Thursday, November 30, 2006
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Tried listening in on a UC conference call about Google Apps for Education but disconnected when I realized it was really only people asking lots of questions and no one providing answers. Followup with Rodney about student HB's e-mail. Met with Cindy. Late lunch: roast turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, corn off the cob, cranberry dressing, coffee. Chatted with Susie on the phone. Chatted with Chris about USB drives, portable apps, databases, ePHI. Spent part of the day setting up Chris's new MacBook Pro and, once again, spending hours trying to connect OS X to Active Directory. I neglected to write down the steps I used successfully in the past, so I had to relearn everything again. Found Erik's very useful guide (which worked for me in the past), tracked down his erratum posted in an e-mail message to the listserv, still cannot get it to work. It fails on Step 5 of the binding process—the gay beach ball spins and spins and if I wait a really long time (20 minutes?) I eventually get an error message that says something like "unknown error." Chris decided to go with Apple instead of Dell, so my plan to switch everyone in our office over to Apple hardware (if not Apple OS X just yet) has begun. Well, it actually started when I bought the MacBook a few months ago to replace our 5-year-old Dell Latitude C400. Soon Apple hardware will rule the world! Their software won't until OS X gives us keyboard shortcut accessibility that matches the keyboard shortcut usefulness of the now-14-year-old Windows 3.1. How can one expect to rule the world without decent keyboard shortcuts? I really thought that no docking solution for the MacBook Pro was going to be a dealbreaker for him, but I was wrong. He decided yesterday to make a purchase, I gave him advice about what he needed, and today he brought a box into my office: "Can I leave this with you?" (But of course!) Within minutes I was starting it up and turning out all my lights and figured out how to make the keyboard backlighting turn on. I put my palms face down over the left and right portions of the keyboard, and it felt somewhat like a religious experience. Brought home the new Brother MFC-845cw all-in-one multifunction device I purchased for home. It was a pain to do so with only the bus, but as I haven't received my new driver's license yet, I rather didn't have much choice. It was only 5 days ago that Amazon sent me an e-mail saying there was a delay and that the expected ship window was several weeks from now. Yesterday I received an e-mail saying it had shipped, and today I received it. I'm glad I waited instead of placing my order somewhere else. Wrapped a gift. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers and cornmeal crust pizza. Chatted with Tina on the phone. We talked about getting old. Backfilled November 27 about the new Ena/Steaven, though I imagine that backfilled data is interesting probably only to Melissa. Wow, it's the end of the month already?! Alyssa starts tomorrow, and our office is excited to have her join our team. Scott has been great, and so have our temps Steaven and Esther. One more permanent hire to complete, and the office will be whole again.