Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Morning run: 15 minutes. Edited my journal entry of January 30, 2006 because in rereading it today I realized it was unclear about the LC50 monitor—as written it made it seem as if the Panasonic LC50 did not sleep properly, but it does. I still am mostly dissatisfied with the Dell 2005FPW monitor—there was another issue with the driver that I could not recall exactly and which I hadn't mentioned in that journal entry. The driver is essentially very difficult to install—the files you need weren't provided on the cdrom included with my monitor, and I honestly can't recall where I got mine but I am pretty sure it wasn't on the cd. Windows XP does not easily detect the monitor even when searching for drivers online, so installing it is not easy. Indeed, the problem I mentioned a year ago about the poor design of the placement of the lock connection point has made itself evident—occasionally now when I touch the monitor cable the entire screen turns a bright cast of yellow and if I wiggle (or even simply touch) the cable where it is connected to the monitor then the screen returns to normal. This is either a cable failure or the VGA connector on the monitor has worked loose from its connection inside, and my bet is the latter due to what I mentioned a year ago. I'll be sticking with Samsung monitors from now on. I've had problems with Samsung monitors in the past, but they are not the kinds of problems due to poor design and engineering as with the Dell 2005FPW. Today I had to look up what keys people press to access accesskey shortcuts on web pages viewed in Firefox 2.0.0.1 in OS X and was pleasantly surprised to learn that it's simply Ctrl+accesskey. This is better than Firefox 2.0.0.1 in Windows because it's one less key. Windows now uses Alt+Shift+accesskey. This does not mean that keyboard shortcuts are better in everything in OS X. I think I've said it before, but it is worth repeating—even Xubuntu has better system-level keyboard shortcuts than OS X which is far more advanced in functionality and engineering than Xubuntu in perhaps nearly every other way. Windows 3.1 had better system-level keyboard shortcuts than OS X (remember C:\ONGRTLNS.W95?). Also, I think a Firefox 2.0 for Windows bug regarding accesskeys fail to work when the accesskeys happen to be numbers seems to be resolved in 2.0.0.1, but I haven't bothered to look it up to confirm. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Spy Sweeper spot checks—Rob and his staff noticed that our enterprise version of Webroot Spy Sweeper is not updating automatically as we expect, so I did a spot check to determine which of our computers were and weren't updating. Of 11 computers, 3 were not autoupdating properly. This problem can be resolved by uninstalling and reinstalling using the latest installer, but we're going to see if OAAIS can force the problem on the server end and push the updates out somehow. Student computing committee wiki work (electronic calendaring). Jobs listserv updates for Joel. Preview session web page closure for Joel. Chatted briefly with Valerie about SF Micro and computer support provided by OAAIS. Followup with Chris about PHPM reqs and terminology. Student database work: with help from Peter Laursen, I resolved a problem I had with SQLyog involving more rows than expected updating because I was using TEXT data types with a table that had no primary key. Peter's response was speedy and efficient—this Webyog forum experience was a very pleasant and useful one, I thought. I need to find one student's SAA ID and then I think the data will be complete. Next step: set up mirroring and get the live site working. Steaven is back, has really beautiful and shiny new glasses, and helped us stuff folders for interviews coming up. I did a brief demo of Windows Vista for Steaven and Scott. The computer I installed it on has only 512 MB of RAM which really isn't enough for Vista. It would use virtual memory, but it was often unbearably slow. Lunch with Joel: he brought his lunch and I had Panda Express. We watched funny things on YouTube. Fixed a printer jam problem for Alyssa by opening and closing doors and trays on the printer. Fixed a printing problem for Chris by unplugging and replugging the USB cable from and into the docking station. Installed Office 2007 Pro Plus on my computer at work. Susie needed some info from me, so I typed it up and sent it to her. Manual PharmAdMIT backups. Dinner at home with Patrick: quesaladas, corn chips, black beans. We watched Heroes episode 13 (The Fix). I figured out I can make it run full screen by dropping the monitor resolution down a bit. At the higher resolution, it was too jerky. We used my primary computer because I couldn't figure out how to make Firefox 2.0.0.1 go full screen in OS X. (F11 doesn't do what I want, Full Screen doesn't appear under the View menu, clicking the green plus sign doesn't do what I want.) Worked on Corinna's first review draft.