July 2011
Summary: Santa Cruz road trip with Will, Fourth of July party at Quyen and Dave's, hernia repair surgery
Dates on this page
Fri Jul 1, 2011
Cut my hair. Accidentally skipped breakfast. Late lunch: 2 garden burgers with organic hearts of romaine, miso mayo, and ketchup; breaded shrimp with lemon and cocktail sauce, hot water. Rode my bike around Lake Merced. Met bicyclist Virgil, who was interested in my bike. Home. Ate a peach-strawberry popsicle in the sun. Used a Barnes & Noble gift card that I had had for a while. Wanted to use it before the store went out of business. 7 ounces of black cherry Coke. Made butternut squash biscuits, ate three, one with Smart Balance Light and salt.
Sat Jul 2, 2011
Brunch at Boulevard Cafe with Will: tuna melt and Coke for Will, The Hangover (hash browns with chili and eggs) with large orange juice for me: $27.60 before a $3.50 tip. The receipt said our server's name was Krishna. Service was very attentive for the first half and very inattentive for the second half. She attempted to create a rapport that is best described as slightly awkward. Will drove us in his car along the coast to Santa Cruz. I napped for part of the ride. We picked up drinks at Safeway and then drove back up the coast, parked. We walked out toward a beach and although it was sunny there were moderately frequent and strong cold winds—it felt like 55 degrees to me. We abandoned the beach and instead tried for Lexington Reservoir, but we got stuck in traffic at the Highway 17 interchange. Turns out the railroad crossing guard was malfunctioning. After a long delay, some individuals held the railroad crossing bars in the up position, and traffic passed through. With so much time lost, we decided to stay in Santa Cruz and found a spot in San Lorenzo Park to sit for about an hour drinking kiwi-strawberry Vitamin Water (focus) and snacking on TJ's flat pretzels and homemade fruity pebbles treats. Dinner at Passage to India in Mountain View. I napped on part of the drive back. Home. The butternut squash muffins I had made had some mold growing in and on them, so I had to throw them out. I stored them in an airtight container but not in the refrigerator. I didn't think biscuits required refrigeration but maybe it was the butternut squash in them that did. Watched The 36th Chamber of Shaolin on Netflix DVD with Will. We enjoyed this film very much. If you've seen Kill Bill, look up the acting credits of lead actor of The 36th Chamber of Shaolin for a nice surprise.
Sun Jul 3, 2011
Threw away the Kryptonite EZ Mount Bracket that came with my Evolution lock because of reviews on Amazon. It seems that it appears to work well for some time then fails, for some people causing a hazard while cycling. Better to be safe than sorry. My favorite breakfast. Will left for home. Sunbathing in the back yard with a peppermint moscow mule, tortilla chips, and a few bites of fruity pebbles treats. Archived documents. Lunch: large organic hearts of romaine salad with sliced mushrooms, lowfat ranch dressing, mixed cheeses. Edits for Drew for the Recharge Medical and Day Spa website. Began troubleshooting Time Machine failure from about a week ago. Disk maintenance for all drives: verify disk and verify disk permissions. Reconfigured the network a little: moved a drive from the Airport Extreme to local since I no longer needed to share it as when Patrick was here, swapped USB hubs to troubleshoot a problem with one of them not working. Dinner at home: organic whole wheat thin spaghetti with canned organic tomatoes, garlic, fresh basil, salt, olive oil; hot water. More Time Machine failure troubleshooting. Watched The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror XXI" (pretty good) and "Lisa Simpson, This Isn't Your Life" (just okay) on Hulu.
Mon Jul 4, 2011
Slept in a bit. Used Apple Facetime for the first time ever with Tina. Brunch: leftovers from last night. Cleaned my desk area somewhat, throwing out maps and transcribed notes from the Asia trip. Weight training: door pull ups, crab walk (fun!), hip raiser (too easy, not worthwhile), advanced inverse push ups (strenuous), chinese push ups (somewhat hard). Fourth of July party at Quyen and Dave's place, Dave and Phil hosting. Quyen, Quyen's family, Dave, Drew, Danny, Romy, Phil, Kenny, Shaniqua, Harry, Chris, Richard, Tim, Alex, Luc. I drove to DDRP's, and rode with Phil and Danny there and back. We saw fireworks on the way back on the freeway. Will met me at my place afterward.
Tue Jul 5, 2011
Weight training: pec crawl. Breakfast: one organic, sliced pink lady apple. Rode Muni to work because my knee was hurting a bit from when I hit it getting out of Phil's car yesterday. Chatted with Lucia about the emergency fridge defrost. SCWG meeting. Helped student ET with problems connecting to email following the accounts migration. Listserv management. Web team meeting. Lunch from Carmelina's: bean and cheese burrito, Yerba Mate berry, ate on the steps next to the library. Lots of listserv rotation followup. Set up new bluetooth mice for our shared office laptops. Previously we used 2 different models of Kensington mice. The new mice are Logitech. They worked properly without installing the Logitech software which I was happy about because I still remember having awful experiences with Logitech driver software in the past and didn't want to install it if I didn't have to. The Kensington mice had grown unreliable somehow no what troubleshooting attention I gave them, so it was time to replace them. One of the Kensington mice required a coin in order to turn the thing that opened the cover to the battery. In retrospect, that was a pretty dumb design because not everyone has a coin handy. The Logitech mice does not require a coin. Also the Kensington mice required a receiver to be plugged in to the USB port. The Logitech mice use Bluetooth and simply work—no receiver required. So far pretty happy with them. Only small issue is that there's a small delay (less than a second) when beginning to use the mouse after rest. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with Matt S about employee ID numbers and access to the staff portal. Asked Public Affairs to add a link to our YouTube page from their YouTube page. Small word edit on one of our YouTube pages. Removed an old announcement from the homepage for Susie. Archived website data to portable hard drives. Finished the fridge defrost that Lucia had started. Dinner at home with Patrick: pizza delivery from Seniore's. Mushroom and green bell pepper, large green salad. We worked on more IRS paperwork in response to a notice he received indicating that they don't know what they are doing.
Wed Jul 6, 2011
My favorite breakfast at home except potatoes were from scratch and not hash browns, 3 eggs instead of 2. Turned out to be a little too much for me to eat. Telecommute day. Web redesign work: reviewed Gartner document that Michael had sent. Supp app project work in Drupal. This has probably been the roughest day for me on the supp app. I got to a point with Fill PDF that I felt like I was at a dead end. I had tried the two methods suggested for displaying the prereqs page and neither worked. The Viewfield method wouldn't work because the token for the view didn't get exposed and I didn't know how to fix that. It seemed like I would need to dig through the CCK code as well as the Fill PDF code—way over my head. The Custom Token method wouldn't work because it put everything into a single text-only field, but I was working with tabular data. After feeling dejected for a while I realized that I can use the Custom Token method and fake tables by using a monospace font and pad the fields with space characters. It's not ideal, but I know how to make it work, and it's probably good enough for now. We absolutely must launch before July 15, the sooner the better. I got to work on that solution and now have it almost completely done. The school list still needs to be addressed as well as character maximums for all fields. I also added the PharmD payment hook following the receipt of that from Kevin in Accounting. Lunch: leftover one-third of yesterday's burrito lunch. Listserv management. Supp app project work in Drupal. Dinner: large salad leftover from yesterday's dinner. Watched The Simpsons "Donnie Fatso" on Hulu. I didn't like the episode that much. Supp app project work in Drupal. Worked very late. Grocery shopping at Safeway on Taraval. Late meal: 2 slices of leftover pizza, water. Got one and a half loads of laundry done today.
Thu Jul 7, 2011
Breakfast: one organic, sliced pink lady apple. Rode Muni to work. Archived website data to portable hard drives. Listserv management. Met with James about the supp app. Minor web edits regarding faculty changes. Shuttle to Mission Bay. Snack at The Pub: large chai tea latte, a banana. Grad program web overhaul content meeting. Lunch at Peasant Pies: two vegetarian pies, water. Shuttle to Parnassus. Listserv management. Supp app project work in Drupal: configured transaction receipts for OSACA. Listserv management. Sent a reminder of /comm/ to Communicators at Sarah's request. Web working group IT meeting. Met with Eric about the supp app. Supp app project work in Drupal: reviewed, made changes for, and responded to feedback from James. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Sent a message to Communicators about timeliness, mobile delivery, Twitter, and Facebook. Left work very late. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home: leftover pizza, corn off the cob from frozen, water.
Fri Jul 8, 2011
Weight training: yes no maybes. Rode my bike to work. Breakfast: one organic, sliced pink lady apple. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Supp app project work in Drupal. Lunch at Reverie with Matt S. Worked very late on supp app project work in Drupal, skipping dinner. Left work around 11 PM. Rode my bike home. Late meal: corn off the cob from frozen with salt and pepper.
Sat Jul 9, 2011
Breakfast at home: vanilla nonfat yogurt, organic blueberries, Grandma Goodie's honey nut granola. Recharge Spa work: made a 4-up postcard for Drew. Began setting up my replacement Time Machine drive, but it won't mount either via Firewire or USB either with the Vantec drive case or an external adapter. Wah! Drove to Sunnyvale, bought flowers. Honmas: babysitting for sis's birthday while she and Rob dined at Birk's and saw Super 8. Swimming, baked pear-banana bread, ate various takeout cuisines for dinner. Dex joined us as well. I left behind the bread and 2 books: Star Wars ABC and The Star Wars Craft Book. Drove home. Late meal: leftover pizza.
Sun Jul 10, 2011
Late brunch: vanilla nonfat yogurt, organic blueberries, Grandma Goodie's honey nut granola. Skipped Sunday Streets because it was cold and overcast. Lookout. Dinner at Jasmine Garden with Larry, Matt W, Chris C, Eric F, Ric, Brad L, Kevin, Ken-Chi (or maybe Kenji?). I had glass noodles with shrimp and scallops—yummy. Home. Weight training: door pull ups. Late meal: stir fry with tofu, broccoli, bok choy, onions; water.
Mon Jul 11, 2011
Breakfast at home: one organic, sliced pink lady apple. Rode the bus to work. Snack at work: a banana. Calendar management. Helped resident AF with a question about email. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Supp app project work in Drupal. Lunch #1: leftovers from last night's late meal, shared a little with Susie. 1-on-1 with Susie: QBC web standards draft, grad programs affiliation overview draft. Helped Tanishia B with a question about our listservs. Web team meeting. 1-on-1 with Susie. Doctor appointment. Lunch #2 at the Kaiser cafeteria: veggie burger and fries, XXX Vitamin water: $7.81. Supp app project work in Drupal. Dinner: leftovers from last night's late meal.
Tue Jul 12, 2011
Breakfast: one organic, sliced pink lady apple; one banana. Rode the bus to work. Listserv management. Identified a problem with the old UCSF search, asked David K and Catherine K about it. Reviewed a page about OWA for Mark B, found nothing to suggest. Web overhaul meeting. Supp app project work in Drupal: shared Fill PDF service info with Eric, lots of Fill PDF work and more testing. Lunch: tostada from Carmelina's. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with Lisa about Acrobat X install for Don K. Web redesign: Drupal themes review. Supp app project work in Drupal: followup with Fill PDF Kevin K. Followup with Susie and Eric about theming and wireframing. Dinner at Home Restaurant with Drew, Romy, Phil. I had a housemade chickpea burger with fries, torched cherry drink. The burger fell apart easily but was tasty. Phil drove me home. Removed a spider with the spider catcher. Weight training: reverse push ups, hip extensions.
Wed Jul 13, 2011
Weight training: pec crawl. Breakfast: one organic, sliced red delicious apple. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Followup with Lucia and Tran about external hard drive encryption. Followup with Catherine K about old and new UCSF search. Snack: a banana. Phone meeting with Susie and Eric: Drupal themes. Supp app project work in Drupal: PDF download is ready for testing by pharmacy. Followup with Lisa about a reimbursement request for the Fill PDF service. Followup with student MK about downloading antivirus. Lunch at Panda Express with Eric. Redirected a job posting request from Melanie D. Supp app project work in Drupal. Minor web edit for Lucia and Cindy: intern hours. Followup with Susie: finding the postbacc program page. Followup with Cindy about using WuFoo. Made an additional vacation request for the week before Labor Day to add more time to attending BriKel's wedding in NYC. Minor web edit: removed CoursEval from the accounts list. Followup with Susie about MDD changes that have been staged for 7 weeks and no resolution yet for the Abate lab website (6 weeks). Lots of supp app project work in Drupal. Dinner at Venticello with Bill, he gave me a ride home afterwards.
Thu Jul 14, 2011
Breakfast: one organic, sliced red delicious apple. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Supp app project work in Drupal: the supp app is live! Shuttle to Mount Zion. Chatted on the way with Nada. Doctor appointment. Snack from the cafe: a banana, $1. Shuttle to Parnassus. Starbucks: grande chai tea latte nonfat, $3.50. Worked late. Supp app project work in Drupal. Web redesign work: url action summary. Dinner #1 from Moffitt Express: rice bowl with teriyaki chicken drummettes. Web redesign work: url action summary. Will picked me up. Dinner #2 from King of Thai Noodle: fried rice with vegetables and tofu, thai iced tea. Web work for Recharge for Drew. Tried setting up my replacement Time Machine drive. I had taken it to work and it mounted without any problem on my Mac Pro desktop with a SATA to USB 2.0 adapter. I realized after more troubleshooting that both my Vantec external hard drive case and my SATA to USB 2.0 adapter cannot support 2-TB drives. The SATA to USB 2.0 adapter that I have at work is newer, so that's probably why it worked there. I guess I now need to buy a new external hard drive case. Oh, well. I thought this was going to be easy, but at least now I know what the problem is and that it's not the Samsung hard drive I bought. So it looks like NST-360FBSU-BK for me.
Fri Jul 15, 2011
Inguinal hernia repair surgery. Will stayed with me and drove me home. Snack in holding: graham crackers, apple juice, cranberry juice, water. Home. Snack: an orgnaic red delicious apple. I'll be on medical leave for the next 3 weeks. Notified people that the surgery went well. Dinner at home. Will cooked organic spaghettini with mushroom sauce with Dorot cilantro, fresh basil, and grated mixed cheeses. Dessert: strawberry cherries, black cherry ice cream. Archived documents.
Sat Jul 16, 2011
Brunch: hearts of romaine salad with mixed cheeses and lowfat ranch dressing, leftover spaghettini. Rested all day. Dinner at home with Will: we made a stir fry together with organic baby spinach, bok choy, mushrooms, diced onion, extra firm cubed tofu, fresh basil, spices; steamed white jasmine rice. For dessert, we shared a leftover fortune cookie from Panda Express: A message from a distance is coming. Another dessert later: black cherry ice cream.
Sun Jul 17, 2011
Talked with Mom and Dad on the phone. Will went to work. Brunch: Patrick came over and cooked. Sliced organic red delicious apple. Baked salmon with ginger and dill, steamed carrots. He also boiled eggs for me to eat later. We chatted with Tina on Facetime. After Patrick left, I watched Julie and Julia on Netflix DVD. Made ginger-dill mashed potatoes from scratch, and ate it with reheated leftover salmon and some carrots I cooked in the microwave; water. Watched Dirty Dancing (1987) on Netflix instant watch. Watched Surrogates (2009) on Netflix instant watch because it was expiring on July 20. I had seen part of this film I think on the plane or in a hotel room on my Asia trip. Watched "Yesterday's Enterprise" from Star Trek: The Next Generation, season 3, episode 15 on Netflix instant watch. Will arrived home after moving stuff from his room in Oakland to the garage.
Mon Jul 18, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Slept in. Breakfast: organic raspberries, nonfat yogurt, Grandma Goodie's honey nut granola. Watched The Bourne Identity (2002) on Netflix instant watch with Will. Snack: mini burrito. Will went to work. Shower, shave. Afternoon meal: leftover salmon; mashed potato with fresh dill, butter, salt, pepper; carrots; TJ's blueberry-pomegranate unsweetened tea. Kaiser called to reschedule my post-op followup appointment. Received flowers from the OSACA, very nice. Watched A Clockwork Orange (1971) on Netflix instant watch, which was the first time I used subtitles during instant watch. I didn't really understand this film. The subtitles worked as expected except they were in all caps, which I found harder to read than normal case. Fun to see David Prowse in this. Watched Chocolate (2008) on Netflix instant watch with Will. If you forgive this film's absurd premise, and that a handful of plot points go unexplained but figureoutable, you'll be presented with some amazing martial arts choreography which take place in ordinary, city settings but which offer a wide variety of unusually creative sequences. It appears that many of the blows and falls are real. It's also nice to see someone other than Zhang Zi-Yi playing a role like this. Yanin Mitananda (aka Yanin Vismistananda, aka JeeJa Yanin) pleases in this film.
Tue Jul 19, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Breakfast: organic green tea; quesadilla with refried beans, mixed cheeses, sour cream. Installed the Google+ iPhone app. (In the iTunes Store I had to search on "Google+" rather than "Google Plus" to find it.) Snack: organic corn on the cob; chai tea with sugar and almond milk. Watched Precious (2009) on Netflix instant watch with subtitles. Not all caps like with A Clockwork Orange—nice. Dinner at home: organic vegetarian chili with elbow macaroni and organic canned tomatoes. Dessert: one piece of Rolo candy. Watched episodes 1 and 2 of The Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack on Netflix instant watch. Watched Contact (1997) on Netflix instant watch with Will.
Wed Jul 20, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Deleted feeds that hadn't been updated in a long time from my feed reader (currently using the Sage add-in in Firefox). Patrick came over and prepared lunch: tex-mex enchiladas. I laid in the sun for about an hour. Snack: hard-boiled egg with salt and pepper, leftover mac and chili from last night, water. Snack: strawberry cherries. Dinner at home with Will: organic yellow tortilla chips; risotto with potato broth, onions, mushrooms, sea salt, dill. Dessert: Breyer's french vanilla ice cream with organic raspberries. Watched Raging Phoenix (2009) on Netflix DVD with Will.
Thu Jul 21, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Slept in. Will went to work. At home today recovering from surgery. Breakfast: strawberry cherries. Lunch: leftover tex-mex enchiladas. Watched episode 3 of The Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack on Netflix instant watch. This one is not very good. I fast-forwarded during the music number. Watched Highlander (1986) on Netflix instant watch, didn't like it. Watched episode 3 of The Outlaugh Festival on Wisecrack on Netflix instant watch.
Fri Jul 22, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. My favorite breakfast. Snack: one sliced organic red delicious apple, one banana, organic yellow tortilla chips. Nap. Patrick came over and made vegetarian black bean chili with orange and cumin (Bon Appétit, January 2009). Dessert: TJ's chocolate chunk cookies. Sent out the link to the drink menu for UYA.
Sat Jul 23, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Slept in. Brunch: leftover risotto, cold sweet green tea. Watched a short clip of Paula Deen on The Oprah Show making hash brown casserole. Watched The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) on Netflix instant watch. Dinner: leftover chili, almond milk. Watched Strictly Ballroom (1992) on Netflix instant watch. Dessert: one TJ's chocolate chunk cookie. Watched and fast-forwarded through Bigger, Stronger, Faster (2008) on Netflix instant watch.
Sun Jul 24, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Slept in. Two strange power anomalies occurred this morning. One was a brownout that lasted a second. The other was a 2-second power surge that instantly shut my Mac off even though my UPS was working properly (which I confirmed by testing it afterwards). It doesn't look particularly windy outside, so I presume this to be a temporary PG&E problem. Brunch: one banana, one sliced red deicious apple, one 8-ounce glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice. Snack: one chocolate-covered cherry, organic yellow tortilla chips, one everything bagel (from frozen) with cream cheese. Midafternoon meal: leftover macaroni with stir-fried broccoli, red bell pepper, and garlic in an almond-cheese sauce with fresh, organic dill. The almond came from using almond milk. The dish was edible but I probably wouldn't use almond milk again. Late dinner at home with Will: Newman's Own thin crust margherita pizza. Dessert: one each TJ's chocolate chunk cookie.
Mon Jul 25, 2011
Breakfast: Grandma Goodie's honey nut granola with almond milk and fresh, sliced banana. Patrick helped me run some errands. We ate lunch at Chipotle and got groceries at Trader Joe's. Patrick drove. It was hard for me to get in and out of the car. Dinner at home with Will: fettucine with mushrooms, asparagus, and red onion in butter and olive oil. Dessert: rainier cherries. Finished rereading the last 11 chapters of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows because I had forgotten how it had ended. (I still haven't seen film 7 part 2.) Rested. Dinner: leftover mac and cheese, water. FaceTimed with Tina. Bought her an e-book from Amazon. She preferred to read on her iPad, so I bought her the Kindle version instead of the dead tree version. I wouldn't say the purchase process was easy—Amazon's website is a mess—but it wasn't hard, either. One confusing thing is that in some places Amazon says Kindle and means "the physical Kindle device" and in other places Amazon says Kindle and means "the Kindle software application"—there's no clear distinction between these two. For example, the page describing Kindle for Mac says that no Kindle is required to read Kindle books on your Mac. Another confusing thing is the user interface at the point of purchase. It has 5 user interface options: (a) Buy Now With 1-Click®, (b) Deliver to: [Frank's iPhone—OR—Register a new Kindle], (c) How Buying Works, (d) Available on your Mac, (e) Give as a Gift. What if I want to buy with 1-Click as a gift? What if I want to deliver it to my Mac or iPad (both of which are not new physical Kindle devices but can run the Kindle software application)?
Tue Jul 26, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Brunch: leftovers. Dinner: leftover mac and cheese. Dessert: one TJ's chocolate chunk cookie, hot nonfat milk.
Wed Jul 27, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Brunch: leftover fettucine. Watched Tai Chi Master (1993) on Netflix instant watch. I had seen this before but I have no record of a previous viewing in my journal. Walked to McCoppin Square and visited the library then walked back. Snack: one hard-boiled egg with salt and pepper. Early dinner: leftover chili. Figured out today the difference between Chris Messina the actor and Chris Messina in the computer world. I was so confused for so long. Watched Scary Movie 2 (2001) on Netflix instant watch with Will. Tried watching Star Trek II on Netflix instant watch but there was no sound—weird. Watched Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) on Netflix instant watch with Will.
Thu Jul 28, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Late breakfast: nonfat yogurt with Grandma Goodie's honey nut granola and diced fresh nectarine. Patrick drove me to my post-operation doctor appointment—all is well. We lunched on bun with spring rolls at My Father's Kitchen. We chatted and worked on tax paperwork at my place for a bit. Dinner with Danny, Drew, Romy, and Phil at Sushi Raw. We chatted at my place for a bit.
Fri Jul 29, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Breakfast: one sliced nectarine. Attended to a work emergency today. Lunch: leftover spring rolls, leftover fettucine. Dinner: leftover tofu and vegetables stir fry.
Sat Jul 30, 2011
At home today recovering from surgery. Snack: one sliced nectarine. Baked 2 mini loaves of hazelnut banana bread. Attended to a work emergency today. Set up the new 2 GB Time Machine drive to replace the one that had stopped working on June 15—about 6 weeks of downtime for one of my 3 backups. Amputagged some clothes items. Late snack: hazelnut banana bread.
Sun Jul 31, 2011
Initial Time Machine backup completed successfully. At home today recovering from surgery. Slept in. Brunch: large butter leaf lettuce salad with diced organic tomatoes, sliced mushrooms, diced red bell pepper, mixed grated cheeses, lowfat ranch dressing. Melissa stopped by for a brief visit. She gave me lots of tips for my forthcoming trip to NYC. Snack: hazelnut banana bread, tortilla chips. Attended to a work emergency today. Watched Wonder Boys on Netflix instant watch for a few minutes then realized after the dog attack I had read the book so I stopped watching and found my journal entry that talked about the book and fast-forwarded through the rest of the movie. Snack: hazelnut banana bread, water. Another snack: leftover macaroni with grated sharp cheddar cheese.