dust inside removed. Put it all back together, much quieter again. I hope I won't have to do this as often as it seems right now. Patrick took a nap. I repaired ankle weights with the sewing machine—one strap had come loose from the stitching, all better now. Midafternoon meal: Joe's O's pasta in tomato sauce, tortilla chips, fruit juice. Nap. Spent the evening with Glenn, Bill K, and Wade, all of whom I hadn't seen in a very long time. We dined at Bong Su which had excellent food and excellent service. Afterwards, we went to The Edge, The Midnight Sun, Badlands.

Sun Feb 22, 2009

Woke late. Brunch: chicken noodle soup, half sandwich. Watched For The Bible Tells Me So (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Snack: half sandwich. Nap. Dinner at psychobauble and Nate's with psychobauble, Nate, Patrick: crackers and 2 kinds of cheeses (pepper jack, dill); bread and butter; garlic bread; homemade beef stew; homemade chocolate cake with homemade whipped cream; stone ground chocolate bar. psychobauble says thank you for introducing him to Caffeine.

Mon Feb 23, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Lots of email followup. Submitted a poster job to DMM for Cindy. Posted new news for Susie. Helped Tim C with data recovery (unsuccessful). Late lunch at Panda Express. Shuttle to Laurel Heights. Web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. Shuttle to Parnassus. Dinner at home with Patrick: broccoli with traditional beef ravioli with marinara sauce, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Watched Highlights of the 5th National Youth Acrobatics Competition (China, 2006) on public library DVD with Patrick and popcorn.

Tue Feb 24, 2009

Woke early. Recharge Spa work: mailing list email. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Just like yesterday (and I forgot to mention it), this morning VMware Fusion 2.0.2 displayed a Windows Vista startup screen that was frozen on the loading progress indicator. I rolled back to an earlier working version. Reinstalled VMware Tools, though I'm not sure if this will help. Took another "all is well" snapshot. Restarted Vista. It hangs again. Successfully restarted in Safe Mode. Ran Disk Cleanup. Scheduled a disk check. Restarted in Safe Mode—hang. Restarted normally—disk check began but I think I switched away with Command+Tab and when I switched back it was already at the login screen, so I think I accidentally canceled it when I didn't want to. Logged in successfully. Scheduled another disk check. Restarted normally. Systray balloon appears: "Windows Defender: MSASCui.exe - corrupt file - The file or directory C:\$Secure is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility." followed by "Acrobat Distiller: Unable to create the temporary folder. Error: 1392 - The file or directory is corrupt and unreadable. (OK)" Scheduled another disk check. Restarted normally—hang. Restarted in Safe Mode—hang. Rolled back to my most recent "all is well" state. Recreated c:\windows\temp. Scheduled a disk check. Shut down. I switched away with Command+Tab to do other things and when I switched back, it was hung on a startup screen. Several times I've seen quickly flashed a BSOD—Fusion must be restarting Windows without letting people read the BSOD. Rolled back to an earlier "all is well" state. Scheduled a disk check. Restarted. Disk check begins! 54 items in my inbox :-(. Entourage 2008 refuses to let me create an all-day event: "The ending time is before the start time. (OK)" If I uncheck "all-day event" and then reselect it, it works. Disk check completes. Windows starts successfully and restarts successfully. Submitted a Remedy ticket: "In IDAF, when I add a dept code and title code for a student, it automatically sets the start date to today's date (02-24-2009) and the end date to one year minus one day from now (02-23-2010). The person requesting these access changes has asked for the access to begin on 03-01-2009 and end on 03-31-2010. When I attempt to set the start and end dates to these dates, an error occurs: 'SF044 Duration of affiliation limited to one year for this title.' I would like to be able to do this work today such that the dates are set correctly rather than waiting until the morning that they are supposed to have access to do so. If I do this work today and leave the dates as they are automatically populated, then students won't have access 02-24-2010 to 03-31-2010 and I'll need to do this work twice to ensure they have the proper access. How can this be resolved? Thanks!" Completed manual IDAF request for 56 students for Claire. 1-on-1 meeting with Cindy. Made live new Set Up E-mail pages, announced to SCWG and Mark B. Calendar management. Helped students LS and AP with VPN lockout due to MyAccess transition. Followup with student JS about laptop problems. Followup with student AP about virus-infected laptop. Requested test Moodle course from Steven Williams. Followup with Cesar about network problems ticket. Management work. CTS final draft documents review, sent a few comments back, but so far it looks good. We just have to figure out what to do with these last minute findings about very inexpensive outsourcing options. Calendar maintenance. Set up users in Moodle for the test course that Steven W created for us. Made live new links from the admissions section of our website to Joel's blog. BTS styling: added boxes to research main page, adjusted print stylesheets, made lots of other small changes. Inserted a new link on the homepage to Partners in D, sent it to Susie for review. Confirmed room for tomorrow's Expression Engine demo by Public Affairs. Linkchecking: fixed all broken links to the new library website. (They did not put in redirects.) Lunch today was a quick burrito and tortilla chips from Carmelina's, chatted with Eric K in line. I could only eat two thirds of the burrito. 40 items in my inbox. Patrick picked me up in the car, and we drove to DDP's for a Mardi Gras dinner and celebration: Vietnamese takeout, king cake.

Wed Feb 25, 2009

Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Joined a teleconference late. Moodle test course followup. Helped student RR with VPN lockout due to MyAccess transition, sent a new message to all students about VPN lockout due to MyAccess transition. Followup with student JS about laptop troubles. More Moodle followup. Staff meeting. Sent a link to student JU's Flickr photos from last night's Red Dress Fashion Show to the OSACA. Realized that I forgot to push yesterday's linkchecking changes live, so I pushed them live. BTS: minor edits. Eric V discovered a display problem with one of the posts in Joel's Blogger blog. I resolved it by opening the edit post screen without republishing it. Lunch: takeout from the cafeteria: chicken rice soup, half sandwich, fruity couscous: under $6. Added P4 students to the graduate jobs listserv. Shuttle to Laurel Heights with Eric D. Kirk F and David K demoed their installation of Expression Engine. The demo was very helpful and although I am not sure that EE is a good fit for us, we will take it into consideration. Eric D showed Ed C and I a moving painting on the 4th floor of our Laurel Heights office. Ed C showed us his office, and we also said hello to Erik W. I was surprised and shocked to see how small the workspaces of Ed C and Andrew P were. Impromptu web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. Reviewed photocopying services web page, which has long had information that is no longer current. Communicators group work. Followup with student PA about wireless setup for a handheld. Dinner by myself at Cybelle's Front Room: mozarella burger, medium, on sesame bun with french fries. Home. Watched Act 1 of When the Levees Broke on public library DVD at home by myself. Worked more on a long letter. To bed.

Thu Feb 26, 2009

Meetings all day. Met with Joseph B and Michael L and lots of others, learned a lot about the communication needs of our people. Lunch with Eric D at Sukhothai, which we learned today will be closing in March and replaced by another Thai restaurant. Followup with Kim B on updating the photocopying services web page. Chatted with JWG about the course schedule change form. Listserv management. New library website linkchecking followup. Met with Devi and Marie and Susie and (Bill?), talked about alumni email and Facebook. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza, steamed asparagus. Exhausted. To bed early.

Fri Feb 27, 2009

Woke at 3:30 AM, couldn't sleep. Went back to sleep at 5:30, woke at 6:30. Usual oatmeal breakfast. DAL meeting, admissions application meeting with demos by David K and Hallan C. 15-minute lunch from the cafeteria: sandwich from the passive-aggressive chef's station, cottage cheese and sliced fresh fruit, water. DAL meeting. 1-on-1 with Eric D: BTS site and DAL review and created a to do list. Gave JCB recommendations on configuring a Dell Mini 9. Drove to Colma BART station, picked up Emery. Travis's house party. Gave sneeper and Emery a ride back to Emery's car.

Sat Feb 28, 2009

Woke late. My favorite breakfast. Watched When the Levees Broke, acts 2, 3, and 4 on public library DVD with Patrick. Afternoon nap. Late dinner: mushroom risotto with leftover asparagus, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Began reading Watchmen borrowed from psychobauble.