Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"During the construction of this crude appearing but complex pile (the name which has since been applied to all such devices) the standing joke among the scientists working on it was: 'If people could see what we're doing with a million-and-a-half of their dollars, they'd think we are crazy. If they knew why we are doing it, they'd know we are.'" -- from The First Pile (author not indicated on that page), about the 1942 Chicago Pile-1, first artificial nuclear reactor.

[Why specify 'artificial' in that description? Because there was a natural one in Africa once upon a time.]

Sleeping some, still not sleeping well; crashing at Really Inconvenient Times (like before sundown) and waking up at even more inconvenient times (usually after only sleeping a couple of hours). So the fibro has been a big deal this week, and the whole feeling-dizzy-and-drowsy thing when I ought to be out doing stuff. Seems to be improving slowly, but still not good.

Been productive on one front anyhow, though it's actually being one more obstacle to Other Stuff at the same time. Got my head stuck in a programming problem. Something that I've been thinking of off and on for quite a while and lately been annoyed at not already having as a tool, so now I'm all like, "*grrr* *grrr* gotta finish this before recent idea for a solution goes out of my head," and when I'm not working on it, it's in the back of my head bugging me. (And when I have to switch gears to solve some sub-problem and have trouble getting my original train of thought back, that bugs me too. Cranky. *grrr* What I really want to be doing is working on other things that use this thing that isn't finished yet. (I guess it was one too many other ideas getting stacked on the mental wait-until-I-get-around-to-writing-this-first pile, and that pile toppled over and now I just want this obstacle gone.)

Bashed out just under 1200 lines of C, since Tuesday, not counting little throwaway experimental snippets here and there along the way. Used to be faster at this. Then again, used to not have fibro -- could keep more state in my head at a time, could go longer without feeling like I need a nap that my body won't allow, typing didn't hurt so much. Anyhow, I'm not sure but I think I'm between half-done and two-thirds-done with the C part of this project. (Then there are shell scripts, sed scripts, and some HTML to write, before I get to the point where I have something I can actually test.)

I do plan to try to be social at some point when I'm not too wobbly-from-unsleep to cope. I need to find a breaking-off point in this program that I'll be sure I can pick up from again after I haven't thought about it for a day. Another thing that used to be much easier before the fibro.

*grrr*

Oh -- and the spirea is full of sparrows. That's not related to anything else in this entry. They're just being loud and conspicuous.