Saturday, March 4, 2006
I forgot to mention yesterday the clothes I ordered from shortmenssizes.com arrived and I tried them on. These shirts fit correctly in the neck and sleeve (because I was able to select based on specific measurements), but not in the torso or armpit. The green dress shirt I bought from The Gap a few weeks ago fits well in the torso and armpit and sleeve, but not in the neck. Although these shirts from shortmenssizes.com are made of extremely thin material and although they didn't fit perfectly, I decided to keep them because I can probably take them to a tailor to have them fixed. I confirmed that my neck size is 15.5 and my sleeve is 31.5. It will cost me more money, but I'm tired of having clothes that don't fit me. I also got a tie which is sized smaller than most ties. I had ordered #1302G but what Al sent me was #1301H. I didn't complain because I ended up liking #1301H anyhow, but it's weird to me that he got both the number and letter of my tie order incorrect. His site says the tie is 52 inches long and 3.25 inches wide, but the one I received measures 51 x 3.25, which is still fine by me. Breakfast: cereal, yogurt. Home improvement: more velcro work in the bathroom inside the bathroom cabinet and under the sink. Worked on Corinna's website. Napped. Dinner at So with Patrick: So Fish, shrimp dumplings soup, pork chops. We really like the appetizer called So Fish—it's battered and deep fried and coated with a sweet-savory sauce. Patrick wants to learn how to make it so that he can try this fish out in a Chinese poboy of his own invention. The pork chops were good, but not as juicy as the ones Patrick makes. It also felt weird eating pork chops in a Chinese restaurant. (How often is it you go to a Chinese restaurant and the server brings you a fork and steak knife without you asking?) The shrimp dumplings soup was good except that I didn't like that the dumplings fell apart so easily. They tasted good, but I wish they didn't fall apart. Patrick thought they fell apart because the soup was so hot we had to wait a long time before we could eat it and they got overcooked, but they were just as flimsy when it first arrived. We realize this time at So that there is only ever one server on duty. He is always busy doing things and never gets much of a chance to catch his breath or take a break. Despite being overworked, he is extremely efficient and fascinating to watch. We felt sorry for him, and I think Patrick tipped a little extra because of that. Indeed, our tea never got refilled, and we frequently saw people getting up to fill their own water glasses. It's real punishment to make a single server handle 40 or 50 customers, I think. It makes me think poorly of the management at So. Oh yes, I forgot to mention the same server is also the bus boy and the greeter/seater. Errands: Walgreens, Safeway. Changed long distance telephone service providers from ZoneLD to ECG because ZoneLD's customer service people repeatedly ignored some of the questions I would send them. I even warned them I would switch if they didn't answer one question in particular, and they again completely ignored it, so I switched. ECG is less expensive, anyhow, and they made it very painless to switch. Good riddance to ZoneLD! You have failed me for the last time! Today's OS X keyboard shortcuts: F9 shows all open applications at once, F10 does something but I can't tell what, F11 reveals the desktop, F12 opens the dashboard. Also: When Command+Tabbing you can press H on a selected application to hide it or Q to quit it—that's very cool and something that Windows XP doesn't have. I also learned that I need to use Option+Home in Firefox to go to my home page instead of what I expected: Command+Home. I also started using Ctrl+F3 to move focus to the dock. Okay, I figured out F10—show all windows open in an application. This one doesn't seem very useful to me since, for example, Firefox uses tabs instead of new windows, and Text Wrangler opens additional files within the same window, too. Consequently, when you have only one window open in your application, F10 doesn't seem to do much except make the background dimmer. I noticed in Mac Help there's no way to bookmark a particular search results page (such as the page you see after searching on "keyboard shortcuts"), and there's no way to bookmark a particular help page (such as the system keyboard shortcuts page called "Shortcuts for the system"). Hrmph! Our neighbor Melissa found herself locked out this evening, so we helped her get back in in a way that didn't break any laws or windows.