valairoen

  Every time I manage to fix a problem (read: get someone smarter/more experienced than me to fix it, or find it somehow felicitously resolved without interference, as so many things in my life often are), it gives birth to 2d4 new problems. Someone is rolling dice on the obstacles in my life, and it's not funny. For instance: I have internet in my computer lab! Huzzah! I type this on an actual computer. A giant unwieldy box with a keyboard that is an accessory. The screen is larger than my thumb. Truly, it is a wondrous age we inhabit. Especially when you consider that I'll step outside and have to avoid donkey carts as I walk around town.
  So yes, I am appropriately appreciative of my good fortune's magnitude. However, that I have spent two hours trying to reconfigure the lab so that the clients connect to the server (which they did before- there was a clear and documented point in time at which they decided to try and forge on alone, and that was the moment the ADSL was plugged in). Not only is this bad in the general sense (ie, that things that worked mere seconds before should continue doing so), but it raises the specific issue that people have been clambering to use the lab in wholly reasonable, academic, edifying ways and just when I'm about ready to announce that, hey, they totally can...no. Just kidding. Let me poke around to no clear benefit for a while.
  But that's life, right? If it was meant to be easy, well, it would be. Things are actually going incredibly well, but it's so much simpler to vent about stupid little annoyances than catalogue the vastness of positive experiences that typically characterise my existence. Also, there's plenty to write about, but I really need to get out of the lab for a while. And finally, the internet in Africa is not as well behaved as the domesticated North American version of which we are so fond. There's something feral about it. Trying to tame this beast is proving exhausting and frustrating beyond all reason. As an example, a random field of some sort just popped up in the middle of the post, which constantly refreshes itself, forcing me to type most of the last few sentences blind, since I can't read anything below the top of the post window. Technology: creating problems you never knew you would have to deal with.
Michael
An apparently dead organism was found in a 2000-year old geological stratum.