The mid-term on ethics was actually pretty easy, and the extra day or two of reading certainly didn’t hurt at all. It is really one of my favorite classes right now, and the professor has a really interesting British accent that seems to keep me quite interested in what he’s saying, or maybe I’m just dreaming. Of course living in Houston I should have a cinch on ethics, since our corporate community has it in bounds.

Over the past 3 hours I have caught up on more email than I thought possible. My inbox no longer runneth over. I have a strangely satisfied feeling that feels like I’ve done something, because email is not just a set of communication, but my inboxes (I have one address for business and one for pleasure) represent a set of things to do, of items screaming for attention in their unassuming way.

This was all done in what I believe to be the most perfect coffee house I have encountered so far: Outlets and ethernet ports every 4 feet and wireless so you don’t need to plug in, a friend who works there, very reasonable prices, good music, and some of the best bread I have ever tasted in my life. Well Sarah’s done with work now so I’m off.

For those that were asking, it’s called Kraftsmen and is at 4100 Montrose, 77006. It’s the place with the giant chessboard and the British telephone booth. Put another way, it’s inbetween the Black Lab and Cezanne’s and the Montrose Public Library. I also found out that they validate parking so that’s a plus.

So after much ado my mid-term really, truly is tomorrow. There can be no further delays or misunderstandings, it’s just a fact. Truthfully I wish it was just over, as I have a lot of Houston schmoozing to catch up on. For now however I will try and immerse myself in the in the intricacies of moral philosophy.

In other news I went for a much-needed eye checkup today. One eye had hardly changed from my last checkup, but the other had jumped into the deep end of the pool of myopia. Within the week though I should have new lenses in my current glasses (I’m not crazy about my other pair). In geek terms, I’ll be going from 1024×768 to a crisp 1600×1200. Now if I could only increase my memory…

Hot dang, Ian has a weblog. Worth visiting if just for the picture of Ian in a swank suit with a red clown nose on.

Yes it’s true, this evening I laundered about $22. And my wallet. I had a washing mishap not all that long ago, and you’d think I would have learned my lesson by now. The only thing I was terribly worried about in the wallet was my Free Software Foundation membership card/CD. It’s actually a bootable distribution in the shape of a business card and was quite cool. (I’m member #246.) It looks like everything is going to be fine though, even the Sudanese dinars and the “One Free Kiss” card from the Renaissance Festival seemed to have not gotten too mangled.

Which OS are You?

This is so funny, and certainly ironic in that this Saturday I will be missing my first HPUG meeting ever since I founded it about two years ago. Go for it and let me know what you get in the comments. I got this via the lovely Rachel, who will have a site soon. (I promise!)

Just getting things ready to head up to Austin. Laundry and money. What else do you need? (Besides this cool bag of course.)

Josh: So what are we doing tomorrow night?
Matt: The same thing we do every night, Pinky…

The other highlight was when Josh decided going to hell would be like the end of the Wizard of Oz. Pshaw. Everyone knows the Wizard of Oz is an allegory of William Jennings Bryan and the free silver movement.

On this delightfully dreary day I’ve decided to bundle up for a spell with some hot tea and get some serious coding done. In fact that’s much how my day has been so far: code, code, code, surf blogs, (4 hours later) code. We’ll see how this goes…

Last night was grand, and the pictures will be up shortly. I’m also catching up on some other backlog stuff around here. There have been several requests for some vintage content, so I’m digging back through my computers grabbing some old pictures and such. I’ll post when I put them up because the reverse chronological nature of my photolog which just started last summer means that anything from earlier times is going to wind up in the back.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about it, I want to mention that there’s a new requirement if you get a a key you have to take a picture with it and email it to me. If I give you the key personally I can take the picture but for the key receivers around the country you’ll have to help me out here.

Well technically spring break started for me yesterday at 2:30, but today is my first full day off. I’ve got some fun stuff planned for this week, but it’s a little difficult since it seems everyone has a different week off for spring break this year. I’m going to try and get all the work out of the way at the beginning of the week so the rest I can relax (and head out of town). The Jason Moran concert tonight and Sarah’s party should get it off to a nice start.

The beautiful Sarah has a new online home at Pacific Nights. It was a lot of fun setting everything up for her. More importantly, today is her birthday so go send her some love! For those wondering, the abstract header image is actually a picture of Sarah’s hair.

When did it get so cold??? I am cold to the point of desperation there. Now I know, some of you native (or born-again) Notherners are reading and thinking “42 degrees? Ha! That’s jogging weather!” and you are probably right. But how should I get warm? I’m not conditioned to deal with this.

The new Carnival of Vanities is up.

I have a wonderful new black ink cartridge for my printer, so I no longer have to print things out in a dark blue and hope no one says anything. Ahhhh. Life is good, and today has been a very good day.

I’ve implemented a very crude caching system on the front page only. Due to increased traffic and my lack of time for a better solution at the moment, the front page will be updated every two minutes. All the other pages will remain as dynamic and random as always. If you don’t see your comment right away don’t worry, it’s there it just isn’t displaying just yet. Update: Nixed it, wasn’t worth it. I’ll just wait ’til Smarty is in the system.

If you’re interested in a new read, Eli has a brand-spanking new blog, Oxy-Moron. We just got it set up yesterday so it’s still getting started, but I’m excited to see what he’s going to write about.

It started this morning while on my way to meet with Eli (whose website is almost ready) there were about 30 people on horses at the place where I like to eat breakfast. I thought to myself, “Only in Houston.”

Fast forward to this afternoon as I’m trying to take a “shortcut” on Memorial, but instead I get stuck behind a trail ride going who knows where at 5 miles per hour. Whose bright idea was that?! Let’s put someone on a busy street in rush hour and see how much we can mess things up. Since when were horses even allowed on streets and such? Isn’t traffic bad enough? Bah. This is why people think in Houston we ride horses to school and have cattle. (I’m not making that up.)

And so it begins. Look for another one tomorrow.

Friends don’t let friends do Livejournal. If you or anyone you know wants help setting up a blog, let me know. I’m trying to help as many people I know as possible get online and blogging. It’s the Right Thing to Do. Plus I have this big ’ol dedicated server running at less than 10% capacity.

Last night Josh and I started our mission to try every single item on the House of Pies menu. Two down, a lot to go. It just occured to me that some sort of mini-review of each item might be worthwhile, a thought that occured to me as I’m about halfway through the menu at Get Wired.