Monday, June 7, 2010
Pre-breakfast: one small nectarine. To work. Breakfast from the cafeteria: scrambled eggs, hash browns, wheat toast, butter, darjeeling tea. cdrom work all morning. Rodney reported a problem with the IRC audio system, so I helped him strategize a solution. Brainstorming communications strategy over lunch by myself at Chow: corn chowder special soup with mahi mahi sandwich (burger, really) special; hot chai tea. Embarrassingly expensive, but so satisfying I didn't mind. This brainstorming I've been doing lately has to do with figuring out how people are communicating now and how can we make that better. I've thought for years that people at UCSF rely on email far more than necessary. We have some really big holes in communications tools—web discussion forums I think is the biggest. With rare exception, UCSF people still think that one-to-many (one-way) communications are ideal and that PowerPoint presentations in person are even better. If useful dialogue occurs, it only happens in 3 ways: (1) in email, (2) in small meatspace meetings, or (3) in the limited Q-and-A time at the end of a large meatspace meeting. In my spare time, I'm trying to get a grasp of the big picture as well as the fine details while simultaneously attempting to define a vision for what communications and communications tools at UCSF could be like in the future. So far I've found it's a big mess, and I know I see only a tiny part of the whole picture. No one can figure out the whole picture; I think in this little project I've taken on we just want to see how close we can get. Errands: Posh Bagel, Progress Hardware. I think it's funny how San Francisco hardware store owners optimistically put the box fans near the store entrance this time of year. That's worthwhile for maybe a few minutes before the fog rolls in. If I owned a hardware store, I would put heaters and box fans on a lazy suzanesque display and spin it based on the weather at the moment. Or maybe I would just put it on a slow motor and leave it spinning all day long. Al's Market is going out of business (again). There are many organic food items that are buy 1 get 1 free, so I bought a few things. Bookstore: Rockstar energy drink. CPFM finally completed our request to mount a key cabinet and whiteboard for Eric—nice work. Helped Joel resolve a printing problem with PDF forms filled out successfully with Apple Preview but which display and print incorrectly in Adobe Reader. The issue exists because of some incompatibility with how Preview writes the resulting form and because some of our applicants use Preview instead of Adobe Reader to complete the form (despite our instructions to use Adobe Reader). The workaround: print from Skim or Preview in OS X or ask the applicant to complete the form again using Adobe Reader. Minor web work: social media linking-from-home-page strategy (my recommendation: do nothing for now; we have more social media work to do before we should link). Management activities. Bought organic nonfat milk on the way home. Dinner at home: essentially the same salad as for lunch yesterday. Reloaded the pepper mill with organic whole black peppercorns. Tried on clothes received in the mail from abercrombie kids: 10 unbelievably-perfect-fit wins, 2 close wins, all keepers, all on sale, very happy. The knit tops in large and the sweatpants in medium are what fit me perfectly. The button-downs will require a little finessing with the sewing machine to make just right. For all the stuff I've bought from aberkids, I understand all the fits and the cuts except for the button-downs; the shape in the torso is not right, I think even for their target market. The cuts of the button-downs don't make sense given the cuts of the knits. Of particular note: compared to other clothing stores, there are almost no photos of kids wearing the clothes either on the website or in the abercrombie store. Late snack: salt bagel, whipped cream cheese.