July 2012
Summary: Dinner and movie with Will and Levie; Auf Wiedersehen, Marck! Europe trip with Chris and Nate begins: Copenhagen, Denmark.
Dates on this page
Sun Jul 1, 2012
Slept in. Breakfast: 2-egg scramble with organic baby spinach and grated mixed cheeses, 2 hash browns, 2 crescent rolls from a can, bing cherries, 8 ounces of generic vegetable juice, hot water. Patrick had woken and eaten earlier but still ate a crescent roll. Caught up on journaling. Archived portions of Apple's MacBook Air website for future reference. Here's a snapshot of the extensions I'm currently using in Chrome: Adblock Plus (Beta) 1.2, Forecastfox 2.0.10, HTML Validator 1.3.3, LastPass 2.0.1, Type-ahead-find 0.3.9, Web Developer 0.4, Window Resizer 1.7.0, Xmarks Bookmark Sync 1.0.22. Recharge spa work: setup of responsive layouts using a relatively new feature of Chris Pederick's Web Developer toolbar for Chrome. Lunch: leftover pasta, leftover rice and beans, bing cherries. Drove to the Castro. Met Will and his mom Levie. We drove in her white pickup to Don Ramon's for dinner then to 5th and Mission Garage. Saw Snow White and the Huntsman at AMC Metreon. The film had a few moments that didn't make sense, but otherwise I liked the film a lot. It takes a lot of different elements from the fairy tale and turns it into a live action interpretation. Nicely done. Recharge spa work: setup of responsive layouts. This is taking longer than I thought because the stylesheets don't always do what I tell them to do.
Mon Jul 2, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic granny smith apple; cinnamon; "mostly marin" wildflower honey; organic soy milk. Set up my MacBook Air, configured system preferences. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Management activities. Followup with Tran about a problem with Firefox and our website. Resolved a problem reported by Lisa about a notice going live on our website earlier than it should (supp app). Listserv management. Small web edits for Susie: make a gift, vision. Reviewed Shirin's entering student newsletter. Lunch to go from Courtyard Cafe: veggie californian sandwich, onion pancake, water from my klean kanteen. Org chart work for Susie and Sue/JoeG. Supp app project work in Drupal: opened the new supp app for testing. Strategic goals work. Patrick picked me up in the car. I put my bike in the trunk. Dinner at Craw Station with Phil, Drew, Romy, Danny, Patrick: about $21 each, tip included, for 2 orders of crawfish, potatoes, house noodles, fried shrimp, fried calimari, 2 orders of gumbo, 3 orders of rice, one pitcher of Fat Tire, one iced tea. They were out of corn on the cob, which disappointed us. Patrick said he would not return. The gumbo was a soup, not gumbo. Phil believed that the crawfish were from China. Patrick agreed they were different than crawfish in New Orleans. I liked the fried shrimp and the noodles. Home. More MacBook Air setup: set up printing and scanning and dvd sharing, installed Chrome, configured more prefererences.
Tue Jul 3, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, argentinian packham pear; cinnamon; "mostly marin" wildflower honey; organic soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Went to a meeting that I realized later was canceled. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Canceled a web team meeting. Supp app project work in Drupal most of the day. Management activities. Handled a logo request for Susie. about/admin updates pushed live for Susie and Sue. Handled a request to add new content from Rebecca B. Honors and awards block troubleshooting for Rebecca B. Had an unpleasant day at work—unusual. Calendar management. Management activities. Very late (5:30 PM) lunch at the cafeteria: garden burger, fries, cherries I had brought with me, water from my klean kanteen. Rode my bike home. Late dinner at home with Patrick: tuna salad on bed of baby spinach, hot water. Finished watching La Vie En Rose (2007) on Netflix dvd with Patrick. Her life story was a depressing contrast to the beauty of her singing. After the first night we watched the film in about 20- or 30-minute increments partly due to our schedules and partly because it was hard to watch someone encounter so much misfortune. Recharge Spa redesign work: did a major reorganization of the stylesheet because the styles weren't behaving for me, added rounded corners to hover states for bottom and right navs, increased padding on right navs, styling for mobile portrait homepage is almost done.
Wed Jul 4, 2012
This morning I resolved to migrate all my Address Book contacts on my iMac to iCloud, and upon investigation I realized it had already happened. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with sliced banana, coconut, raisins, cinnamon, organic coconut milk; 8 ounces of carrot juice, 12 ounces of vegetable juice. Recharge Spa redesign work all day. Some housecleaning. Lunch at home with Patrick: quinoa and onions with leftover lentils, hot water. Patrick took a nap. I cut my hair and showered. Snack: bing cherries. Dinner at home with Patrick: tofu and vegetables stir-fry with yakisoba noodles, hot water. Patrick helped me with a knot in my back. Nap. More Recharge Spa redesign work: desktop, mobile portrait (320x480), mobile landscape (480x320), small tablet landscape (800x600), large tablet portrait (768x1024), large tablet landscape (1024x768), and desktop (larger than 1024x768) are now mostly complete with respect to responsive design. Late meal: organic cheese ravioli in tomato and cheese sauce from a can.
Thu Jul 5, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, granny smith apple; cinnamon; "mostly marin" wildflower honey; organic soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Recently a fire sprinkler on the floor above was activated and I learned today that the photocopier is damaged and there is water dripping from the ceiling in the student lounge. Only Lisa and I are in the office today, so this was an interesting distraction. Management activities. Lisa showed me how to perform a conference call or three-way call on my telephone: press Transfer, dial the extension I want, then immediately press Transfer again while it's ringing. At this point the other person should be able to hear and be heard if the third person answers. Supp app project work in Drupal: testing and fixing. Lunch to go from Panda Express: chow mein, honey walnut shrimp, hot and sour soup. Ate in Saunders Court even though it was a bit too windy. Lime shuttle from Parnassus to MCB. Drupal Users Group meeting. Shared a drink with John K, Ed C, and Vick G at Dear Mom. Lime shuttle from MCB to Parnassus. Snack to go from Panda Express: two veggie spring rolls. My two fortunes from today: You will be successful through innovation and determination. You are gifted in many ways. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: leftover yakisoba. Set up autoload on my Clipper Card, received "an internal error has occurred" while doing so. Recharge Spa redesign work: more responsive stylesheet tweaking and fixing. The small tablet portrait (600x800) is all that's left for this portion of the styling. Late snack: popcorn from a saucepan.
Fri Jul 6, 2012
Dropped the car off at the auto body shop for a few minor repairs. Breakfast at the cafeteria: scrambled eggs, potatoes, wheat toast: about $3.50. Management activities. Met with Eric about some issues I have been having with the supp app. Lunch to go from Carmelina's with Eric: mushroom quesadilla. Helped Lisa S with a problem with her default browser configuration. Management activities. Picked the car up from the auto body shop, drove home. Foggy headlamp covers are now polished clean, and door trim has been reset and is no longer popping out. More work to be done on Monday or possibly Tuesday. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover lentils and quinoa, hot water. Recharge Spa redesign work: more responsive design work on small tablet portrait. Late meal: vegetable soup from a can.
Sat Jul 7, 2012
Breakfast at home: 2-egg tomato scramble, 2 hash browns, 3 small biscuits from a can, 8 ounces of vegetable juice, hot water. Laundry. Found my long-lost money clip and $36 in the pocket of a pair of pants that I haven't worn in a long time—nice! Grocery shopping at Safeway. Folded laundry. Weeded my address book some. Ironed laundry. Lunch at home with Patrick: Kashi mushroom and cheese pizza from frozen, baby spinach salad with sprouts and grated mozzarella and jack. Nap. Late dinner at home: portabella veggie burger on sesame bun, corn on the cob, hot water. Dessert: chocolate pudding from a box mix. (Recently Patrick and I discovered that you can't make box pudding with almond milk; it fails to set properly.) Did new car research.
Sun Jul 8, 2012
Breakfast with Danny at Olea (415-202-8521, 1494 California Street). French toast for Danny; omelet with summer squash and side salad for me; blue bottle coffee for both. Stopped at the spa briefly. Shopping in Union Square: Williams-Sonoma, Niketown, Brooks Brothers, Zara boys and men, Levi's, Macy's boys, H&M boys and men, had planned to go to DSW but I discovered that DSW is now gone and UNIQLO is coming to that space in fall/winter this year—so exciting!, Janie & Jack, stopped briefly at the new Ghirardelli store where I received a complimentary bar of milk chocolate with hazelnut crisp, Pacsun, Footlocker, H&M boys, Hollister, Calvin Klein, The Container Store, The Apple Store, dropped my phone off at my car to charge, ate a late lunch at Katana-ya: bbq pork ramen, picked up my phone, Macy's Mens Store. There were lots of sales this weekend of 50% off or more. Union Square was filled with mostly European tourists. Most of the stores were crowded with shoppers. I drove past the Fillmore Jazz Festival. Fortunately I passed before and after it started and neither California nor Pine were blocked. I should have eaten lunch earlier. Drove home. Watched Shaolin (2011) on Netflix DVD with Patrick.
Mon Jul 9, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with sliced banana; cinnamon; "mostly marin" wildflower honey; organic soy milk; hot water. Rode my bike to work. Maintenance for my own Windows XP VM: installed Apple and Sun updates, troubleshot "some updates could not be installed" when running Windows Update. This let me to KB2686509. faultykeyboard.log lists KBDCR.DLL, and indeed this file is missing from C:\WINDOWS\system32. I do not recall previously doing any customizations to the keyboard layout. Ran sfc/scannow to see if that would restore KBDCR.DLL. Otherwise I might have some trouble getting a good copy of the file. Most in our office have upgraded to Windows 7. Backed up the keyboard layouts registry branch just in case. sfc/scannow did not restore the file. I copied the missing KBDCR.DLL file from Sammie's computer with Win XP to my computer. Deleted faultykeyboard.log. Reran Windows Update. Now the update installed successfully. Restart. Confirmed no more Windows Updates. No changes were made to the registry. Cleaned the computer equipment drawer. Emergency lunch to go from Subway: footlong veggie delight on honey oat. Web team planning meeting (aspirations) with Susie, Eric, David, and Michael. Dinner at home with Patrick: lemon-rice soup with cornbread and black cod. Dessert: chocolate pudding. Late meal: vegetable soup from a can, hot water. Recharge Spa work for Drew: updating the jobs page.
Tue Jul 10, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic vanilla yogurt, Grandma Goodie's super granola, diced nectarine; hot water. Rode Muni to work. Management activities. Supp app work in Drupal: resolved the problem I had lots of trouble with last week. Followup phone call with Robin C about the rxforchange website. Supp app work in Drupal: SSL setup: generated the CSR, submitted an SSL cert request to ITS. Followup with Lucia about Java update. Followup with Sammie about supp app testing. Lunch to go from Panda Express: fried rice, mixed vegetables, veggie spring rolls. Web team meeting. Rode Muni to Kaiser French Campus where I had a doctor appointment: I had a toenail removed because I was unable to resolve a long-standing fungus infection. It should grow back fully after about a year. Patrick drove me home. Nap. Checked on some happenings at work. Dinner at home with Patrick. Recharge Spa work for Drew: added Jenny, ported changes to dev (more complicated than normal). MacBook Air setup: Arcana Startup Sound, Microsoft Silverlight. Watched Archer, season 1, episode 1, on Netflix instant watch on my MacBook Air in bed.
Wed Jul 11, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic nectarine; cinnamon; "mostly marin" wildflower honey; organic soy milk. First look at my toenail surgery, and there was blood everywhere after I removed the dressing. Pain! Ugh! Applied antibiotic ointment and a new dressing, managed to fit on a sock and fit my foot in my shoe. Rode Muni to work. Uninstalled Mozy Pro. I've been receiving UPS error messages lately, tried troubleshooting this for a few minutes but didn't get anywhere. Lots of calendar management. Management activities. Uninstalled and reinstalled Java for Lucia. Reposted the Pharm Sci fall draft schedule for Lucia. Management activities. Showed Lucia and Lisa how to add DK's signature to Word and PDF documents. Management activities. Lunch from Carmelina's: tostada, no meat, no fountain drink, water from my Klean Kanteen. Listserv management for Lucia. Updated the grads licensure checklist and link for Cindy. Management activities. Supp app project work in Drupal: sent an update to the team. Prepared an analysis of the new consent form provided by University Relations in April for discussion at a future web team meeting. Worked late. Muni bus schedule didn't work for my dinner schedule, so I ate at Nan King Road Bistro: shanghai noodles (no extra protein), jasmine green tea, water, $11 after about $3 of tip. Rode Muni home. Recharge Spa redesign work: some styling for small tablet portrait (600x800). Responsive layouts now almost complete. Must still restructure the css so that it works at all sizes, not just thresholds. After that, some page-level examinations and styling fixes, then finally the homepage content with responsive layout adjustments. Responsive design is hard work, but the result should be worth it, and I'm now better prepared for my next responsive layout job. I learned that it's probably better to comp everything first before you start coding. It's difficult for me to work that way because I prefer seeing the interactivity while I build. But knowing and seeing what you're going to build is ultimately better for responsive layout design because it is better to start with the smallest layout and work your way up instead of the way I did it this time starting large and working my way smaller. Small-to-large should make for more efficient stylesheets, too. Did some purging of old, unneeded documents from the document safe.
Thu Jul 12, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic nectarine; cinnamon; organic soy milk. Recharge Spa work: responsive layouts. Drove the car to the auto shop. Went to a meeting but the other person didn't show. WCWG lunch meeting: Susie showed the redesign comps, we talked about org charts. I had a chicken sandwich and water from my Klean Kanteen. Supp app update followup. Management activities. Listened in to the IT Forum meeting. Chatted with John K about setting up SSL for the supp app. Listserv management for Lucia. Snack: pretzels. Picked up the car from the auto shop. Car wash at Divisadero Touchless. Snack: trail mix, fortune cookie. My fortune: Soon a visitor shall delight you. Bought gas on the way home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover lemon-rice soup, large salad, vegetable juice, hot water. Recharge Spa redesign work: responsive layouts: squared away 601 to 765 pixels wide. 481 to 599 is left to do.
Fri Jul 13, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with sliced, organic banana; cinnamon; organic soy milk. Leadership group meeting. 1-on-1 with Susie. Supp app project work in Drupal: SSL setup followup. Wrote new content and rewrote existing content for the new IRC website. Archived documents. Installed Java 7 Update 5 and ran Disk Cleanup for Sammie. Encounted Paul and Andrew on the sidewalk, joined them at Badlands, tried to get a drink but it was too crowded, left. Dinner at Osaka Sushi with Emery, Jeremy, Ray, Mike P. Afterwards Jeremy invited us to his place to help him finish an unusually-shaped bottle of sake. I had time to kill due to the Muni L-OWL not running properly, so I had a mushroom slice at Escape from New York Pizza and sat in Badlands for a few minutes. Tonight I watched the Call Me Maybe video for the first time. I am tired of this song being popular. It's not that great of a pop song or video and not worthy of Sesame Street and Star Wars parodies.
Sat Jul 14, 2012
Breakfast at home: 2 hash browns; 2 eggs scrambled with mushrooms, garlic, grated mozzarella and provolone; 1 biscuit from mix with butter; hot water. Auf Wiedersehen, Marck! farewell party at Jeremy's. Met Amber, Angel, Kyle P. Remet Newton L. Marck leaves SF to join Tilman in München. After the party a bunch of us helped clean. Jeremy bought Paxti's pizza and I had a slice of pepperoni.
Sun Jul 15, 2012
Breakfast: a small bite of banana bread. Laundry. Archived documents. Stopped at Safeway to pick up a bottle of wine. Casual Brunch at Brian and José's. Chatted with Brian, whom I had met at Pink Saturday. We talked about his recent trip to Korea and about unlocking an iPhone. Met Dave (with the dinosaur t-shirt), Camden, Miles, Philip (whom I had met before), Zeke (perhaps the youngest one at the party), Nick (the startups guy with the completely smashed iPhone screen), Sebastian, Dante, David (with whom I talked and laughed about name-remembering techniques), Rob Ferguson (with whom I talked briefly about Songza), Mark (with whom I talked briefly about matchmaking) and perhaps a few more I forgot. After a while, the hot tub opened, and lots of others went in, but I didn't get in. Rested for a bit outside of Lookout. Hao drove up and we chatted briefly. Drove home. Dinner at home: Patrick made a vegetable soup. Stomach hurt somewhat after dinner, not sure why. Folded laundry. Contacted AT&T to unlock my iPhone 3GS, did a backup, then a restore from a previous backup. Not sure if the unlocking took. Recharge Spa redesign work: responsive layouts. All basic responsive layouts are now complete! Hooray! Redid the iPhone restore, but this time I did a restore to factory settings rather than restore from backup. This time I saw the message "Congratulations! Your iPhone is unlocked" and then restored from my most recent backup. The whole process took a really long time, altogether a couple of hours I'm guessing. Late meal: organic whole wheat rotini with yellow cheese sauce from a packet, organic ginger tisane.
Mon Jul 16, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic vanilla yogurt, Grandma Goodie's super granola, diced cripps pink apple; hot Tazo earl gray tea; water. Lots of supp app work in Drupal: ssl setup with Teresa. Lots of file management: deleting old, unneeded files and organizing ones I wanted to keep. Management activities. Late lunch: veggie melt (veggie pattie, cheese, onions on buttered sourdough), vegan primavera soup, water from my Klean Kanteen. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover vegetable soup, steamed asparagus with salt and pepper. Stomach hurt somewhat after dinner, not sure why. Recharge Spa redesign work: homepage body content: inserted text and photos, styled, tested responsiveness. Late snack: pepto bismol, tortilla chips, organic ginger tisane.
Tue Jul 17, 2012
Recharge Spa redesign work: styling tweaks, sent Drew a new snapshot. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic cripps pink apple; organic cinnamon; organic soy milk; organic ginger tisane. It's been a week since my toenail was removed, and the nail bed is continuing to heal. I walk sometimes normally and sometimes with a limp. It hurts the most after showering. I've been taking over-the-counter pain medicine as instructed by the doctor. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Calendar management. Sent a surplus pickup request to Denetra for assorted cables and other old computer equipment. Management activities. Lots of file organization, file purging, and uploading to The Archive. Submitted more requests to Eric to tweak how The Archive works. Lunch at the cafeteria: large salad. Eric and David moved today from their office across the hall to Laurel Heights 218. Followup with supp app work in Drupal: SSL setup. Rode Muni home. Drove to PDDR's. Dinner with Danny, Romy, Drew, and met downstairs neighbors Chris, Will, and Isaac—all young social-networking-company-employed techies, the first two of Cloudy and the third of Facebook. Isaac filled in for (Mark?) who was working. Phil was working and arrived late. Danny made chicken cordon bleu; timbale of rice; side of stir-fried mystery greens; bowl of non-spicy, surf-and-turf gumbo. Dessert: currant-almond tart from Tartine. We talked about Cloudy, work schedules, work spaces, working from home, distractions from working, projection of movies, restaurant preferences, noisy pet birds, Southpaw, Tartine, Texas, Dallas, Austin, Australia, seasons and weather, Mark Zuckerberg, whether Mark Zuckerberg owns more than one t-shirt, the Facebook film, the yoga teacher that was recently fired from Facebook, tech company perks, fashion, shoplifting, more. Home. Recharge Spa redesign work: tweaked margins for responsive layouts. Clipper card now seems to be autoloading. I thought yesterday that it wasn't going to work and that I would have to talk to a human, but fortunately I think it's working.
Wed Jul 18, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic cripps pink apple; organic cinnamon; organic soy milk. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Listened a bit to the live broadcast of some UC meeting, learned about Proposition 30. Listserv management: Tim C reported today that his Year 3 mailing list was not properly populated. He was correct; I had not received the lists like I usually do, so I followed up and began correcting the problem. Followup with Scott N about Rx for Change. Lunch at the cafeteria: vegetable risotto, side of corn, water from my Klean Kanteen. Dessert: chocolate frozen yogurt with chopped peanuts. Jazzee demo. Supp app project work in Drupal: submitted a DNS change request to ITS. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick: all-organic gourmet mushroom ragout with penne rigati, hot water. Dessert: one small piece of dark chocolate with salted almond. Recharge Spa redesign work: tried to do some link color tweaking but ended up getting confused about the multiple states and undid all my changes.
Thu Jul 19, 2012
I wanted to get to work for a 9 AM meeting, but I was running a little late, so instead of eating breakfast at home like I normally do I packed it to go. I left at 8:00 AM to catch the 8:10 bus, but I missed it because it arrived 2 minutes early. My toe was hurting, so I didn't want to walk home, so I waited 20 minutes for the next one, and this time the driver nearly forgot to stop. She saw me flailing my arms at the last second, and I had to limp about 20 feet over to get to the bus. When I boarded she apologized and said she was distracted by (something?). Residency application meeting with Cindy, Cathi, Monica, Frances. Late breakfast: organic oatmeal with raisins; organic cinnamon; organic, unsweetened soy milk. Web team meeting: wireframes review. Comm team meeting: 3-year goals. Snack from Moffitt Cafe: mediterranean pizza slice. Drink from Moffitt Cafe Express: medium chai tea latte. Kiosk work. Wrote and sent a summary of the residency application plans to Orlando. Dinner at home: delivery from Taipei Restaurant: onion pancake with peanut sauce, mu shu shrimp, ants climbing up a tree, braised pork with mustard greens, steamed white rice. The peanut sauce was delicious but it didn't seem to go well with the onion pancake. Patrick had ordered cream cheese puffs but we received onion pancake by mistake. I enjoyed the mu shu shrimp with pancakes. I couldn't eat the ants dish because it turned out to be spicy; Patrick missed seeing that indication on the menu. I tasted only a tiny bite of the pork dish, which I thought was too dry. I can't remember having had such bad luck with Taipei Restaurant in the past, tho when we frequented it we usually ate in. Patrick and I had a house meeting with upstairs tenants Ashton, April, Jackie, Kelsey, Lance. It went very well. Installed the A Year of Riddles iPhone app after hearing about it from sneeper.
Fri Jul 20, 2012
Weight training: door pull-ups. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, diced ?; California sage honey; organic cinnamon; soy milk. Rode Muni to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Lots of calendar management. Small web update for Shirin: reg deadline is now TBD instead of Aug 1. Honors and Awards followup. Followup with Joe C about blurry text on our website in Safari on iPhone: I've seen it too, no easy fix. Try closing other apps, restarting the iPhone, or clearing the browser cache. Followup with Peter A about dist lists and contact groups in Outlook and Exchange. Followup with Rodney about access to our IRC Google Docs folder. Merged my two separate Asana accounts—one for home and one for work. It worked, no problems immediately found. Nice. Followup with Rodney about CrashPlan. Chris O had some good—and possibly still-secret—news for us about CrashPlan. Lots of calendar management. Lots of followup with Peter A and others about POP, IMAP, Gmail, forwarding, HIPAA. Listserv management: 3rd-year mailing list updates. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home with Patrick: I had leftover lemon-rice soup and leftovers from Taipei Restaurant. Patrick had leftovers from Taipei Restaurant. Installed a lot of apps to my MacBook Air. Watched the first hour of All About Eve on Netflix DVD with Patrick. More MacBook Air setup: dead pixel test, memory test, disk verify, repaired permissions, installed Apple updates, set up music sharing, Time Machine. While preparing the external hard drive for Time Machine and Disk Utility I encountered two errors: (a) Couldn't bring the new Core Storage logical volume online, and (b) Disk Erase failed with the error Not a valid Core Storage logical volume group UUID. I canceled the operation and started over, this time choosing to not encrypt the Time Machine volume, and this completed the Time Machine setup with no errors. I am wary of setting up File Vault 2, not gonna do it just yet.
Sat Jul 21, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, organic cripps pink apple; organic cinnamon; organic, unsweetened soy milk. Drove to SoMa to get my windshield repaired, but there was a miscommunication and they failed to order a part that was needed so I cannot get the work done today. I drove to Westlake Center and looked for shoes at DSW but bought nothing. Home. Lunch at home with Patrick: mostly organic nicoise salad with grilled organic tuna and boiled egg; unsweetened cold green tea. Did some trip preparation. Yoga: standing warmup practice. Weight training: sumo squats. (Now that I have custom orthotics I feel more comfortable trying squats again.) Finished watching All About Eve (1950) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Snack: coconut shrimp, popcorn. (Didn't really have dinner tonight.) Had trouble sleeping: upstairs neighbors were talking or watching TV.
Sun Jul 22, 2012
Woke around 7 AM. Wrote and delivered a note to the upstairs neighbors. Slept from 8 AM to 2 PM. Supp app work in Drupal: more testing. Late brunch at home: gluten-free pancakes with butter and maple syrup; tangerine juice. More supp app work in Drupal. Dinner at home with Patrick: quinoa spaghetti with summer vegetables (rainbow chard, onion, red bell pepper, zucchini, heirloom tomato, garlic); hot water. Supp app work in Drupal: more testing. Dessert: banana cream pie with whipped cream. Late snack: one corn on the cob. To bed late.
Mon Jul 23, 2012
Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with fresh, organic raspberries and sliced banana; organic cinnamon; organic unsweetened soy milk. Rode my bike to work. First day riding since my toenail removal 2 weeks ago. A little pain when arriving at work, but otherwise not bad. Made the supp app live. Followup with Frances K about 3rd-year listservs. Followup about Rx for Change and resources. Meeting with Eric about The Archive but he didn't show. Maybe his phone is not working properly still? Lunch by myself at Park Chow: sustainable fried fish tacos, minestrone soup, chai tea latte, $21 after tax and tip. Chatted with Peter A about distribution lists and contact groups and his email needs, brought Mike F into the conversation and we all got it sorted out. Supp app followup: problem reported with the payment process: "Transaction Declined—The configuration with processor is invalid. Call Merchant Service Provider." Our MSP is First Bank but I didn't have contact info for them, so I began asking around. Michael N and Kevin L helped me identify Tracy B. It seems the MSP will automatically turn off your account if you don't use it for 6 months. Trouble is our admissions cycle is open only for 6 months of the year, so it sounds like they're shutting it off just before we relaunch after a year. Still working on a solution. Lots of calendar management. Followup with Michael N about Trustwave scans. Listserv management. Updated preview session dates for Shirin. Began writing content for the Planning and Communications minisite. Rode my bike home. Charged my Serfas bike light via USB. Dinner at home with Patrick: 2 eggs over medium with green onions, 2 hash browns, steamed rainbow chard. Installed Office for Mac 2011 on my MacBook Air. Dessert: a small piece of dark chocolate. Uploaded some photos to Flickr. Reviewed a backlog of Flickr activity and mail. Temporarily tried using Option+Space as my keyboard shortcut for Alfred but returned to F15 (iMac, home) and F16 (Mac Pro, work) after realizing that Option+Space conflicts with Alt+Space in Windows in VMware Fusion. 4 messages in my inbox 4 days before Europe trip.
Tue Jul 24, 2012
Last night I dreamt that I was somewhere in Europe on a sidewalk, and I had left my hotel to catch a flight but forgot to take all my belongings. Breakfast at home: Grandma Goodie's super granola with organic, unsweetened soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Lots of calendar management. DNS change followup: ITS successfully completed the DNS change request that Acquia asked us to perform, and it did result in SSL working on the dev site on our Acquia hosting. Lunch to go from Subway: veggie delight on honey oat with swiss, untoasted; Sun Chips harvest cheddar; water from my Klean Kanteen. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Encountered Michael C in the hallway, visited his corner office with the great view. Lunch web team meeting with Eric, Susie, and David. DPSL new website meeting with Eric, Susie, and Marcus F. Testing and followup with supp app payment process: Tracy B flipped some switches and we're back in business again. pcard process change followup with La'Trece and Paula. Trustwave scan analysis and remediation. Visited new offices for Eric and David in LHTS 218—very nice. Patrick picked me up in the car (and I put my bike in the trunk). We drove to the Castro. Shoe shopping at Body and De La Sole. Didn't buy anything. Hard to find shoes I like that also have removable footbeds for my orthotics. Dinner at The Dancing Pig: two Speakeasy Big Daddy IPAs, pulled pork, half chicken, baked sweet potato, mac and cheese, brussel sprouts, corn on the cob. Parts of the half chicken were dry and parts were very delicious. The brussel sprouts were too spicy for me to eat. The corn was flat or soggy. Everything else was very tasty. Mac and cheese could have used more breadcrumbs but was otherwise perfect—rich, creamy, and smooth. Afterwards I saw a post on Facebook from Thong—he said he was at Blush! listening to a band. Patrick and I stopped at Blush! to find Thong and Thomas listening to a band called Sharmanka, and we chatted for a while, catching up as we had not seen them in a long time. They just bought a new Honda Civic. Thong is now living in The City. If he hadn't posted on Facebook I'm sure we would not have happened upon them.
Wed Jul 25, 2012
Last night I dreamt that I had left a party on the 7th floor of a building and immediately realized that I didn't know where my keys or wallet were. I had ended up on the 6th floor somehow and entered a room with some people and I asked for help. I thought I had recognized one of the men and said so. He said we might have shared a dance on a dance floor somewhere. They were friendly but unable to help me, so I went through a doorway to the hallway to see if I could return to the 7th floor. I encountered a very busy security desk. After a few minutes of waiting my turn, a security woman asked me some questions but before I could finishing answering one or two of them she stopped me and called someone else over to assist—something about being an "institutional baby." That's when I awoke. Weight training: door pull-ups, pec crawl. Toe still not fully healed. After a shower a bit mushy and still red in the center of the nail bed. Little to no pain, though. Just in time. Deferred breakfast. Rode my bike to work. Quick breakfast at the cafeteria: 2 eggs scrambled, wheat toast, diced potatoes. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. More wireframes and sitemaps review. Lunch at Rigolo with Eric: caesar salad with cold salmon, chai tea latte. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. On the shuttle I chatted with Nancy W. Flickr work, kiosk work. Calendar management. Chatted briefly online with Nate. Chatted on the phone with mom and dad for a few minutes. N train to Powell Street Station. Cab to 620 Jones. Dinner at 620 Jones with Romy, Drew, Danny, Phil, Patrick. L train home. Recharge Spa work: added Tranquil Art: Emily A. Installed Safari 6 on my iMac (Lion). Word on the street is that it's really fast.
Thu Jul 26, 2012
A few days ago while I waited next to a policeman to cross Parnassus Avenue, a man in scrubs began to cross on the red light, and the policeman stopped him by saying, "Sir." That kind of thing doesn't happen often enough. Did some packing. Breakfast at home: organic oatmeal with diced, fuji apple; organic cinnamon. (Ran out of soy milk.) Rode my bike to work. fdatransportal is down, troubleshooting. Sent Cindy the draft of the new IRC minisite for review. Followup on LDAP bind request for Mark F, had to write a plea to Doug C to permit us to use opt-in student data. Sent Eric and Susie a long message about The Archive. pcard paperwork. Followup with a folder permissions request from Rodney. Sent the comm team a draft of the P&C minisite. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Chapter Three check-in meeting with Lolita, Mark F, Susie, Eric, Michael, David. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Eric and I set up a couple of HootSuite accounts for our social media work. fdatransportal followup. Small web update for Cindy: career fair reg. Linkchecking, Flickr work, kiosk work. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: organic baby spinach spring mix salad with candied walnuts, organic heirloom tomatoes, grilled zucchini, boiled egg, goat cheese; side of corn on the cob; tibetan flatbread. Finished packing. Watched the first 55 minutes of Mean Girls on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Loaded my MacBook Air with movies for the plane: The Truman Show, 12 Angry Men. Created a Gather Content account.
Fri Jul 27, 2012
Forgot to eat breakfast. Finished packing. Considered shopping for shoes but decided against it. Patrick dropped me off at the airport. The rest of this day is lost to traveling from San Francisco to Copenhagen.
Sat Jul 28, 2012
SFO to AMS via KLM: 10 hours. 3-hour layover. AMS to CPN via KLM: 1 hour. World of Delights Fine Food: one bottle of organic elderflower drink in a bottle: 21,95 DKK ($3.64). Spent about 30 minutes navigating in the airport then about 10 minutes trying to buy a metro ticket and failing—I didn't know my PIN for my credit card and the machine wouldn't accept my debit card even though I had just used it successfully with the debit card's PIN to buy the beverage. Spoke to a human and succeeded: 72.00 DKK (about $12) for a round-trip ticket. Metro to Frederiksberg station: about 15 minutes. The trains here run every 3 minutes. How do they do that? The sky is overcast and people are carrying umbrellas but it's not raining. Checked in to Radisson Blu Falconer. This hotel seems like it might have been a luxury hotel about 20 years ago and over the years hasn't been maintained at its original state of quality. My room is very small but serviceable. Called Chris and Nate who had arrived earlier today and were napping. We went to nearby Moroccad Cafe for appetizers and water. Bicycles are everywhere. Back to the hotel for more rest. Nap. Dinner with Nate, Chris, and Ravi at Sokkelund Cafe and Brasserie. Nate had a hot chevre salad, Chris had a caesar salad, Ravi had steak tartare, I had a salmon and shrimp salad. We shared a bottle of red wine and a small appetizer platter of nuts, cured meat, cheese, and olives. This was a pleasant experience with staff to match.
Sun Jul 29, 2012
Met Chris and Nate in the lobby for Nespresso, my first time using this impressive machine. The Radisson Blu Falconer has a Scandinavian brunch buffet that we decided to try even though we hadn't included it with our rooms. It's an impressive spread with lots of different kinds of food and beverages and probably easily satisfies all their target traveler's culinary needs for brunch. I thought it was the quietest brunch I'd ever experienced. We were among the first to arrive when it opened, and it seemed obvious that they were expecting larger crowds to come later. We chatted briefly with staffperson Emilio from Cuba about the origin of the fruit, particularly the pineapple. Afterwards we walked the city with no particular agenda. We toured parts of Frederiksberg Have, a large city park/garden. We entered at Frederiksberg Allé, saw Frederiksberg Palace from a distance and toured other parts of the park. We exited at at Frederiksberg Allé then walked Frederiksberg Allé to Vesterbrogade to Gasværksvej to Gammel Kongevej, stopped for a rest at Skt Jørgens Sø past Tycho Brahe Planetarium, Vesterport Station, down Jernbanegade. City Hall Square is under construction. We walked along Strøget, a pedestrian shopping street which reminded me of Khao San Road somewhat with its many street shops and sidewalk restaurants. We stopped for Illy coffee at Kongens Nytorv (King's New Square), ordering from Streckers, a 1913 Baroque Revival kiosk and sitting at a small table under a small heat lamp. (The sky was overcast.) A man nearby played Ave Maria and Memories on clarinet to recorded accompaniment. We continued along Strøget and when we reached the end we returned on a parallel street and stopped at Cafe Norden for lunch. Chris had tomato soup with lots of different kinds of sliced chunks of bread. Nate had smørrebrød, a trio of open sandwiches: shrimp and egg, pork loin and red cabbage, chicken salad and watercress. I ordered a sandwich with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon. When my sandwich arrived I was confused. The plate I received looked to me like a salad but with the correct ingredients—scrambled eggs and smoked salmon—and some flat wedges of bread on top. I asked the runner about this, but she insisted I had the correct order. After some investigation, I did indeed find two wedges of a flat bread underneath to match the same two wedges on top. It was much more food than I had planned to eat. To drink, Chris ordered an iced tea and Nate and I each had 33 cl of Leffe, a blond beer. This turned out to be a surprisingly expensive meal: 595.00 Krone or about $100. I couldn't finish all my food and when I asked for a to go container I had to follow someone into the restaurant and watch him hunt for a container. He gave me one and it was too small, so I asked for a larger one, but he didn't have a larger one, so I asked him for a second small one which he gave me. Then I asked him for a plastic fork and he went to look but could not find one and instead gave me two wooden spoons. By now it was obvious to me that it's not common for people to ask for food to go, and so I thanked him and left. On the walk back to the hotel I snaked a plastic fork from a Chinese restaurant. Hotel. We met with Ravi, this time with Maia and Siddhartha. We took the metro to Kongens Nytorv and walked to Nyhavn for a canal boat tour. The tour was terrific, but I was falling asleep due to jetlag, and halfway through the tour it began to rain. Plastic ponchos were purchased and worn. Metro back to the hotel. Ravi set up dinner at La Vecchia Gastronomia for Chris, Nate, and me. To bed, exhausted, despite also wanting to check out gay nightlife.
Mon Jul 30, 2012
Woke at 2:30 AM, ate a portion of my leftovers from yesterday's lunch. Caffe lattes in the lobby with Chris and Nate. Bagels and cream cheese at The Bagel Company with Chris and Nate. Hotel. Day planning with Chris and Nate. Nate left to meet Ravi to do some work. Chris and I had only about 2 hours to kill, so we checked out a nearby shopping center called Frederiksberg Centret. Today I realize that despite the huge numbers of bicycles I have not yet heard a bicycle bell. I have witnessed situations in which I would ring a bicycle bell if I were one of the riders, but people here seem to avoid conflict with ease. Most bicyclists obey street lights, and I've seen only a few using cellphones while riding. Bicycles have a dedicated lane which is slightly lower than the sidewalk and slightly higher than the street. Pedestrians need to pay attention while walking so that they do not accidentally step into bike lane traffic. We stopped at Frozberry for frozen yogurt: about $10. Chris and I met Nate and Ravi at Café Royal, a bakery near the closest metro station and adjacent to the Copenhagen Business School campus. Ravi took us on a tour of some of the CBS buildings. We walked to lunch at Café Lindevang, famous for its traditional Danish cuisine. We had beer and smørrebrød (open-faced sandwiches). We walked to (I think) Lindevang station, rode to Flintholm station just to admire it, then rode to DR Byen station for Ravi's tour of IT University of Copenhagen. When we arrived it had started raining, and we were caught unprepared because today's forecast did not include rain. We chatted briefly at an elevator with some of Ravi's students. After the tour we stopped at Kong Kaffe for hot drinks. Metro from Islands Brygge station to Frederiksberg station, visited Ravi's offices. We enjoyed chatting for some time with Janni and Suzanna, two of his colleagues in the Department of IT Management. Metro back to Frederiksberg station. We ended our day with Ravi and returned to the hotel. I ate the remainder of leftovers from yesterday's lunch. Nap. I wanted a late meal, but restaurants typically close at 10 PM in Copenhagen and the handful of late-night restaurants were too far for me to consider it worth the cab ride there and back. Snack: chocolate müsli bar. It wasn't enough. From my window I could see people entering and leaving the McDonald's across the street. I hurry down to see if they're still open, and they are! After some deliberation, I order a Filet-O-Fish sandwich, large fries, and baby carrots: about $10. Before I leave I ask the woman at the register when they close. She says, "Never." Ate in my room. Tired, slept.
Tue Jul 31, 2012
Met Chris and Nate in the lobby. Breakfast at Café Royal: various pastries, hot drinks. Back to the hotel, prepared for the day's outing. We rode the metro to Kongens Nytorv station, wandered northnortheast to the large courtyard with Amalienborg Palace. Briefly observed a guard change, saw the equestrian statue, visited Ameliehaven, then walked along the canal where we saw from a distance a sandcastle competition and the opera house on the opposite bank. We briefly entered Kastellet then continued along the water to see the famous Little Mermaid statue, which was swarmed by hundreds of tourists arriving by bus. We stopped for soft serve ice cream which tasted creamier than we remember in our home country. We reentered Kastellet and walked through, making our way back toward Kongens Nytorv station. We stopped again at the Amalienborg Palace courtyard to observe more of another guard change. We stopped in at the Marble Church for a few minutes. Construction was taking place inside and outside. We rested for a few minutes. Back to Kongens Nytorv station. Buffet lunch at Indian Flavours restaurant. We were almost the only diners. Food and drink were both satisfying. Metro return to Frederiksberg station and the hotel. We agreed to meet for dinner with Ravi later. I didn't feel the need to nap, so I spent/wasted most of this time browsing imgur. Chris, Nate, and I met Ravi at Frederiksberg station, and he took us to Christianshavn station. We walked a few blocks to Christiania, an anarchist community. We ate at Spiseloppen Christiania. I had a vegetarian entree of mixed grilled vegetables featuring eggplant with a side of fruit salad. Ravi, Nate, and Chris each had the deer entree. All three of the evening's desserts were ordered. I thought my entree easily rivaled that of some of the finest restaurants in San Francisco. Metro back to Frederiksberg station. I'm in Copenhagen only until around 11 AM tomorrow morning, so I say farewell and thank you to Ravi. Chris and Nate don't leave Copenhagen until August 2. Stayed up too late—imgur again.