What I’m Blogging

After the Install

Wisdom tells us that no matter what, the install expands to absorb all available time alloted for it, and then some. It is also a known fact that no plan survives contact with the enemy and no matter how much you prepare something will always rear up to throw a spanner into the gears. The network got moved. It more or less works the same way it previously did. Best of all, there’s a dark light in a pint glass at the end of the tunnel…

It’s time again for one of those treasured moments in Information Technology. Time to burn the midnight oil; to go long; to to make fire; to do the voodoo we do. In other words, it is time to rip the guts out of the network, and then reassemble it into a mirror of itself in a new location. Oh and please do it in the dead of night while everyone else sleeps, and ensure that there is 100% availability when you are done, and, by the way, try to have it done in a couple of hours, because lord knows, western civilization depends on it.

Network and System guys are like the shoemaker’s elves, or Army recruiting comercials. We do more things before 6:00 AM then most people do all day…

So while you are all comfy and warm under the covers tonight, remember those of us making the lights on the RJ45 ports turn green and the machine that goes “ping” do it’s thing. We few, we unhappy sleepy few…

It was on this day in 1558 that the Elizabethan era began with the ascension of Queen Elizabeth I to the English throne. She took power at a time when England was a debt-ridden, divided country, and she set out to stabilize and restore England’s status. She was a Protestant, but she gave Catholics the freedom to worship, which eased the tensions between Protestants and Catholics. But she also knew that her subjects wanted a monarch they could worship, and so she often went on walking tours in public so the ordinary people could see her dressed in the most elaborate of gowns and jewels. She commissioned portraits of herself, which would be widely distributed, and she hired balladeers to write songs about her.

…one of the great eras in English history…

She was always wary of getting into wars, but in 1580s it was clear that Spain planned to invade. When she got word that the Spanish Armada was sailing toward England, she rode out to rally the troops in a white gown and silver breastplate. Her advisors were terrified that she would expose herself to armed subjects, some of whom might not be loyal, but she refused to doubt her subjects loyalty, and those troops went on to defeat the Spanish Armada in one of the most famous naval battles in history.

She began building up England’s empire by chartering seven companies, including the East India Company, to begin colonizing areas around the world. She also presided over an English renaissance in art and especially literature. Itinerant actors had been banned under previous monarchs, but Elizabeth allowed the legal operation of theaters, and the result was a new career for writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, and William Shakespeare.

She reigned for 45 years, one of the great eras in English history. Near the end of her reign, she said to her subjects: “Though God hath raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown: that I have reigned with your loves. And though you have had, and may have, many mightier and wiser princes sitting in this seat; yet you never had, nor shall have any that will love you better.”

You can’t go home again. Nothing is ever the same, and in the final analysis, the memories of what was are more richly sweet than what remains.

…hard times shared and stout pints raised…

This was illustrated to me, in some detail, the last time I visited “my pub”.

My pub was a sanctuary. A place where a pint and comrades met to escape the insanity of the dreaded office and the trolls of management that lingered there.

We met for lunch. We met after five. We started once a week and towards the end of the dreaded International Greed Enablemet Corp., we were there nearly every day. We were there so often, that we had our picture put up on the wall and were given the nickname “the Guinness Lads.”

But alas, it is gone. The picture is gone, a causualty of a rowdy night at the pub attened only by my image. The lads are scattered to the winds, and our more frequent revels are now occasional remembrances, of hard times shared and stout pints raised.

Today is Election Day. Millions of people across the country will be going to the polls today to elect new legislators, judges, sheriffs, and school board members. For the first 50 years of American elections, only 15 percent of the adult population was eligible to vote. To be eligible to vote at the time, you had to be a white male property owner. In Connecticut, you had to be a white male property owner of a “quiet and peaceable behavior and civil conversation.”

…I never vote for anyone. I always vote against…

Thomas Dorr was one of the first politicians to argue that poor people should be given voting rights. As a member of the Rhode Island legislature, Dorr argued that all white adult men should have the vote, regardless of their wealth. He incited a riot to protest the governor’s election of 1842 and went to prison for treason, but most states began to let poor white men vote soon after. Women were given the right to vote in 1920, and many African Americans were prevented from voting in the South until the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Today, the only group of adult American citizens who are regularly prevented from voting are convicted felons.

Gore Vidal said, “Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half.”

W.C. Fields said, “I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.”