A long week

Last week was a long week. I had a deadline Tuesday evening, so I got in earlier on Monday and Tuesday than I had since last summer, and stayed later than I ever have. And it was tiring.

In principle, I like getting into work early. It means that I have time to catch up on my email and still get a meaningful chunk of work done before lunch. On the other hand, it also means waking up. The only time I've ever been able to keep it up for more than a couple of days was a couple winters ago when I was in Singapore, and that was only because I was so jet-lagged it didn't really count. And sure enough, this week, by Friday I was almost back to my my usual time.

And yeah, there was lots of stuff about stupid-but-fatal bugs (mostly mine) and discussing maybe actually launching someday, but I probably shouldn't go into too much detail about that. Instead, you can go play with Google Trends, which I had absolutely nothing to do with but is a great new way to waste time.

In other news, I went to the Bowery lighting district yesterday. By "lighting district," they mean "20 stores selling lamps and chandeliers crammed into two blocks." I counted 17 of them that I went into, but that counts two on opposite sides of the street that had the exact same inventory. I ended up getting a new lamp for my nightstand, but I didn't find anything I liked more for my living room than the one I saw at Macy's a while back. And the whole experience was generally a lot less sketchy than I expected considering it was only a couple blocks away from Canal Street, the heart of sketchy-retaildom in New York City.

I've also been reading Seth Lloyd's new book, which I picked up on a whim last weekend at the MIT press store. It's good, and makes me wish he'd been teaching 2.111 when I took it. More on that later.