Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Followup with student GL about email address change. Followup with cwk about the domain for Joel's blog. Began altering the supp app forms to include a watermark that says SAMPLE ONLY now that our admissions deadline has passed. Had trouble with Acrobat—I would apply the watermark but it would not show up. It fortunately worked for one file—all.pdf—so I worked around the problem by copying that and deleting the other pages I didn't need. Ultimately I did not resolve the problem with Acrobat not displaying the watermark file I selected. Chatted briefly with Joel about why pop-up windows are bad, gave him a few tips on writing for the web as well as links to our web style guide. Staff meeting. Lunch: chicken caesar salad from the cafeteria. Must remember in the future to use the packed-to-go salads only as a last resort—croutons were somewhat soggy. Helped Maria C and Steve H with an emergency about a PDF file that needed to be taken offline. Helped Scott with a problem with PharmAdMIT 2009. PharmAdMIT had crashed on him while he was in the middle of sending a letter. We deleted temp files both as him and as admin. I think that's what solved it. More supp app forms work, completed it. Joel discovered today that someone swiped a bunch of pens from his floaty pen collection. He thought I was playing a joke on him, but I was not, and I don't think anyone in the office would play such a cruel joke. Web edits to PHPM course descriptions for Carol. 15 items in my inbox! While waiting to meet Patrick at what used to be Muddy Waters across the street from BriKel's, BriKel appeared on their way to dinner, and Patrick showed up a few seconds later. Great timing! We went to Home Restaurant and chatted mostly about the election. They were thinking about attending the No on 8 party at the Westin afterwards, but weren't sure if they would go. After dinner, Patrick and I went to Paul's election party, where we watched the coverage on television and surfed the web for additional data. Both McCain's and Obama's speeches were excellent, and I was surprised by McCain's generosity. We were very pleased with Obama's stunning victory not simply in the historic event of the first African-American president but also because this represented to us a marked change in the direction our country has taken over the past 8 years of George W. Bush. At times like these there is always talk of putting aside differences which always seems empty to me, and for me the proof will be 6 or 8 months from now. At least the world doesn't hate us as much as they did yesterday, right? I could feel everyone in the room thinking, "Finally I can travel abroad again!" Well, maybe when we all have a little more money than we do now. The results were not in for Proposition 8, the initiative to ban same-sex marriage, even by the time we went to bed around 10:00 or 10:30 PM, so we turned in not knowing its fate.