Monday, September 24, 2007
Met with Susie. Installed SilverJRunner aka ASSIST for Joel. Tried to find out if I could save an InDesign CS document as an InDesign 2.0 document. A nearly-4-year-old thread on typophile (to which Thomas Phinney contributed (!)) explained that this was not possible. I created a sample layout and distributed it to our volunteer graphic designers, but one of them had InDesign 2.0 and could not open the file I provided. Certainly after working at Adobe for so long, I realized why they made the decision they did, but nonetheless I was amazed at how long the long tail really is, and I think software developers never truly have a sense of it because these things will likely never get reported because software companies have no interest in creating such feedback loops. Alyssa reported a problem in which a file on the server was accidentally overwritten several days ago with data from a similarly named file. My task was to see if we could restore the data. I went first to Mozy Pro. Mozy Pro found only one copy of the data. I did the restore—the whole process of searching and restoring took under 2 minutes. But this file was too recent—it contained the wrong data. I then turned to Retrospect, which had 5 versions of the file, and one of them turned out to be the one she needed. Total time to restore for Retrospect: about 6 minutes. This experience reinforces my belief that one really needs more than one backup system. Recently I have been trying to order green plastic hard drive rails to install a hard drive into our Dell SC420 server. The online documentation does not indicate what part number to order for this, so I submitted an inquiry via their website to their sales team and was later told I needed to submit an inquiry to their technical support team which didn't make sense to me but I didn't bother asking about that—I don't have time for that. I asked them to submit the request for me since I've already wasted time on the telephone navigating their voice jail only to reach the end—a recording: "We're closed!" They obliged, and technical support eventually delivered me a part number: 21TUG. I submitted a quote request for 3 pairs of rails (6 rails total), and a Dell Parts & Upgrades Online Sales Representative named Yessenia responded with: "We regret to inform you that, to ensure availability of these hard drive carriers to all of our customers, we are not allowed to sell empty hard drive carriers. In order to get them you will need to purchase the complete kit, which consists in the hard drive itself, the carriers and the screws. This will maintain a balance in stock availability and will ensure compatibility with your Dell server. If you still need the empty carriers, please contact your account manager or sales representative for further details in this policy." So it would seem that if you wanted to install a hard drive into any Dell computer, you now need to buy the hard drive from them. I went to eBay and in about 10 minutes I had rails ordered. (Sigh.) Pre-lunch: 2 peanut butter sandwiches from home. Organized computer hardware drawer a bit. Labeled shared laptop components with our office phone number in case they are lost. Ensured no Firefox software update failed problem on the shared laptop. Wrote a tiny script to ensure permissions are set correctly on our website, scheduled it in cron to run nightly. Made live new profile numbers for Susie. Submitted reimbursement requests to Lucia and Susie. Wrong e-mail address followup with Lucia. Made live pharmacy information day updates. Met with student LN: Palm Pilot does not synch Lexi-comp. I could not figure it out and referred the student to Rodney who agreed to have a look. Lunch: chinese chicken salad from Safeway. LGBT viz followups. Purchase order management for purchases for me and Eric. Left work. Chatted with Jen C (OET) on the N-Judah about creative writing; Oakland; cultural, political, and sexual enlightenment. Walked from Duboce Park to Bearbucks in the Castro. Got a caramel frappuccino, waited for Chris. He didn't show after a while, so I found a payphone (there aren't many left in this neighborhood) at IDG (formerly known as Cala Foods)—he was arriving soon. I returned to Bearbucks to find him. We got pizza at Escape From New York Pizza: a quick dinner. We needed to resolve his parking problem—he had to move his car or risk getting ticketed—and on the way someone yelled my name from across the street. It was BK ("I'm a gorger") and Kelly who walked with us to the car chatting the whole way. They were just returned from Seattle and remarked how much it has changed. They had just seen Mikey who now has a motorcycle named Bikey and a dog named Bubba. (I knew about Bubba, tho I don't recall the motorcycle.) Chris moved the car about 3 car spaces over, and he was set for parking for the night. Brian told me his real work address: 564 Market Street—I had gotten it wrong somehow on a previous attempt to visit him. We returned to the theatre and said goodbye to BK and Kelly who hadn't made plans for the evening after eating at Catch and did not care to join us for the double feature. It was great running into them. Double feature at the Castro Theatre—$9 for both films—Starman and Brainstorm, cheesy fun. Chris drove me home. Logged in to work: software update failed fixes for Carol, Lucia, Alyssa. Update XML File Malformed problem with Lucia's computer—unresolveable even with suggestions from the net.