Time Management for System Administrators

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 and foraging for food. However, their habits are not entirely known because they are difficult to track and study due to their large home range and low population density.

The wolverine is one of the smallest and most powerful predators at the top of the food chain. In fact, if a wolverine were the size of a bear, it would be the strongest animal on earth. But wolverines are still ferocious despite their diminutive stature. They are solidly built and immensely strong—a wolverine can drag a carcass three times its size for great distances. Wolverines don't hesitate to attack sheep, deer, or small bears, but their diet mostly consists of scavenging rather than hunting. Wolves and cougars will retreat from a freshly killed carcass when a pack of wolverines challenges them. However, wolverines don't subsist entirely on large ungulates; they also eat squirrels, hares, and berries. When food is scarce, wolverines will return to an abandoned carcass and feed on the pelt and frozen bones; their powerful dentition and associated musculature facilitate this foraging.

For centuries, humans hunted wolverines for their luscious fur, which is valued because frost brushes right off of it. With dwindling numbers and a slow reproductive rate, wolverines are climbing up the endangered species list as nimbly as they climb trees.

Marlowe Shaeffer was the production editor and proofreader for Time Management for System Administrators. John Santini was the copyeditor. Colleen Gorman and Darren Kelly provided quality control. Johnna Dinse wrote the index. Loranah Dimant provided production assistance.

Karen Montgomery designed the cover of this book, based on a series design by Edie Freedman. The cover image is from Wood's Illustrated Natural History. Karen Montgomery produced the cover layout with Adobe InDesign CS using Adobe's ITC Garamond font.

David Futato designed the interior layout. This book was converted by Keith Fahlgren to FrameMaker 5.5.6 with a format conversion tool created by Erik Ray, Jason McIntosh, Neil Walls, and Mike Sierra that uses Perl and XML technologies. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont's TheSans Mono Condensed. The illustrations that appear in the book were produced by Robert Romano, Jessamyn Read, and Lesley Borash using Macromedia FreeHand MX and Adobe Photoshop CS. The tip and warning icons were drawn by Christopher Bing. This colophon was written by Marlowe Shaeffer.