June 2008 in the Journal of Frank Farm

June 2008

Summary: Tina visits us for the solstice

Dates on this page

Sun Jun 1, 2008

Breakfast at home with Patrick: 2 eggs, hash browns, sausage, biscuit for me; 2 eggs, hash browns, bacon, biscuit for Patrick. Altered more shirts, realized that I no longer have to just cut tags off (which doesn't always work well because sometimes the tag stub still causes itchiness)—I can remove the portion of the seam with the tag, remove the tag, then refinish the seam properly with the sewing machine. Stretches. Weight training: side plank, advanced one-legged plank. More alterations. Cut my hair, showered, cleaned the bathroom. Lunch at Hard Knox Cafe with Patrick: 3-piece fried chicken, red beans and rice, yams, iced tea for Patrick; chicken breast sandwich, mac and cheese, half and half for me: $26.87 after a $3 tip. Errands: Kamei, Sports Basement. Dinner at Chris and Nate's with Chris, Nate, Patrick, Ludwig, Marion, Chi, Nam, Binh, Drew, Phil, Danny.

Mon Jun 2, 2008

Dean's breakfast, #2 of 3. Rode back to Parnassus with Mary Anne, Susie, and Shannon. Announced our new web hosting offering to the School and campus web developers. Cindy put up the congratulations poster I created for her—it looks great! The poster is for a display case in the hallway congratulating one of our student organizations for receiving the national chapter of the year award at a recent conference. It also congratulates Mary Anne for receiving the outstanding dean award at the same conference. Rsynced our development (staging) website to ServInt, then requested DNS change from OAAIS. Minor web edits. cdrom building. Lunch from the cafeteria: chicken piccatta with white rice (they were out of brown rice), mixed vegetables, corn muffin, pog juice: $6.05. Submitted the following problem report to Adobe: "I filled out the distribution agreement for Adobe Reader, and I received the email message with a URL to confirm, but when I click the link provided I receive the following error message: 'An Error Has Been Encountered, Configuration softdistribute4validate417092wwwadobecom not found! (check conf field or file). We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. This error has been logged and we will be fixing it shortly.' Problem happens in both Firefox 2.0.0.14 and Safari 3.1.1 (OS X). The link doesn't work—how do I fix this?" Timesheets. Excel 2008 for Mac documents open as read only even when there are no permissions problems. Worked around this problem by using Excel 2007 on Windows XP. Dinner at home by myself: leftover pizza and green beans and carrots. Dessert: 2 salt water taffies. Patrick had a late lunch and didn't need to eat. Read rss feeds, edited photos, Flickrd, worked on websites for friends: Tina, Danny.

Tue Jun 3, 2008

Went to bed at 10 last night, woke at 4 this morning; couldn't sleep so I got up. Stretches. Weight training: concentration curl, superslow concentration curl, superslow tricep kickback, superslow dumbbell fly, face outline. Cleaned the floor in the bathroom. Shower. Usual oatmeal breakfast plus lowfat vanilla yogurt and hot milk. To work. cdrom building. Tried to install DemoShield 8 but it would not let me activate because it was activated too many times in the past. We have a legitimate license, but I've probably gone through 3 computers since we first purchased it, and it does what we need so there's no reason for us to upgrade. I called InstallShield and someone who was very difficult to understand because of enunciation problems said there was a URL I could go to to download a hotfix to deactivate the activation requirement and thereby resolve the problem. He looked for the URL and found it to be rather unfriendly, so he took my e-mail address and said he would mail it to me. Called InstallShield support back since I hadn't received the promised e-mail message over an hour later. From the accents, it sounds like they outsourced their support to Dublin or London. They resent the email while I waited on the line, and it took 3 tries to and from various accounts before it worked. The e-mail message pointed to http://kb.acresso.com/ selfservice/ microsites/ search.do? cmd=displayKC& docType=kc& externalId=Q200184& sliceId=1& docTypeID=DT_PROBLEM_1_1& dialogID=11947986& stateId=1%200%208406697 [link defunct]—which pointed to http://www.macrovision.com/demoshield—which pointed to a list of steps which pointed to http://www.macrovision.com /webdocuments /Downloads /Designer.zip [link defunct] which contains a replacement for designer.exe which resolves the problem. The cost of InstallShield product activation in this case: a 100-minute delay and 2 phone calls to humans. At the end of the 2nd call, I almost told them about tinyurl, but figured it's probably better to just let them be, so I didn't. After applying for a license to distribute Windows Media Player 11, I received an automated e-mail message which included the following paragraph: "Important Note: Our licensing email is provisioned using a web based application which adheres to RFC 2821 and uses 'bare line feeds embedded within an HTML stream'. Recipient email systems that are not fully compliant with RFC 2821, may experience unexpected handling of inbound emails." I think it's hilarious that they believe that their correspondents know whether their email systems and applications are fully compliant with RFC 2821—and—that once learning that their systems and applications are not compatible with the licensing e-mails Microsoft sends they should be willing to migrate in the direction of compliance just to read their one email message. "Ah, well, I see we are not fully compliant with RFC 2821, so in order to read this single message from Microsoft regarding our desire to legally distribute Windows Media Player 11, I guess we'll have to upgrade our backend email system and frontend email applications—yes, I agree let's go forth with that plan and implement it before they send us their message which could be the next business day or two." Helped Lucia with a problem with Netscape Security Center popups—turned them off (I think). Helped Lucia with how to recall a sent message in Outlook. Prepared the shared office laptop for Cindy's trip to Davis. Web host migration work for student organizations. Cardkey door lock followup. Updated projects list. Listserv management: MW, M(L)A. Answered questions from Karin A about Flickr. Realized that a mailing list rule I created in Entourage yesterday was filtering nearly all my incoming mail incorrectly so I thought I wasn't getting any mail but I was. Deleted the rule. I don't understand how this feature of Entourage works—it's not very intuitive. Helped Joel with the WordArt feature in Word 2007. If I were to design a social networking website its goal would be to create an environment in which every possible detail of a person's life is recorded and the site would be called mynoosha.com (currently unregistered!). (Thanks to sneeper for giving me this idea.) Joel and I tried to get frozen yogurt from the cafeteria, but the machine was out of order. Lunch: chicken enchiladas from Carmelina's. Dinner at home with Patrick.

Wed Jun 4, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. When attempting to use Secure WebDisk, I received this error message: "Unable to connect to the webdisk server. You must accept the servers certificate to be able to connect! Please try again Finder got an error: An error of type -5016 has occurred. (Cancel) (OK)." I'm not certain, but I think this problem exists because we have not yet pointed our DNS to the server. I think once that's working this problem goes away. More ServInt setup: put in a placeholder page for Nancy's site, configured webdav connections and shortcuts, organized my connection shortcuts. Computer maintenance for Cindy: set BIOS low power mode on. Prepared a message to Academic Management about the 3-week-old problem with PharmAdMIT 2008 not being compatible with last month's Patch Tuesday from Microsoft. Lunch with Joel at Gordo: burrito with cheese, Coca-Cola for me; 2 tacos and water for Joel. He said he prefers taco places that can put more lettuce in his tacos, and I understand that desire. He ran an errand afterwards at the bank. We stopped at the new farmer's market which takes place on campus in the covered breezeway outside of the Ambulatory Care Center (ACC) building every Wednesday. I bought some fruits and vegetables. I sat in their comfortable waiting room watching the flat panel TV tell me what the next steps were for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Spent the afternoon setting up our live site on ServInt before DNS is repointed. I felt like a cowboy getting rsync to do what I wanted then not do what I wanted then do what I wanted again. After that it was a lot of shell script migration. Got linkcheck migrated and working, set up cron jobs. Continuing to look good, just like yesterday. I think we'll be completely off of pubaff's servers much sooner than I had expected. Cindy's new printer arrived but I did not have time to set it up. Just before I left work I restarted the server to complete a Mozy upgrade and after I logged back in I found that Retrospect 6.5 for Windows had again lost its license code. Somehow my most recent backup of the config65.dat file was from April, so I restored to that and had to manually reconfigure some settings after it was working again. I wish I could just get rid of Retrospect and use something else, but I don't know that there's anything better. On the way home I realized that I forgot my farmer's market fruits and vegetables in the fridge at work. Dinner at home with Patrick: cheese tortelloni with cruciferous vegetables in red sauce, dinner rolls, Smart Balance Light, hot water. Watched Juno on Netflix DVD with Patrick. We both like this film and recommend it. Patrick went to bed and I stayed up to work on Danny's website—mostly text updates and a few new services. Facebook is frustratingly slow today. It's the slowest website I use regularly. Runners up in pokeyness are Flickr Organizr (probably because I have so many sets) and d.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s (I can never remember where the periods go). If you've sent me something on Facebook and if it's important please send me e-mail instead. I often can't get Facebook to respond when I click the links!

Thu Jun 5, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. cdrom building: realized that the WMP11 distribution agreement we signed last year is good for 5 years, so I don't have to sign a new one. Austin H. in Adobe Web Support gave a very unsatisfying and unhelpful response to my question in Case #0180220886. I said: "Monday, June 2, 2008 5:00:14 PM PDT—I filled out the distribution agreement for Adobe Reader, and I received the email message with a URL to confirm, but when I click the link provided I receive the following error message: 'An Error Has Been Encountered, Configuration softdistribute4validate417092wwwadobecom not found! (check conf field or file). We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. This error has been logged and we will be fixing it shortly.' Problem happens in both Firefox 2.0.0.14 and Safari 3.1.1. The link doesn't work—how do I fix this? Operating System: Macintosh—Browser: Mozilla" and he said: "Thursday, June 5, 2008 9:06:11 AM PDT—Hello Frank, Thank you for contacting Adobe Web Support. I understand that you are having trouble filling out a form on our website. Unfortunately, Adobe Tech Support is unable to assist with issues while using the Adobe website. Please try the link again, later in the event that some website maintenance is going on. You may also fill out a Website Feedback form, to help us identify possible issues with the site: http://www.adobe.com/bin/webfeedback.cgi—Customer ID number: ?????????—For more information on Adobe products or services please visit us at: http://www.adobe.com/support or contact Adobe at (800) 642-3623. Representatives are available 6:00am-5:00pm PST, Monday - Friday. Best Regards, Austin H.—Adobe Web Support." Also annoying is that I'm viewing his message on the web through the Adobe Customer Support Portal but the hyperlinks he provided are not linked—I have to manually copy and paste them into a new browser tab. His message also included a PDF attachment which included the hyperlinks, but what if your problem is with Adobe Reader and it doesn't work so you can't open the PDF he sent? How frustrating! I go to the webfeedback.cgi form and fill it out even though I would have expected him to pass on the problem report internally. The webfeedback.cgi form does not guarantee a response. If I don't get an answer soon, I'll just document how difficult it was to get the problem resolved and hope for the best. We'll see what happens. Today was the first time I tried to attach a file to a calendar item in Entourage 2008. The process is very unintuitive. I kept dragging the file into the calendar item window. When I hovered over the calendar item window an outline appeared making it seem as though it was confirming my action. However, when I let go the attachment did not appear like it would in Outlook 2007. It took me a long time to figure out that you need to open the Links window—there's a button in the top right corner—and then drop your attachement there instead. I don't know why Outlook calls them attachments and Entourage calls them links—that's very confusing. Entourage 2008 rules also don't seem to do what I tell them to do—I think they're just plain broken. One more Entourage 2008 gripe: Why when you select the Mail icon (Command+1) do you also see items for calendar and address book? When I select Mail I only want to see mail. I have a lot of shared calendars open, and these also appear in my left navigation pane when I select the Mail button/icon to view mail messages (but I don't know why I see calendars when I selected Mail). Sometimes when I'm working with one of the calendars I click the Mail button because I want to get back to my mail folders, and nothing happens. It took me a long time to figure out that I'm already in the section that Entourage considers Mail so it correctly didn't do anything—I needed to scroll up in the left navigation pane to see what I wanted to see. I found this particularly frustrating. Posted draft schedules for fall 2008 for Lucia. Wrangled with ensuring that the new schedules are properly stored on the 4 servers as we proceed with our migration. Wrote code to make the transition seamless as the DNS pointer is changed—this part was tricky because the document roots as seen from within will point to different places depending on which server it's on. The transition needs to be seamless so that the site isn't down for any visitor at any time, so proper conditionals testing for specific environments were added. ICRD followup. OSL web migration followup with student GL. Down to 10 items in my inbox! Woo! Unpacked the new printer that arrived for Cindy. It's an HP LaserJet P1505n. Her previous printer was an HP LaserJet 2100tn that lasted 8 years (!). When I inserted the cdrom that came with the printer, nothing happened—it would not mount or display files. No error messages either. I went to HP's website to download the driver instead and was shocked to find that the "full featured" driver was 194 MB! We have fast connections, but why do they need 194 MB to tell a printer how to display a page? I immediately suspected crapware and upsellware attached to the "full featured" driver. The rest of the printer setup went quickly and easily. I chose to not install the extra HP features because the dialog box giving the option did not even try to explain what those extra features were and because I had already suspected this to be the crapware taking up most of the 194 MB. Dinner by myself at Noriega Teriyaki House (415-664-7766, 1755 Noriega Street, San Francisco, California, USA 94122) where I chatted with the Cantonese-speaking sushi chef named Dason from (Canton?) and had the salmon teriyaki and tempura combination special. Next time I won't get tempura—the greasiness made me queasy. Home. More tennis ball massage. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row, superslow dumbbell press, leg lifts, crunch. Stretches. Today I took photos throughout the day to describe what I do at UCSF—a new Flickr group idea to encourage others to share what they do in pictures—maybe we'll call it My Day at UCSF. Today I started reading, on Patrick's recommendation, Timoleon Vieta Come Home by Dan Rhodes. I did not enjoy reading Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon very much even though the writing was often wonderful. The story is essentially about the successively poor decisions a man makes to significantly alter his life, and I couldn't relate to such a character because I was thinking every few pages, "Well, that's a stupid thing to do." Some people prefer smart dogs over not smart dogs; I prefer smart protagonists, I guess. It reminded me of characters about which David Sedaris wrote. Timolean Vieta seems like more of the same, and when I came across page 82 (paperback) I saw that someone else had the same idea about women and dogs that I had told Patrick years ago he should put a scene like that in his book and it will sell as though Oprah gave it praise.

Fri Jun 6, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Checked on linkcheck—new setup seems to be working. Linkchecking. Discovered that calendars aren't displaying properly due to some kind of problem with PHP includes. Cindy got promoted from Assistant Dean to Associate Dean as of June 1, a promotion I feel is well-deserved. Spent the day addressing small issues with the new web hosting. Calendars were not working until I turned allow_url_include on. Dan Coulter's phpFlickr caching was not working until I found some hardcoded paths and recoded them to be soft. Did some global search and replace for other hardcoded paths. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: Make your dreams a reality. Helped psychobauble with web questions over email. Chatted with Eric. Dinner at home with Patrick, Ludwig, Steven, Hao, Nate, Chris. Patrick prepared antipasto, 2 kinds of bread, black pepper and parmesan cheese, thick spaghetti and meatballs, and peach cobbler. The guests brought wine and an antipesto platter. Installed Growl 1.1.3 at home which failed the first time but installed successfully the second time. I don't know why it failed the first time.

Sat Jun 7, 2008

Breakfast at Village Grill (415-681-5299, 160 West Portal Avenue, San Francisco, California, USA 94127) with Patrick. Got gas and a cheap car wash. Shopping at Sport Authority, Office Depot, Cost Plus. Napped. Shopping at H&M and Puma with Patrick. Dinner at Miss Saigon Restaurant with Patrick, Danny, Drew, Phil, Nate, Paul, Quyen, Dave, Nam. Home. Worked on Danny's website. Stretches. Weight training: superslow shrug, superslow front raise, face outline, other shoulder exercises, push up. Stretches. To bed late.

Sun Jun 8, 2008

Breakfast at home with Patrick. House chores, worked on Danny's website: put new photos in. Lunch at home with Patrick: leftovers. More work on Danny's website while Patrick went to Aaron's to drop off some stuff. Serendipitous journey down the peninsula with Patrick. Home. Nap. Late meal: saifun noodles in chicken broth with baby bok choy, spinach, and egg.

Mon Jun 9, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped Cindy with a computer startup problem. Installed Growl 1.1.3 at home which failed the first time but installed successfully the second time. I don't know why it failed the first time. Management activities. Xerox has a new logo—how exciting! Troubleshot repeating ghost images on our Xerox 6200DP reported by Eric V. Using Xerox's online troubleshooting tool, I was quickly able to figure out how to print a Repeating Defects Page and determine that the imaging unit is causing the problem. Our imaging unit is near end of life, but I think we have encountered this problem ever since it was installed and I never got around to investigating it. I did not know about the Repeating Defects Page until today—it's very useful when you know about it. I think we'll ride out the remainder of life on this imaging unit unless there's a critical need. Faculty member Norm O shared a large bag of fresh bing cherries with our office—delicious! Created a draft for a second congratulations poster for display cases in the hallway for Cindy. Web updates: org chart, about the students. Learned about TweetScan today. Web team meeting with Eric D and Susie. Back to Parnassus. More ServInt setup. System restore for Joel's computer—more PharmAdMIT 2008 problems. Home. Weight training: advanced one-legged plank, side plank, concentration curl. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig stir fry with vegetables. Altered two shirts in 2 hours.

Tue Jun 10, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Student Computing Working Group meeting. Staff meeting. Helped Joel resolve a problem in Outlook 2007: whenever he tried to print a message, an error message appeared: "No printers are installed. To install a printer, point to Settings on the Windows Start Menu, click Printers and then double-click Add Printer. Follow the instructions in the wizard." The problem possibly appeared because we recently did a System Restore and sometimes everything doesn't get put back in the right place. I resolved this problem by logging in as local and then domain admin and deleting his default printer and a network printer he often prints to. Restarted the computer, logged in as domain admin, reinstalled both printers. Also troubleshot continuing problems with PharmAdMIT 2008, which seems to break (cannot print letters) when Automatic Updates is turned on, even with their registry fix. I sent a message to Luke at Academic Management in the ongoing thread about the problem. More ServInt setup. Lunch: leftovers in the work room. Dinner at home with Patrick: tacos and refried beans. Installed VMware Fusion 1.1.3 at home on the iMac, then upgraded VMware Tools from within Windows XP.

Wed Jun 11, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Maybe it's just me, but I think of toilet paper when I see Apple's cloud logo graphics for Mobile Me (or is it MobileMe?—even Apple is not consistent). Checked linkcheck setup for new websites, had some things to fix. Resolved some permissions problems with our synch script by logging in to the destination and resetting owner and group recursively to the destination owner. Removed --perms from the rsync command. Error message was: "rsync: symlink '/home/[username]/public_html/webdev/linkcheck/bps-chen/column1.php' -> 'column1.html' failed: Permission denied (13)". Linkcheck should be all set up now. The time shown is off by 3 hours but I didn't see a quick fix for it and it's not really that important. Resolved error messages such as "chown: cannot dereference 'pharmd/students/policy/hipaa/[filename]': No such file or directory" by using the oldlinks script from Unix Power Tools (O'Reilly) and deleting the broken links and cleaning up any additional references. Lunch at home: ramen noodles with spinach, egg, and green onions. Minor web edits for Scott and Carol. Requested our new IP address to be added to the permitted hosts for rsync for the old website from Kirk F and Tony T. Realized today that my Save as PDF to Receipts folder feature in OS X no longer works. I had created an alias to my folder called Receipts and put it in /Library/PDF Services and this worked fine in the past. I did not want to use Apple's default folder called Web Receipts. Now it's not working—when I save as PDF to Receipts, the file is not created as expected. I recreated the alias, found where the files were getting created, moved them to my desired folder, and then replaced the old alias with the new one. PharmAdMIT 2008 troubleshooting and followup. Websteering followup. Reviewed listserv settings for moderation. Began coding a new form for employers to submit job postings to us. Dinner at Universal Restaurant with Jen, Nate, and psychobauble. A bit noisy when we arrived at 7 but both the food and company were excellent. Service was very good. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell press, face outline, superslow dumbbell fly, crunch, wrist curl. Stretches.

Thu Jun 12, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Wasted the morning trying to get Spotlight to index a network drive. I tried a lot of different things which I hope to document later, and none of them worked. Also realized that it doesn't index my Boot Camp partition—should it be able to? Shuttle to Mission Bay with David H and Eric D. Websteering lunch at Peasant Pies in Mission Bay with Eric D, Julie B, David H. New to the group today: Joe P, Celine N, Christine (sp?), Aaron (sp?). Computer support coordinator meeting in Genentech Hall. Shuttle back to Parnassus with Eric D and Tim McD. Installed KeePassX 0.3.1. Installed VMware Fusion 1.1.3. Followup with Greg H about a database connection and web problem. Announcements processing for Sue A. Listserv management. PharmAdMIT 2008 followup. Stopped at Mollie Stone's to pick up dessert. Dinner at Danny, Drew, and Phil's. Danny cooked noodle soup with chicken and meatballs, beef with watercress, egg foo young. Patrick cooked herbed and roasted BSCBs with bacon, and we also brought cherry pie and dulce de leche cake from Mollie Stone's. We met Phil's mom who was in town from The O.C. for a visit.

Fri Jun 13, 2008

After my attempts to troubleshoot Spotlight not working on network drives, I found this morning that on my Mac at work Spotlight no longer works on Entourage messages when it used to work before. Found some spam in my inbox this morning that will probably fool some people:

From: HP Direct Customer Experience <hp.survey@hpdirectsurvey.com>
Reply-To: <hpsurvey1@hpdirectsurvey.com>
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:01:53 -0500
To: Frank Farm <farmf@pharmacy.ucsf.edu>
Subject: Thank you for your recent order with HP Direct

Thank you again for your recent order [insert long number here]/[insert long number here]. At HP, customer satisfaction is a key element of our core values. Learning about your experience with HP helps us identify ways to serve you better in the future, while giving you the opportunity to instantly alert us to any issues or concerns you're currently experiencing.

We would appreciate your time completing the following survey based on your recent contact with HP. The survey should take approximately 5 minutes to complete. If you already completed the survey, please ignore this message.

You can access the survey managed by Mindwave Research, an HP-authorized independent third-party research company, by clicking on the following link:

http://survey.mindwaveresearch.com/Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=[insert name here]&lLoginId=[insert long ID code here]

Thank you for your participation!

Best Regards,
HP Americas Volume Direct Operations
Direct Customer Experience Team

NOTE: Your individual responses and contact information will remain completely confidential and only reported in aggregate with others who completed the survey.

You will NOT receive ANY sales solicitations (sales-related materials or phone calls) as a result of your participation in this survey.

This invitation is sent to you as a result of your recent contact with HP. We respect the many demands on your time, so if you prefer not to receive email invitations from HP, please send an email to remove@hpdirectsurvey.com and include your email address and we will not contact you again.

How I came to believe this message was untrustworthy:

URLs should be on hp.com—nowhere else. Why should I trust mindwaveresearch.com when I know e-mail can be easily forged?
The header graphic used a typeface that I know HP would never use.
The HTML e-mail was too simple; HP usually pays more attention to visual design than this message provided.
The message did not include any obvious information that I know HP knows in my relationship with them. There are order numbers, but these are not instantly recognizable—I would have to go look them up, and I don't have time to be bothered with that.

Dean's breakfast 3 of 3. Helped student LP with a question about POP connections to our mail server. Lunch with Ena at Pomelo. Followup work on a second recent poster project for Cindy. Chatted briefly with recent graduate Troy D, talked about Seattle. Updated my projects list with stati. DLS transition work. Reinstalled VMware Tools in Win XP because I couldn't remember if I did that following the Fusion 1.1.3 upgrade. (This is at work.) Home. Dinner at home with Patrick: mini bow ties with leftover chicken. Why doesn't someone make necktie pasta? People make pasta neckties and bowtie pasta—why not necktie pasta? Cut my hair, showered. Nap. Picked up Danny, picked up Nate. We went to Club Dragon at Club Eight. Briefly happened upon Jordan de P, met an annoying man named Benjamin who wanted to introduce me to his cousin, but I was not interested. We also saw Tuan and Tuan and chatted briefly. The upstairs DJ—DJ Proctor according to the flyer—had very good mixing skill but selected songs that on several occasions cleared the dance floor completely. Some of the unpopular stretches were very deep trance tracks that were so repetitive they seemed like mixing tape loops to me. Afterwards I dropped off Danny and Nate at their homes. I wasn't tired yet, so I went to the Castro and went briefly in to Badlands and then walked around Castro Street amusing myself with the clubgoers discovering the fluidity of the sidewalk. The clubs closed at 2, and the party people were flushed out onto the sidewalk much like roaches in Hawaii from a rock wall with a garden hose. Met and chatted briefly with Joey outside The Cafe. Got 2 slices of pizza at Nizario's (one mushroom, one hawaiian)—realized I prefer Escape From New York more but I don't think it's open late like Nizario's. Chatted briefly with Dan F inside and out. Home very late (early). Patrick went to bed early tonight, so he didn't join us.

Sat Jun 14, 2008

Breakfast at home with Patrick: spinach omelette with mexican cheese for me, grape nuts for Patrick. I finished with one teaspoon of melon sorbet. Worked on Danny's website. Fixed some coding issues in my journal. In OS X (10.5.2) on my iMac at home keyboard shortcuts occasionally fail to work. For example, I have a Finder window open and type Command+W but the window does not close. If I select File > Close Window, then the window closes. Full keyboard shortcuts is on, but that shouldn't matter in this instance anyway. I'm sure a restart would fix it, but we're listening to music right now and don't want to interrupt that. At 11:13 AM Pacific time, the home page for evite.com says, "Service Unavailable - DNS failure - The server is temporarily unable to service your request. Please try again later. Reference #11.eda71645.1213467146.9158ab0". I believe I knew Yahoo! Maps indicated neighborhoods in various pastel colors with the neighborhood names—a very useful feature—but today is the first time I notice that it calls the outer sunset OUTSET and the inner sunset INSET which I find kind of cute, but honestly I think they're just making up the names. Don't trust Yahoo! Maps for neighborhood names in San Francisco—you will get screwed up! People in San Francisco don't say Outset or Inset—that's weird. The Middle Middle Sunset, where we live, is not called MIDSET by Yahoo!, however—they call it CENTRAL SUNSET which I think you could abbreviate as CENSET, but they chose not to. Chris and Nate's neighborhood is not labeled as Showplace Square. But nearby on Yahoo! Maps is labeled SOMISSPO. Other neighborhoods I've never heard of but which appear on Yahoo! Maps San Francisco: Mastro (between the Castro and the Mission), The Hub, Zion District, Lake, Vista Del Mar, Outer Parkside, Lone Mountain, Baja Noe, Pine Lake Park, Forest Knolls, Cayuga Terrace, and—the funniest one—Transmission (to describe a nebulously defined region near Mission Street and Fair Avenue)—Patrick thinks this must be where all the trannies live. I pointed out several of these to Patrick and he rolled his eyes, saying, "That's weird!" and "That's ridiculous!" Yahoo! Maps says Saint Francis Wood instead of St. Francis Wood—that's weird. They say NOBE instead of North Beach, yet they say CASTRO instead of 'STRO or STRO. Here's my personal method of describing the Sunset subneighborhoods: First think of the Sunset as a 3 x 3 grid of squares. Everything gets both a latitudinal description and a longitudinal description to describe its location on the grid. Everything north of Noriega and south of Lincoln is "upper", everything between Noriega and Taraval is "middle", everything south of Taraval to Sloat is "lower", everything west of Sunset is "outer", everything east of Sunset and west of 19th is "middle" (again). And the Inner Sunset is bounded by (roughly) Lincoln, 19th, Ortega, and 7th (but I don't know where the southern boundary would be adjacent to Forest Hill). Polly Ann Ice Cream is in the Upper Outer Sunset. Lincoln High School is in the Middle Middle Sunset. Dianne Feinstein Elementary School is in the Middle Lower Sunset. Specify the north-to-south description first, then the west-to-east description. I don't know anyone else who uses this terminology, but my made-up neighborhood names make more sense than Yahoo!'s. SoMissPo! Really! Yahoo! Maps describes Parkside as the region bounded by Ortega, Sunset, Wawona, and 19th, but if being parkside refers to Stern Grove, how can anyone north of Ulloa consider their residence to be adjacent to Stern Grove? I would allow Parkside if it's really just the region surrounding Stern Grove—say, Ulloa, Sunset, Sloat, 19th. UCSF is variously considered to be in the Inner Sunset or Parnassus Heights. In Yahoo! Maps my mouse cursor (Fx 2.0.0.14, OS 10.5.3) sometimes acts as a grabber hand and sometimes doesn't act as a grabber hand—it's very disconcerting and I realize a minute later that it's really the Command+Tab problem in OS X that's causing it. The problem is that if you Command+Tab to another application, let go of the keys, then Command+Tab to return to where you were, OS X doesn't always properly return focus to the window you were just viewing. This problem never happens in Windows. Evite is still down as of 1:06 PM—wow! Lunch at home with Patrick: various leftovers. Snack: hot cherry pie (leftover from Thursday). Worked on Danny's website. Nap. Was thinking I'd sleep only half an hour but ended up sleeping 9.5 hours instead. Patrick had dinner by himself.

Sun Jun 15, 2008

Woke around 3 AM, couldn't sleep. Checked stuff online, some edits for Danny's website, ate some soup. Back to bed around 5 when Patrick woke up. Got up around 9 when Patrick decided to take a nap. Checked stuff online. Stretches. Weight training: superslow one-arm dumbbell row. Snack: one quarter of a chocolate croissant from Trader Joe's. Lunch: leftovers from Universal. Picked up sushi platters. Went to my sister's house, Fletcher and Stanley came over as well. We played in the pool, ate dinner—burgers, hot dogs, sushi, vegetables, diced watermelon. Dessert: late birthday cake for Stan. Watched Johnson's slideshow from our grandmother's 90th birthday, then we watched the end of a basketball game between the Celtics and the Lakers. Patrick stayed home. Drove home. Late meal: leftover sushi. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Stretches. Shower. Bed.

Mon Jun 16, 2008

The UCSF Memory and Aging Center launched a new collaboration today with YouTube, which is groundbreaking in UCSF web development in the sense that the University has been reluctant in the past to work closely with outside providers of information technology services—they prefer to do things in-house. Two common fears are: what if they go out of business? and what if they aren't secure? But I believe that at a certain point you know that certain services will not go away. e.g., today, I can tell you with certainty that YouTube and Flickr will exist for at least the next 5 years. And, as history has clearly shown, universities don't have a perfect record when it comes to computing security—no organization does, and probably no organization will, at least as long as humans are adminning. That's not to say that there aren't things to worry about, but I think universities and university leaders shy about working with outside entities lose so much opportunity because the world around us can innovate far better and far faster than we can ourselves. I found out about the UCSF YouTube videos first from a search on summize.com of the keyword UCSF which led me to a tweet on sobrefacebook's Twitter stream. I later realized that news of the launch is also on the UCSF home page. Noticed something weird today: When I visit trazzler.com, it looks like Facebook. Indeed, it seems like I'm logged in to Facebook. That's weird and a little creepy. When opening Word documents from a link in Firefox 2.0.0.14 in Word 2008, either nothing happens or a blank document titled Document1 opens. The best information and workarounds for this problem appear on Alea Jacta Ouest at cortig.net/wordpress, but I tried the Folder Action Script workaround posted on 5-20-2008 and it did not completely resolve the issue for me. Word 2008 (12.1.0) is now essentially unusable for me. To resolve this problem, I uninstalled Word 2008 and reinstalled 12.0.1 but did not install 12.1.0. Now when attempting to open Entourage, I receive the following error message: "This identity cannot be opened with this version of Entourage." The Microsoft Database Utility did not fix the problem. I updated Office to 12.1.0 and I updated Microsoft AutoUpdate to 2.1.1 and now I can open Entourage but I am stuck with my original problem—Word documents opened from links viewed on web pages through Firefox open a blank document called Document1. A separate problem: When attempting to burn additional files to a DVD using BurnAgain FS 1.0b2, I receive the following error message: "Copy: Sorry, the operation could not be completed because an unexpected error occurred. (Error code -1407) (OK)" I burned anyway and it seemed to work okay but then I got info on the new folder I burned and obviously not all the data had copied successfully, so I deleted and recopied and burned a second time and then it worked. I insert a new disc and perform the same burn of additional files, and this time during the burn BurnAgain FS 1.0b2 spits the disk out from the computer and this error message appears: "Error during burn! The DVD burn aborted with an error. (OK)" I again delete the folder that (probably) partially burned, then close (reburn). It again quits during burn with "Error during burn! The DVD burn aborted with an error. (OK)" I download and install BurnAgain FS 1.0.1. Attempt the same thing. Result: "Error during burn! The DVD burn aborted with an error. (OK)" I create a temporary folder on my desktop. I copy all the files from the known-good DVD to the temporary folder. This process takes a very long time—5 or 6 hours I'm guessing. I'll continue the BurnAgain FS story tomorrow. Troubleshot PharmAdMIT 2008 letters printing problem with Chris F and Joel. With Chris's help, we got it working. The only thing done differently (it seems) is that she ran the regedit fix as Joel whereas I ran it as admin. Shouldn't make any difference, but it works now when it didn't before. I'll do the same for Scott's computer after he leaves today. Late lunch: tostada from Carmelina's. Read a lot about Twitter. Learned what bacn is. Computer maintenance for Scott, Carol, Cindy, Lucia, and Eric V: installed XP SP3 and all Microsoft updates, installed QuickTime 7.5. I noticed that my rss feed for ucsf in tweetscan was broken, so I visited the website and plugged in ucsf manually and here's what I got back: "Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Host 'www.tweetscan.com' is blocked because of many connection errors; unblock with 'mysqladmin flush-hosts' in /home/ts/public_html/dbconnect.php on line 5—Database? Anyone? Anyone? Database?" Funny, but ouch! Regarding my DVD burning woes, I am thinking that I will never again buy another writeable optical drive if I can avoid it. Tina L is expected to arrive tonight. She is spending some time in the Bay Area with friends, and we'll enjoy having her company for a few days. Tina arrives. We have dinner at Old Mandarin: chicken and beef chow mein, onion pancake, wor won ton soup, beef with broccoli.

Tue Jun 17, 2008

Last night I started using geni.com. It's really an incredible website for geneology. It provides a very simple but powerful interface which enables you to create and organize your family tree information. I was surprised at how polished it feels—not only did everything function correctly but it also looked visually perfect. The Flash interface provides some usability problems because, for example, scrollbars and scrolling don't behave like regular scrollbars and scrolling, but it's a small price to pay for what you get back in return. Chatted with Tina and Patrick. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Resuming my work with BurnAgain FS from yesterday, I copy the new files I want to add to the DVD to the temporary folder. I erase the DVD using Disk Utility. I burn the contents of the temporary folder to the DVD using BurnAgain FS 1.0.1. Result: "BurnAgain FS: Error during burn! The DVD burn aborted with an error. (OK)" Okay, fine. BurnAgain FS beta 1.0.1 is not yet stable. I thought I would erase the disk with Disk Utility and reburn it the old-fashioned way (without BurnAgain FS), but when I try, I receive the following error message: "Optical Erase failed. Erase of optical media did not complete or completed with an error. See the DiscRecording log file, ~/Library/Logs/DiscRecording.log, for additional information." I look at the log file and it says, "Erase error: 0x80020040 One of the volumes on the media is still in use." I could find no other applications using it. I attempt to eject the disc, and I receive the following error message: "The disk, 'external' is in use and could not be ejected. Try quitting applications and try again. (OK)" Waited until I could restart the computer and hold the mouse button while it starts so that the disc is ejected. Logged back in, successfully erased using Disk Utility, then successfully burned using Burn. Sent Cindy's poster project to DMM. They turned around a "proof" very quickly, and I approved. It's in the queue. Listserv management: tweaked so that Sue A can post to our unit's mailing list. Wiki review and followup for Reviewed Flickr RSS feeds that Eric D created. Telephone conference with Rob, Susie, and Eric. Scanned photos of recent graduate JB for Sue. Faxed authorizations for cardkey door locks to be installed to our computer lab and student lounge this summer. Eric, Susie, and I learned today that when we order a rush check from accounting that means 3+ weeks before it reaches the vendor. Who knew? Supplies ordering. Staff lunch in the work room: Cindy decided on an assortment of party platters from La Mediterranee, and they were very delicious. Lucia handled the ordering. Met with Cindy 1-on-1. FileZilla doesn't seem to work properly when run under a limited user account. When doing so, server settings you save disappear the next time you start FileZilla. Indexing is broken in Entourage, and I can't find anything! Grrr! I want to be able to say (in Darth Vader's voice), "Spotlight, you have failed me for the last time!" but I know it's not true. Dinner at Le Charm (415-546-6128, 315 Fifth Street, San Francisco, California, USA) with Jenny S, Jeremy, Tina, Nate, Chris, Patrick. Le Charm was very satisfying, and both food and service were excellent.

Wed Jun 18, 2008

Stretches, crunch. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Linkcheck setup for 2 faculty member websites: Ahituv and Kroetz. Flickr work: searched for contacts with UCSF in the name and added nearly all of them as contacts. Small web edits to the posters page. Prepared for a meeting. Returned to cortig.net/wordpress to try the Office 2008 File Type Converter.app workaround for the problem in which Word 2008 opens with a blank document called Document1 after clicking a link to a Word document from within Firefox 2.0.0.14 in OS 10.5.2. The workaround worked. Computer Technology Support meeting. Installed Growl 1.1.4. Moved my 2nd document to Google Docs. Susie says OK to switch DNS before we have confirmed they received our check. I think this is best since we are running out of time. Today Scott received an error message when attempting to print a letter from PharmAdMIT 2008. This is the first time he tried printing since I implemented the same fix which appeared to work for Joel's computer. I told Scott to call Chris F tomorrow, but I won't be in, and he agreed. Chatted with Lisa S about scheduling a meeting. Had to resort to Outlook 2007 because of error messages when attempting to share calendars in Entourage 2008. Prepared connection info documents for Nancy Jane W and Rodney Y. Calendar management. DAL work: taking care of e-mails. Sent DLS draft communication for Cindy for review. Chatted with Chris about cardkey lock scenarios. Tina and Patrick picked me up in the car and we went home. They put away groceries from Rainbow, Tina packed away gifts to take home, and I freshened in the bathroom. We went to dinner at Espetus, the Brazilian churrascaria, and had an amazing dinner. I've never had the pineapple mint drink before—it's cool and refreshing. I think the top sirloin was my favorite meat. For dessert, we shared the tres leches and the pudin (flan). We walked to Citizen Cake because Tina wanted to check out the desserts and we were disappointed to see that the dessert case in the main entry had been removed and replaced by a bar. Then, we were disappointed again to see the desserts in the smaller adjacent cafe—very ordinary presentations, and cakes about the size of a hockey puck for $6. What happened?! Read the Contra Costa Times article in which BriKel are stars with photo—what happened to the living room?! Maybe it was all minimalist just for the photo shoot. Installed Growl 1.1.4 at home. Stretches.

Thu Jun 19, 2008

Day off from work. Woke around 5, couldn't get back to sleep for a few hours. No breakfast (!). Small web edits for Danny. Showered. West Portal with Tina and Patrick: drinks at Peet's, breakfast pastries at West Portal Bakery—they were just okay. Tina bought wine at Wine Styles. Drove to Jenny's. Hung out with Jenny in her amazing home; she showed us examples of her wet plate colloidal photography—fascinating! We decided to get a bite at Bette's diner when we got a call from Jeremy who had just shown up at the house. We drove back and Patrick and I got out and Jeremy got in and Patrick and I drove down separately—we were running out of time. Late lunch at Bette's—we made it in the door minutes before closing. Tina will stay at Jenny's tonight. Patrick and I drove home. I napped, then went to dinner at Mary Anne's with about 15 others—a thank you to members of the Self Study Steering Committee and key participants in our recent and very successful accreditation process. She is the perfect hostess, and I even received a giant fortune cookie that I wasn't expecting. I believe she said she was also the chef. Plum chicken, roasted red and yellow peppers, steamed rice with parsley, garden salad, asparagus with baby roma tomatoes, more. Dessert: almond cake with fresh whipped cream, diced and sliced strawberries, and blueberries. A few words from Mary Anne and Barbara—a delightful evening, and I was honored to be invited. I really got the sense that these people are like a kind of family together—there's so much history among them. Home around 8. Watched My Own Private Idaho on DVD with Patrick. I forgot to mention that our temporary admin assistant Eric V told me the other day that Firefox 3 was out, and I immediately said, "Oh, no, it's not out yet" but then I went back to my desk and checked, and he was right! The reviews seem good, but I am waiting just a bit because I don't know if all my plug-ins are compatible and to check I'd have to hunt them down one by one. It would be cool if whatever current version of Firefox would check plug-in compatibility when a new version is released and, perhaps, offer the upgrade only when all the plug-ins I use are compatible. The way it works now is you upgrade and then it tells you what plug-ins you had are and aren't compatible. Kudos to Eric V for being better informed than me about a hot new browser release. Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise, superslow lateral raise, dumbbell press, wrist curl. Late meal: steamed rice with leftover beef with broccoli.

Fri Jun 20, 2008

Day off from work. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Caught up on some e-mail. Fixed a small problem on the School of Pharmacy home page related to Firefox 3.0—removed a max-width attribute that we didn't really need. House chores: rinsed trash bins, removed weeds. Worked on Danny's website. Installed Firefox 3.0 on all computers at home—all the plug-ins I use seem to be compatible with Firefox 3.0. Installed Quartz PDF Plug-in 0.9.8 for Firefox on OS X. Learned from Google's Mac Blog that all the Google I/O sessions are now available online—cool! Sunbathed for an hour. Late lunch: leftover wor won ton soup, ravioli in red sauce. More work on Danny's website. Flickrd. Helped Patrick hand off his 320 kbps mp3 files to Energy 92.7 to see if they might like it for their Below Zero radio program. Dinner at home with Tina and Patrick: chef's salad, french bread.

Sat Jun 21, 2008

Tina left early this morning. Installed Opera 9.5. The Frizz Index at accuweather.com is hilarious! On Thursday while walking from the parking lot to Bette's I told everyone that I had read that a University of Alberta study found that 15% of all cellphone conversations were about how poor or problematic cellphone connection or service was, but no one believed me. Facebook is slower than when I first started using it a few weeks ago. It's not a good sign when I have 7 Facebook background tabs open and spinning (attempting to load). For several minutes. Brunch: leftover chef salad. Patrick took Simmone and Sam to North Face Outlet in Berkeley today. I stayed home and played on Geni, processed photos. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep extension, superslow front raise, superslow face outline. Lunch: lowfat cherry yogurt, chunky soup. Installed EasyEnvelopes 1.0.7 for OS X. Sunbathed in the back yard. Stretches. Dinner at home with Patrick. Watched Netflix Instant Watch: Secret Rivals 2: Revenge of the Gold Fox (stopped watching after about 5 minutes), Nature: Dogs: "Dogs: The Early Years" (stopped watching after about 2 minutes), and Gay Sex in the '70s (watched the whole thing).

Sun Jun 22, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Shopped around for new broadband service. We're currently paying sonic.net $51.07 per month for 1500 down and 128 to 384 up. Lunch at home by myself: tacos from leftovers. Altered 1 shirt: tag removal. Cut my hair, showered. Altered 3 pairs of pants: 1 crotch modification and hem for Patrick, 2 hems for me. Dinner at home with Patrick and psychobauble: pork chops, mashed potatoes, corn off the cob. Dessert: gelato Massimo blackberry sorbet, gelato Massimo melon sorbet.

Mon Jun 23, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Spent all day catching up on email after being out of the office for 2 days. Also had a web team meeting with Susie and Eric D. Lunch with Joel at Golden Rice Bowl. General Tso's chicken lunch special for Joel. Cashew chicken lunch special for me. My fortune: Absence makes the heart grow fonder. 25 18 20 12 43 19. All of our food and drink was disappointingly colder than expected but we didn't complain because we were hungry. We probably won't go back for a long time. $12.50 before a $2.50 tip. Dinner at home with Patrick: slow-cooked chicken in tomato sauce, potato salad, steamed asparagus. Discovered beautifulagony.com. Watched amazing jump rope on YouTube. Sonic wrote back saying they could drop my monthly DSL bill to $24.95 per month and it would be month-to-month, which is more like it, but I still feel a little ripped off after having paid such a high rate for years and not thinking to complain about it or switch. It's the business of broadband, folks—pay attention and keep them on their toes or you'll pay the price like I did. In short, ask before you sign up what the rate will be after the 1-year introductory rate, then after your 1-year contract is up (and every year thereafter), ask them if they'll renegotiate your rate. Companies like sonic.net say publically in forums that it's not bait-and-switch because you receive an e-mail message with the details (probably amongst a long and boring list of other terms of service), but I still believe they are being deceptive because the post-1-year cost does not ever seem to be disclosed on public web pages before you sign up. (Try to find it!) And, they don't voluntarily lower prices in order to stay competitive—i.e., they would rather risk creating an unfavorable relationship with their complacent customers in order to make more money than make less money and keep all their customer relationships favorable. Imagine if every broadband customer called his or her ISP once every month just to ask if their rate can be renegotiated—perhaps that would make ISPs a little more proactive in providing competitive rates. So I'll stick with Sonic for now, but broadband companies better watch out because internet service is a business that can change very quickly, and people remember unpleasant experiences more than they remember the pleasant ones. For me, that unpleasantness is about $1,800 I probably didn't have to pay. Stretches. Weight training: super advanced bridge, advanced side plank, crunch. Stretches.

Tue Jun 24, 2008

Student Computing Working Group meeting. Installed Firefox 3.0 for OS X, manually upgraded Firebug, installed Google's Quartz PDF plug-in to permit PDF viewing within the browser window in Firefox. Reviewed documents at learnit.com/manuals/HTML for Lisa—the first module has an old screen snapshot of PageMill for Windows to describe wysiwyg editing—ha ha! Called Sonic. Got a human immediately, asked for sales and was transferred. Waited 15 minutes on hold, got to a human where I was told I was put in tech support rather than sales. Transferred to sales. They changed me to $24.95 per month. When I asked if I needed to call back every couple of months to check on my rate, they made it sound like it was my fault for not reviewing my billing statements. I'm not happy with Sonic right now, and I consider them lucky that I'm continuing to give them my business. My point is that if you are running a business and you want happy customers, then you should be proactive about giving them what they deserve rather than gouging them for a short-term profit and then passing it off as the customer's fault. Troubleshot web migration for Rodney's IRC website. Lots of small web edits. Lunch with Julie B at You See Sushi. Requested a redirect for the IRC website. Lots of small web edits. Met 1-on-1 with Eric. Repaired phpFlickr caching—had to log in as root and set owner to nobody on the cache folder. Dinner at home with Patrick: butternut squash ravioli in red sauce with organic mushrooms. Removed Off the Cuff from Sage. Set up a twitter account. Stayed up too late sewing and troubleshooting sewing difficulties—now almost resolved.

Wed Jun 25, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Printing troubleshooting for Carol. She's having the same problem that Joel did in which attempting to print to our network printer gives an error: "Word has encountered a problem..." Worked more on creating the podcasting section for Susie and Candy. Prepared for a meeting about switching the IRC printing to a system that the Library just set up so that we don't have to deal with taking cash when charging for printing. Went to the meeting. A decision was made to use our own system for computer printing and to possibly join the Library's system for photocopying. Lunch: dos tacos from Carmelina's. I learn new information which might change our decision from this morning and send the info to Chris. Met with Rodney to review what I need to know while he's out on vacation. Web edits: strategic plan subsite. Computer maintenance for Joel: defrag, installed QuickTime. I didn't realize until today that Netscape—the browser—is dead. browser.netscape.com has details. Netscape was important in the early days of the web as an early innovator in browser technology and the primary competitor to Internet Explorer for many years. Noticed that Apple's current information about MobileMe neglects to mention—except in a transition document in the support section—that Apple Backup will continue to work with it. I have a web page which previously pointed to a video tutorial about how to use the backup services in .Mac. The link broke when MobileMe was announced, and now I have nothing to link to anymore because Apple doesn't provide a page describing the backup features in MobileMe. There's a page describing iDisk, but iDisk isn't backup or Backup. I'm removing my link—Apple's loss. Lots of linkchecking due to many links starting with www.ucsf.edu now temporarily moved to web.ucsf.edu as of a week or few ago. Chris decides we might now join the Library's system for computer printing as well—excellent! Home. Read Sage feeds. Installed Office 2008 12.1.1. Patrick and I recently fedexed something to Tina, and she said today that she found it last night in the bushes. Why does FedEx do that? It reminded me of the time Don Don ordered a large screen television and it was delivered to his house. It had been delivered, but he did not know it was delivered for several days until he found it—a very large box—on a secluded portion of his patio that he never used and never looked at. Snack: lowfat cherry yogurt. Dinner at Daphne's at Westlake Center: shrimp pita sandwich, pink lemonade. Wanted to buy some sewing supplies, but Beverly's was closed. Went to Linen N Things which is closing this store so many things are on sale. Bought nothing. Went to TJ Maxx because I hadn't seen the boys clothing department yet but it was a bust. Found some gifts in other sections, though. Home. Finished altering a pair of pants for me. Patrick is enjoying a new pair of Sennheiser headphones that we bought recently. Cleaned up the sewing mess I made since yesterday. Late meal: ramen with corn, peas, shrimp, and egg.

Thu Jun 26, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: one-arm dumbbell row. ID Card Worker Meeting. Helped resident TT by email with computer problems. Helped student NG by email with computer problems. Helped student ML with a question about our mailing lists. Weeded the computer supplies drawer to make room for new laptop storage. Boxed up less frequently used computer supplies for storage in our storage room on the 7th floor. Asked Eric V to request a surplus pickup. Migrated 3 media files from Public Affairs's streaming server to ServInt and updated the corresponding pointers. Edited the Part D section of our website to take out old, unsupported video formats and add new ones. Troubleshot embedded video player problems. Alerted Eric D to a problem with our Flash slideshow on our homepage—it displayed twice in Safari on both Mac and Win. He fixed it in a few minutes. Agreed to help Steve K migrate the PC121 website. Installed QuickTime 7.5 for Windows. Installed OS X 10.5.3 and QuickTime 7.5 for Mac. Somehow I think I have resolved the problem I had of Apple Spotlight seemingly not indexing things it was supposed to. After installing 10.5.3 and rerunning sudo mdutil -i on for the volume I wanted indexed, I now see the blinking dot in the magnifying glass icon indicating that Spotlight is now indexing. I also changed my Energy Saver settings to put the computer to never sleep instead of (I think it was) sleep at 30 minutes so that Spotlight has more time to index after I leave work. Chatted with my mom on the phone. She called to tell me that my dad showed her our family tree in geni.com and that people have been making errors in our family tree. She doesn't have her own e-mail account, so I told her how to get a free e-mail account at Yahoo! so that she can sign up at geni.com and log in as herself to correct errors, add information, and so on. She kept asking me, "I don't have to pay...?!" and it reminded me that there was a time when e-mail wasn't free. 19 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick, Mom Ryan, Phil, and Danny. Drew was sick with stomach problems. Patrick served mango beef, warm Chinese vegetable salad, Peking duck, and steamed rice. For dessert we split the miniature pecan pie that Mom Ryan brought back from New Orleans for me. (Patrick ate his on the first or second day he got it.) Late tonight Flickr seems to be having trouble loading some images—one or more of their servers must be offline somehow. Facebook is also really slow to load, but that's normal.

Fri Jun 27, 2008

Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise, superslow lateral raise. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Weight training: superslow dumbbell press. Shower. To work. Carol called in sick, so it's only me, both Erics, Scott, and Chris in the office today. Scott and Eric V both reported computer hangs around the same time. Symptoms: computer responds very slowly or not at all, portions of the screen would redraw incorrectly or very slowly or not at all, shutting down was very slow, logging in to Windows XP as a domain user was very slow, logging in to Windows XP as a local admin was speedy and as expected, Macs in our office were unaffected, Windows XP running inside Fusion were unaffected, restarting Windows XP did not resolve the problem, grc reported all ports either closed or stealthed. I called the problem in to OAAIS because I noticed that Sygate Firewall reported 4.79.142.206 as "[423] Possible P2P Botnet Worm Propagation Attempted - Nugache Variant" but later when Sarah M pointed out that that IP address was owned by grc I realized my mistake. Turns out our office server was exhibiting the same slow behavior as the workstations, so I forced power off on it, restarted, logged back in, and now everything is working now. Lunch: leftover mango beef and steamed rice. Excerpts from an email I sent to Nick M today: "I'm actually a conponent of joining Macs to the campus Active Directory. We have only 5 Macs and I've always had problems with joining to the campus domain. I personally believe Apple's implementation is not robust. ... About 6 months ago I decided to not join Macs to the domain anymore—it was too much trouble. ... i avoid it primarily because i can—with only 5 computers there isn't much advantage. if i had a lab, i'd be stuck, tho, as it would be ideal for a lab. good luck—your friends are: http://macosx.ucsf.edu/solutions/, andrew p, erik w." Continued troubleshooting Spotlight. It's now working for files on my computer, but nearly all of my files are stored on a network drive. Here's how to force Apple Spotlight in OS X (10.5.2 is what I'm using) to search or index a network drive. The short answer is that you can and you can't. As of today, June 27, 2008, Apple doesn't provide a simple way to do it yet. But, you can sort of get what you want by using the mdutil command with the -i on switch specified with the volume that you want to index (e.g., mdutil -i on /Volumes/frank). If all is working properly, Spotlight should begin indexing that volume. However, if when the indexing is complete, you'll notice that you can type Command+Spacebar and search for a file or folder known to exist on the network drive you indexed and it won't appear. However, if you switch to the Finder and press Command+F, enter your search terms, and select Shared for where to search, then it will find it. So, yes, Spotlight—the technology underlying the Finder's Find feature—can find files on networked drives, but no, Spotlight—the feature in the top right corner—cannot find files on networked drives. Apple could improve Spotlight by adding a dialog when network drives are connected asking whether you want them (permanently) indexed or not and/or by updating Spotlight's system preferences so that it's easy to explicitly include or exclude particular volumes or folders. Some web pages say you need to run the aforementioned mdutil command after each time the volume is newly connected, but I haven't tested whether that's true or not on my computer. If so, that can be scripted, but it's yet another tedious step that people should haven't to do in 2008. In the process of determining this info about Spotlight, I learned how to automatically connect volumes upon login: 1. Connect to the volume. 2. Open System Preferences > Accounts. Select your account, then select the Login Items tab. Drag and drop the volume icon into the list of login items. Answered a question for resident DS about continuation of e-mail services. PC121 website followup with Steve. We need a password reset. PharmAdMIT 2008 printing problem followup: problem seemed to be resolved by executing the reg fix as the (limited) user rather than as admin. Email management. Learned how to restart the Dock manually. Too bad you can't do Apple Menu > Dock > Restart, though. That would be much easier. Typed up meeting notes from yesterday's meeting, then distributed to Cindy and SCWG. Resolved a minor metadata problem with the strategic plan PDF. Eric V showed me a video he discovered: A day in the life of a USC pharmacy student—neat! Got the PC121 password reset, migrated the site, notified Steve K. Chatted briefly online with Nate. It sounds like he's been having a lot of beer in Utrecht. 17 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick: Chinese noodle soup with leftover duck, baby bok choy, mushrooms, egg, green onions. Watched Thank You For Smoking on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Installed Acrobat Pro 3.1.2 for Windows XP. Noticed recently that the way Facebook imports an RSS feed is kind of quirky. It only does it once, so if the feed content is updated later Facebook doesn't care. So unless I change my writing workflow people who read my blog (notes) in Facebook don't always have the latest or complete or correct information. Additionally, I found that if I delete a note, it is gone and never replaced. I thought perhaps if I deleted a note and then provided that day's content later then Facebook would update it, but no. Processed photos in Photoshop. Uploaded photos to Flickr.

Sat Jun 28, 2008

Breakfast at home with Patrick: almond french toast with cherry sauce and organic shredded coconut—yum! Mended one sock and altered 2 shirts and 1 pair of pants. Late lunch at home with Patrick: sandwiches. Napped. Dinner at Chevy's Embarcadero 2 with Patrick. Ludwig, psychobauble, and Terry N showed up a little late, and we enjoyed our dinner despite inconsistent service (overly attentive at first, then overly inattentive later). Patrick and I met Terry N. Afterwards we took the F line (both Ludwig's and psychobauble's first time riding the F) to the Hyatt at Fisherman's Wharf where we attended PlanetOut's Pride Party, which included free cocktails and giveaways. We ran in to ynot tony, Stephen F, and Brian (sp?) who had already been there since (I think) 7 when the party started. We chatted and drinked a while, then took a cab to the Castro. Ludwig knew a friend living near 16th and Castro who was having a house party on this Pink Saturday, so we went to that. Ran in to pharmacy grad Steve A who briefly said hello. I felt bad because I didn't recognize him. It was so out of context, and I'm bad with names as well. An hour or two later we decided to see what was happening on the street, but the night was cold and many of us were already tired. Ludwig took Muni back to his car at Embarcadero, Patrick and I took Muni home, and psychobauble and Terry stayed to check out the scene.

Sun Jun 29, 2008

Processed and uploaded photos. Flickr Uploader 2.3.1 for OS X fails to finish uploading properly—same problem as before: the set fully finishes uploading all the photos but the set grouping is not created as expected. Watched the Pride Parade coverage on sfpridelive.com which worked mostly well. The sound was out of sync somewhat most of the time. The production of the parade coverage was adequate but not as professional as it could have been. Commentary was just okay, and it was weird how much it seemed they were pushing sponsorship and the corporate way. Just like Stephen F told us last night, we saw him and ynot tony on the first float of the parade. Patrick and I took the train to the parade and festival, got out at Civic Center station. We found Stephen F in the fairy garden with his Marine pals Mike, Neil (sp?), and Raymond. Stephen F was still wearing little more than his underwear (which I coincidentally happen to have a pair in the same style). After a few minutes of chatting, he left with his friends. He invited us to join him at the VIP party at City Hall at 3 ("someone you know must be able to get you in...") but I already knew that we don't know the right people, and to be honest, we didn't care. Patrick and I wandered through the festival getting overpriced Thai food to eat and finding great difficulty finding non-alcoholic beverages other than water and Red Bull. We walked and walked and walked and finally found one booth selling Coke, Sprite, and (I think) diet versions of the same—that's it. We enjoyed the music at Fag Fridays and one other stage (I didn't know the name of this stage) which had music like the How Weird festival (but it seemed to be all straight people). The festival area was much larger than we remember last year—an entire street more at least. Not enough portapotties—lots of very long lines. While leaving, just outside the festival gates, we saw one woman unable to restrain herself. She squatted down between two parked cars to relieve herself (we think) and her two friends provided a hint of decorum by standing on either side and moving suggestively and bizarrely to provide a visual distraction. We were only walking by and didn't even pause. Patrick said, "When you gotta go, you gotta go!" Took the train to Castro Street Station. Picked up a DVD at Superstar. I bought a dremel bit. We got dinner at Thai House. Walgreen's: popcorn. Back to Cliff's just before closing for something we forgot: silicone ice trays—a plastic one broke in half the last time I tried to remove ice from it. When I was a kid, those things never broke. They don't make plastic like they used to. Home. Settled in for about an hour. I vacuumed. Watched Batman Begins on Superstar DVD with Patrick. Archived documents. Tidied. Stretches. Weight training: superslow concentration curl, superslow rear raise, superslow dumbbell press. Late meal: plum lowfat yogurt, leftover noodle soup.

Mon Jun 30, 2008

Usual oatmeal breakfast. 1-on-1 with Susie: we talked about USC and Harvard multimedia, Susie okayed the Flickr project announcement, we reviewed status on the DAL project—Eric D and I will continue reviewing possible partnerships, reviewed Partners in D tasks and Hane Chow Inc. Twitter account tweaking. Edited homepage code so that we can quickly and easily put our emergency-only Twitter feed on the home page. Wrote a procedure document and shared it with Eric D and Susie. Chatted briefly with Scott who recommended a northwest African restaurant called Bissap Baobab as a great place for dinner. Lucia is back from a week's vacation and has recently acquired a 2-month-old kitten that is black on the sides and white down the middle front. She has named it Oreo. Updated Adobe Reader for OS X to 8.1.2. I think this update failed with some error last time I tried to install it but it worked this time. Made live the notice of our Flickr project and sent e-mail notices as well. This is the first that students officially heard about the project. I also customized an announcement message for our recent grads. Lunch: dos enchiladas from Carmelina's. Met with Kurt G, Cesar G, and Quinn H to discuss next steps in our transition to using DLS support. The meeting went well; I always enjoy talking to these guys. Mouse ordering followup for Eric: his 2nd mouse has been hanging out in Fresno according to DHL. Discovered on our IT mailing list a long discussion thread about Windows workstations and servers crashing since Thursday last week. This was the same stuff as the weird problems I encountered on Friday, so I spent pretty much the entire afternoon reviewing the messages in the thread, investigating the data on our server, and compiling my own report to post to the mailing list which I finished just before 6. Home. Took photos of the front of the house. When I got home the garage was really hot and humid. I told Patrick that something was wrong but he didn't notice anything wrong. When I inspected the laundry room, I found that the tube leading from the dryer to the outside had come off. Patrick repaired it later. I repaired the sliding glass door to the tub in our bathroom—the wheel attachment had come loose. Organized my sewing notions into new plastic ArtBin boxes that I just got in the mail from Jo-Ann. Processed and uploaded photos. Dinner at home with Patrick: lemon chicken, peas, potatoes au gratin. Began organizing Flickr sets into more collections. I forgot to mention that on Saturday or Sunday I chatted with my mom on the phone. She wanted me to walk her through setting up an email account with Yahoo! but after 20 minutes I asked her to wait until dad got home so that he could help her with it. She seemed okay with that. Installed Apple Software Updates for OS 10.5.4. Folded laundry that Patrick had washed and dried earlier. Installed Brother printer drivers update for OS X. Stretches. Weight training: superslow shrug, superslow lateral raise, rear raise, wrist curl. Stretches. Late meal: lowfat blueberry yogurt, chunky soup, hot nonfat milk.