Yesterday one of my resources failed, maybe fatally, and I cannot discover what went wrong. I really don't have the wherewithal to deal with a major cock-up just now, but unless I do some investigating, I won't know whether to reconstitute the resource, work around it for the moment, or go without.

I've automated a diagnostic that will crawl the whole system and maybe give me some hard figures to work with, but that will take a day or so to run, and in the meantime I've just lost the equivalent of an arm or a leg, certainly the use of more than one finger.

At least I don't have a supervisor leaning over my shoulder, like in the old days. On the other hand, it also means I have no one to turn to if I get stuck. Like now.

Well, can't be helped. We proceed on the basis of not enough facts, not enough time, and not enough stuff to work with, son — as my last boss liked to say, and always with a smirk — love to get my hands on his throat right now. No trouble deciding what to do in *that* situation!

Here's what matters. Everybody working on this stuff thinks it's one thing, but I *know* it's not that thing, it's something else. They see what I'm doing, and they say, in effect (though never quite to my face), "Why would *anybody* want to do *that*?" And maybe they're right — I mean about doing things their way: their way works fine, gets some results, some are even interesting. But if any of them asks what I'm doing and I tell them, their eyes just go dead and they get that too-interested note in their voice when they say, "Really? Fascinating." And, if I have to ask for help! even if I can get them to understand what I want to do, they say, "Really? Why don't you just (fill in the blank with the first thing any moron would think of)?" and that's as far as *that* conversation ever gets. I hear that "Really?" and I *really* want to kill.

Anyway, I don't feel like I have time to keep carping about this — but then I can't do *anything* until the diagnostic's run its course.

It's a weird place to be. On the one hand, I'm stupefied that they can't see what I'm saying, but on the other hand, if I'm wrong (which I'm not), then I can totally see why they're mystified by my being so stubborn (and occasionally shirty). That is, if things really work the way they think they do (which they don't), then I'm an idiot or a lunatic to keep doing things my way. (Or a poseur, which I know some of them decided long ago.)

And it's not like this isn't an urgent matter. I mean, if they're right (which they're not), then we can all go on doing it their way and things'll be fine just the way they are — except they'll keep getting better and better! Isn't that what we all want (I hear them asking me, a tinge of annoyance creeping into their little voice)? Meanwhile they're thinking, What's the matter with *you*, freak?

But if *I'm* right (and I am), things will *not* be just fine just the way they are, and will *not* keep getting better and better, but worse and worse, until everything falls apart and our grandchildren are living in caves again, if they're living at all. Of course I can't say *that* out loud in front of Certain People, but that doesn't make me wrong. And that's one of the reasons it's sometimes hard for me to keep my temper: everybody does things the way they do things only because that's the way everybody does things. It's STUPID — not to get all fussy and pedantic about it...

Diagnostic's done: news is bad. Either my little corner of the world is special (possible; unlikely, though) or everybody's having the same problem, or will, very soon. Trouble is, I can't find out (from where I am at this point) which one of those conditions is the case. And I can't travel, not now, not with all this gear. And where would I go?

I have a backup plan, of a sort, but I don't trust it, and I can't test it: I can only switch over to it, after which the present system (which still works — *sort of*) will no longer function. I need to think this through, but there's no time: if I'm going to make the swap, it has to be now — tomorrow at the latest. I think I see how this will come down, either way, but either way I'll only be guessing.

Just don't say to me, Only one way to find out! — if you want to keep your teeth.

I only now remember a poem that's almost enough to make me believe in the Deities, just so I could say to them, Bless the person who thought of this:

I always knew that one day I would take this road
but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.

It's the only thing that keeps me going. Puts everything in perspective. Reminds me of the world I'm really living in.

Yes. *Really*.