Bounded in a Nutshell

I wonder how long it's going to take before I stop getting nervous about my bank balance near the end of every month. It has, in fact, significant digits plural on the good side of the decimal point, and should really get used to that fact.

The conference this weekend was good, although less of a getting-stuff-done sort of affair than I might have liked. OTOH, I do really like what it was, which was a lot of hanging out and seeing people whom I don't get to see often enough anymore. And I got my hands on a couple of papers that I've been promised for about six months now, which is also a pleasing thing. (And yet, on another level it's not because that was my last good excuse for not finishing writing one of my own papers. I guess there's still "the proofs keep falling apart", but that's a bad excuse in other ways.)

Oh, and my world is filled with shiny new computer equipment. The laptop (still nameless for now) is being a little wonky, which might necessitate a service call in the near future. The mostly free iPod is going to make 75-mph-CD-management a thing of the past. And the acquisition of the large capacity portable hard drive means (once I've made sure that the transfer went OK) that the old, smaller-but-still-large capacity portable hard drive is somewhat in limbo. I know several people have expressed interest in the device, and I think most of them read this space; if you'd like to make an offer, drop me a line and we'll talk.

Last night my laptop's power adapter stopped working. Or at least, it stopped working well: if I hold it at the right angle and really keep it jammed in there physically it works fine, but this isn't exactly ideal. Since the laptop in question has a battery life not long enough to illuminate any significant fraction of a mayfly's existence, I believe the time has come for replacement.

I placed the order earlier today for all kinds of computer goodness. If I'm really lucky, I'll get at least some of it before I drive down to confer in TN at the end of the week.

In other news, I've already got a rough idea of my schedule for next semester. (And it's only September! I tell ya, tenure-track's the way to go.) It's pretty great, in that it satisfies the basic requirements of my current habitual existence:

1. No classes before 11 a.m. (In fact, no classes until noon.)
2. No classes on Friday, since that's all too often a driving day for me.

And the classes themselves have all kinds of fun stuff in them, including the opportunity to bring terror into the hearts of our graduate students. W00t!

Heavy metal music was born for cellos, and quite possibly vice-versa.

Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy, filthy liar. Or just wrong.

Sorry I've not been writing here much lately. Between the beginning of term and recent national (US) events, I haven't been able to come up with anything that doesn't sound tawdry or banal. But I'm still here.