Delia bought six mouse traps. They have now killed six mice.
But four of the traps haven't killed anything and one trap has only killed one mouse.
The remaining trap has accounted for five mice all by itself, two of them last night shortly after I got home and one more some time during the night.
Cathy was waiting by the door when I arrived home after work a couple of nights ago. It was no great surprise. I had been expecting it ... and what followed:
"Daddy, will you do us -- Mommy and I -- a favor?"
"No." I knew what the favor was to be. Delia had been screaming about an invasion of mice. She had run out and purchased poison and traps. Neither Cathy nor Delia had been able to load or set the traps, so I had done it for them. Obviously one or more of them had worked and they wanted me to unload the result.
"Please, Daddy. There's a dead mouse under the sink and I don't want Rocky to play with it."
It was a small mouse, a juvenile. The bail of the trap had hit it on the chest, probably breaking its back and a bunch of ribs. It had escaped from the trap itself, bled profusely over a wide area and expired a short distance from the trap. I tossed it into an empty Pringles container and took it out to the garbage can.
Last night was a repeat, except that the mouse was bigger, the bail had hit it behind the head, breaking its neck, and it stayed in the trap. However, Rocky had found the trap and carried it all over the house, finally depositing it under the dining room table. Big mouse followed little mouse but without the benefit of a can for a coffin.
This morning Delia decided that the traps needed to be reset. It didn't matter that there were still four traps set, she wanted the two traps that had worked back in service. When she left for work, I loaded them with bait (salami) and set them in their original locations, then I headed off to work myself.
I wonder what I'll find when I get home this time.
I'm enrolled in another writing workshop.
When I walked into the room, all of the tables had pictures scattered on top of them. I was told to select two.
"You are a photojournalist and this is your world. You only have film enough for two photos. Take them and write a story about them."
That was the assignment. The resulting story, "Dom Clas", follows.
Old Nicolas sat there, dreaming contentedly of his past life in this strange new country. Even after more than three decades, the people and these mountains were strange and new to him, so unlike the people and mountains he had grown up in and which, paradoxically, seemed to be growing fresher and clearer in his memory.
But these were his people now, even when he was now free to return to his native land once more. He wouldn't return, though. He would remain where the people called him Dom Clas, the strange name they had invented for him, and treated him with respect. Now they treated him with respect, though once he had been shunned as "the goat man," the funny foreigner who raised the funny long-haired goats.
His family had raised sheep and he himself had been brought up to care for the silly wooly creatures. And the goats had nothing to do with his abrupt departure from his native land, nor with his inability to return. He had fled, carefully and well in advance of the political problems he saw developing, so he had enough to establish himself in a new location and start a new business, difficult though the first few years might be. No, the goats had been a twist of fate, the result of a chance encounter.
Why should the most memorable person he had ever met, with the most wonderful and remarkable personality, have the commonest name, Mary? They had met as they boarded the boat in Greece that took them to Libya. When she learned that he was a shepherd, she told him all about her goats.
His plans at that point had been vague. He thought he would travel to California to see about raising sheep in the mountains there, but he wasn't committed to that plan. He hadn't done enough research. He decided to detour, to take a look at Mary's little research station and her herd of goats that produced such fine wool.
The goats were charming. Nicolas had no better word for it -- charming. They looked nice and they behaved well. They did indeed produce a fine wool, though in small quantities, that could support a specialty market. In addition, their flesh tasted fine, particularly when Mary prepared it.
Nicolas was almost commited to becoming a goatherd when Mary caught pneumonia. There was little they could do for her at the remote station. Her end came crushingly quickly. Just before the end, Nicolas, in a moment of passion, promised to continue her work for her.
If he ever regretted that hasty promise, he never showed it. He dedicated himself to the small herd of goats, becoming, in the process, the ridiculed "goat man". His life and his fortune went into the goats, which prospered, thanks as much to the education his parents had insisted on as to his intimate knowledge of sheep.
Running a research station alone was taxing. In addition to caring for the animals and the business they generated, there were papers to write and publish and important visitors to entertain. It was the flow of visitors, obviously well educated and important, that so quickly shifted public opinion in his favor, elevating him from goatherd to scientist in the eyes of the locals. It was his keen observations in the papers he published that brought the visitors.
He didn't look like a scientist. Long hours outside in a remote mountainside environment had given him a rough exterior, through which a bright humor always glimmered.
Within a decade of taking over the station, Nicolas was doing so well that he married into one of the better families in the area. Even at his late age, he managed to produce two sons and three daughters. Twin girls, MaryAnne and MaryBeth, were born first. They were were now married and had each given him a grandchild. Then came sons Nicolas IV and Rafael, called Rafa, and the youngest daughter Rosa.
More importantly, both of his twin daughters had studied business and were actively managing the business side of the station, which continued to prosper and expand. Rafa was about to marry and would establish a large new station in an even remoter valley, next to the station MaryBeth and her husband were building. Young Nicolas had moved into the city with his young bride to establish his wholesale business.
Other herds of the charming long-haired goats in the nearby region had helped business rather than hurting it. Having an assured supply of the fine wool, still not abundant, made it a better investment.
But tonight, sipping his glass of brandy and dreaming of other mountains and other people, the scene around him faded from his thoughts and the sound of after-dinner clean-up became transformed into sounds that he had heard five or six decades before in the small house of his parents. He could visualize his mother and older sister in the kitchen, could almost see his father and brothers sitting across the table from him.
He was happy enough here, but he was visiting an earlier happy time in his mind.
It has been several years since I have purchased a music CD. Hell, it has been a few years since I've played a music CD except to entertain visitors. But I couldn't resist the hype on "Paganini: After a Dream" by Regina Carter.
There is a violin the Italians consider a national treasure. They call it "Il Cannone" or The Cannon. It is the instrument Nicolo Paganini used in the early 19th century and it is carefully guarded. Few violinists are allowed to play it for serious music, much less to produce a jazz album.
Okay, Regina Carter's album contains jazz treatments of Ravel, Faure and Debussy. Baroque and jazz aren't that different anyway. Debussy's Réverie might benefit from a touch of urban swing. Perhaps Faure's Pavane should be more playfully rendered. Ms. Carter has her quintet, all being backed up by a full string orchestra led by Ettore Stratta. Anyone who didn't know better might mistake the album for classical music.
But why stop at one album. Having broken the ice (and having a paycheck in the bank, for a change), why not get a few more?
I picked one of the more ordinary of Regina Carter's albums, Freefall. Then I picked the second big reason I decided to buy at this time, a new album by Turtle Island, Danzón. (Derek has been known to say disrespectful things about Turtle Island because they use the instruments of a traditional string quartet to play jazz and other forms of music that fall well outside of the classical tradition.) I got three Wynton Marsalis albums and one each by Kenny G, Dave Koz and Bobby McFerrin. Finally, I got Second Nature by Miriam Stockley.
The Stockley album is a pure gamble. She is a South African girl who was popular, along with her sister, a few years ago for the senseless music beloved of the pre-teen set. She seems to have matured. We'll see.
Oh, I almost missed the Willie and Lobo album, Wild Heart. Willie and Lobo (his real name is Wulfgang, hence Lobo) are another of my favorite "groups". They are gypsies who mostly play in and about Puerto Vallarta. One fiddles while the other strums, mostly violin and guitar although that may vary. It doesn't matter much who plays what -- they produce a very neat sound, one I can listen to for hours.
Derek and Cathy grew up listening to my choice of music. A lot of what they heard was from my collection of folk music on old vinyl records that I never play any more. If I don't have it on CD or can't find it on Internet radio, I just don't listen to it now. Some of what they heard was classical music in the traditional sense, not in the purist sense. There was little rock (some CCR and Sting, stuff like that), but it was rarely heard. Instrumentals outnumbered vocals pretty well.
And they both know better than to play really jarring music when I'm present.
Cathy received an email from a local bar that pretends to be an Irish pub, offering her a free meal worth $12 for her birthday. She won't be here on her birthday, having to drive north and work for a couple of days, so we decided to get together with a couple of her friends last night and quietly celebrate.
The Field, despite its local recognition as an outstanding watering place, also serves decent food. What we didn't know was that they also have a trivia contest on the last Tuesday of the month. Derek is our trivia champion, although I have beat him at Trivial Pursuit a time or two (the questions are more for my generation than his), and he was brewing a batch of wine in Boston and willing to help out our "team" with the answers. Actually, we would have done quite well without him and his Google link but being able to find out such things as what number Babe Ruth wore gave us the two point edge that allowed us to beat the next highest team (who were also cell-phone enabled). Cathy took home two music CDs, a Guiness tee shirt and another coupon for a free dinner, this one worth $30.
One food item on the menu seemed curious, what they called a boxty. For most of the regular items on the menu you could get the same item as a boxty, which was a giant potato pancake wrapped around the item in question. I got the Irish stew boxty. That is a lot of potatoes. Next time I'll just get the Irish stew and forget the wrapper. It was good, but I don't need all of those carbohydrates.
Their draft beer of the month was a hefeweissen, a cloudy, semi-sweet, mild beer served with a slice of lemon. I found it went very well with the food, although Delia didn't like it very much and Cathy didn't try it at all. Cathy was too busy sampling the various Irish and Scotch whiskeys available to be interested in mere beers.
The pub was over half full when we arrived and was still about a quarter full when we left. There are a few tables outside on the sidewalk and they remained full all of the time which, I suppose, helps bring other customers inside. Tables and chairs were old and heavily constructed, with the booths or benches well padded and comfortable. It was kept clean although the antiques used for decoration helped give the impression that everything inside was old. The walls were decorated with old photos and posters.
There is a larger Moose McGillicuddy's across the street and a slightly smaller Irish pub just down the block, on the corner. Not every street in the Gaslight District is so rich in Irish places to drink or eat but I imagine there are others, just as there are probably other Thai places besides the one we passed on our way back to where we parked the car.
It is the concentration of interesting places that make the Gaslight the attraction that it is.
I answered the call with my usual thing about Technical Support, my name and "How may I help you?". The lady at the other end said, "Did you know your mail server was down? I think you have a virus?".
I looked down the screen at the row of happy monkey faces, each one representing a mail server. If one of the servers had been stressed, which has been happening a few times each day, one monkey face would have been replaced with a flaming spiderman face. If one of the servers had gone down, the corresponding face would have shown a green goblin ... but that hasn't happened since I got there. I looked farther down the screen. None of the eight outgoing mail servers had even a moderate load. Nor was there any sign of problems on any of the nearly 400 servers we monitor for outside customers.
A green goblin is just one of many emergency conditions we are constantly monitoring for. We have alarms and horns and bells to bring specific conditions to our attention, so that our area sometimes sounds like a sound effects studio. If something had gone wrong I would have called an engineer. If I couldn't get an engineer, however unlikely that might be, I would call the Technical Services Manager and, if he was unavailable, I would start in on the list of company Vice Presidents until I got somebody there who could handle the problem. We don't ignore server problems.
I asked the lady why she thought we might have a problem. She said she had tried to sign on to our Webmail service and had gotten a strange error message instead of being able to sign on. It was a message I had never heard of before. She insisted that everything had been running well when she went on vacation in June, that she hadn't changed anything on her system and that the problem was therefore at our end. When I asked what software she used to access Webmail, she told me she used Netscape 4.6.
There is a lot of HTML out there that older versions of Netscape browsers have problems with. I told her this. She immediately misunderstood and accused me of having said that we no longer supported her browser, an accusation she continued to repeat as I tried to help her. I did convince her to upgrade to a more recent version, though, since it is free except for the time required to download the new software.
It turns out that my suggestion should solve her problem, but I didn't know that and I didn't know why.
This is an aside on a slightly different problem which happens frequently: a customer goes on vacation. Everything was working when they left but they can't get to their email when they get back. That is because their alloted storage has filled up and the system chokes when it tries to download messages to the customer's system. We have to ask the customer to access the mail with Webmail until he has deleted enough messages that the system can function properly. Usually the problems start when the customer reaches 70% of capacity, so he has to get rid of about 30% of the accumulated mail to get back to normal.
I continued to research her problem after she was off the line. The first indication I got was that the problem, mysterious and intermittent by nature, seemed related to the amount of virtual memory available. Microsoft had issued a fix specific to the problem for Windows 95 and clearing the browser cache and system temporary files sometimes fixed it.
Then I had a second customer with a similar complaint. He was more reasonable and clearing his cache seemed to fix his problem, but I did some more research.
Bingo! With older versions of Netscape, accumulating exactly 1024 temporary files of a specific form causes the problem. Clearing out the temporary files (or upgrading to a more recent version) fixes the problem.
Why 1024? Because sometimes, to a computer, that number in binary looks like zero. If they don't detect an overflow condition when they count to 1024 and think the value is zero, strange things may happen. Because it doesn't happen very often, the condition may remain a mystery for a long time before somebody figures out what happened.
We provide technical support 24/7/365. We contract those services for companies whose staff works only the basic forty hours. We do this on a nation-wide basis.
When it is quitting time on the East Coast, our workload doubles. It increases again as they quit for the day in the Central, then again in the Mountain, time zones.
I wasn't really thinking, when I agreed to come in at 7:00 on Sunday, that it was 10:00 in the East. The hunt was on. Calls were coming in faster than I could write them down, much less answer their questions and concerns.
Why do wealthy (at least compared to me) middle-aged men -- to whom you have to explain each time, "now double click the mouse ... click the left mouse button twice in rapid succession ... no, the left mouse button" -- buy an expensive laptop computer on Saturday evening that they have to get set up and running on Sunday morning and you can't even explain to them what a slide bar is: "the vertical gray bar on the right of the window -- the box containing the information -- with an arrow at the top and bottom and a control tab in the middle that you can move up and down -- okay, little triangles, not arrows -- yes, you put your cursor on the slider tab -- that's the arrow that moves when you move the mouse -- put the point of the cursor arrow on the slider tab and hold down the left mouse button -- the left button -- and move the slider up and down -- yes, now release the mouse button". Surely you realize how much I've condensed that little segment to avoid repetition -- it seemed to go on forever.
Then there are the angry users who don't want to part with any information that will help you solve their problems. "But sir, I can't test your account settings if you won't tell me what they are. How can I tell why a message was bounced from your account if I can't access your account? Don't you want me to fix the problem?".
When I first got there this morning, I couldn't access one of the customer databases, the associated servers being down. You've seen those old WWII submarine movies where they sound a klaxon horn just before diving. Whenever a server we care for goes down, a klaxon sounds. When I walked into the office it sounded like all the bad submarine movies in the world being shown simultaneously. The tech on duty before I got there had been calling for about ninety minutes before he was finally able to wake an engineer to come down and look at the servers in question. It took another hour for him to get there. But I was too busy with phones to worry about much else.
When the customer service manager got there, after I had been alone for about three hours and feeling totally lost, he told me to ignore most of the calls. There would always be more calls than I could handle, so I should take one call, do my best with it, write up a ticket on it while it was fresh, then go on to the next when I was ready, taking a break when I felt overwhelmed (which was most of the time).
Doing that would have cut the number of calls I handled about in half, but I would have done a much better job with that half.
There was never a moment of calm when the phone wasn't ringing. Most of the time there were calls backed up. A few of the calls were easy to handle, particularly when the person on the other end knew something about computers.
I can do all of the setup necessary to get almost any computer going, even if I'm not familiar with its operating system. My hands just automatically seem to know where to go based on what I see on the screen.
I cannot translate this into verbal explanations. To do it is automatic. To explain it is nearly impossible. They have provided me with a number of tools to help me with the explanations but I still have problems getting my mind wrapped around the problem set at first. But I think I'm already getting better.
I've had nervous diarrhea almost every morning I've had to go to work. My blood sugars have been significantly elevated. I've had a few nightmares already.
I should get over it. If I don't, then I'll look for another line of work.
My new job is located just under twenty miles from home, up freeway 805 north. Just a few miles beyond where I turn off, at Mira Mesa, the 805 merges with the I-5, a section of freeway designed for less than a quarter of the traffic that regularly uses it. Over the next few years they are going to be adding lanes to all of the freeway leading into and out of the merge, in places as many as five new lanes. Meanwhile, an already congested stretch of road is going to become worse for a few years before it gains the capacity it needs. The blockage now regularly extends back to the portion of the 805 that I use. So far, though, it has caused only slowdowns, not stoppages like when the power lined went down over the freeway and had to be re-strung by helicopter during daylight hours.
Anyway, driving at peak traffic times, I regularly make the trip in 35 to 45 minutes. I expected worse. From now on, I should rarely make the trip during peak traffic times.
When you leave the 805 at Mira Mesa, there are three lanes turning right. You want to get into the leftmost of those three lanes so that you can make a left turn at the next light. There are two lanes to turn left but it doesn't matter which one you choose since they will merge before you need to turn.
As you go up the hill and through the traffic light, you will see a large red sculpture on your right side as the road winds around. It looks as if somebody shaved a number of curls off of several giant candles, leaving candles and curls piled up together.
Behind the sculpture is a tall building. Everybody calls it "the tall building". It is home to a number of offices, some of them in the IT business although the sign in front mostly mentions the Karl Strauss brewery. Just beyond the tall building is a wide driveway. That's where you go in.
Off to the left as you enter is a parking area. Ignore it. Drive straight back to the road behind the so-called industrial park, which looks more like a garden, and drive farther down to the left to park in front of one of the few buildings to actually display a number instead of a name. That's the place.
The building is a fortress. It doesn't even really have windows -- the dark glass-like material just covers solid wall. You have to go through one security checkpoint to get to the reception area (where the only bathrooms are), a second to get to the work area, a third to get into the colocation area where every space is individually locked, and then you get to my night-time sanctum, also sealed from everything else, where I will have my computers, my phone station, my television monitors and a lot of other stuff. So far, I have been working in the work area rather than in the sanctum.
Okay, they worry about security. It isn't just for their stuff. Customers keep lots of valuable equipment running in the colocation room and other secure cages inside it.
Behind the building is an athletic complex and the Karl Strauss brewery restaurant, with gravel and flagstone pathways leading through a collection of plants, trees and fountains, making it a pleasant place just to walk around in. There is one picnic table; there may be more but I haven't found them. There are several tennis courts, at least one basketball court, and one court covered with sand for beach volleyball. There is a very small swimming pool and a therapy / massage room. All of these are reserved for use by employees of businesses in the industrial park, hopefully including ours. I'll have to ask.
So far, I've enjoyed just watching the volleyball players while I eat my small lunch, then wandering the pathways. If anybody else in the group does anything at lunch, I am unaware of it. Schedules are too irregular to make it convenient.
Still, the place has a lot going for it.
I see Xanga has come back after its absence. Fortunately it was gone when I was too busy to use it anyway.
I still have the job, having survived most of the first week. I still have to work Sunday from 7:00 to 16:00, but things should be pretty quiet and I'll get a day off to prepare. The early hours have been a difficult change for me. My permanent schedule shouldn't be so early, when I get past training.
Training went pretty fast. The first day I just observed -- me and one other new hire. Then I spent half a day trying to pull down info with the computer while my instructor, Veronica, who is the same age as my daughter, Cathy, took the customer calls on the speaker phone. The second half of that day I did both phone and computer while Veronica watched, correcting my frequent errors and making many helpful suggestions. Two more trainees showed up but there weren't enough instructors to go around, so their schedules have been adjusted. Today I was thrown to the wolves to see what blunders I would make on my own, with Veronica and Bob, the manager, there to help or chastise, as appropriate.
I survived. I have been given a device that activates the electronic locks on the doors to areas I'm permitted to enter and they gave me the passwords to sign on to the various systems by myself.
Okay, it's less than a week. But not everybody lasts that long. Bob, the manager, has been there for over three years ... but he likes what he does. Veronica, second in longevity among those I've met, has been there three months. The rest have been there for a month or less.
Why don't they stay? Most are promoted out. Company policy demands that everybody in any technical position spend time in Customer Service first. The company got where it is by putting the customer first and wants to impress that on the technical staff.
Those who do their jobs well get pushed into better positions. Those who do their jobs poorly ... leave. Many simply dislike the work, which is stressful at times.
I've run into a few customers who were unpleasant, at least at first. I've soothed a few ruffled feathers and I doubt anybody has left angrier than they arrived. They haven't yet tried my patience.
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