October 2011
Summary: Oaktoberfest with Will; Castro Street Fair with Patrick; Steve Jobs passes away; Q Bar with Will, Ace, and Cesar; Q Bar with Will and Ace; Toad Hall with Syndicate; Don Ramon's with Will; BADcamp 2011; Lookout and La Med with JY and Syndicate; Syndicate Invades Rainbow Skate; Fall Harvest Cocktails with Danny, Romy, Drew, Phil; Pet Pride Day 2011.
Dates on this page
Sat Oct 1, 2011
Slept in. Breakfast at Lakeshore Cafe (510-832-4374, 3257 Lakeshore Avenue, Oakland) with Will. FYI Lakeshore Cafe is not on the lake's shore. Afterwards we checked out Oaktoberfest in the Dimond district of Oakland. I was surprised to see so many kids. It was essentially a family affair, a place where adults could pay a lot of money to get drunk on beer while their kids enjoyed the root bier garden kids area or rockclimbed. We didn't drink any beer because it was too expensive of a commitment for us both in terms of money and time. Missing from this Oktoberfest was a woman dressed like St. Pauli Girl, or at least I expected to see one but didn't. It was definitely shorts weather, and we were both too warmly dressed because it was overcast and cooler where Will lives, closer to Lake Merritt. Back to Will's. Nap. Dinner at Ghazal Indian Cuisine: garlic naan, fish korma, chicken tikka masala, chai iced tea. A recent Panda Express fortune: There will always be delightful mysteries in your life.
Sun Oct 2, 2011
Grocery shopping at Fresh & Easy in the Richmond. It was our first time shopping at this store. Late breakfast in the Fresh & Easy parking lot: spicy california roll, egg salad sandwich, fruit drinks. Home. Researched bike repair shops. The closest one I could find that was open and didn't have a busy signal and could fix my flat was Valencia Cyclery, so we drove there and got the flat fixed and my gear shifting checked in about 15 minutes. Afterwards we walked the Castro Street Fair, stopping at Trigger for a drink special—2 for 1 of anything on the rocks (we got margaritas, $7 for 2). A cover band played the (main?) stage, and they were really good. We also watched Cheer SF perform, and I donated some money to them. Lunch at Starbelly with Patrick: salad with arugula, roasted almonds, endive, heirloom apple; pizza with butternut squash, humboldt fog, sage, pumpkin seeds. It got cold so we returned to the car and drove home. Nap for me. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled salmon in provencale sauce, mashed potatoes, rosemary buns with butter, hot water. Dessert: 1 peanut butter cookie each.
Mon Oct 3, 2011
Archived tax documents. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, sliced banana; California sage honey; cinnamon; organic applesauce; organic soy milk. Rain expected today, so I rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Lots of QBC web work today. Conference call with Susie and Robin: QBC rollover graphics. Answered an InDesign question for Lucia. Made live new PID dates for Shirin. Submitted a request to DLS to set up new monitors for Lisa and Lynn. Lunch from the cafeteria: pasta salad, shrimp dim sum. More QBC web work. Supp app project work in Drupal: an import. Snack: frozen yogurt from the cafeteria, corn chips that I brought from home. Got my flu shot. I think today was the first day UCSF offered it to staff, faculty, employees. It was pretty fast—about 10 minutes total. Troubleshot a problem in which using Lucida Grande with Adobe Photoshop CS5 produced an error: "Could not use the type tool because of a program error." I spent about 30 minutes on the problem trying a lot of possible solutions, but none worked. Very frustrating. We couldn't not use Lucida Grande—it was everywhere in our website. I gave up trying to fix it. Computer maintenance for Lucia, Sammie, Cindy, and Joel: 7zip installation, Firefox 7.0.1 installation, Java update to R27, disk cleanup, disk defrag. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick. Patrick was late getting home, so I cooked. Same salmon from last night, organic stuffing with added fresh parsley. Dessert: one chocolate chip cookie each. Smith and Wesson for me. Tried helping Patrick set his PCR-30 up again, but it seems some of the keys are broken now.
Tue Oct 4, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic nonfat yogurt with fresh, sliced banana; granola. Rode Muni to work. Communications team meeting. Shared a document with the team (communications team staffing). Helped Lisa try to find the key to the lock on her monitor—unsuccessful. Sent Eric some notes about what we needed for Lytebox. The Lytebox website appears to be newly set up with a new domain, and the redirects for it are particularly annoying, makes it difficult to find information. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Listserv management. Followup with Mark B about the 4 MB attachment filesize limit in our listserv system. Lunch to go from Panda Express: chow mein, honey walnut prawns, eggplant tofu, water. My fortune: Past inspirations and experiences will be helpful in your job. Restarted the kiosk because it was displaying nothing but a black screen. Timesheet activities. QBC work: stylesheets, added privacy, accessibility, and contact us pages. QBC work with Eric: apply button, jquery, stylesheets. Worked late. Muni was terrible getting home. Took me an hour. Dinner at home with Patrick: tofu korma over steamed white rice. Dessert: one peanut butter cookie each. I organized stuff and moved photos from the camera to the computer.
Wed Oct 5, 2011
Weight training: advanced hip extensions, crunch. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced gala apple; California sage honey; cinnamon; organic soy milk; and blueberry lemonade. Began mockups for a homepage redesign for Recharge. Rode Muni to work. Unlocked Lisa's monitor so that Tran can upgrade it today. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Redirected a mailbox setup request from Lynn to Tran. Redirected a support request from student JY to CLE. Followup with a student org website that had gone missing. Followup with Cindy and Lucia: 7-Zip. Corrected a small problem in the job postings script regarding character entities in subject lines. QBC slideshow work with Eric. Followup with Susie and Julia about printing problems with the QBC site in progress. Followup with SCWG and students and staff about the postponement of forthcoming changes to UCSFwpa. Lots of slideshow work with Eric. UCSF gray shuttle from Parnassus to Mission Bay with Eric. Starbucks with Eric: grande nonfat pumpkin latte no whip for me, grande mocha frap for Eric. Lunch: leftovers. QBC content retreat with Eric, Susie, Julia, Rebecca, and Debbie. UCSF gray shuttle from Mission Bay to Parnassus. During a short break in the meeting, Eric told me he received a message from Amber that Steve Jobs had died. I didn't believe him, but pulled up news.google.com anyway and after a search on "Steve Jobs" it was confirmed. (The Wall Street Journal was the first hit.) Management activities. Met John, the new cleaning person. Tran had installed Lisa's new monitor while I was gone, so I locked the new monitor up. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick: large salad. Laundry, dishes, mended a missing button on my Topman burgundy jumper. More Recharge mockup work. Folded laundry.
Thu Oct 6, 2011
Breakfast at home: hash browns, omelet with parsley, english muffin with butter. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with SCWG about the postponement of forthcoming changes to UCSFwpa. Lots of QBC all day: mostly copy and some styling. Lunch: leftover salad. Web edit for Cindy: pathway declarations. Followup with Susie about QBC content. Followup with Lisa C about the BTS website (an access request). Chatted with applicant PN about a payment that is in the system unsettled. Redirected an announcement request from Misty L to Susie. Listserv management. Today someone from facilities changed all the light bulbs in our hallway. Previously we had a warm temperature bulb, and now it's a much cooler temperature. Every time I open my door now, I think, "Wake up!" Rode Muni to Duboce Park. Walked to my optometrist, picked up some colored contact lenses. Dinner at Zadin with Patrick: fish spring rolls; fried pad thai noodles with shrimp, tofu, and vegetables; mint tea for Patrick, jasmine tea for me. More Recharge mockup work: logo and textures. Purchased a flight for a forthcoming vacation. Late meal: leftover tofu korma.
Fri Oct 7, 2011
Rode Muni to work. Ate a banana while walking from 9th and Judah. Breakfast to go from Carmelina's: breakfast burrito. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Helped student JW with a question about antivirus software. Websteering: asked the group if they wanted to continue the lunches. Lots of QBC content and styling work. Sent Tran a request to set up Joel with dual monitors. Chatted briefly with Ami J about the ucsf911 Twitter account I had set up a long time ago. Lunch at Masala Dosa with Eric and Matt S. I had requested my dish to be made mild. It came out too spicy for me but I ate it anyway. Eric and I stopped in to say hi to Joe and Sue in the dean's office. Followup with Tran about Joel's dual monitor setup (possible fuzziness concern). Updated a broken link for APhA-ASP. Helped student CB with a question about email setup. Wore my colored contact lenses (or contact lenses of color if you're certain people) for the first time today. I guess it will take some time to adjust to them. The "true hazel" color I selected meets my intent for subtlety; the difference is most obvious in a certain bright light. Every time I blink there's a bit of haziness (not hazelness) for less than a second before my vision clears again. They also seem thinner, but not as thin as the samples I had tried. Once today one of my lenses folded in half while in my eye, and I needed to emergency-reset it. Rode Muni to Duboce Park, walked to Q Bar where I met with Will and met his friend Ace. They've been friends for 15 years. We had a round of bay breezes, and then their friend Cesar joined us for another round. We walked back to Walgreens at Market and 15th for Ace to pick up a prescription and for Will to visit the restroom at his work, then ate dinner at Criolla outside under a heat lamp which made it tolerably comfortable against the cold night. Garlic shrimp with rice and beans, hot water for me; hush puppies, Mexican Diet Coke (aka Coke Light) for Ace; Cubano sandwich, hot water for Will; 3-piece chicken and waffles for Cesar. Afterwards Will wasn't feeling well, so I drove him back to my place.
Sat Oct 8, 2011
Will went home. Breakfast at home: 2 eggs scrambled with parsley, 4 hash browns, 1 english muffin with butter, 8 ounces of blueberry-lemon juice. Web work for Tina. Lots of ironing. Lunch: butternut squash ravioli, vegan sausage, leftover marinara sauce with zucchini, bread and butter. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: true cod with lentil stew, bread and butter, hot water, small glass of white wine. Mended my gray/silver jacket which had developed some ripped seams at the elbows.
Sun Oct 9, 2011
Pre-breakfast: Patrick and I split an english muffin with butter. Stonestown Farmer's Market with Patrick: samosa; extra large shrimp and chive dumplings; chinese pancake; bought groceries. Edited and uploaded photos to Flickr. Sunbathed for about an hour. Lunch: veggie burger, seasoned crinkle-cut fries, mango cooler (TJ's frozen mango chunks, water, ginger ale, coconut rum). The skies turned overcast and a breeze gathered, so I showered to remove the sun protection and took a nap indoors. Weight training: door pull ups. Dinner at home with Patrick: deep-fried okra, salad, corn on the cob, a bit of mango cooler, 2 glasses of white wine. During dinner we talked about Lodestar Quarterly. Watched Stardust (2007) on Netflix DVD. We both enjoyed it. Weight training: door pull ups.
Mon Oct 10, 2011
I can't remember what I had for breakfast today. Finished reading Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte. Began reading Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane on my iMac. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Communications team meeting. Redirected an image request from Devi to Susie. Ordered a new computer for David: Mac Mini. Lunch to go from Subway: veggie pattie footlong sandwich. Management activities. Supp app project work in Drupal: various small requests for Joel and Sammie. Timesheet activities. Submitted a network folder permissions request for Rodney and Michael W (Ilios). Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick. I made up a drink on the fly: chocolate root beers (vodka, creme de cacao, root beer, grenadine, maraschino cherry). Stir fry with tofu and vegetables. Vacuumed, organized stuff. UCSF work: supp app initial review form PDF. Late meal: leftovers from Masala Dosa.
Tue Oct 11, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Archived a document. Breakfast: a white nectarine from the farmer's market. Rode Muni to work. SCWG meeting. Lunch #1 to go from Palio: nostromo. Web team meeting. Supp app project work in Drupal: import for Daliah. QBC work. More supp app work. Lunch #2 to go from Subway: veggie delight footlong sandwich. Management activities. QBC work. Checked in with Eric about M-Z student photos. More supp app work. Redirected a request about closed student accounts from Lucia to Doug C. Initial Review Form PDF work for Joel: sent him a first draft. Pcard reporting. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick: udon noodles in miso with vegetables, Sapporo. Watched The Simpsons "The Falcon and the D'Ohman" on Hulu with Patrick. Did some supp app work from home: cron.
Wed Oct 12, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Breakfast: lowfat organic yogurt, fresh, diced granny smith apple, granola. Continued reading Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane on my iMac. Rode my bike to work. It was my first time back on the bike after many days of wet roads, and it was also my first time on the bike following a flat repair and mini-tuneup at Valencia Cyclery. My bike feels much better than before the flat. I love that Valencia Cyclery! Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Reported email server connectivity problems to ITS. Reported air flow problems to facilities. Asked Lucia to confirm a grad. Released batch download capabilities to Joel and Sammie. More QBC work in Drupal with Eric. Updated the student leaders picture page for Cindy. Lunch at You See Sushi. More QBC work in Drupal with Eric. Listserv management. More supp app work. Followup with Ami about ucsf911 transition. Reminder to comm team about BADcamp 2011. Listserv management. Followup with James about supp app and auth.net. Worked very late. Dinner from Moffitt Cafe Express: artichoke and veggies pizza slice, half of a deluxe tuna salad sandwich on 12-grain wheat, water. Continued reading Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane on my Mac Pro. Rode my bike home, got home at 10:10 PM. Yoga: standing warmup practice and assorted poses. Weight training: inverse push ups.
Thu Oct 13, 2011
Breakfast: granny smith apple with organic lowfat yogurt. Rode my bike to work. Supp app project work in Drupal for Daliah. Shuttle to Mission Bay. QBC content review meeting. Lunch with Susie and Eric at Peasant Pies. I had a moroccan something with vegetable barley soup. More QBC work. Shuttle from Mission Bay to Parnassus. Followup with Cindy about an email problem (picasso). Followup with Cindy and student NB about sending rich text messages to listservs. (ITS says it's not supported even though it works in some cases.) Answered a question from a prospective student for Lisa C. Snack: 2 veggie spring rolls to go. Rode Muni to Duboce Park, walked to Peet's to meet Patrick. Dinner at Blue with Patrick: rock shrimp mac and cheese and arnold palmer for him, tuna casserole with ritz cracker crumble and water for me. Rode Muni home. Worked until very late (1:45 AM) on UCSF work: management activities.
Fri Oct 14, 2011
Cindy brought in bagels. Toasted half bagel with cream cheese. 1-on-1 with Rodney. Edited an image for Shirin. Followup with ITS about email connectivity problems (all gone now). Followup with student SL about email problems. Lunch with Matt S at Soi Gow: soup and tofu pad see yew for him, pineapple fried rice for me, thai iced teas. Chatted briefly with Eric. White Coat Ceremony setup, rehearsal, class photo, ceremony, and cleanup. I stopped in at the reception briefly but there was no air conditioning and the heat and humidity in the room was unbearable, so I left. Met Will and Ace for drinks at Q Bar. Will and I got a quick pizza slice at Escape From New York Pizza then rejoined Ace at Q Bar. After a bit, Will took off to meet a friend and Ace and I visited Toad Hall where I encountered many Syndicate members. Home around 2 AM by cab.
Sat Oct 15, 2011
Breakfast at home: 3 hash browns, 2 eggs scrambled with Dorot cilantro, english muffin with butter. Errands: stopped at Toad Hall, car wash at Divisadero Car Wash, grocery shopping at Fresh & Easy (Richmond). Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: miso-glazed grilled salmon, bread, herbes de provence organic doubloon spreadable cheese from Weirauch Creamery. Did a bunch of UCSF work that I was unable to complete earlier in the week. I don't usually have to take work home on the weekends, but this time I had to do it to meet a deadline.
Sun Oct 16, 2011
Canceled clothes shopping with Danny. More UCSF work: initial review form PDF for Joel. Uploaded and geotagged photos. Shower. Went to a house party in the Mission, met Danny there. Home. Snack: leftover cauliflower soup, rosemary ciabatta roll with butter, water.
Mon Oct 17, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Tennis ball massage. Breakfast: yogurt with fresh, diced granny smith apple, granola. Rode Muni to work. QBC work in Drupal. Management activities. Chatted with Sue and Joe. Lunch: Panda Express. Supp app project work in Drupal: resolved batch download zip-inside-zip issues. Small web update for Sammie. Small web update for Cindy. Posted updated schedules for Lucia (a week late). Lots of QBC work in Drupal. Patrick picked me up in the car. Dinner at Limon with Danny, Romy, Drew, Phil, and Patrick.
Tue Oct 18, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Weight training: advanced hip extension. Tennis ball massage. Rode Muni to work. Breakfast burrito from Carmelina's. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with student TM about web hosting resources. Supp app project work in Drupal: answered a question about refunds for Sarah. Management activities. Helped student JW with a question about the spam firewall. Listserv management. Resolved a character translation problem with the job postings form for Lisa. Reviewed a proposed affiliation style for Susie and David. Checked in with Erin H to see if she has some new kiosk slides she can share. Looked up today how to pronounce Dries Buytaert. My best approximation: dreez boytaert. Management activities. Followup with many about an accidental closure of an account for a student. Initial review form PDF for Joel. QBC work in Drupal. Supp app project work in Drupal. Initial review form PDF for Joel. Computer maintenance for my computer in Windows XP. Rode my bike home.
Wed Oct 19, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, sliced banana; cinnamon; soy milk. Today the taillight on my bike fell off because the metal bracket that Everybody Bikes had installed a while ago snapped in two. I guess the metal was softer than it should have been. The weight of the taillight repeatedly pulled it downward, and I had to keep pushing it up to keep it in a visible position. Fortunately it fell off before I left home rather than on the road. Rode my bike to work. Redirected a question from Lynn about CLE. Supp app project work in Drupal. Updated the grad fairs web page for Shirin. Encountered difficulty with TortoiseSVN. Yesterday I had installed the latest version of TortoiseSVN. Today I realized that TortoiseSVN did not seem to remember the settings I had previously. I resolved the problem by selecting something about updating or upgrading from the popup menu on the root of my file store. It was not intuitive, but fortunately it worked. Initial review form PDF work for Joel: more tweaks and fixes. Began work to update the School's administration org chart. Supp app project work in Drupal: import. QBC work in Drupal. UCSF shuttle with Eric to Mission Bay. Lunch from Publico II: crispy vegetarian taco, high school nachos. QBC content review meeting. Rode back with Susie and Eric. Rode my bike home. Patrick had reorganized some of our things while I was at work. Dinner at home with Patrick: shrimp scampi, rosemary ciabatta roll with butter, water. Tried FaceTiming with Tina but was notified I either had to pay $0.99 or upgrade to Lion. I paid the $0.99 even though I plan to upgrade to Lion. I just don't have time to do it right now. Turns out Tina wasn't available on FaceTime. Watched 37 minutes of Big Trouble in Little China on Netflix DVD with Patrick. It's hilariously awful. Or is that awfully hilarious? Just for historical record, at the moment my preferred browser is Firefox. I usually run the latest version. It's now at 7.0.1. Here's a list of the addons I have installed and enabled: Adblock Plus, Brief, Download Statusbar, Forecastfox, HTTPS-Everywhere, LastPass, Open With, Xmarks. Installed and enabled only when needed: Ant Video Downloader, ColorZilla, Firebug, Juicy Studio Accessibility Toolbar, Operator, Page Speed, Web Developer, YSlow. At home my Firefox skin is Japanese Tattoo. I also have Parasol Totoro installed but not enabled.
Thu Oct 20, 2011
Yoga: standing warmup practice. Weight training: door pull ups. Trip planning. Breakfast at home: Grandma Goodie's super granola; fresh, sliced banana; 12 ounces of vegetable juice. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Helped Don with a printer problem. Redirected a schedule question to Lucia. Pcard paperwork. Listserv management. Lunch from Panda Express. Helped Lynn with shared calendars. Calendar management. Resolved a problem with my telephone line. Supp app project work in Drupal: temporarily resolved a problem with filenames. Lots of QBC work in Drupal. Updated /about/admin for Susie. Rode Muni to Church Street. Met Will at work. Dinner with Will at Don Ramon's, a Mexican restaurant with old-school food. We liked it. Stayed over at Will's. There were 2 earthquakes today. I felt both of them. The 2nd felt stronger to me perhaps because I was closer to it than the 1st one.
Fri Oct 21, 2011
Taxi from Will's place to UC Berkeley. In retrospect, I should have taken the taxi only to the nearest BART station. Breakfast at a cafe on campus: egg and cheese muffin, tater tots: about $6. Higher Education Drupal Summit at BADcamp 2011 at Wheeler Hall. Kevin Miller from Cal State Monterey Bay presented Open Atrium as a Campus Intranet—very impressive. Michael drove Eric and me to MCB for a meeting he called at MCB which included the most famous celebrity in the Drupal community as well as some others at UCSF involved in CMSes and technology decisionmaking and potential partners in the Drupal community. Carmelina's Cafe with Susie and Eric: a late lunch. Rode the UCSF lime shuttle to Parnassus. Took Muni home. Shower then nap. Too exhausted to do anything else. Dinner at home with Patrick: spinach-ricotta ravioli in marinara sauce, roasted squash with onions. Dessert: small coconut tarts from a Chinese bakery. Finished watching Big Trouble in Little China on Netflix DVD with Patrick. That film is so awful I enjoyed it. Reinstalled Flash at home and at work after trying to live without it. Here are a couple of useful things that still use Flash: Hulu, playing video in Flickr, Google Maps Street View, playing messages in Google Voice. Selected my BADcamp schedule for Saturday.
Sat Oct 22, 2011
Breakfast: organic nonfat yogurt with super granola and organic applesauce. Muni then BART to Berkeley. BADcamp 2011. It's the largest BADcamp ever—1,500 participants. Modern Web Typography in Drupal (Scott Reynen, Ken Woodworth, Garret Voorhees), Beyond WYSIWYG + Comments: Web Engagement is the New CMS (Jay Batson). Lunch with Leslie K, Jason, Stefan, Eric D, Carl U, John K, Jonathan P at Raleigh's. Using Panels To Make A Smarter Page (Sean Lange), Best Practices for Development and Deployment (Joshua Koenig, Matt Cheney), Drupal 7 Takes Portland State University to School (Jennifer Hols), Modern Theming: Beyond Preprocessing and .tpls (Tim Cosgrove). The BADcamp keynote took place in the late evening—unusual for these kinds of events. It was in Zellerbach Hall. Free nachos, flatbread/pizzas, and made-to-order tacos. $5 bottles of beer (!), $3 cups of soda. The bar ran out of beer. Live DJs. I found it quite pleasant but was disappointed by the price of the beer. I happened to be standing near Dmitri Gaskin and chatted briefly with him and others to whom he was talking. Danese Cooper from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gave a brief history of open-source. Jeff Robbins from Lullabot encouraged us to think beyond the desktop computer and how to build Drupal apps that provide data to lamps, refrigerators, and other kinds of devices. Josh Koenig interviewed Dries Buytaert.
Sun Oct 23, 2011
Muni then BART to Berkeley. BADcamp 2011. Coat Your Website in Varnish (Steven Merrill), Content optimization & SEO: secret weapons for driving traffic (Tom McCracken, Ben Finklea). Lunch at Raleigh's with Eric D and Carl U. dog: A New Era for Drupal Sitebuilding (Sam Boyer), How to Build a Mobile Site with Drupal (Harris Rashid, Andrew Berry), Responsive Drupal Theming: Beyond the Media Query (Chris Ruppel), Getting it into Drupal with Migrate (andrew morton). The guest wireless at UC Berkeley was awful. First, the usernames and passwords were unnecessarily long—difficult to type on a mobile phone. Second, the passwords were printed in Times New Roman, so a lowercase ell was indistinguishable from a number one particularly when your password included only one of those characters. People should use a typeface which makes ells and ones and ohs and zeros and so forth distinct. Or, better yet, simply prevent ambiguous characters from being used in passwords in the first place. Third, the UC Berkeley signin screen said that it would remember the password for I think a week, but it did not. It forced me to reenter the login and password at every session—so annoying. On my phone I gave up using it by the end of the conference because it was faster to use 3G than to reenter the login and password. So a few bad things about BADcamp 2011: the price of beer and the horrible UC Berkeley guest wireless. Lookout with JY, who is in town on his world tour. Met Alex and Albert. Dinner with Syndicate at La Med. Encountered Thomas and Thong, met their friend Steven. We chatted for a short while in front of IXIA. Steven did a great impersonation of someone named Shirley Q. Liquor.
Mon Oct 24, 2011
Breakfast at home: super granola with unsweetened soy milk, 12 ounces of generic vegetable juice. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Lots of QBC work in Drupal. Lunch at Marnee Thai: rat na with shrimp and broccoli, thai iced tea. Errands. Supp app project work in Drupal. Listserv management. Notified students about tomorrow's change to UCSFwpa campus wireless. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick: shrimp with 2 kinds of sauces, corn on the cob, steamed white rice, water. Spent some time working with Modernizr. Installed the latest XCode and iOS SDK on my iMac.
Tue Oct 25, 2011
Breakfast at home: 3 eggs scrambled easy, 2 hash browns, water. Rode Muni to work. SCWG meeting. IT Governance new media and web meeting: Michael Williams presented. Susie drove Eric and me to Mission Bay. QBC content review meeting with Susie, Eric, Debbie, Rebecca, and Julia. Susie bought for me a caprese sandwich with side salad. I ate during the meeting. UCSF shuttle to Parnassus. Edited computer services web pages: wireless, list of accounts. QBC work in Drupal. Supp app project work in Drupal. Snack: seaweed, fortune cookie. My fortune: Your home is a pleasant place from which you will draw happiness. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza from frozen, water. Began including media queries on Tina's staging website.
Wed Oct 26, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced bartlett pear; California sage honey; lowfat milk. Rode Muni to work. Chatted briefly with Lynn about using the shared office laptop. Sent Sean S a followup message regarding the recent change to UCSFwpa to accept AD credentials in addition to MyAccess credentials. Helped student AB with a question about what are my Active Directory username and password. Fielded a door access question and submitted a problem report for student KT. Followup with Todd M about printing in campus housing. Supp app project work in Drupal for Joel and Sammie. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You are a considerate and thoughtful person. Muni then BART to Ryan and Jason's place. Emery picked up me and Ryan then Chet. We drove to Redwood City. Dinner at Patty Shack where we met a bunch of others from Syndicate and not. I found the butternut squash and white cheddar sandwich both atypical and tasty. My sandwich was grilled slightly too dark on both sides, but I ate it anyway. Rainbow Skate at Redwood Roller Rink. Met a bunch of new people, including Chet, Will, Anthony, Jeff, and Charlie. Also, Thomas met me there. The lockers don't work very well and it seemed like our group was about a third of all the people there (so Rainbow Skate isn't very popular, I guess), but otherwise it's a pretty fun time.
Thu Oct 27, 2011
Can't remember what I had for breakfast. Finished reading Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane. To be honest, the book was less useful to me the further I read, but that's not to say that others will have the same experience. I found Chapter 1 essential because it can help others better understand the value of content and content strategy. Began reading Jeremy Keith's HTML5 for Web Designers. Rode Muni to work. Today I spent almost the entire day with pdftk, pdftk4all, and GNUWin32 coreutils and sed, writing a script for Sammie and Joel that automates the combining of PDF files in a certain way and giving them an additional option for manual PDF combining since Joel encountered unresolvable problems with Adobe Acrobat Pro 10.0.3 when using the Insert Pages feature. Late lunch from Subway: veggie delite sandwich, bottled water that I brought with me, ate in the sun by the library. Fielded a question from student LT about the limitations of sending large files in email. Redirected a request to take someone's photo from Susie to Susie. Chatted about mice and wrist rests with Lisa. Met briefly with Eric about QBC. We also chatted with Susie briefly about IA concerns. Computer maintenance for some staff. Dinner at home with Patrick: persimmon bisque (from a recipe that he created), bread and butter, corn on the cob, water. To bed early.
Fri Oct 28, 2011
Breakfast: organic lowfat european-style yogurt with blueberry-apple granola and fresh, diced bartlett pear; 12 ounces of vegetable juice. Rode my bike to work. Gave Lisa a spare wired mouse I had at home because she needed it. Responded to an emergency request from Sue for Mary Anne for a white coat ceremony photo. QBC work in Drupal all day: lots of styling and caretaking of the to do list. Supp app project work in Drupal for Joel. Notified the ucsf.edu web team of editing errors for their social media guidelines pages. Notified students of the 4-MB attachment filesize limit for sending to listserv mailing lists and the 25-MB attachment filesize limit for sending to individuals. Also notified them that formatted text is not guaranteed to work when sending to listserv mailing lists but that if you use recent versions of Microsoft Outlook with the right settings you can get it to work. Calendar management. Responded to another image request from Sue. Responded to a question from Daliah about applicants who paid but never submitted. Reviewed the social media guidelines from University Relations, sent a request for more details. Edited a photo and uploaded it to The Archive. Posted a new news story for Susie. Late lunch from Palio: caprese half sandwich, pasta salad, bottled water that I brought with me. More QBC work. Followup with campus housing about wireless printing. Archived documents. Worked very late. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Rode my bike home.
Sat Oct 29, 2011
Slept in. Breakfast: rustic multigrain bread with lemon-cilantro hummus, 12 ounces of vegetable juice. House chores: vacuuming, dusting, carpet cleaning, laundry. Weight training: door pull ups throughout the day. Archived tax documents. The IRS has finally begun sending me multiple tax refunds due to memorandum 201021050. Those hours I spent 6 months ago preparing all the modified returns is finally literally paying off. Sent the following inquiry to Bluehost: "In about the past 2 weeks I've been seeing more downtime than usual for my Bluehost sites. I use an outside monitoring service. Do you have anything you can tell me about service and uptime in general in the past 2 weeks? I just want to get a feel for what's going on. Thanks!" Power outage occurred while I was vacuuming, so I thought the circuit breaker had tripped. I went to check it and the panel looked normal. It took me a few minutes to figure out that power to our entire block was out. Key indicator: the SmartPanel display on the electric meter was blank. The power returned after about 30 minutes. Rinsed the car. Sunbathed for about an hour. Snacks: one fortune cookie, some Wonka grape-flavored candy, one orange (Italian?) hard candy. My fortune: Remember to share good fortune with friends. Dinner at home with Patrick: garden burger for me; Fresh and Easy mini dim sum from frozen for Patrick and me; hot water. The mini dim sum was just okay. We would not get it again.
Sun Oct 30, 2011
Breakfast at home: mostly organic almond pancakes, hot water. Laundry. Jeremy from Bluehost responded to my question from yesterday. "In the last week our admins have had to perform some investigations on the box to repair some minor issues, but they have that straightened out as of now. Our network uptime has still been within the advertised 99.9%, though individual servers can experience downtime when things affect the boxes, or the admins have to perform work on them, which is, sadly, probably what you were feeling. We're grateful for your patience while those things are taken care of as quickly as they can be. Please let us know if you have any other questions or concerns." Thought about closing my Loopt account but decided not to. Asked a question about item CP1500PFCLCD of CyberPower Systems via their website. Lunch at home with Patrick: persimmon bisque, rustic multigrain bread with melted cheddar cheese, hot water. Dessert: small pieces of almonds and sea salt in dark chocolate. Pet Pride Day 2011 at Sharon Meadow in Golden Gate Park with Patrick. This sounds like it's an LGBT event but it's not. Mostly dogs. Rode the Carousel. Patrick rode the ostrich. I rode the horse next to him. Snack: salty pretzel, churro, 2 vitamin waters. Sunbathed in Golden Gate Park. Drinks at Lookout. On the way we encountered Eli and met his friend Rick at Marcello's. Encountered Ben L, Hao, Adam, Rich. DJ Robbie Martin spinning a mix of current and early 90's with a dash of modernized 80's. Patrick said hello to Robbie. Snack at La Fajita Grill: fish taco. Watched Jet Li's Fearless (unrated version) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Late meal: tuna mac and cheese.
Mon Oct 31, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with an extra large, fresh, diced granny smith apple; california sage honey, soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Calendar management. Web team meeting: QBC review. Lunch at Perilla: veggies with garlic noodles, thai iced tea. QBC work in Drupal. Supp app project work in Drupal for dentistry. Small web edit for Shirin: grad fairs UCLA link, PID reg. Supp app project work in Drupal for Joel. QBC work in Drupal. Gave Eric a spare UPS from under my desk. Reviewed his Mac Mini installation for David. Worked very late. Dinner to go from Moffitt Cafe Express: sundried tomato and cheese (panini? sandwich?), water. Rode my bike home. Paid bills. Ordered a new UPS. Uploaded photos to Flickr.