"It's no longer in use" and "power it down and remove it from the rack" and so forth.
The near off-site has three server racks. Two of them are in the production building (which is the gigantic machine for making amorphous silica). That building is five storeys high, and each floor is about two floors of a normal building.
According to my work-supplied iPhone I walked 4,200 steps and climbed 12 floors' worth of stairs. I did not find the file server.
Finally, 15 before noon, I was allowed to quit trying. I went and got lunch; and after eating I sat in my rocking chair and pondered the wisdom of calling off for the rest of the day, because I was simply dead flat busted and had no more energy left. However, I gutted it up and returned to work.
When I got back to the office after lunch, I was told that there had been a mistake, and that the server I'd spent two hours trying to find had in fact been taken out of service sometime in 2019.
*sigh*
* * *
So antifa has started trying to blind people with lasers. It does not take more than a moment's exposure to a laser to ruin your retinas, and if they get the fovea your sight in that eye is effectively gone.
The fovea is the part of the retina which does all the detail seeing. When you are looking at something, you've got your foveas pointed at it. The lens is focusing the image right there. You read with your foveas. It's got the highest concentration of cone cells (and no rods) so it's strictly black-and-white. Your brain adds the color from the surrounding retina.
...I can't really explain all this without going into a huge discussion of how the brain processes the information sent to it by the eyes, but suffice it to say that if your fovea is damaged, you're not going to do anything like read or drive or do anything that requires detail vision. Processing information from the foveas accounts for something like 50% of the visual cortex, and without them, you are blind. You can see things, kind of, but you're blind. Permanently, because retinas don't heal from stuff like this.
And antifa feels justified in maiming people like this.
I suppose if they were going around gouging out peoples' eyes with pointed sticks (shut up!) there would be a considerable amount of outcry about it. But all they're doing is shining lasers on people, which accomplishes the same thing without all the gore, and of course the Democrats don't give a wet fart about the people that their radical army maim.
If someone shoots a laser at you, shoot lead back at him. It's the only way.
* * *
I do believe this trend has the teachers' unions shitting themselves. Here's the thing: let's say a neighborhood's worth of parents get together and hire a private teacher, and they set up a time and place for that teacher to teach their kids. Those kids will get a better quality of education than they'd get at a public (socialized) school, because the teacher has a definite, tangible monetary reason to perform well. The parents are directly paying for their kids' education--writing a check every week or every month--so they will take a personal interest in making sure their kids get the most out of it. And the kids get all of the benefits of going to school without having to go to a socialized school or a hyperexpensive private one.
Meanwhile, because those kids aren't going to the socialized school, that school is not getting paid by the federal government for "butts in seats".
Strangely enough, this is the model which education used to have in the United States. You know all those stories about kids in the olden days, going to the one-room schoolhouse? The teacher that ran it was paid for by the people of the town. She (it was usually a single woman) was beholden to them; there was a list of rules for her conduct she was expected to follow. If Miss Unicorn started teaching the kids about global warming and using condoms and your parents are racist and neglecting the three R's, she'd get fired. There would be no question of her teaching the kids anything that their parents didn't like.
You know those cases of socialized schools teaching kids about gay sex? Doesn't happen here. Because the first time Miss Unicorn mentions sodomy, she's out on her ear.
This puts the parents in charge of their kids' education again. This gives everyone involved a hard incentive to make sure the kids learn useful skills instead of the leftist horseshit that passes for education in the socialized schools.
The left wing is, of course, decrying this as being "unfair" to "disadvantaged children" because their parents can't afford to buy into the "pod" with the other parents. The simple fact is that if the parents care at all about their kids' education they will do whatever they have to in order to afford it. But if the parents don't care about their kids' education enough to pay attention to what they're learning and how--if they say, "It's the teacher's job to teach my kids to read," for example--then why would they bother sending their kids to a pod in the first place?
The simple fact is that the vast wasteland of the inner cities are full of people who don't give a fuck about education. People who try to learn are bullied for "acting white". The parents of those kids aren't going to be able to afford to send their kids to a pod, but since they don't care about their kids' education, why would they even worry about it?
As it stands now, the financing of socialized schooling is forced; you have to pay your taxes, and some of that money goes into the school system. The teachers' unions will fight (have fought) against that money going where the student goes, because if the money follows the student, they're not going to be going to the useless, shitty, socialized schools. They're going to go to schools that actually teach things to kids--and then the union teachers are right out of a job.
Of course, in systems where the money follows the student, educational outcomes are fantastic, because all the schools out there are competing for pupils. We've seen examples of how well that works; there's a scandinavian country where this is the case and it works well.
The teachers' unions don't want to have to compete, because it means that all the incompetent fools currently teaching socialized school will have to work for a living, and some of them (many) will find themselves unemployed.
Did you know that education majors are in the bottom quintile of GPAs? Their coursework is full of beetle tracking and occupational therapy for morons (Heinlein homage) and they still can't average better than Cs and Ds.
I'd be beside myself with joy if this COVID-19 horseshit led to the downfall and defunding of public education.
* * *
NBC is laying off "under" 3,500 employees.
* * *
The Democrats are terrified by what's happening to Joe Biden. Today he said something which--had anyone other than the Democrat candidate for President said it--would have led to immediate pillory and censure. "If a Republican or corporate CEO said this, he'd have been forced to resign before lunch today."
Biden said that all black people think alike, but latinos have diversity of thought.
Yes it's incredibly racist! But he's getting a pass from the Democrat-media complex because he is their nominee for President. This is why they are trying to prevent debates from happening.
I think I said before that the Democrat party fronting this man for President is verging on elder abuse.
* * *
This is going to go over really well, too. At a time when guns are being sold in record numbers, some New York Democrat hack is suing to have the NRA dissolved.
Even if they're successful and get the NRA dissolved, there is absolutely nothing stopping someone from starting a new NRA; but it's hardly necessary, considering how many pro-gun groups there are out there.
The thing is, the NRA is moderate compared to the other groups.
NRA's been around long enough to be a "country club conservative" organization. How hard has the NRA fought to ease legal controls on suppressors? Has the NRA ever lobbied to loosen the regulations on machine guns? What has the NRA done to try to overturn the federal firearms laws that unduly reestrict our rights to keep and bear arms?
...the organization that rises to replace the NRA might not be so moderate.
When I imagine an organization with the money and reach of the NRA that advocates for a complete repeal of the machine gun ban etcetera, I get all tingly.
* * *
"I've seen what real courage looks like, and it's got D-cups." A bunch of woke bots are mobbing a female former MMA fighter. She's basically responding with LOLGF.
As it should be!
* * *
So, every day this week I've spent time at one of my off-sites. I'm hoping to remain in my office all day on Friday. I bet I don't get to.