November 2002
Summary: Leaky ceiling at home; My birthday party at Watergate with Brian, Kelly, Little Brian, Adrian, Nico, David, and Amy; Felice Picano's world premiere of The Bombay Trunk; Second Island is submitted to 10 major publishing houses; Jeremy's 3th birthday party; Thanksgiving at our home with Amy, David, Sam, Yuichi, Adrienne, Armando, and Kent.
Dates on this page
Fri Nov 1, 2002
Spent the whole day working on the mail server. Set up autorpm and up2date and updated a bunch of RPMs. Installed Apache 2.0.40 and PHP 4.2.3. The Apache install was clean and easy. The PHP install was very troublesome. I ended up using the --with-mysql switch without specifying a directory and was able to 'make' and 'make install' with no problems despite a warning called "configure: error: Cannot find header files under [directoryname]". Laundry, cleaning, garbage. Patrick and I sign a new 6-month lease to stay in our Parkside in-law. Our rent went up US$40 per month due to electricity and water costs. Our landlord Norita tells us that her husband Georges is the owner of The Butler and the Chef, a charming French cafe in the South Park neighborhood of San Francisco. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. We watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on DVD.
Sat Nov 2, 2002
Patrick and Sam practiced sword while I cleaned the shower and vacuumed the bathroom. Patrick took a nap while I ate noodles with spinach for lunch (he wasn't hungry). Car wash. Patrick and I get a snack and run errands and hang out in the Castro: Escape From New York mushroom pizza slices, Walgreens, Cliff's Hardware and Variety. Got a drink at the Bar on Castro. Dinner with Patrick at Fuzio. While at Under One Roof looking for holiday greeting cards, we run into Amy and David and two friends of theirs whose names I have forgotten. It was quite a nice surprise. We chatted for a while but they had a book club meeting at 7:00 PM in Glen Park so they had to leave. Watched the bonus materials disc of the Harry Potter DVD. The bonus materials were just okay—they mostly simply restated things that happened in the movie in the context of interactivity. Great for people who have a lot of spare time, but otherwise not particularly enjoyable. Since this was the first Harry Potter movie, I would have been more interested to see an interview with the author about how she created the stories, what obstacles she had to overcome, what parts were her favorite to create.
Sun Nov 3, 2002
Biscuits for breakfast. Napped. Lunch at Nirvana with Patrick and Sam. Errands in the Castro while Patrick and Sam get haircuts at Nice Cuts from Bao. Cookies from Hot Cookie. Ran into Brian (of Eric and Brian) who introduced us to his friend Tina. Chatted with them about movies: Frida and Spirited Away. Tried to eat at the new restaurant called Catch, but it was too crowded and we didn't want to wait 45 minutes.
Mon Nov 4, 2002
Dinner at home with Patrick: crab cakes, pasta shells and cheese. Voted absentee ballots.
Tue Nov 5, 2002
Worked on the student database. Patrick dropped off our voting ballots. Dinner at home with Patrick: salmon, bagel, spinach. Worked on Domenica's website.
Wed Nov 6, 2002
Worked on Michael's computer—the permissions changes I made yesterday in response to a recent security bulletin messed up his computer. I restored from a backup, but it took all morning to fix. Oy! Lunch at the cafeteria: grilled chicken burger and fries for about US$5.00. It was awful because I had to stand and wait for it, the chef gave inaccurate directions to the people in line, the burger was tiny, the fries were cold, the dining room was crowded so I decided to take it to go instead, and by the time I got back to my desk to eat it was all cold. I vowed not to return. Worked on the student database. No food in the fridge for dinner, so we went to West Portal and ate at Sabella's, an Italian restaurant. We started with garlic bread. I had penne with zucchini, mushrooms, and chicken; water to drink. Patrick had grilled salmon with french fries; an Italian beer. Too full for dessert. The bill after a US$4.00 tip was $39.14. I worked on Domenica's website—yucky CSS problems. "Grrr!" to all browser makers! A rain storm settled in tonight after Patrick had gone to bed.
Thu Nov 7, 2002
Patrick and I woke up this morning to find that last night's storm found its way into our small first living room. Water was dripping in through the ceiling fixture, and the fixture glass was filled with a small pool from the night's collection of slow drips. We called our landlord Norita who came to assess the situation while we hurriedly moved out as much of our furniture as we could from the area. Our front living room is at the back of the house, and above it is our landlord's deck. Only the carpet had a little damage from the drip drip dripping. Worked on the student database, set up a new old computer for Chris, put in a few more admissions pages changes for James and sent him the link for review. Lunch at desk: pasta leftovers from last night. Dinner with Patrick at Catch (2362 Market Street, 415-431-5000), a brand new restaurant near Castro and Market. I called it a baby version of Stars because it's reminiscent of Stars except that most everything is smaller. The bar is smaller, the piano is a baby grand instead of a grand, the food portions are sometimes slightly smaller, even the prices are smaller. Live piano (20th century American classics), a full house at 6:30 PM on a Thursday, a mixed crowd but mostly men, some dressed businesslike, some casual. We had: baguette and butter, French onion soup, caesar salad with bay shrimp, roasted half chicken with pomme frites and skinny green beans, 2 iced teas. All the food was prepared very, very well. The only exception I found was that the chicken could have been juicier, but I couldn't say it was dry. The baguette was very fresh, and Patrick and I are both partial to delicious bread. The flavor of the chicken was particularly savory. We didn't have time for dessert. Our server performed mostly well, occasionally disappearing for noticeable lengths of time. The name on our receipt said "Angela." She checked in on our table shortly after the deliverator had brought our entrees, realized instantly that Patrick's small caesar was missing the added shrimp, and promptly corrected the mistake while also bringing us a late-ordered cup of soup. Our bill after a $4.25 tip was $29.75—cheap eats, I thought, for such a pleasant experience and great food. After dinner we went to a reading with Paul Lisicky and Michael Lowenthal at A Different Light Bookstore. Both readings were worth hearing; Lowenthal's slightly better—Patrick thinks it's because he read slower than Lisicky. Lowenthal read from Avoidance and Lisicky read from Famous Builder all while the passing storm continued blowing strong gusts of droplets all over the city. Afterwards, Patrick introduced himself to both of them and bought copies of each of their books and had them signed. Lowenthal is another writer represented by the same agent as Patrick, so he felt at least that in common with him. Patrick also chatted with Krandall Krause and Matthew Bernstein Sycamore, who were also at the reading. When we got home, the power was out on our block—the forceful winds must have taken down some power lines. Patrick had just finished lighting candles all over the apartment when the power suddenly came back on. We found a plastic tarp covering the leaky ceiling areas and eventually learned from our landlord that the construction they started 2 days ago could not have been timed more unfortunately as it rained both nights since then. They have sealed up the work they had been doing, and he says the rest of the water must be allowed to drain out and then they can patch up the holes and everything should be fine. None of our stuff has been damaged, so if he's right we can certainly live with just these few days of inconvenience. Tomorrow I'm supposed to work from home, but I think I'll go in to the office instead because they'll need to clean up the tarp, the wet-dry vac, and the various drip containers left behind. Patrick ran in to Nico and Lil Brian today and invited them to my birthday dinner on Sunday.
Fri Nov 8, 2002
The day was split between working on the student database and setting up a new old computer for Chris. After work, Patrick and I had dinner at Bombay Indian then visited Brian, Kelly, and Jesse at their place.
Sat Nov 9, 2002
Patrick and I spent the day at my sister Leilani's family's house. Rob was doing yard work when we got in, raking up the red, orange, and yellow fall leaves that had fallen everywhere. My cousin Alex Ko was in town planning to see a football game between USC and Stanford. Another cousin of mine, Johnson Young, came over and introduced us to his bride Chica—they had recently gotten married. My sister made chocolate chip scones for us from scratch using a great recipe from a friend of hers which made the scones a little airier and a lot moister, which we preferred over the drier and denser traditional recipe. Patrick and Lani talked about his Mandarin studies, and she let him borrow some picture books and brochures from when she lived in Taiwan for a year. Alex is working in sales for Ingram Micro, putting his business degree to good use. Later we had a dim sum lunch at Sam Kee (1696 S Wolfe Rd, Sunnyvale, California, 408-737-9976)—an excellent choice for authentic dim sum dining. Johnson very generously picked up the lunch bill for us all (!). Thanks, J! Jeremy couldn't take a nap afterwards so we gave him piggy back rides and distracted him from his demands repeated throughout the day: "Mommy, I want candy!" or "Mommy, I want juice!" He gets along well with his new little brother, and we are glad to hear that Matthew sleeps even quieter than Jeremy did when he was younger. Alex and Johnson and Chica had taken off in the afternoon, but we stayed long enough to stay for dinner: Rob's barbecued chicken, Patrick's brown sugar carrots, Lani's steamed artichokes, and some steamed rice. Jeremy got leftover Halloween candy for dessert: a small box of Junior Mints. We left a little after dinner, a bit weary from the rambunctiousness of a 2-year-old but very satisfied with the day's proceedings. Lani and Rob also got some Williams-Sonoma gifts for me for my birthday: pecan pumpkin butter and pumpkin bread mix. Jeremy and Matthew made some artwork as the birthday card to go with it all. After we drove home, Patrick and I did a little work—him on his writing and me on Domenica's Web site.
Sun Nov 10, 2002
Woke up early—6:30 AM. Uploaded Tina's photos to Ofoto, organized albums. Created several new albums including photos of Tina, Tina's photography, and photos of Patrick. Wrote in my journal. The leaks in our ceiling seemed to have stopped dripping finally. Yesterday it didn't rain much, but we trust that our landlord had done the sealing he said to prevent the problem in the future. Perhaps soon we'll pull out the plastic tarp from our front living room and start putting things back in order again. Patrick can't work well at home when things are in such disarray. Today's my birthday—I'm 33! Patrick and I did some shopping on Castro Street. I got a dark blue dress shirt from Body Body Wear and a dark blue Stussy ski cap from Rolo. The ski cap is reversible—on the inside it says (for some unknown reason): WORLD WIDE. Napped. Birthday dinner at Watergate with Patrick, Amy, David, Middle Brian, Kelly, Nico, Adrian, and Little Brian. Amy and David got me a steel and glass tealight holder with a set of 12 mulled wine tealights. Nico, Adrian, and Little Brian returned my red sweater which I had left at their place a long time ago. Middle Brian and Kelly gave me a CD-R of "Frank and Patrick thru the years - 2002"—photos that they had taken here and there. They also gave me a bouquet of orange and yellow mums. Dinner was wholly satisfying, and everyone there was new to the place except for Patrick and I and it pleased me that they all enjoyed the food as much as we knew they would. Watergate does not disappoint. Afterwards, Amy and David went home and the rest of us hung out at Middle Brian, Kelly, and Jesse's. We mostly just talked and Eric and Big Brian also stopped by to join us. The evening's highlight: when Jesse opened up the laptop and visited ratemypoo.com. I didn't see the site myself, but I agree with Middle Brian's assessment that it was probably better to just watch the expressions of people looking at the site rather than the site itself. Adrian saw one page and said, "That's just wrong!" Later Middle Brian put on Thievery Corporation. Patrick and I went home exhausted, still full of food, and very satisfied.
Mon Nov 11, 2002
Slept in. Ate Patrick's leftovers from last night: the pork chop. Did laundry. Napped. Folded laundry. Cleaned up more, putting a few things back into the front living room. Worked on Domenica's Web site some. Dinner with Patrick at Sparky's. Hung out at Brian, Kelly, and Jesse's.
Tue Nov 12, 2002
Spent the morning shopping for 17-inch LCD monitors, which I think we'll purchase for the office staff. Lunch with Joel at Pasta Pomodoro. The music selections were as if it were pop oldies night at a gay disco. Gloria Gaynor sang "I Will Survive," Diana Ross sang "I'm Coming Out," Stacey Q sang "Two of Hearts," and ABBA sang "Dancing Queen." Joel thinks our waiter was tweaking and higher than a kite. I don't have enough experience being around people taking drugs to know the difference, but the guy (our receipt said "Brett") was bumping into tables accidentally, got Joel's order wrong, mixed up our bill with that of a woman a few tables away, and charged the wrong amount to our bill. (He caught it before we left, though.) I told Joel to call him on it, so he did and the guy denied it was true. Afterwards we went to Radio Shack to replace the Nokia charger that Joel had forgotten in his hotel while travelling on business last week. Later James and I worked on the student database together. He requested many changes, so many of the VB scripts I wrote broke and I'll have to go fix them later. Today I finally received a check from the IRS about a screwup that my mom caused with my taxes. Dinner at home with Patrick: corn biscuits, pork chops with wild mushrooms, green leaf salad with Annie's vinegar-free dressing. Yum! Caught up on old e-mail. Worked on Domenica's Web site.
Wed Nov 13, 2002
Spent most of the day working on the mail server. I got mail to send out successfully, but I still can't get pine to see the Maildir folders that I wanted to use with qmail. Lunch at Beijing on Irving. Dinner at home with Patrick: hoisin chicken, green leaf salad, rice pilaf. Worked on Domenica's Web site.
Thu Nov 14, 2002
Staff meeting in the morning. Met with Jeff Beck of Clinical Pharmacy after that to discuss the redesign of their subsite. Leftovers for lunch. Computer Support Meeting in the afternoon. Did surgery on Joel's PowerBook G3 Lombard (Bronze) because the hard drive was making noises like it was on its last million rotations. We ordered a replacement over the Web—about US$80. Leftovers for dinner. Saw Felice Picano's play called The Bombay Trunk, which is having its world premiere now at the New Conservatory Theater. The play is billed as a mystery comedy, so I was hoping for laugh-out-loud jokes and stomach-clutching hilarity. This play had almost none of that. Throughout there was an occasional chuckle with some sprinkles of outright laughs from the audience. It was quite entertaining nonetheless. While watching it, I got caught up in figuring out the mystery which lies on the surface: What secrets lie within the bombay trunk? and How did the man die? However, the play's beauty lies in its subtext wherein the viewer is challenged to determine what is and isn't reality, who is the audience versus who is the storyteller, and who is dead or dying or about to die. As you watch, the story becomes both clearer and murkier. The play had a short intermission, but we think some people didn't realize it and went home thinking it was over. At intermission a young dyke seated behind us said to the woman next to her, "I have no idea what's going on, do you?" And in the restroom Patrick heard someone say, "I wasn't sure if it was intermission or the end of the play." Another man said, "I'm thoroughly confused!" I, too, was confused when I went to sleep. I figured that since it didn't make sense it must be well-written. But...
Fri Nov 15, 2002
This morning I woke up having absolute clarity of last night's play and decided it was brilliant. It was storytelling and drama as I had never seen before, and it reminded me of the DVD Patrick and I recently saw: Mulholland Drive by David Lynch. However, The Bombay Trunk was significantly better than Lynch's work because it eventually made sense to me. I might spend the rest of my life and never figure out what the miniature people crawling under the door meant in Mulholland Drive. I left home without eating breakfast because I was promised something to eat for our all-day training meeting for some software called PharmCAS. I arrived at the bus stop at 7:15 AM. The 7:22 AM bus did not show up. I waited for 40 minutes thinking it might be just a little late, but it just never showed up. The 7:49 AM bus showed up, and I got on it. I got to work at about 8:12 AM, already late for the meeting which started at 8:00 AM. However, since my stomach had been growling and hurting for the past hour, I figured I couldn't just go to the meeting on an empty stomach. Since I was late, all the food was probably gone or I'd look like a fool making a pig of myself while everyone else had gotten started with the meeting. So I went to the cafeteria and spent US$3.24 for scrambled eggs, 2 slices of pork sausage, 2 slices of wheat toast, and 2 wedges of deep-fried shredded potatoes. With my stomach full, I felt better heading to the meeting. Turned out the meeting started late because a lot of the attendees waited for a shuttle that didn't arrive or broke down or something like that. I had lunch with James at Burger King.
Sat Nov 16, 2002
Worked on Domenica's web site some. Napped. Dinner and a movie with Patrick, Amy, and David. Amy and David rode BART over from their home in Berzerkely. We picked them up at the Balboa Park station—for some reason there was no electricity at the Daly City station, so the train wouldn't go there. We went to the Century 20 Theater in Daly City and ate at 99 Rice Bowl before seeing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The movie was a lot of fun—we all agreed it was great and that the pacing was noticably improved over the previous Harry Potter film. It was Amy and David's first time ever to Daly City. It was the first time we experienced traffic at the Century 20 parking garage. Worked on Domenica's web site until late at night.
Sun Nov 17, 2002
Leftovers for lunch. Dinner with Patrick at 22/23 or 2223 or No Name or whatever they call it (2223 Market St, 415-431-0692). It was our first time to the restaurant. We both chose the fixed price meal: 3 courses for US$19.95. We both started with an amuse of fruit and cheese tartlets of some kind (raspberry?). For the appetizer, Patrick had tomato soup with very thin tortilla strips (which they called "nachos"), and I had a mixed salad of organic greens with pomegranate, diced apple, diced carrot, pecans, and goat cheese. Our main courses were: pork chop with mashed potatoes (Patrick) and wild mushroom and pumpkin ravioli (Frank). Patrick asked for his pork chop to be cooked medium well, and it was, but what was especially notable was how tender the meat was. Patrick said, "I haven't tasted pork chops this good since I cooked them!" The service was excellent except that the waiter lied to me when I asked if the soup was spicy and he replied that it was not: "No, not at all." He was also so tall that it hurt my neck when I looked up to tell him my order or ask for a fork after he brought my salad and he didn't notice that the busboy had taken away my fork with the amuse plate. This $19.95 deal ends on December 1, 2002—they're celebrating the restaurant's 7th anniversary. It's a slightly better deal than Watergate, which offers a fixed price meal for $25, and it's in a more convenient location for us. For dessert, we both chose the bread pudding with brandied cherries—delicious! (The other choice was mango-raspberry sorbet with coconut tapioca.) Afterwards, we hung out at The Cafe for a while, then went home to do a little work before going to bed. A message on our answering machine told Patrick that he won first place (!) in the Chinese character writing contest in which he had recently participated. Woo hoo!
Mon Nov 18, 2002
Installed Joel's laptop hard drive. Updated the current students calendar. Tweaked the PHP code for showing links to the current quarter's curriculum websites. Worked on the Information for Web Developers section of our Web site. Fixed a few broken links. Lunch with Joel at You See Sushi. It was our first time at You See Sushi. We've walked past this place perhaps a hundred times and never gone in. Turns out the food is delicious and reasonably priced. I had a deluxe California roll, a piece of ebi, a piece of unagi, and a piece of tofu and miso soup for US$6. Joel agreed it was a favorable lunch experience. At today's ceremony for the Chinese character writing contest, Patrick received the first place award: a US$15 gift card to Office Depot and a certificate. We laughed at the "award". The 7:00 PM bus for route 66 didn't show up today, so it took me about 50 minutes to get home. Dinner at home with Patrick: veggie stir-fry. Watched some Simpsons episodes but they weren't very funny: Bart and Lisa go to Kamp Krusty and another one that I forgot. Patrick's agent sent Second Island out to 10 publishing houses today.
Tue Nov 19, 2002
Worked on the webdev section. Lunch with Joel at Pasta Pomodoro. He tells me that his friend Michele reads my journal more than he does and I laughed at that because I don't know Michele all that much; we say hello when she stops in to see Joel now and again. We got a different waiter than before and this one was much, much better. Dinner at home with Patrick: fine linguine with red sauce, cheese bread. Watched some Simpsons episodes that were better than last night: Homer turns into the Hulk, Lisa uses science to overcome a school bully.
Wed Nov 20, 2002
Yesterday Joel's friend Heather sent me a thank you e-mail in response to my telling Joel that I'd be happy to look at her ailing laptop. She's going to drop it off—that works out fine with me. Lunch with Joel at You See Sushi. Worked on webdev and started fixing stylesheets so that tables weren't broken in Mozilla 1.x. Mozilla and DOCTYPEs—frustrating! Grr! to all the Mozilla developers! Grr! Grr! Grr! GRR! After work, Patrick and I drove to Mountain View to go to my nephew's 3th birthday party. As a gift, we got him Cranky the Crane (wrapped in Thomas the Train gift wrapping paper). Cranky is part of the Thomas the Train set of toys, and that's what Jeremy loves along with fire trucks. We met Lani and Rob's friends Ken and Kalina and their sons Daniel and Joshua. We also met Lani and Rob's neighbor Shawn and Shawn's daughter Gracie. We also met Lindsay and Drew. We ate a big dinner, late, having arrived at about 7:00 PM. They had too much food, so it all worked out. We had vegetable soup with chunks of meat, green salad with garlic dressing, hand-rolled pepperoni and mushroom pizza made with Trader Joe's one-dollar pizza dough, garlic bread (which we brought) made with pugliese from Grace's Bakery, and mint chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting and shavings. We didn't have room for spaghetti and meatballs, so we took it home with us along with a bunch of veggies and other leftovers. Jeremy likes his Cranky the Crane, so we're happy.
Thu Nov 21, 2002
Finished stylesheets work. Worked on the student database. Lunch by myself at Pomelo because Michael wouldn't eat with me. "I have too much work to do!" Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers from last night: spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread. Looked for jobs on craigslist. Added job hunting links to my bookmarks page.
Fri Nov 22, 2002
Telecommute day! Hooray! Did minor stylesheet tweaking and adjusting of content. Did research on open source calendaring systems and Web accessibility issues. Installed HTML-Kit Build 292 today. I noticed some of my keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Home to jump to matching tags no longer works. No time to troubleshoot, though. Work, work, work.
Sat Nov 23, 2002
Worked on Domenica's Web site today: Put in the portfolio section by building a small MySQL database and processing images in Photoshop and ImageReady. Put in the PHP code to extract the information from the database. So far thumbnails and titles are working. I have them all in DIV tags and it feels good to be working with a tableless page structure. Somehow a few stylesheet tweaks I made made the resume page break in IE6. Gotta fix that later. In the evening, Patrick and I went to Colma to see Bowling for Columbine, a film by Michael Moore about American guns, media, culture, and politics. It was delightfully enlightening, and Patrick and I believe in a great deal of what the film lays bare about American society. As we drove to dinner in West Portal, Patrick said, "It's embarrassing to be an American." We talked more about leaving the United States to live in another country—ideas we had tossed around in the past and in which the film renewed our interest. We dined at Spiazzo (33 West Portal Ave, 415-664-9511), a very good Italian restaurant. Patrick calls it a "good value." To start, we shared Stracciatella alla Romana, a chicken broth soup with spinach and battered eggs. For a main course, he had Fettuccini con Gamberoni—fettucine with prawns in a red sauce. I had Pizza Vegetariana—a vegetarian pizza which turned out to be much larger than I expected (about 10 inches). Patrick had a glass of chianti. We had no time for dessert because we had to go to a show. Our bill came to US$35.49. After dinner, we went to a dance concert at City College to see a classmate of Patrick's named Yuichi. We saw 13 different performances, and his was the last one—a tap-dancing number to "Moanin" by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. The show was lots of fun except for one performance which was quite boring and stretched the meaning of the word "dance." Today in the mail we received our copy of Rainbow Curve which has Patrick's story in it called An Undisturbed Dark Place. Recently Patrick found out that Oyster Boy would not be able to publish his work for another year even though they accepted it a year ago. Pleiades also agreed to publish a story of his long ago, and it comes out next week. He still hasn't heard back from Hanging Loose—another publication that accept his work but has neglected to publish it. Today was also Patrick's first day at Gold's Gym on Market Street in the Castro. He said he was going to go 3 to 4 times a week doing a mixture of cardio and free weights. He met a attractive man named Michael who was helpful and who had the kind of build Patrick wanted for himself. They talked about workout routines.
Sun Nov 24, 2002
Breakfast at home with Patrick: sliced Bosc pears, oat bran muffins. Read michaelmoore.com. The Donahue interview in particular brought tears to my eyes at several points because it spoke truths about America that made me want to cry. Worked on Domenica's Web site today. Portfolio thumbnails and descriptions are now working. Dinner at home with Patrick: romaine salad with croutons and cheese and garlic dressing, leftover pizza.
Mon Nov 25, 2002
Lunch with Joel at You See Sushi. We talked about Bowling for Columbine, Michele. Worked on the student database. Helped Joel set up a wish list. He said, "It's all about me" or "Coz it's all about presents" or something like that. Dinner at home with Patrick: teriyaki salmon, zucchini, baked potato. Yum! Worked on Domenica's Web site, making significant progress. I fixed the IE clearance problem I had with a shaded box—I had forgotten to include a spacer DIV trick which I found on A List Apart. It's somewhat of a hack, so I was hesitant to include it, but it works, so I made the stylesheet issue the hacky code only for IE. It could have been worse. I separated the all-on-one-page page to its proper url (/year/) and got the local jump nav working. (It had to pull from the database to get its data, too.)
Tue Nov 26, 2002
Set up a new monitor for Chris. It's a Samsung SyncMaster 191T, a brand new 19-inch flat panel monitor for about US$800. It's a beauty. Here's my review: It seems to be perfect in every respect except: (a) I wish it rotated the video automatically when you physically rotate the screen [you have to adjust the video manually], (b) we wish it had a way of knowing when you got to exactly 90 degrees—as it is you can turn the screen a few degrees past 90 and that's annoying, (c) there's one bad pixel—not bad for as many pixels as it has, (d) it was the first time ever I had to use a Philips head screwdriver to install a monitor. Why? Well, it came with both the digital and analog cables screwed on to the monitor. The screws were so tight and the jacks set so flush to the monitor and positioned on the under-back side of the monitor with the center stand in the way that I couldn't get the digital cable off with just my fingers. I was very annoyed, but 10 seconds with the right tool fixed it right up. Anyone who doesn't have a long-necked Philips head screwdriver should go buy one before buying this monitor. Chris seems pleased with the new monitor. Despite the installation troubles, I am, too. Created a schedule template in Microsoft Word using our new design. Taught Debrah more features of InDesign, such as using transparent objects. Met with Susie about Web stuff. We created a wireframe for the proposed clinical pharmacy home page. Joel went home early today, said he wasn't feeling good. So I had lunch by myself at Nan King Road Bistro—Hong Kong style chow mein noodles, vegetarian style. Dinner at home with Patrick: crab cakes, peas, Spanish rice. I took home Heather's rock of a laptop for fixin'. My birthday present from Chris De Lay and Nate Dwyer finally showed up—they had to resend it to my work address because it never showed up at my home address. Turned out to be six pair of chopsticks that were exactly the same style as the pair Patrick and I got at Jitra for Valentine's Day 2001. We now have a set of 7! The power went out unexpectedly at about 9:10 PM, so we went to bed. I couldn't work on Heather's laptop since I didn't want to risk running out of battery power and having it die on me. From the system log on frankfarm.org, the power seemed to have come back on exactly at midnight. Weird!
Wed Nov 27, 2002
Lunch with Joel at L'Avenida. Short day at work since it's just before a holiday—we get to leave at 3:00 PM. Patrick spent the evening preparing for preparing for Thanksgiving cooking. Dinner at home with Patrick: he brought home Pizza Hut: mushroom and green bell pepper. I worked more on Domenica's site. We watched the first show of a television series called Six Feet Under. Patrick said it was funny, but Joel said it was a drama not a comedy, so I didn't know what to expect. It turned out to have dark, wry humor which was entertaining. If I watched television regularly, it would probably be something I might enjoy. The show we watched was well written and most of the characters were interesting. The acting was a little stiff, but it's the first show, so it's to be expected.
Thu Nov 28, 2002
Patrick and I spent the morning cleaning and preparing for our Thanksgiving feast. Patrick got all his dishes prepared in the morning, and after I vaccumed and cleaned the bathroom I made pumpkin bread and made an emergency run to the grocery for eggs, butter, and ice. Amy and David showed up before noon in a day-rented green VW New Beetle from City Carshare. They helped us cook all day. We each had one leftover pizza slice for a snack. (I really couldn't call that lunch.) Yuichi, Patrick's friend from Mandarin class, showed up on his bicycle around 4:00 PM. Patrick's ex-boyfriend Sam showed up shortly thereafter. While waiting for dinner, we nibbled on the pumpkin bread I made and white cheddar CheezIts. The six of us feasted on: Amy and David's shrimp cocktail appetizer (a family tradition of Amy's); Patrick's 12-pound Sage and Parsley Roasted Turkey with gravy, oyster dressing, shrimp-stuffed mirlitons, sweet potato casserole with persimmons and roasted chestnuts, and buttered corn on the cob; Amy's cranberry sauce, Amy's broccolini with pine nuts and parmesan, and Andronico's olive bread and sourdough baguette. For dessert, we had Amy's homemade apple pie, Amy's homemade pumpkin pie, and a pecan pie that Sam bought from Just Desserts. Patrick, Amy, and Yuichi made whipped cream from scratch to top off all the desserts. Amy and David shared a new discovery with us: a served-hot, sweet-tasting Scandinavian beverage called Glögg which they found at the grocery. Patrick said, "To me it tasted like a cider. Not apple, though. More like a grape cider." As we were eating dinner, Sam got a call from Sam and Patrick's friend Adrienne Katner, who had arrived earlier than we had expected. She and her ex-boyfriend Armando and her brother Kent drove up from Los Angeles where she is just starting a PhD program in public health at UCLA. We invited them over to have some food, and soon we had 9 people in our tiny in-law apartment. The sink filled up with dishes maybe 5 or 6 times after successive rounds of washings. People took leftovers home, and we still had a lot of food left over. Everyone left at around 7:00 PM, and Patrick subsequently collapsed on the floor from exhaustion.
Fri Nov 29, 2002
Waking up this morning in bed, Patrick said, "My hands still smell like turkey." Sam came over and we drove to Baghdad Cafe where we met Adrienne, Kent, and Armando for brunch. We walked through the Castro, then stopped at Uncle Bert's Place for a drink. We split up after that—Patrick and I went home to rest and study and work on Domenica's website. Sam went home, too. We met them again for dinner at Catch where we met Armando's friend Claudio and a woman named Maria who accompanied Claudio.
Sat Nov 30, 2002
Slept.