Thursday, August 18, 2005
I forgot my sandwich this morning, but Patrick found it and ran outside where Sam happened to just pull up and he asked Sam to drive to the corner to meet the bus so he could hand me my sandwich—so sweet! I forgot what I ate for breakfast this morning, but I know it was something. Probably a nectarine and toast if not my usual favorite breakfast. The firefighting story continues. The problematic server is relatively stable now. Not perfect, but not as bad as a couple days ago. I restarted after applying two security patches, then defragged another hard drive. Chris's laptop: the technician now thinks it was both the mobo and the display. We can now get a picture when we plug it into the docking station. (We couldn't before and there's a new mobo now.) He's ordering a display and will return tomorrow for the install. The CD-ROMs for entering students arrived. Set up Joel with the design he needed for promotional post-it notes to give to prospective students. Set up linkchecking for Aaron C and the CDDS website (one of the school's partners). Wrote Outlook tips for the office. Helped students via e-mail with Outlook questions. Troubleshot a problem with some of our cabinet doors with Ena. The doors get horizontal scratches across them but only sometimes. There's a lock right where the scratch occurs, so I had suspected that perhaps the position of the lock made a difference, but upon closer inspection (after Ena provided the key to the locks) it appears to be simply poor design by Steelcase. Made web pages live for pharmacy information day for Joel. For lunch, we were invited to a presentation by some students in our program who were doing a summer internship with Albertson's and Sav-on. They presented the internship activities in which they had participated. It was great to see their learning processes grow on them, and I could tell they're a really sharp bunch. Albertson's provided the food and drink, of course, so we got to eat fried chicken, giant slices of tortilla wraps, sandwiches, vegetables and dip, chips, and other lunch goodies. Dinner: I had brought a sandwich today but didn't get to eat it, so I took it home and ate it there. Patrick and I went to Mezzanine for the first time today to experience a DJ set by Gus Gus. We arrived way too early—9:00 PM—because I had thought the show would start right at 9. Starting DJs played electrosoul which we liked. An opening band named Protection played 1980ish electrorock which we thought was not great and not awful. (Patrick gives them a 4 on scale of 1 to 10, 10 being best, and I concur. The vocals are their weakest element, and the Stephen Hawking voicebox needs to be used in greater moderation.) When Gus Gus finally played around midnight we were tired of waiting. The almost entirely straight crowd disappointed Patrick, though I don't know what he was expecting. I hadn't seen so many women dressed like hookers since I'd been to North Beach. A Heineken cost $5. A rum and orange juice cost $6. Coat check was $2 per coat. Entrance was $10 each. Parking at the 5th and Mission garage was $9. We spent $44 tonight, and it wasn't worth it. We left not long after Gus Gus started and got a late night meal at Sparky's. Patrick got a burger and fries. I got a hearts of romaine salad with grilled chicken. About $20.