Some Days in the Life - May 11, 1999

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So, I have the first known Driving Sports Injury. I blame Mason.

Got a good amount of sleep last night, but I still feel like I'm on a deficit. I should just go to bed at ten tonight and rejuvenate. I'll be much happier in the long run. I'm just afraid I'll end up waking up at three and getting back on that cycle. There are days if I wonder if sleep were a design flaw.

It's been a long day, which might explain why I get to type this at three instead of nine. You see, I like coming in and typing up a journal on the previous day first thing in the morning. Among other things, it helps reboot my mental processes, gets me into the 'groove' of the day... you know, helps me start up. It compliments that first cup of coffee.

Well, I was out yesterday afternoon, getting my foot looked at and getting a hint of sleep here and there. So when I walked in today, there was a ton of work to do. Seems some people dropped equipment off last night willy-nilly (is that a word?) and we needed to cope with it today. Plus we're in the process of implementing the budget for this year, so I needed to discuss things with different people who are trying to get all these computers ordered. And, naturally, MacOS 8.6 came out last night, and some of the students with 8.5 wanted to know if they could upgrade.

So, when I had a few minutes to spare, I downloaded 8.6 and installed it. First, though, I copied and stuffed a copy of my clean system folder. I'm not as dumb as I look.

Once done, I started it up. It seemed smoother on startup, and did a few things cleaner. I liked the feel. So, I opened up the Firstclass Client to read some work-related mail....

And it crashed. Type Two error, which is System bus.

I blinked, and tried again. Same deal. I rebuilt my desktop. Same deal. I tried building a new settings file. Almost the same deal, except I could see where it was crashing.

Like most client programs, it had a place to type in username and password. Unlike a lot of them, you had to type them in before it negotiated a connection. However, whenever you type your username in and then click on the password field or hit tab to get on the password field more quickly. Then you type your password and click "connect," and it looks for its server.

Only when I typed in my username, and hit tab to move to the password field, it type two'd.

I tried again, typing in my username. I clicked onto password. Crash.

I tried again, typing in my username. I clicked off the dialog box onto the desktop. Crash.

Somehow, MacOS 8.6 is incompatible with the Firstclass Intranet Client... when you do the operation of entering your username into the "username" field and then try to move off, so it saves the name in a temp file.

Which is a weird place to crash. It's like your tires deflating whenever you stick your key into the ignition. Our assumption here (after eliminating the possibility of an extension conflict and verifying it happens on other machines as well) is that when Softarc made the Intranet client (and we tried two different versions of it) they used "fake" system calls -- shortcuts exploiting bugs in the system -- which have been eliminated in MacOS 8.6. The thing is -- setting up a field in a dialog box where a person types in short information and clicks or tabs to another field is a very basic resource and system tag. There isn't much reason to reinvent the wheel.

On the other hand, Firstclass encrypts sessions. So it's possible there's a problem in the encryption routine.

Or, alternately, MacOS 8.6 may be a bug ridden catastrophe, but in this case that seems less likely.

So, clearly I had to give it up. So, I went to unstuff my backup system folder.

And the archive was corrupt. So, while I backed up my system folder, I wasn't able to get it back because I didn't do a drive backup. Next time, I will.

Grumbling, I tried to reinstall 8.5. But it wouldn't take 8.5 over 8.6. So I had to clean install a new version of 8.5 and move extensions and preferences over.

Sometimes, I wonder if upgrading isn't Newspeak for "self-flagellation."

While waiting for my machine to not work, I also called a number of people looking for employment. This is an interesting dance. You have to pretend you want to hire them, and they have to pretend they want to work for you, even though both sides are clearly not that interested in each other. One person I spoke to has worked her way up to management level in customer service. Another person's clearly an NT systems administrator and hardware repair tech down on his luck. Neither one would want the amount of money we pay, and frankly we wouldn't be that interested in them. They wouldn't be satisfied here long enough to make it worth the time and effort. It's easier to find someone who'd want this job as this job, and run with it.

But you have to dance the dance, first.

The air conditioner I should have is pretty pricey, according to George. I can afford it, but there's this little voice from Maine inside me saying "what, you can't take a little heat?" It's right next to the bigger voice in me that's saying "wow, that could get you a better scanner, or a good external hard drive, or a Firewire card or...."

It's hard to be a tech-geek. There's so many ways we can spend money and truly enjoy the results, but so many of them are worthless. I don't need a better scanner. I don't need more hard disk space. I just put in a RAM order. Going from 64 megs, which I have now, to 224 megs. I'm going to increment the Hell out of this machine.

I remember when 64 megs was a graphics production powerhouse. Hell, I remember when a 10 meg hard drive was outrageously large -- who would ever need that kind of storage, unless you ran a BBS. Why not just use floppies? You can count on floppies, and you don't run out of them.

Sigh. I think the air conditioner is more important. We'll see.

One more day until we hear about the Delacourte Press Award. One more day. Will we win? Could we possibly win? Could we stand it if we didn't?

It's an honor just to be nominated. It's an honor just to be nominated. It's an honor just to be... it's not workiiiiiing....

I don't think Greg, Louise or I will sleep tonight. It's a silly little superhero story. It's a silly little morality play. How could it possibly win an award like this one?

And so many doors will open just by making the finals. Heck, Bantam Doubleday Dell might publish it anyhow. They publish a lot of them. Or someone else will look more closely at it because it made the finals....

"...award winning children's writer...."

Nope, I'm definitely not sleeping tonight. Neither is Greg or Louise. Think of us, lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting.

Well, not lying in bed together. Louise is a married woman. Get your mind out of the gutter. Yeesh.