September 2004
Summary: Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile at the Asian Art Museum with Patrick, Melissa, Laverne, Sam, and Dianne. Dinner at Park Chow with Patrick, Travis, and Steve. Chinese Dinner with Tony and Bobby. Mozilla Firefox releases 1.0 Preview Release. Bill and Glenn's house joining party. Bill and Kevin's birthday party. Lodestar Issue 11. Dinner at Yum Yum Fish with Patrick and Melissa. Folsom Street Fair with Patrick. Set up computers for AJ and Melissa. Windows Server 2003 training at LearnIt! with Jim Galvin.
Dates on this page
Wed Sep 1, 2004
Toasted plain bagel and cream cheese. I missed the 8:08 AM bus, and the 8:30 AM bus didn't show up just like yesterday so at 8:35 AM I walked to Taraval and within a few minutes caught an L train. At West Portal, the doors wouldn't open to let people in or out—there was a technical problem and we were delayed about 5 minutes. At Forest Hill the same problem happened but the driver fixed it quicker. I caught a 43 bus to work and it only took me 50 minutes to get to work today. Chatted with Mike W about various SIS issues. Missed my meeting with Bill S, so we rescheduled for later in the day. Linkchecking. Prepared notes for my meeting with Cindy. Bill S and I met—a good, quick meeting. Lunch from the cafeteria: cheddar cheeseburger, half order of onion rings, half order of curly fries, Arizona mandarin orange tea. Tried to decrease James's user profile (which was 34 MB). Archived Internet content about how to reduce user profile sizes. Lots of changes to the PHPM pages for Bill S, sent them out for review. Updated my computer services presentation handout page 1. Performed standard monthly procedures: tarball archiving, WinHTTrack archiving, turn in timesheet. Watched 2 Simpsons episodes: The Secret War of Lisa Simpson and You Only Move Twice. Patrick thought the former was funny enough to save.
Thu Sep 2, 2004
Toasted plain bagel and cream cheese. Reinstalled WinZip. Home page work: propagated stylesheets. Chatted with Joan about an unresolved listserv problem from several months ago and the closure of e-mail accounts. Chatted with Rodney about the Exchange migration and Active Directory and how it might affect the domain for his lab. Retrospect 5.5 error -541 trying to get Chris's laptop to be seen from the server. Scheduled SF Micro to come visit tomorrow to fix it, although I already suspect they will tell us the only thing that will work is to upgrade to version 6.5. Researched how much it would cost us to upgrade (about $300). Application workshop page updates. Installed Firefox 0.9.3 and upgraded Netscape from 7.1 to 7.2 for Ena. Impromptu dinner at House of Chen with Patrick: won ton soup, ginger chicken, Hong Kong style chow mein. My fortune: Travels from nesting space will take you to a broader cultural horizon. His fortune: A friend you see as gold and silver reflects your own precious qualities. Grocery shopping at Safevay. I was so tired I was falling asleep standing up!
Fri Sep 3, 2004
Overslept. Banana on the road for breakfast. Met briefly with Cindy: updates on issues. Updated the spyware page in the computer security guide. More edits to the computer services presentation handout. Lunch: takeout from Panda Express. Larry from SF Micro came over and we tried to figure out Error -541 in Retrospect 5.5 for Windows. Larry spent an hour working on the problem: Retrospect 5.5 will sometimes give error -541 or error -530 with Windows XP clients whose NETBIOS name has changed. Problem happened even if firewalls on the problem computer were disabled. We were able to determine that it wasn't a networking issue since the server could explore files on the client. The problem computers had the client installed and the services were running. Together we figured out that if the problem computer's IP address is changed the problem goes away. I'm not sure if both the NETBIOS name and the IP address need to change—it might be both. After Larry left, I also installed Retrospect 5.6 client on the problem computers—I think that also helped, enabling me to set back the original IP addresses and still make the problem go away. If this problem comes back, I think experimenting a lot with these steps I've described should fix it. Set up the computer and a projector for Melissa and James for today's application workshop. Chatted with Joel about the City Tours page. Power outage in our building at work at 4:47 PM so everyone decided it was a good time to go home. I shut down the server and left instructions for whoever came in to work first on Tuesday for turning it back on. Dinner at home with Patrick: sauteed chicken, peas, french fries, bread. Watched Simpsons: Bart on the Road and Margical History Tour.
Sat Sep 4, 2004
Woke up too early: 5:00ish. Ate leftovers from House of Chen. Patrick woke up. We heard dull, rhythmic pounding from somewhere this morning, and I eventually discovered that the plumbing guys were here today digging up the sidewalk between our house and the street. Somehow I must have misunderstood Georges about the day the plumbers were coming (today not last Saturday). They started around 9:30 AM and we were told we can't let water drain anywhere from 12:00 NOON to 1:00 PM. I went back to bed around the same time and woke up around 2:00 PM. Patrick had taken off to Jumpin Java to work. I went outside to see if the guys were done and they said they needed about 30 more minutes. There was a huge hole in the ground and a few pipes laying about here and there, some long, some small. Archived thank you cards. Made a fruit smoothie with milk, sugar, apple, plum, pear, banana. Cleaned out folders in my Yahoo! e-mail account. I just noticed today the keyboard shortcuts in Yahoo! Mail. Cool! At 3:45 PM I went outside to check with the plumbing guys and they said it's okay to use the water again. I did dishes and cleaned countertops in the kitchen. Showered. Dinner at home with Patrick: pork chops and quesadillas. Watched cooking shows.
Sun Sep 5, 2004
Slept in until 1:30 PM. Showered. Made a fruit smoothie (banana and orange) and a cheese quesadilla for lunch. Grocery shopping at Tower Market. Fruit smoothie: grape and banana. Archived documents. Dinner at home with Patrick: linguine with spinach and chicken in cream sauce, bread. Bought 20-ounce iced tea glasses from acemart online. Read ontherail.com and movies.yahoo.com. Chatted with Tina.
Mon Sep 6, 2004
Slept in. Patrick made coffee creme brulee. Late breakfast: spinach omelette, bacon, hash browns. Napped. Read news. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers reworked with shrimp and broccoli instead of chicken, bread, coffee creme brulee with almond cinnamon cookies. Relaxed. Investigated sharing calendars. Watched The Lost World recorded from broadcast TV.
Tue Sep 7, 2004
Student Computing meeting. OSACA staff meeting: Rob D came to talk about the employee survey. After much stress and hassle, cdroms from Mr. Toad's arrive at 4:25 PM during Kevin's orientation so I run them down to him. Snack: fortune cookie leftover from Panda Express a few days ago. My fortune: Your careful nature will bring you financial success. City Tours updates for Kristy. Student computing issues. Finished backing up Chris's laptop. Joel made sushi for the office today! It was all beautifully arranged on a square, green, lacquered plate. None of the pieces fell apart—I was very impressed. Stayed late cleaning spyware off everyone's computers and installing freeware security tools: Startup Manager and Spyware Blaster. Home. Vacuumed up broken glass (a candle holder broke last night), vacuumed much of the rest of the house, exercised, showered. Dinner at home by myself: pepperoni pizza. Downloaded and installed Mozilla Sunbird 0.2a. Discovered Mozile through Chris Kelley's blog, vetula.com, which was linked from the Mozilla Calendar FAQ. Mozile is not yet ready for production use, but that's quite alright with me as I already have too many projects on my plate for now. It might be something I could use in the future, though. It's hard not to be impressed with such a potentially elegant CMS. I'm researching calendars because (a) I want a backup plan in case our School of Pharmacy migration to Exchange server in fall 2005 doesn't let us do calendars the way we like, and (b) Patrick and I want the ability to share calendars with each other (but not necessarily anyone else). We don't run an Exchange server at home, and if I have my way, we never will.
Wed Sep 8, 2004
More spyware removal and prevention (Chris's computers). Helped Ena troubleshoot a printing problem, referred it to SF Micro. Linkchecking. Worked on updating my job description for Cindy. Delivered cdroms to Rob S and Gwen E. Updated the computer security guide. Asked to be removed from the catalog mailing list for Smith+Noble. Arranged with Ena to have handouts duplicated. Helped Ena take photos of the lockers. Lunch: Melissa's mixed greens salad with heirloom tomatoes, grapes, an orange. Dinner at Catch with Patrick, Dianne, and Sam (Dianne treated!). We ordered a plate of deep-fried olives and an order of steamed artichokes to start. Patrick and I also shared a crabmeat and ? bisque. Entrees: I had handmade rigatoni with corn, spinach, and baby tomatoes. Patrick had the seafood stew. Sam had ?. Dianne had ?. For dessert, we all shared a chocolate (brownie?) and a trio of sorbets: orange, mango, and raspberry. The food was all very delicious, and the service was good. We let Sam borrow sheets.
Thu Sep 9, 2004
Helped Melissa and Ena resolve a problem with osaca e-mail messages. Well, we didn't really resolve it; we just made the problem go away by getting rid of the feature we think caused it. Linkchecking. Late breakfast: eggs, sausage, hash browns from the cafeteria. Compiled survey 1 results for Susie and sent them to her. Tried to resolve issues with Mike W and Joan M, but couldn't reach either of them today for very long. Lunch: leftovers from last night. Placed an order with The Source for 2 copies of Norton Anti-Virus. Computer Support Coordinator meeting. Discovered that I need to build a new computer by September 23. Got the probably final list of entering students from James. Prepared materials to explain the ps number mixup to students. Noticed a problem with recent backups—not enough space on the tape—but no time to fix it now. After work, I joined Melissa in a visit to the Asian Art Museum. The current exhibit is Geisha: Beyond the Painted Smile. Essentially, someone said, "Hey, let's get every piece of art that has a geisha in it or has something to do with geisha and make a big show." Some of the pieces were 400 years old, but most of it seemed to be from the mid-1700's or later. I was fascinated with one large hand-painted vase which had very fine brush strokes depicting geisha in various settings. Patrick met us at the museum and brought with him Sam and Sam's mom Dianne, who was in SF visiting for about a week. Melissa's friend Laverne joined us at the museum as well. Afterwards we ate in the museum's cafe, which had pretty decent food for a cafeteria setup. I had BBQ sesame beef, Melissa had coconut chicken soup, and everyone else had pork of some kind. Laverne talked about how she made $100 for 4 hours' work one night in the Santa Cruz mountains (a crazy acting gig in a film for a filmmaker friend). Dianne talked about her relaxing day at the spa getting a manicure and pedicure and waxing. Everyone talked about Chinese (Laverne knows Mandarin, too). A fine time was had by all, I believe. (Patrick's meal and my meal and 2 fruit teas cost us $23.27 after $1.82 tax, no tip since it's a cafeteria.) After having brunch with Dianne at Baghdad Cafe and spending much of the day with her, Patrick somehow got a new Ben Sherman motorcycle-style jacket and nu shooz. And somehow we also ended up with 2 bars of soap: one banana-scented, another cherry-scented. (Thanks, Dianne!)
Fri Sep 10, 2004
I forgot to add that 3 or 4 days ago I made a cinnamon banana fruit smoothie after work—very yummy. Bagel and cream cheese. Spent most of the morning wrangling with mail merge and printers trying to get them to do what I wanted. Also finding and selecting proper paper of color for the message I had to distribute. Ena's printer is losing its network connection intermittently, Debrah's printer needed the imaging unit replaced (which I did) and also needs a new transfer roller (which is now on order), and Melissa's printer jammed when I tried to send a few sheets of cardstock through it. Debrah's printer also ghost printed some of my jobs even though the display says it can print 500 sheets at 5% with the current transfer roller. Asked Ena to contact SF Micro to resolve her printer problem and the grinding noise in Melissa's printer. I also asked her to place an order for a new transfer roller. Chatted with Mike W and later Kirk H and later Joan M about the ps number mixup. Notified my staff about the ps number mixup. Contacted 3 students who reported problems with their ps numbers. Helped Melissa with the laptop a little. Lunch from the cafeteria: sandwich, banana, nectarine: about $5. Finished with my mail merge task which took much longer than it needed to, stuffed envelopes. Chatted with Chris about final details for our Tuesday presentation, updated our slides to add info about the class mailing list. Distributed final list of entering students and e-mail addresses to staff. Created the Year 1 mailing list, notified the mailing list announcement list and my staff. Converted schedules to PDF and uploaded them to the website and updated the corresponding web pages. Updated current students news and calendar. Other minor website updates. Remembered that the student lounge needs a new door code so asked Ena to set that up with facilities management. Discovered today that the UCSF Bookstore is the best place to buy toothbrushes. Oral-B Advantage toothbrushes normally cost $2.50 or more at the grocery or drug store. At UCSF Bookstore, they're 69 cents! I got 6 of them, 2 travel toothbrushes, and a dental floss I haven't tried yet: Oral-B Ultrafloss. On second thought, I think I've tried this before but I can't remember exactly if I liked it or not. I tried getting a gift for a friend (secret for now), but due to some unanswered questions I postponed my purchase. Mason from the bookstore said he'd call me back when he had more details. Travis and Steve treated Patrick and me to dinner at Park Chow. Appetizers: spinach salad with apple slices and gorgonzola for Travis, Prawn salad without cheese for Steve, Prawn salad with cheese for Patrick, bowl of minestrone soup for me. Entrees: roasted half chicken with mashed potatoes for Travis, Smiling Thai noodles for Steve, Grilled mahi mahi with mashed potatoes and red endive for Patrick, mozzarella and basil pizza for me. Dessert: one order of warm chocolate cake, a la mode on the side, and one order of ginger cake and pumpkin ice cream with caramel sauce. Patrick talked a lot about China. We talked about Chinese, 9/11, writing, school, teaching. After dinner, Steve drove us all back to our place (we talked about Hao, dogs, fish and Lodestar). We chatted awhile longer sipping ginger tea. We talked about clothes and where to buy clothes that fit us; beds, pillows, and sleeping; Travis' forthcoming car purchase. A very pleasant evening.
Sat Sep 11, 2004
Meant to do Lodestar work today, but instead cut my hair and did a lot of housecleaning. Two kinds of leftover pizza for lunch by myself. Napped. Tony A invited us over to his place for dinner. We met Bobby, who seems very sweet. With Bobby assisting, Tony prepared a large 4-course Chinese dinner: potstickers, mu shu pork, 5-spice pork, stir-fried vegetables, steamed rice, and 2 side dishes: pickled cucumber; tofu with 1000-year-old egg. We were only 4 people, but he cooked enough for 8 or 10! It was all very delicious, and I'm very impressed with Tony's knowledge of cooking. I told him he should have his own cooking show. Patrick and I brought over Thomas Kemper Black Cherry and Vanilla Cream sodas. Patrick learned how to roll out and fold potsticker wrappers. Tony accidentally stuck himself with a cactus fruit, causing some mild drama while pulling out all the tiny, nearly invisible needles from his hand. We talked about food, cooking, photography, writing, Lodestar, art, how stupid Details magazine can be sometimes (Gay or Asian?, Gay or Trucker?). Tony got a luxurious new chair in December. You recline in it and press a button to get a back and calf massage. It's orgasmic! Tony had recently started using Firefox, so I showed him all the tricks and keyboard shortcuts I've learned. The Firefox extensions website wouldn't work for us—we'd click to install the Adblock extension and it would appear to download but no installer window would appear. That site has never been reliable for me, so I figured it was a problem with the site. Couldn't sleep after we got home, so I stayed up and did UCSF work. Went to bed very late in the morning.
Sun Sep 12, 2004
Breakfast at home with Patrick: Potatoes O'Brien with fresh yellow bell pepper, rosemary. This morning as I peppered my breakfast hash Patrick said that black pepper (as from peppercorns) was not digestible and so I shouldn't add too much. I didn't believe him, and he said, "Look it up!" So we did, but there was nothing on the Internet that would support his claim. Indeed, some web pages claimed the exact opposite—that pepper helps digestion. He says his claim is from Chinese medicine, so I'm mentioning this here in case anyone else is searching for this info. (Contact me if you find an answer, e.g., you know about Chinese medicine or herbs.) Today I logged into My Yahoo! for the first time in a long time and had forgotten how helpful it is to see local news headlines from a bunch of different cities on a single page. The cities I have on my page are: San Francisco, Seattle, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Boston, San Diego, and San Jose. New Orleans news is provided by WDSU, and almost without fail every headline is—or is about—ridiculously bad news. For example, today's headlines were: Police Seek Mentally Ill Man Missing Since July; Suspect In Overnight Bar Shooting In Custody; Neighbors Near Uptown Cemetery Complain Of Odor; DA: Investigators Uncover Plot To Kill 11-Year-Old Witness; $5,000 Offered For Tips On Whitney Bank Robber's Identity; and Causeway Commission Raises Speed Limit.—Exercise. Read and edited pieces for Lodestar. Downloaded more mixes from Phil Stumpf. Dinner at home with Patrick: shrimp quesadillas, side of refried beans.
Mon Sep 13, 2004
Oatmeal with banana and brown sugar. First day of orientation! Got introduced to the new class. Lunch: bought sandwich innards from the cafeteria and inserted them in a croissant leftover from this morning's breakfast offerings for the new students. Also had a banana. Helped Joel set up a laptop presentation for one of his speakers. Helped Melissa make decisions about buying a new laptop. Began reviewing the Photoshop file Martha had sent me for our home page redesign. Susie cancelled our meeting today—she has other things to work on. Burned CD-ROMs with archives of the website to free up disk space on the server to resolve problems with the backup process running out of space on the tape. Coded new web pages describing new photocopy services that Kim is offering down the hall, sent the pages to her for review. Met with (fill in later) about the student lounge. Dinner at home with Patrick: Mimolette and Somerdale Red Dragon mustard seed cheeses with crackers, pan-fried local sea bass with Dijon and rosemary, steamed broccoli, homemade mashed potatoes. Finished editing fiction and poetry for Lodestar, handed them off to Patrick for review. The iced tea glasses we ordered a few days ago arrived. They aren't exactly like the ones we had before, but it doesn't really matter. Chatted with Chris De Lay—a rare moment seeing him online.
Tue Sep 14, 2004
Croissant and cheddar cheese for breakfast. The bus driver today was the slowest driver ever. Part of it was the old bus which you could hear complaining as it went up the hill, but the other part was the driver himself who took his time going 20 or 25 miles per hour even along the flat stretches. Helped Joel and Cindy set up and check in for day 2 of orientation. Made bunches of edits to various Web pages and made them live. Made live the photocopy pages and the PID pages. Attempted to set up Firefox on Joel's laptop. Les from SF Micro came to fix a number of printer problems. The manual feed tray for our Xerox is missing a spring or something. Melissa's makes a loud groaning noise. Ena's loses its network connection inconsistently and unpredictably. Bought a printer cable from The Source, which Les installed for Ena's printer. He replaced a set of rollers for Melissa's printer. He also ordered some new parts for the Xerox printer. Watched the tail end of Mike W's HIPAA presentation—he's fun; I like his style. Did my computer services presentation with Chris. It went well; no major problems except we couldn't get wireless to work with the laptop. It must have been the WAP or something else in the room because the same laptop connected in the same room just yesterday no problems, and Joel was connected with his iBook at the same time. Watched the orientation skits put on by the upperclasspeople. Chatted with Mike L about his computer. Briefly helped Melissa with her laptop purchase. Chatted with James about problems with his home computer. Turned off Alerter and Messenger services on Debrah's computer. My favorite bus driver James drove me home. Dinner at home by myself: frozen pizza (chicken something), side of leftover refried beans. Balanced the checkbook. Installed Windows and Office Updates. Installed Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. Whoo Hoo! So far not bad. IE View and Flashblock are not compatible, but Adblock and Web Developer Toolbar are. I also had to go back in to Tools > Options > Advanced > Accessibility to turn "Use Find As You Type" back on.
Wed Sep 15, 2004
Fruit smoothie (pear, banana, cinnamon, hint of vanilla) and cheesy croissant for breakfast. Worked with Kristina on more changes to the PHPM pages. Installed Windows Updates and Office Updates for Ena, Melissa, Debrah, Cindy, Joel, and the shared laptop. Installed Firefox 1.0 Preview Release for Ena and the laptop. Minor update to the photocopy page. Gathered more info about the student lounge from Rodney and the lock shop. Created a poster and desktop background for the upcoming drop-in computer support and services session on Friday. Took notes from Melissa regarding her Dell-UCSF computer order. Compiled notes regarding problems with new student accounts. Dinner at Blue with Patrick: Patrick had pork chops, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. I had veggie lasagne. We shared a piece of chocolate cake for dessert (which Patrick couldn't finish!).
Thu Sep 16, 2004
Woke up at 4:30 AM, couldn't go back to sleep. Finally fell asleep again at 6:30 AM. Woke up again around 8:30 AM. Fruit smoothie for breakfast. Dealt with student account problems. Made live PHPM pages for Kristina, Bill S, and Tom K. Worked on Chris's laptop: Windows and Office Updates, Updated Firefox to 1.0 PR. Took a break somewhere in the middle of the day and had a lime popsicle with Kristina in Saunders Court. Showed Chris the "Add a keyword for this search" feature in Firefox. Jake B came to the office and had me look at his laptop. His computer was very peculiar. It would hang hard every time a PDF was opened either in or not in a web browser. Problem still happened even though we disabled everything in Startup Manager. He had already uninstalled and reinstalled Acrobat. No viruses. He eventually decided to reformat, so I set him up with instructions and he'll give that a try maybe this weekend. Hazel stopped by and wiped the OmniLock brain and reprogrammed the whole thing. Dinner at home: leftover pizza. Went to bed early—very sleepy. Joel wore an outstandingly classy suit today. I won't even try to describe it further. (Or maybe this was yesterday—I can't remember now.)
Fri Sep 17, 2004
Breakfast at the cafeteria: sausage, potatoes, scrambled eggs, wheat toast, orange juice. Dealt with more student account problems. Updated current student calendar and news. Updated 2 schedules for Debrah. Created a local copy of the PHPM pages for Bill S to use at a forthcoming presentation. At the Drop-in Computer Support and Services session I hosted today, Kirk H, Christine W, and Rick S helped about a dozen of our students install required software for their classes. The session went well. Skipped lunch, but somehow I wasn't that hungry anyway. Helped Ena install the transfer roller in Debrah's printer. Dinner at home with Patrick: baked chicken, Caesar salad. For dessert: almond torte. Joel gave me the shoe box from his Kenneth Cole shoes he bought recently on eBay. Helped Mark P with mail configuration and listserv problems. Began setting up data tables for the next issue of Lodestar.
Sat Sep 18, 2004
Patrick and I had inadvertently overcommitted ourselves this weekend. We have to release the next issue of Lodestar Quarterly this Tuesday, but didn't have that on our calendars that when we'd said yes to two events for today. Nevertheless, we enjoyed taking a break to socialize. The first event was Bill and Glenn's house joining party. Glenn showed slides from and told us about their trip to New Orleans. We saw the new and improved back yard, watched hummingbirds at the feeder, enjoyed burgers from the grill, spanikopita and mini quiches and mini brownies from the oven, and many other delicious snacks from the kitchen. Glenn showed off the fancy sprinkler system. Misha inherited a free DVD player—a spare from Bill and Glenn's household. Afterwards Patrick and I went to Bill and Kevin's birthday party. It was yet another summer barbecue, this time with a pool, but the weather was overcast and only in the low- to mid-60s so no one except Geoff went for a swim. We got a car wash near my sister's house, then we got groceries at Safeway on Taraval before going home. I thought I would take a short nap and then wake up and work on Lodestar, but I ended up sleeping.
Sun Sep 19, 2004
AJ was supposed to show up today so that I could help him transfer data between two laptops, but he didn't show up. Actually, we all hadn't agreed he would show up; yesterday morning I suggested he show up this morning and we hadn't heard back from him. Breakfast: Patrick had a bagel and cream cheese. I had eggs scrambled easy, hash browns. I tried having some leftover chicken but it had gotten too dry so I threw it out. Finished editing the lodestar essay for our forthcoming issue of Lodestar. Late lunch: Patrick made a deluxe spinach tortilla quesadilla, tortilla chips, side of refried beans. Spent all day exercising and working on Lodestar. Dinner at home with Patrick: spinach spinach salad (spinach leaves garnished with deep-fried spinach tortilla strips and other salad goodies). Stayed up late working on Lodestar.
Mon Sep 20, 2004
Took care of student account problems. Prepared a summary of the drop-in computer support and services session for the SCS group. Posted PDF forms for Joel for the career fair and placement interviews so employers could download them. Resent PHPM local pages for Bill S. Tried to upload files to AM for James and Scott—it wouldn't work so I sent Scott the error logs and posted the files to a non-public location for him to download. Late lunch: broccoli, zucchini, macaroni and cheese. Took care of student account problems. Chatted briefly with Adrian T who had stopped by to discuss a weird wireless problem—he lives off campus but can pick up a WAP called UCSF which is labelled "peer-to-peer." Chatted with Susie. Dinner at home with Patrick: plum plum pork chops (plum sauce and sliced plums), homemade mashed potatoes, spinach, boiled egg. We watched the first 35 minutes of a recording of Speed taped from TV while eating dinner. Stayed up late working on Lodestar. We're behind a little bit this quarter. Now all the works are coded except for drama. The new home page is done except for the lodestar bio and deck. We might be a day late, but I tell Patrick no one will notice.
Tue Sep 21, 2004
Student computing committee meeting—we met Doug Carlson, the new registrar. Met with Cindy. Helped student Trinh N set up her computer. Helped an unidentified student with filetypes and browsers and PowerPoint downloads. Updated the spreadsheet of remaining first-year student account problems. Updated listservs for Cindy, Claire, Cathi P, and Marisela K. Lunch: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn off the cob, cornbread. Helped Melissa set up her new laptop while I took notes because it's a UCSF-Dell computer and I wanted to track the problems we found during her ordering process. Dinner at home by myself: canned soup, then later I shared a mini pizza with Patrick.
Wed Sep 22, 2004
Helped Jorge get added to a bunch of listservs. Updated current students news and calendar. Updated course subs page for Cindy. Spent most of the day in e-mail. Lunch with Martha Fitzgerald at Eliza's (415-621-4819, 2877 California Street at Broderick): potstickers, Martha had chicken with asparagus, I had chicken with broccoli and cashews. Her last day is this Friday and she's leaving to be a Web Developer at Cornell. She has contributed a wealth of her amazing skills to UCSF, and I am very sad to see her leave. Her fortune: A smile is your personal welcome mat. My fortune: It is much wiser to take advice than to give it. Last Friday, Mark P reported this error message when attempting to send e-mail to one of our fraternity listservs: "None of your e-mail accounts could send to this recipient." Google only has 35 hits on this error message. It appears to be specific to Microsoft Outlook, but microsoft.com has no documentation of the problem. Updated and distributed the student accounts problems spreadsheet. Removed spyware from Debrah's computer. Dinner at home with Patrick: pasta with red sauce, bread, cherry sorbet. Worked more on Lodestar: coded half of the play.
Thu Sep 23, 2004
Oatmeal and banana for breakfast. Helped Dawn E with her account problems. Helped Joyce G-A with a problem sending attachments to a listserv. Added Anne W back to the class listserv. Helped Melissa with a printer communication problem. Updated the VPN Issues document. Created and distributed an Exchange Migration Planning document and calendar. Updated and distributed the student accounts problems spreadsheet. Dinner at home by myself: leftovers. Tina left us a funny story on the answering machine about her parents and her cousins.
Fri Sep 24, 2004
Oatmeal and banana for breakfast. Vacuumed. Worked on password management in KeePass 0.97b and creating password icons in Photoshop CS and IrfanView 3.91. Converted 7 pages of passwords from MS Word to KeePass. Updated HIPAA and VPN pages. Added student Abdi M back to a listserv. Lunch at home by myself: canned soup, fruit smoothie. Helped JWG get rental car info. Dinner at Yum Yum Fish with Patrick and Melissa—$15 each. We had lots of miso soup, green tea, and great sushi including ebi, hamachi kamikaze roll, shrimp salad roll, salmon and green onions roll, bbq eel roll, soft shell crab roll, white tuna, pumpkin. We talked about persimmons and crabs, whether food floats or sinks in milk, why Patrick avoided eating seeds as a child, Melissa's brand new laptop computer, law schools, breakfast cereals, Melissa's chamber music event this weekend, Folsom Street Fair. Dropped Melissa off at home.
Sat Sep 25, 2004
Cut my hair. Brunch with AJ and Patrick. Patrick made a fruit salad, beignets, and Community coffee and chicory. AJ brought his 2 laptops. He needed to migrate his data from one to the other. I hadn't known he hadn't even turned on the new one. Dell has been very troublesome for him, and he only has this new laptop for another month before they send him a new one. I had to set up the new computer first. I started around 11:30 AM and finished around 4:30 PM. The biggest problem was when we tried to register McAfee VirusScan 8—we got this error message: "McAfee Product Setup: McAfee Security Setup Error: Your Dell PC Has Already Been Registered for This Offer: Your Dell PC has already been registered for this McAfee product subscription. If you need access to your service, click the "Log In" button. You can also obtain specific support related to this Dell offer at: http://ts.mcafeehelp.com/dell (Log In) (Cancel)" The only thing I found in Google was a description from April 2004 of the exact same problem at techtales.com. No solution—just (rightly) making fun of McAfee for sending the customer to Dell (because McAfee's software was pre-installed) who had originally (and rightly) sent the customer to McAfee (because it's a McAfee registration problem, not a Dell problem). We had typed in a login and new password on the previous screen, but when we click Log In and try to log in, we get another error: "The email address or password you entered was invalid. Please try again." When we choose the "Forgot Your Password?" link, we're asked to enter the e-mail address we used to register then click Get Password. So we do, and the error we get is "The email address does not exist in our system. Please try again." These problems are consistently reproducible. It seems that McAfee is incorrectly determining that the copy of McAfee on our PC has already been registered. Our solution to this problem will likely be to go to the store to buy Norton Anti-Virus, disconnect from the Internet, uninstall McAfee VirusScan and McAfee Firewall, then install Norton Anti-Virus then install the free version of ZoneAlarm. I warn Aaron that it's a choice between spending $40 and spending hours talking to inefficient technical support teams. (If they were efficient, the answer would already be on the web by now.) Neither of us are rich, but this choice is a clear one to both of us—we both would opt to spend $40 for Norton. Lunch: quesadilla, tortellini with red sauce. I set up networking between the 2 using a crossover cable, set up TCP/IP with static addresses 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 (subnet 255.255.0.0) with File and Printer Sharing and in the same workgroup. Still had trouble connecting until I shared the hard drive roots. Melissa comes over with several beautiful dahlias for us, and I help her do more setup with her new laptop computer as well. I introduced her to hosts files, Firefox, AdBlock, and KeePass all in one day—it was all a little much, but I think she can handle it. We invite her to stay for dinner: steamed rice, stir-fried cow slices in a soy sauce marinade, baked sweet potato with nutmeg and hazelnut oil. After she left, I chatted online briefly with Travis, then Patrick and I watched 2 Simpsons episodes. Mikey sent us a thank you card and photo cdrom for his recent visit. Thanks, Mikey!
Sun Sep 26, 2004
Fruit smoothie, bagel with cream cheese at home for breakfast. Made Lodestar Issue 11 live. Went to Folsom Street Fair. We saw Scott and Andy, Tony C, Karl and Kevin, (Darren). It was the usual stuff (just like Tony A said in his journal). The Fag Fridays music was pretty good. Dinner at La Mediterranee (288 Noe Street): Patrick had the sampler with lamb kebob, I had the pomegranate chicken, we shared a slice of chocolate kahlua cake for dessert.
Mon Sep 27, 2004
All this week I'm in class at LearnIt! learning all about Windows Server 2003. The trainer is Jim Galvin—he's very good, knows his stuff. Lunch: roast beef and cheddar sandwich at Lee's. Dinner at home by myself: leftover tortellini.
Tue Sep 28, 2004
Walgreen's errands. Breakfast: breakfast burrito with bacon from Cafe Venue, banana. LearnIt! training. Lunch: pastrami and cheddar sandwich at Lee's. Snack: a banana, a double mocha from Peet's Coffee. Dinner at home by myself: Caesar salad. About a week ago I stopped reading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003 and started reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Year 5), which Patrick got for me from the public library. I am enjoying it very much.
Wed Sep 29, 2004
Breakfast: an orange, a banana, water. LearnIt! training. Snack: breakfast burrito with bacon from Cafe Venue. Lunch: pho from some nearby underground food court—I didn't like it very much because I took it to go and consequently it was very messy (too many parts to the meal—lemon, bean sprouts, basil, noodles, meat, etc.) and because I didn't enjoy the tripey meat slices and the mystery sea creature which, at first, I thought was some mutant kind of tapeworm. (I set the tapeworm creature aside.) Snack: a banana. Dinner at home with Patrick: shrimp stir-fry with steamed rice, cherry sorbet. We watched Super Size Me—an enlightening documentary.
Thu Sep 30, 2004
Today was essentially identical to yesterday except leftovers for dinner and no movie.