Sunday didn’t contain a lot of interesting stuff. Went grocery shopping, played some video games, catered to Fuzzball, made dinner, talked on the phone, and finished reading War: the Lethal Custom by Gwynne Dyer. Even though that book was revised in 2005 or thereabouts, I believe it’s overly optimistic. The main bright spot in the brief history of war that the author delivers is that people have had nuclear weapons since 1945 and have only used them against other people twice. The author seems to believe that there can be an end to war, provided that people do the right things.

I don’t know if I buy that, because all my experience of dealing with people over the last few years has shown me that A) people are stupid B) people are greedy. If you combine A and B, you have sufficient justification for a lot of wars. War has not been profitable for a society as a whole for the last 50..80 years, though, and since those who are in charge of societies follow the money, large scale wars may become rare or disappear.

My Rock Band 2 DVD has been screwed up for months. I finally replaced it on Saturday. Then I spent 1.5 hours playing various songs, and found out that I’m out of practice on a lot of stuff. Ah well.

I also spent some time helping Jean-Claude replace his air filters. He could have done it himself if it hadn’t been for one of the retaining screws being rusty and really difficult to move. After some brute force, we managed to get it all fixed. He gave me some saltwater taffy in appreciation.  I can’t eat that stuff, but maybe my co-workers will appreciate it.

I have a large amount of stuff to do in the next six days.  Strangely, I’m not panicking yet.

Caturday, and the cats are imitating dinosaurs.

Friday was notable mostly because it took way too long to get some stuff vetted and approved. Of course, the people who were supposed to vet and approve that stuff were either on vacation, in remote areas, or dealing with a 1-month-old baby, so that’s understandable.

Most of the crew went out to lunch, as we usually do on Friday. We went to the Downtown Deli on Central, and as we were mowing down on tasty sandwiches, Joe Arpaio walked in with some deputies. I didn’t even notice this when it happened—I was too busy eating. Sheriff Joe and the deputies were there to eat lunch, not cause a media circus, so I don’t think many other people noticed either. Heck, I wouldn’t have noticed if Jamel hadn’t said, “Wasn’t that Sheriff Joe?” when we left the restaurant. *shrug*

Shiva is sometimes depicted as doing many things at once. Thursday, I attempted to emulate Shiva, but with less slaying of evil demons and more tech support. Also, when you’re building a database that has people’s names in it, making 2 columns, one for “first name” and one for “last name” makes it a lot easier to sort names in alphabetical order than having one column for “name”.

Been reading Russia and the Arabs by Yevgeny Primakov. He was a Russian official who was relatively highly placed, and the book talks about the events in the Middle East from about 1955..1990 from a perspective that’s pretty different from the one in the West. The copy I have is an advance uncorrected proof, and the book won’t be available to the general English-reading public until November. I don’t know whether it’d really be worth buying at retail. The author isn’t very engaging or a good storyteller, and the book seems like it’s intended for readers who already know a lot about the Middle East’s recent history.

It has a few good sound bites though. “We knew pretty early on that traditional Arab culture is incompatible with Russian-style socialism. However, it was not ideologically correct to say this” was one of them. “I’m sorry I’m late! It’s not my fault; Jordan is the only country where Arab drivers always stop at red lights” was another. Also, a Russian official said, “Hey, we’ve got your back! We’ll support you in your endeavors!” to Nasser early in 1967, and that’s a big reason why the Six Day War happened when it did.

Viking Kitty demands his share of the Dane-Geld. And some tuna.

Didn’t do a whole lot yesterday, but returned old library books and got new ones. Then took a nap. It’s nice to have a day off in the middle of the week. I hope that there hasn’t been some sort of explosive crisis at work today that I’m going to have to spend all Thursday dealing with. I guess I’ll find out tomorrow.

Apparently, Patty and Spencer are getting married. In June 2011. I don’t know how they can plan things that far in advance. Most of the time, I can’t plan things for more than a month in advance, because so much can change at any given time for trivial reasons.

Pharmaceuticals and snack food don’t usually go together, but what if they did?

Apparently, some of the mail we’re sending out is getting eaten by overly zealous spam filtering, and none of the people who are in charge of the spam filtering know anything about why it’s happening or how to fix it. And some of the mail that got eaten was apparently important enough that another person who’s higher up the ladder than I am got really annoyed. They sent out an e-mail that was almost perfectly balanced between “having a passive-aggressive hissy fit” and “trying to be polite”. I am really glad this whole thing is not anywhere near anything I’m responsible for. But no, on the latest thing that I am responsible for, they wanted a feature that nobody had told me about until today. It’s possible. It’ll probably require duct tape and baling wire behind the scenes. It’s just something I should’ve been informed about a long time ago, so I could’ve put it together without last-minute finangling.

Trivia: We had almost everyone. After some discussion, it looked like I’m not going to be hosting a Rock Band + food event this Saturday. Too many people can’t come. Next Saturday looks better for almost everybody.  So that’s what I’m planning on.

Moira loves to sit in this window when the sun’s out.

Monday was pretty normal, but two of the usual crew were on vacation or had to work from home because of transport problems. I spent what seemed like forever trying to solve somebody else’s problem with a database that had a bunch of HTML in it where no HTML should’ve been. It looks like I get Wednesday off for being on call all last week. And thanks to various scheduling things, it looks like the weekend party will be on Saturday instead of Sunday. Not many people have said yea or nay yet though. I guess I’ll find out on Tuesday night.

Sunday had very little exciting happen. Grocery shopping, paying bills, cleaning house, and stuff like that. At least no machines fell over and no gruesome software bugs were reported.

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” —P.J. O’Rourke. Maybe we should give the car keys, money, and power to the bunny rabbits. They might do a better job, even though their legs are too short to reach the pedals.

Went with Nathan and Trevor to see “District 9″ on Saturday. That was an interesting movie, and not quite what I’d been led to expect by the reviews I’d read. As an allegory for apartheid, it’s lacking. People living in Soweto under apartheid would’ve had a much easier time of it if they’d had energy weapons, robot exoskeletons, and spacecraft buried under their houses. I also think that despite prejudice against critters who don’t look human, people would economically exploit those critters by employing them as cheap labor (or something) instead of herding them into ghettos. But maybe that’s just me.

After the movie, we adjourned to a nearby restaurant, Lucille’s Smokehouse. There, we got a whole bunch of barbecue and talked about trivia competitions and various topics. Trevor wanted to know what he should do with his winnings from “Who Wants to Be A Millionaire”. “Go on a Carribean cruise” and “Get a new car” were two of the things that were put up. After dinner, we discussed doing something next weekend. It’s been a long time since I hosted a party, so we might be doing Rock Band + enchiladas at my place next Sunday if we can get enough people.

Caturday has been canceled. It’s Cavy Day!

The entire crew plus almost everyone from the 7th floor went out to lunch on Friday. No one had any idea where to go, so I suggested the Hero Factory on 1st Ave. Only a few of us had been there, so it was a new experience for many of us. Almost everybody liked the sandwiches. That was about it for excitement on Friday, except for the string of strange yet mostly harmless weird problems with the database that all happened half an hour before I was supposed to leave.

At about 7:30pm on Friday, it started raining in Tempe. No thunder, just a slow rain. That’s great, because we haven’t had enough rain in the whole Phoenix area. We’re also trying to see if we can get enough of us together to go see “District 9″ and have dinner Saturday. The reviews I’ve read of that movie make it sound OK, even though it has A Message. (Aliens =~ blacks under South Africa’s apartheid system, what an original metaphor. . .)

Apparently, Shirley Manson is in Guitar Hero 5. This made John’s day.