March 2009
Summary: First visit to Fresh at Ruby Skye; Justin Bond at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko with Patrick, psychobauble, Nate; Dinner at La Mediterranee with quantum13 and Patrick; Dessert at Chow on Church with quantum13, benca, and Patrick; First meal at Jardiniere with JCB and James.
Dates on this page
Sun Mar 1, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Nap. Lunch at home with Patrick: vegetable soup, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Watched disc 3 of When the Levees Broke by myself on public library DVD. Snack: Jelly Belly jelly beans. Dinner at home with Patrick: chicken korma, biryani, naan. Watched The Kite Runner on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Spent today and yesterday feeling under the weather—an infrequent cough, achiness in my shoulders. Paid a bill.
Mon Mar 2, 2009
Called in sick. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Read from Watchmen. Snack: fat free fig newtons. Read from Watchmen. Lunch: Joe's O's with crackers, peppermint tisane. Finished reading Watchmen. Stretches. Dinner at home with Patrick: oven-roasted beer chicken, steamed carrots, hot water. To bed early.
Tue Mar 3, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Laptop maintenance for student JS: concluded that it has hardware problems. Still under warranty, contact Dell for support and service. Chatted with Joel about change of course schedule web pages that must go live asap. 76 items in my inbox, feeling stressed. SCWG meeting. Lots of calendar management. Lots of small web edits: removed the course waiver for a course, current students news: added amount of proceeds for Red Dress Fashion Show, pointed preview session confirmations to Shirin for a few weeks, removed a university from the approved course list list, confirmed linkchecking set up for BTS. Made live lots of admissions and entering students pages changes for JWG, notified staff. Followup with student CT about computer help. Diversity town hall with Sharon Y. Listserv management. Chatted with Susie about the BTS website. Calendar management. Wrote a transition heads up for BPS website owners and coders. Listserv management. Attempted to install the software JWG needed for a WebEx conference: "I installed something successfully, but I'm not sure if it was the right thing. WebEx offers no way for an admin to test that the installation was successful when your conference is not in progress. So it might work, it might not. :-(" Listserv management. Calendar management. Huge headache. Dinner at home with Patrick: thin-crust pepperoni pizza, creamy corn and lemongrass soup. Prepared a computer upgrade strategy for Patrick, who is overdue to replace a Dell Latitude 700m.
Wed Mar 4, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Web edits for pharm sci resources for Carol. Web and email edits for provisional admission pages for JWG. Spinach salad with sliced mushroom, baby carrots, broccoli, grapes, currants, ranch dressing, crumbled peppered crackers, high fiber V8 juice, orange juice, hot water. Coded the new dean's update. Edited the home page to add the dean's update box and a box to feature a new blog by student ST. Coded an update to the PharmD program description for Mary Anne, Cindy, and Susie. Began online sexual harassment prevention training for supervisors, which is required annually of all supervisors at UC. Began work on the new communications section of our website. Recoded the feature box for ST, sent to Susie for review, then made it live after her fast approval. Dinner at home with Patrick: tacos, mac and cheese. Left this note on Netflix about The Kite Runner (2007): "I wasn't particularly impressed with this film. Plot had some very unlikely turns and coincidences. Once you get past the shock of the delicate subject matter there's not much more to the story." Another one, for When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (2006): "Commendable for its timeliness, breadth, and conscious attempt of balanced viewpoints, this film only scratches the surface of the hundreds of thousands of stories birthed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005." Uploaded photos to Flickr, ran into errors and subsequently lost data that I had entered in Uploadr. Upgraded Flickr Uploadr to version 3.1.4. Uploaded a film clip to YouTube. Stretches. Weight training: crunch. Installed Firefox 3.0.7.
Thu Mar 5, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Chatted with Patrick. To work. DAL teleconference. Chatted with James—he's having trouble with his home computer, so I've agreed to help him out with it this weekend. Supp app followup meeting with Cindy, David H, JWG, JCB, Scott. Backed up website data to portable hard drive. Reported a problem with Outlook prompting users for logins and passwords to OAAIS. Followup with Cesar on that problem—he asked users to restart Windows. Posted the homepage boxes for dean's update and ST's blog to the current students page. Followup on delivering photos of screen corruption to student JS for computer maintenance. Worked in Outlook 2007 but not in Entourage 2008. I guess Entourage 2008 has trouble sending 4 and 5 MB file attachments. Checked out the new Public Affairs calendar website. I love the clean URLs. The graphic design doesn't have PubAff's usual polish. Sent Outlook and Firefox tips to Shirin. BTS conference call with Maria F, Susie L, and Eric D. Lots of BTS edits. Worked on the communications page. 28 items in my inbox—whew, looking better. Lunch today was a leftover sandwich from yesterday followed by a late afternoon snack of a fruit bar. Before leaving work, Lucia reports that the password problem was still happening after Cesar had said it was fixed, so I told her that she should report it if she still sees it in the morning. Dinner at home with Patrick: tortellini with sausage in marinara sauce, hot water. Dessert: lowfat cherry yogurt, guaifenesin tablets, hot water. Watched Raising Arizona (1987) on Netflix DVD at home with Patrick: "A must-see for the cleverly crafted hickster dialogue, the perfect deliveries and performances, and the hilarious chase scenes and situations." Stretches. Weight training: crunch, leg lift, side-lying leg lift. Stretches.
Fri Mar 6, 2009
Woke early. Warm-up cardio. Shower. Troubleshot problems with home email connecting to the mail server—the problem resolved itself after a while. My favorite breakfast at the cafeteria. Met with Susie: BTS site review. Met with Eric: BTS site review. Lunch by myself at Park Chow: medium cobb salad, hot water. Updated current students calendar. Updated academic calendar web page and PDF for 2008-2009 to reflect graduation ceremony date. BTS styling. 25 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick: italian sausage in bbq sauce, broiled skewers of shrimp and vegetables, steamed peas. Watched Heroes season 3, "Cold Wars" on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. To bed early.
Sat Mar 7, 2009
Woke around 3 AM, couldn't sleep, accidentally had left the heater running too hot before I went to bed, turned off the heater, opened the window to cool off the room. The iMac freaked out—something to do with the screen saver kicking in but I hadn't changed settings and this never happened before. I took a video of the problem, restarted. All is well. Documents in InDesign in Windows were opening unusually slowly, so I defragged and ran a disk check in Windows Vista. Stretches. Weight training: kneeling kickback. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Cut my hair, showered. Prepared new tip cards for Dianne. My USB drive accidentally got erased a few days ago. VMware Fusion has no longer been detecting USB drives properly in the past few months and I have not had time to troubleshoot it. The USB drive got erased somehow when I left it plugged in and restarted Vista. Vista hung during restart like it sometimes does, and when I next opened the USB drive it said that it needed to be formatted. On the USB drive I store only data that already exists at home or work, so there was no data loss, but I realized now I need to have some kind of synch folders set up for my folder of security tools, so I began setting that up. Went to JCB's, helped him fix his computer—we had to clean reinstall XP, and the computer was having trouble getting bootstrapped with the right network and graphics card drivers. Did I say I would never buy another Dell monitor again? The things are inexpensive and good quality, but I could not get XP to recognize the drivers no matter what I tried. Yeesh. Brunch at Home Restaurant. Met Patrick at a coffee shop where I had a nonfat almond latte. We had dinner at Thai Chef, then rented a film from Superstar Video.
Sun Mar 8, 2009
Cleaned the tub and shower. Showered. Medicine cabinet velcro maintenance. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Lunch: leftover chicken curry, leftover corn and lemongrass soup. Nap. Printed Dianne's tip card. Dinner at psychobauble and Nate's with psychobauble, Nate, Phil, Drew, Danny, Dave, Quyen, Paul, Sandip.
Mon Mar 9, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Computer maintenance for student AP: remove and reinstall Boot Camp with XP SP2. BTS work: added olive background white coat vignette image, added copyright and privacy pages. Received the following error when attempting to install Windows XP Service Pack 3 in Boot Camp: "There is not enough disk space on C:\WINDOWS\$NtServicePackUninstall$ to install Service Pack 3. Setup requires an additional 4 megabytes of free space or if you also want to archive the files for uninstallation. Setup requires 4 additional megabytes of free space. Free additional space on your hard disk and then try again." Tried the fix found on windowsreference.com in which you open regedit and go to [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\ Software\ Microsoft\ Windows\ CurrentVersion\ Setup] and add a new string value called BootDir and set that value to C:\ and didn't have time today to see if that worked. Shuttle to Laurel Heights. Met with Leah B from Adaptive Path and David K from Public Affairs to discuss our needs for ucsf.edu. 1-on-1 meeting with Susie scheduled, but I hadn't planned lunch properly today, so I left to get a sandwich and fries from the cafe at the Jewish Community Center across the street—very friendly, great food. Web team meeting with Susie L and Eric D. Shuttle back to Parnassus. Listserv management. Continued Win XP setup for student AP. Chatted with Lucia about mail folders and rules and mailbox too full. Completed print stylesheets check for Firefox. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover steak and sausage, leftover creamed corn, cous cous. Watched 300 (2006) on DVD borrowed from JCB. Weight training: dumbbell press, front raise, lateral raise, tricep kickback, crunch. Late meal: high fiber V8 juice, hot nonfat milk, lowfat cherry yogurt.
Tue Mar 10, 2009
Woke at 3 AM coughing, couldn't get back to sleep. Researched web hosting providers. Patrick woke and went to tai chi practice. Back to bed at 5:45 AM. Woke around 7:20 AM. Weight training: kneeling kickback, sidelying leg lift. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Shower. Graduation documents and web pages update for Cindy. Reviewed furniture installation proceedings for Eric D. Lunch: leftover sandwich from yesterday. Began troubleshooting slow computer behavior for student CT. BTS styling: IE screen stylesheets. 32 items in my inbox. I forgot to mention that recently I experienced extraordinary service from Delessio and from the Jewish Community Center. At Delessio last Saturday morning a friendly man took one minute out of his day to genuinely welcome me with a smile, ask me if it was my first visit there, and also chat with me briefly. At the JCC every worker I encountered had a smile, one food worker complimented me on my Zara wool coat, the food was excellent, and the pastries were surprisingly affordable. Dinner at home with Patrick: cow stew.
Wed Mar 11, 2009
Woke at 2 AM coughing, went back to sleep. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise, superslow lateral raise, superslow tricep kickback, superslow dumbbell fly. Stretches. Shower. Began investigating PHP/MySQL reporting tools for work. Visited the doctor about the cough. To work. Early lunch: leftovers. Continued laptop maintenance for student CT. Helped student PA with connecting an LG cellphone to campus wireless (failed connecting to SSID UCSF, worked connecting to SSID UCSFnet but we couldn't find the login and password dialog) and with connecting a Windows PDA to campus wireless (failed due to some error message which indicated that the battery needed to be charged). Finished staging graduation ceremony details for Cindy (FAQs). IE7 stylesheet work for BTS. I thought I would have to resort to a conditional stylesheet but I added a height:100% to #page and now the footer area on the home page is fine. Everything is done except there's a small problem with the footer that I will look at tomorrow. Student AP picked up a laptop. Finished laptop maintenance for student CT. Dinner at home with Patrick: cow stew leftovers with vegetables over rice, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Investigated nightclubs to go dancing at during the week. Watched Howl's Moving Castle on Netflix DVD with Patrick. I didn't like this crazy movie that much, but the animation is beautiful. I've decided today that Windows Photo Gallery in Windows Vista is so slow that it's unusable.
Thu Mar 12, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. DAL teleconference. Chatted with Eric D about image resolution and InDesign and ResourceSpace. Carbonite backup for Mac was announced on Monday and today was the first day I had to visit their web page describing it. It doesn't say how much it costs, which is annoying—the website mentions a "free trial" and the promo email I received says "risk-free 15-day trial." Sent them an email asking how much it costs. Fielded a request from Sue A about a photo she needed. Tried logging in to Google Voice for the first time and encountered an error: "Invalid request." BTS stylesheet work: screen in IE7, print in IE7. Helped JWG resolve a problem with presentation setup for our MacBook in HSW303. They couldn't find the systray icon to change screen resolution. On the phone I got them to the Display control panel, but it would be faster if I went down to the room, so I did. In Windows, I could not get the projector to recognize the MacBook. 640 x 480 x 32 did not work. Unplugging and replugging the connector did not work. More stylesheet work. Lunch from the cafeteria: meatloaf, mashed potatoes, gravy, corn off the cob. Laptop maintenance for the white MacBook. Restored the missing icon for changing screen resolution. Encountered the following error message when attempting to install Microsoft Updates. "Some updates could not be installed. The following updates were not installed: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 Service Pack 1 and .NET Framework 3.5 Family Update (KB951847) x86. (Close)" The hard drive had run out of disk space, and the update repeatedly failed to install with no explanation that that had happened. I uninstalled Acrobat 8 Pro. Helped Bonnie H by documenting my IDAF affiliate screen update procedure and sending it to her. Completed screen and print stylesheet testing for both IE7 and Firefox 3. Calendar management. More laptop maintenance. Connected to UCSFwpa for the first time ever. Got it to work in OS X on our old MacBook. The process was not intuitive, but it worked. Didn't need complicated settings—just my MyAccess login and password—but UCSFwpa didn't show up all the time when expected in the list of available access points. To home. Dinner at home with Patrick: chinese chicken salad. Bought 2 half-off tickets through goldstar.com for Justin Bond in Rites of Spring at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko on Saturday, March 21. Picked up a dormant project: restoring Flickr photos that I had lost in my last hard drive crash. I had downloaded originals from Flickr using some utility whose name I can't remember now and the files are a mess. I no longer have the original filenames, and the creation datestamps are messed up. I switched from OS X to Windows Vista because Windows Explorer provides better metadata views than OS 10.5.6 does. Sorting on the date taken field in Windows Explorer gives me the exact view I need. Stretches. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback. More photo restoration. Weight training: superslow dumbbell row, shrug. More photo restoration. Downloaded and installed IrfanView 4.23. Paid bills. Late meal: leftover chinese chicken salad. Signed up to use vark.com.
Fri Mar 13, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: leg lifts 3 ways (leg lift, sidelying inner thigh lift, sidelying leg lift), kneeling kickback, crunch, hip thrust. Stretches. Shower. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. BTS work: added back the copyright page, linked the privacy page, added various standard error pages, began Safari testing. New MacBook hung with gay beach ball of death while attempting to install Apple Software Updates. Could not gracefully shut down no matter what I tried. Cold restart. Installing updates a few at a time seemed to fix it. Submitted the following problem report to OAAIS: "PharmD student reports that when she logs in to OWA her folder names appear either as question marks or as Chinese characters instead of English characters. I asked her if at one time she connected to e-mail using a computer with Chinese language settings in Windows and she said yes, once, with her mom's computer. She wants the folder names restored to English if possible. I confirmed that the problem happens in Firefox 3.0.7 for Mac as well as IE7 for Windows. We looked in OWA Options on both platforms and found no language settings other than spellcheck, which did not fix the problem when we set it to English. Please reset the language setting to English for her on the server side if that's possible. Or, let us know how she can restore the language to English. (To me it seems obvious that question marks appear when a universal font which includes Chinese characters is not available to the operating system and thus to the browser.) Thanks! p.s. I found the pages at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997435.aspx and http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996640(EXCHG.65).aspx but could not figure them out—they appear to be related to the server side." Helped student IP with questions about Microsoft Office. Listserv management. Helped Susie find the path to a shared network folder. Lunch from the cafeteria: cheddar junior burger, onion rings. More BTS work: recreated the copyright leftnav image, more error page work, adjusted the temporary code for the Flash placeholder and the tagline, revised the footer, purchased an image from istockphoto and inserted it, small edits for Susie. UCSF Comm followup. Calendar management. Coded an html email from the dean. Couldn't get access to the shared network folder that Cesar had set up for us last May, so I walked the file down to Sue and installed it. Listserv management. More BTS work: added links to co-chair profiles. 27 items in my inbox. Chatted briefly online with Nate. Dinner at home with Patrick: pig chops, gnocchi, steamed spinach, hot water.
Sat Mar 14, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: superslow concentration curl, superslow lateral raise, superslow dumbbell press, dumbbell fly, crunch. Stretches. Cut my hair. Showered. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Realized that my camera's date has been set incorrectly I guess since the daylight saving time change so a number of my photos have incorrect datestamps in the metadata. Corrected the date and time on the camera. I don't know an easy way to fix the metadata, so I'm leaving it alone. Lunch with Patrick at Kingdom of Dumplings (1713 Taraval, San Francisco, California, USA): shanghai dumplings, pork and shrimp dumplings, vegetarian dumplings, radish cake, onion pancake. $28 after a $2 tip. Service was very inattentive. There was about a 10-minute interval between the time when we finished our dumplings and when the radish cake and onion pancake arrived. It would have been better if all of it had been timed to arrive together. The food was okay. Patrick was disppointed with the shanghai dumplings but I thought they were fine. One radish cake was unacceptably burned on the underside, but Patrick chose to not send it back. Vacuumed. Uploaded photos to Flickr. Spotcleaned the carpet. Nap with Patrick. Drove to psychobauble and Nate's. We talked about iPhone lust, video game world generators, websites, Amazon Kindle, more. Dinner with psychobauble and Nate at Stelline (415-626-4292, 330 Gough Street, San Francisco, California, USA). Excellent service and food. I had beef stew over polenta, which was satisfyingly hearty—perfect for the cold evening. All-paper to-go container—very earth-friendly. Recommended.
Sun Mar 15, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Stretches. Weight training: various leg lifts, lyingdown kickback, crunch. Snack: leftover cow stew from last night. Prepared taxes. Submitted federal. Lunch at home by myself: chinese chicken salad without the chicken. Nap. Got energy drinks and cash at Safeway. Fresh at Ruby Skye with DJ Jamie J. Sanchez. Patrick and I had never been before, and we both had a lot of fun. Music was gay house, sexy go go boys wore Andrew Christian underwear, and the crowd was fresh as advertised. I had brought earplugs—very useful. Those we knew there: Emery, Matt W, Rick, Brad, JY, Adrian, Jonathan G, tall David. Late ramen meal at Katana-Ya (415-771-1280, 430 Geary at Mason, San Francisco, California, USA) with JY and Adrian. We talked about employment, Atlantic cruises, sleeping while sitting up, iPhone, cellphones, Chinese, Buddhism, Brazil, kissing in public, websites, graphic design, Javascript, Facebook, finding old friends, defriending, New Orleans, Patrick's mom, birthdays, brunch, Daniel and Mark, cars, Ryan, Galen, Yuki, more. Gave them a ride home. Home.
Mon Mar 16, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Helped student AC with a question about phishing. Listserv management. Followup with Bonnie H about ICRD and IDAF. Small web edits for Susie. Lunch: salad from the cafeteria, about $3.50. DAL meeting all afternoon with Joseph, Mike, Susie, and Eric D. Some BTS review with Eric D. Researched reporting software, couldn't find anything good for what I'm seeking. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled chicken boobs, steamed broccoli, baked potato. Watched Die Hard (1988) on Netflix DVD with Patrick.
Tue Mar 17, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped student AL with a question about a phishing attempt. Prepared images for Eric V for graduation tickets. Notified web hosting users of scheduled maintenance. iPhone 3.0 announcement sounds really great. Reviewed Eric V's proposed graduation ticket mockup. Calendar management. Followup with JCB about getting code from Jon J. Lunch. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Doctor appointment. Back to work for a bit. Dinner at Elephant Bar with Mom Ryan, Danny, Drew, Phil, Patrick, Tony D.
Wed Mar 18, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: kneeling kickback, various leg lifts, crunch, one-legged calf raise. Cardio cool-down: 10 minutes. Shower. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Telecommute day. Yesterday our email administrators upgraded Outlook Web Access from (I think) Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. This caused some problems. Previously, many students didn't bother to include their domain and a backslash when logging in—they would say "ffarm" instead of "campus\ffarm". The old OWA didn't require it, but the new OWA does, so it appeared to them that they could no longer log in. Another problem is that the link to the spam firewall on the VPN home page after logging in is now broken. The workaround is to use VPN to visit https://cuda.ucsf.edu. JWG's computer got infected with Troj/Virtum-Gen and Mal/EncPk-CZ. Symptom: I removed the viruses, deleted all temp files, cleared browser history, cleared system restore, restarted Windows, rescanned in Sophos and Defender. Lunch: burrito from a nearby burritoria. Lots of students needing help with e-mail. Worked on the forthcoming Communications section of our website. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Watched Heroes season 3 ("Exposed") on Netflix instant watch with Patrick. In the Netflix website, it's really hard to identify my friends because Netflix displays cryptic initials instead of real names or chosen names. The harder ones are those that have initials that don't match anything in my address book. I can sometimes make a good guess based on city (e.g., WK and bmh), but some are impossible for me to figure out even if I am shown what films they are watching (e.g., mvs). My gripe is more with Netflix than with my friends. If Netflix has established that 2 accounts are friends, why must they have the cryptic initials? Can't you presume at that point that the friends know each others' names? Also, if I have more than one friend whose initials are the same, I can't easily tell them apart. Stretches. Weight training: superslow front raise. Stretches. Late meal: nonfat vanilla yogurt, high fiber V8 juice, hot nonfat milk, vegetable beef soup.
Thu Mar 19, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. DAL teleconference call. Helped student DL with installing Lexi-Comp and optimizing Windows. Snack: tortilla chips. Computer requirements meeting with John M. Very late lunch: chicken soft taco from Carmelina's: $2.50. More students needing help with email. Calendar management. BTS: reviewed proposed leftnav images for news archive section. Followup with Kurt G and Valerie S about MCCA. Followup with student SY about question marks in OWA due to Chinese language and missing universal font. Ran Disk Check on the silver laptop after yesterday's BSOD that JWG had encountered. 24 items in my inbox. Dinner at home with Patrick: vegetarian spaghettini in marinara sauce. Watched Heroes season 3 "Shades of Gray" on Netflix instant watch with Patrick.
Fri Mar 20, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. Facebook meeting with Marie P, Devi V, Susie L. Servint billing followup. Sent Susie stats on the new BTS site. BTS news archive image work. Helped student MS with drug database software options. Small BTS edits for Susie. More help with email not working, this time for residents (who I believe have no official computer support). Lunch: Panda Express to go. My fortune: Be adventuresome. Try a new look. At the UCSF Communicators Network meeting today Doug L presented blogs and blogging, I presented RSS feeds, and David H presented Flickr. Calendar management: DLS data center migration. Network cabling installation followup. Chatted briefly with Sue A. Email followup with links to the group. Dinner at home with Tony D, Mom Ryan, and Patrick: non-spicy jambalaya, side salad, warm baguette, Smart Balance Light.
Sat Mar 21, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: various lower body. Stretches. Cardio cool-down: 5 minutes. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Helped Aaron with computer stuff: migrated data from old computer to new, hardened and optimized the new computer, wiped the old computer with dban. Lunch: leftover jambalaya for Aaron and Patrick, mushroom risotto and grilled chicken for me. Dessert for me: one tagalong Girl Scout cookie. More work on Aaron's computers. Fussed with the Westinghouse digital photo frame which has grown flaky (or maybe it always was?). The problem was that images were somehow getting corrupted and appear with discoloration or a weird barlike pattern. Data transfer to the embedded 128 MB of storage is extremely slow. I ended up using a 32 MB SD card instead. Used more current photos. For a next one of these I get it will be nice to have wireless. An Apple iFrame? Snack: strawberry lowfat yogurt, one fig newton, one beef tamale, hot water. Nap with Patrick. Dinner at psychobauble and Nate's with psychobauble, Nate, Patrick: mushroom and chicken lasagne, salad, buttered baguette. Afterwards the four of us went to the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel. Muni along Van Ness (bus) and California (cable car) worked surprisingly well for us tonight. It was psychobauble and Nate's first time. The greeting staff at the Tonga Room seemed really disorganized. We arrived around 8 or 8:30 PM and waited about 5 minutes behind a party of 4 before I could tell anyone what we wanted—just one drink each in the bar for 4 people before a 10 PM show—and the man I spoke to said he had to check on availability and walked off. We waited another 10 minutes before we were seated by a woman greeter. We never saw that man again. The drinks were just okay. Patrick had a mai tai, psychobauble had a strawberry daiquiri, I had pina colada, Nate had a scorpion. About $21 per person after tip and $7 entertainment charge. We probably should have just gone to Top of the Mark. Afterwards we saw Justin Bond at the Rrazz Room at Hotel Nikko. We arrived at 9:30 PM for a 10:00 PM show expecting to be seated in about 15 or 20 minutes. However, the Paula West show that preceded Justin Bond's show ran long, and the lounge area was already full, so there was no where for us to go. We were forced to stand in line for what ended up being about an hour, and by the start of Bond's show I was tired and annoyed, and I sat on the floor in silent protest. We now know what Paula West's dog looks like. When finally the Rrazz Room man returned to seat us, he took psychobauble and Nate in without asking if we were all together. After a few extra minutes of delay, we were finally seated properly and together. A man dressed as a geisha was one of the guests who was seated before us, and he pleasantly introduced himself as Clayton to our group. Bond dressed in a dress made of fishnet, safety pins, and laminated tranny porn and sang songs and told funny stories. Our Lady J accompanied energetically on piano. Drinks: I had a mint kiss and a hot russian, Patrick had a mojito. We didn't see or hear what psychobauble and Nate ordered. There was some strange, long delay getting their first round of drinks. We were entertained. Bond's honesty, unique perspectives, and creative talents make him an important voice for our world. One of the stage lights in the Rrazz Room over psychobauble and Nate's heads clearly had no safety cable. Whoever ran the light and sound for the show did an excellent job. Afterwards we all realized that we had forgotten to bring umbrellas. We thought about taking a cab for about a minute before just walking to Powell Station and catching one of the last trains back to Van Ness Station. Dried off at psychobauble and Nate's for a minute. Drove home in the rain. Late meal by myself: leftover jambalaya.
Sun Mar 22, 2009
Breakfast at home by myself: 2 sausage, 2 eggs scrambled easy, 2 biscuits, strawberry lowfat yogurt. Various house chores and organizing. Lunch: potstickers. Cut my hair and showered. Nap. Cleaned the dish rack. Dinner at home by myself: leftover salad.
Mon Mar 23, 2009
Warm-up cardio: 16 minutes. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Picked up a projector on loan from clin pharm (Lilia). Alerted other web developers to last week's release of IE8. Installed IE8 into Vista (Boot Camp). Our home page has minor display problems. Secondary pages look fine after a quick peek. BTS meeting with Ingrid K, Lisa C, Maria F, Susie L, and Eric D. Calendar management. Met with Eric D and Susie L about BTS followup. Chatted briefly with Eric V about the job postings form. I made one small fix and now we're about ready to make it live. Lots of small BTS edits for Susie. Helped student BA with email connection problems. Fielded a question from Joel about email connection problems. Fielded a question from Shirin about email connection problems. Both Shirin and Joel reported long hold times with OAAIS customer support. Submitted a ticket to OAAIS about missing Web Themes for Sue A's computer. Emailed myself a reminder: "block ie8 for osaca?" Reviewed a proposed web page for Mark B. Followup with Luke T about email connection problems. Lots of small BTS edits for Susie. Helped student LS with mailbox too full. Listserv management. Unsubscribed from EMC's Retrospect mailing list. Chatted with Cesar about html email and Outlook templates and Outlook 2007 and Web Themes. Vacated my office to let a student take an exam. Late lunch: fried rice, black pepper chicken, potstickers from Panda Express. My fortune: Seek friendship and you will find it. Helped Shirin H with laptop setup. PHPM sample schedule edits for Carol. Lots of small BTS edits and styling for Susie. Helped student EG with a question about a mailing list that I don't administer. Chatted briefly with Mike K about email connection problems. Helped student PA with a question about email from unfamiliar people. Helped student JC with a question about VPN. Helped Devi V with a question about Facebook. Delivered a student photo to Chris C. Back in my office. Created Santi and Kayser html email for Sue A using Outlook template workaround suggested by Cesar. Dinner at La Mediterranee with quantum13 and Patrick. Dessert at Chow on Church with quantum13, benca, and Patrick. I asked benca about Active Directory issues in OS X and we came to an agreement that I would report unable to log in problems if I decided to start using AD again with OS X.
Tue Mar 24, 2009
Stretches. Cardio warm-up: 20 minutes. Weight training: superslow tricep kickback. Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Graduation 2009 edits in InDesign. Image weeding meeting with Susie. Susie and I chatted with Bob D about the project. Lunch: burrito #4 from Carmelina's, water. Made live the job postings pages for Eric V. Made live the revised PHPM sample schedule for Carol. Made live the graduation ceremony pages for Cindy. This is the first year we have an FAQ. Created a map and directions letterhalf (2-up landscape) sheet in InDesign for the graduation ceremony to help people get from the Palace of Fine Arts to the Golden Gate Club. Student MB stopped by with a complimentary latte to chat about switching to Mac. Flickr work: invited lots of photos to our groups. More graduation ceremony map work. 42 items in my inbox. Blocked off time for high-priority projects. New BTS subsite followup with Maria F and Lisa C. Dinner at home with Patrick: lemon chicken with asparagus risotto. Played Wallace and Gromit's Grand Adventures episode 1 "Fright of the Bumblebees" by Telltale Games for about an hour. It didn't work perfectly in Vista in VMware Fusion, but it worked well enough for us to enjoy it. Cardio warm-up: 6 minutes. Late meal: leftover spaghetti with marinara sauce. Stretches. Weight training: superslow dumbbell fly, superslow curl, superslow lateral raise, crunch.
Wed Mar 25, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. Followup with student PN about mailbox too full. WeID work for Rodney. Began unwrapping supp app code from Jon J. Graduation ceremony map edits and final for Cindy. Made live the calendars for 2009-2010 for Cindy. Set up my work briefcase in Windows to synch files to my usb drive. Also did the same for software installers that I keep handy on the usb drive. MCCA followup with Kurt G and Valerie S—still have not received the expected email. Posted a notice about our office closure on Fri Mar 27. Fixed our website so that it looks correct in IE8 (with compatibility mode off). Made live spring schedules for Lucia. Doctor appointment. Shuttle to Mission Bay. Took lots of photos of building exteriors. Chatted with students PN and KH. BTS celebration. Met and chatted briefly with Peter L and Christina C. Met and chatted with Robert in Shuvo R's lab. Chatted with Richard T and Eric D and briefly with Mary Anne and others. The party's caterer used Bambu plates which I learned later are made of 100% organically grown bamboo and are disposable ("fully biodegrade in 4-6 months and contain no bleaches or dyes"). Dinner at home with Patrick: coconut poppyseed chicken, thai-style lime rice pilaf. Watched Die Hard 2 (Die Harder) on Netflix DVD with Patrick.
Thu Mar 26, 2009
Stretches. Cardio warm-up: 19 minutes. Skipped breakfast. To work. Breakfast: a fruit bar. BTS: inserted a photo. Conference call: only Susie and I showed up—weird. Unloaded yesterday's Mission Bay photos from the camera, uploaded them to the school's Flickr account. Small edits for the PHPM faculty page. Prepared and sent a long email about domain name selection for Lisa C, Maria F, and Susie L. Redirected a request from grad student MD to OAAIS. Redirected a request from student TA to OSL and/or OAAIS. Checked in with Mark B about proxy settings following last week's OWA upgrade—not sure if proxy settings were affected. Sent Outlook and Firefox tips to Shirin. Calendar management. Snack: raisins. Lunch from the cafeteria: mushroom pizza slice, small salad, ranch dressing, one third of a peanut butter cookie: $5.12. Conference call appointment mixup. We hold the conference call now with me, Susie, and Mike L. Chatted with Susie about CDDS and ACDRS. psychobauble reported to me that he saw some comment spam on one of my Flickr photo pages, and by the time I checked it had already been removed. It made me realize how amazing it is that Flickr is free of spam. I can't recall ever seeing any! Great job, Flickr team! Prepared and delivered 2 new BTS subsites to Lisa C. Listserv management. Helped student CP by email with Entourage 2008 setup. Reviewed supp app code from Jon J and David H—we need SSL certs. Asked Cindy and JCB to decide on a domain name. Confirmed that Fantastico is installed and that the Drupal installation is available. Tomorrow's a holiday for UCSF—thank you, Cesar Chavez! Dinner at home with Patrick: tubular pasta in marinara sauce, dinner roll, Smart Balance Light. Downloaded photos from the camera to the computer. Napped.
Fri Mar 27, 2009
Alarm clock mixup, woke up too late to go dancing after last night's nap. Stretches. Cardio warm-up: 25 minutes. Usual oatmeal breakfast. Computed. Stretches. Weight training: various lower body. Installed Flock 2.0 for OS X, played with it for a few minutes. Shower. Sorted, archived, and shredded documents. Snack: tortilla chips and salsa, lowfat cherry yogurt. Completed filing taxes. Nap.
Sat Mar 28, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To JCB's. Helped JCB with his computers. He recently bought a Dell Mini 9, which is just tolerable for me to type on with some mental adjustments, but the screen doesn't push far enough open to be comfortable for the neck. It's missing a numeric keypad plus sign which is useful in Windows Explorer for adjusting all columns instantly so you can read everything (Ctrl+NumericKeypadPlus), but probably no one else in the world will miss that. The Page Up key didn't work properly, but Page Down and every other key did. Otherwise it seemed like a pretty nice piece of hardware. It's super small and super light, and it works. JCB got it with Windows XP. Since my last visit, he couldn't get Microsoft Backup working on his desktop computer as expected. I looked at the configuration and could not figure it out either (there was an unresolvable permissions problem with the scheduled task that it had created), so I said let's just give up on it and install something else. He's backing up to an external hard drive. I reformatted the external hard drive and then installed CrashPlan home, which was very simple to configure and get started backing up. A great first impression. 10 GB through USB 2.0 took under an hour. Pizza slice at Cybelle's. To home. Patrick and I drove out to walk the 1,000 steps trail north of Baker Beach, but it was too cold for Patrick, so we aborted the plan. We drove to Laurel Village where it was indeed warmer, walked around, visited the Jewish Community Center, bought a few gifts at Books Inc, bought note cards at Papyrus. Patrick got a Jamba Juice, and we ate on a sidewalk bench in the sun eating strawberries and tortilla chips we had brought along. To home. Installed CrashPlan on my home computer. After today's 2 installations of CrashPlan, and since we're getting federal and state tax refunds (woo!) I bought two 1.5-terabyte bare hard drives—$130 each—with the intention of not only implementing CrashPlan for us (backing up and then shipping the drive off to a friend for continued offsite protection) but also to back up Patrick's forthcoming new computer (also courtesy of our tax refunds) and to offer offsite backup to a few close friends. Now that the basic home version of CrashPlan is free, there's no excuse to avoid it. For what you get—free onsite or offsite storage limited only by your ability to purchase hard drive space—it's absolutely the best deal going for nearly all home computer users who can set up a backup buddy. My current recommendation for backup is for Mac users to use Time Machine locally and CrashPlan offsite. For Windows and Linux users, use anything that's not CrashPlan locally and CrashPlan offsite. I still believe that you need both local and offsite backup because it is likely that one of the two will eventually fail you but far less likely that both will fail you at the same time. I recommend that you do not use any single method of backup for both local and offsite backup—there is value in diversity of backup methods. So, it's okay to use CrashPlan for both local and offsite, but don't rely on it for both. If CrashPlan fails for whatever reason, both local and offsite might become problematic to retrieve. In March 2007 when I researched home backup solutions for Mac my options were Box Backup, Mozy, Carbonite, DriveHQ, SpareBackup, and Duplicity. We've come a long way in 2 years. Mozy came out with a Mac version which I tried. It worked for a while, but after some time I kept getting showstopping errors that they were unable to resolve. In place of Mozy, I tested the free version of iDrive, and it seems to work, but now I'll be following the plan I strategized earlier and will be switching to CrashPlan. Carbonite eventually released a Mac version long after Mozy did, and I never bothered to try it. When you are that late to a game which is changing on seemingly a monthly basis, you're not a player anymore. Dinner at home with Patrick: tacos with side of refried beans. Patrick and I reviewed his proposed iMac purchase and played with Magic GarageBand for a while. Watched Quantum of Solace (2008) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Afterwards we rewatched in slow motion the portion of the scene that transitions away from the bell tower—fantastic shot! and kudos to the filmmakers for that one in particular. How did they do that? There is more trivia in imdb for Quantum of Solace than perhaps any other film I've ever looked at in imdb. If you liked Jason Bourne films, you'll like this one. The film's MacGuffin is smirkworthy, but for a film like this we really need only as much plot to get from scene to scene and to create or contribute to a story arc. I particularly liked how the villain is publically presented as a trusted and valued member of society. In this manner, Quantum of Solace's villain Dominic Greene probably represents some of our real world villains too accurately for their comfort. Found a fortune cookie fortune which I had not recorded: You will discover an unexpected treasure.
Sun Mar 29, 2009
Stretches. Weight training: superslow concentration curl, superslow tricep kickback, superslow front raise, crunch. Stretches. Cardio cool-down: 15 minutes. Patrick made my favorite breakfast for me. We were misled by the web page and flyer for T-Dance at The Endup. Both listed no cover charge, and when we got there a sign at the door said $20, so we skipped it. I realized that I was hungry and wanted to get a bite to eat, and we wanted to hang out in the Castro, so there we went. Shortly after arriving, we happened upon JCB and then JY and chatted briefly with both. Patrick and I attempted to eat at Nirvana, and we were fully prepared for bad service, but after we were seated at a dirty and unset table and the waitress put the menus down right on top of sauce splotches of the previous diners, I whispered in Patrick's ear, "We don't have to stay here!" and we walked out. We attempted to eat at the Thai restaurant at 19th and Castro, but it looked empty. All the lights were off, no humans could be seen inside. The hours sign said they were open, and indeed the door was unlocked when I tried it, but we were creeped so we didn't go in. We looked in at Harvey's, but it was packed—too noisy for us. We ate at Fuzio, both having the chinese chicken salad which had bean sprouts and deep fried noodles but which didn't have peanuts or mandarin oranges. We were not impressed with this chinese chicken salad recipe—not recommended. I personally don't think bean sprouts belong in CCS, but is there really an authentic recipe? I frequently joke about my great-great-grandmother's chinese chicken salad recipe. Service at Fuzio today was good except for when the waitress attempted to take my plate while I was still holding my last 2 bites of focaccia. I looked at her and froze in mid-bite, and she backed off, after a beat. There were only 3 tables full in the whole place, and I imagine that she was trying to be efficient by saving herself a return trip to our table at the expense of the awkwardness of having no plate upon which my focaccia's final crumbs could fall. No place in the Castro had dancing at this hour, so we walked over to Dolores Park to observe the sunbathers. To home. Nap for me. Dinner at home with Patrick: Simmone's lemon pork chops, steamed broccoli, rice pilaf, corn off the cob mixed with leftover taco filling meat. Netflix instant watch with Patrick: the first 2 episodes of Rick and Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World, the first hour of The Natural History of the Chicken (2000). Stretches.
Mon Mar 30, 2009
Usual oatmeal breakfast. To work. CCD meeting. Supp app followup. Submitted a book order to Susie: O'Reilly, Using Drupal. BTS work: generated images for Eric D's news story. Helped Sue A figure out what to do with an unsolicited request related to domain names (answer: ignore it). Coded and announced to the committee the draft of the fall 2009 computer requirements. Lots of calendar management. Lunch from the cafeteria: chicken marsala, mixed vegetables, brown rice, corn muffin. Met Eric L to review the new network connections in Eric D's new workspace. Three ports were installed, but when I tested them last week only 2 of them worked. He showed today that one of the ports takes about 30 seconds after you plug it in before it becomes active, and I thought that was really weird. He said something about it being on a newer switch which didn't make sense to me—newer should be faster, not slower. I tried to tell him that it didn't sound right to me, but he wouldn't do anything about it, and it really doesn't matter—we just need to use that port for whatever won't get unplugged and plugged frequently (like a laptop). Their contractor failed to mount the box to the cube wall, which looked really unprofessional to me, and I was told that that was impossible to do because there was no hard surface to mount it to. (So, to me, that means you mount a hard surface in the spot that you need it—something like this is not impossible with the right hardware.) We agreed that worst case he would try to find some heavy duty double-stick tape. He mentioned duct tape, and that's when I told him if he couldn't find adequate double-sticky mounting pads that I would just do it myself. Yeesh. ICRD work for Rodney. Signed up for Adobe Flash training which Eric D took last year and which I didn't have time for then. Added links to our website to the Class of 2012 website for student AK. More calendar management. Facebook followup by email with Devi, Marie, Susie. Lots of calendar management. Dinner with JCB and James at Jardiniere. This is my first time at Jardiniere. The first thing I notice when I walk in: the dining room and bar are exquisitely decorated. JCB said Monday nights are great because you get a 3-course prix fixe meal ($45) with included wine pairings. He treated to thank me for helping him out with his computers 2 previous Saturdays. James (The Pup) came along for the ride and was great company, just like JCB. They both started with the featured cocktail: savoie sour: cognac, lemon, absinthe ($10). Appetizer: warm asparagus salad, country ham, brioche croutons, bread, butter, Domaine Edmond Jacquin, Roussette de Savoie "Marestel" Savoie, France 2005. Main course: roast hoffman chicken, tartiflette potatoes, Guy Dufouleur, Fixin Premier Cru "Clos du Chapitre" Burgundy, France 2005. Dessert: biscuit de savoie, Navarro Vineyards, Late Harvest Riesling, Anderson Valley, California 2007. Service was very, very good, and very inobtrusive. I believe we nearly had a different person when each course or wine tasting was delivered. This was a little disconcerting, but I never found myself wanting at any point. The only error: while (our server?) cleared some dishes, she dropped JCB's used butter knife on the banquette seat next to him—not a big deal. I enjoyed every course. No single one was my favorite; I liked them all evenly. When I got home, Patrick was watching Next (2007) on Netflix instant watch, so I watched the end with him. Here's the note we left on Netflix: "Patrick says: I wish I could've seen 2 minutes into the future to avoid picking this movie. Frank says: This film doesn't accurately depict Cris Johnson's ability at all."
Tue Mar 31, 2009
Learned this morning that the Exchange OWA migration that took place on March 17 really did require students using Outlook to change their proxy configuration settings even though we were told no one but OWA users would notice a change. I didn't learn this from OAAIS or from one of the SCWG committee members but rather from one of my students (JE). Student computing working group meeting: we reviewed computer requirements (a few changes), talked about the letter to entering students (no changes for now), discussed the Outlook proxy settings change, Entourage weirdness, other UCSF email weird behaviors, OAAIS communication needs. Back to my desk. Updated proposed computer requirements, sent pages to SFS and Housing for review and approval. Forwarded the proxy settings solution to resident LT. Helped drop-in student VL with computer setup and optimization. Helped Kerry M troubleshoot problems with Web Disk, confirmed that it doesn't work for me either, began troubleshooting with ServInt. Supp app followup with JCB and Cindy: cost estimate for project. Helped Sue A with an emergency scan: Barbara S's signature. Reviewed a new news story with Eric D. Supp app followup. BTS new subsite followup with Maria and Lisa. Updated the Google Documents spreadsheet of all websites affiliated with the school with the data provided by BTS. Helped drop-in student AP and drop-in student MAM with resetting Outlook proxy settings. Chatted with a student at the bus stop. To home. Patrick's allergies have been making him miserable. Dinner at home with Patrick: orange chicken, mashed potatoes, boiled peas. Worked on Danny's website: added April specials. Prepared a work plan for tomorrow. Warm-up cardio: 10 minutes. Stretches. Weight training: various lower body, crunch. Stretches. Late meal: cran-grape juice, V8 high fiber juice, blueberry lowfat yogurt, leftover, mixed-up taco fixins, hot nonfat milk.