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Malfunctions
(29 Jun 2004 at 14:45) |
Carnegie Mellon is having serious malfunctions today. Newell-Simon and Planetary Robotics have both lost power for the entire day (fortunately the prototype "dark energy" defense robots are still operational). A bell sounds outside my door every 2 minutes for no reason in the following pattern: (DING DING wait wait/2 DING DING wait wait/2 DING DING DING wait/2 ...) A steam pipe vents itself loudly every few seconds, blowing smoke rings across the smoke vent grotto and wheezing as it recharges itself. Amazingly, AFS still works.
For a number of reasons I am quite stressed! This isn't supposed to happen during the summer. The easiest to explain is that I have several major things that I must complete in the next two weeks. Probably most important is my talk for LICS 2004, which will be fun to do, but still time consuming because I have not attempted to write a "flatex" tool yet (à la TeXpoint). Next up is a paper for POPL that I haven't really started writing, though I have been working on the technical details for some time. I tell you, formalizing things in Twelf is at once (well, perhaps at twice) intensely satisfying when it works and intensely frustrating when it does not, almost to the point that I am reminded of descriptions of such misbehavior as gambling or day-trading addiction. It's true -- that "Server OK" message is like a sort of drug. I currently have over 1500 lines of working mechanization, with probably that same amount to go (although much of this will be easy or cut'n'paste due to Twelf's lack of polymorphism.) Unless my pace picks up dramatically, soon, I may have to delay work on this until the paper is written. The POPL deadline is conveniently during the time I am in Turku, Finland at LICS. Did you know that Turku has only about 5 hours of darkness per evening at this time of year?
Mike and I went to a wedding this weekend in Rye, New York, and I will post my pictures from that trip online soon. Let me just relate an amusing story from the end for now: As we were leaving the hotel, we saw my grandmother (who has difficulty walking) hobbling along slowly, while my grandfather (that's Tom 5) was up ahead pushing an empty wheelchair. We asked her, "Why aren't you in the wheelchair?" To which she responds, "He said it was too hard to push with me in it!" I shit you not. Actually, this is funnier if you know my grandparents, but I hope it is kind of funny anyway. |  |
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I heard the power outage was cuased by EXPLODING TRANSFORMERS outside NSH. You should be able to see them from your window i think.
Damn Decepticons! |
| robots in disguise |
| doot doot pause doot doot |
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