Solarbird pokes at Scrabble tiles. I can spell ENERMAT.
Solarbird says, “Which sounds like it should be a word. From, idk, SF. In the 40s.”
GrendelFish says, “Sounds like part of the Cyberman lifecycle”
Solarbird says, “Or what they’d consider a cute corner cafe, really.”
GrendelFish . o O ( You see, Tegan, if a Cyberman doesn’t return to the Enermat at least once a week, their power source becomes dangerously unstable. )
Solarbird giggles at GrendelFish.
Solarbird says, “So the first warning of a Cyberman invasion isn’t the stompy, but the sudden appearance of Enermat franchise stories on every street corner.”
GrendelFish grins.
Solarbird says, “Coffee and battery recharge.”
Solarbird . o O ( and of course ‘Enermat’ in Cyberman language is actually pronounced ‘starbucks’ )
GrendelFish says, “it’s like how classic Daleks had to wait for civilizations to invent the equivalent of the ADA before invading.”
Solarbird [to GrendelFish]: Which means it’s amazing they ever invaded England at
all.
GrendelFish [to Solarbird]: Why do you think they had to keep doing it?
Solarbird says, “oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhh”

Off to the lava flow to get my hair re-energised before the festival. It’ll take a while, the Creatures haven’t been disciplined lately, and you know how that goes. Have fun while I’m gone, kids.

Here, have a lovely flower. I can’t take it with me, it’d burn up before I even got there, so it’s for you. ^_^

Sakura Extra

So one of the big events at nwcMUSIC every year at Norwescon is Cascadia’s Got Talent! which is our Gong Show-like talent show. It’s part actual talent show, part parody of talent shows, we have people who come in and demonstrate really cool talents, we give away terrible prizes, everybody has a good time.

For me, as presenter, the terrible prizes are the best part. We have a trophy, we have a trip, we have smaller gifts… and the thing you have remember is that they’re all real and exactly what we say they are. They work. We give away junk, sure; but we don’t give away garbage.

Which is why I was so excited about and looking forward to announcing:

Help Me Make It Through the Night with Jim Nabors

But I always make sure these things work, right? They have to be playable, and in pretty decent condition (unless the condition is part of the funny), so I got it out to clean the disc and make sure it played.

Wait, What?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Son of a bitch.

I can’t be the only person out there who looks at these shipping balloons and thinks, “y’know, with the right incendiary or biotoxin, these things could be hilarious,” right?

First: If you haven’t read about the CD release yesterday, you should!

Okay, so. Supervillains, as everyone knows, need computers. Lots of computers. We, predictably, have a lot of computers, and last week, after an… experment… we needed a new KVM switch. (KVM switches keyboard, video, and mouse across several machines at once, so you don’t need so many monitors and such everywhere.)

So we got a new one, and it’s quite snazzy, supports USB and PS/2 both, also switches sound, yadayada nobody cares just make it work.

But what we forgot is that one of the machines is so old, it isn’t PS/2 or USB. It’s 5-pin DIN keyboard, and 9-pin serial mouse.

Nightmare City, 1995. This box is old enough to drink in British Columbia.

Not so bad; we can connect anything to anything, including the arm control nerve in your belly. So 5-pin DIN to PS/2 and good, right? We aren’t using the mouse, of course, because in the server room, GUIs are for the weak. If it weren’t for vi, those minions would still be using ASR-33 teletypes, and thank the gods for vi, because teletype paper is hard to find now.

Except turns out the switchbox has no idea what to do with a 5-pin DIN machine, because it was made in the modern era, not The World Before, or The Olden Times. I can switch to the display, but the keyboard doesn’t work.

Now, the old switchbox partially works – two connections out of four isn’t bad for a failed experiment, sometimes we have… seismic incidents… to clean up – so I try using it as an adaptor for the keyboard cable, since it talked 5-pin DIN just fine, and has PS/2 outputs.

That didn’t work either.

Eventually I figure out that the new switchbox doesn’t actually have any trouble with the keyboard! With a PS/2 adaptor, that’s just fine. No. It needs the mouse cable plugged in. TO SOMETHING. Why? I DON’T EVEN KNOW. So I plug it into the old switchbox’s PS/2 mouse connector and that works and everything is happy, except getting rid of that damned broken box was the entire point, so this isn’t happening.

But! Serial mice worked on 9-pin serial! So I have a henchie order a 9-pin to PS/2 adaptor. But then I discover I already have a PS/2 to serial adaptor! And I plug that in and that works! So I disintegrate the henchie and have a minion cancel the order, since no one must know of my mistakes.

…but then it turns out it works only on the switchbox, and not on the computer, because kill everyone. This machine doesn’t put out enough voltage.

…but a USB wall-charger most certainly does, which is how I ended up with my computer’s mouse cable plugged into the power strip in order to get the keyboard to work.

There, I Fixed It.

Some days, supervillainy IT is just kind of dumb.

A bunch of plug-in upgrades (not particularly wanted) that came in with some security updates (entirely wanted) may have hosed my digital audio workstation. I have earlier – and recent – whole-disk images I could revert to, but… that would be a lot of work to unwind.

Some days make me miss editing magnetic tape with razor blades. Not many days. But some.

I’ll be debugging all day, I suspect. Here, have a flower picture I took on Friday.

Sakura

TA DAAAAAAAH! It’s the nwcMUSIC 2014 schedule! It’s huge! It’s tremendous! It’s a bit late but we’re pulling it together! It’ll be awesome.

Been a Long Time Coming

We have an overview writeup here, with concert details (including playable tracks!) here, and detailed information about workshops and performance opportunities here.

You’ll note we’re down from the Salon this year. YES! FRONT ROW! Or at least out of exile. Go us! Cascadia’s Got Talent is going to be in a big room this year – we’ve been filling the tiny Salon for a while, but Salon is tiny, so if only that many people show up in Evergreen, it’s gonna feel all spooky and quiet. So show up and bring people! Also, consider entering, it’s a lot of fun.

We’re like three weeks out already! Where’d the year go?! Pass this thing around like crazy OK!

James Nicoll pointed to this post on Scripting News, wherein the author tells a story about a guy he hired who didn’t do any work, had to be fired, then sued on the basis of discrimination, all back in 1985. The author lays out this gem:

[E]very time a company hires someone who is not a young male, they run the risk that the new hire isn’t there to work, rather is there to scam you.

…and proceeds to deny that he’s advocating only hiring young white men. (The white part comes in later, in comments.)

Here’s my reply, in case it doesn’t get unscreened:

The statement that you made very much advocates hiring only young males, whether you want it to or not.

”[E]very time a company hires someone who is not a young male, they run the risk that the new hire isn’t there to work, rather is there to scam you.”

The meaning of the sentence is that people who aren’t young men might just be scamming you, and that young males, by exception, are not out to scam you.


Young women need not apply: might be out to scam you! Anyone over whatever your definition of “young” age is need not apply: might be out to scam you! Risky! Young men, by contrast: not part of the problem; not out to scam you.

What do you think this advocates?

And yes, there is an implicit whiteness in this, by virtue of the point of “Roy” using civil rights laws to sue you. C.f. all the people in comments picking it up, and comments already made that “this scam only works because of protected classes.” You may not want to own that, but you put it out there.


The underlying assertion, of course, is bullshit. I’ve seen exactly this work behaviour out of your “young males” more than once. When I was at Microsoft in particular, I saw this a couple of times, and how your “young men” had to be so carefully nudged out the door to prevent them from being able to sue either. I saw your “young males” doing it when I was doing research in academia. It was project-destroying.

But that’s not part of your story, now, is it?

Stories matter. We tell stories for reasons, and we pick stories we think have meaning, and meaning we want to communicate. And yours, here, communicates certain things very clearly – whether you want to admit it or not.

My only regret is failing to mention that exactly this thinking is exactly how Bitcoin’s Reddit forum had posted in their FAQ not to do business with people identifying as women online, because it was probably a scam.

Awfully similar language, don’t you think?

Today is accountant day. Hopefully it’s also water-heater replacement day. It is a day of Things and Stuff, most of which are not that interesting, but all of which take a lot of time, so I will give you a flower, and be off. Enjoy the day!

Sakura