February 2013
Summary: Installed a new rug in the living room, Valentine's day dinner and a movie with Patrick (Samovar/Hobbit)
Dates on this page
Fri Feb 1, 2013
Breakfast at home: oatmeal with dried blueberries, dried cranberries, cinnamon, soy milk; cappuccino beverage from a powder mix. Finished cleaning the stove vent filter cleaning that Patrick had started yesterday. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Web content meeting with Cindy, Frances, and James F: experiential education. 1-on-1 with Rodney. Followup with Susie about the Drupal Web Starter Kit project. Followup with a student about a legal name change. Calendar management, including content migration training. Moved the staging checklist from Google Drive to the SOP IT wiki. Tried archiving website backups to external hard drives, but this is the first time I'm plugging these drives into my new iMac and it won't recognize them in OS X. It will recognize them in my Windows XP VM, but copying files from Win XP to the external hard drive is now much slower than before. Initial searching for solutions led me to discussions about recovering partition tables, and this sounded way more complex than I thought it needed to be. Both external drives behaved the same way, so this is not a damaged drive problem. Walked to my dentist's office intending to drop off my mouth guard for cleaning, was disappointed to find the office closed. I hadn't bothered to check their hours beforehand. Lunch at Paxti's Inner Sunset. Today was strangely hot. I sat at a sidewalk table in the sun, and it felt like 85 degrees F. I removed my jacket and a long-sleeved shirt, was down to a short-sleeved t-shirt, and it was still too warm. Somewhere nearby smelled faintly of dog shit, and I looked everywhere but couldn't find the source. Also nearby two women were dealing with a simple car accident. Cherry Coke with a free refill, butter lettuce salad, veggie deep dish pizza slice: $14 after a generous tip for excellent service. On the way to the hardware store I saw a double-decker bicycle locked at a parking meter, and this brought a smile to my face. Bought with some excitement Scotch extreme mounting tape—one square inch holds a half pound. Walked back to the office. Used some of the extreme mounting tape to repair cable management solutions that were previously and unsuccessfully held with non-extreme mounting tape. Chatted for a fairly long time with Stephane and Lisa about printers, scanners, and fax machines. Apparently Cindy recently said to Lucia and Lisa that we should purchase a new color laser printer. We were still talking when Cindy walked up and in about 5 seconds Lisa got approval to buy a new fax machine as well. Whaaat? More talking. Stephane will research color lasers and send me his top picks, Lisa will obtain demos of nearby scanners and research scanners on her own and let me know what she prefers. BOMGAR session with Tran: FileVault and DLS admin account setup. After restarting, my Win XP VM in VMWare Fusion failed to start. I resolved it by repairing disk permissions and restarting the iMac. Submitted a ticket to ITS to resolve the network junction box under my desk coming loose from the wall because the people ITS hired to install it in 2004 installed it with double-stick tape that eventually failed to hold. Followup with Doug C about same name issues in the GAL. Followup with Eric about the staging checklist. Followup with Jaime and Susie about the UCSF web banner. Submitted to ITS a DNS request for Jaime K. Finally found time to address a request from Shirin from several weeks ago to update the preview session pages with a new date. Because the new date created a reg window that overlapped with another date's event, I had to modify the code, then test it thoroughly to make sure it will behave the way we want. Listserv management for Cindy. Followup with Frances, James, and Cindy: IPPE page URL, APPE page edit. Check-in with Eric about people syndication. Followup with Nancy W and Ellen C about CLS and people data and schedule. Nearly completed monthly pcard paperwork; still waiting on documentation from Michael N. Posted a PDF for Cindy. Removed our Inside UCSF page for Shirin. Management activities. Followup with Eric about transcription services. Followup with student RB about a podcast idea. Rode my bike home with a particularly heavy load that included a half-gallon of milk and several pieces of fruit remaining from today's interviews. Dinner: leftover Chinese food. Lately I've been trying unsuccessfully to reach CrashPlan support. The problem I've had is that CrashPlan fails to back up to my external hard drive even though I have the green light and the drive mounts on my iMac desktop and I can successfully browse it. I tried restarting the iMac, turning the CrashPlan engine off then on, and checking that there was no extra volume name. I submitted ticket 254127 reporting the problem (backup to external hard drive stuck on "connecting to backup destination"), but later when I tried to find the ticket I received an error message: "You do not have access to request #254127. It may have been solved or deleted." When I selected CHECK YOUR EXISTING REQUESTS the message "You have no open requests" appeared. Repeated attempts to contact CrashPlan over the next two days failed—no response. Today, on a whim, and with my latest backup over 6.8 days old, I decided to run Repair Disk on the external hard drive using Disk Utility, and hooray, that was the solution. I magically fixed my problem with no help at all from CrashPlan. In the past I have found their support to be very hot and cold. Sometimes I get great support, and sometimes, like this time, it's like no one is there. I sent them a note in the ticket that I'm not even sure if they will see: "So I fixed the problem on my own, and I'm not telling you how I did it because I'm mad at you for failing to provide excellent support. This isn't even bad support. This is no support. Stupidly, since I have it working again it's still not yet so bad I'll leave, but you have many competitors, and I'm letting you know that you need to do better. I've been a believer and supporter of CrashPlan since October 9, 2009, and I am appalled by how I was treated in this ticket." Checked in by email with the person who wants to buy my old receiver/amplifier. Did some catching up in my journal. Did a little more work on the staging checklist in the SOP IT wiki. Prepared a message for the upstairs neighbors. Lately Patrick and I have been finding that the Find Friends feature on our iPhones does not always work as expected lately. I don't know how to resolve this. Documented upstairs neighbors noise events. Late meal: leftover Chinese food, water. Installed Office 2011 updates 14.3.0. Began another editing pass for the first 100 pages of Patrick's new book.
Sat Feb 2, 2013
I realized last night that 3G data hasn't been working on my iPhone 3GS probably since I updated to iOS 6.1. To resolve this, I flailed with several possible solutions, but the thing that worked was following the Howard Forums wiki instructions for Straight Talk iPhone again from scratch. Tested 3G data and MMS, now both work again. Tedious, but it works. It took me an hour because I didn't know what I was doing, but I have documented the procedure in anticipation of needing the info again later. The Howard Forums wiki page is great in that there's nothing else better, but in my opinion it's pretty awful in terms of technical writing. Checked on CrashPlan for Patrick's iMac, made sure it was running again since his latest backup was over 2 days ago. Tried performing some maintenance as well to make his iMac faster. Added a felt pad under one leg of the Picasso chair to resolve a wobble due to (Patrick says) an uneven floor—successful. Brunch: cinnamon-buttermilk gluten-free pancakes with butter and maple syrup, cappuccino beverage, 8 ounces of orange juice. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: spinach dal and jasmine rice from packets for him. For me, salad with pomegranate vinaigrette and dried apricot; carrot-almond soup. This evening all my Bluehost websites and email accounts became inaccessible. When I visited the Bluehost server status page, I received an error: "Unable to connect to dbh_ro db: DBI connect('database=cp_billing;host=10.0.82.6;port=3306:mysql_compression=1','rd',...) failed: Can't connect to MySQL server on '10.0.82.6' (110) at /var/www/lib/DBH.pm line 65 at /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.8/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/ModPerl/RegistryCooker.pm line 204". I made banana bread with pecans from a Tyler Florence recipe found on Food Network. Late snack: three small slices of freshly baked banana bread (miniloaf).
Sun Feb 3, 2013
Breakfast at home: one egg sunny side up over a bed of country-style spanish rice with grated sharp cheddar, side of black beans, 8 ounces of orange juice. Spent a few hours setting Sam up with my five-year-old iMac. Vacuuming. Troubleshot and resolved "The backup disk image ... sparsebundle ... is already in use" on Patrick's iMac using the C12 solution (all computers off, power-cycle the Time Capsule, on the problem computer remove and readd the Time Capsule volume in Time Machine system prefs, no prior backups are lost). Muni to Union Square. Waited for Danny, but he didn't show up. I find out later he had forgotten his phone. We connect when he calls me from Phil's phone. The plan is he will pick me up on his scooter, and we ride to the Mission for brunch with Phil, Drew, and Romy. I gave them a miniloaf of pecan-banana bread. Brunch at Grub with PDDR. Drew had two eggs scrambled with side of ham and side salad, Romy had a three-egg frittata with chorizo and maine lobster, Phil had chorizo hash, Danny had a chicken sandwich with pomme frites, I had peanut-butter french toast with rice-krispies-encrusted fried chicken breast and one sunny-side-up egg and side of cole slaw. Bottomless mimosas for Romy, Phil, and me. Walked to the Castro. Restroom at Badlands. Groceries at Mollie Stone's Castro. L train home. Caught up on journaling. Watched Keep The Lights On (2012) on Netflix DVD with Patrick.
Mon Feb 4, 2013
Weight training: bam bam. Did some reorganizing of things in closet spaces. Breakfast at home: three slices of banana bread, lowfat milk. Rode my bike to work. Followup with DNS request for Jamie K. Checked in on the IRC. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Followup with Greg H and Eric D about Office licensing. Followup with a student request from November. Calendar management. Helped Frances with hardware questions, discovered the case of the missing Dell 2005FPW monitor, did some investigating but did not solve the case. Lunch: leftover mac and cheese, water from my klean kanteen. Management activities. Followup with color laser printer issues. Followup with Tran about Rick's problematic monitor. Responded to student CS's request about antivirus software. Followup with ITS about access to dbuilds due to MCCA. Sent Stephane dimensions for the new color printer to fit. Followup with Orlando about a BAA for Qualtrics. Web edits for Cindy: grads and licensure. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers. Finished watching Keep The Lights On (2012) on Netflix DVD with Patrick. I liked how it showed sex in situations that are more realistic than typically portrayed in film, but otherwise this film is not particularly memorable. More reorganizing of things in closet spaces. CrashPlan responded this morning with an apology.
Tue Feb 5, 2013
Troubleshot error message "the disk was not ejected properly" by searching Google on ["the disk was not ejected properly" "mountain lion"]. In Energy Saver system preferences, I unchecked "Put hard disks to sleep when possible." If you don't hear from me again within the next few days on this issue, that fixed it. (Wed Feb 6: It's still not fixed.) Had planned yesterday to begin working at Laurel Heights but received a UPS delivery notice at home last night to receive an item that would be difficult to receive other than home delivery, so I worked from home. Breakfast at home: leftover pancakes, leftover carrot-almond soup, 8 ounces of tomato juice, one cutie. Began work. Archived documents. Tea: earl gray. Did research for and purchased a bare hard drive for a Time Machine drive for my iMac at Laurel Heights. I will use an external hard drive case that I no longer needed at home. Unsubscribed from the AACP mailing list to which I was automatically subscribed a while back because I occasionally help with PharmCAS and PharmAdMIT work. SCWG work: followup with Erik W: does JACS have any interest in taking over our computer reqs work?, set up comp reqs meeting with John M. Followup with Greg and Dan about CP edits process. Ordered another external DVD drive for use at Laurel Heights and also display adapters. Reviewed Stephane's color laser printer short list. Documented people database subproject and status. Followup with John K request for discussion forum. Calendar management. Followup with removing San Diego. SOP IT wiki work: Qualtrics, can the BAA be public? Followup with Tran about my PGP problem report with external hard drives. Followup with a supp app issue resolution. More color laser printer review, sent Stephane, Tran, and Cindy my decision. Dinner at Old Mandarin with Emery M, Alan, Scott T, Andy M, Patrick C, Dan B, Ted D, Mike P, Andrew C, Ray. More work: web edits for Cindy: licensure and exams. Purchased the new color laser printer in BearBuy. Worked in the news database spreadsheet in Google Docs: changed titles to sentence case, exported data in sets I needed: PharmD stuff only for the PharmD honors and awards page, strategic plan goals 1, 2, and 3 for the strategic plan milestones. Folded laundry.
Wed Feb 6, 2013
Breakfast at home: bagel with lowfat cream cheese and whole foods peanut butter, cappuccino beverage. Rode my bike to work. Pushed live licensure and diplomas page edits for Cindy. Replied to a request from John K in San Diego. OSACA staff meeting. Had a conf call scheduled with Michael W but for some reason we didn't connect. Web edit: old news for Susie. Asked LHTS team if it was okay to put my folding bike under my desk at LHTS—answer is yes. Checked in with Michael N about pcard paperwork. More followup with John K in San Diego. Lunch at desk: leftover mac and cheese. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Worked half a day at Laurel Heights. Meeting with Nancy Jane about CLS data cleanup. Chatted briefly with David about a printing problem. Unpacked and set up packages that arrived: UPS and an Epson Perfection V370 scanner. Followup about whether the Qualtrics BAA can be public. Followup with Stephane about the computer in the empty workspace in OSACA. Followup with Nancy L and Terri C about my phone service and hardware order from January 22. Forwarded Karen G's survey to email newsletter and announcement senders. Web edits: academic calendars for Cindy and Carrie. More web edits for Susie: old news. Purchased additional supplies for OSACA. Followup with Dan P about the student issue from August. Asked Zach S if we have access to the Gliffy plug-in for Confluence. It looks pretty cool. Office 356 research. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Helped a stranger named Sandra try to find her Inside UCSF event. I ended up printing a map for her to a building at SFSU, but I'm not really confident that that is correct. Snack from Panda Express: veggie spring rolls, no sauce. Rode my bike home. Snack: fortune cookie. My fortune: You are a true romantic. Dinner at home: Whole Foods white bean kale soup, dinner roll with butter, smith and wesson, hot water. More Office 356 research. Washed dishes. Created accounts for Gliffy and Creately. Started creating a flowchart in Gliffy but stopped after only 2 shapes and 2 connecters. The process of creating a flowchart was much slower than I needed for the task at hand. Installed the Prey iPhone app, then immediately uninstalled it before opening it due to the bad reviews. Online shopping: abercrombie kids: 50% off clearance items. Opened CrashPlan. Again, "backup location is not accessible." Sighed, then resolved it again using the method with which I am now pretty familiar.
Thu Feb 7, 2013
Weight training: bam bam, tricep kickback. Breakfast at home: pecan-praline granola with diced apple and soy milk. Rode Muni to work. C3 conf call. Core admins meeting: John, Courtney, and Irene demoed the Drupal Web Starter Kit. TeamWork work: lots of ticket followup. Printed current computer requirements to prepare for tomorrow's meeting with John M. Web edits for Cindy and Adele, pcard paperwork followup with La'Trece and Michael N. Followup on hardware orders with Frances and Cindy. Web edits for Shirin: PID. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Lunch to go from The View Cafe: veggie sandwich. Ate lunch during sprint end and sprint start meetings. During the meeting I snuck in other work: Chatted with Eric for a few minutes afterward in his office. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Web edits for Danielle: graduation regalia. More TeamWork work. Followup with Beth about a request from John K in San Diego. Followup with www.bmi.ucsf.edu with Eric. The 6:50 PM Muni 66 bus didn't show up. Took 44 to the L instead. Dinner at home: Patrick had two kinds of soup (Whole Foods white bean kale soup and a homemade chicken broth) and a warm tortilla. I had Whole Foods white bean kale soup with two small cheese quesadillas with green onions.
Fri Feb 8, 2013
Weight training: weighted leg lift, crunch. Breakfast at home: TJ's granola and the three berries with some additional fresh blueberries, fresh-squozen orange-grapefruit juice, hot water. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Web update: graduating students health insurances for Cindy and Adele. Delivered two monitors to OEIS. Org chart work. Lunch at Perilla: vermicelli noodles with pork and imperial rolls, thai iced tea. Errand: hardware store. Followup with a surplus pickup request: I had mistakenly specified the wrong room, sent my apologies. Org chart work. Sent Susie links about Twitter backgrounds and avatars. Management and timesheet activities. Cable management. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: corn-quinoa rotelle with vegetables in a light tomato-based sauce, dinner roll for me only, hot water. Watched 63 minutes of Men in Black 3 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Snack: one minneola.
Sat Feb 9, 2013
Weight training: seated dumbbell curl, wrist curl, tricep kickback, lateral raise, dumbbell overhead triceps extension. Snack: one orange. Breakfast at home: 3 scrambled eggs with mild salsa and three grated cheeses, side of black beans, 2 hash browns, 8 ounces of tomato juice, hot water. Did a bit of organizing. Patrick and I moved a bookcase from the garage to my room. Rode Muni to the Castro, shopped a bit at Body. Park Chow with Will: crispy chicken sandwich and Coke for him, raspberry-ricotta pancakes and arnold palmer for me, we split an iceberg wedge salad. Skyfall at AMC Metreon. Nordstrom, Will bought underwear. Rode Muni home. Dinner at home: gluten-free, brown rice caserecce with cheese sauce packet and also grated real cheese and corn off the cob from frozen and fresh, sliced green onions; hot water. Finished watching Men in Black 3 on Netflix DVD with Patrick. More troubleshooting error "The disk was not ejected properly upon wake" with the new iMac on OS 10.8.2 Mountain Lion. It seems that there is nothing to do but wait for Apple to fix the problem with an OS update.
Sun Feb 10, 2013
Breakfast: 2 slices of pecan-blueberry bread that Patrick made yesterday, Green and Black's hot chocolate. Made chocolate rice krispie treats, part with and part without crushed peppermint. Reinstalled MacVim because I had deleted it a while back thinking I no longer used it but I do—only at the command line. Cleared the living room, painted part of one wall, vacuumed. Small lunch: leftover caserecce. Rested, laid out the new rug. Began restoring the living room. Dinner at home with Patrick: veggie dumplings from frozen from Kingdom of Dumpling Outlet on Noriega, decaf hot green tea. Dessert: individually wrapped fortune cookies left over from the last time we ordered Chinese food. His fortune: For people who like peace and quiet: a phoneless cord. My fortune: Don't expect romantic attachments to be strictly logical or rational! Continued restoring the living room, implementing some improvements at the same time: mounted various peripherals on top of the bookcase instead of under my desk (including the Time Capsule to give Patrick better wifi signal in his room), rerouted speaker wires so that they aren't under a rug over a common walkpath, connected the black-and-white laser printer to the network so that Patrick can still print to it even when my computer is sleeping. Late meal: fish sticks, shoestring fries, hot water.
Mon Feb 11, 2013
Weight training: advanced, one-legged push-up. Breakfast at home: granola with diced pink lady apple and soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Checked on the IRC—all is well. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Lots of content type work all day in Drupal: courses. Submitted a surplus pickup request for our Xerox Phaser 6200DP. It has lasted us since 2003. Ray C thinks their team might have resolved the slow network problems some of us have been encountering. He asked us to restart and see if the problem is gone. I notified the staff. Responded to Terrie C's inquiry about issues I have with the GAL. Posted new news for David J. Didn't eat lunch today because I was too busy. Rode Muni to the Castro. Met Carl and Paul M at Hi Tops. We had originally planned to eat there, but Paul wanted something healthier, so we went to Thai House Express and ordered toong gyen yuen (golden bags: minced chicken, onion, carrot and potatoes wrapped in a golden pouch, served with cucumber salad), moo tod (crispy garlic-cilantro marinated pork, served with house sweet and sour sauce), mixed vegetables and fried tofu in peanut sauce, steamed white rice for Paul, steamed brown rice for me. Afterwards we had drinks at The Edge. It was musicals night, and most of the songs that played were unknown to me.
Tue Feb 12, 2013
Weight training: bam bam, dumbbell curl. Breakfast at home: oatmeal with diced pink lady apple, cinnamon, soy milk; 6 ounces of tomato juice; hot water. Delivered yet another piece of mail that was incorrectly delivered to our address by USPS. As it happened, this neighbor was pulling into her driveway just as I arrived, so I got to meet her. She explained that she frequently needs to retrieve incorrectly delivered mail from her next-door neighbor and that she frequently receives mail for other addresses, too, probably including ours. "I give up," she said. Rode Muni to work. Today was the first day I had to commute from home to Laurel Heights, where I'll be working every Tuesday and Wednesday as part of the focus on our web redesign project since the rest of the Communications team is there. I realized that it takes a lot longer to get there than it does for me to get from home to Parnassus. I walked to 19th and Rivera then walked to 19th and Taraval, caught a 28 bus, rode it to California Street, caught a 1 bus, rode it to the Laurel Heights campus. It's about 40 to 55 minutes depending on traffic. Linkchecking, kiosk work. TeamWork, Drupal, reviewed lab websites comps, reviewed the new ITFS orgchart and informed the OSACA, followup with Kurt and Valerie about support for Eric D and David J, posted new news for David J, unpacked packages that had arrived: a graphics adapter, an Apple SuperDrive, a hard drive. Calendar management. Bought Girl Scout Cookies: dulce de leche, $4. Very late lunch at Rigolo: large shrimp with penne and roasted vegetables in a tomato cream sauce, hot water. Errand: hardware store. Dessert: CRKTs. Began learning about Features module, successfully installed pear on OS 10.8 Mountain Lion, successfully used pear to install drush. Troubleshot problems with Xmarks synching. Rode Muni 1 to Park Presidio, then rode Muni 28 to Taraval. Dinner at Sushi Raw: teriyaki salmon bento, hot green tea, about $13 before a $2 tip. Rode Muni L home. Stretches. Weight training: tricep kickback, front raise.
Wed Feb 13, 2013
Breakfast: an apple and an orange. Rode Muni 28 and 1 to Laurel Heights. Fixed a small typo that Paula had found in the About section. Reported CTSI profiles slow to open/respond to Brian T. Followup with Jazzee team about a feature we require. 1-on-1 with Michael. Chatted with Eric about various issues. Quick lunch from The View Cafe: garden burger with cheddar, pickle. John K gave Eric and me a ride to the Chapter Three office. Greg H met us there. We met with Mark F and Brad E. Brad walked us through his code for the LDAP integration, and we fixed a blocking problem related to working titles and department names. Jaesin stopped in for only a few minutes. We chatted briefly with Garret and Nica. Met or possibly remet Anne S. Rode Muni L home. Chatted with Ashton and Kelsey from upstairs about noise issues. Dinner at Koi Palace in Daly City with Patrick, Danny, Drew, Phil, Romy. Installed more rug pad.
Thu Feb 14, 2013
Breakfast: oatmeal with sliced banana, cinnamon, soy milk. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. Jazzee followup. Password management. Web edits: entering students, sent to review. Tried reaching Diane W in legal—unavailable. Followup with Kurt G and Erik W about ITFS transition and headcount. Followup with CLS Dist and Storage about surplus pickup. Chapter Three conference call. Reported slow network behavior to Ray C. Desai lab website followup with Kevin. WCWG lunch meeting about org charts: chicken sandwich. Susie brought chocolates to share. Followup with Travis C about how to report spam to ITS. Taxi to Samovar Tea Lounge at Yerba Buena Gardens. We encountered heavy traffic at 4.5th and Howard, so I paid $20 after a $3ish tip, got out, and walked. Dinner at Samovar with Patrick, Tyler serving. Watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey at AMC Metreon. Tried to take Muni home but as we entered in the paid area we heard an announcement that there was an accident at West Portal and that trains were delayed. We exited immediately, and I was surprised to get a refund after asking for one. Taxi home was very fast, $26 after a generous tip. Patrick went to sleep. I rested a bit then did some weight training: leg lift, bam bam. Late meal: leftovers from THX, hot water.
Fri Feb 15, 2013
Rode Muni to work. Troubleshot printing problems. Org charts research. Lunch from the cafeteria: garden burger with cheddar, french fries. Content migration training with Eric D, Greg H, Rodney Y, Kevin H, and Simon D. Web edits and SCWG work: computer requirements. Followup with Cindy about student RB's podcasts. More troubleshooting printing problems. SOP IT wiki work: documented how to connect to the Drupal IRC chat room. Calendar management. Resolved printing problems by configuring the printers on the Mac side before testing them in the Win XP VM. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: gluten-free orzo with chicken soup from a can, 8 ounces of Sprite. Installed more rug pad. Weight training: tricep kickback, wrist curl, pec fly. Snack: popcorn from a saucepan.
Sat Feb 16, 2013
Repaired my black-and-white winter hat with some stitches. Repaired a loose handle on the stove. Breakfast at home: 2 hash browns, 3-egg mushroom-onion scramble, roll with butter, 8 ounces of vegetable juice, hot water. Laundry. Delivered another letter incorrectly delivered to our address by USPS, this time to our next-door neighbor. Garbage, washed dishes. Caught up on journaling. Ironed, vacuumed, completely repaired the vacuum cleaner power cord with electrical tape, repaired a torn seam in a jacket for Patrick, cleaned items for selling or storing, wrote a greeting card. Late lunch at Taraval Okazu-Ya: kitsune donburi, seaweed salad, hot green tea. Stopped at Benjamin Moore to ask about paint, picked up some color samples. Picked up the car from Rex Garage—some noises, catalytic converter, new boots, $100. Also ordered a replacement clock unit from Scott. Took photos of things to sell or give away. Ordered paint. Snack: CRKT. More taking photos of things to sell. Nap. Dinner at home with Patrick: quinoa spaghetti with trumpet mushrooms and soy protein sausage in marinara, water. Watched half of History of the World: Part 1 on Netflix DVD with Patrick and dulce de leche Girl Scout Cookies. Folding dining chair research.
Sun Feb 17, 2013
Baked mixed berry muffins using a recipe from The Joy of Cooking. Cappuccino beverage from a powder mix. Organized some stuff in the garage. Ate four muffins. Cleaned surfaces to be painted with a sponge and water. Cut my hair, showered. Ate two muffins. Picked up the paint I ordered yesterday. Grocery shopping at Safeway on Taraval. Painted Patrick's door and part of the door frame. Patrick helped me take a photo of the IKEA ULDUM rug we plan to give away. Put items on craigslist to sell or give away. Prepared books for giving away to friends of the library. Put one book for sale on Amazon. Snack: vegetable soup from a can. Dinner at home with Patrick: we cooked spanish rice and black bean corn tortilla tacos.
Mon Feb 18, 2013
Breakfast at home: Mark Bittman's sweet baked omelette with powdered sugar, vanilla yogurt, cherry preserves. Tasty and different—just what I needed. Decaf green tea. Reorganized paint supplies. Secured lamp cord for the light over the kitchen sink. Recharge Spa work for Drew: forms work. Gave away the IKEA ULDUM rug. Lunch: leftover black beans with spanish rice, hot water. Removed screws and anchors from decorative pedestals that were holding speakers. Vacuumed and patched the holes. Patched other holes left behind from removed speaker wire. Reorganized bookshelves a bit. Repaired loose stitching in my Uniqlo jeans. Altered an Abercrombie Kids short-sleeve shirt (wanika falls, white stripe) by taking the sides in a bit. Dinner at home with Patrick: baked breaded tilapia, chicken Stove Top stuffing, soup from Whole Foods, hot water. Cocktails: Conquistador (but we added root beer because it was too strong). Chatted on FaceTime and Google Hangout with Tina and Matt. Began editing another shirt. Weight training: seated and standing dumbbell curl, advanced push-up. Stretches.
Tue Feb 19, 2013
Weight training: bam bam. Breakfast at home: honey-maple-almond granola with fresh, diced apple and vanilla yogurt. Rain today, so I rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. SCWG meeting: computer requirements, Adobe Acrobat for students? UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Web project report with Michael N, Susie, and Eric D. Susie showed me a new office that I'm going to move into shortly. It faces north and overlooks the UCSF Laurel Heights shuttle stop and parking lot. Big windows, very cold, lots of old furniture. Susie asked me to determine what furniture should be removed, and it took me a while but I decided to keep only one desk, one round table, and three chairs. I let Denetra know these preferences, and she will take care of the CPFM orders. Calendar management. Followup with Cindy and Frances about computer requirements. Replied to Rodney and Valerie about a request for encrypting a student laptop. Followup with Walter S about Pharm Chem server migration. Redirected a request from student JK to James P in Housing. Followup with Kevin L about the Desai lab website content draft. Lunch at Eliza's: cashew and broccoli chicken with brown rice, hot tea. My fortune: You are admired for your impeccable tastes. TeamWork ticket review. Content type work in Drupal by myself and later with Eric: courses. Eric introduced me to xbench. Chatted with James J for a few minutes with David J stopping by now and then. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Stopped at my Parnassus office to pick up a USB drive I had forgotten, found that Patrick's new computer had been delivered, called Patrick. He came to pick me up in the car and we took his new computer home. Dinner at home: leftover spanish rice with guacamole and salsa, leftover vegetable soup from Whole Foods, hot water. Dessert: 2 small pieces of dark chocolate with almonds and sea salt. Weight training: wrist curl, tricep kickback. Late meal: star pasta in tomato sauce from a can, water.
Wed Feb 20, 2013
Breakfast at home: honey-maple-almond granola with fresh, diced pear and vanilla yogurt; hot water; hot tea: Allegro breakfast blend. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Scanned packing slips. 1-on-1 with Eric. 1-on-1 phone call with Michael. Coded the new update from the dean for Sue, used Sublime Text 2 for the first time at length. So far I like it. Lunch at Jewish Community Center with Eric. Just as we sat a pianist began performing in front of an audience of about 40 people, so we got a free concert while we ate. Eric had a daily half pizza, I had a falafel sandwich with fries. Sprint start meeting with Eric, Susie, Rodney, Greg. Followup with Shirin about a tiny design job. Followup with Frances and Cindy about computer requirements. Let Victor know about the new Kensington SmartSockets surge suppressor in 416 that I purchased on Susie's budget. Followup with the content migration team: 2nd columns now have comment markers. More followup with Frances and Cindy. Followup with Sue about the update from the dean. Followup with Eric about labs.ucsf.edu. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Dropped off stuff at my Parnassus office. Rode Muni home, chatting with students K? and ??. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover soup with added spanish rice, cornmeal crust pizza with pork. Finished editing a long-sleeve shirt from Gap.
Thu Feb 21, 2013
Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, sliced banana; cinnamon; soy milk; 8 ounces of vegetable juice; hot water. Weight training: standing dumbbell curl. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Followup with Erik W about comp reqs and JACS. C3 conference call. Met with Rodney and Joe about vidconf. Supp app meeting prep. ICRD work for Rodney. Lunch to go from Subway: foot-long veggie delight on 9-grain honey oat with provolone. Met with Eric and Greg about orgcharts. Followup with Walter S about pcweb and pcwebapps migration and IP addresses. Met with Shirin about table cover artwork. Announcement management. Calendar management. orgchart work: marked up css from html that Eric sent me. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: steamed veggie dumplings from Kingdom of Dumpling, hot water. Cocktails: bailey's chocolate-covered cherry from idrink. Dessert: leftover fortune cookies, dulce de leche Girl Scout cookies. Watched 43 minutes of The Cabin in the Woods on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Had trouble with the dvd playback. My fortune: Never let an opportunity pass you buy. Patrick's fortune: Be innovative. Take charge of new ideas.
Fri Feb 22, 2013
Breakfast at home: honey-maple-pecan granola with fresh blueberries and sliced banana and lowfat vanilla yogurt, 8 ounces of vegetable juice. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Calendar management. Jazzee and supp app meeting. Content migration work in Drupal: person adds, notified Nancy about a problem with one record, content type work, TeamWork work, courses work. Followup with Dan P about a student issue from August. Late lunch from Panda Express: chow mein with mixed vegetables, about $3. More content migration in Drupal: announcement. More orgchart styling work. SOP IT wiki work: documented how carousels work. Calendar management. Font size review: comps versus actual. Rode my bike home. I learned near the end of the workday today from Doug M that the iMac order I had placed on January 7 so that I have a workstation at Laurel Heights never actually got placed due to a miscommunication. He was very apologetic, and I wasn't upset. He'll place the order asap and I'm expecting to have it in three to four weeks. Dinner at home with Patrick: delivery from Jitra Thai. Finished watching The Cabin in the Woods on Netflix DVD with Patrick. Dessert: fortune cookies, dulce de leche Girl Scout cookies.
Sat Feb 23, 2013
Installed Office 2011 14.3.1. Breakfast: eggs in a nest, yogurt with blueberries, 8 ounces of vegetable juice, hot water. Lunch: leftovers. I felt tired all day despite having had 9 hours of sleep, so today was quite unproductive. Patrick set up his new iMac, so I helped him configure things a bit. I was unsuccessful in saving his over-500-GB Time Machine backup because the new iMac didn't ask if it should use the previous backup and I tried to force it but could not I think because it connected to the Time Capsule wirelessly and I did not care enough to connect it with an ethernet cable. I also discovered today that the Time Capsule does not really support our black-and-white laserprinter on the USB port. The screen of my four-year-old Canon A650IS digital camera has malfunctioned, so I shopped for a new camera, am thinking of the Olympus PEN E-PL5. Sold my old pair of pecan-endcapped Mini Advent speakers for $45 to Justin L via craigslist. Dinner at home with Patrick: veggie quesadillas, hot water. Dessert: previously frozen red velvet cake, hot water for Patrick, Green and Black's hot chocolate with a shot of peppermint Torani for me. Watched The Simpsons "Love is a Many Splintered Thing" on Hulu with Patrick—parts were very funny but not funny overall. Skimmed Banksy's Coming to Dinner on Netflix instant watch with Patrick—too boring, not funny. Watched part of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life on Netflix instant watch with Patrick—parts were very funny but not funny overall. Recharge Spa work for Drew.
Sun Feb 24, 2013
Rode Muni to Embarcadero, met Danny at the Ferry Plaza Marketplace. Not many places were open to eat when we arrived, so we walked back to Union Square and ate at Emporio Rulli Il Caffe (415-433-1122, 225 Stockton Street) where Alena took my order. Danny had a croissant (and for some reason they called it a plain brioche). I had a salmone sandwich. Hot water for both. Danny tried on a hoodie I was planning to return to Abercrombie Kids, and he liked it for about 20 minutes. I returned the hoodie, then shopped at Walgreens, Zara Kids, Johnston and Murphy, Crate & Barrel (where I had a nice chat with Trey about the dining table I like), Macy's Mens shoes. Along the way I stopped at Starbuck's for a grande iced chai tea latte. Late lunch at Tropisueno by myself where Jeniffer took my order: veggie super burrito, tortilla chips, water. Rode Muni home. Bicycle maintenance: bath, oil, air. Prepped the rolling rack mount for sale and took photos. Listed four items for sale on craigslist, edited several others that were previously listed. Dinner at home with Patrick: he made butternut squash gratin, I made mac and cheese from a box, hot water for both. Dessert: previously frozen red velvet cake. Did a lot of tech news reading on the iPad via Flipboard. Confirmed that Java is uninstalled on my iMac. Detected a problem with Patrick's CrashPlan configuration following his new iMac setup, cannot fix it tonight since he has already gone to sleep.
Mon Feb 25, 2013
Weight training: tricep kickback. Troubleshot CrashPlan backup on the new iMac using instructions from Oliver Aaltonen's blog, but they didn't work for me I think because there was no old or new GUID. So Patrick's 500-GB CrashPlan backup needs to start over from scratch—disappointing. Similarly his Time Machine backup had to start over from scratch. In most cases I think Time Machine handles getting a new computer and reusing old backups better than CrashPlan does, but both failed in this case and I don't care enough to troubleshoot it further. I found a CrashPlan article called "Adopting another computer" but the behavior I saw did not match the document. I'm so disappointed in both Time Machine and CrashPlan. Rode my bike to work. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Content migration work in Drupal all day: curriculum and other pages. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick: mushroom pizza, side salad with hard-boiled egg, hot water. Weight training: standing dumbbell curl.
Tue Feb 26, 2013
Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, diced pear; cinnamon; soy milk. Rode my bike to work. Encountered Bill L on my way to the shuttle, said hello. UCSF shuttle from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. 1-on-1 with Susie. Michael N update meeting. Linkchecking, kiosk work. Comm team lunch meeting: tuna salad sandwich from The View Cafe. Action items from comm team meeting including followup with Zach S about libwiki and comment privacy. 1-on-1 with Eric: Drupal work. Snack: sea salted potato chips. UCSF shuttle from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: leftover butternut squash gratin, hot water. Dessert: dulce de leche Girl Scout cookies.
Wed Feb 27, 2013
Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. Swapped the UPS I had with a new UPS, gave the UPS I had to the roaming user workstation next to Rick. Printed web pages for the staff meeting. Staff meeting: facts and figures brainstorming and discussion. Breakfast at home: granola with fresh, diced pear and soy milk; hot water. Rode Muni to UCSF Parnassus. OSACA staff meeting. Helped Rebecca B with a question about form building. Forgot to eat lunch—just too busy. At some point midafternoon a platter of fruit leftover from a meeting arrived, and I ate some of that. Web edits: postbacc. Began investigating Adobe software purchases. Everything is now much more confusing with Adobe Creative Cloud. Helped Rick restore the data set location setting in PharmAdMIT. Met with Shirin, made postbacc page changes live. TeamWork tickets review, partly with Eric D. Documented how to style special link lists on the homepage in the SOP IT wiki. Followup with PharmAdMIT support about Java security. Documented a limitation related to subdomains in the SOP IT wiki. Followup with Sarah and Sandy about a Comm group presentation. Followup with Brian W about accessibility requirements for podcasts@ucsf. Began examining a listserv request from a student. Followup with Susie about questions about stylesheets. Asked La'Trece for help with ordering Adobe software. Followup with student NN about an ITS request from last year. Worked late. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home with Patrick. Did a little more work before I forgot about certain items that needed to be taken care of. Spent 90 minutes in online chat with an Adobe sales rep who answered a lot of my purchasing questions. Patrick gave away a large picnic basket today to someone named Jay Jay who responded to our ad on craigslist. Late meal: hearty vegetable soup from a can with added leftover rice.
Thu Feb 28, 2013
Woke up around 3 AM, couldn't get back to sleep for about 90 minutes. Breakfast at home: oatmeal with fresh, diced pear; cinnamon; soy milk; hot water. Rode my bike to work, encountered Michael C at the S elevator lobby, chatted with him for the elevator commute. Followup with Joel and Rick about Java security: WebAdMIT requires Java, so we need to keep Java on their computers. C3 conf call. Calendar management. Followup with Michelle A about website content. Bioe website meeting with Sara G, Susie, and Eric. Susie gave Eric and me a ride from Parnassus to Laurel Heights. Lunch from The View Cafe: tofu and vegetables over brown rice. Followup with Rodney and Joel about vidconf in 936. DPSL website meeting: Marcus, Susie, Eric D, Joan, Melissa. Snack: oatmeal-raisin cookie. Followup with ITS about my Java security request. Followup with Rebecca B about survey building. Purchased Sublime Text 2 for Greg, Eric, and me. Teamwork ticket work. Posted updated draft schedules for Lucia. Followup with student RB about podcasts. More TeamWork work. Worked late. James J gave me a ride from Laurel Heights to Parnassus. We talked about rent, Tahoe, Golden Gate Park. Recently I set my vacation notice or out of office notice to say that I had more than 100 messages in my inbox. It has been received rather well so far. Rode my bike home. Dinner at home: veggie burger with ketchup, mustard, and mayo; french fries; hot water.