Thursday, November 17, 2011
This morning while investigating downtime issues I learned that my web hosting company Bluehost is based in Provo, Utah, and this made me very sad. Rode Muni to work. Breakfast to go from Palio: scrambled egg and cheese bagel. Declined a request for new project work from Sarah S. Redirected a request from Todd L about the robotic pharmacy to Lynn P. Sammie started using her dual monitors today. I tried to help her resolve a fuzziness problem with one of the monitors. Upon investigation, I found: (a) both monitors were hooked up via VGA rather than DVI, (b) one monitor was still using the motherboard graphics card (the new graphics card is supposed to be able to handle 2 monitors with a DVI splitter, and I had forgotten to ask Tran to specifically set it up this way), and (c) the Samsung 204B monitor driver had not been installed (this was the monitor that was fuzzy). I tried resolving these issues but ended up making things worse while being late for the conference call I had scheduled with Susie and Eric. Web team conference call: mostly QBC followup. Sent a QBC status report to the wider project team. Calendar management: QBC followup. Made a minor edit to the initial review form for Joel. ICRD work. Fast and very late lunch to go from Subway: veggie delight. Sent a linkcheck report to the QBC project team. Followup with Tony T about the A to Z list and QBC project entries. QBC cleanup: CSS work. Maintenance for Sammie's and Joel's computers. Rode my bike home. I didn't know it was raining until I was downstairs with my bike. I had checked out the window before I left, but from my floor and with everything dark it seemed like there was no rain. Truly, though, it was more of a heavy mist than even a light rain, and it wasn't as cold as it can get in San Francisco, so I rode home even though I didn't prefer it. Nothing bad happened, though a car turning at 20th and Quintara did seem to come right at me but ended up not hitting me and there were the usual, annoying cars that speed up while passing a bicyclist. I haven't ever had a completely peaceful commute; there's always some driver making me feel threatened. I didn't even tell you about the time I was riding alongside the N-Judah one morning and a speeding car squoze between me and the train and passed while accelerating even faster in order to get ahead of the train. Must have been going 35 or 40 miles per hour. So unnecessary. The car came close to brushing me but didn't. The Muni driver saw me, and we shared a look of dismay, but there was nothing either of us could do to bring justice to the situation as seconds later the offender was gone. Dinner at home with Patrick: spaghetti with marinara sauce. Dessert: a small brownie. Watched True Grit (2010) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. I loved this film. A tale so lovingly, perfectly told with solid performances throughout. Surprisingly amusing for a tale of retribution. Late snack: leftover sushi, leftover corn off the cob.