Time Management for System Administrators

Colophon

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The animal on the cover of Time Management for System Administrators is a wolverine (Gulo gulo). Long admired for their strength, cunning, fearlessness, and voracity, wolverines are still a mysterious but respected animal. Native Americans considered them to be mythical trickster heroes and links to the spirit world. Wolverines have been personified and glorified in poetry and folklore for centuries:

Picture a weasel—and most of us can do that, for we have met that little demon of destruction, that small atom of insensate courage, that symbol of slaughter, sleeplessness, and tireless, incredible activity—picture that scrap of demoniac fury, multiply that mite some fifty times, and you have the likeness of a Wolverine.

—Ernest Thompson Seton, 1909

Wolverines are the largest terrestrial member of the family Mustelidae, which includes weasels, skunks, minks, and otters. Like humans and bears, wolverines have plantigrade posture—they walk on the soles of their feet—helping them to move easily through soft, deep snow. Wolverines thrive in very cold climates—they are found throughout the holarctic taiga and tundra in North America and Eurasia—and they do not hibernate. During the day and night, solitary wolverines alternate between sleeping ...