Filed Away

Sitting, waiting for the replacement of a bad brake light switch that set off an impressive number of warning lights this morning.

The sequel to Methuselah’s Daughter is a bit of a dead issue at this time. I made so many compromises to her character that I’m finding it nearly impossible to write Zsallia well, and without that I can’t see any point in pushing forward. It may yet come to pass, but I doubt it.

Anyhow, other ideas have been poking to the surface- just a little to show:

Belle disliked awakening and in a very logical approach to this dislike she made certain her emotive subroutines were disabled before entering hibernation. It served to reduce the confusion that could accompany the return to awareness after prolonged downtime, particularly under these circumstances. With her awareness returning numerous systems clamored for her attention: it was best to approach this as dispassionately as possible and besides, for the moment she had nobody to talk to.

The vast majority of the alarms were familiar and she ignored them, instead turning her attention to thirteen new alerts, the first of which was the Mission Clock: nine hundred and thirty-seven years, eight months, nineteen days, six hours, fourteen minutes and thirty-one seconds… approximately. Next came the grim realization the remaining twelve were transit pod failures, meaning that of the eighty-nine crew she had been entrusted to safeguard, only one remained alive. In the cold calculus of the mission success probability that even one remained was rather unlikely, though the one survivor was certainly the one she would expect to remain.

Belle acknowledged all alarms and set about a methodical systems check, waking each critical subsystem individually, re-routing where necessary or taking direct control if the management system was too corrupt to be trusted. Once satisfied she had full control Belle spun up the navigational system and compared her projected course against known navigational landmarks, correcting for the catalogued changes incurred by the exceptionally long transit time and the two confirmed Dislocation Events. She was precisely where she expected to be, one star before her appearing noticeably brighter than all the others, sensors detecting streams of energetic particles that confirmed the identity of the star as definitely as any chart comparison could.

Within minutes she located her destination and turned all signal detection equipment to the task of making a final appraisal. She picked up fragments of transmissions and ran brute-force signal processing against them to tease out more structure, to find meaningful data. It took more than twelve hours, but the evidence was conclusive and with a surviving crew member, an officer at that, she had no discretion. Belle utilized minimal bursts from attitude control and an assist from internal gyroscopes to align the ship properly, and then started the countdown clock to begin her Insertion Burn in just over ninety days. She would arrive with dry tanks and little reserve, but she could drop drones to collect and process fuel as well as collect raw materials for repair and refitting.

Planning completed and automated subroutines in place Belle brought her consciousness fully on-line, and wept.

Finally pulled the plug on my Facebook account. It’s been a while in the coming- I certainly got sick of the politics during the election, and the way they seem to be insistent on steadily stripping away your privacy “for your own good” (read that, “For our profits”). So, today I finally did it. My wife still has hers so I have access to the kids pictures and the like. As for friends, those who care to know how to reach me and the rest can reach me through my wife.

Friends don’t let friends use Facebook.

Civilization does not “fall” in any classical sense. Certainly historians like to examine events and trends and draw lines in the past where one would say Rome fell, or Persia, or the Delian League; however, these are the constructs of modern eyes looking back rather than the observations of those living through those times. One does not wake up one day only to have all of society go up in flames around them.

Civilization does not fall, it withers. The fall consists of decades, maybe even centuries of decline characterized by loss of the essential character that one identifies as the community or the nation or the empire. Norms desiccate into mere husks of what they once were. The commonplace becomes scarce and the unheard of becomes commonplace. People find they cannot rely on the structure of society and little by little that structure erodes away. By the time some cataclysmic event erupts to wipe away all vestiges of ‘civilization’ it has been all but dead for some time, just awaiting the touch of the barbarian or the soothsayer to reveal it has been dead lo these many years and never knew.

Those who seek to prepare for civilization’s fall are mostly engaged in a fool’s errand, for they are unlikely to recognize the fall until it is far too late.

We saw the doctor on Wednesday and she was very reassuring about the nature and prospects for Tina’s cancer. I noted before that the 5 year survival rate is very high and she reiterated that. In the vast majority of cases the hysterectomy is the cure and nothing else needs to be done. We won’t see the surgeon until October 2nd, and the surgery will be a week or two after that. Naturally we’d both prefer things happened faster, but what can you do? Tina worries a lot- she won’t stop until this is over and done with. I don’t worry as much as she does and I’ll still be in that unhappy place until then, too.

Posting from my phone at Bertucci’s in Rockingham, NH. Dropping Facebook so this site will a lot more action.. in theory, anyhow.

My wife has been diagnosed with Uterine Cancer. The doctor called her and delivered the news as she was waiting outside the high school to pick up our son.

We don’t know… hell I don’t know what to make of this. I researched it and I know that if it is Endometrial and Stage 1 the recovery rate is better than 92%. Hell, even Stage 2 has pretty good recovery rates. But here we are with a diagnosis delivered on a Friday afternoon, and we won’t see the doctor until Wednesday… and what do we do?

We watch TV. We go get her a new iPhone on Saturday. We play like everything is normal because we don’t know enough to believe anything else. We wobble between terror and optimism and have no idea what else to do.

And in the most selfish, most ashamed part of me… I wish the damned doctor had just waited to tell her on Monday and left this weekend to us.

This is simply da bomb! Ordered the book and my wife and I are going to this very concert tonight!

Videos:

Clockwork Angels
Brought up To Believe

Pumped? Me? Why yes, yes I am!

Cross-posted at Dean’s World and Weekend Pundit

UPDATE: Great show! And since this was the first show of the Clockwork Angels tour it was also a little historic- Rush had guest artists on stage for the first time EVER in live performance. In this case it was an eight-piece string ensemble they used to back them up on the Clockwork Angels portion of the concert. It was well done and a good decision on their part; though it was a little strange, being so used to seeing Geddy, Alex and Niel up there all alone pounding it out for more than thirty-five years…

I call this “Temporary” because maybe, just maybe something will come along to make Windows 8 a viable Desktop OS. Maybe.

Thinking of upgrading to Windows 8? If you are running Windows 7 on a desktop computer or a laptop without a touch screen or sophisticated touch pad then my advice to you is simply this: Don’t do it.

The new OS has lots of good things under the hood- it’s faster, more streamlined, even more stable (as compared to other RTM releases). Ditching Aero alone is enough to noticeably improve performance. The problem is, the price is too high. If you are on a desktop without a touchscreen you are going to rapidly become frustrated with the Interface-We-Are-Not-Supposed-To-Call-Metro imposing its will upon you. Knowing that most desktop machines out there don’t support the touchscreen interface, why on Earth is Microsoft jamming it down our throats?

There is a classic desktop you can get to from Metro, but no start menu, just the ability to paste shortcuts to all those non-metro-enabled applications you own. What would have been so hard about offering the user an option to use a classic Start menu? This alone will delay if not outright prevent adoption of this OS in Enterprise environments- learning curve is too steep and benefits are way, way to few.

Getting a new tablet with Windows 8? You’ll love it. Got a hot new laptop with a high-end touch pad? This may be for you. That desktop machine you built or bought last year? Stick with Windows 7 and save yourself the hassles.

The upgrade went pretty good and so long as all I was doing was browsing or playing with the included apps everything was fine. Then I tried running Netflix… Sorry, it doesn’t like my HD audio from my Radeon HD 4670. I tried something simple- Second Life. Sorry, my video drivers are either not installed or my hardware is unsupported. It went on and on like that for quite a while before I pulled the plug and reinstalled Windows 7 (no roll-back option, either).

I think my main issue is drivers (duh) and the upgrade installation. I’ll do a clean install soon and see how that unfolds. I will do a full system backup so I can restore Windows 7 when or if I want to- it never occurred to me I would not be able to roll back the upgrade. Fortunately this is my second workstation and I am used to just nuking it and reinstalling when i want to experiment.

In the mean time, some observations:

You have a Desktop Similar to Windows 7, it’s just not the default. you can cover it with shortcuts and work off it if you want… once you go through the New Interface Microsoft Does Not Want To Call Metro.

Pay attention to that tutorial video that runs when you first log on, short as it is it gives you some very important information about how to access settings and (most important to me) how to close applications opened through the New Interface Microsoft Does Not Want To Call Metro. Mostly this is to use the corners of your active screen to reveal the tools available.

I love the little search box in the Windows 7 Start menu. The search tool in Windows 8 simply blows that away. Seriously.

Speaking of the start menu… why can’t I have a start button? Please? Yes, I got used to working with the new interface once I figured out the thing about corners and the search tool, but still.. no ability to have a start button? Why?

As an IT professional I would hate to have to roll this out as an XP or Win 7 replacement. OTOH, this is the RTM (Release To Manufacturing) version and vendors still haven’t got drivers and whatnot available to the general public (Kudos to AMD- they had x64 Windows 8 drivers on their website).

More will follow once I get this installed clean, probably next weekend.