By the time he told me what was wrong, he was crying. He was maybe fifty years old, wearing business attire, and was looking at the floor of the bus while he spoke -- maybe because he didn't want to show that he was crying, or maybe because he wasn't telling his story to me, he was just telling it to someone, a random person, who happened to be me.

"My wife of twenty years is cheating on me. I found out tonight. I had no idea. We have three kids. Cheating on me with someone I don't even know. I wasn't supposed to make it home tonight. I don't even know him."

He had been sitting beside me silently for five minutes before speaking to me. Our conversation began when he turned and said, "I know I don't know you. But can I ask you a question?" Then he explained what had happened.

There's nothing that you can say to comfort that. Or, if there is, I don't know what it is. Despite the intro, he didn't have a question at the end of his story. He just needed to tell it.

I listened ("How long has she been lying to me?") quietly ("How long would it have gone on for if I hadn't walked in?") thinking to myself ("Did she tell our kids?") how glad I was ("She seemed so happy!") that I wasn't him.

His stop was first. He thanked me for listening, put a heavy hand on my shoulder, looked at me directly in the eyes (his red from tears), and said "don't ever open up to getting hurt". Then he left.

There are some nights where I'm infinitely thankful to be myself and not someone else.

I finally bought another bike. Took the long way home so that I could get the full feel of it. Dodged cars and pedestrians (haha! I'm not one of you anymore!) on the way home, going twice as fast as the cluttered Queen street traffic.

I should have done this months ago when the last one was stolen instead of waiting until the summer's end.

Now I just have to resist the growing urge to buy an iPod to provide my own soundtrack while I rush through the downtown core, no longer walking at a crawl.

Yay! Back on wheels!

"We have to strike a delicate balance. Isolate him enough that he remains creative -- otherwise he'll adopt the system here and we'll lose him. At the same time, we need to make sure he keeps a strong ability to lead."

"If he earns rank, he'll lead."

"It isn't that simple. By the time this war happens, there'll be too much, even for a genius. He has to work smoothly with his subordinates."

"Oh good. He has to be a genius and nice too."

"Not nice. Nice will let the buggers have us all."

"So you're going to isolate him."

"I'll have him completely separated from the others by the time we arrive."

"I have no doubt of it. I'll be waiting for you to get here. I watched the vids of what he did to the other boy. This is not a sweet little kid you're bringing up here."

"That's where you're mistaken. He's even sweeter. But don't worry. We'll purge that in a hurry."

"Sometimes I think you enjoy breaking these little geniuses."

"There is an art to it, and I'm very, very good at it. But enjoy? Well, maybe. When they put back the pieces afterward, and it makes them better."

"You're a monster."

"Thanks. Does this mean I get a raise?"

"Just a medal. The budget isn't inexhaustible."

-- Ender's Game. Always a good read before a new school year.

Today the CNE is having an air show. Specifically, they're having an air show right above my house. There's a gentle clinking noise of various objects on tables shaking slightly everytime the jets pass overhead -- approximately every ten seconds, for the past hour and a half now. The absolute roar of the aircraft drowns out all other noise such that I had to go turn my music off because I couldn't hear it anymore. And lastly, they keep setting off car alarms. They guy across the street has had to go stop his car alarm at least six times now. I think he's given up (it's been making noise since I started this paragraph).

The amazing thing that I've found about this air show is that no one thinks we're being bombed. It's a pretty stupid thought until you really think about it: shaking houses, loud noises, aircraft, alarms going off... if we lived in a place that even had casual conflicts, our instinct would be terror at these events. Instead everyone just ignores it, or runs up to their deck to watch, or (if they're me) wonders how big a sign would have to be for them to read it from the air. But no one is fleeing in terror.

...Except Mota. She's hiding under my desk and giving me looks that imply that she believes the loud noises to be my fault. But other than this cat, I doubt that it's occurred to anyone that it could be the end of the world. I think that's cool.

You can chew on coffee grinds?! Wow. Mornings will never be the same again. And here I was, spending lots of time to create coffee-sifted water like a chump, instead of just chewing on a spoonful of coffee grinds themselves. But now I know better. Just add a spoonful of coffee grinds to whatever food you were going to be eating anyway: brownies, ice cream, even coffee. The world becomes a much happier place.

Welcome, insanecatsers, to my fourth year.

Because so many of you have been asking, here's my schedule for this fall term:

Classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Citizen Lab work on Tuesday and Thursday. Classes start at 10 and end at 4, with a few hours break for lunch and hanging out and being a pain in the ass and such. The classes are Stats For Second Year Students (STA247), Numerical Methods (ugh) and Formal Methods of Software Design (CSC465). I plan on doing quite well, but not fantastically well. Because, um, there are more important things than these courses for me to be worrying about. By the time I hit grad school applications, they won't care about these piddley silly little barely-related-to-what-I-want-to-focus-on courses. Or, if they do, I didn't want to go there anyway.

That's right. A whole new level of cynicism has begun ;). Three years down, two to go. w00t!

She took one last sip and tossed it on the ground. Then she turned away and leaned out to see if the streetcar was coming. I stared at the green box in awe. She'd just tossed it on the ground. This was something absolutely new to me.

We were waiting for the Queen streetcar for what had been about half an hour. Only two had passed us so far -- and I do mean passed us -- without even opening their doors because they were so full. It was raining. Hard. And I had a slight yellow trickle down my neck from where my new hair colour (tiger coloured, stripes) was bleeding. I was cold, wet, late, and not in a good mood.

The juicebox said "Apple Juice" in a non-descript font and had a big picture of a ripe red apple on the front that had a beed of water falling off the side. The water was supposed to convince you that the apple was fresh off the vine, but in the pouring rain it only made me feel even wetter. And now the juicebox lay on the floor of the streetcar stop.

"Did you throw that?", I asked. It was a stupid question. It was obvious that she had thrown it. A few people glanced up from under their umbrellas to watch the scene that was about to emerge.

"There's no garbage can around here," she replied. A few more people glanced over.

"I'm sure at some point during the day you'll pass one."

She just looked away as if she hadn't heard. The rain kept falling. It was silent, but everyone was still watching. Had to do something. I leaned down, picked up the juicebox, and handed it to her. "I think this is yours."

She snatched it out of my hand, scowled, and looked away again. Clutching the juicebox tightly.

It was cold and it was wet and I was late, but I was in a bit better of a mood. Score: Catspaw 1, Lady Who Pollutes My Streetcar Stop 0.

Ice cream, bean bag chair, Final Fantasy 8, iBook, Mota, bottle of coke, and nothing to do this evening but lounge. Every so often life gets better than this ("congratz, you won a million dollars!") but it's rare.

Easy to please.

Today we opened the minds of an incoming team, poured all the knowledge they could handle in one sitting, and went on our way. Helium has been officially upgraded to Neon and a new team of programmers will be carrying the torch from this point forth. As the sun went down tonight, summer officially ended in my mind.

I grabbed my bike (yay bike!) and waved to Jason. "See you in a few hours," I grinned. Our in-joke farewell caused by working late and arriving early. Then I stopped myself. "Err....no, I guess I won't. I'll see you.....when will I see you next?"

I don't think it occurred to either of us until right then that Helium was over. We wouldn't be going back to our lab. We wouldn't be eating lunches with the triplets, making coffee, playing Jack, having Thursday morning meetings, etc. The summer was over.

"Are you going to the Tuesday night Neon meeting?", I asked. He nodded. "Good. Then I'll see you then." At least the project is not dead. At least we can watch the next team continue it, and at least we can offer our hard-earned wisdom every so often. But everyone knows it's not the same.

Last year I had some trouble abandoning working fulltime and getting back into the swing of academics. It feels like this year might have the same problem. Only without a newfound studygroup to ease the growing pains.

Back to school. But back to citizenlab too. I'll just have to make sure to lean back extra far on my citlab chair, sing extra loudly to the offensive music, and have a few extra meetings in The Cage.

So long and thanks for all the fish.

The difference between being a fourth year student and being a tiny third year student, is that you're smart enough to have breakfast up on your gorgeous deck, watching the backlit cityscape, instead of scarfing it down in your room while you rush to simultaneously pack your bag, get dressed, and figure out where you left that pile of tokens, all within the five minute time slot that you alloted for getting up in the morning.

My first class of the year was Numerical Methods. Laurie was sitting in the back of the room and waved her coffee mug at me. I jumped up the stairs to sit next to her. There was a strong wireless signal in the room: not a good omen for productivity. A few minutes later NinjaTim walked in and came and sat on the other side of me, mocking the fact that I colour-coordinate my notes. (He laughs now, but he'll be begging for them later.) The odds of productivity were rapidly decreasing.

The prof began his lecture by talking about the variety of people sitting in the room. "Some of you are second years, some of you are third years, and some...", glances across the room at me, "are fourth years." I waved back with a grin. For the next hour, some sort of discussion happened involving numbers, but my brain just heard mostly white noise. Gah. I've gotta get back into the habit of listening.

When the class ended, I biked up to the CitLab. "Hey guys, I'm home!", I giggled upon entry. Nart hugged, Graeme said "yaaaaaaaaaaaay" for possibly an entire minute without taking a breath. Over the summer, Graeme had developed a habit of grabbing me on the street and not letting go while yelling "come baaaaaack!!". We went for lunch with Deebs and it only took a few minutes before it felt like I'd never left. We discussed the plans for this month, this term, this year, and beyond. Lots of fun work to be done. The chix0r returns with some new sk1llz0rs. Bring it on.

After a few hours, it was back to class: Formal Methods of Software Design. The prof waved to me on his way into the room (I'm starting to grow waaaaay too accustomed to this knowing-the-prof thing), and Clarence sat beside me. Fairly decent hour, considering my pessimism towards my classes this year. However, Loud Girl (I don't know her real name) from some of my previous CS classes was in this class, and lived up to her name. She had more comments and questions than the rest of the students combined. I'm going to have to remember to bring a crossbow to my next class with her. "Hello I have another ques--"*twang*"--AAAAAARGH!"

My last class of the day was Statistics. It was in the Lash Miller building inside the very same classroom where I had Calculus and Linear Algebra. I'm going to start calling that classroom the boring classroom of death. The instructor absolutely sucks (he doesn't speak clearly and I had to yell twice from the back of the room to ask him to write slightly larger than 2 pt font) and he began the class without even introducing himself, just writing definitions on the board. Every pedagogy-aware bone in my body shuddered over the next hour as I watched an inherently mundane subject transform into somehow even worse crap by this guy. Ugh. This is gonna be a long term.

The class ended, I quickly ran out the door, and back to Bahen. Passed by Laurie on my way up the elevator, unlocked the lab we'd used this summer, and sat down, pretending that we'd never left. They haven't filled the space with new people yet, anyway.

Coffee, laptop, silence, ahhhh. One day down. 38 more days of classes to go.

My local laundromat is lots of fun. First of all, there are lots of great signs to giggle at. For example, whoever designed these signs obviously didn't fully understand the meaning of quotation marks:

• "Don't" overload machines
• We are "not" responsible for loss or damage to anything or anyone
• "Do not" use machines to wash or dry rubber shoes

Secondly, many of the signs are open to alternate interpretation. My two favourites are:

• The management thanks you for not using the machines to wash or dry alternative rubberized materials.
• Your clothes will be removed by the management if you leave the machines unattended.

But on this occasion, I'd read the signs enough times that they no longer provided the necessary two hours of entertainment. Enter my laptop, stage right. I brought along a DVD and several anime episodes (thanks to JM) to keep me occupied. It also occurred to me that I could use the time to get some work done.

The real adventure in this story began when I turned on the iBook and noticed a wireless signal. "Wireless, eh?", I said to myself, causing several bored parents (with their flock of uncontrolled children) to glance over at me. Suddenly the idea of being able to watch a movie was secondary to having a net connection. I needed one -- nay, my life would be incomplete without one.

The first problem arose from the fact that when I set my card to use the wireless signal, it prompted me for a password. Some wireless cards can be set to capture packets in passive mode and can decrypt WEP or gather these passwords. Mine can't.

But, as several defeated souls will admit, a Catspaw with a goal in her mind is a dangerous thing. Six minutes later, the first hurdle was crossed and it prompted me for a password no more. (We'll save the details for the court case.) Of course nothing is ever that simple. In this case, I had access to the router but there was still no net connection.

Like most wireless routers, this one had a web interface. Likewise, like most wireless routers, this one had the default password still installed. Turns out that the reason why it had no internet connection was that it wasn't configured to connect to anything. This was a wireless router just sitting there, not doing anything.

The logs showed that the owner of the router had been trying to get it to connect to Bell Sympatico, but were messing up. Didn't take long to figure out what they were messing up (DNS problems). I fixed it, hit save, and tried again.

Internet connectivity! Yay! As a fee for my services at fixing their router, I decided it was fair to use it for a short duration of time :)

If nothing else, it was worth it because of the dozen people who said "you're connecting from a laundromat?? Not really! really?" after I changed my MSN and iChat names to reflect such.

Internet connectivity in the laundromat: computing at its finest.

I feel like crap.

You're supposed to start media articles with a sentence that grabs your reader. While "I feel like crap" might not have been as successful as "I caught a fucking bike thief today", this isn't a media article, it's an insanecats entry. I make the rules here. And the rules say: today's entry starts with "I feel like crap." Now let's get into why.

I biked home from campus and stopped at my local grocery store to pick up a few necessities for this afternoon's hard core coding session. Locked up my bike to a huge parking meter thing and ran in.

The necessities for today were as follows: a bunch of grapes, a bottle of coke, and a package of pita. I waltzed around the grocery store, grabbed these items, and headed to the checkout counter. So far, so good. Life is awesome.

As I'm standing by the checkout counter, I notice an old man parking his bike next to mine. I'm not sure why my eyes decided to rest on him, but there they fell. He put his bike up against the same pole and started shifting my lock to make room for his. I continued to watch as he struggled a bit more, and I felt kinda guilty for hogging all the pole space. It wasn't until I hit the front of the line and my items started going through that I noticed what he was doing.

He'd moved his bike out of the way, and was fiddling with my lock.

Before I knew what was happening, instinct took over. I ran outside yelling, and grabbed the grocery store security guard. It didn't take very long to prove that the bike was indeed mine (see, my key fits), and he was trying to break the lock open (bunch of wires and shit in one hand, and the lock in the other). The guard grabbed the old man by the wrist and yelled inside for the other security guard to call the cops.

My heart slowly stopped pounding so hard. It was okay. My bike was safe. The excitement was over. Relax.

However adrenaline was quickly replaced by something I hadn't expected. The guy, still being held by the wrist, was probably 60 or 70 years old, with shot-white hair, and was looking right at me. "Nice girl," he said, softly at first. "Nice girl, tell the officer that you know me. I wasn't doing anything. I wasn't going to take your bike. I was just looking. We can work this out just you and I. Tell him you know me. Tell him it's was a joke."

I took a step back. The security guard told him to shut up. By now several people in the parking lot had walked over to watch the excitement. The thief-that-wasn't just kept looking at me. "Tell him to let me go. We can handle this just you and I. Don't let them take me away. Don't let them arrest me. I know her. We're friends."

You fucker, I thought in my head. How dare you try this social engineering crap on me. How dare you try to gain my empathy. You were going to take my bike. I'm not falling for this shit.

But even while I thought it, I knew that it wasn't entirely true. The security guard asked for my phone number and then said I was free to leave. I grabbed my bike, rode it through the small crowd, and left.

I've had my bike stolen more frequently than most people twice my age. If it had been taken again, so soon after getting a new one, I probably would have just given up entirely. I should be singing happy little songs in my head for having caught the jerk who was trying to inflict that on me yet again.

And yet, for some stupid reason, I feel like crap.

At 7 am this morning, the temperature was 5 degrees C. Five! Gah! No wonder I was so freezing! What is this, winter? Where's my nice warm summer? Who stole the summer? Okay, here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to turn around and when I turn back, I expect for the summer to be returned and I won't ask who took it, okay? Ready?.......

Sitting on my bed, I get my iBook to start playing a song on my Windows box that sits on the other side of the room. Standing is for wusses.

Sitting in class, I'm following the online course textbook, and taking notes collaboratively with a few others using SubEthaEdit.

When I arrive on campus, my iChat status changes to "@campus" and when I sit in class it changes to "@class" (and automatically mutes my volume), and it changes to "@work" when I open it up at the Citizen Lab.

Bugtrac talks to e-mail. Blogs talk to e-mail. SVN and CVS talk to RSS feeds. Everything talking to each other.

I've got tools running to watch all the others on laptops in the same building on campus as me. It's also a great place to listen to others' music that they're sharing on the network.

This week I've been absolutely stunned at how much technology is helping me out. As Dilbert once said so well, I have reached nerdvana.

The infinite patience of metac0m:
metac0m: Ping sweep. Pin---no, ping sweep. No, not that. Ping sweep. Ping sweep. Ping sweep. There. No. Ping sweep. 255. Ping sweep.

Media whores:
metac0m: What's the CBC guy want?
Catspaw: He says any footage of us at protests. And to go where we hang out and stuff. Dramatic media stuff.
metac0m: I'm not doing it.
Catspaw: You gotta come. To balance out Graeme and I. We're too unstable without you.
metac0m: I'm not doing it. I'll give $20 to anyone who wants to be my stand-in.

Sanitary?
Catspaw: Can we empty out the things that have been in that fridge since, like, before I left?
Graeme: When you say 'we', you mean 'you', right?
Catspaw: No. I never use that fridge for anything but coke. You're the one who puts apples and shit in there that are gonna get contaminated by the old food.
Graeme looks down at the apple he's eating and frowns.

More media whores:
metac0m: You know what we should do? Memorize a bunch of Mao quotes. And then whenever the CBC guy asks us questions, we should respond with 'As Mao says...'

Problem between chair and keyboard:
Graeme: Can either of you think of why I can't get this to work?
metac0m: User error.

Even more media whores:
metac0m: You know what I'm worried about? Is that CBC guy is gonna get here and say "Jump like a monkey", and I'm gonna say "no", and you guys are gonna say "C'mon, let's jump like a monkey". And then he's gonna be like "do you have any protest footage?", and we're gonna go "no", and he's gonna be like "okay, let's make some signs and you guys can pretend to march around and protest things. Just walk around with your signs and it'll look like you're protesting. Dance monkeys, dance."

Hate for inanimate objects:
Graeme: Do you know what this is?
Catspaw glances over. No
Graeme: It used to be a Mac. But then I took it apart. To find what I was looking for.
Catspaw:What were you looking for?
Graeme: I don't really know. I just wanted to take it apart. But I don't feel bad. Because I hate macs.
Graeme points at the G5 sitting on the desk. That's right you G5 slut, I'm talking to. I hate you.

Can't get enough media whoring:
Graeme: You know what I think we should do? Turn the music up really really loud when media guy comes. And then pretend we can't hear him.
Catspaw: WHAT? YOU WANT US TO HOLD PROTEST SIGNS?
Graeme: WHAT? NO, I DON'T THINK THAT'S GAY. IN FACT, I'M OFFENDED BY YOU SAYING THAT. I DON'T DIG YOUR LANGUAGE. THAT'S NOT COOL, DUDE.

Rock taken to a very odd place:
Music: o/~ Try to remembeeeeer... o/~
Graeme: o/~ Yeah, fuckin' remembeerrr... o/~
Music: o/~ Try to remembeeeeer... o/~
Nart: o/~ Remember the Bellarussian popular front... o/~
Graeme: o/~ GUITAR! o/~
Nart: o/~ Remember the gnome things... o/~ What are those things? Hobbit. "Frolav." Sounds like that guy. What's that guy's name?
Catspaw: Frodo?
Nart: Yeah, Frodo. Frolav. His bellarussian counterpart.
Graeme: You're making us what for dinner?

Media whores: epilogue
metac0m: You know what else he's gonna do? He'll say "take me to a place you guys hang out", and we'll say "well, we don't really hang out anywhere, but we eat lunch at the Pita Pit all the time", and he'll be like "let's go to Spaha", and I'll be like "we don't hang out at Spaha", and he'll be like "yeah let's go to Spaha and get some great footage of you guys at Spaha. The hackers at Spaha. That's great." I don't wanna do this.
Graeme: You know where we should start hanging out? Spaha.

There's been heavy construction along College street for several months now, but recently it's moved to right outside of Bahen -- the computer science building -- so it's affecting me directly now.

They've dug up a huge canyon along college and are forcing people to go around the entire canyon even when you just want to cross the street to visit Starbucks (but not the Starbucks in Bahen, the Starbucks a few seconds away that has a wider selection).

Artist's rendition of the college canyon. I know that you wish that you could draw this well, but you can't, so just give it up. This is pure art gold.

Now they're not asking too much, just that people take a two minute detour when they want to cross the street to go around the huge canyon. They'd have to be jay-walking to cross otherwise, anyway. Of course, they obviously aren't aware of the fact that everyone jay-walks across this street.

Thus, in order to avoid walking around the canyon, people have begun the crazy expedition of crossing the canyon whenever the construction workers aren't looking.

The canyon from the side view. Okay I guess the worker didn't actually have a gun, but he was yelling at people. Which is similar.

Being me, I decided to just go ask the construction worker if I could cross his canyon. The risk associated with asking him is that if he explicitly says "no", one can't do it anyway and then claim ignorance.

Catspaw: "Hi there. Can I cross?"
Construction dude 1: "Uh...I don't think..."
Construction dude 2: "Sure, why the hell not. Everyone else is."
Catspaw: "Thanks! That's very nice of you. What's your name?" <-- note: asking so I can later say "Soandso told me it was okay."

He tells me his name, and I cross. On the other side, Paul Gries (remember Obi Wan?) is giggling at me.
Paul: "[Catspaw], what are you doing? Making trouble?"
Catspaw: "They said it was okay!"
Paul: "Did they? Good. I've gotta teach in 10 minutes and I'm starving."
He jumps into the canyon and walks across towards the Pita Pit.

No, this story isn't going anywhere. I just wanted an excuse to make stupid MSPaint pictures of the canyon.

The seat of my bike was stolen last night.

I just stood and stared when I noticed its absence this morning. There stood my bike, less than a month old, locked up tight. But without its seat.

It felt like a slap. "We're still around, we're still stealing things, your property isn't safe yet, don't relax." What the hell? Am I wearing my Please Steal My Things t-shirt? Do I have a badge on that says I have nothing better to do than replace the things you steal? Is this really what I need right now?

I feel like giving up. "Okay, you win. I'll take the fucking streetcar."

If I believed in deities and fates, I'd take this to be a pretty strong sign that I'm not Meant to use a bike. As is, I'm just pissed off.

Left home with fLufFy at 7:30 this morning to join the masses at the St. Lawrence Market. Here are the things I sacrificed my well-earned Saturday morning for:

• A basket of fresh peas (which I am currently eating out of the pod like popcorn)
• A piece of honeycomb (which I'd never tried before; tasty, but weird)
• Cheese (nothing exciting, but I got some cool bread stuff to go with it)
• Shrimps so large that they'd kill you and everyone you loved if they got the chance
• An awesome huge coke glass (gift from fLufFy, awwww!!)
• Freshly squeezed juice (raspberry, blueberry something something?)
• A wicked huge bowl (which I'll be using for rice and steamed veggies, mmmm)
• Chocolate wafers (looked so good...couldn't help it...)

Sure, it may not sound very impressive, but I'm happy. Now excuse me, I have to keep eating these handfuls of peas...

I wish I'd had this poster with me when I was working at the University Fair this weekend. Everyone wanted to be a doctor. Everyone was asking about med school. Here are Grade 12 students, not even yet in undergrad, and that's all they were thinking of.

"What does it take to be a doctor?" "Can you tell me about med school?" "I'm interested in UofT medical school." "What marks in Life Science do I need to get into med school?" Med school, med school, med school. And if not med school, then law school. And if not law school, then they wanted to go into CSI. They see these things on TV and then want to be them.

But oh, not med school in a third world country where they really need doctors who are willing to work at moderate salaries. No, everyone wants to be in an ER setting and make millions of dollars.

I shoulda photocopied the poster above to give to all these kids. It's good to dream high, but they're all gonna be sad little puppies when their dreams shatter because what they want isn't possible.

My answer should have been: "You need three years of undergrad in whatever field you'd like, provided that you have two full Life Sciences credits, and one credit in Humanities, Social Science, Language or Literature. Then you take the MCAT and apply to the medicine school. And then, when you are refused entry but didn't make a backup plan, you end up in a crappy job that you hate. Yes, I would like fries with that. Any other questions?"

Answer: three. One to screw it in, and two to crack under the pressure.

There's a growing CS legend of an undergrad my age who has taken off and left computers behind forever to instead pursue farming and selling of crafts at a local fair in BC. I've met him only a small handful of times, but he's been on my mind a lot recently. I dyed my hair after him, did the project course after him, and perhaps this is yet another footstep I'll be following in.

I'm unhappy in my classes.

As an academic-at-heart, it's hard for me to admit that. Recently, however, classes have just been interruptions to all the other things I have to do. I'm barely thinking about them. I haven't even bought my textbooks yet. (Seriously.) So maybe this is just a crappy term? But there are zero courses between now and graduation that I'm even remotely looking forward to taking. I'd sign up for some fun courses, but then my five years would turn into six, and it would take even longer to get through this degree.

I know no less than four programmers who have quit their jobs within the last month. They all stated similar reasons: they were bored, underused, under-appreciated and unhappy where they were. I feel like I've already won the undergrad game and playing two more years of it has nowhere to go but a slow downhill. At the same time, when I'm being offered full-time jobs from a few directions, none of them really appeal to me. I don't think happiness is in that direction either.

Catspaw's supposed to conquer the world, and The Plan requires completing another two years of undergrad and doing very well in them. The Plan may need revising. I just don't think I'm going to find the motivation for it.

In a perfect world, I'd spend the next two years doing exactly what I'm doing now (working for CitLab, helping out with Pyre, writing stuff, coding stuff, lecturing at a few places, learning things on my own, etc.) minus the classes, and then magically get a degree at the end of it so I could continue on to grad school.

In this less-than-perfect world, I feel like just letting myself crack under the pressure and escaping to go work on a farm instead. I have no recollection of why I'm here.

I'm going on strike. I am not going to write another line of code, teach another concept, or sit through another class until my demands are met. I have two demands, which I will outline here:

1. An army of winged monkeys.
2. A glass of coke.

It should be noted that I expect enough monkeys that I can make little ranks for them and dress them up in little army uniforms, and they should be able to handle weapons like switchblades, tiny crossbows, and swords. And that the coke must be normal coke, not Diet or LowCarb or any of that we-added-citrus crap.

When -- and only when -- my two demands are met, productivity will continue.