We interrupt the total lack of posting to inform you that the Scott Pilgrim movie is the most awesome anything in the history of ever. Go see it immediately. Right now. You've missed the 5:00 showing, but if you hurry you can make the one at 5:45.

I have the house to myself this weekend, and am free to make as much a mess as I like. That means it's brewing time!

This batch is an attempt at a Scotch Ale, from a new recipe I tracked down this afternoon. The first few steps of the cookery are complete, and the wort is now boiling merrily, filling the whole house with the smell of hops. This goes on for about 45 more minutes before the next step, cooling the wort to a temperature the yeast can survive in, which will probably take close to another hour.

If all goes well this should be ready for bottling in under two weeks, and then finished fermenting another two weeks after that. So, I'm hoping for drinkable beer by the last week in May. (It will probably continue to improve with a little more aging, but who has that kind of patience?)

[added]
All done. Starting gravity is 1.048, spot on what the recipe expects. By morning we should see some action from the yeast.

The Philosophy Midterm of Doom was returned this evening.

I did not feel at all confident about this one; philosophy has never been my best subject. I took a pass on one question, getting an automatic 21/35 credit for it, and there were no bonus points available to make up for that. I didn't really have a frame of reference to go by, since this is the first graded assignment we've had in this class, but I wouldn't have been too disappointed by a low B (210 points).

I got 357 out of 350.

Yeah, I said there were no bonus points. I am just that awesome.

I have confirmed how much I dislike studying philosophy. It really wasn't just a personal grudge against the jerk professors I had during sophomore year. Reading these stupid arguments bugs the crap out of me.

My background is in math and hard science. If you give me something that purports to be logical argument, I expect it should work like one. Explain your context, make your argument in provable steps, and don't go pulling random assertions out of your ass if you expect to be taken seriously.

Philosophical discourse doesn't seem to work that way. In this class I've only had two reading assignments so far, and I've already lost count of the unsupported "obviously" and "undeniably" and "every rational person must agree". Writing like that for any of my other professors would have gotten you laughed out of the building, but for some reason here it qualifies as brilliantly rigorous discourse.

It isn't hard to memorize what Kant and Mills and the rest are saying. I just wish people would stop pretending this stuff is valid logic.

I have passed my lead test at the climbing gym, and got my shiny yellow certification tag. Now I can go hurt myself in new and interesting ways!

In the gym there are two basic kinds of climbing. "Top rope" means the rope is already in place, looped over a beam up near the ceiling. The rope always runs upward from the climber, so if you slip, the rope immediately halts your fall and you can't go anywhere. This is the kind of climbing everyone is allowed to do in the gym, and it's really pretty safe.

"Lead" means the rope is not put there first. You get to carry it with you, and clip it to protection equipment on the wall as you go up. This is more difficult and dangerous for a couple of reasons. First, you must periodically stop climbing, and free one hand to clip the rope in. After clipping, you climb above where the rope is attached. If you slip, the rope will not catch you until you fall past the attachment point, which usually means ten feet or more of free-fall. Also, since the route isn't restricted by the rope placement it can follow more challenging paths, like up the underside of an arch.

And now I'm starting to do that. It's a great time not to have health insurance, right?

Joking aside, climbing seems to be a really good thing for me. Just getting over the fear of heights was a big step, and now I feel surprisingly nonchalant about literally hanging around twenty-five feet in the air. I am definitely getting more skilled, I'm in good shape, and I have developed a lot of muscles that I never had before. These are great results for something I tried for fun after my 30th birthday.

Today I went to a repair shop with the camera I dropped at DragonCon '08. The guy there examined it with much headshaking and "hmm" noises and flipping through repair manuals, and eventually gave me an estimate of $150 for parts and labor.

I paid less than that for the camera in the first place, and the going rate for a used but functional example is $60 on Ebay. Clearly it wasn't worth paying to have it fixed. So when I got home today, I took it apart. It being already broken, I reasoned I couldn't really hurt anything.

As it turns out, what I could hurt was myself. I neglected to discharge the flash capacitor, and got a couple of good zaps and a burn mark on one fingertip. But who cares about that? The camera works now!

Sure, it needs a little percussive persuasion on startup, and I had at least one screw left over when I reassembled it. These details bother me not at all. It's no longer a paperweight and I have for once done something useful with my insomnia time.

The cold weather and dry air have been playing havoc with my sinuses for weeks. I have been eating decongestants like candy, which is probably not a great idea. In an attempt at a nonpharmaceutical remedy, I've just bought and used a neti pot.

Pouring water through one's skull is a very weird and disorienting sensation. I think I can smell my brain.

is for Voted.

We got up in the dark this morning, and went to the polls as soon as they opened. A lot of other people had the same idea. The line ended up being a little more than an hour long. We needn't have hurried so much. Few people got in line behind us, so if we had gotten up an hour later, we would have had less of a wait and still had plenty of time to get to work.

The election folks seem to be well prepared for a large turnout. Compared to the last election, there are extra electronic kiosks and twice as many booths for paper ballots. The queues have been laid out in neat, space filling curves, like for a ride at a theme park. Somebody put a lot more thought into it than usual.

Today is my last day at this job. It's time to pack up all my stuff, uninstall software I put on the machine, and nuke any personal data that may be left behind. This means Firefox is going away, and I'm going offline.

Now I just need to run over to the supply closet and steal six thousand ball point pens for no reason, then I'm out of here.

Tonight, Witches Ball. Tomorrow, Halloween parties. Bright and early Sunday morning, Chemistry midterm. Monday, new job! Woo!

I accepted a new job. Now I have encountered a dilemma.

I've told all the other recruiters that I am off the market. Two of them so far have come back and said (paraphrased): "That's too bad, because I just heard back about this other awesome position you applied for, and they think you're a good fit. Do you still want to interview?"

I would be foolish to think of the new job as a permanent marriage merely because I accepted it first. I know I'm not going to work anyplace forever, and if I'd already started I would have few qualms about interviewing elsewhere. In the short term, the smart thing to do is go on all the interviews and pick my favorite. Selfishness is not inherently a bad thing.

However, it would be rude to go and take another job after I've accepted this one. I'd be shooting the new consulting company in the foot, because they've told the client my start date is confirmed. That might not be great for my reputation as an IT contractor.

Reason says I don't owe the recruiter anything. It's just a business relationship. He's looking for a commission, I'm out for my own best interests, and sometimes those goals are incompatible. Yet it doesn't feel great to ditch a guy whose hand I shook this morning.

I have decided what I'm going to do, but I'm interested if you all have input. What do you think? In this situation, would you be "smart" or "nice"?