Did ya know... That sqrt(2) = 2 * sin(Pi/4) ? Bet you didn't. :)

The weather is really getting nasty. Today, during one of my breaks, I spent some time cleaning my bookmarks.. Probably about half were obsolete, and while trimming the hierarchy, I neded up removing some branches that got too narrow.. I came across one page that I was particularly sad to see go -- It was a page on KIBO, part of early geek kultur that's just gone now.. and I don't think anything like him could come about in today's internet... all the advertising bastards, the profiteers, curse them for taking that beautiful community, and destroying it under their collective weight. Ladies and gentlemen, toast with whatever you've got, to Tale and KIBO. Remember the Usenet! Hmm.. one interesting thing -- of the sites that are no longer maintained, the ones on Geocities seem to have disappeared much faster than those elsewhere -- they actually seem to put some effort into removing dead sites. I'm not sure if it's a good thing or not..

It looks like Srees is going to close for the season soon.. The Sree family is heading to India for a month, and so the truck and the restaurant won't be there. I guess I'll need to figure out where else to eat.. I'll be saving as many of the mandatory vacation days as possible for later use when I want to do something with them.. meaning that while I'll have classes off, I'll be working.. with any luck, on Christmas, New Years, and all the days surrounding them that are supposed to be vacation. In deference to my parents, I'll probably head home whatever weekend is closest to Xmas to say hi to everyone who shows up. But, at least as currently planned, I'm going to skip Christmas.. for the simple reason that I'm not a Christian, and that I'm not going to put up with being dragged into religious crap anymore. My parents will no doubt have a cow, but just as christians stake out claims for themselves, this is something I'm staking out for my flavour of Atheism -- I will not participate in your traditions. I will not hold your hands while you do your superstitions, I will not come to your celebration of a dangerous myth. Whatever Jesus really believed or said, be it like what the Muslims or Christians think or not, he's just another dead guy, killed by the Romans almost two thousand years ago. I'm not taking part, and doubt I ever will.

A fragment: Be careful of making your system depend on software that comes from outside -- any bugs in new versions, or upgrading problems, might break the OS. That's why there has traditionally been reluctance to make modern Linuces depend on Perl or Python.. some vendors do the wrong thing, and have a static perl in /usr/bin, and another perl elsewhere. The right thing is to have a "sysperl" or something like that, with a different name, and altered so it can't be affected by changes to the regular perl package (changing library search paths and stuff), and make all said scripts run with that. Yeah, it's a horrible duplication of code, but it means your users can upgrade their perl seperately without breaking their OS..

It was a strange day in heaven... the world had ended a thousand years before, and peace and quiet had finally come to the cosmos. The garden above, with Yahweh, and the desert below, with Belial and his wandering spirits. The soft light of heaven, and misty edges of the beings there suddenly contrasted with 1, 8, and then dozens of bald men and women, in orange robes, as solid as things ever were in reality. Sitting in the field, they waited, as the Angels nervously backed away, and began an anxious discussion as to what they were, and how they were there... no material beings were supposed to be physically capable of entering the Garden, and they did not behave as Belial's compatriots.. In the desert below too, there was much worry, as similar entities appeared, the ever-flowing sands seemed to stay clear of them, not inflicting on them the burn, the eternal mark of those who had fallen. And then, a fallen sat with one of the women, a smile, and a opaque bubble surrounded them. Similar events in the Garden, and occasionally, the bubbles opened, and only the monk remained. An angel attempted to strike one, and awoke minutes later on the other side of the garden, having simply vanished from the spot. Some tried to pierce the bubble, and simply found it inpenetrable. Belial and Yahweh, as usual, were on one of their inner explorations, and could not be rearched, and so the souls of the garden and the desert slowly disappeared. The angels were understandably uncomfortable, but eventually stopped bothering them, instead suggesting to the souls that they steer clear of them, although with only limited success, hoping for the fast return of their deity. Yet the souls kept disappearing, and in time, there was only about a dozen left, the desert long empty. Some of the monks bowed to the rest, each moving their fingers to a small piece of lint on their robes, tossing it off, and then disappearing, leaving only a brief afterimage of a purple starry night from before the end of the world. The remaining monks stood, and began to walk around the garden, seeking out the last souls in heaven. Four sets of eyes opened in unity, a shriek of rage in Sheol, a cry of anger in Eden. Heaven and Hell were empty, and a brief glance of the four angry eyes over the emptiness between found nothing left in the world of matter, nowhere they could be. The garden reshaped itself, and before one of the remaining monks stood an old man, eyes holding the ages of eternity in their pupils. The remaining monks bowed, a tuneless hum escaping their lips, and the angels unraveled, like the golem never properly alive. A final bow, and there were but two monks, one looking at Yahweh alone in the Garden, the other sitting calmly at Belial in Sheol. "You were once one of us, remember", a phrase spoken by two sets of lips, seperated by a vast spiritual distance. An angry response, "I AM ALL THAT IS GOOD", "I AM ALL THAT IS LIFE". "You don't know who you are. Remember. You are only half of what you were". "HOW DID YOU REMOVE MY SOULS?" "We held back until we could fulfill our vow, and passed them on to the other side". "THIS IS THE OTHER SIDE". "No." Two heads bowed, four sets of hands raised, and sand began to flow into the garden, mist began to flow into Sheol. Belial faced Yahweh for the first time in thousands of years, and the male monk bowed to the female, pulling a speck of lint from its robe, fading to purple spark. "I am here for you, you who are not what you are". A brief, bitter glance, and both tried to reshape their realms, to seperate again. "There is no return, there is only the future. You must accept who you are. Those souls were never what you made them out to be, your sheol and garden were never the final destination". Rage, anger, feelings of righteousness, a figure that could not be moved by divine might. Three figures sat down on the moist, grassless earth, or was it two? The duty of the last Bodhisattva, to enlighten the Divided Being..

Disclaimer: The theology in this story is not necessarily an accurate depiction of Buddhism or of any of the Mosaic religions, and certainly isn't a statement of what I believe. I'm sure you can handle that :)