Data Problems
It may be that the most interesting American struggle is the struggle to set oneself free from the limits one is born to, and then to learn something of the value of those limits.
-- Greil Marcus
Friday, December 22, 2000
One year ago: I Can See
Three years ago: Titanic
Thursday I did more shopping, of course! This is written after the fact, so I can reveal what I bought without fear of spoiling the surprise. After work I drove over to Uwajimaya, the big Oriental grocery superstore. I've been gathering some Indian food things for Jack, since that cuisine seems to interest him lately, and this place seemed like the most convenient place to get sauces or mixes to make it easy. I do like just wandering the aisles there! I also grabbed a few odd candies for Jack's daughter H---, and a bag of those little fruit jellies in plastic cups just for fun.
Because that neighborhood is so congested, I just walked to Trader Joe's, which is on the same street but on the other side of the block. I wanted some of those lacey cookies that Bob had brought to work last week. They were out of the macadamia nut variety, but I grabbed a container of cookies made with almonds instead. At the drug store next door I bought a notebook and some pink paper pouches (say that three times fast!), to use in my newsletter efforts while I'm at dance camp.
After I got home, I walked up to the drycleaners where I'd left Jack's old coat last week. They'd replaced the zipper and cleaned it, though there were still some clay stains on the cuff. Jack likes this coat, and I know he'll be pleased to have it back.
* * * * * * * *
At work we've been having a variety of data problems, at the worst possible time! Just as folks were loving the intraday charts, to have them go on the blink! And just as Chip's wife is having a baby any day, which appropriately takes him away from the office. Thursday morning the site was down when I got in, but I expected Pete to arrive any moment, so, after looking at the servers in a frustrated manner, I took no further action. It had been some months since Chip had reviewed the restart procedures, so I was reluctant to just dive in and start pressing buttons. They change things around in the server room fairly often! I didn't call Chip because I thought he was already out on family business.
But he called me, and he was bugged! He walked me through the button pushing that he couldn't handle from home, and we got the site up again. (*sigh*) Later in the day we all had a training session on site restart procedures.
So when I came into the office this morning and we were down again, I knew what to do. Unfortunately the problem was one we hadn't encountered before, so the normal procedures didn't fix it. Chip had to remove the charts from our home page to keep the site up! Very aggravating for all.
* * * * * * * *
This morning I took more stuff out to the trash:
- a plastic storage tub that had gotten a crack in the bottom somehow
- some cardboard and a few pieces of styrofoam (both of these were from a gift pack of Claire Burke home-good-smelling AppleJack and Peel that I'd treated myself to a while back)
- broken down soda packages
Now the remaining cleaning to be done is just to put the sorted stacks of paper that are on my stove, into folders, and get the box of recycled papers out, also.
Getting stuff out to the trash is more hassle than I would like, and it's even worse in winter -- dark and wet most of the time. So this is the type of accomplishment that I post to the decluttr mailing list or the alt.recovery.clutter newsgroup -- the folks there understand such difficulties and give needed strokes and praise.
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