OCTOBER 6, 2019
SCARY MONSTERS
The previous week a series of rainstorms soaked the area, giving the illusion that fire season was done with us. The end of summer heatwave that always happens in the end of September and we had triple digit temps again.
There is no Island-life Sabbatical this year due to recovery from injuries incurred in 2017.
So anyway. Raif Sanjani had a problem at work. He was trying to get the latest Nextgen interface pushed out but the Developers would not stop developing the interface which meant that it would always be behind as Raif's team tried valiantly to push out the updates.
In addition the printer jobsimpishly would appear at random across the room, the other side of the building, sometimes a completely different floor. It did not help that staff would pick up and move without any compelling business reason from one room to another, often plugging equipment into just any wall jack and then complain urgently that the computer, which worked fine the day before, had just lost network access.
All of this was lost on the people who actually had to do the work in the office. They had the common complaint that the icon did not work. That is all they understood and all they really needed to understand. They needed to bill for medical services and this darned icon on the desktop stubbornly refused to work. They expected top notch service at a moment's notice. When Raif told the Department Head how long it would take to get the interface completed, the DH said brusquely "That will not do. We need it by next week."
Around midnight Raif put his head in his hands. Things could not go on this way with unreasonable expectations. They could have had the project done within a week if they had outsourced but no, they did not want to spend the money.
Raif had a sudden inspiration. He wrote a small batch file that did only one thing: it called a visual basic program to display the message "DATA UPLOADED SUCCESSFULLY." This he attached to the desktop icon for the interface and he then pushed it out to all the desktops. He then wrote a snippet to take all the interface data that had been keyboarded and send it to a SQL server that did nothing. The data would of course be garbaged, but it would be months before anyone discovered that and in the meantime Raif could work on the interface at his leisure.
Or better yet, get another job.
On the Island people handled the heat wave in various ways, but the real news was all about the new whistleblower who had replaced Joshua, Wally's son, as the focus of irrational Right Wing ire.
An as yet unknown snitch had revealed that Mayor Blight of Newark had sought to have the Mayor of Hackensack launch an investigation on the son of former VP Ignatious Bidet on trumped up corruption charges.
It was all terribly convoluted and the part about corruption and Mr. Bidet very exciting to people who read the National Enquirer and take it seriously.
The part about using a foreign power to exercise influence really seemed the pits for both sides, especially the whistleblower who joined Wally up there in the Greek Orthodox temple seeking sanctuary.
Nobody seems to understand how this process works. People vote scumbags into office and decent, honorable people inform upon them and instead of the scumbags running like roaches escaping the light, the decent people have to run and find sanctuary. Which seems odd to us. But Joshua is glad of the company.
The heat wave has come and gone and the buckeyes are all gone sere. Mornings and evenings the pogonip drifts in over the hills.
Yes, that special season has come upon us when the air turns brisk with scents of apples and chimney smoke and thoughts turn to traditions and season rituals. Dick and Jane go gaily scampering through the fallen leaves with ruddy cheeks and panting breath hand in hand, leaping over babbling brook and fog-damp fallen tree, each dreaming of popping a few rounds into a Fifi, blasting the stuffing out of a silver-haired poo with a brand new, polished thirty ought-six.
God! It is such a magical time! It is glorious America in Fall!
Yep, that much anticipated Island event is nigh upon us once again, the Annual Island-Life Poodleshoot and BBQ.
We will be posting the official rules presently in the sidebar. For now, last year's rules are up there to give you an idea of what this dreadful celebration is all about. What is the Annual Island-Life Poodleshoot you may ask. This year marks the 21st year that the 'Shoot has taken place and perhaps the last time it will be held on the Island before it moves to Marin where the infernal species abounds in great numbers. It is, in short a Tradition, and we are big on Tradition.
The sound of the train horn keened from Oaktown across the estuary and wended its way through the redwoods of Marin's well-matriculated hills and slid over the sleeping bulk of Princess Tamalpais following the old, forgotten railbeds that once led along Sir Francis Drake Boulevard to the coast, stirring the coyotes who began to howl their evensong which carried forth on the winds over Fairfax and White's Hill, ululating through Silvan Acres and the mist-shrouded niches of the San Geronimo Valley, coursing with faint gray shapes along the ridge-tops through the drifts of fog to an unknown destination.
