This is the first time I've stayed at a job for long enough that I was moved from one office to another. My new office is bigger, but it no longer has a window. For right now, I'm going to be alone up there -- I hope things remain that way. I'm not completely happy with the change -- I will miss having a window, and despite my being kind of reclusive, I've grown used to my present officemate. Sometimes it's better, I think, to be forced into social situations one wouldn't seek on one's own, and sometimes those work out rather well. I also am kind of curious where I fit on the pecking order of offices -- part of the reasoning behind the office moves, as stated in the email, is that the new occupant of my present office is being given what's normal for visiting faculty, and my officemate is sharing a bigger office with another visiting researcher to facilitate knowledge transfer, with my being sent to one of the recently vacated offices as unexplained (the odd man out?) Because my job is an anomaly, I don't really know what I should expect, and I don't know if my boss does either -- typically sysadmins have their own (fairly nice) offices in the private sector, but then, most technical staff at least have offices. My job is great because it's very low pressure and because it's half research, but I don't fit into the normal academic seniority ladder. I would probably quit if I were sharing a small office or a cubicle (I don't handle small places well, and I need space to work with systems).. Meh. I'll be pretty irritated in the end if I'm sharing the new office with someone -- as is, I'm just a bit disappointed -- as is, I'm going to miss sharing an office with Fincham. Come to think of it, I miss sharing an office with Paul back in CMU Robotics. Kinda-sorta sharing an office with Mac in Columbus was quite cool - he was another hardcore geek and probably the brightest person I've ever met.

It's funny that just earlier today, my officemate was expressing hopes that I wasn't planning on going anywhere soon after thinking about a lot of the work I do for the lab. It's this kind of shuffling of my environment without at least talking to me about what I want that makes me feel less tied down here.. OTOH, maybe even without the asking, it might be a good thing? I don't know... maybe I'll have that office to myself for however long I stick around here?

Random thoughts:

• One type of enlightenment is to place enough "breakpoints" in the brain whereby one does reflection that one is extremely conscious. This has several effects, making some things easier and others harder, and is one of the types of things I've striven to do
• Another type aims at extinguishing the conscious and reflective, and becoming purely reactive
• Some types of enlightenment are opposite from each other, representing paths from a centre rather than movement towards a consistent goal

• OUR WORDS ARE BACKED WITH NUCLEAR WEAPONS!
• (P ?= NP) == NP
• If newlyweds got into a car crash on the way home from the wedding, both were put into long-term comas, and they were placed into the same room together
• A contest in which participants attempt to determine if words in a foreign language in a music video (with presumably some cognates) are being translated correctly into English or not. This is inspired by Ome Henk's Opblasskrokodil, where some people used a flash animation to suggest a lot of the Dutch words were actually badly pronounced english words, and made a "video" illustrating what they were about.

I had a nice dinner of Ethiopean food with Kavita today. As always, Abay's food was very tasty.