A smooth trip back to Ann Arbor was marred by the failure of the student government's airport bus service to show up,
after I had waited outside for it in excess of 1.5 hours. The temperature since then has dropped steadily. Today was a day that looked very
nice and sunny, and could probably pass for summer if not for the snow and coats. At times the warmth of sun even created moments of
pleasantry. But at every street corner a wicked wind from the north would blast me, causing me to curse loudly until I reached the shelter
of the next block of buildings. Even so I got to the library for the book sale. My selections these days are growing more and more obscure
as the pickings seem to get slimmer. Today I picked up a two-volume Hungarian-English dictionary (a collection of language dictionaries has
become a goal), a Cyclopedia of America in Japanese (a good beginning read I figure, and potentially humorous), and "The Tin Drum" by Gunter
Grass. The latter is one of the only works of fiction I've purchased recently, I don't know why.

Later I went to "Saigon Garden" with Amanda and her roommate. It was a good time, but I must register my complaint
with Ann Arbor restaurants that are more expensive than their New York counterparts, which are of higher quality and must pay much more rent.
Ah well, I'm not much of a restaurant person, tending to go for cheap places with basic cuisine. I feel much more at home in these places,
and I get full and almost always enjoy it. From the talk I hear this makes me a good upper west sider.

I think if I'm to finish all my work for this semester I may have to disengage completely from current events and the
world around me. Seeing movies like "Crumb" about crazy geniuses who create their own little world is part of my inspiration. Keeping up
with worldly events is all well and good, but I don't think it can do me much harm to take a break and then catch up later. I may go so far
as to take my large sound absorption blanket, so far unused, and drape it around my chair and computer as a big blinder to everything that
usually seems to matter. Of course my computer itself can be a huge distraction, so I'll have to do something about that. Perhaps the 'links'
page of this site, which I usually use as home base for my daily webbing, will have to have some entries temporarily removed.

Have been on a kick with these personal entries, and I promise myself to stop them soon. Being in New York seems to
produce events of everyday life that are more worth writing about, and that's over now.

Darn, I was going to make a special note on 03.03.03, but that's long gone. Haven't implemented my isolation plan yet,
largely because I haven't obtained the necessary butterfly clips from work. But the mind has been very strained lately as I get deeper and
deeper into this semester's programming projects. Did pretty badly on my Operating Systems midterm, but found myself unable to care. I have
to face the fact that exams are just bullshit. And if it affects my GPA, so what, I haven't gotten a job yet that depended on my GPA. The
best jobs I've had I didn't even need a resume to get.

Been thinking lately about music. Wondering about whether or not I'm really going to do it for the rest of my life,
and in what capacity. And on a smaller scale, what kind of music I want to make. A lot of this is fueled by having to produce compositions
every week for a music class, with little or no restriction on the content. Basically it's always a battle between stuff that is more
experimental, complex, musically interesting, and stuff that is more simple, catchy, and nice-sounding. My ideal, that I don't think is
impossible, is to have both. With experimental stuff, I usually feel better about it, but other people don't necessarily want to listen to it
repeatedly, and often the interesting stuff has to be explained to anyone who's not a music theory wonk, and that makes it sort of pointless.
The argument for simple catchy stuff is that, well it sounds nice, isn't that what music is supposed to do? And often I'm listening to bands
I like and say to myself, these songs are simpler than mine, if I could just keep it simple, I'd have success. Of course it never quite works
out that way, because there's a difference between 'simple' and 'good.' Then again there are many reasons that I don't have 'success.'
It becomes pretty clear after obsessing over this for a long time that I want to have the best of both worlds, and that the best way to do
things is to write what I like writing and not think about who's going to like it.

Just as this has been on my mind, I heard from an old friend whose whereabouts I've also been wondering about. He
offered the potential of joining a band he's in. This could be a lot of fun because it's a real band that practises a whole lot, and plays
shows on a regular basis, and is going to go on tour, unlike every band I've been in (no offense of course to the members of those bands,
for they were great, but playing lots of shows is something I'd still like to do). This would also be a change, because I wouldn't be much of
a creative force in the band, also unlike all my previous bands. But this could be a good thing, because when in the creative position, I've
had a lot of band members quit over issues of me being an asshole control freak, which has been extremely depressing. This could be the chance
to sit back, have fun, play the music and not worry about the creative stuff. But can I do that? --dramatic cliffhanger music--

P.S. a few more self-absorbed words about making music. When it comes to people giving you feedback on your music,
actions speak loudly and words don't really speak at all. This is why the 'auteur' may seem apathetic when told that the stuff is good. In
the case of music, there's a big difference between that and someone taking your music home and listening to it repeatedly, as we all do with
music we like. The latter has almost never happened for me, and that's one of the most depressing parts of my music experience. Of course
it's not the audience's fault, it's mine for not making better music. But accepting that I am part of the 95% of everything that sucks is
difficult.

The time for Crisis Wolverine to be released draws ever nearer, and when the subject of credits came up I started
thinking about whether or not I should list this site in my credit. A lot of people could see it, maybe a few hundred or more, but is that
good or bad? A recent Pitchfork review of the new New Folk Implosion album noted something I've always felt, that artists tend to do their
best work when they think no one is watching, and they are just doing it for themselves. I have no illusions about my own vulnerability to
this effect, and I think it goes a long way toward explaining the downfall of many bands when they get famous. Of course I'm not as concerned
about the quality of this blog as about my music, but there could be other negative results too. Of course there could be positive ones too,
like me finally putting some mp3s up and someone liking them, but that's unlikely.

Sometimes lately I just stop working on all my projects and think, what am I doing? Why do I keep doing this, am I
going to really have something at the end? How did I get interested in these obscure topics like retrograde analysis and natural language
generation and whatnot? This is kind of scary, but so are the projects themselves. For the next month I really need to just put my head
down and burrow forward, and I'm sure at the end at least something will seem like it was worthwhile.

I think if I knew a lot of people were seeing this I might feel pressure to write more commentary-type stuff and less
personal stuff. Not that the personal stuff is that personal, or anything I wouldn't tell anyone, but do I really want all these people
who are walking down the street around me every day to see it, and do they really care? See it's already happening, I should stop this.

This could become a time of hiatus when I hardly write anything here until graduation, but I don't want that to
happen, not more than it already has. It's stupid when people talk about how busy they are and how crazy life is, because if they were really
that busy they wouldn't be taking the time to talk about it. But lately I feel compelled to engage in this behavior when I do have a pause,
if only to remind myself of all the tasks and projects I'm trying to keep in my mind, and try to assure myself that it can all be done in the
time left. Also I think most of the things making me busy are very cool and interesting, and that others ought to want to hear about them.

The other day my Operating Systems professor made a repeat performance of a rare kind. Back in fall of junior year,
he was my professor for my data structures and algorithms class, and I had his class the morning of 9/11. The TVs in the lecture hall had been
turned on to the news, but all I could see from my usual vantage point in the rear was a lot of smoke (on the screen), and I still didn't know
what had happened. He came in and, about as dismissively as possible, said "I'm sure you all know about this so I won't read the press release
statement that they asked me to read," turned off the TVs, and taught the lecture on hash tables or whatever the hell it was. At the time I was
just mildly annoyed that whatever had happened, he wasn't telling us about it, and everyone else was just muttering. But since then I've found
it rather stupid and offensive of him.

Flashing forward to this past Thursday, he completely ignored the start of the war and taught his lesson again. Of
course this is very different, it was no shock, not some immediate tragedy, or thing like that. But come on man, pick your head up out of the
fucking sand every once in a while and realize there's more to life than operating systems, and it's worth mentioning even without any relevance
to the course. He might not really have any new information or insight to bring to us, but still, just remind us that we're living in the world
here, we're not mindless programming drones, ourselves programmed not to think about bothersome, tragic or irrational things. Also he's got this
smirk that really makes me angry.

Today we worked for 14 hours straight on Crisis Wolverine, in preparation for the release in about 1.5-2 weeks. We seem
to be on track to finish on time, although the schedule doesn't have much room for error or maneuvering. I can't wait to see how the marketing
campaign I have masterminded turns out. I also have to accept that this is probably going to be the best time, the time leading up to the game
when we're all just pouring our passion and creativity into it, making it the best it can be. Soon enough our posters will be on the ground,
and people won't be talking about it anymore, and that will be disappointing. But it has still been great, and we can only hope that it reaches
the number of people we're aiming for. It certainly deserves to, because it's a lot of fun and does what nothing else out there does, by
catering to such a specific audience with inside jokes and maps of the neighborhood.

I keep thinking I'm about to crash after a period of sleeping only a few hours a night most nights, and then getting a
decent amount of sleep every 3rd night or so. This has been going for about 1-1.5 weeks now. But I keep going, and often I'm a little tired
and/or achey, but never very much, and I haven't taken many naps at all. I think the enjoyment of making this game is keeping me going. I've
gotten into a mode where the game simply has to succeed, and will no matter what I have to do to ensure it. The happiness that I think I
could derive from lots of people enjoying and appreciating something I did seems like a far greater reward than a good grade in a class. Don't
want to let my classes slip though, that would be bad.