~ Tuesday, April 17, 2001 ~

 

1:08 a.m. I made some progress today against the outlaw shenanigans of my rogue computer system; I even think I just might be getting the systems under control. Well, as much control as we pretend is possible ... control is always such an illusion, isn't it?

I was shocked to find out, for example, that I have thousands of invisible files floating through my system, formerly undetected. They range in size from tiny to megabitey, and who knows what havoc they might be planning there in the dark?

I have left them alone, for the moment, because I have no firm evidence against them ... but now I feel better about them, should they act up. Now I have the upper hand. I know where they live.

Complex systems require complex responses. The trouble isn't merely confined to my own little desktop, either. Today I was in the process of making a presentation with my online store, and wouldn't you just know it? I did some talking, hit the URL for the storefront and got an obscure error message, and that was that.

I did the same song and dance I used to do years ago when I wanted to show people the World Wide Web and the modem wouldn't cooperate -- the old "It was here just a minute ago, honest!" routine. Vanished into thin air like a thief in the night, stealing another valuable chunk from my reputation, I tell you.

And as soon as I was alone again with my machine, I emailed the server people and cut and pasted the error message and in seconds I got back an "Ooops! Just fixed it. Sorry for the inconvenience" email and that was, once again, that -- and the web site was back up again as if it had never been gone.

Brigadoon in the afternoon.

Sometimes all you can do is get out of the way ...

Speaking of alarming, I just finished listening to a most alarming radio program on mad cow disease and why it's probably far more serious and widespread than we're being told. One of the most interesting things about the discussion, in a terrifying sort of way, is the idea of the prion -- that's the particular mutant protein that is totally indestructible, jumps between species, and does all its damage because it happens to bend the wrong way. That's it. That's all it does.

You can see prions, a whole gallery of prions, including some in 3D on this website, and you can marvel, because there's nothing else you can do. So many things can go wrong. The fact that we manage to remain upright and live and breathe at all -- that's something to marvel at, as well.

I took today's photo, by the way, to see how the sizzling flares would turn out. They had been spread on the street to keep people away from a fender-bender accident that we came upon the other day. No one was hurt, but the cars were pretty crumpled and there looked to be a lot of note-taking and blame-passing going on as we cut across the street and kept a wide distance.

Sometimes all you can do is to keep you head down and just ... get out of the way ...