April 2008 in the Journal of Frank Farm

April 2008

Summary: A Conversation with Amy Richards and Dan Savage at Herbst Theatre with Patrick, Muni forum

Dates on this page

Tue Apr 1, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Student computing committee meeting. A crazy day at work. Chris's laptop running Windows in Boot Camp had exhibited 100% cpu problems yesterday and in my absence another admin did some troubleshooting which I think I will need to undo now. I probably would have made the same mistake, too, though. Spent most of the day coding a new news story announcing our new strategic plan for Susie. Lunch: Panda Express. Doctor appointment. Home. Worked another hour from home making that important home page story live for Susie. Dinner at home with Patrick: seasoned meatloaf, steamed zucchini, herbed slab. Chatted with Nate on the phone and played with Google Docs live simultaneous editing. Finished filing taxes—hooray! I thought I needed to consult Tax Boy again but I stuck through it and got everything to work. Processed photos. While attempting to upload photos with Flickr Uploadr 2.3.1, it goes through the upload progress indicators much faster than expected. When it finishes, there is no notice of success or failure. It appears to have uploaded 62 MB in about 7 seconds which I know is impossible on our connection. I try the upload a few times before noticing that some of the tags I entered are duplicated. I return to the folder with the photos and find they are all missing. I must have accidentally moved them to the trash or another folder. I undo the move and reupload and now it is behaving as expected. Installed Winamp 5.531. Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row, shoulder shrug, lateral raise. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Wed Apr 2, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Prepared Chris's laptop for surgery. Helped student PV with password expiration. Followup with student EB about a class wiki. Posted Identifying People in the GAL to the SCC wiki. Minor web updates for Cindy: law review, orientation, campus security. Coded new news for Susie, wrangled with usnews badge issues. Strategic plan website edits for Susie. Prepared the old laptop for a presentation tomorrow. Helped student NG with computer questions. "Unable to create mobile account. There was a problem creating your mobile account record. (OK)" error message when attempting to log in as domain administrator after having installed Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard. I seemed to have resolved this by installing Apple Software Updates, restarting, installing Apple Software Updates, and restarting. Lunch was meatloaf leftovers. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken boobs stuffed with seasoned stuffing and wild rice, steamed broccoli and asparagus, herbed slab. Stretches. Tennis ball massage.

Thu Apr 3, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Various followups in e-mail. MacBook Pro (MBP, November 2006) consistently fails to restart properly from Windows XP (Boot Camp). The screen goes black. Sometimes the Mac chime is heard at this point—sometimes not. Caps Lock light is stuck in off (unlit) and fails to toggle, laptop is fully charged, and AC adapter light glows green and steady. The pill-shaped light on the screen release latch lights only for a few seconds during startup during the Mac chime and then it turns off and stays unlit at all other times. No other lights on the computer to indicate onness, but putting an ear directly above the keyboard reveals that something inside (a fan or motor) is still on. Mousepad, mouse button, and keyboard provide no response. Pressing the power key once makes the computer emit a high-pitched whine that winds down and dies within 1 second. At this point, the computer appears to be completely off. Pressing the power button once makes the computer start up, seemingly normally. Problem happens even while installing Win XP in Boot Camp at the first and second restarts (reboots). In OS X, Tech Tools Pro indicated no hardware problems. Shutting down (shutdown) from Win XP works as expected. Lunch was chicken boob leftovers. Dinner at home with Patrick: pasta shells, sausage, broccoli, herbed slab, EVOO and balsamic vinegar. Spent a long time trying to get Apple Mail configured to received mail from my multiple accounts. iChatted with Tina, experimented with iChat effects, photo sharing, video sharing. Screen sharing did not work—it spun and spun but never completed. She was able to successfully configure Apple Mail according to the instructions I gave her to retrieve mail from her 2 e-mail accounts. When attempting to download VLC 0.8.6f in Firefox 2.0.0.13 for OS 10.5.2, I received the following error message: "[filename] could not be saved, because an unknown error occurred. Try saving to a different location. (OK)" Changing the Safari downloads folder did not work. Changing the Firefox downloads folder did not work. Deleting ~/Library/Preferences/ com.apple.internetconfig.plist [one space added to avoid layout problems] did not work. Still unresolved. Wait—deleting the plist file did fix it! Hooray! Downloaded photos from the camera. Late meal: chunky soup.

Fri Apr 4, 2008

After starting Fusion into Win XP today, Win XP started behaving very slowly and eventually hung. I let it sit for several minutes but it was stuck good. I force quit Fusion and then restarted Fusion immediately. Now it lists 2 boot camp partitions when before I only had one. When I tried to open one, it said something about this will take a minute to prepare but I let it sit for many minutes and nothing happened so I force quit again. Restarted Fusion. Tried opening the other boot camp partition and got an error message: "Cannot open the disk '/Users /[username] /Library /Application Support /Vmware Fusion /Virtual Machines /Boot Camp /%2Fdev%2Fdisk1 /Boot Camp partition.vmwarevm /Boot Camp partition.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: Resource busy. (OK)" Quit Fusion. Restored the Virtual Machines folder from last night's backup tape. Restarted Fusion and tried opening the Boot Camp VM—same problem. Deleted VMWare preferences file. Restarted Fusion and tried opening the Boot Camp VM—same problem. Ran Disk Utility disk verify—disk is okay. Restarted the Mac. Reinstalled Fusion (I think this is 1.1.1) and tried opening the Boot Camp VM (#1 not #0) and it worked! Whew! Upon logging in to Windows, Outlook reported that it knew it had a problem last time so did I want to start Outlook in Safe Mode? I said yes. All seems normal with Fusion for now but it was a scary few hours there. Student reports the following error message after browsing the web: "LoginUI.exe - Corrupt File: The file or directory C:\PROGRA~1\Google is corrupt and unreadable. Please run the Chkdsk utility. (OK)." Error message now appears frequently, even after restarting Windows Vista anew the error dialog appears multiple times (repeated) over the login screen. Got properties on the C: drive and requested a disk check checking both checkboxes, but upon restart the disk check did not start—same errors and normal login screen. I restarted in Safe Mode and again requested a disk check. Restarted but selected "Fix your computer" from the F8 menu and it gave me a choice to repair the disk. It ran through a scan for several minutes and then reported "system volume on disk is corrupt" and it also said that upon restart things might be fixed or might not be fixed. Upon restart, the login screen appeared with no error messages—good. I logged in successfully—still no errors. Again requested a disk check, then restarted normally. Again the disk check failed to start as expected. Ran a full scan in Windows Defender—no problems. Restarted in Safe Mode Command Prompt. Requested chkdsk /f /r. Restarted in Safe Mode Command Prompt but again chkdsk would not start. Requested sfc /scannow which ran and reported: "Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files but was unable to fix some of them. Details are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log." I look in the CBS folder and CBS.log is 27 megabytes! Transferred CBS.log to my computer for evaluation. First line that had the string "cannot repair" looked like this: '2008-04-04 13:52:46, Info CSI 00000025 [SR] Cannot repair member file [l:22{11}]"autochk.exe" of Microsoft-Windows-Autochk, Version = 6.0.6000.16386, pA = PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE_INTEL (0), Culture neutral, VersionScope = 1 nonSxS, PublicKeyToken = {l:8 b:31bf3856ad364e35}, Type neutral, TypeName neutral, PublicKey neutral in the store, hash mismatch.' So this seems to be why chkdsk was not starting as expected. I did a system restore to the previous morning. Restarted in safe mode with command prompt. Requested chkdsk /f /r, restarted in safe mode with command prompt—chkdsk still would not run. Corrupt files specified by CBS.log: autochk.exe, tcpmon.ini. Found "How to Fix Chkdsk will Not Run at Startup in Vista" on vistax64.com which provided great instructions. It seems that 6.0.6001.18000 is the 64-bit version and 6.0.6000.16386 is the 32-bit version but I'm only guessing here. After I copied in 6.0.6000.16386 (and changing permissions on the Security tab) the computer successfully ran chkdsk upon restart—woo! Chkdsk reports: "Deleting index entry sqmapi.dll in index $I30 of file 137" followed by "CHKDSK is recovering lost files" and "Recovering orphaned file sqmapi.dll (7294) into directory file 137." Battery died at 70% on part 5, but laptop should be okay. Visual check of tcpmon.ini—looks okay. Tried unsuccessfully to find a way to search a network drive with Spotlight in Mac OS 10.5.2 Leopard—I believe this is not possible but nothing I could find confirms it officially. This is problematic because we store users' home folders on the RAIDed server which happens in this case to be Windows Server 2003 and it would be very useful to have Spotlight search where my documents are rather than where they aren't. Retrospect 6.5 for Windows error: "Can't compress Catalog File for Backup Set seagate 500, error -625 (not enough memory)—TMemory::mhalloc: VirtualAlloc(224.5 M, MEM_RESERVE) failed, error 8." I do not yet know how to fix this problem. Helped student NN with password change issues. Finished surgery on Chris's laptop. Prepared new homepage images for review for Susie. When I got home today Patrick was in bed nursing his allergy symptoms and watching Stephen Chow's Kung Fu Hustle. Lunch was leftovers. I had had a sandwich late in the day so instead of having dinner right when I get home like we usually do, I got in bed with him, and we watched the movie. Afterwards I cooked a frozen pizza for both of us, but in only 15 minutes Patrick was already in a deep sleep, and I figured he needed the sleep so I ate without him. Hand-migrated 7 address book entries from my custom address book database in Microsoft Access to Apple Address Book. Apple Mail seems to be working properly for my home e-mail accounts, so I removed my home e-mail accounts from Entourage. Since December I've been using only IMAP instead of POP to simplify migrations and retain flexibility in using different e-mail clients. I'm not fond of IMAP's slow response times and often-quirky behavior, but the ability to switch e-mail apps instantly and relatively painlessly is well worth it to me. Recently I finished reading Garth Nix's Sabriel which sneeper let us borrow. I enjoyed the story very much, and I think the praise for Garth Nix is well-deserved. May the Force—I mean the Charter—be with you! Thanks again, sneeper! Patrick finished reading Pullman's The Amber Spyglass while we were in San Diego, so I'm starting on that now but I seem to have forgotten the last 100 pages or so of The Subtle Knife. I found a summary on the web, but that ending was just not something that stuck in my head, so I'll have to ask Chris and Nate for Book 2 again.

Sat Apr 5, 2008

I found a Panda Express fortune from a fortune cookie but I don't remember which meal this was from (probably April 1): You are gifted in many ways. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Folded laundry, cleaned the bathroom, vacuumed, filed receipts, archived documents. Processed and uploaded photos. Why in Flickr do some of my photos now say "(null)"? Bad code somewhere is my guess. As of right now, there appear to be 63,419 photos with this tag in Flickr. Recently expanded Spaces in OS X from 6 screens to 9—so useful! Stretches. Weight training: super slow dumbbell press, front raise. Midafternoon meal: hot nonfat milk, chunky soup. Apple Mail is really screwy sometimes. I created a rule to move all messages containing the string "{Spam?}" and then ran the rule and it moved 5 messages that did not contain that string! I had to create my own rule because its built-in spam filtering doesn't properly remove spam messages from my inbox, and I can't figure out why. Thunderbird was much better at spam filtering, but it doesn't have the integration with OS X that I like. Installed Opera 9.2.7 for OS X. Started using Thunderbird again after not using it for a long time. Dinner: leftovers. Spent all of the afternoon and the evening helping Patrick create a DVD. He and Sam recorded martial arts exercises using digital cameras and wanted to make a DVD so that Simmone, who I think doesn't have a computer, could watch them. The process was alternately great and awful. The great parts were the video tutorials on apple.com—we watched maybe 10 of them related to iMovie, iDVD, and GarageBand. The frustrating parts were: (1) discovering that iMovie '08 (7.1.1 529) would not import MPEG-1 which led to me install the free MPEG Streamclip 1.9.1 and converting them to DV before importing (should I get rid of the original MPEG files? they're taking up space I'd like to free up); (2) in iMovie, not understanding why you have to add clips to the Event Library before adding them to a project—why can't you just add them directly to a project? the Event Library seems like an extra step that's not needed; (3) discovering that iDVD does not permit one to create chapter markers so that individual chapters or clips could be played from the DVD menu which led me to a blog posting solution titled "Unlocking iMovie '08: How to add chapter markers" on imovie08.blogspot.com which involved opening the iMovie project in GarageBand as a video podcast, setting chapter markers in GarageBand, and then exporting to iDVD; (4) getting really crappy DVD menus quality and not knowing how to fix it (The "professional quality" setting is not); (5) iDVD burns one DVDRW successfully but then when I insert a second disc which is a brand new (blank) DVDR it spits it out prematurely (shortly after inserting it) with no indication of why it spit it out. I know I was inserting it right side up because I tried the other side and it was worse - click - whirr - click - whirr; (6) realizing that iMovie created copies of my imported video files in a folder called iMovie Events thereby wasting my disk space but I can't tell if I should delete my originals or not because I don't know what iMovie is doing with the files it imported. There were other annoying steps like figuring out how to remove the Apple logo, figuring out what you can and cannot change in the iDVD templates, and so forth, but we got something that worked—it only took about 6 hours longer than we expected since those friendly Apple commercials and tutorials say I can build a DVD of my digital life in just seconds. The web tutorial videos were invaluable—it would have taken us much longer to figure out tasks without them. Stretches. Reverse leg lift. Tennis ball massage.

Sun Apr 6, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Burned a second DVDRW for Sam. Cut my hair, showered, manicured. Lunch: bowties with red sauce and vegetables. Shopped online with Patrick. Watched The Secret History of the Credit Card on the web—thanks to psychobauble for the link. Patrick and I watched the sewing machine training video that came with the sewing machine I recently bought. Showered. Paid bills. Dinner at Chris and Nate's with Chris, Nate, Danny, Drew, Phil, and Patrick: pocket bread, hummus, cow and chicken kabobs, spiced yellow rice, homemade lemon meringue pie. Chris and Nate gave Book 2 away, so I guess I'll have to do without. Recently I filled up one of the journal books I use to take meeting notes and started using the Oberon Design journal that now-former PharmD student GR gave to me as a gift. These leather journals are beautifully handcrafted and practical works of art. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row, wrist curl, dumbbell fly.

Mon Apr 7, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Dealt with a problem with a possible power outage and beeping UPS problem in Eric's workspace—this took an hour to investigate, troubleshoot, and resolve. Bugged Andy V about my expired evaluation license for VMware Fusion. Even though we ordered it months ago someone screwed up on their end and the order was supposed to be resubmitted last week but it's still being processed and we don't have our licenses yet. I got him on the phone and he quickly sent me a new eval license. Finished prepping new homepage photos and sent them to Eric and Susie for review. The slide scans that DMM produced for us turned out beautifully. Minor web edits. Made live the revised computer section—a large update. Made my first real world edit in Daisy to the OAAIS website, followed up with John K to make sure I was doing everything properly. Directory information disclosure followup with Doug C. Websteering lunch prep, used doodle.ch to let people specify restaurant preferences. Listserv management. Computer maintenance for Chris: installed and configured a few remaining applications. Best part was I got Bluetooth working so that he can synch his Treo 755p to the computer over Bluetooth—very sweet. Previously Bluetooth has been painful to use because it couldn't hang on to the COM port it needed, but this time for some reason it is sticking. I do not pretend to know how it works. Lunch: taco and chips from Carmelina's. Dinner: cow and vegetable stew with steamed rice. Hand-migrated 13 address book entries from my custom database to Apple Address Book. Talked on the phone with Melissa H about law school, graduation, chocolate, kids, computers. Weight training: advanced plank, super slow bench dip, reverse wrist curl. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Tue Apr 8, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Websteering organizing. Change password help for one student. Responded to multiple students who all reported the same problem: that Windows was incorrectly reporting that Sophos was out of date. I noticed this at home yesterday on the 2 Windows installations we have at home. I responded individually to the students who mailed me directly, then sent an urgent notice to all our students that they can safely ignore (for now) the Windows Security Center warning saying that Sophos was out of date. Indeed, the Sophos tray icon appeared normal in all cases. I reported the problem to OAAIS and received a response from Sarah indicating that they knew about the problem and confirmed everything I had suspected—it was a problem with Sophos but there was nothing to worry about; it would be fixed when the new version is released no later than May 31. I sent her the following reply: "Thanks for this message—it is very informative, and I understand the issue. But will there be a general announcement to the campus regarding this new, unexpected, and confusing behavior? To be aware of the issue without making an announcement creates an unnecessary support burden for those who support students, and it reduces student productivity because they are confused and are taking actions when none are needed (e.g., one asked what login and password she needed for Sophos to autoupdate). Earlier today, I sent the following urgent message to our students. I can send a followup message based on your message, but would you prefer to create the message yourself and send it out more broadly (to the entire campus community)? The message I send would be only to PharmD students and my unit because that's all I'm responsible for. Even though there is no risk, I consider this an urgent issue because most of our students use Windows and because there *appears* to be an element of risk. Your timely communication to clarify the issue would be most appreciated. [Included message begins] All students—If you have a Windows computer and if you are using the free, campus site-licensed version of Sophos Anti-Virus software ( http://tinyurl.com/62elg5 ), please read this message. Since the evening of Sunday, April 6, I have received many reports from students that Windows detects that the campus site-licensed version of Sophos Anti-Virus software is out of date. Windows Security Center reports this as a problem that requires immediate attention. This is likely a problem on the server. I have reported the problem to the system administrator and will let you know what I hear. No action on your part is required at this time despite the Security Center warning. [Included message ends]" Within 7 minutes I received word from Sarah that a public message was forthcoming—a wise decision. Downloaded and installed Flip4Mac Studio Pro which took us about 6 months to receive after placing my order in November due to an unresponsive vendor and accounting bureaucracy. More Sophos problem followup. Helped student CM resolve problems with Outlook 2007: "Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. Cannot open the Outlook window. The set of folders cannot be opened. The file C:\ Documents and Settings\ [username]\ Local Settings\ Application Data\ Microsoft\ Outlook\ Outlook.ost cannot be accessed. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange at least once before you can use your offline folder file." My response: "I'm sorry to hear about the problem you encountered opening your mail in Outlook 2007. The problem you described is caused by corruption in the Outlook data files, and that has a number of potential causes. Common causes of corruption are if Outlook failed to close properly, if Windows crashed, if you have a lot of messages and/or attachments (very large OST or PST files), or if your computer is infected with viruses or malware. To resolve the problem, you need to either repair the corruption or create a new profile in Outlook. The following URLs describe these steps: Repair: http://tinyurl.com/3cb7re. Create a new profile: http://tinyurl.com/khkcx. More info on Google: http://tinyurl.com/5hpln5. If you get stuck or are unable to resolve the problem, please let me know. Good luck!" Eric mocked up our homepage with some new Flash animation as requested by the dean. It's only serving as throwaway imagery—nothing terribly functional, so it's not as bad as one might think. Made live the new admissions calendar for students entering in 2009. Jon J mentioned the Boston University website homepage as interesting after a recent homepage redesign review with admins and faculty, and I took a look and even though it uses Flash it does a lot of things well. Using Flash still breaks the Back button and prevents people from sending a direct link to one of the items in the Flash content, and it's still not fully accessible even though they made somewhat of an attempt at accessibility to non-Javascript user agents. Lunch: leftovers. Dinner with Patrick at California Pizza Kitchen. It was our first time dining at this CPK. I had dined at a CPK once in L.A. a long time ago—I think with Don Don. Our server was Bo Waverly though we couldn't tell for certain if that was his entire name or just his first name—his nametag said BOWAVERLY. Service was very good, and the food was very good. We shared a half bbq chicken salad and a shrimp scampi normal (non-neo) pizza with the honey wheat crust option. Dessert: chocolate banana cake—delicious. Afterwards we went to A Conversation with Amy Richards and Dan Savage at Herbst Theatre—thanks to tickets Joel gave me for my birthday. I've never heard Dan Savage speak before, and he's funnier in person than in print because you get his facial expressions and body language in reaction to other people in addition to his witty, snappy, and yet wisely informed and wisely informative dialogue. We both very much enjoyed the evening, and if you get a chance to hear Dan Savage speak I highly recommend it—a fun time guaranteed. He's pretty to look at, too—a bonus. Neither Patrick nor I were previously acquainted with Amy Richards, and we found her equally insightful and entertaining. They talked about how they got into the advice-giving business, what kinds of questions did they get; did they ever make up any questions; handling difficult questions or questions that stumped you; what was too risky to publish; grandmothers and horny parakeets; the dismal current state of sex education in America; Juno and Knocked Up; growing up in a multigenerational family household; what the difference is among a blowjob, cocksucking, and fellatio—and how this related to Dan Savage's mom; Hillary or Barack?; and more. Home. Wrapped gifts. I think there is some kind of natural law in San Francisco that ensures that (a) if it is nighttime, and (b) you are downtown, and (c) you are jaywalking—if all 3 of these are true—then somehow you happen to be or magically become clothed entirely or almost entirely in black. It's become kind of a twisted and fun driving game to see during a nighttime drive across town how many all-black-wearing people jaywalk in front of us. We encounter some black-wearing jaywalkers outside of downtown, but it's not as common as in downtown. Or they might be wearing all black, but they're in a crosswalk crossing legally and therefore it doesn't really count. Fortunately, somehow, these people don't seem to be getting hit very frequently, as I have never seen a public safety or health education campaign reminding people to wear bright colors—or lights even—while walking at night. Use banks instead of check cashing window services—yes. Spanish-speaking women who live in a house exist—yes. Get tested for hepatitis—yes (tho I can never remember if it's A, B, C or some other letter). Beware of people who try to help illegal immigrants—yes. Share the road with bicycles—yes. Don't make your kids fat—yes. Don't use crystal meth—yes. Don't be a whore—yes. Always carry a towel—yes. Wear lights or bright colors when walking at night?—no! And a public awareness campaign that's missing is the global economic emergency of the slowing ribbon manufacturing industry. I for one like to show my support of the ribbon manufacturing industry by wearing a brightly colored silicone wristband. Late meal: chunky soup.

Wed Apr 9, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped student MR with VPN and spam quarantine questions. Helped student KS with change password questions. Followup with Doug C about directory information and FERPA. Flickr group work: created labs, updated descriptions and cetera for others. Lots of calendar scheduling today. Phone chat with Susie and Eric about new homepage changes. Spent over an hour flailing in OS X because I forgot that OS 10.5.2 does not support multisession DVD burning. Grrr! Installed Disco 1.0.3. Found in its online help this text: "Can Disco burn multi session DVDs? No, as it stands it is technically impossible for any disc burning application to do this. It is simply not a feature of the DVD media." Okay, but this works for me in Windows, and it appeared to work for me in OS X on a different DVDRW disc. Things wouldn't start working for me until I erased the DVDRW disc I had using Disco and then burning using Disco. Weird part was that the Finder showed 2 DVDRW discs mounted after the erasure—I didn't understand that. After Disco reported that the burn completed successfully I had 3 DVDRW discs mounted! Totally bizarre! But still I couldn't get Disco to do what I needed (burn once, eject dvdrw, insert same dvdrw, burn more files to the same disc)—upon reinsertion Disco would not detect that the DVD already had files on it—so I moved Disco to the Trash. Installed BurnAgain DVD 1.2.2 (1.2.2). All worked fine until the end of the 2nd burn when I received the following error message: "Error during burn! The DVD burn aborted with an error. (OK)" I look in Console and the last message says, '4/9/08 2008.0409 11:40:40 BurnAgain DVD[19033] burnerrors: ("the LUN appears to be stuck writing LBA=93b0h, keep retrying in 70ms", "the LUN appears to be stuck writing LBA=93b0h, keep retrying in 70ms").' I realized today that I can't use Entourage 2008 to compose certain e-mails because it automatically changes single and double quotation marks to real quotes when I don't want it to and there doesn't seem to be a way to disable this feature. In OS 10.5.2 I don't understand the following behavior: In System Preferences > CDs and DVDs I have my preferences set so that when I insert a blank DVD it should ask me what to do. I insert a blank DVD, and I am prompted with Ignore followed by a list of choices. If I choose Ignore, the dialog goes away but the DVD does not mount on the desktop. If I select Open in Finder, then the DVD mounts on the desktop. Also, sometimes a DVD icon appears and sometimes a Burn Folder appears—I can't figure out why it's one sometimes and the other other times. Tried BurnAgain DVD using a new DVDRW disc and this time it completed the 2nd burn successfully, but when I attempted a 3rd burn I received the following message after attempting to drop the new files into the BurnAgain DVD window: "The application BurnAgain DVD quit unexpectedly. Mac OS X and other applications are not affected. Click Relaunch to launch the application again. Click Report to see more details or send a report to Apple. (Ignore) (Report...) (Relaunch)" I checked Console, which reported: "4/9/08 2008.0409 12:02:53 com.apple.launchd[98] ([0x0-0x4b64b6].net.freeridecoding.burnagaindvd[19155]) Exited abnormally: Segmentation fault." At this point, I give up and resign myself to copy all the data from the DVD back to the computer, creating a Burn Folder, adding my new files, erasing the DVD, then reburning all the files anew. So I try that and upon starting the new burn, I receive the following error message: "Burn: Burning the disc failed because the disc drive is in use. For example, another application may be using it. (Error code: 0x80020021)". I notice that Disk Utility is open, so I close it and restart the burn. It appears to burn the entire disc successfully. Just on a lark, I reinsert the previous DVDRW—the one that got sticky LUN errors in BurnAgain DVD. I erase it using the Completely option, then reburn—it burns successfully. In OS 10.5.2, why when you right-click a CDRW or DVDRW there is no Erase option in the popup menu that appears? Lunch with Joel at Ten. Chatted on the phone with Melissa H—help buying a computer. I noticed that sometimes when I press the Eject key on my keyboard OS 10.5.2 will eject the disc in the drive and then the tray drawer will immediately close again. I've nearly gotten my fingers trapped or injured due to this strange behavior and have had to train myself to wait suspiciously to see what OS X will do for a few seconds before reaching in to retrieve a disc or before inserting another one when the tray is empty.

Thu Apr 10, 2008

Woke early. Stretches. Weight training: super slow decline dumbbell press, super slow decline crunch, regular and super slow wrist curl. Stretches. Shower. Breakfast: Cocoa granola with nonfat milk, orange juice, hot nonfat milk. Answered a question from student AP about how to connect a BlackBerry to UCSF e-mail—answer for now: use POP or IMAP. Chatted with Barbara S about student org website migrations—80 days left. Transferred Daisy training notes from the sheet of paper I had that day to my journal. Updated current students news. Reported a redirect problem to Public Affairs. Flickr work: scanned new slides, updated web pages, sent links to Susie and Eric for review. Earthquake Home Preparedness talk by Matt Springer. Websteering lunch. CSC meeting. Flickr work: created more new groups. Met with Eric and reviewed and tested Flickr work. Dinner at Sushi Time with Patrick, Mom Ryan, and Sam. It's Patrick's birthday dinner and Mom Ryan's late birthday dinner, too. Sam sent Patrick 8 birthday cards in the mail and gave him an assortment of gifts that included a dinosaur egg that hatches in the bath, lots of bath salts, and a book about China. While we waited for dinner to arrive after ordering, I gave Patrick his birthday gift, which turned out to be a Booka Shade CD/DVD set. We ate dinner, and over dessert I gave him a surprise second gift: a 70% dark chocolate bar! I said, "You should open it!" but he didn't want to eat it, fearing that his mom would eat it, but I insisted and so he did and found tickets to see Booka Shade on April 25 at Mezzanine! I hid the tickets inside the candy bar and rewrapped it—a la Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, an inspiration from our recent visit with Tina. Sam drove us all home. Created rules in Apple Mail to filter messages to folders. I don't like how Apple Mail doesn't "just work" when it comes to handling junk e-mail. If I mark a message as junk, I want it to disappear. Yahoo! Mail behaves that way, Thunderbird behaves that way, I never even see spam in Outlook 2007 (but probably due to Barracuda there), but in Apple Mail 3.2, it disappointingly remains in my inbox after I mark a message as spam or junk. Also in Apple Mail you cannot sort messages by whether they have the junk mail icon or not—it changes the order somehow but it's not what you want or expect. Installed Apple Software Updates and Thunderbird 2.0.0.12. Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 has no feature similar to the outbox in Outlook. This is annoying because when I send a message I must wait many seconds while Thunderbird sends the message immediately rather than sending it immediately in the background or queueing it for batch sending at the next send/receive interval. I didn't learn about the Send Later feature under the File menu until after I had spent many minutes searching for a solution on the web. Supposedly Ctrl+Shift+Return invokes Thunderbird's Send Later feature, but I don't know what they mean by Send Later—the online help has nothing describing what it does. Ctrl+Shift+Return does not work on the Mac, but it seems that Cmd+Shift+Return does something. The Thunderbird File menu doesn't specify shortcut keys for Send Now or Send Later, but Send Now is Cmd+Return and I think Send Later is Cmd+Shift+Return. I think Send Later behaves like Drafts, but I'm not certain and Thunderbird Help is no help. iMac EFI Firmware Update 1.3 appears to install successfully, but returning to Software Update shows that it has not been installed—the same update keeps appearing and asking if I want to install it. My computer is still at Boot ROM Version: IM71.007A.B01 instead of IM71.007A.B03. Solution unknown at this time. Stretches. Weight training: super slow lateral raise, super slow front raise, reverse wrist curl. Stretches.

Fri Apr 11, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped Patrick with some computer questions. Legal name change work. SCC work in the wiki. Uninstalled BurnAgain DVD—there is some kind of junkiness going on and it's not possible to determine what the cause of the problem is (see yesterday). Go with what works, and unfortunately right now that means wasting a lot of time with a manual workaround for the lack of the being able to burn data in multiple sessions to a DVD. Zach S from the library responded quickly with satisfactory responses to my question and suggestion for the wiki. I want to use a PageTree plug-in with Confluence. He'll check it out and let me know if it's approved in 2 weeks or less. Checked in with Eamon K about the podcast I'm awaiting. I had been checking the existing RSS feed to determine when he uploaded it, but he uploaded it to a different location and so I didn't know about it for several days. Burned a cdrom with the podcast files and sent it out to someone at Cindy's request. Student help request followup for STOR. Lunch with funcrunch at New Ganges Restaurant (415-681-4355, 775 Frederick Street at Arguello Blvd, San Francisco, California). We were drawn in because they hired people to distribute flyers for the restaurant on Parnassus Avenue—Indian vegetarian cuisine, all you can eat buffet for $6.95. The food was good but not superb. The buffet was poorly stocked the entire time we were there. Service almost didn't exist—we received water once. The man who seated us chided me for trying to get us our own water which I was doing only because several minutes had passed since we were seated and he was still obviously too busy to do it himself. We never received the advertised "free tea with meal." Avoid—it's almost a scam. Chatted with Eric about our homepage project. More wiki followup with Zach S. Chatted with Susie about our Flickr project. Lots of Flickr work. Dinner at home by myself: pasta, red sauce, sausage. Patrick went with Sam to a friend's recital.

Sat Apr 12, 2008

Brunch at Cove Cafe with Patrick, Danny, Drew, Phil, Nate, and Chris. Bought a heating pad at Walgreen's for Patrick's mom—she's having some minor lower back pain. Patrick and I were planning to do a photo shoot in Golden Gate Park but his allergies have been bad lately and we aborted our plan at the last minute. Dropped off the heating pad. Patrick dropped me off on Market Street and then went home to remain indoors away from potential allergens. I took the F train to Powell Street and went shopping. I first stopped in to Hollister—my first time shopping there. How does this store stay in business? It was so poorly lit that I had to use my keychain flashlight to see the price tags! I understand the concept of mood lighting, but this is ridiculous! I wanted to return to the store another day with the head lamp I bought for spelunking last year, but I think even that wouldn't be bright enough to see colors accurately. I think clothes might have fit me here, but it was too difficult to shop here and only one salesperson—a tall, young, handsome Asian guy—was on the floor in the dudes section, and I'm too used to $8 polo shirts that fit me at H&M boys—the prices here seemed like I'd be throwing money away. After this, I went to H&M boys and bought 3 short-sleeved polo shirts (2 at $7.90 each, 1 at $9.90), 3 packs of socks (two 5-packs at $7.90, one 3-pack at $4.90). Music was a kind of hip-hop which I did not like very much. I left H&M at about 2:03 PM (according to the register's clock). Went to The Gap—it was my first time in a long time. I hadn't been since long before their recent remodel. I am guessing that their current staff has recently taken some new customer service training or retraining. Everyone was very pleasantly helpful without being overbearing, and it was such a pleasant change that it surprised me. They still don't carry much of my sizes—I saw no extra smalls or belts sized 30 or 32 in the mens department. But I did find khakis on sale that looked like they might be a good fit or a starting point for alterations—$27. In the boys department I found XXL t-shirts that fit me on sale 2 for $15. I also found an embroidered white XL (size 12 boys) short-sleeved casual dress shirt that I liked which I was happy to pay a little more than usual for—$25. The boys department is rather a forgotten place here—it's isolated without its own register and only an occasional salesperson and though there are dressing rooms they were locked with no one nearby to service them. It's as though corporate said, "We don't make much of anything from boys clothes so let's focus on the other departments and just keep the boys shelves from getting bare." The music was improved over my last visit around Christmas. At least 3 separate times during my visit salespeople offered to check the warehouse or other stores for additional sizes, and in all cases they were unsuccessful. In one case, a salesperson went in the back for a size which was out on the floor right under our noses—I don't know why he did that. Maybe he presumed I had looked through the pile already, but he was watching me the whole time, and I hadn't even had a chance before we started talking. I left The Gap at about 3:43:50 PM (according to the register's clock) and went to Bistro Burger for a cheeseburger royale with cheddar (meat: medium) and a glass of water. Receipt says 3:55 PM. Bought DVD-R discs from the Apple Store, which does not obviously print the time on their receipts. Home. Rested for about 25 minutes. Went to PDD's for dinner: chinese takeout. Chris, Nate, and Carlos also attending. We watched Relax, It's Just Sex (1998) on DVD. Learned what a spit take is from imdb and Google's define function. Backfilled journal entries for San Diego.

Sun Apr 13, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Swept in the back yard. Showered. Mended some clothes. Other house chores. Lunch with Patrick at home: turkey sandwiches. Dessert: one homebaked chocolate and peanut butter cookie. Archived a document. Uploaded photos to Flickr. Weight training: leg lift. Watched The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Afterwards we realized we watched the trilogy out of order—this is the 3rd film and we still haven't yet seen the 2nd, The Bourne Supremacy. No wonder we couldn't remember what was going on at the beginning, but it didn't matter much, I think. It's nearly all suspense, stunts, and effects, just like Ebert said. Processed and uploaded more photos to Flickr. When preparing a Flickr upload I titled one of my photos "UCSF BARCWA/WIHS" and a few minutes later when the download ended I went to Google and searched on "UCSF BARCWA/WIHS" because I wasn't familiar with this office and needed to find additional details. The only link that Google returned was a link to www.flickr.com/photos/tags/sanfrancisco/?page=2 which linked to the web page with the photo I just uploaded! I was rather stunned. To me, this means that Google in certain situations indexes practically in real time! Dinner at home with Patrick: turkey burgers, split pea and ham soup. More Flickring. Late beverage: peach detox with local honey. Read a little more from Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass.

Mon Apr 14, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Celebrated Joel's birthday with everything (well, most everything) orange: orange tablecloth, orange napkins, orange cups, orange basketball plates, orange tulips, oranges, cuties, orange-frosted chocolate cupcakes, doughnut holes, banana bread. I gave Joel a Tennessee Lady Vols rug shaped like a basketball, Lady Vols drink coasters, a Lady Vols decal sticker, and a book called 500 Cupcakes. Meeting with Candy, Susie, and Eric: podcasts. Lunch: chicken tostada salad from the cafeteria. Met with Susie and Eric. Met with Eric. Dinner at home with Patrick: lemon chicken, steamed asparagus, wild rice. Dessert: molten chocolate cake. Watched bonus material from The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. iMac EFI update fails to install again. Still at IM71.007A.B01 when it should be IM71.007A.B03. I don't know how to fix this problem. Stretches. Weight training: leg lift, regular and superslow one-arm dumbbell row, regular and superslow shoulder shrug, lateral raise. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Tue Apr 15, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Met with Cindy and Susie about our Flickr project. Student computing committee meeting. Lunch: panda express. My fortune: Your path may be difficult but will be rewarding. Ate in the library courtyard and chatted with funcrunch. Met with Cindy 1-on-1. Minor web edits. Flickr work: had a lot of fun taking Christian Heilmann's YUI DOM Collapse code and working it into a proposed web page based on a suggestion that Cindy made. Joel shared some caramel apples that his sister had sent him. Prepared for telecommute day tomorrow. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled Pacific cod, shells and cheese, steamed spinach with boiled egg. I forgot to mention that the captioning on the DVD for The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) is really excellent. Discovered Flickr's multitags feature but didn't use it—good to know about it, tho. The Large Type feature in Apple Address Book is cool. In Address Book, right-click a phone number then select Large Type from the popup menu that appears and the application displays the phone number in gigantic type. The reasoning is that often when dialing if you're unfamiliar with the number it's very helpful to see the number larger than the size normally presented. It's along the same line of thought that I used when designing phone number markup on rechargespa.com. I'm glad to see my way of thinking validated in this manner. However, I prefer the behavior on the web page I coded rather than that in Apple Address Book—simply hover and the type is enlarged. With Address Book, it's 3 more steps which I think are unnecessary and therefore not as efficient. Did more manual address book entry migration, stopped for the day after migrating the entry for BK—quite possibly the longest address book entry I have so far. Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise, lateral raise, calf raise. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk, 2 oatmeal raisin cookies made by Sam.

Wed Apr 16, 2008

Weight training: superslow dumbbell press, wrist curl. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Spent most of the day coding new web pages for computer requirements. Lunch: leftover pasta with red sauce. Dinner at home with Patrick, Mom Ryan, Phil, Danny, Drew, Nate, Chris, and Aaron. Patrick cooked Emeril Lagasse's garlic-studded pot roast (2003), The Barefoot Contessa's parmesan smashed potatoes (1999), and Gourmet Magazine's plum tart. Downloaded and installed 4 different lyrics widgets for OS X but none of the worked on the few songs we tried out. Uninstalled them all.

Thu Apr 17, 2008

Met with Susie, Eric, and Mary Anne about Flickr. Met with Susie, Eric, and Candy about podcasting. Chatted with Dick about web space. Lunch: sandwich and salad and grilled potatoes from Crepevine. Minor web edits. Computer maintenance for student LE. Created scripts to recursively check for and remove files called Thumbs.db from a unix filesystem:

#!/bin/sh find . -name Thumbs.db -exec echo {} \;

#!/bin/sh find . -name Thumbs.db -exec rm {} \;

Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Minor edits to page templates for the journal. Stretches. Weight training: superslow concentration curl, leg lift, crunch. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Fri Apr 18, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast with yogurt. Eric and I met with John K to talk about advanced Daisy. Lunch: leftover salad and sandwich from yesterday. Helped Cindy set up the laptop for a preview session. Keynote saved us today. The MacBook wouldn't display to the projector in the room in Boot Camp no matter what I tried, so I restarted in OS X thinking that we'll just run the PowerPoint in Office 2008 but I forgot that when we open this particular presentation it makes PowerPoint 2008 crash. I right-clicked the presentation and saw Keynote as an option and selected it. The Keynote trial began and Keynote opened the presentation. The first slide had a text box that had a plus sign and I thought that was a bad sign, but all the other slides seemed to be okay. I resized the text box on the first slide and saved the changes and everything seemed to go okay. Cindy started her presentation about 6 minutes late but otherwise everything seemed to go well. Met 1 on 1 with Eric. We shopped a little for external web hosting since our dean decided on Wednesday that we shall either buy our own servers and run things in-house or go outside and since we learned that we probably cannot do this in-house because we don't have the kind of 24/7 support that we want. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled shrimp with garlic arrostito sauce over farfalle, hot dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light. Watched Justin Timberlake's Futuresex/Loveshow on DVD borrowed from Sam.

Sat Apr 19, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast with yogurt. Did some tailoring: Hand-mended some clothes for Patrick. Also did some machine sewing. This is the first time I used the sewing machine I bought last year. Made some edits to t-shirts, just getting a feel for the machine. The presser foot lever is in a different place than my mom's sewing machine, so I'm always reaching in the wrong place when needing to use it—it will just take some getting used to. The other weird thing is not using a pedal. The machine has one which you can optionally use, but I found it's easier to just use the buttons to control everything. You can't choose to use the buttons or the pedal on the fly—if the pedal is plugged in the buttons don't work. I might go back to the pedal later—we'll see. House chores. Lunch: leftovers. Installed Cyberduck 2.8.5 (3611). Web edits for Tina and Phil. Cut my hair, showered. Weight training: superslow leg lift, superslow one-arm dumbbell row. Dinner at home with Patrick: oven-roasted herbed chicken boobs, leftover pasta, boiled peas. Watched Without You I'm Nothing (1990) on Netflix DVD. Neither of us had seen it before. Computer maintenance: I figured out the answer to the problem of the iMac firmware not updating properly: run the iMac firmware updater in the Utilities folder, then after shutdown be certain to hold the power button in beyond the Mac chime—don't let go until you hear a continuous, loud, annoying tone. I don't know why Apple made firmware updates so complicated to install—they could have at least replaced the annoying tone with a pleasant voice that said, "Okay, you can let go now." Ran basic disk utility checks just to be safe. Stopped using the Web Receipts folder and set up an alias so that I can save receipts to a different folder. Tried to resolve my long-standing problem of receiving the error "You do not have sufficient access privileges" when attempting to rename certain files or folders in OS 10.5.2. Much grief with OS X permissions, posts by petrock, "failed to set ACL on file", "operation not permitted", and "chmod: no acl present". Posted the question to Apple Support Discussions. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, superslow crunch, sissy squat.

Sun Apr 20, 2008

Breakfast at home by myself: black forest ham and cheddar omelette, hash browns. House chores. Wrapped a gift. Worked on homepage changes for Danny's website. Picked up Mom Ryan and we 3 went to The Mint so that Patrick could sing some songs. We arrived a little too early, we thought—the place was empty—so we browsed a while in Get Lost (415-437-0529, 1825 Market Street, San Francisco), a terrific travel bookstore, and I bought a small gift. We were hoping to run into Julie B and her friends in case they showed up, but no such luck. Patrick sang 3 songs which he forced me to record with my digital camera. He did very well, but I'm not sure yet if the camera captured it well. If Patrick approves, we'll upload to YouTube. Dropped off Mom Ryan at home. Went to Recharge Spa on Nob Hill to wait for Danny to get off work. Drew showed up. We met Phil, Quyen, and Dave outside. We had a quick dinner at Miller's Delicatessen on Polk Street. Miller's needs a lot more people working. I counted 7 tables requiring busing for the entire duration of our meal. Afterwards all of us went to 1000 Van Ness to see Forbidden Kingdom, which was fun and preposturous, but forgivingly so.

Mon Apr 21, 2008

Woke slightly early. Weight training: side plank (this exercise was very hard for me—it's my first time doing it), side-lying leg lift. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Phone meeting with Susie. Helped student MM with a question about Microsoft Office. Set up a shared folder for Alyssa and Cindy. Prepared for forthcoming changes due to Alyssa's departure. Helped student HB with getting the law review podcast. More web followup regarding Alyssa's departure. Helped student MR (RR) with a question about the class wiki. Lunch: roast cow and cheddar on rye sandwich from the cafeteria, $3.26. Encountered some display problems with Christian Heilmann's YUIDomCollapse script and he was very kind to answer my e-mail with my troubleshooting steps. With his help, I found there is something in my CSS that's messing it up, but I believe that padding isn't it as he suggested—the story continues. Troubleshot MacBook and projector problems from Friday—Doug J at IRTS was helpful but we came to no resolution, posted for help in the campus Mac forum and also in Apple Discussions and later an e-mail to Panasonic and another to Henry S. Via e-mail, asked for Charles K's thoughts on our DNS and external web hosting situation. Dinner at home with Patrick: mahi mahi, corn on the cob, half of a baked potato with sour cream, dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light. Dessert: one Girl Scouts peanut butter cookie. Made live new homepage changes for rechargespa.com—took away the large slideshow and replaced it with smaller icons leading to a lytebox slideshow, added some copyright notices. Chatted with Chris and Nate online. Weight training: advanced plank.

Tue Apr 22, 2008

Finalized draft of new computer requirements and sent it to the committee for review. Checked in with Garrett S about computer bundle offers and web pages. Helped student JP with password lockout. Installed iWork '08 on the shared office laptop. Computer maintenance for the shared office laptop. Updated iWork '08. Computer maintenance for the student affairs coordinator computer. Computer maintenance for Chris's MacBook Pro: very slow or impossible to shut down Win XP—hangs at blue screen (but this is not a BSOD). Also, error: "Hotsync Manager - The selected port, COM3, is not available at this time. HotSync Manager will open the port when it becomes available. (OK)" when attempting to shut down. Laptop is configured for Bluetooth synching to Palm Treo 775p. These problems are currently unresolved. Lunch with Joel at You See Sushi. Web edits for Alyssa's departure. Computer maintenance for the old laptop. Charles K says no problem with the DNS—great news. Home. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, grilled onions and carrots, brown rice. E-mail and web. Weight training lateish: superslow dumbbell fly, lateral raise. Caulked two squeegees. Late meal: nonfat yogurt, chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.

Wed Apr 23, 2008

Usual oatmeal yogurt with nonfat yogurt. This morning I found a seemingly very healthy baby silverfish just a few millimeters long swimming in my orange juice. I have no idea how it got there—whether it came in with the OJ or crawled or fell in the glass beforehand while it was in the cabinet or sitting on the table. We don't have an insect problem of any kind, so I was surprised as well as disgusted. I fished it out with my finger and washed it down the drain (which is not necessarily the same as killing it, I think). I thought for a moment of throwing all the juice down the drain as well, but I figured some people in the world probably are much worse off, and they're still alive, right? If I get sick or die later today, then you'll know why. Yesterday when closing up at the end of the day I asked Windows XP to shut down and it hung on the "Please wait... Saving your settings..." dialog box. I figured it might be taking a long time for some reason and just left it overnight with the OS X screen locked. When I got in to work this morning, nothing had changed—it was still hung on the "Please wait... Saving your settings..." dialog box. There are no buttons on this dialog, but the orange/blue gradient progress indicator continues to animate, indicating that possibly something is happening. I can also select and drag the title bar to move the dialog box around on the screen—that works as expected. In Fusion, I selected Virtual Machine > Shut Down Guest but nothing happened. I selected Virtual Machine > Restart Guest, answered OK to the question that appeared ("Are you sure that you want to restart the guest operating system?") and the screen immediately blinked once and then nothing else happened. I selected Virtual Machine > Send Ctrl+Alt+Del and nothing happened. I disconnected the cdrom, network, and sound from the Virtual Machine menu and then selected Shut Down Guest again—nothing happened. The last time something like this happened I had to reinstall Win XP from scratch, so I'm wanting to not have to do that again. I don't know what else to do, so I click the red circle close button at the top left corner of my Boot Camp partition window in Fusion and the following dialog appears: "Are you sure that you want to power off the virtual machine and exit? Please make sure that the virtual machine is in a safe state for shutdown; abruptly powering off can damage data. When possible, shut down your virtual machine from its operating system. (Cancel) (Power Off)" Nothing else worked and I couldn't find any other suggestions on the web, so I select Power Off and still nothing happens. I force quit Fusion. Restart Fusion. Check my license code since I had entered it on my last Fusion session—it's fine. Restart the Boot Camp partition—it takes me back to the "Please wait... Saving your settings..." screen! I found a VMWare Communities discussion thread called "How? Gracefully shutdown VMWare Fusion After a crash?" in which rcardona2k posts this solution: "In the Finder using the Go menu you can open Go > Go To Folder > enter ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/Boot Camp. This will open a window with a folder named "%2Fdev%2Fdisk...". Highlight that folder and ctrl-click (or right-click on the mouse) and choose to make an Archive of that folder. Delete the folder itself and restart VMware Fusion. Fusion will scan for your Boot Camp partition and create a new Boot Camp partition machine that should be in working order." I didn't have the Archive option—I had compress—it creates a ZIP archive. I think it's the same thing as Archive. After some processing, Fusion displayed the following dialog: "The Boot Camp partition is not prepared to run as a virtual machine. It appears that Windows did not shut down cleanly the last time it was used. To shut down Windows cleanly, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and set Windows as the startup operating system. Restart your system. Once in Windows, use the Startup Disk pane in the Control Panel to select Mac OS X as the startup system, then click the Restart button to return to OS X." I did as instructed—this solution worked for me! However, in the Startup Disk system preferences I did not see an option for Windows—I saw only "Mac OS X, 10.5.2 on Macintosh HD" and "Network Startup." To get the Boot Camp Windows icon back, I had to restart OS X. After I set the startup disk to Windows, the computer successfully restarted into Windows. I logged in as admin and immediately installed Microsoft UPHClean to possibly mitigate shutdown problems in the future. I restarted the computer—it shut down successfully and restarted successfully into Boot Camp. I logged in again as admin, then tested a full shutdown to power off—works. I restarted into Boot Camp, set the startup disk back to OS X in the Boot Camp control panel, then restarted and logged in to OS X. Started Fusion and opened the Boot Camp partition. There was a bit of a delay, but it did successfully start the Boot Camp partition. Without logging in, I shut down Windows—successful. Quit Fusion. Restarted Fusion. Thanks, rcardona2k! I also received a solution to my problem of renaming files in OS X on my iMac at home. The error message "You do not have sufficient access privileges" appears when attempting to rename certain files or folders in OS 10.5.2. Attempting to rename, for example, Image-57E66CC6A02011D9.jpg at the root of my home folder consistently produces the error message "You do not have sufficient access privileges". I tried repairing permissions with Disk Utility—it completed successfully, but the problem remains. I tried restarting with the Leopard Install DVD and doing the Utilities > Reset Password > reset ACLs thing for all user accounts on the computer but the problem remains. When I execute sudo chmod -R +a "everyone deny delete" ~/ chmod responds with "Operation not permitted" on hundreds of files. For example: chmod: Failed to set ACL on file 'Application Data': Operation not permitted When I next execute sudo chmod -R -a "everyone deny delete" ~/ chmod responds with chmod: No ACL present When I execute sudo chown -R `id -u`:`id -g` /Users/`id -un` chown responds with "Operation not permitted" on hundreds of files. For example: chown: /Users/myusername/Music/b/Beck/1993 Loser (CD Single)/05 - Fume - Beck - 1993 Loser (CD Single).mp3: Operation not permitted This is on my iMac, which was new in December 2007. I had used Migration Assistant to migrate files from a Mac Mini running 10.4. The iMac with the permissions problem also received files from an NTFS filesystem (Windows XP SP2). The answer to this problem is to execute the 3 statements provided by V.K. of Toronto in his post of April 2, 2008 at 5:35 PM ("Re: Must Enter Password to Move from Movie Folder"). I realized today that the journal hadn't been publically updated since the 19th. I've been writing entries every day since then, but the changed data is authored on my iMac and then later rsynced to the web server on the Mac Mini and sometimes the connection doesn't exist. This happens if I forget to remount the Mac Mini shared volume on my iMac after restarting the iMac—I haven't yet figured out how to automatically make it mount. Today was Alyssa's last day at our office. She found a new position with Bright Horizons, and we held a little going away celebration and asked her about her new job and work environment. I brought a loaf of blueberry cream cheese tea cake from Arizmendi Bakery and a bottle of ruby grapefruit juice. Cindy brought bagels and cream cheese. Lucia brought small chocolate-frosted cookies. I didn't see who brought what else. Edited the student awards dinner PowerPoint for Cindy. Went to the dentist for an exam and cleaning—all is well. Natasha Lee's office, Better Living Through Dentistry, is now using superslick high-tech equipment. X-rays are now digital—90% less exposure to x-rays (I think is what Emily said), instantly see results, no film developing chemicals. I was very impressed. Dinner at home with Patrick: ravioli with grilled vegetables in red sauce, corn on the cob, dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light. Watched The Bourne Supremacy on Netflix DVD with Patrick. We turned this Netflix movie around in less than a day, and it feels so good that we're getting the most of our $9.95 per month (or something like that). Tomorrow evening Patrick and Aaron are hanging out. Friday Patrick and I see Booka Shade. And Saturday is Ryan's birthday party. Paid a bill.

Thu Apr 24, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: side plank (easier this time). Usual oatmeal breakfast. Placed student awards dinner A/V order with IRTS. Berkeley support meeting - Ann bought pizza and drinks for the meeting - woo! Mac OS X meeting - Apple reps brought a dessert platter. Set up training hours for Eric VU. Edited the student awards dinner PowerPoint: added photos. When attempting to print handout slides from a PowerPoint 2007 presentation to a Xerox Phaser 6200DP, I received the following error message: "ERROR: ioerror, OFFENDING COMMAND: image, STACK: -dictionary-" and when attempting to print the same to PDF using Acrobat Pro 8 I received the following error logfile: %%[ ProductName: Distiller ]%% %%[Page: 1]%% %%[Page: 2]%% %%[Page: 3]%% %%[ Error: ioerror; OffendingCommand: imageDistiller; ErrorInfo: DCTDecodeFilter Unknown or invalid JPEG marker = 0x0 ]%% Stack: -dict- %%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%% %%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %% Problem was caused by a problematic JPG. Opening and resaving the image in Photoshop and replacing the image in PowerPoint fixed it. Lots of e-mail followups. Stopped at Al's Market then Park's Farmer's Market but bought nothing. Hopped the N-Judah train to Civic Center. Took BART to 16th and Mission. Ran in to JY and Adrian on their way to Sunflower, and I stopped to say hello. Walked to Tartine and bought some desserts. Dinner at PDD's with Danny, Drew, and Phil: Phil prepared lasagne, a salad, and garlic bread—perhaps the first Italian meal I've ever had at PDD's. Romy joined us for dinner partway through. Chi and Cuong showed up after needing help buying a fountain over the web. Dessert: two small (4-inch?) tarts from Tartine: chocolate hazelnut, coconut cream—well worth $7 each—so delicious! Patrick spent the evening with Aaron. Stretches.

Fri Apr 25, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. At yesterday's Mac OS X meeting others told me that you can see shared calendars in Entourage 2008, and that surprised me because I was certain I had tried it and it didn't work. So this morning, the first thing I do when I get in to work is start Entourage 2008 and attempt to open a shared calendar and I get the following error message: "The user's folder could not be found. Entourage could not find a mailbox for the user [lastname], [firstname]. (OK)". I posted a message to our Mac OS X mailing list seeking a solution. Computer training for Eric VU. Here's my problem report from the Entourage 2008 problem: In Entourage 12.0.1 (080305), I am unable to open a calendar that someone else has shared with me. I know the calendar sharing works because I can view it as expected in Outlook 2007. I'm attempting to open it like this: 1. File > Open Other User's Folder.... 2. I type in the person's last name, e.g., Silvertongue. Type = Calendar. I select OK—a popup window appears with a list of names matching Silvertongue. 3. I select the correct name from the list that appears then select OK. Actual: The following error message appears: "The user's folder could not be found. Entourage could not find a mailbox for the user Silvertongue, Lyra. (OK)". Expected: The person's calendar opens. More information: I can send and receive e-mail messages successfully in Entourage. I can view and work with my own stored-on-the-server Exchange calendar as expected. Kristan B replied with a message that helped me figure out the solution. It works, but it's definitely not intuitive: 1. File > Open Other User's Folder.... 2. Select the Find User button (which looks like a person dressed in blue standing next to a giant address book with green, red, and blue tabs along the right side). 3. Select Advanced (lower left corner). 4. Type in the user's name, e.g., "Lyra Silvertongue". 5. Type in the user's @ucsf.edu e-mail address, e.g., type in lyra.silvertongue@ucsf.edu even though her primary e-mail address and School naming convention is silvertonguel@pharmacy.ucsf.edu. 6. Ensure that you have the correct server settings in the server address inputline (for UCSF I used exvs06.net.ucsf.edu and leave "Uses SSL" and "override default port" unchecked). 7. Select OK. The User inputline in the Open Other User's Folder dialog is automatically populated with the user's name. 8. Select OK. A progress indicator appears on the dialog and animates for a few seconds before the dialog disappears. After the dialog disappears, Entourage 2008 switches to the Calendar view and continues to fetch and process data, but it provides no indication that it is still processing the request—be patient. 9. The user's calendar appears in the pane on the left, usually within 15 seconds. The error message appears even when a valid name and e-mail address is specified. I probably would not have discovered this solution on my own, and I would have likely continued thinking that Entourage 2008 cannot view shared calendars. I also found this feature difficult to find—I was looking for "File > Open a shared calendar..." or a context menu with "Open a shared calendar..." when right-clicking my Exchange calendar or an empty area in the Calendar left pane. "Open Other User's Folder" doesn't mean "Open a shared calendar" to me after having used Outlook for years—I want to open a calendar, not a folder. Clipperz and the concept of zero-knowledge web applications made for very interesting reading over lunch, which was cow stroganoff over egg noodles with broccoli and cauliflower and a corn muffin. What Clipperz does particularly well (besides, presumably, their software) is their communication and openness. There is a frankness that you don't find with most other companies and organizations. I added it to our how to manage passwords page. Classroom support followup with Kristin K. PowerPoint editing. Managed VPS web host shopping. More PowerPoint editing. Home. Fixed some problematic code with the journal. (/journal/current/ was displaying incompletely.) Disco nap. Booka Shade at Mezzanine with Patrick. Mel's Diner afterwards. Home around 3:00 AM.

Sat Apr 26, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: dumbbell tricep extension, superslow bench dip, superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow wrist curl. Muni meeting. Midday meal (late lunch) with Patrick: turkey sandwiches. Helped Patrick burn Redbook copies of his No Fighting cd. He has signed up with CD Baby and needs to send them a few copies. Ryan's birthday party at Nihon Whiskey Lounge with Ryan, Jason, Patrick, sneeper, Scott, Emery, Ted, John B, Matt, Peter, Chris, Chris, pach00ey, Anthony, Brian, and perhaps a few others I can't remember right now.

Sun Apr 27, 2008

Photo session with Patrick in the back yard. Shopped for shoes for Patrick at Body. Brunch at Luna with Chris and Nate. Ran into Yan at Luna. Helped Patrick burn music cds and print cd packaging so that he can send his cds to CD Baby. It was quite problematic because the cd labels would print incompletely even though it looked fine on the screen. This problem happened in both InDesign printed as INDD and Acrobat printed as PDF. Draft grayscale prints correctly from both applications. I returned to InDesign and tried printing only one label at a time instead of two per page, and that printed correctly. Started using the Facebook account I created a long time ago but never bothered to use very much. Facebook is easily the slowest website I've used since Friendster. Dinner at home with Patrick: fettucine alfredo with sliced ham and vegetables, biscuits and Smart Balance Light. Dessert: one peanut butter Girl Scout cookie. Watched The Simpsons, The Lard of the Dance, on public library DVD with Patrick.

Mon Apr 28, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Shopped for virtual private server hosting. Lunch with Joel, Ena, and James at Pasta Pomodoro. Met 1-on-1 with Susie. Ran the slideshow at the student awards dinner. Began reading Lirael, borrowed from sneeper. Thanks, sneeper! In Facebook I don't like that buttons don't behave like buttons—they don't push down (animate to resemble a button being pushed in) in any way. Home. Showered. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, superslow crunch, superslow dumbbell press. Facebooked. Late meal: black cherry nonfat yogurt, pot roast chunky soup, hot nonfat milk. Facebooked. Stretches. Bed.

Tue Apr 29, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Installed Boot Camp 2.1 on two computers. Wait. Installed Boot Camp 2.1 on one computer. On the other I launch the installer and then the computer hard drive shows some activity for a few seconds and then nothing else happens. I let it sit for 10 minutes and still nothing happens (it does nothing) and the installer seems to exit with no errors or warnings. I found lots of discussion on the web related to language settings and uninstalling and reinstalling Boot Camp, but our computer never had anything other than English, so I was dubious that that was going to work for me and I was afraid of uninstalling anything—that seemed like it might break things. After much unnecessary poking around, I realized that the MacBook where it wasn't working had Leopard 10.5.2 installed but was still running Boot Camp 1.4 (beta)—after installing Leopard I had not remembered to insert the Leopard DVD while logged in to Windows to upgrade Boot Camp from 1.4 (beta) to 2.0. Apple's download page for Boot Camp 2.1 doesn't say that it requires Boot Camp 2.0—this inattention to detail caused me to waste much of my morning. Apple could improve by listing the system requirements on their download pages as well as linking to the page which describes how to upgrade from Boot Camp 1.4 (beta) (or any earlier version) to 2.0. Better yet, write the installer to test for earlier versions and display an appropriate message before exiting. Staff meeting. Installed Boot Camp 2.0. Didn't work the first time so I restarted into Windows and tried again. It worked this time except I have to manually select Continue Anyway—it didn't automatically select these buttons, and this was tedious because it seemed like I had to manually select Continue Anyway for every driver Boot Camp 2.0 installed. Restarted. Checked version: 2.0. Restarted (just to be safe). Installed Boot Camp 2.1—successful, and again I had to manually select Continue Anyway a whole bunch of times. Restarted. Checked version: 2.1. On my primary computer, installed VMware Fusion 1.1.2 and confirmed Boot Camp 2.1 installed successfully. In Outlook 2007, it seems to be impossible to change the font used for displaying (certain?) plain text messages. For example, if someone sends me a plain text message it appears in Courier, which is very hard to read. I want to change this to Calibri or at least Lucida Console. I spent many minutes trying to find a solution, and I think no solution exists. However, I discovered a workaround: Open any message. At the top of the window, select the Customize Quick Access Toolbar button, which appears as a downward pointing triangle with a short horizontal line above it. Select More Commands from the popup menu that appears. An Editor Options window appears. Select the Customize item in the left pane. In the Choose commands from... picklist, select All Commands. In the list of commands on the left, find then double-click Edit Message. Edit Message should appear in the 2nd list. Select OK. Now, when you receive a message in, say, all Courier, you can open the message, select all, choose a new font, and then close the window. Created a new HTML e-mail and corresponding web page for Susie for Mary Anne on very short notice. Sue and I wrapped it up at around 6 PM. Installed a registry fix for Chris's laptop so that the NumLock key would remain off instead of on after booting. Lunch was leftovers. Snack right after work: 2 veggie spring rolls from Panda Express. My fortune: You will surround yourself with warmth and riches. Dinner at home with Patrick: wild mushroom ravioli with sauteed mushrooms in puttanesca cream sauce, focaccia roll, Smart Balance Light. Dessert: blood orange sorbet. Taught Patrick how to print his cd materials. Facebooked. Caught up on some e-mail. Weight training: superslow shoulder shrug, superslow dumbbell internal rotation, superslow dumbbell external rotation, bent over dumbbell row, superslow bent over dumbbell row, advanced plank, side plank, advanced plank. Stretches. Late meal: chunky soup, hot nonfat milk, nonfat yogurt.

Wed Apr 30, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. The Time Machine at Etsy is extraordinarily beautiful but not terribly practical for shopping except in one particular scenario. But there's a lot in the Etsy website to interest a web developer because it features a lot of innovative user interface design for the web, and I am rather impressed even though it uses Flash. e.g., the up and down arrow keys on the keyboard work in their Time Machine to navigate forward and back—most Flash interfaces don't pay as much attention to detail as that. Discovered that I can access the UCSF campus directory in Entourage 2008 only when I have VPN Network Connect active. Installed KeePass 3.11 for Windows and KeePassX 0.3.1 for OS X. Many Flickr web edits for Susie. Announced the email on your smartphone survey to our students. Completed the staff survey, which took me 4 times as long as Cindy said it took her to complete. Computer security web edits. Dinner at home with Patrick: maui beef (cow), steamed asparagus, thai rice. Dessert: one piece of salt water taffy (peppermint).