"Master, how shall we repair him?" "First we will put the suctures in his head, Then we will put the sutras in his head"

My laptop is now reliable again, powerwise, and has a nice new keyboard as well. Hurrah! I'm very happy that I can finally trust my computer again -- I can start programming again with peace of mind. The new keyboard does throw me a bit though -- I had gotten used to my remapped, funky keyboard without a tab key (and with capslock mapped to it), and now my fingers are confused. Hmm.

I'm working my way through one of my favourite movies from my childhood -- "The Princess Bride". Naturally, I'm referring to the book, which I got a week or so ago. The movie really flattened the characters, especially the Princess, who is more dark and cynical in the book. By standards of the movie, she is largely forced into accepting the Prince's plans by implied force, while in the book she has more of an inner struggle between her practicality and her love. It actually reminds me of a few people I know in real life.

Many of the movies my generation saw in childhood/youth really are based off of some good books.. The Neverending Story is based off of a really good book, "die Unendlische Geschichte", and The Wizard of Oz is just the first in a long series of (mostly) good books on Oz.

I woke up this morning and found that my arms feel like I did some arm exercises yesterday.. but I don't remember doing any, and can't recall lifting anything more than my computer bag and my bookbag. Confused... On the upside, I do think my arms are getting a lot stronger -- I can now do a number of pull-ups at the Climbing Wall without touching the ground, and not be at all tired for climbing by that. Hurrah.

I'm catching on to this brain imaging work. This is good -- my predecessor leaves for the last time today. On the downside, I'm needing to do some paperwork for the new hardware we're ordering. Ehh.. not so bad. I like this life. Running patients, managing hardware, analyzing mri results. I have good friends, a good job, and someone who is special to me (complex but good). I think I'm happy. At some point, things will all change again.. perhaps better, probably worse, but these are good times either way.

I'm working on character-set-training. Meaning: I'm using flashcards to brush up on the non-english alphabets I know. Currently I'm doing Cyrillic (Russian) and Hiragana/Katakana (Japanese).. I might add modern Hebrew as well, although that'd mainly be for laughs -- I don't speak any Hebrew at all, just have some memorized phrases.

Lunchtime!