Thursday, March 15, 2007
I witnessed perhaps the worst Muni driving error ever today, but I cannot tell it here. Ask me in person if you want. Installed PharmAdMIT on the shared laptop for Steaven, set up network printing. HTML e-mail for Cindy. Discovered that Outlook 2007 reverts to the poor rendering engine of Word 2007 for display of HTML e-mail. In Outlook 2003, Microsoft used the IE rendering engine, which supports a lot more than that of Word 2007. Consequently, people designing HTML e-mail will find that their layouts will often break in Outlook 2007. Outlook 2007 will no longer display the same HTML e-mail template that worked properly in Outlook 2003, and this problem exists for both sending and receiving/viewing. On my computer, I have already upgraded to Office 2007, so to test the new HTML e-mails I'm creating I need to use Remote Desktop to log in to another computer that isn't being used, set up Outlook 2003, copy the HTML I wrote to a shared network folder, switch to Remote Desktop, copy the HTML from the shared folder, paste it into the Stationery folder, send the HTML e-mail from Outlook 2003, switch back to my computer with Outlook 2007 and check the results. Repeat as needed. Before, I could simply edit the file in my own Stationery folder, save changes, then switch windows back to Outlook 2003 and send a test message. This now significantly increases the time it takes to develop HTML e-mail for users of Outlook 2007. Lunch: roast turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, corn off the cob. More HTML e-mail work. Scanned documents for Alyssa. Prepared and installed a Belkin USB hub for Chris. Met Patrick with the car at 9th and Kirkham—this was the first time ever he drove the car to meet me near work. (He's not yet comfortable with taking the stick shift up the hill.) Went to dinner and Beach Blanket Babylon with Patrick and Mom Ryan for Mom Ryan's birthday. Dinner at Franchino (415-982-2157, 347 Columbus Av) with Patrick and Mom Ryan. The show was as fantastic as ever, and we all enjoyed it very much. We sat in the balcony on the side and on the side above the band. If you sit on the side balcony, it's better to sit on the side across from the band because the show opens on the band and you can't see what's happening for about a minute and for other parts of the show it was hard to see what was going on stage right. Night run: 15 minutes.