January 2017
Summary: Trump is inaugurated, Russian River Valley Weekend, Chinese New Year Party with Richard and Michael.
Dates on this page
Sun Jan 1, 2017
Home all day recuperating from a cold. Helped one of the upstairs neighbors with being locked out. Rode UberX with Patrick to the Mission. Saw Rogue One at Alamo Drafthouse New Mission. I thought the film was perfectly satisfying. Food and drink: devil's canyon root beer, chocolate shake, popcorn, cobb salad, hot water. We walked a bit then rode UberX home. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef black-eyed pea stew with cornbread, sweet potatoes, collards, tomatoes. Encountered many hangs today with macOS Sierra 10.12.2, began troubleshooting. Console is filled with "MacOS error: -67050" and "CSSM Exception: -2147411889 CSSMERR_CL_UNKNOWN_TAG" and "UNIX error exception: 17". I tried disabling all internet accounts except iCloud, uninstalling the Google Remote Desktop extension for Chrome, removing login items that had a warning icon next to them, and changed my default browser from Chrome to Safari, but none of that resolved the problem. Console system reports indicate repeated crashes with DDP Agent (and Dell Data Protection Encryption is on my computer as required by work at UCSF). I also suspect a keychain problem but do not have much to go on. Now I can't use my computer for an hour before a new hang occurs.
Mon Jan 2, 2017
Breakfast at home: leftover pizza sub sandwich. Continued troubleshooting home iMac hangs and crashes. Called UCSF IT and submitted a problem report; level 2 will call me back, not sure if it will be today or later. Updated medic alert cards for wallet and iPhone wallet. Nap. Created and printed a template for cutting handle holes into Green Chef boxes; we're going to use our collection of cardboard boxes to reorganize our stuff in the garage. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef rosemary chorizo linguine with radicchio, frisée, and snap peas. (The orange salad had gone bad, so we replaced it with leftover garlic bread.)
Tue Jan 3, 2017
Walked to breakfast at Tennessee Grill: two eggs over easy with sausage and hash browns, hot water: about $8.50 before a $1.50 tip. Rode Muni 28 and 1AX to UCSF Laurel Heights. Susie had left me a gift: some Humboldt County jam—sweet! html email new year greetings build. Completed an edit for Cindy. Followup with Marley about an edit. Followup with an outside info request. Plancomm team meeting. Forwarded Eric the P1 email list. Reviewed html email new year greetings and orgcharts with Susie. Orgchart work the rest of the day. For lunch since the cafeteria was closed similar to before the break, we all chipped in for Patxi's: two deep dish pizzas, one meat and one veggie—yum! Rode Uber Pool home with a driver from the south of Ireland. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef moroccan chicken with apricots, almond-studded couscous, chickpeas. Dessert: gingerbread-molasses cookies and soymilk (Patrick) and milk (me).
Wed Jan 4, 2017
Breakfast at home: one orange, two eggs over easy, two hash browns, two sausage links, orange juice mixed with san pell. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Sprint standup. Notified CP about their new org chart just posted. Followup with resolving PHP vuln. Helped Joe C with a permissions problem with the Dean's email account. Lunch: leftovers. Problems with the Exchange server today made it difficult to get work done. More UFD html email work. Craik Lab build. Helped a PharmD student with a question about obtaining a discount for Microsoft Office. Rode Uber Pool home. Patrick had had a late lunch, so he ate no dinner. Dinner at home: leftovers, Dr. Zevia. Reviewed my Obduction notes with Patrick since I had played for some hours without him a few days ago. Continued playing Obduction with Patrick. Continued studying Spanish on Duolingo.
Thu Jan 5, 2017
Breakfast at home with Patrick: ready-to-bake biscuits with various spreads. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Followup with IT with a Barracuda problem. Sprint standup. Followup with Eric G and Sachin G about closing completed tickets. Chatted with Susie about orgcharts. Filed pcard paperwork. Lunch at the JCC: hamburger and fries, water. Several times I have ordered this burger medium and it always reaches me with no pink inside. I don't care that much, but someone else might. Chatted with Zev G about a new website build. Craik Lab build. Completed info security refresher training. Orgchart work: BTS, PC, Education. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken marsala with mashed potatoes and mushrooms, dinner roll. Afterwards we decorated cookies shaped like sweaters that Sam had given us for Christmas.
Fri Jan 6, 2017
Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Sprint standup. Digital housekeeping. Followup with Mohammad TN about spam making it through Barracuda even though the domain is already in my blacklist. Worked with Eric to schedule and deliver the Hope and Health new year greeting from the dean. Errand: hardware store. Lunch at Rigolo: roast turkey sandwich, side of chicken pesto soup, water. Orgchart work: PC, Education. Microsites work: three-month post-launch followups. Followup with Polly and Rebecca about people data. Followup with Millo about profiles with empty bios and other missing data. Inactivated the CRSP website. Learned today that Lisa S gave notice and will leave the OSACA in two weeks—sad! Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza from frozen, white wine, Dr. Zevia. Continued playing Obduction with Patrick. Uber Pool has been consistently around $4.75, so I have been using it a lot lately.
Sat Jan 7, 2017
Patrick and I spent the whole day rearranging furniture, cleaning, and organizing.
Sun Jan 8, 2017
light pre-brunch and rama epic with danny at asian art museum. danny went home. i ran errands, stopping at IAMA and The Cavalier for lunch: earl gray tea, corned beed and potato hash with pea shoots. IAMA is perhaps the oddest museum I have encountered since the Sex Museum in Amsterdam in 2000. westfield centre, ms store to see dell xps 13 and surface studio 28-inch, h and m kids, bought nothing. walgreens. container store. cole hardware. crate and barrel: bought a rug for the new library and dressing room, arranged for delivery.
Mon Jan 9, 2017
rode uber pool to work. breakfast from the view cafe: coffee with half and half, odwalla orange juice, egg and cheddar on english muffin. sprint standup. antman matt visits and drops some ant bait-poison. spent all day building an analysis of the pharmd cardsort exercise. lunch for the first time at as quoted: chinese chicken salad, chai tea latte: about $20. almost everything in this small restaurant is white. the tableware is white. the servingware is white. the walls are white. the flowers are white. the people are white (mostly). the salad was huge and delicious, but i wished it included roasted sliced almonds and mandarin orange slices. a fun touch: the giant demilune of shrimp chip to take the crunch place of fried noodles. the chai was richly flavored and expertly prepared. it's nice to have discovered a new, quality lunch place. exchange wasn't working properly today, so i mostly stayed out of mail and calendar. rode uber pool home. dinner at home with patrick: chicken piccata with cavatappi. watched superstore s2:e11 on Hulu with Patrick.
Tue Jan 10, 2017
breakfast at home: one third order of oatmeal with a dash of whole milk, TJ's tangerine juice. rode uber pool to work. noticed that after matt left ant bait yesterday there are now many more ants than before and many of them are dead. mail not working again today. spent most of the day prepping for font changes in the identity retheme project. also prepped and delivered a wordcount sample of the UFD html email for Eric. lunch at as quoted: kale avocado caesar, snowy plover. the office held a celebration today with ice cream and chocolate cake for a birthday. Uber Pool home estimated price was $12.72, so I instead took the ucsf shuttle to UCSF Parnassus. from there Muni predictions were awfully bad but also probably incorrect, so I took Lyft Line home from there for about $10. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover pot roast with rice and peas, side of lemon-rosemary bread. We watched the season 8 preview of Archer, a clip to remind us of what had happened at the end of season 7, Meryl Streep's speech from the Golden Globe Awards ceremony two days ago, and some clips about the 1992 Twin Peaks television show in preparation for the show's recently announced May 21 return to production, this time on Showtime. following furniture rearrangement this past weekend, i repositioned lamps above the dining table and repositioned the Logitech speakers on Patrick's desk. lots more organizing of stuff and shopping for things we need following last weekend's furniture rearranging. archived documents related to modular bar units we recently received and installed in the kitchen and entryway.
Wed Jan 11, 2017
Breakfast at home: granola with yogurt, 8 ounces of tangerine juice. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Sprint standup. Spent pretty much the whole day working on font changes in the identity retheme project. Lunch: leftovers from last night. Installed Adobe and Microsoft updates on work computers. Rode Uber Pool home: $4.75. Dinner at home with Patrick: TJ's curry chicken over steamed white rice with peas, beer. Installed Adobe and Microsoft updates on home computers. More organizing of stuff following last weekend's furniture rearranging. Called UCSF IT; my third call in trying to resolve problems with hangs caused by the DDPE agent following upgrade from OS X El Capitan to macOS Sierra. Folded laundry that Patrick had washed earlier.
Thu Jan 12, 2017
Breakfast at home: granola with yogurt, 8 ounces of tangerine juice. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. OSACA staff meeting. Cable management for Joel: completed! Lunch at Pomelo: havana: cuban style fried rice with black beans, plantains, chipotles, ginger, cilantro, served with sautéed onions, cuban avocado salad; hot black tea. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Identity retheme fonts work. Met with Susie to review the PharmD cardsort analysis. Met with James and Eric to review James's nav exploration work. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken soup, dinner rolls. Began decryption in preparation for DDPE uninstallation for my home iMac due to hang problems encountered following upgrade to macOS Sierra. Examples of errors: "the application Console.app is not open anymore", "console failed to quit and is not responding", "safari failed to quit and is not responding". Also: the Mac shows only a spinner on a black screen while attempting to shut down and remains like that forever. Also: selecting Sharing in System Preferences immediately causes the Mac to hang. Disk First Aid was clean.
Fri Jan 13, 2017
Decryption is about 33% complete. Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, diced granny smith apple and pumpkin pie spice; 8 ounces of tangerine-orange juice. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. PharmD redesign meeting. Apple Mail crashed on me while applying a rule. When I tried to restart it, it would not open. I found the crash report in Console: EXC_CRASH: EWS store S{MFEWSStore <MFMailbox: 0x7fe4d1fa8360> A925D85D-D31B-4FB4-8B83-F77CF62E4545 <5 chars> <MFEWSAccount: 0x7fe4d1d16000> [identifier] mail.ucsf.edu (7038ABBB-C647-400C-A7E9-3FF8BA98E376)} doesn't have a folder ID / *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'EWS store doesn't have a folder ID' / abort() called terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException. My UCSF email account is inactive on this computer, but somehow it's causing a problem. I'm expecting my account to be migrated from Exchange 2013 to Exchange Online soon, so maybe I won't bother troubleshooting or resolving this until after that.
Sat Jan 14, 2017
Decryption is taking a lot longer than I had expected. Filevault now says it's nearly halfway done but the DDP control panel is still only at about 18%. My hard drive is 1.11 terabytes. Breakfast at home: toasted cinnamon swirl bread with butter, orange juice. Wall prep and painting mostly in my bedroom. Lunch: leftover chicken soup, Dr. Zevia. More painting. Snack: leftover chicken soup. Watched half of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Skipped dinner accidentally, but ate a slice of chocolate cake instead. Recharge Medical work. Late meal: leftover chicken soup with leftover rice.
Sun Jan 15, 2017
Breakfast at home: one toasted english muffin with butter; oatmeal with fresh, diced fuji apple and pumpkin pie spice; 8 ounces of orange juice. More organizing, cleaning, unmounting a pendant lamp, mounting a different pendant lamp, breaking down old shipping boxes (e.g., Pottery Barn modular unit), wall prep, and painting at home. I discovered today that as I had surmised a large Blue Apron box fits perfectly inside a large Green Chef box, so a crude system of storage can be had from all our saved boxes which we had been storing flat while we figured out something useful to do with them. I cut the two boxes and taped one where appropriate to create one unit of a storage system whereby the smaller box is a drawer inside the larger box. This is much easier for accessing stuff than just putting things in boxes and stacking them. It's essentially an almost-free storage system; the costs are packing tape, box-cutting tools, and time. I have a few more of these drawer units to build, but I need better tools, so I ordered some new box cutters. Mended a pair of long underwear by hand. Lunch at Grubbin' with Patrick: we split a Kickin' sandwich, small order of fries. Flavored san pell sodas to drink. About $16. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef beef picadillo with chili-seasoned masa cakes, olives and capers, cotija. Afterwards Patrick took a shower then for about an hour we began playing Samorast 3 which is cute, fun, mysterious, and challenging.
Mon Jan 16, 2017
Holiday. Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, diced granny smith apple and pumpkin pie spice; 8 ounces of orange juice. Booked future travel. More organizing and cleaning. Moved my desk into position. Shredded documents. Set up and rearranged lamps in my bedroom. Installed a remote light switch for the dining room table lamps. Identified and gathered some things we no longer need, including all things related to RJ11 connectors (aka POTS aka four-conductor telephone cords, splitters, couplers, and DSL filters). Reworked wiring near the microwave since I realized that items were tripping the surge protector on the power strip I recently installed. Patrick spent most of today with Aaron at The Pilsner. Filed a request to have our recalled Cuisinart blade replaced. Late lunch: leftovers from last night. Dinner: sirloin burger chunky soup, water. Filevault is still decrypting, by the way. Maybe 80% done as of 10:30 pm today.
Tue Jan 17, 2017
Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Parnassus. Breakfast from Ladle and Leaf: yogurt and granola cup with fresh fruit. Drupal training session A with Eric and Paula. Training went well. Followup on various tasks and requests. Microsites work: followup with calpoison team who want a new kickoff, followup with Craik Lab. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Lunch at the JCC: chicken sandwich with side salad, water. Met and chatted with Bryon H who just started teaching tap dance. Identity retheme fonts work. Orgchart work: prep for BTS, PC, main, DO, and Education; made BTS live. Rode Uber Pool home: $4.75. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef spinach artichoke chicken with paprika-spiced bulgur, artichoke hearts and pecans; red wine. (He subbed artichoke hearts for the green beans that were originally in the recipe because they had gone bad because we had waited too long to cook this meal.) Watched more of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Filevault is still decrypting.
Wed Jan 18, 2017
Breakfast at home: yogurt and granola, eight ounces of orange juice. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Parnassus. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Sprint standup. Orgchart work. Dean's Office New Year's Celebration and Staff Luncheon. Rode Biff with David, Paula, and Nancy from UCSF Parnassus to UCSF Laurel Heights. Email signature work. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: delivery from India Clay Oven West Portal. Finished watching The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Filevault is still decrypting. Today Apple Mail on my home iMac crashed repeatedly upon launch with EXC_CRASH ... MFEWSStore ... MFEWSAccount ... [domain]\[username] [servername] ... doesn't have a folder ID ... Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'EWS store doesn't have a folder ID' abort() called terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException. I removed my UCSF Exchange email account from Internet Accounts in System Preferences, waited a few minutes, then launched Apple Mail again—success: no crash. In Apple Mail, I organized and weeded mail folders and set up smart mail folders for quickly deleting sent, archived, and trashed messages older than one month.
Thu Jan 19, 2017
This morning at home we had to reenter wifi passwords on some but not all devices in order to connect to the internet. Not sure if we have been hacked due to unpatched T-Mobile Personal Cellspot TM-AC1900 (aka Asus RT-AC68U) or if this is a somewhat normal situation. Zoey Weaver of mondo.com has been spamming me hard with email spam and voicemail spam at work. I thought I had tweeted about the unwanted messages sometime in the past 6 or 8 months, but now I can't find my tweet. I feel it must have disappeared or I am losing my memory. As far as I know, I have never done business or shown interest in doing business with mondo.com. No breakfast. Rode Uber Pool to a doctor appointment. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Walked to UCSF Laurel Heights. Late breakfast from The View Cafe: egg and cheese on english muffin, coffee with half and half. More email signature work. More followup with IT about spam making it past Barracuda even though the sender is in my blocklist. Completed a logo request. Chatted with Susie and Eric about various issues including email signatures. Lunch at Starbucks: chicken and bacon sandwich, ice water. Errand: hardware store. Lots of pubs edits for Lei W (highlights). Chatted with Zev G about potentially new website work. Lots of task followup. Orgchart work. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home: leftovers from last night. Recharge Medical work: print items: promo card for botox for bruxism, new outdoor large sign for lightbox. I noticed that Illustrator CS5 and InDesign CS5 are now regularly crashing upon quit probably because they were never intended to run in macOS Sierra. The day will come when I can't use CS5 anymore; I can feel it. At least it seems to work fine until the crash upon quit. Ignoring for now. This evening my 1.2-terabyte Apple Fusion drive finished decrypting, so I then successfully removed DDPE and BigFix and restarted. I was then unable to reproduce a crash when opening Sharing in System Preferences. I was also unable to reproduce a hang when shutting down. So it seems as though DDPE did cause some kind of problem for my computer when I upgraded to macOS Sierra even though I had installed the latest version of DDPE before doing so, and after decrypting and removing DDPE the problems were completely resolved. I'm glad to be done with it, at least on this computer. It took about one week for my 1.1 TB (850 GB used) drive to decrypt. This evening I also had trouble printing to both printers. It took me some time to resolve, but I did get things to work again by finding both printers' IP addresses in the web-based Sonic Pace router configuration and removing and readding the printers via IP address in System Preferences. (Later I realized this was wrong since the IP addresses may change and found path names to use instead.)
Fri Jan 20, 2017
Took today off from work to get a head start on a Russian River Valley weekend trip. Breakfast: granola with yogurt and fresh blueberries. Rode Uber Pool to Shotwell House. Rode with phil, drew, romy, and paul to Forestville. we stopped at d'argenzio winery then j vineyards on the way. d'argenzio is in a strip mall. we stopped there mostly because we needed a restroom. others tried wine but ultimately did not like any of them or the service. Paul, Phil, and Drew hunted for and returned with groceries from Guerneville. paul and phil prepared dinner: steak and mashed potatoes, broccolini, arugula salad. wayne, peter, and danny arrived, then later richard and michael as well. we played cards against humanity: a three-way tie among dave, richard, and me. the others stayed up late i think watching something on television. I started getting a new cold today.
Sat Jan 21, 2017
Breakfast at home at Casa Tranquilo. Wine tasting in Russian River Valley with The Group With No Name: Matrix (very personalized and friendly service, but we did not stay here long), Twomey, Geyser Peak (where we saw interestingly flickering liown candles and where I bought a True Fabrications Twine Rustic Farmhouse acacia cheese board), Landmark Vineyards Hop Kiln Estate, a California registered historic landmark due to its involvement in the hops industry. In Healdsburg we browsed at Moustache Baked Goods before awkwardly aborting a large purchase. Richard stayed behind a few minutes to select a trio of cupcakes. We browsed at Healdsburg SHED. Bought a chocolate birthday cake from Costeaux French Bakery. I tried to get us in for dinner at Willi's Seafood and Raw Bar, but they didn't have space for us. They referred me to a sister restaurant nearby called Bravas Bar de Tapas, and Bravas was excellent. We sat on the back patio with heat lamps in the middle of light and medium rain. All the courses were excellent, and the standout was the octopus which had no chewiness to it at all. Unfortunately I feel that we can never return because of Danny's inappropriate comments to one of the staff members; it embarrassed the whole table. We returned to Casa Tranquilo. Peter almost got left behind. We consumed cake and dessert wine. We watched The Boss (2016) I think via Quyen's Chromecast, then Jason Bourne (2016) via a Redbox disc that Paul had picked up at Safeway Guerneville. I think it was today that I again lost data with Simplenote I think due to poor internet connectivity and making changes to the same note on different devices (iPad Pro and iPhone 6 Plus). Disappointing, but it doesn't happen often, and I like the Simplenote and Notational Velocity combination still.
Sun Jan 22, 2017
Breakfast at home at Casa Tranquilo: leftovers and some fresh breakfast dishes. More wine tasting in Russian River Valley with The Group With No Name: Thomas George, J Vineyards. Early dinner at KIN in Windsor. I was dropped off at home.
Mon Jan 23, 2017
Sprint standup from home. Decided to call this a sick day instead of trying to work. Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, diced red apple; cinnamon; 8 ounces of orange juice. Cold recovery. Nap. Late lunch: leftovers from a meal Patrick had made earlier: Green Chef chicken veggie bowl with pearl couscous, squash, broccoli, apple, cashews. Dinner at home with Patrick: Trader Giotto's roasted cauliflower and cheese mezzelune with Paul Newman's alfredo, cheesy breadstick.
Tue Jan 24, 2017
Breakfast: mixed berry granola with unsweetened soy milk and fresh, diced red apple; 8 ounces of orange juice. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Sprint standup. Small web edit: added a listing to the find a home page. Microsites work: Craik (pubs). Lunch: walked to B On The Go: torta hot sandwich: smoked turkey, tomato, provolone, and basil aioli on house torta; water. Microsites work: Savic (editing and some sitebuilding). Identity retheme work: continued fonts work. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers from a meal Patrick had made earlier: Green Chef chicken veggie bowl with pearl couscous, squash, broccoli, apple, cashews.
Wed Jan 25, 2017
Breakfast: mixed berry granola with unsweetened soy milk, an orange, water. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Sprint standup. Followup with Mohammad TN about spam making it through Barracuda even though the domain is already in my blacklist. Identity retheme work all day: fonts. Lunch at As Quoted: taco salad: about $16. Calpoison kickoff meeting (#2). Rode Uber Pool home. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Dinner at home with Patrick: fish burger with arugula, side of french fries with ketchup; hot water. Did some catching up on journaling and uploading and archiving of photos. Late snack: blue corn tortilla chips, water.
Thu Jan 26, 2017
Breakfast: mixed berry granola with unsweetened soy milk and fresh, diced red apple; 8 ounces of orange juice. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Sprint standup. Followup with Tejal's pubs issue. Followup work for Calpoison. Redirected two requests to the OSACA. Lunch Web Advisory Council meeting: I had a roast turkey sandwich. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas, san pell.
Fri Jan 27, 2017
Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Parnassus. Dropped off an encrypted hard drive for Lucia. Followup with Joel: wireless mouse. Stopped at OEIS, many of whom were excited about my DRYGUY hand warmers / phone chargers. Sprint standup. Breakfast at Moffitt Cafe: omelette, breakfast potatoes, coffee with half and half. I think the grill chef got my order switched with another omelette order adjacent to mine, but I didn't bother to complain—the only difference was spinach versus green onions. Not enough to complain about. Microsites work: resolved Tejal's pubs problem, built a new page for Erin H for Residencies, called a meeting for the Staff Wellness Group for Nakisha. Ordered a new mouse for Joel. Late lunch from The View Cafe, ate at my desk: veggie california on rye sandwich. Various Asana ticket followup. Orgchart work. Followup with Mohammad TN about spam making it through Barracuda even though the domain is already in my blacklist. Microsites work: Savic Lab build. More orgchart work. Lots of calendar management. Rode Uber Pool home. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Dinner at home with Patrick: rigatoni with meat sauce.
Sat Jan 28, 2017
Breakfast at home: two eggs over easy, two sausage links, cinnamon bread, a handful of blackberries, leftover hash browns, 8 ounces of orange juice. Home improvement and organizing. Set up a new UPS for our networking equipment. Repaired the retrofit filter for the bathroom heater. Archived documents. Repaired a mitten by hand. Wiped and began rebuilding my Time Machine backup for my home iMac because my backups seemed to be taking a really long time, and I thought it would improve the speed. Rode Uber Pool to Nob Hill. Newsletter and marketing meeting at Recharge Medical with Phil, Chris, and Drew. Romy showed up. Rode with Drew and Romy to Shotwell House, met Jesse, then with PDDR and Jesse to Richard's. Chinese New Year party at Richard's. Met or encountered richard, michael, jesse, albert, veronica, chloe, dave, chrisk, yorkie, john from toronto, satyajit. Richard put us all to work making dumplings for about 20 or 30 minutes. We had pork dumplings and veggie and tofu dumplings, steamed and potsticker-style, tilapia, hot and sour soup—all very delicious. Rode with PDDR to their place, then rode Uber Pool home.
Sun Jan 29, 2017
Slept in. Brunch at home with Patrick: blackberry pancakes. Lots of research to select and buy a new router so that I don't have to pay Sonic $10 a month for the gigabit router they installed when our gigabit fiber was installed last year in February. I had meant to do this all along but was just lazy in doing this work. I had started at The Wirecutter, but wasn't sure if I wanted their pick, the TP-Link Archer C7 ($87), or their upgrade pick, the Netgear R6400 ($107). As a long-term strategy, I want to move long-term or archival data storage off of drives that are built into computers and onto drives that are connected externally or to the network. That way when buying a new computer, we need only enough storage for the OS and apps and some room for the OS and apps to grow over, say, four or five years. This way we don't need to pay Apple a markup premium for extra storage inside the computer, and we can move those dollars to the Apple markup premium for RAM, which we can no longer control by buying third-party RAM. However, some external USB drives won't work with these routers. Netgear publishes a list of drives known to work, but the listed devices specify item ID numbers that were popular several years ago, some of which are now either hard to find or no longer available. Since there's an explicit list of mostly or all older devices, I can't be certain that a newer rev of the same-named drive will work. TP-Link doesn't publish a list at all. Both seem to indicate that if the drive has an external power input it should or must be used. This potential drive incompatibility is perhaps unavoidable given the number of devices on the market. Consequently, in trying to work around this by looking at storage connected via ethernet instead of USB, I spent some time looking at NAS, but NAS is overkill for our needs. We don't need media streaming to anywhere, RAID, more than 3 or 4 TB, or other features typical in NAS. Simpler ethernet-connecting hard drives seemed unpopular and unreliable. For a while I considered the Netgear Nighthawk X4 because it had two USB 3.0 ports and one eSATA port, but eSATA external hard drives seemed unpopular and with poor reviews. Essentially all consumer-focused external storage is currently USB 3.0, with USB-C on the horizon. The performance benefits of the X4 over the R6400 were enticing, but we still own two- and four-year-old smartphones and computers, so we probably would not benefit from an X4 performance-wise for at least another year. So back to choosing between the C7 and R6400. In looking closer at the features of the R6400 that were not available in the C7, the iTunes streaming seemed to be of benefit only if you have AirPlay devices, and we do not, nor do we intend to buy them. OpenVPN seems a nice feature, except it doesn't work with iPhones (or Android phones, for that matter). The R6400 claims to support Time Machine backups, but The Wirecutter article and one commenter seem to support that Time Machine backups indeed do not work with the R6400. I have no use for ReadyShare Vault since I already have three methods of backup. The Wirecutter said that one advantage of the R6400 over the C7 in hardware revision 2 was that it had an easier web user interface, but the C7 is now in hardware revision 4, and the rev 4 user manual is significantly improved over that of the rev 2, and the screenshots of the web user interface also seem significantly improved over rev 2. So that leaves the R6400 with only one advantage for $20 more: OpenVPN for only laptop and desktop computers, which I feel is not worth it. Patrick will never use it, and if I feel I need to, I can use my work VPN. We almost never need to access files remotely, and for the handful we do we can put them in Google Drive or Dropbox. I spent a lot of time investigating MU-MIMO and 802.11ad. We can't benefit from 802.11ad because all our devices will not have line of sight to the router's location. MU-MIMO I'm sure will be beneficial to us at some point in the future, but not now with our older devices. No sense in spending this money now, especially when MU-MIMO routers are two or more times the cost of the Archer C7. So I decided to buy the TP-Link Archer C7. The USB drive that holds our local Crashplan backups is a WD My Passport. If it works in the C7, fine. If not, I'll keep it attached to my computer and Patrick's computer can access it through AFP as happens now (This connection frequently fails, but a simple manual reconnection restores it every time.) I had planned to keep our fourth-generation Time Capsule for Time Machine backups until it died, but now I'm thinking that when it dies I'll try to borrow someone's hair dryer and replace the drive myself instead of trying to choose another USB drive that will be compatible with the C7 which might or might not work. If I find that the WD My Passport works in the C7, then I might buy another for that long-term, archival storage option and plug it into the C7's second USB port. Since these data won't be backed up to Time Machine, I'll back them up to CrashPlan Central. Nap. Snack: flax seed tortilla chips. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef five-spice pork with coconut-ginger quinoa, green beans, corn and endive; ginger ale Zevia; we also opened Cindy's red wine gift from December. Time Machine backup reset for my iMac continues; about 75% complete. The "hours remaining" estimate is such a joke.
Mon Jan 30, 2017
Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Breakfast from The View Cafe: egg and cheese on english muffin, coffee with half and half. Sprint standup. Orgchart work: replaced school, dean's office, and finad. Filed a wishlist task: motivational stickers specific to our community (e.g., for iMessage). 1-on-1 with Katherine K: walkthru of add and edit person profiles. Investigatory work: paper and digital letterhead for School depts and units. Filed pcard paperwork. Lunch at Limu and Shoyu: small house ahi with half sushi rice and half brown rice, can of iced tea: about $15. Microsites work: Savic Lab build; pkcourse: replace one image. 1-on-1 with Eric. PharmD full sitemap build. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover meatloaf (for me) and meatloaf and spicy sausage (for Patrick), mashed potatoes, beets from a jar; red wine.
Tue Jan 31, 2017
Forgot to eat breakfast. Rode Uber Pool to UCSF Laurel Heights. Along the way I continued studying Spanish on Duolingo. Sprint standup. Lots of task followup. 1-on-1 with Susie and Eric. Lunch at My Father's Kitchen: bun with imperial rolls. Ran an errand. Pretty much finished PharmD full sitemap build. Microsites work: Savic, PKCourse. Posted job posting links for Peter. Rode Uber Pool home. Dinner at home with Patrick: Green Chef white bean chili with sweet potatoes, wild rice, corn-cabbage slaw. This dish turned out spicier than we had expected.