"You'll be workin' for the rat race..."

It's been a lovely (involved) day, but this entry is almost entirely about external events and Things I've Done... What I'm thinking and feeling is another matter entirely... but it's time to sleep!

- I juggled... and I'm very close to getting the four-balls-crossing-over-on-every-beat pattern down. Maybe by next week...

- The first AI Problem Solving project is out... and I'm not entirely sure what to think of this. This is like a three-week deal, and it's going to be pretty well involved, but I think it's okay to use an association that keeps coordinates in the grid (it has to do with finding routes along a map of campus and caching them), but if I can keep the coordinates of places, then I can have a very easy heuristic, and then I can do an A* search, and that's a win. Provable optimality is a bonus :) Now we just have to think of a good representation and write a lot of LISP and draw pictures and think really hard for a long time. Practically done!

- Health class is actually much, much cooler than you'd think it would be. The instructor remains deep and insightful and funny (in sort of a laid-back Southern kind of way) and looks, in fact, like a healthy guy. He talks about his own running, and I believe that he, in fact, goes out and runs... and it's pretty well informative, it turns out... we were talking about how the body uses creatine, and that's new information to me. That, and there's wireless in the building, so I can be working on other stuff during class and listening with one ear :)

- We finally got a meeting scheduled, for the AI Natural Language independentstudy! I ambushed Kurt today (he's really good at being elusive) and we're getting together to start the thing tomorrow. At 1pm. Don't let me forget. Big NLU, here we come...

- Kung Fu remains cool... this one fellow, Chris, is tall and strong and puts off an aura that says "deeply intelligent", and we were working on the grappling techniques today. He knows what he's doing...

Tomorrow's going to be busy... massive 2130 grading. Other stuff. *yawn*

Peace out, keeds :)

"I'm not an addict, it's cool..."

So this morning, I woke up, and Tim neuroticmonk and I were about to head off to Physics, and he'd made coffee (he's picked up the habit of making a pot in the morning, because otherwise, he has this habit of passing out during Physics, which probably counts more as "amusing" than "good for Tim's GPA")... and he asks me if I want some...

And I think to myself, "Do I? What if I didn't want any?" And I declined... and I went through most of the day, into the evening, caffeine-free. And I felt like my head was full of pillows... which probably wasn't the safest thing, because I was skating down Luckie Street (towards downtown) to visit the bank, earlier... oh yeah, and now I've just put down a pot. So I feel more alert...

But what had brought this whole thing up was Health class, actually... (and I guess it's ironic that I'd been super-reluctant to take it) -- and talking about how when you're in really good shape, your bloodpressure drops because your blood-vessels get so used to holding large amounts of blood that they stretch out. And your resting heart-rate drops, because your blood needs to do fewer bpm to push the same amount of blood. And I was sitting there, listening to my own heart thumping away while I'm sitting still... and that's a really disconcerting feeling.

Heh... yes, so if you know me as a high-energy, springy sort of person... well, that's just because I'm always jacked up on caffeine. I really should cut back. I want to get to where I don't need it to have my head on straight... that, and I should drink more water and do long runs more often. Flush everything out. Chemical dependence is not what I need...

But probably what Tim needs, so he can pass Physics :)