Excuse me, have you seen my toupee? It was around here somewhere. . . .

There was going to be a get-together Friday night. I was thinking about going, but at about 7:15pm (15 minutes before it started), I got a helpdesk ticket. I spent about an hour trying a bunch of different things to figure out what the user’s problem was, and having no luck at all. And of course, the user didn’t respond to e-mail asking for clarification. Sigh. So I didn’t get to go, but I had sent out an e-mail telling everyone that I might not be there for reasons like what actually happened.

Finished White Supremacy. Since it was published in 1980, it didn’t cover the worldwide media attention that was focused on the South African apartheid policy in the 1980s, and the government’s eventual abandonment of the policy and subsequent regime change.  I wonder how the book would’ve been different if it’d covered that.

The main thing I got out of the book was a brief course in the history of South Africa.  And more data for the idea that people who are in power will do anything to keep that power, including espousing racist policies and systematically denying entire classes of people the right to vote.  Pretty sickening, actually, but I guess that’s how people are and how they have always been.

Siamese cats can resemble snakes when viewed at the proper angle.

Thursday night, it rained a lot in some areas of the greater Phoenix metro area. There were reports of 100mph winds at the airport, tons of downed trees, power outages, flooding, and even hail. I noticed it was raining some when I hit the sack, and didn’t know that it had rained a lot until I walked outside and saw that the drainage pond was full. The weather here is extremely sensitive to geography during monsoon season.

The rain actually caused some headaches at work, but we figured out how to fix them. Power got shut off several times, and all the machines in the data center were OK, but some of the workstations got shut off and were unhappy. All in a day’s work.

Fierce disapproval is what Patagonian Cavies are all about.

Yay for the three-day weekend coming up! A whole bunch of people are going to be gone from the office tomorrow. I guess they wanted a four-day weekend.

Really Lousy Error Reporting: Apparently, "Warning: NFS server cannot mount example.com:/stuff on /mnt/stuff : not owner" is secret Solaris code for “The remote NFS server doesn’t support NFS version 4. Modify /etc/defaults/nfs so that we try version 4 first, then version 3.” Well, many “enterprise” systems provide completely incomprehensible error messages. Enterprise systems typically promise phasers and photon torpedoes, and they typically deliver a red shirt.

Still working my way through White Supremacy. Apparently, in the 1600s, non-Europeans were looked down upon and considered worthy of enslavement because most of them weren’t Christians. So when enslaved Africans started converting to Christianity, the upper class had to do a lot of backing and filling to keep both their slaves and the moral high ground. And in South Africa in the 1600s and 1700s, slaves were tacitly encouraged to become Muslims, as no one saw anything wrong with keeping Muslim slaves.

Most people who have worked with the general public would like to put a complaint procedure like this into effect.

So since Steve is still in NYC right now, Juan and Zach and I decided to do something different on Wednesday night. We all went out to Shooter’s World after work and spent some time at their indoor shooting range firing a variety of pistols and rifles. I tried a Romanian .22LR training rifle that had almost no recoil to it and a Glock 17 that whacked me in the thumb because I was holding it wrong. It is surprisingly easy to hold handguns incorrectly. Heck, even Zach, who is much more experienced with handguns than I am, whacked himself in the thumb with his short-barrel .22 Magnum “noisy cricket” revolver.

Also tried a Saiga AK-47, which was fun. The ease of use and the general ruggedness of the AK make it really popular among people who have to use weapons under lousy conditions, even though it’s not as accurate as the AR-15 at long distances. Also, Luli took her .22 and fired 10 rounds at a silhouette target at 50 feet. Each round hit the target in the head. This is pretty good shootin’.

Work: Solaris. BLEAH. Why is it that whenever some suit tries to call something “enterprise ready” that its error reporting sucks tapeworms out of dead dog’s intestines?

I don’t know what this guy is outraged about, but it was evidently pretty bad.

Trivia: We were leading when I left, but there were way too many sports questions. And we had a hard time thinking of a good team name.

Been reading White Supremacy by George M. Fredrickson, a book that was published in 1980 that examines how racism developed and was practiced in the USA and South Africa. It’s interesting, mainly because of the South African bits. The “World History” course in school should’ve been called “European History”, since neither Africa nor China were discussed at all. Apparently, slavery and similar forced-labor systems are most economically beneficial when you have a relatively large amount of land and very few people to work it.

Camouflage Cat has words of wisdom that should be followed. Well, unless you want to emulate a Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.

One of my co-workers had a late meeting yesterday. She came back into the office at about 4:15pm, looked out the window, and said, “Oh wow, when did all the dark clouds show up?” “Just now,” said Bill. “Yep, in the last 20 seconds. We should call you ‘Sherry, the Harbinger of Doom’, and it’d look great on your resume,” I said. We all laughed at that, because it was silly and the clouds had been building for the last few hours. A few minutes later, when Bill was leaving for the day, the clouds opened and rain started hitting the windows. The monsoon storms hit downtown Phoenix, right when most of us had to stand outside waiting for the buses that took us home. Oh well. I used my laptop bag to cover my head—it looked silly, but it kept me mostly dry.

Been reading The Gift by Patrick O’Leary. Unfortunately, that’s the last book by that author that the local library has. It may be that he’s only published 3 books—which would be a shame; he’s talented and writes well. But the books he writes aren’t as marketable as some. The books of his which I’ve read are all self-contained, which is Bad in modern publishing—you want to have an iconic character or set of characters whom fans love, then you can write an open-ended series and Make Many Sales.

It’s sad to say, but publishing firms would rather have a Piers Anthony than a Herman Melville. There are thousands of authors who have great stories to tell who will never find an audience, and never be appreciated. This is annoying. We want to pretend that talent, skill, and merit guarantee success, but that is not the case. Luck, social position, being in the right place at the right time, and having a well-funded marketing team are probably more important than merit in many cases.

About 8 years ago, I bought a knife similar to the one in the picture to the left, though mine didn’t have pliers, a saw, or scissors. Now I can’t find the bloody thing. I have a spare knife that doesn’t look quite as nice, but should still be usable. I guess that’s what I’ll use for a while.

I’d like to plug a book that got much less fanfare than it deserved. Neverness by David Zindell, which I read for the first time 8.5 years ago. It’s far-future science fiction, set ten thousand years from now. It’s rough and full of flaws, but it asks questions that deserve answers, like “What does it mean to be human?” and “What is the purpose of life?” It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but in my humble opinion, it’s a book that’s worth reading, mostly because it might make you think.

Fuzzball owes her real name to Neverness, as I was reading that book when I found her. The important female characters in that book were named Katherine, Moira, Justine, Kalinda, and Balusilusaltu. The last just didn’t work, “Katherine” was not a name I felt comfortable with, and neither “Justine” nor “Kalinda” felt right. So Fuzzball’s real name is “Moira”.

What else. . . not that much. For years, I had a tradition of reading Moby-Dick in August. I don’t think I’ll be able to do that this year, since I haven’t started it yet and it takes me at least a week to read that book. Oh well. . . .

Yesterday, I filled out the early ballot that I’d requested through the Maricopa County Recorder’s office. OK, the ballot was for a primary election, not the real election that happens in November, but at least I’ve made my opinions known. I was troubled by one race; there were 2 candidates who both looked like they could do the job reasonably well and I couldn’t find any good reasons to reject either one. I ended up voting for the one who had the most extensive and comprehensive website. $DIETY only knows if I made the right decision there.

There’s not a whole lot else to report.  Juan and Zach and I are trying to arrange a small get-together for next Wednesday, but we don’t know if it’s all going to work out yet.

Sometimes I think it’s a good thing that Fuzzball is short-haired.  A longhair like the one in the picture would shed so much it’d be impossible to keep hair off anything.

Last night, Jean-Claude knocked on my door.  Apparently, the handle assembly on his toilet had broken.  He had bought a new handle assembly, but wasn’t sure how to install it.  I helped him remove the old one, but the one that he’d bought wasn’t the right shape and wouldn’t fit properly.  It looked fairly simple to do with the right part—I hope he got it fixed.

This caption doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but who cares? BUNNIES!!1!

I read a bizarre diatribe on one of the political stories in the local paper’s online section which said that Barack Obama was the Antichrist. I believe that people have been accusing their political opponents of being the Antichrist since the whole Avignon “multiple Popes at once” thing, and so far none of the people so accused have turned out to be the Antichrist. You’d think people would learn—but they don’t. It is always tempting to say that the people you disagree with are evil, when in all probability they’re being backed by different players than you are. Or they’re just stupid. There’s plenty of stupid to go around.