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rinueIt is fair to say I am enthralled by catastrophic failure of complex systems. Plenty of people rubberneck disasters, but I'm rarely interested in the disaster itself. I'm also not interested in preventing future failures; that tends to be impossible in the kind of emergent cascading sudden collapse that catches my attention. I don't want to change security proceedures or secure a bolt better so I can say "never again!" and not be afraid. That's stupid. I just like finding out what happened, the series of fatal decisions and why they seemed reasonable at the time.
I guess it's what other people get out of murder mysteries, only with me it's Three Mile Island. And I guess it isn't what people get out of murder mysteries, because instead of the good guy winning and balance being restored, I get to see the boundary where order was not able to hold the line against entropy, the 1% chance of failure which therefore occurs 1% of the time. I don't have an emotional reaction to it, exactly. It's something like a rush of satisfaction and something like vertigo.
Anyway, there was a cascating and complicated 6-minute caption loss at work a few days ago where I can go back and prove through computer logs that my memory of events is importantly wrong, and then I can go back further and look at the leadup and why it would cause me to completely miss these important things AND how underlying that is also a technical flaw that can't be attributed to me, and it's outrageously exciting.
You have human error from three different people, unusual supervisors in place, overstressed scheduling, interdepartmental communications problems, typos, changing user interfaces, known software bugs, unknown software bugs, and several oddities that are complete red herrings. It's wonderful.
Probably nobody else is as absorbed as I am. At the very least, probably no one else would say my losing six minutes of captions is the best thing to happen in weeks. But it is so terribly interesting. I have probably been filing more and longer reports than anyone cares to read, and they are probably going to take the wrong thing from them.
Otherwise, I've been looking at classified ads for musicians, although I'm not optimistic because what I am looking for is overly specific. Basically, I want an already-formed band of people I would like to hang out with who live within 30 minutes' drive of me and are at the same level as me musically who want a vocalist who sounds like me and who practice once a week on weekends, gig once a month, and don't tour or want to grow aggressively. On the other hand, I have known a lot of instrumentalists like that, so maybe there's hope.
My other rules: no saxophones (I hate saxophones) and I don't play keyboards. (I hate how they feel, I hate how they look, and I hate how much space they take up. I only like them as input devices for computers. I'll do piano, clavier, organ, harpsichord, guitar, bass, autoharp, drums, orchestral percussion, accordion, mandolin, dulcimer, harp, or banjo. I would probably be willing to pick up harmonica. But no keyboards.)
Made a blood orange chess pie.
I guess it's what other people get out of murder mysteries, only with me it's Three Mile Island. And I guess it isn't what people get out of murder mysteries, because instead of the good guy winning and balance being restored, I get to see the boundary where order was not able to hold the line against entropy, the 1% chance of failure which therefore occurs 1% of the time. I don't have an emotional reaction to it, exactly. It's something like a rush of satisfaction and something like vertigo.
Anyway, there was a cascating and complicated 6-minute caption loss at work a few days ago where I can go back and prove through computer logs that my memory of events is importantly wrong, and then I can go back further and look at the leadup and why it would cause me to completely miss these important things AND how underlying that is also a technical flaw that can't be attributed to me, and it's outrageously exciting.
You have human error from three different people, unusual supervisors in place, overstressed scheduling, interdepartmental communications problems, typos, changing user interfaces, known software bugs, unknown software bugs, and several oddities that are complete red herrings. It's wonderful.
Probably nobody else is as absorbed as I am. At the very least, probably no one else would say my losing six minutes of captions is the best thing to happen in weeks. But it is so terribly interesting. I have probably been filing more and longer reports than anyone cares to read, and they are probably going to take the wrong thing from them.
Otherwise, I've been looking at classified ads for musicians, although I'm not optimistic because what I am looking for is overly specific. Basically, I want an already-formed band of people I would like to hang out with who live within 30 minutes' drive of me and are at the same level as me musically who want a vocalist who sounds like me and who practice once a week on weekends, gig once a month, and don't tour or want to grow aggressively. On the other hand, I have known a lot of instrumentalists like that, so maybe there's hope.
My other rules: no saxophones (I hate saxophones) and I don't play keyboards. (I hate how they feel, I hate how they look, and I hate how much space they take up. I only like them as input devices for computers. I'll do piano, clavier, organ, harpsichord, guitar, bass, autoharp, drums, orchestral percussion, accordion, mandolin, dulcimer, harp, or banjo. I would probably be willing to pick up harmonica. But no keyboards.)
Made a blood orange chess pie.
