You've got to love it when non-technical people try and troubleshoot...

... a 1,300 person listserv. A recipient calls to ask why they haven't been receiving posts from the listserv, so rather than (a) asking the friendly administrator who has access to all the logs for past year, or (b) actually checking to see if the user is on the list, they choose option (c). Option (c) doesn't make any sense:

Assume that Person A normally posts to the listserv, but is out sick. Normally, Person B posts in A's stead. This time, Person C has been charged with the job. Now, Person C has been posting to the listserv for over a week, and Person B (as well as the friendly admin) has received the mail from the listserv just fine. So, option (c) is to assume that if Person C posts, Something Bad Happens - and it's a fluke that Person B, Person C and the Friendly Admin have all been receiving the mail. So, Person C sends out a test message (received by Friendly Admin and Persons B & C). Person C sends it again (again, received fine). Person B sends a forwarded copy of Person C's email, just to find out if Person C Has Bad Things Happening. Person C then decides to send out all 7 of the last week's mailings again, just in case (presumably because Nothing Bad Is Happening).

The funny thing is, for every one of these posts, as well as the 7 previous daily postings, the log file reads: smtp completed for 1393 recips, in XX seconds.

So now everyone has 3 test messages, and two copies of every message from the last week, for a total of 23,681 message deliveries in 30 minutes.

Mood: contemplative
Music: None

Nuclear power

We definitely live in interesting times; the president of Greenpeace just testified to Congress that nuclear power is the best environmental option for now - and the Hydrogen option is finally being debunked. The big lie in the Hydrogen debate is that it reduces greenhouse emissions. Like all straw-man arguments, it is true that Hydrogen does not contribute to warming, and a Hydrogen-fuel-cell approach to delivering power (for example into cars) is very clean. What this misses is that Hydrogen itself is not a great source of energy - but does a fine job of storing it. You still have the charge the things - which requires a large quantity of electricity. In effect, a Hydrogen economy moves the polution burden up the chain to the power producers rather than the consumers. A good start, but far from a silver bullet given how much pollution comes from coal/oil/gas burning power stations. This is where nuclear power comes in; modern designs are safe, efficient, and non-polluting. A significant increase in nuclear power generation would make a lot of the emissions problems from fossil fuel plants a thing of the past.

There are two large downsides. The first is that nuclear power plants require a finite resource, Uranium (enriched to a certain degree). Recycling (such as Selafield) can extend the life of Uranium, but not indefinitely. In other words, if we don't continue to look for future options we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The second is that it is relatively easy to convert a nuclear power program into a weapons program (both depleted Uranium and nuclear bombs, depending upon what you do). This tends to be a thorny issue when it comes to non-members of the IAEA Nuclear Club. Nuclear weapon proliferation is already a problem, and is likely to get worse as nuclear power is ramped up. This may or may not be a bad thing (compare and contrast Gray's contention that a nuclear armed world is a polite world with almost any non-proliferation text!), although a nuclear attack on a major conurbation would be a high price to pay for being wrong.

Overall, however, I think that nuclear power is the way to go for now. We need to continue to pursue fusion (probably more energetically, and both lunar and terrestrial), extra-terrestrial solar, and anything else (hamsters?) that might work. We already live in interesting times, and I'm inclined to think that small countries with a few short-range nuclear weapons would be a good deterrent to rabid imperialism from the major powers. There is always the risk of something horrible happening, but if India and Pakistan can behave responsibly, I tend to have some hope for humanity. In many ways, non-use of nuclear weapons is our best hope for this: when word gets out that they aren't even very effective weapons of war (let alone terror, compared with readily available biological compounds), nuclear use may lose some of the stigma that has prevented it.

I'm rambling. :-)

Mood: happy
Music: Nefilim - 24th Moment

Much happier

My day definitely improved after my last blog entry. My boot is a bit
mangled/scuffed after having the truck run over it, but my foot appears
to be okay - one toe is slightly discoloured, but otherwise it feels
pretty normal. Our electricity was reconnected sometime in the evening.
Best of all, I got to hang out at the Artisan and Lakota and work on
Kris's new website with her. The site is PHP/MySQL on IIS6 - and seems
to work pretty well. I bumped into Sarah, too, which was nice. We
talked for about 10 minutes, smoked, agreed to have dinner either
Thursday or Friday, and got whistled at by a homeless guy when we
hugged goodbye. Stupid homeless person. Anyway, it was nice and
relaxing, and definitely fixed my day!


Mood: happy
Music: None

Gahh, Cingular are sucking badly!

Last month, my phone bill was wrong. About $80 in Internet usage
charges were applied, even though I'd paid for a plan that included
Internet use. Latest bill - the charges are back, with the same dates.
I pretty much had to jump through flaming hoops of fire to get it
changed last month, and my attempts thus far indicate that the hoops
are now guarded by attack leopards.... someone should tell them that
impolite customer service reps and incompetent billing staff are not
the way to keep business customers.


Mood: aggravated
Music: None