May 2011
Summary: How Weird Street Faire, Dinner at Social Kitchen and Brewery with Will, Shopping in Hayes Valley, Visited the Honmas, GAMeBoi and Orphan Andy's with quantum13
Dates on this page
Sun May 1, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat organic vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, diced organic pink lady apple. Poked at divorce paperwork a bit more. Sports Basement (415-575-3000, 1590 Bryant Street): found cleats to nearly complete my baseball uniform outfit—last item: a mini Louisville Slugger. Service was excellent at Sports Basement. Parked at 5th and Mission Garage. Walked to the Levi's store. The greeter says they don't have boys sizes but they do have 28 and 29 waist in mens. He refers me to Macy's instead. I walk to Macy's. The boys department doesn't have a dressing room, so I have to walk across the store to the girls side where there is a dressing room. I don't like how any of the Levi's jeans fit. I do buy 2 pairs of Levi's skinny chinos. Back to the Levi's store, bought 1 pair of jeans. Bought gifts on sale at Janie and Jack, was very impressed with everything at this store: service, merchandise, style. I've repeatedly asked them to make clothes for teen sizes (i.e., me) but so far no luck. Dropped off purchases with Deliverator. Walked to Passion Cafe (28-6th Street), ate a veggie burger with a side salad and lemonade. Walked to the How Weird Street Faire. Stomach was hurting, so I didn't dance. Dinner at Tropisueño: chips and salsa, chicken flautas, pork soft tacos, water. Watched Salt on Netflix instant watch with Will which he had not yet seen and I saw 1.5 times on flights to or from Asia.
Mon May 2, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, diced organic pink lady apple. Rode my bike to work. Brought caribbean banana bread to share. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Met with Michael W, Susie, and Eric to discuss our web redesign project and RFP. Lunch at You See Sushi: futomaki lunch special, hot green tea. Staged new PID reg work for Shirin: database tracking of confirmed payments, adding dollar totals to admin pages. OE subcommittee meeting. Will picked me up. Dinner at home with Will: I had leftovers; he had freshly cooked potato gnocchi in marinara. Side of peas from frozen. Read from Snow Crash.
Tue May 3, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, diced organic pink lady apple. Read from Snow Crash. Rode the bus to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Archived website data to portable hard drives. Responded to Orlando L's message asking for what kind of data integration our website needs. Created and made live /communciations/ for Susie. Lunch at Pacific Catch: soup and salad special: coconut-ginger soup, side salad, water. Helped Cindy prep AV for the student awards dinner. Minor edit to faculty listing for Susie. Sent Rodney a draft announcement about the IRC upgrades for him to review. Lots of student awards AV followup with Margaret A and Noel B. Edited my webmail instructions page for SCWG, sent it to Doug C and Mark B for review. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: cheese tortelloni with organic mushroom marinara, 4 slices of garlic toast. Dessert: 3 cinnamon honey almonds. Read a funny Facebook comment today from Garrett M: "i went to starbucks today and i heard the barista say 'omg... that guy's drink is so complicated...' i ordered an iced venti caramel machiatto, quad shot, upside down, 4 pumps, light ice, soymilk, no caramel.... its not THAT complicated... :P" Is this the longest coffee drink name ever?
Wed May 4, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced organic pink lady apple; cinnamon; nonfat milk. Rode my bike to work. Wasted about half an hour because my iPhone told me I had a meeting today but it was incorrect. After I figured out the problem I was unable to resolve it except by removing the calendar entirely then adding it back and waiting for it to sync over 3G. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Archived website data to portable hard drives. IRC upgrades announcement followup with Rodney. Webmail instructions page followup with Doug C and Mark B. Minor web edits for Susie: removed Eric from the OSACA listing, removed text explaining research misconduct procedures from /research/ and /facultyandstaff/. Made live and announced to SCWG new webmail instructions. Also now linking to ITS's instructions for Outlook 2010. Supp app project work in Drupal. Lunch at Lime Tree: transparent noodles with shrimp, spinach, and mushrooms; thai iced tea. Supp app project work in Drupal. Snack: an orange. Supp app project work in Drupal. Snack: an orange. Rode my bike home. Weight training: pec crawl. Shower. Weight training: pec crawl. Dinner at home: Joe's Os, side of peas from frozen. Dancing at Badlands. Groceries at Safeway in the Castro. Home. Late meal: leftover tortelloni and organic mushroom marinara.
Thu May 5, 2011
Weight training: crunch. Fixed a coding error with my journal: The tilde in Tropisueno on May 1 was causing problems. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup work with sentence-case style. After my initial suggestion and some discussion we are considering a switch from using title case to sentence case for certain page elements such as page title, all headings, and all links to internal pages. The rationales are that sentence case (1) is much easier to read than title case, (2) takes up less space, and (3) it appears friendlier. I converted all top-level pages in /about/ on our staging server to the proposed style. Supp app project work in Drupal. Lunch: UCSF celebrated Cinco de Mayo by having a live band and giving away small burritos and tortilla chips with green salsa. Supp app project work in Drupal. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: organic mushrooms stuffed with cheddar cheese and panko. They tasted good but didn't look very pretty. Made hash brown casserole. Snack: a slice of caribbean banana bread. Late meal: some hash brown casserole.
Fri May 6, 2011
Weight training: door pull ups. Rode my bike to work. Followup with Sammie and Joel about a new email address for them to use for admissions. Supp app project work in Drupal: followup on payment gateway info. Lunch 1: hash brown casserole. Lunch 2: hash brown casserole. 1-on-1 with Eric: youtube embed playlist on faculty page, SSL for Rx for Change, fixed some minor problems with the background image code. Supp app project work in Drupal. Let Cindy know that I'm ready to push live the fall computer requirements. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: hash brown casserole, one corn on the cob.
Sat May 7, 2011
Woke up too early. Breakfast: 3 eggs scrambled with Dorot cilantro, 2 slices of toast with butter, 2 hash browns. Nap. Lunch while watching Black Swan (2010) on Netflix DVD: hearts of romaine salad with sliced organic mushrooms, organic heirloom cherry tomatoes, grated cheddar cheese, ranch dressing; side of tortilla chips with hummus. Worked on the drink menu. Snack: corn on the cob. Thought I needed to do some sewing but I was wrong. (Not yet, anyway.) Dinner: herbed rice medley, grilled asparagus, sugar-free black cherry Torani in organic nonfat milk. Snack: anise biscotti, popcorn. Chatted briefly online with Nate. Watched Charlie's Angels (2000) and Pay It Forward (2000) on Netflix instant watch.
Sun May 8, 2011
Weight training: door pull ups. Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, sliced banana. Weight training: door pull ups. Errands: tried to stop at the dry cleaners but Yelp said they were open when they really were not. I now believe that there is no dry cleaners near me open on Sundays. Errands: Walgreens, grocery shopping at Safeway. Home. Washed the car. Rinsed compost, recycling, and garbage bins. Midafternoon meal: leftover hash brown casserole, 12 ounces of generic V8. Tried to set up Yobongo on my iPhone but couldn't get past the create account screen—it would not accept any photo I tried to set. Uninstalled it. Dinner at Social Kitchen and Brewery with Will.
Mon May 9, 2011
Weight training: pec crawl. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced pink lady apple; cinnamon; nonfat milk; 12 ounces of nonfat milk. Reviewed divorce paperwork again. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Supp app project work in Drupal all day: began working with Fill PDF module. Rode my bike home. Snack: hot leftover banana bread. Dinner at home: hearts of romaine salad with sliced organic mushrooms, organic heirloom cherry tomatoes, grated cheddar and colby cheeses, ranch dressing; water. Dessert: cinnamon honey almonds.
Tue May 10, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, sliced banana. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. SCWG meeting. Met 1-on-1 with Michael W. Snack: 2 navel oranges. Meal #1: hash brown casserole. Supp app project work in Drupal: more Fill PDF work. Meal #2: hash brown casserole. Rode my bike home. Neighbor Ian dropped off some gelato—thanks, Ian! Weight training: leg lifts. Dinner at home: leftover rice medley with broccoli; microwaved corn on the cob. Dessert: gelato from Ian. Watched The Simpsons: "The Great Simpsina" and "Homer Scissorhands."
Wed May 11, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, sliced banana. Telecommute day. Snack: 2 navel oranges. Supp app project work in Drupal. Module updates: FileField 6.x-3.9 to 6.x-3.10 (2011-Apr-27), Fill PDF 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-Mar-10) to 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-May-11), Jammer 6.x-1.5 to 6x-1.6, Maxlength 6.x-2.0-beta1 to 6.x-2.0-beta2, Menu token 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-Feb-02) to 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-Apr-26), Node import 6.x-1.0-rc4 to 6.x-1.1, Personalized E-mails 6.x-1.x-dev (2010-Jul-11) to 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-Feb-25), Views Custom Field 6.x-1.x-dev (2010-Nov-12) to 6.x-1.x-dev (2011-Feb-25). Dinner at home with Will: hearts of romaine salad with sliced organic mushrooms, organic heirloom cherry tomatoes, grated cheddar and colby cheeses, ranch dressing; orecchiette with roasted garlic and mushroom marinara; pomegranate blend juice. Will showed his new tattoo. Dessert: gelato from Ian.
Thu May 12, 2011
A funny comment from Joel today on Facebook: "As soon as someone throws a chicken leg, IT'S ON!!!" Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, diced pink lady apple. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. 1-on-1 meeting with Susie. Short web team meeting. Eric and I visited the Living Green Fair in Millberry Gym. Web steering lunch with Ed C and (joining us at NKRB) John K. Among other things, we talked about CTSI Faculty Profiles, MyAccess, Shibboleth. IT Services meeting: John G steps down, Patrick P will lead starting next month, 2nd Annual Tech Forum: A View From the Ground Level. Rode my bike home. Quickly ate some leftover orecchiette in marinara. Drove to Oakland International Airport, getting lost along the way I claim due to poor freeway signs. Picked up Danny and Phil, newly arrived after traveling in Philly, Boston, and New York City. Dinner with Danny and Phil at Miss Saigon. Bought gas on the way home. Will met me at home. Watched Tron: Legacy (2010) on Netflix DVD with Will. I liked this film for its visual beauty, but in many other respects I was very disappointed in it. I think the film's biggest failing was that, like Tron (1982), the story was weak. I didn't really care about the characters, I didn't see how Flynn's discovery would change the world or do the amazing things he said, and I didn't think the threat they were fighting was a real threat to meatspace. Many of the plot elements were very similar to or identical to Tron (1982). I understand if the makers of Legacy wanted to pay their respects to the earlier work, but when so many elements are mirrored, why bother making a new film? The film stole lines from other films, such as "The only winning move is not to play" from Wargames. The film also stole plot elements from lots of other films—not in ways that could be considered homages. I think that trying to follow in the now-hokey footsteps of Tron (1982) crippled this film, and I would have preferred to see either a completely reimagined reboot of Tron (1982) or for a sequel to not feel like it has to honor an earlier film with a weak story—something with more social relevance to today than the same fantastic save-the-world plot you see quite commonly throughout science fiction. I loved Tron (1982) for what it was but in a sequel I would have more appreciated a story that spoke a little more seriously to one or a few longstanding issues in coders' lives such as data security, data privacy, the stifling of innovation, information freedom, how programmers balance lives with families. The closest Tron: Legacy came to this is getting the shell screens to have realistic commands (but in a completely unrealistic scenario). Coders have grown up since 1982, and it seems Disney and the filmmakers somehow didn't realize this.
Fri May 13, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey maple almond granola and fresh, diced pink lady apple. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with Rodney and Michael W about IRC hardware purchases. Chatted on the phone with Beth about ITS web hosting and Drupal. Supp app project work in Drupal. Snack: Cindy brought in bagels. I had a cheese bagel with chive cream cheese. Cindy, Rodney, and I met with the Medical Center team that is using our computer lab as a training room during the summer. Meeting was surprisingly short and went very well. Lunch: one orange, leftovers from Miss Saigon. Supp app project work in Drupal. Will picked me up at work. Dinner at Rigolo with Will. I had a coupon from Fresh Guide for $30 of food for $15. (On Gowalla and Foursquare I mistakenly said Groupon instead of Fresh Guide). Small Caesar salad, vegetarian ratatouille, and lemonade for me; spicy chicken tartine with small Caesar salad and Coke for Will. For dessert we shared the mixed fruit galette that came with my prix fixe meal. It felt like it took a long time for our meals to emerge from the kitchen. Our order-taker forgot to bring us our drinks until I reminded her. We also didn't understand the timing of how food came out. For example, we both had side caesar salads. Mine came out and many minutes passed before we asked about Will's. Turns out his was part of his entree plate—not separate. Also, we weren't sure about how the dessert that was part of my prix fixe meal was supposed to arrive. Since it wasn't true table service, I got up and asked at the register, and it came right out a few minutes later. Having the order-taker inform guests of the timing of how food is expected to be delivered can set expectations more properly. My caesar salad had too many yellow leaves and not enough dark green leaves. The rest of our food was delicious.
Sat May 14, 2011
Breakfast with Will: banana bread, scrambled eggs with Dorot cilantro, hash browns, toast with butter. Cut my hair. Errands: dry cleaners, groceries. Early dinner with Will: rice medley with grilled asparagus and onions; fresh blueberries and strawberries. Dessert: gelato from Ian with a sliced strawberry coated with Torani peppermint syrup. Watched 2010: The Year We Make Contact (I LOLed whenever we saw computers) and Exit Through the Gift Shop (the trailer doesn't do it justice) on Netflix instant watch with Will. Late meal at home with Will: garden burgers with Tillamook sharp cheddar, sweet potato fries, battered halibut.
Sun May 15, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat vanilla yogurt with Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola and fresh, diced organic pink lady apple. Picked up on my old (December 14, 2008) project of restoring photos on my computer from Flickr that were lost in (I think) a previous data backup disaster. I again used FlickrEdit, this time examining sets one by one. Vacuumed and tidied. Weeded old Firefox bookmarks. Pulled weeds in the back yard. Installed Steam for Mac and Windows. Bought and installed You Don't Know Jack for Windows for $9.99. Midafternoon meal: mini burritos with whole wheat tortillas, black beans and Bearitos organic taco mix, shredded colby-jack, julienned hearts of romaine, organic sour cream. Dessert: fresh blackberries, some gelato from Ian. Laundry. Planned a Hayes Valley clothes shopping day. Installed IE9 for Windows. It's been out 2 months but I only figured it out today. IE has not really been relevant the past couple of years. Watched The Simpsons "Love is a many strangled thing" on Hulu. Dinner at home: leftover hash brown casserole, 12 ounces of orange juice.
Mon May 16, 2011
Breakfast at home: plain nonfat yogurt with red currant preserves, fresh blackberries, and Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola; 12 ounces of generic V8. Rode the bus to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Web team meeting: mostly scope document review. Lunch: Panda Express: Panda Bowl with mixed veggies and chow mein—I think this was under $4, surprising. My fortune: Success and wealth are in your future. 1-on-1 with Darius: we got his faculty table code almost completely working, well enough that he can continue it on his own. Supp app project work in Drupal: tried to revert modules upgrades in an attempt to bring back my missing admin menu but failed. 1-on-1 with Eric: Supp app project work in Drupal: [forthcoming]. Supp app project work in Drupal: restored all other modules to the versions described on May 11. Worked lated: Student Awards Dinner. All went well except these things: (a) for some reason Office 2010 kept saying that it was not activated. To resolve the problem I had to log in as admin and reenter the activation key and perform the activation. (b) Shirin wanted the 1st slideshow to loop but didn't set up the transitions to do so, so I had do to that on the fly. (c) the AV setup by ETS gave us more equipment than we needed. I had to remove wiring for an A/B VGA switch. (d) the wireless microphone battery provided by Margaret went dead about 20 minutes before the end of the event, (e) projector #1 from ETS did not display as clearly as projector #2. Post-event storage in Margaret's office with Jonathan went well. Rode the bus home. Got home around 9:40 PM. Weight training: door pull ups. Shower.
Tue May 17, 2011
Breakfast at home: plain nonfat yogurt; 1 large, sliced fresh strawberry; fresh, diced pink lady apple; and Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola; 12 ounces of generic V8. Rode the L train to West Portal. Muni delay. Continued to Castro Station where there was another delay before the train could empty. It took 40 minutes to go from 26th and Taraval to Castro Station. 18 minutes until the next 24 Divisidero. Caught a cab almost instantly to catch my doctor appointment just in time. Diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome. Walked to a nearby medical building, waited 35 minutes for the right staffperson to arrive. Purchased a wrist support to wear at night. Walked to UCSF Mount Zion shuttle stop. UCSF shuttle to Parnassus. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Staff meeting. Lunch from the cafeteria: penne with vegetables in marinara sauce, sliced zucchini, garlic bread. Scope document work with Susie: roles and responsibilities. Dentist appointment at Dr. Natasha Anne Lee's office, Tina performing my x-rays and cleaning (very efficient yet thorough). Arizmendi Bakery: pizza slice, chocolate mint cookie. Rode the bus home. Pressed 3 fallen orchids with my Microfleur microwave flower press. Downloaded and installed the iPhone app called Color. Wrapped gifts. Organized photos. Snack: an orange. Tried to eat a bread roll I brought home from Arizmendi but it was way too spicy for me, and I threw it in the compost bin after 2 bites. Late meal: rice medley with cubed extra firm tofu with Gourmet Garden Thai and fresh, diced onions; 16 ounces of nonfat milk. Watched The Simpsons "500 Keys" on Hulu. This was a particularly good episode. Stick around during the credits for a little bit of smile-inducing culture.
Wed May 18, 2011
Breakfast at home: plain nonfat yogurt; 4 sliced fresh strawberries; and Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola; 16 ounces of generic V8. Went to a physical therapy appointment only to find out that the therapist had called in sick and I was notified only about 30 minutes before my appointment. I didn't receive the call probably because I was in the tunnel on Muni. UCSF shuttle to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Prepared a survey, sent it to Susie and Eric for review. Answered a question about schedules for student RH. Lunch from Carmelina's with Eric on the steps next to the library: I ate half of a salmon burrito, mango agua fresca to drink. Met with Susie and Michael about the web redesign project. Researched wireless speakers. Sent Sue a message about remaining technology needs for the Dean's conference room. Cindy drove Shirin, Sammie, Joel, and I to the graduation banquet at City Club. The meal I had was salmon with rice medley and broccolini. Afterwards, Will picked me up. Left this review for dentist Dr. Natasha Anne Lee: "I moved to San Francisco in 2000 and for 3 years I tried several different dentists but was never satisfied. One tried to set the stage for a whitening offer by having the receptionist comment on how yellow my teeth looked—awkward, perhaps due to cultural differences? Another had dental chairs in a row with no privacy. Another had an office that was poorly lit, seemed like it hadn't been dusted in years, and the receptionist seemed really unhappy. Another had (still has) examination rooms that are about 25 feet from the Muni tracks, so it's a bit unnerving when the train rolls by and jiggles the whole room. Dr. Lee's office had none of these problems. It's all here: semi-private examination rooms, clean and well-lit and modern office decor, super friendly staff, excellent feedback loops, open and clear communication. A number of years ago she began using digital x-rays—very nice to see a dentist that knows how to use technology to improve efficiency and lower the impact on our environment. The location is great, too—there are a lot of shops and restaurants around 9th and Irving. I recommend hopping 4 doors over to Arizmendi Bakery for a ricciarelli cookie or a slice of pizza or anything else that catches your eye. If your visit doesn't let you eat right after, save it for later."
Thu May 19, 2011
Breakfast at home: plain nonfat yogurt; 3 sliced fresh strawberries; 1 fresh, sliced banana; and Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola; 16 ounces of generic V8. Rode the bus to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. 1-on-1 with Rodney: he is continuing to set up new hardware and software in the IRC. Scope document work with Susie. WCWG meeting with lunch: chicken sandwich, crunchy cheetos, water. Midafternoon meal: the 2nd half of the salmon burrito from yesterday. Organized Google documents and granted access to Michael. Helped Susie with a 2-Google-accounts problem. Attempted to add Michael to HiTask. Added Michael to Google Analytics. Helped Bob D by taking some photos of an object. Followup with Tran about PGP Desktop, PGP, Acrobat X, and Office 2010 installations. Calendar management. Answered a question from student NT about listserv. Flickr work. Realized today that our Cufon solution does not work in IE9, alerted Eric and Susie, planned to resolve this early next week with Eric. Evening meal: roast beef sandwich leftover from today's meeting. Rode my bike home. Late dinner: 2 veggie burgers with Tillamook sharp cheddar, hearts of romaine leaves, on whole grain wheat buns. Dessert: 3 sliced strawberries in gelato from Ian.
Fri May 20, 2011
Class of 2011 graduation ceremony at Davies Symphony Hall. Met Jim (who sat in the foyer next to the Green Room), and usher Teresa (sp?), Jim from the musician team, and others whose names I could not remember. Shopping in Hayes Valley: Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC), Welcome Stranger, Azalea Boutique. Stopped to eat a chocolate-lavender macaron at Miette ($1.75). Lava 9, Cary Lane, Sean, Residents Apparel Gallery (RAG). I also visited a few stores whose names I cannot remember. Service everywhere I went was friendly, helpful, and not hounding. Customer traffic was light. Almost universally items were too big for me and tops were boxy rather than tailored. Notes for each store follow. Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC): very unique items, most items very expensive (e.g., I found a handkerchief for $40), some very bold-colored items including an astounding fluorescent suit jacket. It sounds tacky but it was very tastefully done. If you have lots of money to support poor high-end clothing designers and need to stand out in a crowd, Modern Appealing Clothing (MAC) is a good store for you. Welcome Stranger: Supposedly they are the only place in San Francisco you can buy Topman. The sales clerk said it was an exclusive. All of the Topman suit jackets on the shelf right now have a weird dimple caused by the buttonhole's placement about half an inch off from where it normally would be. I asked the sales clerk about it and he agreed with me it was unusual and looked odd but he did say that they were selling. Also, he said a new shipment had just arrived and if I return this weekend it should be out on the floor. Maybe not this weekend, but I'll return to Welcome Stranger just to check out the Topman collection as it changes. There weren't very many small sizes, but if I find something I like perhaps they can order it for me or I can order it online. That's sometimes still a better deal than buying online sight unseen. Compared to all the other Hayes Valley shops I had visited on this day, Cary Lane has amazingly low prices. In addition to men's and women's clothing they also carry some boy's clothes into roughly the early teens, but the shirts were still too small and did not fit me. When I asked about small sizes, the sales clerk said that the owner wears small sizes himself so he likes to keep those sizes in stock. The clerk also said that customers will often buy small sizes en masse, e.g., one in every color of something that fits, so items can sometimes go quickly. I asked how tall the owner was, and the clerk guessed 5 feet, 3 inches. I tried on a sweater jacket that I liked very much except it had a 2-way zipper which looked awkward with the 2.5-inch zipper pull hanging right over my crotch. Yes, you can cut off the zipper pull, but there's still the metal part of the pull and on this item it seemed more noticeable than others to me so I did not buy it. It would have been better with a regular 1-way zipper. Or, perhaps, a transparent aluminum bottom pull rather than a metal one. Emile Laufaurie for Sean: The sales clerk at Sean was particularly down-to-earth and helpful, having me try on a few suit jackets and reassuring me, after some questions about my sizing, that they have clothes that would fit me. The styles are a little too loose and middle-agey for me, but I might return when I have more time to spend shopping. Late afternoon meal at Tartine, a cafe that's not affiliated with Tartine Bakery. Tuna half sandwich, spinach-potato soup, chai tea latte. They had run out of wheat bread, and I okayed a substitution of white bread. (The only other choice was baguette, and I don't like how for a sandwich the hard edges of a baguette digs into one's gums.) Turns out the white bread was a poor choice because the sandwich didn't hold together well. After a few bites it was just falling apart on its own, but I managed. The soup was good. The chai was so hot that I could not drink it until after I had finished my meal. Useless. Drove home. Traffic on Market Street was thick until Market and Castro. Weight training: pec crawl. Late meal: jasmine brown rice with leftover stir-fried Thai cubed tofu. Cleaned spinach-potato soup stains from my suit. Continued rereading from Snow Crash.
Sat May 21, 2011
Weight training: door pull ups. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced granny smith apple, cinnamon, nonfat milk. Weight training: door pull ups. Pressed 3 fallen orchids with my Microfleur microwave flower press. Cleaned more spinach-potato soup stains from my suit. Collected screen snapshots of various home pages for 2 reasons. One is to provide support for my belief that font-changing Javascript widgets on web pages is of limited usefulness. The other is because Susie wants us to look at how other sites are providing links to social networking websites. This happens typically with small icons at the bottom of the page. We want to do the same kind of thing with our site, but we need to figure out a good way to fit it into our current design. This is technically work on a Saturday, but it doesn't take long to create good screen snapshots. Especially after Eric reminded me about Command+Shift+4. Picked up dry cleaning. Lunch at home: grilled cheese sandwich: Tillamook sharp cheddar on whole wheat. Drove to the Honmas. Dinner at Gombei (3533 Homestead Road, Santa Clara). Grocery shopping at Kyo-Po Market. Dessert at the Honmas: butterfinger ice cream with sprinkles and non-pareils. Tried to fix Jeremy's computer. The problem was that he got the "Open with..." dialog whenever he double-clicked applications. He told me that his computer had encountered virus infections in the past that were removed. I restarted in Safe Mode and successfully ran sfc /scannow but that did not fix the problem. Reran Malwarebytes and it found some threats but eventually Windows Vista crashed with a BSOD. I recommended a clean reinstall of Windows. Left late—around 9:30 PM. Home, chatted online with quantum13, then picked him up at home and we drove to Mist Ultra which sounds like an air freshener or a refreshing beverage or a cheap perfume but it's the name of the club to which GAMeBoi moved starting tonight. We luckily found parking just outside of Ted and Emery's place. We waited in line only a few minutes. At just before midnight, it was $15 to get in, $3 for coat check. 2 floors, I think restrooms were only on the ground floor. 18 and over. Tony and I received wrist bands and were asked before entering to not give alcohol to minors. This club is the only club I have seen with a glass dance floor—you can see right through the glass to people dancing on the 2nd floor. The glass tiles are quite big relative to its support frame, so it's a bit unnerving when stepping out on it the first time, but it and the 2nd floor feels quite solid—not worrisome at all. 2 DJs: one on the ground floor, then another in the glass-door enclosed lounge. Ventilation seems better than most clubs but still could be cooler and with more air pressure. I encountered Emery, Alex R, Joe and Duy, Rich S, Evan Low. Late meal with quantum13 at Orphan Andy's. (We checked Criolla first, but it is not open at this hour.) Onion rings and Coke for him, veggie burger and fries with plain water for me.
Sun May 22, 2011
Slept in a bit. Tried to do laundry but found a sign on the washer that says it is out of order. Weight training: calf raises, Mark Lauren's sissy squats. Edited and uploaded photos to Flickr. Uninstalled Pentadactyl. I didn't use it enough for it to be worthwhile, and not everything is accessible by keyboard with it (e.g., some interface elements on Flickr). Late lunch: capellini with organic roasted garlic sauce and TJ's meatless meatballs, hot water. Watched The Real Housewives of Fat Tony on Hulu. Organized and tidied stuff at home. Dinner at home: stir fry with cabbage, organic cubed tofu, mushrooms, broccoli, garlic, Thai spices, sauce. Baked almond poppyseed quick bread from a boxed Krusteaz mix into 2 mini loaves. Ate 2 slices.
Mon May 23, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat plain yogurt with Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola and fresh, diced organic granny smith apple. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Supp app project work in Drupal: payment hook followup. Followup with student computer help requests. Calendar management. Web edits: wireless (and notified SCWG), official graduation dates, grads email. Distributed gift certificates to Recharge Spa to the office staff and also gave some of them to the students' Spring Auction. Helped student MR by email with IT questions. IRC upgrades followup: CPFM quoted us $923 to replace laminate strips on a desk. Notified Maria of some issues with the BTS website to fix. Followup on the CP website uptime issues: at about 85% now, much improved since May 12 but little change since May 17. Followup with Tran about software installations and updates. Lunch at Marnee Thai: pad thai (includes prawns) with vegetables. They charged me extra to add vegetables—weird. Their pad thai was also slightly spicier (I believe from chili oil) than most places. Bought 4 pounds of granola from the grocery store. Web edits: job postings form. Supp app project work in Drupal. Pre-dinner: leftover pad thai, almond poppyseed bread. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Will: leftover stir fry with jasmine brown rice. Will also ate a bowl of beef ramen. Watched The Simpsons "Heart to Heart" on Hulu. Watched Twilight Zone "To Serve Man" on Megavideo.
Tue May 24, 2011
Breakfast at home: nonfat plain yogurt with Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola. (I ran out of fruit.) Rode my bike to work. SCWG meeting. Followup with Michael W about access to monitoring reports. Met with student LV about a BSOD. Followup with Tran about software installations. Met with Eric and resolved the IE9 and Cufon problem. It was very easy. Simo had a fix. We inserted it, tested it, it worked, we pushed it live. Lunch with Michael W at Wooly Pig. My first time at the Wooly Pig. More accounts followup with Michael. Submitted a ticket for student DT about receiving incorrect messages for another person at UCSF with the same name. Authorize.net meeting. 1-on-1 with Michael about the web redesign project. Authorize.net meeting followup with Kevin L and dentistry. Helped Darius with a MySQL problem: he cannot upload files larger than a few megabytes. I gave him some suggestions. Rode Muni to Church Street. Bought a cake and a few other groceries at Safeway. Walked to Will's work. We drove to PDDR's. Dinner with Phil, Drew, Danny, Romy at their place with Will.
Wed May 25, 2011
Weight training: standing leg curls, pec crawl. Breakfast at home: Grandma Goodie's blueberry-apple granola; fresh, diced peach, nonfat milk. (I ran out of yogurt.) Rode Muni to work. Web team meeting. Updated /about/admin/ for Susie (Lynn Paulsen), pushed live a lot of changes: animated favicon, changed background image, sentence case styling for /about/ section, faculty profile video thumbnails in column 2 on /faculty/. Authorize.net new account followup with Kevin L. Lunch at You See Sushi. Calendar management. Authorize.net new account followup with Kevin L. More web changes: lots of MDD work. Susie got a new laptop that was set up by Al B and she asked Eric and me what else she needed on it besides Windows 7 Enterprise, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Office 2010, Acrobat 8, QuickTime and iTunes, Symantec Anti-virus, Roxio CD Creator, and Power DVD player. I said: "Acrobat 8 was released in Nov 2006. No one should be using this today. The latest version is Acrobat X, released Nov 2010. Also install Apple Safari and Google Chrome. You can still use Firefox for everyday browsing, but it's helpful to have Chrome and Safari available in addition to IE to see differences in web browsers and their rendering engines. Adobe Flash. Adobe Shockwave. The latest version of Sun Java. Symantec should be the UCSF version of Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP)—not just Symantec Anti-Virus. Optional: For Firefox, I highly recommend: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/download-statusbar/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/forecastfox-weather/" Followup with Rodney about an overdue invoice not paid by accounting. Followup with student DT about a display name change request that has been completed as expected. Listserv management: Phi Lambda Sigma for student CL. Updated /about/board/ for Paula J. Authorize.net new account followup with Cindy. Followup with Rodney: okay to surplus the CRT monitors we recently removed from the computer lab. Rode my bike home. Pressed fallen orchids with my Microfleur microwave flower press. I forgot what I ate for dinner today.
Thu May 26, 2011
I forgot what I ate for breakfast. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Web redesign followup: card sorting. Top 10 pharmacy websites analysis. I forgot what I ate for lunch today. Management activities: pcard. PID reg: some post-PID cleanup. Snack: cherries. Doctor appointment. Rode my bike home. Laundry. Dinner at home with Will: burritos.
Fri May 27, 2011
My favorite breakfast. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Web team meeting: video backup, web redesign, more. Lunch: 3/4 of a tuna sandwich left over from someone else's meeting. 1-on-1 with Cindy. Supp app project work in Drupal. Chatted with Eric about fonts. Snack: cherries, a few pieces of (Steve K's?) toffee. Rode my bike home. Laundry. Dinner at home with Will: burritos. Watched failblog videos and listened to Pandora's comedy channel.
Sat May 28, 2011
Breakfast: raisin bagel with soft cream cheese, 8 ounces of nonfat milk. Errands: alterations, shoe repair, drug store, grocery store. Will and I drove to Palo Alto where I met his mom Levie, sister Tiffany, baby Kenyon, and relatives Jamie and Kylie. California Pizza Kitchen Express (CPKX) and shopping at Stanford Shopping Center with Will. Home. Nap. Repaired a shoe with some Elmer's glue. Late dinner at home with Will: noodle soup with Thai spices, cubed tofu, spinach, cabbage.
Sun May 29, 2011
Slept in more than I thought I could. More shoe gluing. Cut my hair. Accidentally fasted until early afternoon when I ate a stir fry with the uncooked ingredients of last night's meal. Watched The Social Network (2010) on Netflix DVD. Updated Drupal from 6.20 to 6.22 for Patrick's website. In the process, I upgraded Drush to version 4.4 by manually downloading the package and replacing my drush directory. (I don't know what version I had before.) To update Drupal core: drush up. Some vacuuming. Dinner: corn on the cob, threw away a failed meal that I had prepared. Eric D introduced me to Regretsy recently, and I confess that the compare and save category of posts can sometimes put a smile on my face.
Mon May 30, 2011
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced organic green apple; nonfat milk. A bit of a sore throat today, stayed home instead of being social or riding my bike. Laundry. Pressed fallen orchids with my Microfleur microwave flower press. Finally got around to reading Annie Proulx's short story "Brokeback Mountain," a copy of which Steve M emailed me years ago after the film was released. Wow, what an incredible read, a pleasure. Fixed the time on the Cateye. Minor web work for Recharge. Archived clothing price tags. Edited and uploaded photos to Flickr. Lunch: TJ's organic vegetarian chili, corn chips. Vacuuming. Snack: cherries. Edited and uploaded photos to Flickr. Weight training: door pull ups. Midafternoon meal: 2 corn on the cob. Early dinner: shells and cheddar cheese made with organic pasta with tuna. Snack: cherries. Watched a new trailer for Super 8—it looks good enough that I want to see this in a theatre. Cleaned spinach-potato soup stains from my suit. Altered some clothes.
Tue May 31, 2011
Pre-breakfast: a peach. Rode the bus to work. Breakfast from Carmelina's: breakfast burrito. Web team meeting. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Timesheet activities. Lunch at You See Sushi. Helped Chris W with getting his site into UCSF Search. Followup with CP website downtime. Helped student MA with Droid setup for UCSF email and "Enter the credential storage password"—I said, "See posts 6, 7, and 8 on http://bit.ly/j5lNYj and also see http://bit.ly/mzURNQ. Let me know if those do or don't help." Updated the scope document at Susie's request (role descriptions). Edited a proposed SurveyMonkey survey, sent it to Eric and Susie for review. Top 10 pharmacy schools review followup with Michael. Small web edit for Lisa and Joel to date for the PharmCAS filing period. Small web edit to the faculty page for Susie and Leslie F. Calendar management. Made facelift Mac fonts available to Eric. Management activities (vendor followup). MDD edits. At Susie's request, deleted the remaining vestiges of the tagline "Mastering Medicines to Maximize Health" for our website. Followup with Eric about tabindex="-1" (which I later learned we did intentionally). Reminded Joel about the need for a new admissions calendar. Followup with Doug B about Stop Security Plate offerings. Staged School of Pharmacy logos and Word letterhead templates, sent it to Susie for review. Rode the bus home. Dinner at home: corn on the cob, large iceberg lettuce salad with grated cheese and broccoli. Late snack: tortilla chips, popcorn.