Small.Island.in.World.Three

Yeah. We all make them. I greatly regret a recent one. But when we are lucky, we are forgiven; we get the chance to learn. Learn to watch more diligently for the wrong choice.

One mistake I won't make, and I hope you, dear reader, don't either... is to vote using an electronic voting machine that doesn't include a secondary paper record of each vote as they are made. Diebold voting machines freaking suck. Don't use them. Cast a provisional ballot or absentee ballot or something if your voting district uses Diebold's horrifically unsecure machines.

Had a really nice weekend away from town. Sometimes life gives me these little vacations from things, and I often don't really know what I've done to "deserve them." But "gift horses", you know. Which is a really old, archaic saying, come to think of it.

Things and experiences relating to my wonderful girl continue in myriad fantastic ways. (Speaking of things I don't know how I deserve.) Can't wait to see some of her words in published print. Publicly done congrats on that, baby.

Need to buckle down on some thesis related stuff, but not in that overly hurried way of recent memory. Just some focused dedication. Speaking of which, I've come to believe that the simple models of effort & reward that we humans often seem to far towards in our thinking --those assuming some sort of linear relationship-- are just plain hopelessly naive. Life is more messy than that, and so is this sub-phase-space of life. The idea of working a little bit harder each day so as to get a little bit more reward/productivity each day... I just see no reason why that should even be close to the top of the list of preferred models of how things are. Much higher up the list should be the more complex idea of needing to time-shift priorities (sometimes even neglecting potential increases in process efficiency), shift entire segments of one's daily routine, and run closer to burn-out effort to get past the "divergence-point wall" into the next attractor basin of reward returns.

A simple defeater of the linear effort/return theory serves to make my point. Consider how telling those around you that you are "on a deadline" can change things. Those around you will make allowances for you, help you eliminate (or postpone) obligations, and even help you accomplish things. All these far beyond what they would if you were simply "trying harder to be productive." This non-linearity alone seems, to me, like more than enough to defeat the simple models.

So, by "focused dedication", I don't quite yet know what I mean. But it isn't simply "a bit more effort".

Anyway, more explanation now could meet the description of "me procrastinating." So later.

Just got done with a rather busy 1.5 weeks. Timetables were moved up on me. Some sensor samples got killed on the alter of rushing through steps. And the two runs of data taking don't make sense with each other, although the first and better done one looks good.

Many hours spent with a wonderful person continue oh so much better than I can explain in mere words. We enjoy listening to music together. Watching this and that together. Uncomplicated meals and warm embraces. So nice.

Although the aforementioned busy time cut into the time I would have liked to have spent with her. Hopefully some time spent together this weekend will make me forget all that.

In other news, D.T.'s mill is moving about, even if not always as perfectly as one might like, and without z-axis yet. Fay-town art festival was nice this year. Umm, and a brief war with some spiders in my place went rather well; no more seen for a while, but also not enough preemption, yet.

Oh, and Ziggy came in quite handy for doing some graphs (via gnumeric) while walking across campus one day. Even if I did get an amusing barb about the silliness of it.