August 2009
Summary: Drupal Camp L.A. with Eric D, Alameda Beach with Thong T and Thomas G
Dates on this page
Sat Aug 1, 2009
Patrick made breakfast for me at home: french toast, water. Worked on Patrick's website: inserted the homepage slideshow using the Cycle plugin for jQuery—it's nice. Patrick worked on music in GarageBand. Lunch: tamales, tortilla chips. Worked on Patrick's website. Nap. Worked on Patrick's website. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig stew with roasted baby beets, saffron risotto, hot water. Watched Four Rooms on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Troubleshot Time Machine error "Waiting for index to be ready (915 > 0)" on my iMac, still unresolved after trying a few suggestions from P in the Apple discussion forum.
Sun Aug 2, 2009
Slept in. Had a lot of trouble with my new Acuvue Oasys lenses. Last night was the first night I stored them after opening. Both my eyes have the same prescription correction, so I normally store both lenses in the same well. This morning I found that the two lenses were stuck together and no amount of solution would unstick them. After many frustrating minutes, I ended up tearing both lenses. The Oasys lenses seem thinner and also harder to remove. I am not liking them very much so far. They might be more comfortable for some people but I don't notice a difference. My favorite breakfast at home with Patrick. Home maintenance: adjusted brackets for a mirror, repaired the bracket for the iron, replaced a light bulb, vacuumed. Midafternoon meal: spaghetti os, English muffin, hot water. Finished Patrick's website. Edited and uploaded photos (SF Pride). Installed the Dashboard widget called Time Machine Buddy to assist with my troubleshooting of Time Machine errors. Continue troubleshooting Time Machine error "Waiting for index to be ready (915 > 0)" on my iMac. Dinner at home with Patrick: coated and fried chicken legs, steamed carrots, moroccan curry whole grain pilaf. Stretches. Weight training: superslow kneeling kickback, superslow leg lift. Stretches.
Mon Aug 3, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. On an alternate way to work I found 3 pennies on the bus. They looked clean, so I picked them up. Posted updated schedules for Lucia. Backed up data to external portable hard drive. Communications section: Kiosk and templates. Lunch at Pomelo by myself: manila, hot water. Password management. Reimbursement filing for computer supplies. Flickr work. Management activities. Chatted with Eric D about web planning. Management activities. Configured staff computers to no longer turn on automatically before they arrive for work—an energy conservation move. To home. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers. Patrick is visiting Aaron tonight. I gave up on resolving Time Machine problems with my iMac. Last thing I tried was to delete the sparsebundle—but it was similar to my experience on May 23. Reformatted the Time Machine hard drive, losing 6 weeks of backup for my computer and 7 weeks of backup for Patrick's. Started Time Machine anew for Patrick's computer. At work Time Machine has worked surprisingly flawlessly. (And Mozy Pro has, too, for that matter.) But I'm convinced now that the fastest way to deal with Time Machine problems is simply to give up and reformat and start over completely. In the future with another Time Machine problem I might try a few things, but I'll be jumping more quickly to the reformat or repartition conclusion just to save time. After all, it's not the only backup system I use, since I am no longer foolish enough to trust only one. And despite my good experience with it at work, I will have to add Time Machine to my list of Apple technologies that I don't fully trust. (Or maybe it was on the list already. I have to go find that list...) (sigh) Another Muni accident today, this time a SUV-ette crunched between two Muni streetcars. Web work for Danny. Time Machine on Patrick's computer completed successfully. Late meal: leftovers, hot water, cherry lowfat yogurt. Started up Time Machine anew for my computer at 23:28:46.
Tue Aug 4, 2009
New Time Machine errors found on my iMac: Cookies do not match and Backup failed with error 18. Restarted. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. SCWG meeting. Adjusted energy settings for Shirin's computer. Web update: list of accounts. Prepared for Drupal planning meeting with Eric D. Lunch: leftovers. Tweaked code and crontab for the SOM non-block electives scraper, realized I need crontab to run the script on both the dev and live servers. Drupal with Eric D. Energy saving initiative announcement to staff. To home. Chatted with Melissa. Stretches. Weight training: superslow lateral raise. Dinner at home with Patrick: baked breaded salmon, green beans, rice pilaf. Worked on Danny's website. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow tricep kickback, superslow hammer curl, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl.
Wed Aug 5, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Installed Backup and Migrate module for Drupal. Updated Drupal core and modules. Installed 960gs fluid for Drupal. Web edits: School of Medicine electives scraper, wireless. Helped student AD with a question about VPN and MyAccess. More Drupal work. For lunch I tried to eat at Bistro 9 but after I was seated, made my decision, and put the menu down no one came to take my order for a really long time, so I got up and left. Nan King Road Bistro instead, hong kong noodles with chicken—so good! More Drupal work: stylesheets. I think the proper order for link state pseudoclasses is: link, visited, focus, hover, active. Dinner at home with Patrick: braised cow with bowties in tomato alfredo sauce, hot water. Watched Once Upon a Time in Mexico (2003) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Continued troubleshooting Time Machine, "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." I think I resolved the problem with "sudo cp /var/db/.TimeMachine.Cookie /var/db/.TimeMachine.Cookie.backup" followed by "sudo cp -v /Volumes/[volumename]/.[macaddress] /var/db/.TimeMachine.Cookie" where [volumename] is the volume name and where [macaddress] is my computer's MAC address. I now have "-2" tacked on to the end of my Time Machine drive name when it appears in Console. Before that it was "-1" and I have an idea of what's going on but it creeps me out that this number is increasing. So far, the first backup appears to be working. Worked on a price list for Danny. More Time Machine errors: "Unable to rebuild path cache for source item. Partial source path:" and "Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Music".
Thu Aug 6, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Around 8:00 AM tried to post [resolved "Backup failed with error: 18" & "cookies do not match" and is now honestly surprised that Apple Time Machine is working properly] to Twitter, but it was down due to a denial of service attack. Spent pretty much the whole day working out content types in Drupal with Eric D. Lunch: two kinds of leftovers. New hire followup. Calendar management. Password management. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza, salad, hot water. Unable to tweet [knows about @twitter outage but has been unable to authorize the @youtube twitter connection all day - /oauth/authorize gives a blank page] at 10:12 PM. Created a flyer for Patrick's private and group tai chi chuan instruction in San Francisco. Updated Drupal modules for Patrick's website. Work for Danny: price list. Scanned and printed a photo for Mom Ryan. Late meal: leftovers, lowfat vanilla yogurt.
Fri Aug 7, 2009
Helped student JM with a question about the website. Forwarded a data request from Sue to the staff. Websteering lunch setup. Calendar management. Answered questions for Peter L and Lisa C about search engine optimization. Lunch: takeout from the cafeteria: pasta primavera, mixed vegetables, garlic bread. Forwarded a request from a student to Claire L. Helped a student with how to connect to UCSF Exchange with Palm Pre. Drupal work. Dinner at home with Patrick: breaded fish, steamed broccoli and zucchini, bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar, hot water. Completed a new price list for Danny, sent it to Drew for review. Minor website edits for Danny. Prepared for tomorrow's trip. I'm going with Eric D to Drupal Camp L.A. in Irvine, and unfortunately we'll have a pretty full schedule Saturday and Sunday, and there is no time for me to visit with friends or relatives in the area. Backed up data.
Sat Aug 8, 2009
Drupal Camp L.A.
Sun Aug 9, 2009
Drupal Camp L.A. Time Machine problems again: Cookies do not match and Backup failed with error 18 and operation not supported on socket. Tried sudo chown -R $USER [computername]_[macaddress].sparsebundle but got lots of operation not permitted errors. Unplugged the Time Machine drive from the Airport Express. Plugged it in to the iMac. Ran Disk Utility, Repair Disk: incorrect number of access control lists. Ran Disk Utility, Repair Disk: the volume appears to be OK. Ran repair permissions on the iMac hard drive. Unmounted and unplugged the Time Machine drive from the iMac. Plugged it back into the Airport Express. Remounted the drive. Turned Time Machine back on. Started a back up now for Time Machine: Cookies do not match, backup failed with error: 18. Back in Disk Utility, lots of permissions were fixed on the iMac hard drive. Started back up now again: cookies do not match, backup failed with error: 18. Ran disk repair on the sparsebundle, stopped repair about halfway through. Time Machine preferences: use no backup disk. Turned Time Machine off. Turned Time Machine back on for Patrick's computer, said to use no backup disk, turned Time Machine off. Unmounted and unplugged the Time Machine drive from the iMac. Plugged it back into the Airport Express. Remounted the drive. Started Time Machine backup on Patrick's iMac. Uploaded movies to YouTube.
Mon Aug 10, 2009
Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, superslow dumbbell press. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Printed a new flyer for Patrick's tai chi chuan instruction. To work. Drupal work. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You will take a pleasant journey to a faraway place. Communicators meeting: budget crisis communications, Twitter. More Drupal work. To home. Troubleshot printing problems, printed a new flyer for Patrick's tai chi chuan instruction. Dinner at home with Patrick: ravioli in marinara sauce, bread, butter, hot water. Watched Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Began new Time Machine backup for my computer.
Tue Aug 11, 2009
Time Machine errors: on Patrick's computer: The backup volume could not be mounted. On my computer: Unable to complete backup. An error occurred while copying files to the backup volume. No time to troubleshoot now. Restarted Patrick's computer. Turned Time Machine off on mine. To work. Answered a question for Karl M about .htaccess files. Prepared reimbursement requests. Eric D and I shuttled to Laurel Heights. Picked up lunch at The View with Eric D. DAL meeting with Joe, Mike, Susie, and Eric D. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Pathway calendar edits for Carol. Orientation edits for Shirin. Began creating a Yahoo! Pipe to combine all known UCSF Twitter feeds—there are about 15 of them. Dinner at home with Patrick: mushroom risotto, beef tri-tip marinated in porter, corn on the cob. Watched disc 1 extras from Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull on Netflix DVD with Patrick. More Time Machine troubleshooting. Console: "Error writing to backup log. NSFileHandleOperationException:*** -[NSConcreteFileHandle writeData:]: Input/output error" and "Copy stage failed with error:11" and "Couldn't create backup directory for computer name..." and "Failed to eject..." and "Error: (-36) Creating directory..." and "Backup failed with error: 2" and "(FSVolumeRefNum: -110; status: -47; dissenting pid: 0)". Here's what I did in response: Open Time Machine preferences, select Change Disk..., stop backing up. Select Choose backup disk, reselect the same drive. Turn off Time Machine on Patrick's computer. Restart Airport Express. Attempted new backup: "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." Unmounted the Time Machine drive. Power-cycled the Time Machine drive. Restarted Airport Express again. Attempted new backup: "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." Used the solution I had successfully used on August 5. Backup begins. Backup completes successfully. I start another backup immediately—it is successful. Looked at lots of friends' photos on Facebook and Flickr. Checked Console: no Time Machine errors. Removed an excluded folder from Time Machine, started a new backup, it completes successfully. Removed another excluded folder from Time Machine, started a new backup, it completes successfully. Turned Time Machine back on for Patrick's computer. Time Machine error on my computer: "Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed." To bed.
Wed Aug 12, 2009
Time Machine error "Bulk setting Spotlight attributes failed" doesn't seem to have prevented a backup from completing successfully—this error message seems to not be a problem. Checked on Time Machine backups for both computers—both still working. Weight training: various leg exercises. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Web planning meeting all day with Eric D and Susie L. Lunch: Panda Express, sat in the sun on the steps with Eric D. My fortune: You love the spotlight—become an entertainer. Dinner at home with Patrick: biryani with sausage, naan, hot water. To bed early.
Thu Aug 13, 2009
Woke at 3 AM, couldn't sleep. Back to bed. Woke a little late. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Time Machine errors again on my iMac: "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." Drupal planning with Eric D. Shuttle to MCB. Websteering lunch with Ed C at Truck. I had a cheeseburger and onion rings. The onion rings were too spicy for me but I ate them anyway. Chatted with Erik W at Carmelina's. IT services meeting. Shuttle back to Parnassus. Chatted with Eric D about our Drupal project. Web edits. To home. More troubleshooting of "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." I ran my fixcookiesdonotmatch script. Started a backup again. Time Machine worked once, then "Backup failed with error: 18" and "cookies do not match" again. Dinner at home with Patrick: baked chicken, steamed broccoli, bread, Smart Balance Light. Pina coladas. Deleted and reselected and restarted Time Machine. Stretches. Weight training: various leg exercises, superslow one-arm dumbbell row, shrug.
Fri Aug 14, 2009
Office celebration to thank Eric V—it's his last day and we are sad to see him go—and a late bday celeb for Shirin. Public Affairs taxo meeting—I thought it went very well. Web edits: orientation, white coat ceremony. Chatted with Aunt Helen. Helped an entering student with computer purchase decisions. Home page mockup work in Photoshop. Dinner at DDP with Danny, Drew, Phil, Romy, Binh, Kim. For dessert, Patrick made an almond-fig tart. Time Machine worked properly all day. Maybe deleting /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist fixed it? Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly and variations. Stretches. Late meal: lowfat strawberry banana yogurt with leftover Eric D fruit salad, hot nonfat milk, chunky soup.
Sat Aug 15, 2009
House cleaning. Cut my hair. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Had to restart the Airport Express since the Time Machine volume wasn't mounting properly (Backup failed with error: 19). Lunch with Patrick at Luna. On the way we ran into and said hello to scandy. After lunch we ran into Bill and Kevin and chatted a bit. We also saw a man I know works at UCSF but I don't know his name; I said hello. I got a mushroom pizza slice and tap water at Escape From New York Pizza. Home. Nap. Time Machine working as expected. Got the the ajax spinwheel of eternity today when attempting to send a direct message at twitter.com. Caught up a bit on email. Dinner: leftovers. Dessert: leftover fruit salad. Bed.
Sun Aug 16, 2009
Breakfast: leftover fruit salad. House chores. Altered a pair of Seven For All Mankind jeans for Danny. Shopped in the Haight for elbow pads and knee pads. Dropped off Danny's jeans at the spa. Lunch by myself at Squat and Gobble at Market and 16th. To home. House chores. Drinks and dinner with Chris G and Andy T at Truck.
Mon Aug 17, 2009
Pruned SMS-followings on Twitter. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Listserv management. Small web update for Lisa S. Updated staff page to reflect Lisa S. Sent Chris C links to our keyboard trays. Sent info to Karl M about using .htaccess and .htpasswd. Comm group followup. Small web edit for Cindy: course subs. Calendar management. Lunch at desk: sandwich from home. Small web updates for Carol. Linkchecking. Forwarded a directory problem to John K. Installed OS 10.5.8. Installed Vista updates. Tested potential solution to WebDAV problem—it did not work. Drupal work with Eric D. Home page mockup work. Installed Microsoft Entourage 2008 for Mac, Web Services Edition. Troubleshot connection problems for Kerry M and Adam Daniel M. Got two veggie egg rolls from Panda Express on the way home. My fortune: Adventure awaits you. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig meatloaf with linguine and marinara sauce. Dessert: nonfatmilk-based fruit smoothie. To bed earlyish.
Tue Aug 18, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback. Bad Muni day—took an hour to get to work. SCWG meeting. "You cannot install Entourage 2008, Web Services Edition Update on this volume. A version of the software required to install this update was not found on this volume." Yahoo! Pipes work. Web edits for Carol. Closed a workshop for JWG and Scott E. Uploaded a form for Shirin H. Web edits for JWG and Scott E: WES reports. Calendar management. Chatted with Chris C about backup procedures. Lots of Drupal work with Eric D, set up the sandbox, rebuilt the stage. Investigated the disappearance of Eric D's Flash code for our student profiles. They hadn't disappeared; they just weren't in the place we were looking. To home. Console reports many "USBDeviceOpen failed: 0xe00002c5". Restart. Dinner at home with Patrick: Watched the first hour of Firefly "Serenity" with Patrick on Netflix DVD—we both like it. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Late meal: hot nonfat milk, chunky soup. Lots of computer maintenance for both computers. Time Machine: cookies do not match and backup failed with error 18. Resolved this by turning off Time Machine on both computers, unmounting the Time Machine drive from both computers, turning off the drive for one minute, turning it back on, starting a backup now from my computer. Today during an 18-minute discussion with my bank, they admitted that I discovered a bug in their authentication system. They were very nice about the whole thing, as was I. Chatted over SMS with Brad L about Twitter spam.
Wed Aug 19, 2009
Woke up too early. Time Machine: cookies do not match and backup failed with error 18. Modified my fixcookiesdonotmatch alias to instead say 'sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist'. Ran the new alias. It appears I will lose all the backup data I had before. Getting tired of this. Stretches. Weight training: superslow lateral raise, superslow front raise, superslow dumbbell row. Watched the developer preview video for Google Wave. Spent some time trying to find info on the web about the best fonts to use where you are presuming you'll use Cufon and so "web-safe" fonts are not part of the discussion. In other words, what are the best fonts for viewing text on screen, typically for web pages, without restricting yourself to the small set of fonts that are included with OS X, Linux, Windows, and Microsoft Office? What I found is that nothing on the web answers this question very well right now. One guideline seems to be to look for fonts that have larger x-heights. Another is to look for fonts that work well with square pixels rather than round dots, but it feels as though some people mistakenly think this means that you want a boxy shape to the letters, but I think that's not necessarily always the case. Spent most of the day writing a web page for SCWG describing what students need to know about information security and encryption. Lunch from the local burritoria. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, leftover herbed potatoes and carrots, side salad. Watched Disc 1 of Firefly, remainder of "Serenity" and all of "The Train Job." Set Time Machine back up from scratch for my computer.
Thu Aug 20, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Joel gave me a cute Thai worry doll from his recent trip to Thailand. Drupal work with Eric D: content types, help text. Lunch with Shirin H, JWG, and Eric D at Bistro 9. Helped JWG troubleshoot beach ball of death issues with his MacBook, performed some surgery. Installed PharmAdMIT 2010 for Scott E. Dinner at Paxti's with psychobauble, Nate, and Patrick: sausage, pepperoni, and mushroom deep dish pizza—yummy! Processed and uploaded a video to YouTube. Submitted a few Flickr photos to the UCSF School of Medicine Flickr group. I'm way behind on processing and uploading photos to Flickr.
Fri Aug 21, 2009
Discovered Time Machine errors again: "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." I will post this soon to Apple's discussion forums, but I am not optimistic and think now that I will have to stop using Time Machine altogether for this computer. Works fine on Patrick's iMac—I don't know what the problem is with this computer. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Helped Scott E configure PharmAdMIT 2010. SCWG work. Chatted with John K about CLS. ComNet work: blogging and social media guidelines. Lunch: leftovers. Followup with Helen G about our job posting. Calendar management. Chatted with Eric D about megadropdown menus. Weeded files. Provided Rodney Y with a dataset. Notified students about Entourage 2008 "Web Services Edition" or "Exchange Web Services." (They don't appear to be using a single consistent name, which is a little frustrating.) Installed updates for VLC and Adium. Job posting work. 16 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover pizza, side salad, hot water. Watched "Bushwhacked" from Firefly disc 1 on Netflix DVD with Patrick.
Sat Aug 22, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. House chores. Today I encountered CrashPlan error "Destination unavailable. Backup location is not accessible". The backup location was indeed accessible from Finder and I had both read and write permissions to the location. SOLUTION: I resolved the problem by repairing the drive holding the backup location with Disk Utility. Disk Utility reported and resolved a few errors, and then CrashPlan started working properly again. I suggest this error message be changed as follows: CURRENT: Destination unavailable. Backup location is not accessible. PROPOSED: The backup location is not accessible or might have disk errors. Began migration of Lodestar from 5dollar to Bluehost. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: ravioli in marinara sauce. Made mint chocolate chip cookies with Patrick. Shopped online. Late meal: shrimp-based ramen with carrot slices and paper-thin zucchini.
Sun Aug 23, 2009
Breakfast at home: cherry french toast, grapes, apple juice. Checked on Lodestar migration—email has migrated, but web has not, and there are still some problems with the mail connections. Lunch at home with Patrick: turkey burger sandwiches, hot water. Reinstalled Sophos on both computers. Installed Postini trial. Created a business card holder for Patrick. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken mediterraneo, mushroom risotto, hot water. Stretches. Lots of website management work. Reorganized entries in my password database.
Mon Aug 24, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. I noticed today that the Sage addon for Firefox is now compatible with Firefox 3.5, so I reloaded my Sage bookmarks for work, then caught up on several months of feeds. Web strategy work. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You will be surrounded by things of luxury. Worked on Drupal stuff with Eric D. Organized paper documents. Worked late. Picked up food. Patrick picked me up in the car. Dinner at home with Patrick: Panda Express takeout. My fortune: Success will be yours. Patrick's fortune: People admire you for being such a charmer. Small web edit for Drew. Discovered via psychobauble The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, which is painful and funny for me to read. Reloaded my Sage bookmarks for home, caught up on several months of feeds. Time Machine started working again after repeated errors "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." I didn't do anything except perhaps restart the computer once. I was so ready to give up on Time Machine completely. I think maybe my iMac knew that I was ready to do that or ready to post a long message to the Apple discussion forums.
Tue Aug 25, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Welcome party for Lisa S with bagels, cream cheese, fresh strawberries and grapes, mint chocolate chip cookies. Chatted with Scott N about logins and passwords. Chatted with Cindy and Shirin about a folder cover print project. Chatted with Cindy—a brief 1-on-1. More Photoshop mockup work. Lunch: fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cornbread, fresh fruit, cottage cheese from the cafeteria to go. Drupal work with Eric D: built out the news content type. More Photoshop mockup work. To home. Short nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: beef stew with long grain rice pilaf, hot water. Watched Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Here's the Netflix note I left for it: "It's quirky and different, but the plot was flimsy, the songs were just okay, the lip-synching was noticeably off, and the humor didn't make me laugh once." People love it on imdb, but I was not that impressed. More troubleshooting of Time Machine errors again: "Backup failed with error: 18", "cookies do not match." Unmounting and remounting the Time Machine drive and trying a back-up-now failed 3 times in a row. (I think this worked for me in the past.) I was successful in getting Time Machine to work again by restarting the Airport Express, remounting the drive, and running a back-up-now. Tweaked my php.ini to comment out all no-debug lines which are causing errors in my log files. Resolved other PHP errors. Installed Drush. Added Google Analytics to Patrick's website via the Drupal module. Couldn't get it to work without it appearing twice and also stomping on some of the Javascript I had working in the site, so I uninstalled the module and put the Google code in manually. Posted on Twitter and Facebook today: "frankfarm is not happy with Watermark Credit Union right now https://www.watermarkcu.org/ for twice failing to quickly deliver a replacement ATM card." Tried using Typedia, but encountered error "You are only allowed to search every 15 seconds" twice and then stopped using it. Might be worth revisiting in a few years. (Only 15 Adobe typefaces listed right now.) Uninstalled Feed Sidebar addon and OPML Support addon. Enabled Delicious Bookmarks addon. Uninstalled Delicious Bookmarks addon. Stretches. Weight training: front raise. Late meal: leftovers.
Wed Aug 26, 2009
Hey Expression Engine team—the Expression Engine error message "You are only allowed to search every 15 seconds" should instead be "You are allowed to search only once every 15 seconds." "You are only allowed to search every 15 seconds" means that you are not allowed to do anything except search every 15 seconds, which is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. (If it were up to me, I wouldn't even have such a feature—it only annoys site visitors and causes them to leave, and it doesn't explain whatever rationale there might be for such an unusual limitation. Imagine if you could search Google only once every 15 seconds! I'd probably stop using Google, just like yesterday when I stopped using Typedia due to this error.) Stretches. Weight training: various leg exercises, advanced plank: about 90 seconds. To work. Small web updates. Shuttle to Laurel Heights, chatted with Lucia on the way. Dean's Office furlough implementation meeting. I took notes and recorded audio because Sue A asked me to. Tried to find Eric D afterwards to drop off cdroms but couldn't find him. Shuttle back to Parnassus. Dropped off the audio and chatted with Sue A and Shannon W, said hello briefly to Eric whom I knew from U-12. Small web updates. Answered a question about closure of services from recent grad JP. Regex work with Eric D. Answered some computer questions for Chris C. Tweaked Bluehost spam configuration. Dinner at home with Patrick: shells with pig in marinara sauce, biscuits, Smart Balance Light, hot water. Showed Patrick the value of Google Voice. Found countdown app solutions for Patrick. Price list edits for Drew. Time Machine errors "Error: (5) getxattr" and "Backup failed with error: 26" and "Failed to eject volume (null)". I temporarily resolved this by ejecting the Time Machine volume and remounting it. I have Time Machine problems so frequently now that I always leave Console running and set to view all messages filtered on "backupd". I minimize it when I don't need it, and I restore it when I do. Much easier than closing it and opening it again when Time Machine gives me so many problems.
Thu Aug 27, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Listserv maintenance. Answered a computer requirements question for entering student KW. SCWG followup. Answered questions about MyAccess access and Barracuda access from off campus for student LC. Hiring activities. Linkcheck followup. Answered a question about internet requirements for entering students SS and JT. More linkcheck followup. Reviewed the An Event Apart San Francisco schedule which was just released. It looks really good, so I'm trying to find out if Eric D and I can go. Drupal work with Eric D. Lunch: leftovers. SCWG work: email setup edits, new VPN login page review. Reorganized the supplies boxes in the workroom storage. Other website edits. Patrick picked me up in the car. Dinner at New Loi's Vietnamese Restaurant on Irving Street where we had a pretty miserable meal and I decided to never return. The food I thought was good, but Patrick thought it tasted not as good as before. The service was terrible, though. Our appetizer arrived after our entrees. Patrick's tea went empty, so he drank part of mine. (Neither of our glasses were ever refilled.) We had to get up almost every time we needed something because our waiter—seemingly the owner—was obviously counting receipts and not waiting on tables. When I politely asked for sauce that wasn't spicy he noticeably sighed and rolled his eyes. (Come on, if you're going to do that you can at least hide it from me.) Then he brought me more spicy sauce, so I asked him again and this time he understood and finally brought me non-spicy sauce. When our to go container arrived, it had a few black marks of some kind of soot on the inside. I tried to wipe them off with a napkin, but they would not come off. Home. Tweaked Bluehost spam configuration. Patrick and I viewed funny websites failblog, awkward family photos, cake wrecks. Attempted to install Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (SP2) in a VMware Fusion VM, encountered error "One or more drivers might be incompatible", could not find anything relevant in Google. Started Telltale Games "Fright of the Bumblebees" after many weeks of not playing. We stopped playing because the graphics didn't display completely right and because of quirky behavior. The puzzles were kind of too hard for us, too. Now when I launch it, I get an error that I never did before: "WallaceGromit101.exe has stopped working." It's an APPCRASH with exception code c0000005. There's a thread in Telltale's forum, but the solution is not conclusive. I will attempt to dirty reinstall the game. Stretches. Weight training: superslow hammer curl, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl. Stretches.
Fri Aug 28, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Updated the login dialogs page for Doug C. Followup with student LC about his MyAccess access (or should I say hisMyAccessaccess or HisAccess?). SCWG followup: campus standards for login dialogs. Updated schedules for Lucia. Reimbursement filing followup with La'Trece and Lucia. Looked for an old visibility project photo for Shane but I did not keep an archive of our originals. Lunch today: JWG and I got sandwiches from Subway. Spent most of the afternoon coding the Update from the Dean and posting it live. Password reset for a student. 17 messages in my inbox. It was a sweltering, muggy day today, so I decided we would eat out for dinner tonight. We initially attempted to base our dining location on the proximity to our home as well as an ice cream parlor that would not have long lines. For us, that meant dining in West Portal or the Sunset and having ice cream at Rite Aid West Portal or Marco Polo or Polly Ann's. My first choice was Rite Aid, since it was also likely to be the least expensive ice cream and we're trying to save money. But when I checked the web to check its hours, I discovered that the Rite Aid had been replaced by a Walgreen's. I called—the ice cream counter is gone. The dining choices in West Portal are generally better to us than in the Sunset where Marco Polo and Polly Ann's are, so we decided to eat at Xiao Loong and Patrick knew of at least 2 other places in West Portal to get ice cream or frozen yogurt. I like Xiao Loong (250 West Portal, San Francisco, California, USA 94127), but it's pricier than the typical Chinese restaurant, and I don't feel it's worth the extra price, but we don't eat there often so I don't mind it once in a while. Patrick had white rice, I had brown rice, and we shared mu shu pork, lemon chicken, broccoli with soft tofu. $46.60 after a $7 tip. Patrick's fortune: Seek out the significance of your problem at this time. Try to understand. My fortune #1: You are always welcome in any gathering. My fortune #2: Do not dwell on differences with a loved one. Try to compromise. We got ice cream at an ice cream shop down the block a bit. Cool shower. To bed earlyish.
Sat Aug 29, 2009
Woke at 4:30 AM. Accuweather.com says that at 4:49 AM it's 73 degrees F outside, but it feels a bit cooler than that. Humidity 41%. Did some work email followup that needed doing. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Resolved a problem with the home network, symptoms on both computers were that Time Machine failed with error 36 and apps stalled—had to shut down both computers and cold restart the Airport Express. Resolved a problem with the Ticket History link in Bluehost—it's not clear that the ticket tracking system requires separate credentials from your CPanel account, so I needed to look to the left column and register a new account with the ticket tracking system. Finance review and paperwork. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, shrug, wrist curl, reverse wrist curl. Caught up on email—4 messages in my home inbox. Cleaned in the back yard and a little bit in the front yard. Lunch: leftovers. Edited photos. Dinner: leftovers. Edited photos. Weird discovery today: Windows Vista as a VMware Fusion VM is unable to recognize a folder named "2009.0808 Drupal Camp L.A." that was created in OS X. If I renamed the folder in OS X to "2009.0808 Drupal Camp LA" then Vista sees it. Patrick helped Aaron with a yard sale today.
Sun Aug 30, 2009
Breakfast at home with Patrick: scrambled eggs with sliced mushroom and red bell pepper and green onions. Tagged and organized photos in Flickr. Time Machine backup failed with error 29. I restarted the Airport Express and that fixed it. Nap. Safeway: picked up some food and drink. Drove to Thong's, then to Alameda Beach where Thomas met us. It was warm for a very short while after we arrived and then grew colder and breezier. Back to Thong's place, showered. Dinner at Lotus Thai Cuisine (510-658-8491, 4133 Piedmont Avenue, Oakland, California, 94611 USA)—delicious food, excellent service.
Mon Aug 31, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: various leg exercises. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Answered a question from a recent grad about email closure. Requested info security awareness handbooks from Tiki. Followup with Chris C about AD account migration. Sent questions about MyAccess to Rebecca and Judy, got a response quickly from Rebecca with all my questions answered. Followup with Rob about Servint. Prepared orientation materials for my computer services presentation. Lunch: leftovers. Followup with HR about our craigslist posting. We celebrated Chris C's last day in our office and his transition to a new position as the director of institutional research with SAA. His new position begins tomorrow. More management activities. Added Darius to our mailing list for school of pharmacy web developers. Calendar management. Management activities. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers with fresh steamed rice, side salad, hot water. Patrick and I enjoyed viewing the remainer of JWG's photos from Thailand.