![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Day of laughs
Oct. 6th, 2010 09:56 pmCynical laughs, maybe, but laughs nonetheless.
Started with the gallery, where we had a guild meeting followed by award presentations by the judge, who talked about her reasoning and used a number of items as examples, including one of mine. (No, she did not give me an award.) As I predicted, her orientation was like that of the last three or four judges they've had, very much toward high fashion clothing. I'm not the only one in the group who just doesn't do that, but all of us are still a minority. This is compensated by the fact that I received lots of compliments from fellow members on all three of my woven pieces (and my former boss has offered twice to buy one of them, she likes it so much.) The three pieces are nicely displayed in prominent spaces and lighting, and I'm happy with that.
Amusement continued at the library. The backup jobs that had been failing for a while and I got them going again by splitting them into two jobs are failing again. Someone is literally filling every empty kilobyte of server space with files, though I can't yet tell who it is or which files are causing the problem.
A door that is supposed to be kept locked when the room isn't in use but is always forgotten and left unlocked has developed a new kink. It's one of those double doors where one door has to be latched with a bolt into the dooframe at the top, and the other locks with a key that drives a deadbolt into the other door. Now they keep locking the key without bolting the stationary door, which is completely ineffective. Both open at a slight push.
Best, though, is that ridiculous credit card terminal. Not only does it persist in arguing that its security certificate has been tampered with, but it can't remember the date. I glanced at it this evening, and it said 01/02/80. I forced it to reboot just to see what would happen and it came back with a date in May of 2016. I left it there, since at least it can't be used that way. Any credit card presented will be declared "expired" and refused. I have gone from zero confidence in the banks and credit card system responsible for this fiasco to a negative value somewhere approaching absolute zero. I may yet win my argument that we should forget the whole thing and send the trash back where it came from. They obviously have no idea what they're doing or how to set this up.
I've come up with a third Halloween display category to add to the "Ghost Writers" and "Zombie Writers." It's "Zombie series" for series of books that have been declared finished and then revived and more books added by either the original author or someone else. Mercedes Lackey has just released a second new Valdemar book after saying five or six years ago that she was done with the series. Frank Herbert may be dead, but his Dune series lives on and keeps reproducing. Older examples include The Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew mysteries, both of which continued to add new books long after the original authors passed on to their just rewards (or punishment.) Asimov's Foundation books have suffered a similar fate, I think. So have John Ludlum's pseudo-military suspense stories. One of the silliest is Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's trilogy, which he pushed to five books himself, while still alive, and now that he's gone, Eoin Colfer has produced the sixth by pulling it out of a hat (or perhaps out of some other place.)
I saw more honeybees in the butterfly garden outside the staff kitchen than I have seen all summer. They are coming to the New England asters, which are very prolific this year. Though I often say that I dislike the color purple, I'll make an exception for those.
Started with the gallery, where we had a guild meeting followed by award presentations by the judge, who talked about her reasoning and used a number of items as examples, including one of mine. (No, she did not give me an award.) As I predicted, her orientation was like that of the last three or four judges they've had, very much toward high fashion clothing. I'm not the only one in the group who just doesn't do that, but all of us are still a minority. This is compensated by the fact that I received lots of compliments from fellow members on all three of my woven pieces (and my former boss has offered twice to buy one of them, she likes it so much.) The three pieces are nicely displayed in prominent spaces and lighting, and I'm happy with that.
Amusement continued at the library. The backup jobs that had been failing for a while and I got them going again by splitting them into two jobs are failing again. Someone is literally filling every empty kilobyte of server space with files, though I can't yet tell who it is or which files are causing the problem.
A door that is supposed to be kept locked when the room isn't in use but is always forgotten and left unlocked has developed a new kink. It's one of those double doors where one door has to be latched with a bolt into the dooframe at the top, and the other locks with a key that drives a deadbolt into the other door. Now they keep locking the key without bolting the stationary door, which is completely ineffective. Both open at a slight push.
Best, though, is that ridiculous credit card terminal. Not only does it persist in arguing that its security certificate has been tampered with, but it can't remember the date. I glanced at it this evening, and it said 01/02/80. I forced it to reboot just to see what would happen and it came back with a date in May of 2016. I left it there, since at least it can't be used that way. Any credit card presented will be declared "expired" and refused. I have gone from zero confidence in the banks and credit card system responsible for this fiasco to a negative value somewhere approaching absolute zero. I may yet win my argument that we should forget the whole thing and send the trash back where it came from. They obviously have no idea what they're doing or how to set this up.
I've come up with a third Halloween display category to add to the "Ghost Writers" and "Zombie Writers." It's "Zombie series" for series of books that have been declared finished and then revived and more books added by either the original author or someone else. Mercedes Lackey has just released a second new Valdemar book after saying five or six years ago that she was done with the series. Frank Herbert may be dead, but his Dune series lives on and keeps reproducing. Older examples include The Bobbsey Twins and the Nancy Drew mysteries, both of which continued to add new books long after the original authors passed on to their just rewards (or punishment.) Asimov's Foundation books have suffered a similar fate, I think. So have John Ludlum's pseudo-military suspense stories. One of the silliest is Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's trilogy, which he pushed to five books himself, while still alive, and now that he's gone, Eoin Colfer has produced the sixth by pulling it out of a hat (or perhaps out of some other place.)
I saw more honeybees in the butterfly garden outside the staff kitchen than I have seen all summer. They are coming to the New England asters, which are very prolific this year. Though I often say that I dislike the color purple, I'll make an exception for those.
