A Few Random Afternoon Thoughts

My friend Mars wrote in response to my NLP post from a few days ago: "I can't tell you how to write a program to handle this simply because it is an impossible task - any program you write will simply process this as a short editorial and discard it, not bothering to even consider this as something containing humor, 'cuz it doesn't and I'm not sure it's intended to." Very amusing, and also true.

Someone named Jimmy from Upenn.edu, whom I certainly don't know intimately, or even superficially for that matter, sent me something that appears to be compiled C code. Jimmy is now banned for ever, and no amount of previously unreleased Tom Lehrer material will be enough to earn my forgiveness. I mention this only as a warning to others.

I've been listening to "We Are A Happy Family" and I am amazed by how good this album is. I would never have listened to these bands otherwise (and I'm not planning to seek out their material now either) but their tribute covers are really quite fantastic. I think that Ramones songs actually sound better when they are covered by different artists... kind of adds variety. I can't get through a whole Ramones album without thinking "uh, I just heard this song, only they used a different name."

Since I installed Netbeans 4.1 a few days ago, my computer has been taking short breaks now and again to cough and vomit a little. It's been unpleasant for everyone involved.

My friend Phil, who went to college with me and now has a lucrative job on Wall Street, wrote a response to my comment about the Computer Science department's motto being "the idea is the important thing" : "Irina, this is so true, and anyone who graduates from Columbia and tries to get a job in the real world knows exactly what you are talking about. I remember being shocked when my manager handed me back the scrap of paper containing pseudocode, and actually asked me to write something that compiles and runs! " Aah, the real world... glad I bailed out of that situation.

I am now drinking an average of 4 cups of coffee a day. This is not nearly as bad as it used to be, but I feel like my intake is starting to increase. I think the worst time was junior year of high school when I was finishing up my Westinghouse research project, taking a bunch of APs, and applying to college. I was chasing down caffeine pills with espressos and mountain dew. It also got pretty bad when I first started working at Merrill Lynch, and they put an industrial coffee maker right near my office. I didn't really need the caffeine, but I couldn't resist the free coffee.

Since I linked to that Nigel Short article from a few years ago, several people have written claiming that they too have been playing Bobby Fischer on ICC. Those people are all obviously smoking some incredibly potent crack. Just because you consistently lose at blitz to someone who is not very chatty, doesn't mean that the person kicking your butt is Bobby Fischer! I will see about documenting these "sightings" into some sort of official compilation of total crack-headedness.