Scratch'n'Sniff STD Handbook

Time has been flowing interestingly as of late, in the subjective realm of me. My sleep schedule has been very random (and unfortunately insufficient to meet demand), with half-sleeps at pretty odd times, leaving me awake at odd hours like 02:-05:. The end of this week is coming together very quickly -- I hope the pieces fit well enough before they happen. I've been too slow to apply for preimbursement for subject payments for work, so the next few scans I'm going to have the pleasure of paying subjects out of pocket (upwards of $60 per). Bleh.

Much of today was spent looking forward to Chainmail class, with good reason, it turns out. Chainmail is like KGB junior (although more like the better, smaller KGB meetings and not the larger ones). Having quit KGB, it's not so bad here because it's a slightly different mix than normal, and there are people I'm generally more comfortable around (and vice versa) more prominently around. The topic is indeed interesting, and I'm looking forward to the construction part of the class. It's interesting that Lizza has had the time to learn all this stuff to the point of being ready to teach it -- she has neat hobbies. Afterwards, a small subset of us went to grab Indian food, and accidentally caught the tail end of a buffet (which I did and G/C didn't).

Today, over the objection of some do-not-spend-money-on-fun parts of myself, I ordered some fun stuff. Arrived today was my order of the "Naked Lunch" DVD, a masterpiece movie interpretation of a masterpiece-but-throughly-unfilmable-and-truly-perverse book. I promptly loaned it to my officemate, who will probably have a very odd time watching it. It's funny -- my officemate is probably about 8 years older than I am and lives in a different mental world. Initially, I didn't think I'd get along with him purely because of the barriers between us, but over the year or two of sharing an office, a certain amount of comfort has come. This is true with many of my coworkers -- it takes me a long time to warm up to people.. but it's getting a little easier in some cases. When J's brother was in town (very recently), I was surprised at how well I seemed to get along with him. All four brothers in that family are rather different in some ways, but all of them are very likable. I'm working a bit on changing my public persona to be a bit more likable too.

Misc:

• Latin Wikipedia - A waste of time or cool? Both?
• Abandoned Cities in Russia - It seems there should be some better thing to do with these places than abandoning them. Surely some group of people would like to live there..
• It's not just the American conservatives that are looking to purge Universities of liberals. For all his infuriating positions and actions as a force for harm in the world, Ahmadinejad is a charismatic guy.
• On that note, Reformist former Persian President Khatemi is in the United States for a week, speaking at various places including Harvard and meeting with BushJr. For the Islamic republic, he's kind of like Jimmy Carter (who I believe he's also due to meet with).
• There's a small Perl Conference going on on the 23rd of this month in town. It promises beginner and advanced tracks.. I'm presently deciding if the schedule and tracks look interesting enough to go. If I do go, it will mean skipping another scanner slot for work and waking up early to hike out there for breakfast. Neither of these bode well. On the other hand, if some friends want to go too, I'd probably go with the benefit of hanging out a bit tossed in. Hmm.