Thursday, June 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.