Called my daughter today-- she just turned 12, and for her birthday, she wanted a telescope. She told me today she's been looking at the moon with it, and she's been learning how to find the planets.
Very cool.
Afterwards, I took the motorcycle down to SEREMS to help out with that damned MS-Win network. Let me state for the record-- I'd rather be raped by a jackhammer than deal with with MS networking again. Machines disappear randomly from the network; they can still act as clients, so they are set up properly, but otherwise they fall off the face of the earth just like Amelia Eirhart. If I change the name of the machine and reboot-- viola, it's back. Until it disappears again.
Argh.
It only happens to machines with a particular Alfa ethernet card, though, so I suspect it's related to the NDIS drivers.
Mostly, though, I've been wasting time playing Nethack. I'm waiting for a particularly nasty problem to work itself out in my head, and I've found that happens best when I'm distracted.