Some Good Fortune
I slept 'til 11:00 this morning; I needed it. I was still kinda tired, but I can only sleep so long. Usually I don't sleep past 10:00. My Dad would be scandalized; he gets up at something like 8:00 at the latest.
I went into the office a little after 1:00 and was surprised and pleased to learn that one of the projects I was supposed to be testing had been passed off to someone else, and another was running behind and wouldn't be ready until tomorrow - and I'm not going to be available for most of tomorrow. So I finished testing the project that was available, passed it, and came home. A lot easier than I'd expected.
Then I basically frittered away the afternoon organizing some of my comics, and playing around on the computer. But I think I needed to fritter away some time. I thought about going for a bike ride but didn't really feel like doing anything, despite the nice weather. I needed the mindless downtime.
Tonight I kept reading Children of God; I'm almost half-done. It's not as good as the Sparrow, partly because I don't quite buy some of the plot, and partly because the characters are not as well-defined (or maybe just not as compelling) as in the first book. Still, half-finished is not finished, and in a 400-page book there's plenty of time for it to transcend its early problems.
I little while ago I checked out CDnow.com, which is to music what Amazon.com is to books. I had inferred from CDnow's ads that it had some sort of system where I could have it infer from what music I enjoyed other albums I should check out - a sort of AI system like Reel employs, where you rate movies on a 1-to-10 scale and it recommends other ones you might like based on your input - but I was disappointed to see that it is not so. Pity. Anyone know of such a system on the Web and where I could find it? I consider such systems to be sort of like the tarot: No reason to think they'll truly be useful, but they're fun to play with and maybe I'll get lucky.
Oh, and the classical music network of Wisconsin Public Radio has finally started airing 24 hours a day. In the past they've always gone off the air from midnight to 5 or 6 am; I guess they're doing well enough and there's enough demand for them to expand their hours. Not a bad deal, since I listen to them most late Friday and Saturday evenings. Unfortunately, they don't carry some of their best weekend shows anymore, such as Michra Logus (sp?), which was a half-hour show of pre-Renaissance music, and Echoes, an excellent folk and new age music show. However, I am glad that the execrable Hearts of Space has been removed from their schedule. It was even worse than the Saturday afternoon opera broadcasts. (No, I can't stand opera. Sorry.)
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