Who will be the one to restore balance to the Brent?

Alternatively: Person X [shouting at Brent]: You were the chosen one!!111oneoneeleven

Alternatively: Time [to Brent]: It’s over Brent! I have the high ground!

Er, yes. I seem to be more stressed, sleep-deprived, and caffeine-addled than usual lately. Lots of work, little time for anything else. Meesa so unhappy.

I waste my free time these days dreaming silly computer-related dreams, as if I don’t already spend too much time in front of a computer for work. The most recent of these is the desire to learn a high-level programming language: should I pick up Ruby on Rails, or Python? Ruby’s creator supposedly wanted to “put the joy back into programming,” which strikes me as a fine idea, whereas Python is more widely-accepted and is itself (apparently) relatively joyful when compared to other languages.

A long time ago I tried to learn how to program in C, but got frustrated at how much nitpicky detail was involved in the process. (Do I look like I care where that pointer is pointing?) C and its ilk were pretty much the only game in town, though (especially if you were on a Mac)—higher-level languages were just too slow. (Actually, I really learned to program in HyperCard; it was slow, but it was so much easier to get something off the ground that I couldn’t resist.) Now, in the land of machines whose performance is measured in terms of gigahertz, a tradeoff of execution speed for programming ease seems much more practical and/or reasonable.

Over the last two days, when I’m not drooling in front of the computer for some reason or another, Marin and I have been watching Paranoia Agent. We’re three-quarters of the way through, and all I can say is that it’s a bloody weird show. It looks as if it might be an examination of various societal problems that Japan has been facing, and how easy it is to put the blame for problems on something that isn’t really relevant… but I’m not sure.

Speaking of blaming irrelevant factors: it’s all my calculator’s fault. On Friday I learned that I passed my second actuarial exam (woo); today I learned that my score was a mere 8/10. Considering that this was reputedly the easiest of the exams, and that I was/am fairly confident that I knew the material, I’m officially disappointed with my performance. It obviously was the fault of my calculator, which defaults to performing calculations in algebraic mode: if you type “2 + 5 * 4 =” into the thing, it interprets your query as “2 + (5 * 4),” following order of operations, and tells you the answer is 22.

When I type numbers into a calculator, I’m sure as heck not worrying about order of operations. I mean, why should I have to shoulder any of the blame for not switching this mode off? And there’s no way it might be because I didn’t know the material as well as I think I did. Poppycock!

Stupid calculator.

…

I almost let my extreme fatigue keep me from attending last week’s ballroom dance practice. In retrospect, I’m glad that I didn’t succumb: because I did attend I was able to say good-bye to Connie, who (quite suddenly, courtesy of a job opportunity) moved to Arizona (!) this last weekend. I can’t say I really like saying good-bye, but in my experience that’s better than not saying it.

I was also able to humorously insult Jenny, which is certainly a fringe benefit.