Tuesday, April 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.