this road

Yesterday one of my resources failed, maybe fatally, and I cannot discover what went wrong. I really can't deal with a major cock-up just now, but unless I do some investigating, I won't know whether to reconstitute the resource (if I can), work around it for the moment, or go without.

I've automated a diagnostic that will crawl the whole system and give me some hard figures I can maybe work with, but that will take a day or so to run, and in the meantime I've just lost the equivalent of an arm or a leg, certainly the use of more than one finger.

At least I don't have a supervisor breathing on my cowlick, like in the old days. On the other hand, it also means I have no one to turn to if I get stuck. Like now.

Well, can't be helped. We proceed on the basis of not enough facts, not enough time, and not enough stuff to work with, son — as my last boss liked to say, and always with a smirk — love to get my hands on his throat right now. No trouble deciding what to do in that situation!

Here's what matters. Everybody working on this stuff thinks it's one thing, but I know it's not that thing, it's something else. They see what I'm doing, and they say, in effect (though never quite to my face), 'Why would anybody want to do that?' And maybe they're right — I mean about doing things their way: it works fine, their way, gets some results, some are even interesting. But if any of them asks what I'm doing and I tell them, they get that too-interested note in their voice and they say, 'Really? Fascinating.' And if I have to ask for help! even if I can get them to understand what I want to do, they say, 'Really? Why don't you just (fill in the blank with the first thing any moron would think of)?' and that's as far as that conversation ever gets. I hear that 'Really?' and I really want to kill.

Anyway, I don't feel like I have time to keep carping about this — but then I can't do anything until the diagnostic's run its course.

It's a weird place to be. On the one hand, I'm stupefied that they can't see what I'm saying, but on the other hand, if I'm wrong (which I'm not), then I can totally see why they're mystified by my being so stubborn (and occasionally shirty). That is, if things really work the way they think they do (which they don't), then I'm an idiot or a lunatic to keep doing things my way. (Or a poseur — I know some of them decided that long ago.)

And it's not like this isn't an urgent matter. I mean, if they're right (which they're not), then we can all go on doing things their way and things'll be fine just the way they are — except they'll keep getting better and better! Isn't that what we all want (I hear them asking me, a tinge of annoyance creeping into their little voice)? Meanwhile they're thinking, What's the matter with you, freak?

But if I'm right (and I am), things will not be fine just the way they are, and will not keep getting better and better, but worse and worse, until everything falls apart and our grandchildren are living in caves, if they're living at all. Of course I can't say that in front of Certain People, but that doesn't make me wrong. And so it's sometimes hard for me to keep my temper: everybody does things the way they do things only because that's the way everybody does things. Not to get all fussy and pedantic, but that's STUPID...

Diagnostic's done: news is bad. Either my little corner of the world is special (possible; not likely, though) or everybody's having the same problem, or will, very soon. Trouble is, I can't find out (from where I am at this point) which condition is the case. And I can't travel, not with all this gear. And where would I go?

I have a backup plan, of a sort, but I don't trust it, and I can't test it: I can only switch over to it, after which the present system (which still works — sort of) will no longer function. I need to think this through, but there's no time: if I'm going to make the swap, it has to be now — tomorrow at the latest. I think I see how this will come down, either way, but either way I'm guessing.

Just don't say to me, Only one way to find out! — if you want to keep your teeth.

I remember a poem just now that makes me wish I believed in the deities, just so I could say to them, Bless the person who thought of this:

I always knew that one day I would take this road
but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.

It's the only thing that keeps me going. Puts everything in perspective. Reminds me of the world I'm really living in.

Yes. Really.