Miscellany

1. Whenever I see that someone has defriended me, I find myself briefly wrestling with a vague feeling that I've let them down. Silly, but there it is.

2. The committees for my two Senior Project students have been approved, and they'll present sometime in the next two or three weeks. Meanwhile, an SP student whom I last saw in January has popped up again - and I don't remember what project we were discussing...

3. Summer - the real summer, not the astronomical artifact - seems to have abruptly ended. After weeks of highs in the 90s F, we've now gone two or three days without breaking 80. It's gray and a little breezy outside, and it looks as though rain is imminent. (It's looked that way for about 48 hours, and occasionally it hasn't been deceptive.)

4. I'm on a Poul Anderson kick again, rereading the Time Patrol stories. The best of them - "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth", "Star of the Sea", "Amazement of the World", "Brave to Be a King" - are very good indeed, but, as usual with Anderson, infodumps are common and clumsy. PA remains the unrivalled king of alternate history even so, to my mind.

5. I switched to a wireless mouse a year or so ago, and I'm generally pleased with it. However, there is a persistent problem with phantom clicks - I'll click once, but it'll be transmitted twice. This is irritating if, e.g., you're playing Spider Solitaire, but there are other, worse, consequences sometimes. Is this a common problem?

I'm feeling very sluggish, despite the beginning of classes. Gotta shake that off...

"Onward goes Dandelion, breaker of guest-law"

papersky has written a Norse Goldilocks. Go, read.