Writing on a Dismal Day in Las Vegas

2 Masa'il 164 B.E. - Thursday, December 13, 2007 about 10:56 AM PST

It's a dismal day in Las Vegas. It's cloudy and chilly, there is a slight breeze and I think I hear distant thunder. All of that should work together to help me find a topic to write about.

This morning I had difficulty access one web site. At first I thought it might be the weather interfering with my Internet connection, but I just attempted to access the site again. The message I received concerned server maintenance. Therefore, the problem with that web site isn't the weather. Server maintenance is another good subject for a short story or a flash fiction piece.

Did you ever notice that in sci-fi stories when there are interplanetary ships and other equipment that use computers to run them; that server maintenance is never mentioned. All the maintenance they need is always completed when the ships are in port. The computes in those stories never seem to have down time when the ships are out of port.

Let's be realistic about computer maintenance and Murphy's Law. Let's face it equipment and technology gives us problems. Even the most well maintained items have unexpected problems. Somewhere Murphy's Law always kicks in and causes difficulties. That's why the Law was stated so precisely: "If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong and at the worst possible moment."

Maybe the weather that brings these things to mind. The last two days were dismal, that's a good description of the cloudy sky. The good thing about dismal weather is that it makes you appreciate the sunshine when it returns.