Monday, February 25, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Met with Susie 1-on-1. Notes I had written down a while ago: "Can Google Chart be used to create an org chart?" Answer (I found out later): No. More laptop maintenance for student ML. I had a very delicious and pleasant lunch with Joel at Pacific Catch (415-504-6905, 1200 9th Avenue at Lincoln, San Francisco). It was our first time eating in this space which was last known as The Canvas Gallery and which was more of a coffee shop and art space than a restaurant. We were served unwrapped edamame and fish-shaped pretzels while we waited for our food. Joel had the sushi-grade ahi salad, I had the california salmon sandwich with sesame slaw and small salad. I especially liked the quality of the bread in the sandwich—just the right hardness and softness outside and inside to feel and taste noticeably different for a sandwich. The menu has sushi, sashimi, starters, salads, tacos, rice bowls, entrees, fish and chips, sandwiches, sides, and desserts. It's kind of like table service Asian food court with New American touches here and there. The prices are higher than average, but I think the food quality is higher than average, too. Website migration followups. itssrv1 diaspora followup with Dick S. More laptop maintenance for student ML. Small web update: research page. LGBT viz work: edited the style guide and uploaded source files to the wiki. Met with ML, who decided to buy a new laptop after learning that a new hard drive was needed—this after being told there wasn't enough RAM and more RAM was purchased. It's a good decision. I received 2 gifts today. Susie brought back a cache of chocolate bars in various flavors and let me have first pick—I chose a Lindt dark chocolate bar which had a guava-flavored syrupy filling, which Susie recommended to have with a glass of port. The other gift was from Tina—a Canon A650IS, which is the camera I've been wanting for the past 6 months or so. Thanks, Tina! Dinner at home with Patrick: New York strip steak, medium; Safeway Organics white cheddar macaroni and cheese; steamed spinach with chopped boiled egg. Dessert: a piece each of that Lindt chocolate bar—delightful! Maybe tomorrow we'll try it with some port. Watched the remainder of the actors' commentary on the Ocean's Eleven DVD from Netflix. While watching the credits roll I noticed a familiar name and then looked it up on imdb then Wikipedia. The editor of Ocean's Eleven, Stephen M, is a former housemate of mine. We worked together for the Conference Office at UCSC and shared an apartment in both College Eight and Kresge East Apartments for at least 2 summers. He was perhaps the nicest housemate I had during that work, and I found him pleasant with which to both live and work. I am glad to learn of his stunning success and hope he continues to find happiness in life. In OS X, Spaces doesn't work exactly right when it comes to returning Command+Tab focus to the window you want when, say, multiple Finder windows are open in different spaces, but I think Nate said this is true even without spaces, so I don't know what's up with that. Another OS X quirk: You're done watching a DVD but you haven't quit DVD Player and try to eject the disc from the Desktop by right-clicking and selecting Eject—this error message appears: "The disk [name of disc] is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again. (OK)" Expected behavior: Either (a) DVD Player quits automatically if paused or stopped, then OS X ejects the disc, or (b) a dialog appears: "The disc [name of disc] is in use by DVD Player. (Quit DVD Player) (Quit DVD Player and Eject) (Don't Quit or Eject)". I couldn't remember why I thought I needed iCal and I remembered today—Entourage 2008 does not have the ability that iCal and Outlook 2007 have where you can see more than one virtual calendar on a single calendar. Outlook 2007 calls this overlay mode. However, I haven't figured out how to make iCal recognize Outlook 2007 appointments. I'm not even sure if it's possible. e.g., if someone who uses Outlook 2007 sends me a calendar invitation, I want to be able to accept it and add it to my iCal calendar with a single click. And if I have multiple calendars, how do I tell Entourage which iCal calendar to add it to? Entourage 2008 still crashes consistently when creating certain recurring items, so I don't entirely trust it.