(no subject)

This week has gone straight from balanced to busy. Haven't had more time to spend sleeping and possibly get my sinuses back, so I can't smell. This means _everything_ tastes funny. I can't eat things I usually find tasty, and I could probably eat a number of things I usually find repellent. Ah, me.

Finished up the symbol table manager I was implementing. it works nicely, which gives me that great programmer's glow I haven't had in a while.

Finished up my taxes. Should be getting money back. yay.

At work, we've got people with powertools building the mounts for a pair of all-fiber routing cabinets for the internet-2 stuff that we're going to be managing. Somehow, during all of this, one of our cabinets, which thankfully no longer held _every_ major web application on campus, suddenly lost power. We don't know why, but all those empty power plugs musta looked attractive to ona dem bastiches. Took us most of two hours to get Blackboard back up. It was... unappreciative of the abuse.

Compilers is a particularly unique class, I've already said, because noone's in there except the people who really want to be. 22 of us and we're active, yakking with the professor. You know it's a class of geeks when more than one of us is vocally doing comparison studies of the flex regular expression system.

So yeah. Haven't mussed things yet, and it's middle of second week. Hump day. Maybe I'll make it through week three without making a mess.

"You can have peace, or you can have freedom. Don't ever count on having both at once." -- Robert A. Heinlein.

I wonder what he would say in these days, where they're doing their damndest to ensure we have neither? Some Republican peabrains are making me want to vote Democrat by getting up and petitioning to erase the expiration from the Patriot Act. Dear God, WHY? Stupid gameplaying politicians with no idea what their rules actually do to their public, too abstracted from reality. My head hurts.

I'm cleaning. I decided to explicitly start cleaning when I realized I'd lost my old Gameboy games. Not the recent ones, just the old Color and original ones. Still, though. When you start losing things in your room, it's time to clean. Maybe this time I'll get to my desk drawers.

Oh. I've considered adding a third totem to my complement, to finish out a triat. I am, as you all know, a Ferret. That much has been demonstrated beyond doubt. I can be flighty, lunging after sparkly things and in general being an overexcited sillybastard. A side which I enjoy because it means I'm happy. I am also a Fox. Clever (which means sharp enough to cut yourself and others), somewhat reserved, perhaps a bit randy, even when carefully burying a rat to let its flavor improve, I have panache.

The last piece was spawned by my last quarter reading old classics and rereading Sandman. I found a certain affinity for Lucien - the Librarian of Dream and the First Raven. Reserved, noble in an avian sort of way, contemplative and knowledgeable. Clasiccally, Ravens are major portents, good or bad. I also can't object to being somehow related to the Most Noble of Ravens, Huginn and Muninn, Thought and Memory, Odin's familiars.

So yeah. Not sure yet. The first two are fully developed, while the Raven is someone I'll have to contemplate.

Heinlein

I have a book called 'The Notebooks of Lazarus Long', full of quotes from Heinlein's literature. Some of the pieces are illuminated quite nicely. I like this one, for _really_ obvious reasons:

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation; stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid.
But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.