Month: December 2003
Math is Easy
Words II
Apophthegm A remarkable saying; instructive sentence.
Bilbo A rapier, a sword.
Cucullate Having the shape of a hood.
Eighteen Twice nine.
Frale A basket made of rushes.
Glaire The white of an egg.
Grumous Thick, clotted.
Guaiacum A physical wood.
Malversation Mean artifice; misconduct in office; prevarication.
Mammock A shapeless piece.
Marasmus A consumption.
Mesentery That round which the guts are convolved.
Neoterick Modern, novel.
Neal To temper by a gradual heat.
Negro A Blackmoor.
Phleme An instrument to bleed with.
Phlogiston A chymical liquor extremely flammable.
Phrenzy Madness, frantickness.
Phthisick A consumption; a wasting of the body.
Piaster An Italian coin, about five shillings sterling, or 110 cents.
Tabefy To waste by disease.
Ultramundane Being beyond the world.
Taken from the following, c. 1804:
Yup. No Surprises Here.
After a marathon eleven hour stretch of coding, ending at 7pm today (21 hours of coding in 2 days), the project from hell is out the door. And the client called at 6:30 to say, “You know, when I said I would be in on Christmas Eve for a several hour long meeting to look at the thing, well, I have decided to wait until after Christmas. Hope you didn’t work too hard.”
God. Dammit.
At least now I don’t have to work on Christmas Eve. Maybe I will have time to start my Christmas shopping. On a happier note, I am taking the rest of the year off of work. I don’t have to go back until January, um… 5. 13 days off. I haven’t had that much down-time since I was unemployed one summer back in the college days.
Got my packet in the mail from Kendall. Classes start January 12 and run through the end of April.
So to all of my readers – who I hope were appropriately awed by the amazing fractal- snowflake- wreath thing – Happy Holidays!
Gone Fishin’
Zoom!
With ten days to go until Christmas I have resigned myself to buying little if anything useful for anyone. Therefore I am going for “neat” or “meaningful” instead. Photo galleries for the family, and the code for said photo galleries for the online community.
The big rush is that in three weeks I begin teaching a class at Kendall, and that will eat up all, and I mean ALL, of my free until the end of April. The game is being taken off the back burner and being put back in the fridge. Any coding I want to do will have to happen at work. Heh.
In case this is my last post of the year, Happy Holidays!!
zzzzzzzzz
11:30pm. Still coding. Could have maybe been done earlier, but I went to yoga practice after work, then watched The Italian Job. Now in front of the computer for another fun-filled night. Last night ended at 1:00 this morning. I believe I should hit 40 hours some time tomorrow afternoon.
I am so burned out that I have become used to it and now I feel kind of good. William James wrote an essay called The Energies of Man , in which he posited that the more of X we do, the greater the capacity for X we create within ourselves, which allows us to do more of X. I am starting to understand what he meant.
Too bad the catalyst was work.
Under-Appreciated
Here it is, 10:00pm, and I am home sitting in front of my new 21″ flat-screen monitor (wooHoo!), taking a break from working. Yep: In one of those odd moments of convergence, I am working under pressure of a holiday deadline. Just like being in the retail business again. After all these years… Last Thursday I worked until midnight. Looks like the same thing tonight. And tomorrow, and Thursday… and Friday. And maybe Sunday.
I made the decision a couple of years ago that work would never again interfere with the martial arts classes . This has largely held true; the only time work EVER takes precedence over class is when a deadline is jeopardized through my own actions; i.e. almost never. Once in a month of blue moon Sundays. The upshot of that is, class becomes a three-hour break in a crushingly long day.
Class is also what keeps me from going all Skynet on the human race.
So how about a little informal poll here: What keeps you sane in an insane world?
*snap*
Fond Memories, Part n+1
Ever wonder what happened to Bill Watterson? This guy did , and tried to find him in his hometown.
For you whose formative years didn’t happen in the 80s, Bill Watterson is/was the creator of one of the two most brilliant newspaper comics ever, Calvin and Hobbes . The other one, of course, was Bloom County by Berkeley Breathed .
Remember when comics were funny and smart? Me too. Vaguely.