So I told her that not only do I not want to save the world, the world doesn’t particularly want to be saved.

She thought about it for a while, then asked me if I thought that was a cynical attitude. Not at all, I replied; it’s a realistic one.

In the end, I think we agreed to disagree on the matter.

“Acocdrnig to an elgnsih unviesitry sutdy the oredr of letetrs in a wrod dsoen’t mttaer, the olny thnig thta’s iopmrantt is that the frsit and lsat ltteer of eevry word is in the crcreot ptoision. The rset can be jmbueld and one is stlil able to raed the txet wiohtut dclftfuiiy.”

First, the good news…

Shelly returned yesterday from her weeklong trip to New York City, where she evidently had quite a blast even in spite of the fact that she did not encounter latexiron during his trip. I picked her up from the airport Monday morning.

Next, the Bad news…

I picked Shelly up at the airport. I did not pick Shelly’s luggage up at the airport. Someone named Ruth picked up Shelly’s luggage instead.

I think Shelly should’ve taken Ruth’s luggage, just to hold hostage or something, but oh well.

I nailed the curb at the airport parking garage in kellyv‘s car, which I had taken so that I’d be able to…er, fit all of Shelly’s luggage. Destroyed two tires. Goddamn.

The Cinnabon at the mall by my house is gone. After getting the car fixed and making a trip back tot he airport to fetch Shelly’s luggage, I really wanted needed a cinnamon roll. I had to drive all the way across town to get one. (And yes, it was really, really good.)

Cinnamon rolls, like bacon, help make life worth living.

The amusing news

Courtesy of my friend Chris, in honor of my newly-minted arch-nemesis (without which no evil genius can be complete), and in recognition of the fact that the whole Friendster thing is overdone (as is, indeed, the whole online-dating thing), I give you:

ArchNemesisster!

It’s been a long, frantic, busy week. As with most things, thee’s a simple explanation, and a complex explanation.

The simple explanation:

A client’s server computer went down, and I had to replace the motherboard in it.

The complex explanation:

This is a sordid tale of corporate espionage, incompetence, greed, and Asian notions of “honor” and “face.”

Before I get into the whole cloak-and-dagger story, a bit of background: Computers and other electronic devices use components called “capacitors,” which are small metal cylinders, vaguely can-shaped, that are soldered to circuit boards. Capacitors contain a viscous, oily material called a “dielectric,” which improves their efficiency.

Last year, a scientist working for an electronics firm in Japan stole his company’s formula for a high-quality dielectric, and fled to Taiwan, where he sold the formula to a Chinese firm that manufacturers capacitors. The Chinese firm began making capacitors with the stolen formula in mainland China and Taiwan, where they were sold to Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers Abit and Micro-Star. Many thousands of the capacitors were also sold to IBM.

These are cheap components, costing less than a penny apiece in quantity. Manufacturers could shave a few cents off the cost of a motherboard by using the Chinese capacitors in place of name-brand capacitors from Taiwan and Japan, which cost a few percent more.

Problem is, the thieving scientist bungled the formula. The dielectric formula as sold to the Chinese firm was incomplete.

As a result, the capacitors using the faulty formula are unstable, and tend to fail dramatically. In some cases, they will physically explode after a few thousand hours’ use. When they do, the result looks like this:

As you can see, the tops have split open on the capacitors. The brown crud all over the place is the faulty dielectric, which leaks out and turns to a hard, crusty mess.

This causes the computer to fail.

So I spent a good part of the week replacing the motherboard, and rebuilding the Windows install on the affected server.

The Moral

My client’s server has been down for several days as the result of the unethical and incompetent corporate espionage of a Japanese scientist and the greed and petty cost-cutting of a couple of electronics firms (in this case, Micro-Star and IBM) who used untrusted components from an unknown manufacturer to save a few pennies on the cost of a computer.

The moral lessons here are not necessarily obvious. Yes, greed is bad; but beyond that, there’s another factor at work here as well.

The world we live in is a complex, interdependent entity, where actions by single individuals half a planet away can reach out and touch people far removed from them. I’m sure the thieving scientist and the greedy accountants at IBM and Micro-Star didn’t intend to make my week miserable, but their actions conspired to do so anyway.

The scientist involved was never arrested. Why? Because he’s in Taiwan; someone in Taiwan would have to lodge a criminal complaint against him. However, the manufacturers in Taiwan are reluctant to do so, because admitting they were hoodwinked by a vendor would be a grave loss of face. (For the same reason, the Taiwanese author of the Cherynobl virus was released after he was captured because no Taiwanese firms would risk losing face by admitting they’d been affected by the virus.)

Thge law of unintended consequences is as immutable as the law of gravity. So, too, is the fact that if you do not stand up against peope who do wrong, those people can continue to do wrong; pride can make anyone into a victim.

Don’t feel bad…it could always be worse.

This from The Register: A criminal was arrested in Wisconsin recently after he–get this–stole a GPS device used to monitor people under house arrest.

The gadget contains a GPS tracking unit and a satellite transmitter. When it was stolen, it sent a signal to the police telling them exactly where it was located, and the police followed the signal to the man’s apartment.

Some people, you just can’t reach…

DragonCon

DragonCon is a large, busy science fiction convention held every year in Atlanta. No, sadly, we didn’t go. bandage and M were able to attend this year, together with a large group of friends, but we, alas, were not.

So instead we spent the weekend with moonshadowdance, lightgatherer, their partner Chris, ucertola, and a group of other friends.

We had a blast.

What every evil genius needs…

…is a good archnemesis. And I believe I’ve found just the person.

He has all the qualities one generally looks for in an archnemesis: he’s intelligent, we see eye to eye on most things, we get along very well, our philosophies and worldview are generally compatible. There’s just one catch: He’s not a superhero, he’s an evil genius as well.

But I figure I can overlook that. After all, the “evil genius/superhero” thing has been done to death anyway.

So without further ado, I give you: Tacit’s arch-nemesis

Perspective

Last week, someone tried to have a friend of mine killed. The attempted assassination was unsuccessful, and the people responsible are currently in prison awaiting arraignment on a number of state and federal charges. This kind of thing makes for one hell of a reality check; whatever challenges I’m facing and whatever issues may surround me and those around me, it could be a whole lot worse.

Accomplishment

bandage and I went to Tampa Fetish Party last weekend. Regrettably, we still don’t know whether or not moonshadowdance will enjoy herself at an S&M play party, as she was unable to attend. Perhaps next time.

In any event, we were able to debut the second-generation illuminated spreader bar, which looks much better than the first go-round (and is quite a bit brighter, too!). The new one, which like the first lights up with continuously cycling colors, looks like this:

It’s great fun! 🙂

Humor

scarlete seems to think I’d make a good cult leader, based on my ability to make unreasonable things sound reasonable. I’m not quite sure what that says about the people around me, as cult leaders are generally successful not because of their own reasoning skills but because they tend to choose followers who’re easily led, but there it is.

Nevertheless, I’m reminded of a saying (attributed to George Bernard Shaw: “Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.”

Suffice it to say that I don’t think life comes in “one size fits all,” and I don’t think the path of least resistance leads to enlightenment, or to happiness. And this is a feature, not a bug. 🙂

Paranoia

I’ve been on America Online for…well, since 1992, meaning for the better part of a decade. In that time, a number of people have sent me instant messages.

Over the past three weeks, the volume has gone way, way up. And a lot–I mean a lot–of those instant messages have looked like “Hi! I’m 12. Wanna chat?”

Am I being paranoid in thinking that this is a very clumsy attempt to set me up, or is this happening to everyone?

And now, by popular request:

Tacit’s cool poly dragon sticker

It’s Tuesday, and I still haven’t recovered from the weekend. Does that mean I’m getting old?

Take a deep breath…OUCH!

Saturday morning, Shelly (bandage) decided she wanted something pierced. She, Kelly (kellyv), Mel (lightgatherer), Nan (moonshadowdance), and their partner Chris went traipsing to the tattoo parlor to do the deed.

Okay, so I lie. We didn’t actually “traipse.” We were on a mission; we went with a purpose. Shelly wanted needles and pain.

Have I mentioned recently how absolutely lovely Shelly is when she has pain inflicted on her? She got two piercings, hood and labia, and was flying like a kite for hours.

If you’re interested, pictures are here. This is SO not work-safe!

Some images of the lovely lightgatherer:

A few more, plus a bonus image of Shelly and Keirston, below. Warning: not work-safe