Dog of a Day

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Tuesday, November 3, 1998

It was my task to shepherd 113 digitally signed cab files through a web tool that requests their placement in a distributed download program that MS has going. I'd have done this ahead of time (tomorrow we post!), but not all the cabs were signed off earlier. Finally all our ducks were in a row, so I went to this web tool, and Bang! the back-end database barfed on me!

I was truly perturbed, but the team that runs the download program said they would go ahead and propagate our bits, even without the webform being signed. This was important, because it takes hours and hours to get these files delivered around the world.

We still need to sign-off via the form, for technical reasons that affect the website we are working on. The team that takes care of the web app (not the same team that props the files) got it going again, but by that time the person on our team who was going to sign on behalf of test had already left!

I feel happy but tired now, but I was quite stressed earlier in the day. I didn't want to be the cause of a slip. I hadn't realized how long all these steps were going to take, or I would have cut folks off earlier from updating their stuff.

I was tempted to go dancing after this was all over with, since I haven't done any lindy hop since last Thursday! I decided against it, though. I stayed up quite late last night, so I think I'd better make it an early bedtime tonight (well, early for me!).

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In true online journaler fashion, I soaked myself in a hot bath afer I got home, then put on velour pants and an old t-shirt. While I was in the bath, and when I got online, I was listening to "Must See TV" on my tv-sound radio. Sitcoms usually work very well this way. Who says that radio is dead? This is the way I catch Letterman and Conan O'Brian, as well! There are many shows and commercials that I've heard very often, but have never seen.

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I voted this morning before heading in to work. The precinct polling place is in a subsidized housing high-rise building a few blocks from my building. This year I didn't vote in all the races; too many judges! And I hadn't provided myself with a handy-dandy "Stranger" voters guide. But I did vote on the Senate and Congressional races, and the ballot initiatives.

Back in Virginia I actually volunteered as a precinct worker at least once, maybe more than that. I did it because a neighbor, a close friend of our family, did it too. She must have asked for my help. All the other volunteers were much older. A strange sensation to be there, in the local recreation center, so many hours! After a while it all starts blending together. I do remember that it was an off-year election that year as well.