Double ARGH!

We've all had the experience of Not Doing Anything and having the behavior of the complex system change, right? The answer, generally, is to look at the asterisk and ask what little thing we Just Poked At A Little.

My first ARGH was Saturday, early evening, when a major complex system at work to which we had Not Been Doing Anything, No Really suddenly stopped working at all. When we got it back up, it was mostly up but not entirely. I poked at it some more, and then announced I would fix it in the morning rather than touch critical systems while tired. My minion was extremely helpful.

This morning I grabbed the whole config, diff'd against an archived version,
and saw... nothing significant. So I wrote a note to the team saying I was still banging my head against the problem, and started to retest everything.
Second ARGH: the things which were broken were now healed.

I'm now suspecting a completely different system is broken.

Double ARGH!

We've all had the experience of Not Doing Anything and having the behavior of the complex system change, right? The answer, generally, is to look at the asterisk and ask what little thing we Just Poked At A Little.

My first ARGH was Saturday, early evening, when a major complex system at work to which we had Not Been Doing Anything, No Really suddenly stopped working at all. When we got it back up, it was mostly up but not entirely. I poked at it some more, and then announced I would fix it in the morning rather than touch critical systems while tired. My minion was extremely helpful.

This morning I grabbed the whole config, diff'd against an archived version,
and saw... nothing significant. So I wrote a note to the team saying I was still banging my head against the problem, and started to retest everything.
Second ARGH: the things which were broken were now healed.

I'm now suspecting a completely different system is broken.

Books

_Races and Classes_
_Worlds and Monsters_

by the Dungeons & Dragons authors, editors, playtesting staff and random people who come from 'Corporate'.

These are 64 page advertisements for D&D 4th Edition, which will be out in a few months. Apparently they needed some money right now, so they are selling these books as teasers.

This time, they say, they got it right. Forget those last 3.5 editions; this one's going to work for sure. Any fun you may have been having is obsolete compared to the fun you're going to have, just by using our rules. So there. Please pay again when we come out with Edition 4.1. Have we mentioned the annual subscription fee to our online resource? You'll need that, too.

Books

_Races and Classes_
_Worlds and Monsters_

by the Dungeons & Dragons authors, editors, playtesting staff and random people who come from 'Corporate'.

These are 64 page advertisements for D&D 4th Edition, which will be out in a few months. Apparently they needed some money right now, so they are selling these books as teasers.

This time, they say, they got it right. Forget those last 3.5 editions; this one's going to work for sure. Any fun you may have been having is obsolete compared to the fun you're going to have, just by using our rules. So there. Please pay again when we come out with Edition 4.1. Have we mentioned the annual subscription fee to our online resource? You'll need that, too.

Books

_Inhumans_, Jenkins and Lee

A collection of volume 2 issues 1-12, in which the nature of leadership, strategy and morals is discussed. Good but not great; probably puzzling without an encyclopedic memory of Marvel comic book characters, some good luck, or Wikipedia. Contains gratuitous bondage of an attractive redhead in painted-on clothes, and, in the dungeon, an intermittently insane brother to the king.

Books

_Inhumans_, Jenkins and Lee

A collection of volume 2 issues 1-12, in which the nature of leadership, strategy and morals is discussed. Good but not great; probably puzzling without an encyclopedic memory of Marvel comic book characters, some good luck, or Wikipedia. Contains gratuitous bondage of an attractive redhead in painted-on clothes, and, in the dungeon, an intermittently insane brother to the king.

Oh boy, monsters.

Z: Mama! Daddy! There's a monster in the bedroom!
Us: Oh really? What does it look like?
Z: It has really big sharp teeth! And it's scary! And it's red!
Us: Well, let's see this monster.
Z: Right there! On that book!

He's pointing to the Beholder on the cover of the D&D book.

Explanations follow.

Later:

Z: I think you should read me that book so I can find out what happened to the monsters with sharp teeth.

Oh boy, monsters.

Z: Mama! Daddy! There's a monster in the bedroom!
Us: Oh really? What does it look like?
Z: It has really big sharp teeth! And it's scary! And it's red!
Us: Well, let's see this monster.
Z: Right there! On that book!

He's pointing to the Beholder on the cover of the D&D book.

Explanations follow.

Later:

Z: I think you should read me that book so I can find out what happened to the monsters with sharp teeth.