kind of like rabbits

My company makes collaboration software. One of our projects has a big deadline coming up, and they've set up a testing area. A couple weeks ago there were three machines. Monday there were seven, yesterday ten, and today a dozen. With nice flat LCD screens, because these are piled up 4 to the table.

I'd really like to borrow a breeding pair. :-)

(And when the crunch is over, I want to see if I can borrow one of those monitors for evaluation purposes...)

struggling over Yom Tov

Today is the seventh day of Pesach. The Torah states quite clearly that this is a festival day (like the first). Yet here I am at work, just like last year and the year before and...

I don't know why I have so much trouble with this one. (And, correspondingly, the last day of Sukkot.) There is natural resistance -- it's another vacation day, and clumps of holidays disrupt work schedules already, and there's no real ritual associated with it (unlike the seder), and -- locally, at least -- there's basically no community encouragement for it outside the Orthodox subset. (Yes, everyone has holiday services, but the presumption that of course you're observing the holiday is absent.)

But the Torah tells us it is a festival and to "do no work", just like the others, and that ought to be sufficient. And every year I feel a little more guilty and become a little more aware that I am sinning.

Maybe next year I will finally overcome this. (Once I start, I will feel bound to do it every time -- no "just when it's convenient" observances here.)

network connection

Last night our home network connection was dead, but I didn't have a lot of time to investigate it. (I tried all the simple stuff.) This morning it was still dead. I just tried pinging us from work and it appears it's still dead. Grumble. This means I have to start taking things apart... (Yes, I have a firewall and thus won't answer pings. But I should get a rejection notice, not silence, if the connection is there.)

The modem activity light flickers occasionally, but I don't know if that really means anything. The chain is: modem to linksys box to router box(es) to desktop machines. None of the machines that are presently network-aware can see the internet, though I can see the file server. (Dani can't, but his machine is flaky that way so that's inconclusive.) Presumably this means the problem is at or beyond the modem, but I know from past experience that Verizon won't talk to me if I admit to the real wiring. They want the modem to be plugged into a single machine and they'll want me to mess around with my TCP/IP settings even though the problem is not there. Bah. I've got to improve my mental model of all things Windows so I can fake my half of that conversation. :-)

Well, homeward to see if there are any quick fixes before heading out to D&D.