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voting for the Dutch sheriff
Thursday, September 13 2018
Today, [REDACTED], I put the finishing touches on my Python script to convert files produced by dbunload (a Sybase utility) into a format suitable for import into Microsoft SQL (aka MSSQL or T-SQL). With the exception of my account, there is no succinct description anywhere on the web for how to do the conversion of data from one system to the other, though Microsoft has produced a tool that supposedly does this. Unfortunately, as I've mentioned, I could not get that tool to work and had been forced to go through an intermediate (and lossy!) step involving MySQL (which, being open source, has much better tools than either Microsoft or Sybase). That conversion using MySQL had been a one-off, not suitable for automation. But the system I was polishing today could be run automatically. With an hour left in the workday, I'd completed the Python script (meaning that it was doing the conversions without producing bad SQL for any of the tables that mattered) and even written a .bat file (with helpful comments!) to perform every stage of the conversion starting with a Sybase .db file and ending with a tables in a Microsoft database. As I was leaving the workplace, the head honcho seemed delighted with my work, so I was feeling good enough to celebrate with an adult beverage. I stopped at the Stewarts on the south edge of Red Hook to buy that. While in there, I noticed that the products carried were a bit fancier than those found in the Stewarts I frequent in the less afluent places west of the Hudson. They had an expensive four pack of an IPA I'd never heard of, along with potato chips fried in avocado oil (which, west of the Hudson, they only have at the Stewarts near the Home Depot). I wound up buying a single Antihero IPA instead, which came in a big 19.3 ounce can. It was pretty good, but not great. On the way home, I stopped at the town hall in Old Hurley to vote in the Democratic Party primary. My most important vote was for Cynthia Nixon (as opposed to Andrew Cuomo, whose dreams of some day running for President seemed to be rooted in keeping conservatives in charge of the state legislature for as long as possible).
Back at the house, Gretchen was enjoying the warmer temperatures by reading in her screened-in porch. When she emerged, Gretchen mentioned something about an election night event at Rough Draft (the bookstore/bar in Uptown Kingston). That sounded interesting to me, so I made mental plans to do that. Meanwhile, though, Allison, Dan, and I all happened to be on the diaspora Slack at around the usual weekly diaspora happy hour time, so we ended up having a happy hour together. Diaspora happy hour wasn't dead yet! Since it was just us, the three who had been fired on Bloody Thursday (June 14th), we didn't know much about what was going on inside Mercy For Animals other than that it was probably in a state of chaotic transition. Dan noticed that the advertisements for new software developers had all been taken down, though probably not because anyone had been hired. He also mentioned having talked to Jaιme Surεnkamp, the newest member of the MFA board (and the one who had done the most talking when Allison and I had managed to insinuate ourselves into a board meeting the night before we were fired). According to Dan, Jaime claimed not to know who either Allison or I am, which was a little weird considering how big of a deal our firing ended up being. We also talked about our former colleague Cameron, who is apparently still in rehab. We all agreed that he probably wasn't as much of an alcoholic as he feared and that he was just taking precautions because of the ominous state of his definitely alcoholic mother, who has a way of being found passed-out in public places. I left the happy hour relatively early so I could do the next thing: attend that election night event at Rough Draft.
Rough Draft was crowded with people when we arrived. Most of them were older, in their 60s or so, though there were a smattering of younger people as well. It was odd seeing so many obvious lefties from the area and not knowing any (or hardly any) of them. At the bar, I got a strong IPA in a small 10 oz glass and Gretchen got some sort of hard cider, and then we went to the part of the store where the results were being projected onto a screen. It looked like Cynthia Nixon was going down in flames (as the polls had predicted), but most of the people assembled tonight appeared to be more interested in the race for Ulster County Sheriff. The current sheriff is Paul VanBlarcum, and he was being primaried by Juan Figueroa. The crowd at Rough Draft tonight (including Gretchen) all seemed to be Figueroa partisans. But the funny thing was that I'd been unfamiliar with this race and had simply voted for the candidate with the least familiar name, assuming it would lead to "change" (maybe a crackdown on the gunfire at the bus turnaround?). In this case, though, I'd accidentally voted for VanBlarcum, the incumbent, because I felt like I'd heard of Figueroa somewhere (maybe just because it's a common Spanish last name). I should've known better, that when the choice is between someone with a Spanish name and someone with a Dutch name and one knows nothing else, one should always vote for the person with the Spanish name. In this area, nothing says establishment more than a Dutch last name, even one as ugly as VanBlarcum.
In the end, my errant vote hardly mattered. Figueroa started leading two-to-one, and as more results came in, the percentage of his lead only grew larger. Shortly before the race was called for Figueroa, he appeared before the crowd. He was short thick dark-complected Puerto Rican with a winning smile. I leaned over to Gretchen and admitted my voting mistake, and it became the source of continual humor for the rest of the evening.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?180913 feedback
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