August 2004
Summary: Dinner with Dexter at Korea House. Attended the first-ever-in-the-world same-sex marriage rally for queer Asians. Conservatory of Flowers with Patrick. Dahlia Glen Picnic with Patrick and Melissa. Lee's 32th Birthday Party (Volaré). Nihonmachi Festival with Galen and Tony Q. I take a week of from work and Mikey comes to visit: Foxy Brown at the Red Vic, Conservatory of Flowers, Kamei Restaurant Supply, crepes, Apple Store, Cafe Venue, Smack Dab, The Canvas Gallery, visit with Brian and Kelly (Mikey meets Jesse), POP! at SF MOMA, Ferry Building Marketplace, watched Baraka on DVD. Badminton and Kill Bill Volume 2 with Dale and friends. Patrick begins the TESOL program at SFSU. Watched our pal Nico Santos perform stand-up comedy at 50 Mason. Brunch with Lani and the boys at Miyake.
Dates on this page
Sun Aug 1, 2004
Smoot froothie for breakfast: blackberries, cherries, nectarines, banana, milk, ice, sugar. I paid bills. Met Sam at the Century 20 to see Spider-man 2. We all liked the movie a lot. A nice twist at the end makes this film an atypical treat over other superhero films. Snack: smoot froothie. Patrick worked on Second Island. Read Tony's blog/journal and viewed a lot of his photo albums. Dinner at home with Patrick: hearts of romaine with cucumber, mushroom, tomato, green goddess dressing. Watched a lot of Simpson's episodes. For the record, a couple of days ago we were watching a Simpson's episode and a commercial came on for The Chronicles of Riddick. In typical movie trailer style, it showed a quote from a news source, then another bit of the movie, then another quote from another news source, then a bit of the movie, then another quote from a news source, then another bit of the movie. I said, "Hey, wait a minute—those 3 quotes were all from the same source!" We rewinded and sure enough, yes—all 3 were from Shawn Edwards of FOX TV—the same Shawn Edwards who has become known for being overly enthusiastic about ordinary (or worse) films so he can increase the exposure of his name in movie ads. I didn't write them all down, but one of them was: "ONE OF THE BEST SCI-FI FILMS EVER!" Moral of the story: Don't trust Shawn Edwards or FOX TV or The Chronicles of Riddick.
Mon Aug 2, 2004
Breakfast at the cafeteria. CD-ROM building all day. Lunch: Met with Susie. Dinner at home with Patrick: soy sauce chicken, steamed rice, corn on the cob. Watched Hellboy on DVD. It's just okay. Attended to emergency requests from Bill Soller.
Tue Aug 3, 2004
Oatmeal with banana. CD-ROM building all day. Lunch: You See sushi lunch special A. Made live the new Center for Consumer Self Care Web site built by Aaron Calhoun. All his pages validate—cool! Finished reading Iris Chang's The Chinese in America yesterday. Started reading Through It Came Bright Colors by Trebor Healey.
Wed Aug 4, 2004
Fruit smoothie. Lunch: Panda Express. My fortune: You will be awarded some great honor. Burned CD-ROMs at the library—beta 2 of our entering students CD. Dinner with Dexter and Patrick at Korea House. Sam got us a rice cooker.
Thu Aug 5, 2004
Oatmeal, fruit smoothie. I just missed the 9:10 AM bus, and the 9:30 AM bus didn't show up, so I got to work very late. Grrr! Designed the cdrom label. Had a lot of trouble trying to figure out how to make a placed EPS file with black artwork overprint black in InDesign. InDesign by default overprints black only for native objects—it was very unclear how to make an imported object overprint. I eventually worked around the problem by copying and pasting the object from Illustrator into InDesign. InDesign then sees it as a native object, but you lose any updating features you'd have gotten with linking. Some documents I found said that you should set overprint settings in Illustrator, but I couldn't figure out how to make that work for an EPS or AI file saved from Illustrator—all the stuff I found talked about outputting (printing) directly from Illustrator. Lunch at SBC Park—the dean bought everyone tickets to a baseball game today. Visited Jesse, met Jeff. Jesse had just gotten a bed from someone down the street and moved it into his bedroom and rearranged furniture. Watched Simpsons: Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming. Dinner at Blue with Patrick: chicken pot pie for me, meatloaf for Patrick, 1 iced tea: $24.49 before tip. Visited with Brian and Kelly who told us about their bike tour and other travels in Europe while making and eating dinner (something with meat-substitute chorizo). Chatted with Nico, who came over shortly before we left. He's doing stand-up comedy now! Funniest thing Brian said tonight (paraphrasing)—we'd been talking about heirloom tomatoes: "I'd rather eat broken glass than a regular tomato."
Fri Aug 6, 2004
Zucchini omelette. Telecommute day. School plan pages and forms work for Susie. Lunch at home: mac and cheese with zucchini. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover mac and cheese with more vegetables. Patrick met with Aaron, Sam, and a new writer's group he formed with some former SFSU colleagues. Microsoft announces the release of XP SP2.
Sat Aug 7, 2004
Breakfast with Patrick: Fruit salad with blueberries, apricots, plums, banana. Cinnamon rolls. Coffee with chicory. I spent most of the day attempting to resolve problems with the School of Pharmacy Web server. It would intermittently give Error 403 Forbidden instead of the page you wanted. Very inconsistent. Sometimes pages would load without a stylesheet, sometimes without images. I called and e-mailed our server admins but no one got back to me all day so I sent a message to all my staff and all our students. Forgot to eat lunch, so after Patrick got back from a walk he made me a curry potato dish with vegetables. Returned a movie to Superstar. Grocery shopping at Safeway. Archived (scanned) some of Patrick's China trip memorabilia. Freschetta pizza for dinner. (Warning: "Zesty" really means "spicy.") Looked at BriKel's photos from Europe. Watched Simpsons: Home Sweet Home Dum Diddly Doodly and Two Bad Neighbors.
Sun Aug 8, 2004
Coffee for breakfast. Leftovers for an early meal (not breakfast and not brunch). Patrick and I returned a movie to Superstar, picked up caulk at Cliff's Hardware, said hi to Jesse at AAB. Patrick and I went to a same-sex marriage rally for queer Asians today. The Gay Asian Pacific Alliance event took place in a park near our home along 19th Avenue in response to a rally held by some Asian churches in April in which lots of anti-gay-marriage people held picket signs along 19th Avenue to show support for their beliefs. Many supportive speeches were given by important city, community, and church leaders, including Mabel Teng and Bevan Dufty. There were perhaps a few hundred people. The speeches were mostly good and worth sticking around for. People we saw who attended: Ray, Hao, Emery, and Ted. Nicholas came over this afternoon to pick up the free scanner I had offered on craigslist.org. Hooray! I'm free of it finally! Patrick and I cleaned then recaulked the shower and taped it up with plastic wrap to let it cure for a few days. Napped. Dinner at home with Patrick: mushroom soy sauce thin pork chops, stir-fried baby bok choy, steamed rice with Japanese seasonings. Fruit smoothie: apricot, nectarine, blueberries, orange juice, milk, sugar. Dusted the apartment, cleaned in the kitchen. For the past couple of months I've been neglecting to record in my journal when I exercise, and it's partly because I'm lazy at writing it down and partly because I've been doing it so often that it's hard to keep track of it. Patrick works on Second Island and makes a new mix. Watched Star Trek: Voyager—"Repentance."
Mon Aug 9, 2004
Bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns. Built and tested backend code for Susie's survey #1 results. Set up a new listserv for Chris C. Chicken burger for lunch at burgermeister. School plan edits for Susie. Prepared info for the forthcoming student computing retreat. Responded to an incoming student's question about computer requirements. Dinner at home with Patrick: grilled salmon with cream cheese and lemon, leftover rice with Japanese seasoning, organic greens salad with honey glazed pecans, goat cheese, and vinaigrette. After dinner, we looked at photo albums from friends of ours who had traveled recently: Daniel L (Japan) and Chris and Nate (Sydney). Was tired this evening, so I went to bed early.
Tue Aug 10, 2004
Left early for a 9:00 AM meeting, planned to get breakfast at the hospital cafeteria. The 8:08 AM bus didn't show up, so I caught the 8:30 AM bus, which got me to campus right at 9:00 AM. Skipped breakfast, did the student computing support meeting on an empty stomach til 10:30 AM. Ate an orange at my desk. Early lunch: fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, corn off the cob. Coded and made live a new front page news story for Susie. Lots of school plan edits for Susie, made the pages live after her review. Link checking. Chatted with Cindy about the recent Web server outage (we need to get our own server). Worked with Joel to set up a computing support session for students during orientation. Chatted with Chris about orientation. Chatted with Kirk about the Dell computer configuration. Patrick met with Jason and Aaron today. Dinner at home with Patrick: rigatoni in a cream sauce. Watched Simpsons: Bart the Fink, Lisa the Iconoclast, 22 Short Films about Springfield. The disappearing cursor problem returned with my ATI All-in-Wonder Radeon 9600 graphics card. I did the same fixes as before (see April 19, 2004) and now things are fine again. Wrote a long e-mail to Debbie S in Israel who—I just found out—is recently married and is expecting a baby girl (!). ATI Eazylook Multimedia Center (MMC) 9.1.0.0—oh, such buggy software! Problem: Control buttons appear all jumbled on top of each other. Workaround: Enter Setup (Ctrl+S), on the Display tab, change Video Size to Large. Melissa is back from her vacation to Japan and brought some kind of mochi and kitschy Seiyu drip coffee (kitcshy because it comes with a cardboard contraption with a built-in filter—you set it over a cup and pour the hot water over it). I thought it would make a great gift for Michael O'Brien, but I couldn't find a way to buy it online.
Wed Aug 11, 2004
Breakfast: bagel and fruit smoothie. Researched options for Chris to use his laptop with a docking station, monitor stand, and instant backup solution, then sent him e-mail about it. Sent e-mail to Tardon Feathered at mrtoads.com regarding our cdrom project and questions about duplication. Lunch: sandwich from the cafeteria. Met with Cindy: regular monthly meeting. Prepared information for Cindy regarding the forthcoming e-mail migration for students. Dinner at home with Patrick: beer-steamed chicken, cheesy sage mini penne, yams. Patrick did Lodestar work and I read from Trebor Healey's first novel while we listened to Chopin. Watched a Simpsons episode: Curse of the Flying Hell(something).
Thu Aug 12, 2004
Woke up at 3 AM, couldn't sleep for 90 minutes. Woke up late, got to work a little late. Dealt with UCSF-Dell deal issues. Issued a status update on the cdrom project. Chatted with Chris about various computer topics. Prepped the backup schedule for my vacation. Lunch at Cybelle's with Melissa. CD-ROM building in the Library. Dinner at home with Patrick: heirloom tomato salad.
Fri Aug 13, 2004
Telecommute day. Recoded the admissions steps page due to a small browser compatibility problem. Updated the computer security guide. Early lunch: leftover salad from last night. Updated current students calendar. Dealt with UCSF-Dell deal issues. Updated graduation e-mail and e-mail policy pages. Dinner at home with Patrick: tarragon and garlic pork chops, baked potato, corn on the cob. Watched Simpsons: Much Apu About Nothing (not that funny).
Sat Aug 14, 2004
Cereal and fruit smoothie. Visited the Conservatory of Flowers: $5 got us in to see lots of beautifully maintained trees, plants, and flowers, many of them unusual. The highlight for me was the Amazonian water lily pad exhibit. Joined Melissa for the Dahlia Glen Potluck and Picnic. We brought macaroni salad, viewed the dahlia garden mostly in full bloom, and chatted with Melissa and her friends and family. Home. Nap. Went to Lee's 32th Italian-themed birthday party, which he called Volaré. Lee was the perfect host serving Buca di Beppo from chafing dishes, and his brother Shane and his father were charming as well. Patrick and I both had a great time.
Sun Aug 15, 2004
Cereal and fruit smoothie. Went to the Nihonmachi Festival in Japantown. Tony Q met us there, and we watched the Taiko Dojo drummers perform a number of pieces. It was boring because the percussion was too repetitive for my brain, but it was also impressive because it obviously required a great deal of energy and concentration to hit cues amidst all the repetition. Galen showed up shortly after we watched the drumming. We ate sushi purchased from a stand advertising an internationl group against violence against women: good sushi and a good cause. We also got satay with peanut sauce. The festival was pretty small by SF standards, so within an hour we'd seen all the booths and browsed shops up and down Fillmore. Home. Patrick and I napped for 3 or 4 hours. Seniore's pizza delivery (415-661-2222): when I placed my order the man taking my order was not very patient. From experience, I always know I have to explain how our place is an inlaw—use the side gate—but he was impatient and didn't seem to care about my specific instructions. Sure enough, when the driver showed up, he had to call us to figure out how to get to our place. I doubt it will occur in my lifetime, but I'm still waiting for pizza delivery that requires no human intervention. A large part of the problem is the lack of robotic (or otherwise non-human-attended) delivery of goods, and no one I've heard of is even bothering to work on that on any large scale. We had a Caesar salad and a mushroom and green bell pepper pizza: about $18 after a $2 tip. Finished reading Through It Came Bright Colors by Trebor Healey. The book is a fine first novel, and I expect more delightful novels from him.
Mon Aug 16, 2004
Oat bran. Reread The Pearl by Yukio Mishima. Napped until 11:00 AM. Ramen with spinach. Cut my hair. Cleaned the bathroom. Washed dishes, cleaned in the kitchen. Cleaned the Brita pitcher and changed the filter. Vacuumed and dusted. Held funerals for house plants which had died. Archived postcards. Patrick got home from working at Jumpin Java and buying groceries at Golden Produce. We had leftover pizza for a late afternoon snack. I began reading The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover pizza slices; spinach linguine with shrimp in a garlic, dill, and lemon sauce. Watched I Love Lucy and The Simpsons. More plumbing problems today: the water overflowed in our kitchen when we did laundry, then again when Adam did laundry. Wrote some new code for the journal.
Tue Aug 17, 2004
Slept in. Patrick cleaned in the morning before going to JJ to write. Spinach and cheddar hash for breakfast. Archived Web sites and documents, threw out papers I didn't need anymore. Georges came over with a plumber and they determined that a piece of pipe between the house and the street is clogged with roots and needs to be replaced. We should be okay plumbingwise for at least the next month. Mikey arrives from Seattle for a visit. He's staying with us until Saturday. I picked him up at Glen Park BART. We got home and I made a fruit smoothie while we chatted. Mikey settled in and took a short nap. I archived Web sites to CD-RW. Patrick worked on Second Island. Dinner: Patrick made assemble-yourself salad with green leaf lettuce, onion sprouts, grated jack cheese, fresh mozzarella cubes, red bell pepper slices, fresh basil leaves, cucumber, sliced red onion, heirloom tomatoes, and Annie's Green Goddess dressing. We drove to the Red Vic to watch Foxy Brown on the big screen—fantastically groovy! I laughed when I saw that the choreographer for the opening credits was Anita Mann. I laughed again at all the wacky patterns on the fabrics. Mikey made friends with the guy running the popcorn machine and snack stand. Back at home, we watched a Simpsons episode in which Marge persuades Springfield to have a film festival—unusually weird, but still funny. We read Best of Craigslist.
Wed Aug 18, 2004
I slept in. Fruit smoothie for breakfast. Mikey and I took the 66 then the 44 to Clement Street. While the bus drove through Golden Gate Park we observed graffiti: VOTING IS SEXY. Mikey liked it so much that he wants to make a t-shirt that says that. We shopped at Kamei Restaurant Supply (415-666-3699, 507 Clement Street), which had lots of inexpensive kitchen and houseware goods, mostly from Asian sources. Interesting things we saw: a home soy milk making machine, plastic rice dispensers, silicone muffin pans, a fruit-kabob device, a tea set hanging on a portable metal rack, an avocado scooper and masher. I bought a 12-cup non-stick muffin pan for $5.50, a ramen bowl to match the one I had picked up at Uwajimaya in Seattle years ago for $11.50, 50 Reynolds pastel baking cups (1090000387) for $0.59, 32 Reynolds foil baking cups (1090000383) for $0.99, and a wooden rice paddle for $0.49. We stepped in to a small cafe called Little Paris (415-221-6028, 445 Clement Street) pondering something to eat when we ran into Christopher N, one of the 2nd-year students in the UCSF School of Pharmacy PharmD program. We stopped a few minutes to chat—he's interning at Walgreen's in the Castro and another location. Mikey and I continued on, looking for something to eat, and we stopped at a convenience store which also sold crepes. Mikey had banana with almond, I had one with spinach, mushroom, and cheddar. We walked around Clement a little more, then took the 38 Geary to Union Square. We ran into Nico and his co-worker Mia outside of Rite Aid, so we chatted a few minutes while they were on break. Nico looked sharp, as always, this time in an all black suit and tie. He possibly has another stand-up gig on August 21 at The Marsh. I got a gift for the office. We wandered in and out of shops, spent a lot of time looking at Crate and Barrel's huge store. We tried to buy bus tokens at the Powell booth, but they were all out. We tried to get info from the Visitor Center, but it was past 5:00 PM so they had already closed. Dinner with Mikey at Cafe Venue (415-546-1144, 721 Market Street), which was an eatery which he remembered and enjoyed from a previous visit to San Francisco. Mikey had soup and a sandwich. I had penne with cow sauce and a side Caesar and a berry smoothie. We took the subway to the Castro. We tried to buy bus tokens at the liquor store but they were all out. We walked up and down Castro, stopped in A Different Light bookstore for a while. Went to Magnet for Smack Dab open mic, headlined by Alvin Orloff (who read from Gutterboys) and Bambi Lake (who read from a work in progress about a homeless person's adventures). I especially enjoyed the life-in-the-Castro memoirs of Mark (I didn't remember his last name)—a weekend from 25 years ago today. Mikey's favorite was someone named (I think) Swag, who read a poem about answering doors naked, cops, cats, dreams, and not dreams. Mikey also really liked Alvin's t-shirt, which said "POWERED BY" and had a picture of a stack of pancakes underneath. We took MUNI home. It was a one-car, and I was surprised that we immediately got seats. The ride was uneventful. After getting home, Mikey had his Chinese herbal tea, then went to bed shortly thereafter. I stayed up to write in the journal, then went to bed as well exactly at midnight:15. A fine day.
Thu Aug 19, 2004
Fruit smoothie. It was sunny yesterday around town, so Mikey and I thought we'd try to sit out in Golden Gate Park and enjoy the nice weather. We packed a beach towel for sitting and planned to pick up lunch along the way. However, when we got to 9th and Lincoln, it was obvious the cold and the fog were not going away soon. We instead ate submarine sandwiches at the corner sub shop, then visited the Conservatory of Flowers and the Dahlia Garden. We stopped in at The Canvas Gallery and did some reading. I read from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, and Mikey read from The Kid by Dan Savage. Later, Patrick joined us there and we all took the N-Judah to Duboce Park to show Mikey Jumpin Java and to eat at La Mediterranee (Mikey's treat). Mikey had the vegetarian platter, Patrick and I each had the prix fixe special—chicken stewed with tomatoes. Patrick got a generous appetizer and dessert samplers with his prix fixe. I opted for the prix fixe choice without appetizer and dessert, and Mikey and I shared the chocolate cake. Patrick went home. Mikey and I spent the evening with BriKelJess, Nina, Brian and Eric, and Simma. Nina made meatloaf. Brian gave Mikey and me soap from Mayobaby. Mikey got lavender, I picked cinnamon. Brian wrapped my soap in a very special hand-embroidered bag made by Big Brian. Sweet!
Fri Aug 20, 2004
Fruit smoothie and cereal for breakfast. Today, Mikey and I visited San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA). The current exhibit was POP!—a sampling of popular art works including several by Andy Warhol. I liked chairs from the permanent collection best. Afterwards, we had crepes at a crepe shop in Embarcadero Center, then we visited the shops in the Ferry Building. We got groceries at Golden Produce, then came home. I napped. We had dinner: falafel wrapped in lavash, tabouli. After dinner, we watched Baraka on DVD at home.
Sat Aug 21, 2004
Mikey left for brunch with Bill and then for the airport to return to Seattle. It was very enjoyable to have him here, even for just a short stay. I didn't feel like going anywhere today, so I stayed home and had small meals throughout the day (leftovers), researched buying a projector on which to watch DVDs (decided against it—we don't have enough space for it), exercised, read news, read from The O. Henry Prize Stories 2003, showered, napped. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftover falafel, salad.
Sun Aug 22, 2004
Brunch with Patrick at Baghdad Cafe. I had corned beef hash, Patrick had bacon, eggs, potatoes with a side of biscuits and gravy. Patrick went to JJ to work. I got a car wash, filled up the gas tank, bought socks at Macy's, did some auto detailing (removed old wax from grooves where it got stuck). Drove to Sunnyvale. Played badminton organized by Dale at Bintang Badminton Gym (Shawn or Sean, Desmond, Erick, Brian, Ralph, Jason, Teddy, Jeremy, Greg). Chinese takeout and movie night at Dale's (Jack, Brian, Erick, Antonio, Greg, Shawn/Sean, Dale, me): Kill Bill Volume 2. My fortune: A good time to start something new. Drove back late. I hit a lazy drizzle just entering San Francisco. Vacation's over!
Mon Aug 23, 2004
School plan survey edits for Susie. Updates for a listserv for Chris. Laptop maintenance for Chris: upgraded Eudora to 6.1.1, upgraded Firefox to 0.9.3, removed viruses and spyware. Eudora had a very strange problem: whenever it would check mail, the CPU usage would jump to 100% and stay there, essentially hanging the computer tightly, requiring a force powerdown—sitting 4 seconds on the power button. When not connected to the Internet, Eudora performed just fine. The problem was consistent—I must have reproduced the problem a dozen times while attempting to find a solution. The POP inbox was near quota but not quite. Several mbx files were very large—some as large as 25 MB. I compacted mailboxes, I did a clean install of 6.1.1 and migrated mail folders, I tested on a different computer (same problem there). The thing that eventually resolved the problem was using the Eudora setting called Skip Messages Over ?? KB in Size (Tools > Options > Incoming Mail). I set it to 40 KB, then did a check mail—it worked. I set it higher—80 KB—and did a check mail—it worked. Eventually, unchecking the option let it work no problem. Fedexed the cdrom master to Ben at Mr. Toad's. Late lunch: pork loin with mashed potatoes and gravy, side of zucchini, from the cafeteria. Met with Cindy and Susie. Met with Susie. Chatted with Chris about privacy issues. Dinner at home with Patrick: salad, cheese tortelloni in vodka red sauce. After dinner we tried creating a PDF of Patrick's novel. He usually works on it on his computer—Windows 2000 and Office 2003. We opened the same document on another computer—Win XP and Office 2003—and all the quote marks were somehow set to the font called SimSun. After much frustration, I eventually resolved the problem by uninstalling the SimSun font from the Office setup program (red X on International Support something or other), logging off, then logging back in and reopening the document. Like magic the problem is gone. Sorted through empty picture frames for some new photos to frame. Patrick finished his final revisions to Second Island today, meeting his goal of completing it before school started. Hooray! A big relief for him—he celebrated with a glass of white wine. Patrick brought home a 2-disc CD set for me which he got from Jamie, whose former roommate left behind a number of CDs. It's The Shamen Collection, Hits + Bonus Remix CD (1998) with mixes by Paul Oakenfold, Orbital, LTJ Bukem, Renegade Soundwave, Moby, and Danny Tenaglia. It's the best "new" music I've had since the Alliance Ethnik CD Patrick got me a long time ago.
Tue Aug 24, 2004
Met with Bill Soller to discuss his changes for the HPM pathway pages. He has everything organized and although it's more content than I had initially expected it still looks like no more than 2 full days of coding to complete. He's happy, since they're under pressure to get this finished before an important something or other in early September. Survey #1 changes for Susie. Installed Win XP SP2 blocks on all our office computers. Debrah's computer wasn't reporting in to Sophos Admin, so I removed some spyware and viruses from it. However, after a restart, a strange thing happened. Whenever she opens any browser, there's a long delay—about 30 seconds—before anything appears. Her homepage—Yahoo!—doesn't appear to have been hijacked, but I still suspect that spyware installed with Web search toolbars had somehow screwed something up. The problem happens both in IE6 and Netscape 6.2. Hosts file is clean. The problem goes away when I log in as me, so I know it has something to do with her profile on the computer—not the computer itself. The delay might lead one to suspect a DNS or network settings problem, but the network settings are the same under my login so I think I can rule that possibility out. (Though as I write this I should check that a different non-admin login behaves the same way.) I installed Firefox 0.9.3 and got the same weird behavior. I'm still puzzled over this one. During the day I also installed PharmAdMIT 2005 and Jet 4.0 SP8 for most people in our office. I made new icons for PharmAdMIT 2005 through 2010. I stayed late trying to fix Debrah's computer. Dinner at Nan King Road Bistro by myself: Double Happiness (noodles with dumplings) with Chicken. Patrick had his writer's group tonight.
Wed Aug 25, 2004
8:39 AM: I'm waiting at 19th and Taraval for a bus to take me to California Street. I'm heading to the UCSF Laurel Heights campus for an all-day conference (they call it a "retreat") to plan the vision of student computing. 5:15 PM: The retreat is a success. Kevin S walked us through exercises helping us understand the scope of the issues, the people and groups involved, our strengths and problems, the threats and opportunities. Christina C assisted with notetaking on the giant posters and Post-It notes. They both did a fantastic job, and I think a lot of good will come of the meeting. Kevin kindly gives me a ride home. Linkchecking from home. Patrick had his first day of classes in the TESOL program at SFSU. He's taking Chinese, Structure of English, Language in Context, and Second Language Acquisition.
Thu Aug 26, 2004
Cinnamon bread for breakfast. Met with Susie. Did a system restore on Debrah's computer to resolve the weird problem from 2 days ago. Lunch: chicken boob sandwich from Subway. Bought stamps and MUNI passes. Started on Bill S's HPM site changes, got about halfway done. Installed ASSIST for Melissa. Dinner at home with Patrick: rigatoni and bowties with vodka tomato sauce, leftover biscuits, leftover lentil pilaf. Watched 2 Simpsons episodes: Scenes from the Class Struggle in Springfield and (one of my favorites) Lisa the Vegetarian.
Fri Aug 27, 2004
Cinnamon bread french toast. Updated faculty page. Worked on Bill S's HPM site changes. Did City Tours page updates and made them live after Kristy approved them. Tested the proposed new VPN client package. Lunch at home: leftover lentil pilaf, leftover pasta, orange and grape fruit smoothie. Started coding the new homepage. Dinner at home with Patrick: 30-minute delivery from Xiao Loong: black bean chicken, Xiao Loong cow, Hong Kong style vegetable chow mein, steamed rice: $29.65 before a $4 tip. Watched Margaret Cho: Revolution on DVD with Patrick.
Sat Aug 28, 2004
Woke up too early—5:00 AM. Ate ramen. Went back to bed. Patrick woke up the normal time—around 7:30 AM. Georges had called yesterday to say that today they would be fixing the plumbing in the morning, so Patrick and I didn't want to be around. We packed up and drove out to Clement Street so that I could show him Kamei Restaurant Supply. We got some dim sum beforehand at Tong Palace (415-668-3988, 933 Clement Street). The food quality and decor are typical of most dim sum restaurants in San Francisco. One of the waitrons was a classmate named Jimmy from Patrick's Chinese class last semester, but he didn't seem to recognize Patrick. We bought a wooden lemon reamer at Kamei. Patrick laughs at the word "reamer" every time he reads it. Picked up Tony An and went to Hao's housewarming at the observatory. We arrived around 4:05 PM, missing the start of the party by 5 minutes. We would have arrived exactly at 4:00 PM if it weren't for the amusing circus-like procedure with the front gate. We met Kenneth and many others. Hao had burgers, hot dogs, gardenburgers, chicken boobs, chips, and desserts. Everyone brought drinks. We couldn't stay long, however. Around 6:30 PM we returned to San Francisco to see Nico Santos perform stand-up comedy at 50 Mason. Simma, Nina, Jesse, Brian, and Kelly showed up a little late and stood against the back wall during the show. We met Nico through Brian and Kelly and Jesse, and Nico has been just starting out his comedy career. He's fantastic, and it's no surprise since he's been making us laugh over and over again since we've known him. Susan Alexander declared him to be an up and coming comic, and we heartily agree. Other comics we especially liked were Enzo Lombard-Quintero and Alfred Muller. After the show, we met Brian's brother J.J. who was in town visiting for the weekend. We all returned to BriKelJess's. Patrick and I got a bite to eat from Azteca. We all went for a drink briefly on the patio at The Pilsner. When Patrick and I drove home, it was quite late (for us)—maybe 1:00 AM. Georges and the plumbing guys never did seem to show up and do the work.
Sun Aug 29, 2004
Fruit smoothie for breakfast: orange, nectarine, 2 bananas, a few strawberries, milk, ice, sugar. Brunch with my sister Lani and my nephews Jeremy and Matthew. Jeremy is 4.77 years old and can count to at least 80. We watched Clifford the Big Red Dog. He showed us the LeapPad book we got him for his birthday last November. We set him up with a starter kit of 2 books and he has lots of them now. He needs a giant book to hold the LeapPad and all his books and cartridges. Jeremy seems very smart. I hope when he grows up he'll remember who set him up with the fun LeapPad book. Matthew is talking now—new since the last time we saw him. For example, "I'm makin' poo-poo now" or something like that. He's 2.38 years old, and Jeremy shares his LeapPad book with Matthew—such a kind brother. We ate brunch at Miyake in Cupertino (408-253-2668, 10650 South De Anza Blvd, Cupertino)—inexpensive sushi on boats. The quality of some of the food was disappointing, but the service was above average. For example, the tough and grainy beef teriyaki in the bento box special suffered from low-quality meat and/or overcooking. Several pieces of California roll on one sushi boat had collapsed because the roll hadn't been rolled tightly enough, or perhaps it had too much of something wet inside. Not everything is awful, though. If you're on a budget but want the novelty of sushi boats, give it a try. Before driving home, Patrick and I got coffee at Starbucks in downtown No Mountain View (we'd been tired all day from yesterday's many activities), then bought gas and got a quick car wash. Dinner at home with Patrick: leftovers from Xiao Loong delivery. Hot sex. Patrick and I made an ad for Lodestar to appear in the holiday issue of The Gay and Lesbian Review. Laundry.
Mon Aug 30, 2004
Fruit smoothie for breakfast. It's Patrick's first time making one. Organized cdroms. Prepared my computer services presentation, printed a copy for Chris to review. Finished HPM changes and sent them to Bill S for review. I finally used some code that Julie B gave me a long time ago to hook into UCSF's ph server. It was fun getting it done, and I ended up working late without realizing it. Late lunch from the cafeteria: marsala chicken, mixed vegetables, brown rice. Went to my dentist, Dr. Natasha Lee, in the afternoon. All throughout my visit Emily told me I was doing a wonderful job with keeping my teeth clean. However, at the end of the visit, the doc used a new instrument which uses a laser to measure the density of teeth to check for cavities and she determined that I had two. Dinner at home with Patrick: kamikaze pasta (tubetti and 2 kinds of mini penne) with four cheese tomato sauce, corn on the cob, ciabatta. Patrick got a job tutoring Japanese students in English. It's his first paycheck job since wcities in 2000.
Tue Aug 31, 2004
I got out to the bus stop at 8:45 AM, and I knew the 8:30 AM bus didn't show up because the Chinese women who always catch it were still there. The 8:50 AM bus did show up, however. Helped entering student Sapna P with computer requirements decisions. Chatted with Susie about the new homepage project, did some more work on it. Helped James resolve problems with crashes and errors on his computer. I suspect old spyware from iWon that didn't get completely removed when iWon was uninstalled awhile ago. Installed Startup Manager, Spyware Blaster, Ad-Aware SE Personal, and ran a virus scan. Restored his Quick Launch icons from backup tape. For Staff Appreciation Day, Cindy took us to a feast at Buca di Beppo: calamari; bruschetta; mixed greens salad; chicken marsala with mushrooms; chicken cacciatore with garlic mashed potatoes; tiramisu; and bella festa: a plate of rich, brownie-like chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and spumoni, topped with chocolate Sambuca sauce, caramel, nuts, and whipped topping. Somehow (?) the staff thought it was Cindy's birthday and sang Happy Birthday when the desserts arrived. She blew out candles on the giant 5-stick candelabra (Kristina helped). All the food was very tasty, and the service was excellent. Just bring a light sweater or jacket when you come here to eat. After lunch, Cindy took off for home and the rest of us stopped in to browse at The Container Store before returning to work. Ena had a sticky keyboard, so I swapped it out and replaced it with a new one. She also had printing problems which I resolved by cycling the printer off then on and resetting some settings at the panel (just like Anakin Skywalker in Episode 1!). Chatted with Chris about the passwords RFC and our forthcoming computer services presentation. Sent in comments for the RFC. Resolved problems with Microsoft Word templates for Susie. Linkchecking and backups. Dinner at home by myself: roast chicken, stir-fried vegetables, bread.