shaver

A handful of my esteemed co-workers are down at “Supercomputing 2003″:http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/ working on, among “a tutorial”:http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/intercal/intercaldetail.php?eventid=10678 and other things, “our contribution”:http://www.clusterfs.com/ncsa-111203.html to the crazy “Bandwidth Challenge”:http://www.sc-conference.org/sc2003/infrabwc2.html shenanigans.

Apparently the tutorial — in which a small horde of people is being tutorialized as I write this very entry — is going quite well, so things are off to a good start. It’s pretty exciting, even for those of us who are cheering from megametres away.

Now that people are doing “real sciencey stuff”:http://www.clusterfs.com/llnl-111303.html on top of our baby, I think things are going to pick right up around here. Not that there’s really been a lot of thumb-twiddling recently anyway, but.

Addendum: “zoom”:http://www.clusterfs.com/ncsa-111803.html.

I can’t find my Windows XP CD, which is really too bad, because our Windows installation is pretty busted right now. Neither it nor my 98SE CD are in their usual homes (the operating-systems section of my massive software CD wallet), which is consistent with them being used for some sort of installation, perhaps on my computer. But then, I find myself asking, why would they be outside arm-and-chair-rolling reach of the computer? Perhaps Tyla hid them, that I might be further motivated to clean the office.

In what I hope is not some sort of freakish alchemical transformation, there are also two gold earrings in the office (small ribbon-hoops, about the size of a nickel, width of about 1cm) to which neither Tyla nor I have any rightful claim. I don’t think they’re Mehmet’s.

Dell both “sucks”:http://www.cypherpunks.ca/dell.html and “rules”:http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/7246890.htm. Discuss.

Day 4 of my new wonder drug, and the nausea hasn’t made its previously-daily appearance. I still can’t concentrate on anything for more than a few minutes, so I can count the number of useful work-things I’ve accomplished this week on my antennae, but that’s up from the heartbeat-span I was working with on Monday and Tuesday.

I have a truly daunting backlog of work, but I’m now back to being enthusiastic about it, instead of feeling like I’ll never get through it, or that I’m going to be fired at any minute. Speaking only for myself, I greatly prefer the current situation. All sorts of exciting things are going on around me at work, which helps buoy my spirits, and later this month I’ll be able to talk about them in more detail.

Well, the anxiety is already diminished a bit, I’m not nearly as tearful (I actually heard the National Anthem this morning and didn’t get choked up, which is pretty amazing), and I didn’t have a lot of trouble getting out of bed this morning. (Considering I didn’t get to sleep until like 5:30, that’s a little frightening, actually.)

On the down side, I have a bit of nausea — happily, not enough to keep me from enjoying a light Quizno’s lunch — and absolutely no ability to concentrate. Focus Factor Zero. Apparently these are both normal first-day effects, so I’m not too worried. (If I do indeed end up with the off-and-on pattern for just treating the most troubling episodes with drugs, I will need to remember to start this protocol on a Friday, I think.)

Some of this might well be placebo effect, but the onset and half-life periods for Effexor are ridiculously short, so it’s quite likely that I’m actually getting some real, honest-to-goodness, doctor-I-smell-toast neurochemical assistance.

I am very much looking forward to tomorrow, when I will be rested, have a gym visit in the morning, and generally return to earning my keep, Lustre-wise.

Not a lot of traffic, hereabouts, in the last week or so. I was down fully or partially for 4 days with a cold, but with modern instruments we can now distinguish a reason from an excuse.

The reason is that I’ve been gently, seductively sliding into a wee little depression, and that sort of thing is specially formulated to interfere with goal-directed behaviour, as it were. There are other, more important goals being impeded than just this screed-sack, of course, but that’s a discussion that I should have with “my parole officer”:http://off.net/diary/.

It’s the winter, so it wasn’t completely unexpected, though it’s worse than my usual downward cycles. You’d think — unless you know me at all — that I’d be better predicting my mental weather, so that I could tell a summer shower from Hurricane Andrew (an overstatement, really; I’ve never had severe depression, as professionals use the term), but I really never seem to know until it’s been too long and too dark for me to pretend that it’s just a little blip. (more…)