pillow talk

I'm having trouble with my pillows. At some point, my pillows were just the right depth, but lately they seem too thin for me. Normally, I like a really thin pillow, hence I went to some effort to get pillows that were quite thin. But now one is too thin for me, and when I pile two on top of each other, that just feels stupidly tall, like my neck is at some silly angle. My current solution is to prop one up at an angle of about 75 degrees to the horizontal, against the wall, and then lay a second so that it hits the first about 1/3 of the way up, thus being slightly elevated but not all that much. It still feels wrong. Perhaps it's all psycho somatic anyway.

I should probably have linked to feelgood:abd before. Well, it's not too late -- although it does rather look like the author has abandoned it already. Wonder what that suggests about the thesis?

I missed the third episode of Tru Calling tonight -- I figured that I'll watch it tomorrow if I wake up and the day repeats (I do hope not -- I don't really want to have to do all that C programming over again from scratch). The second episode was quite bad, pretty much a complete re-run of the first: Tru still seems surprised and stupefied when she wakes up to find she is living the previous day over again. Really, she should be getting used to it by now. Then, without giving too much away, she does exactly the same thing as she did in the first episode: completely get the wrong idea about what caused the death she is trying to prevent not once but twice. And this time it is so blatantly flagged who the real arsonist is, you do really want to go up and shout at her.

I'm actually warming to Jake 2.0 a lot more, which shouldn't be too surprising, given its pedigree (a production of David Greenwalt, a Buffy/Angel stalwart) and its concept (nerdy guy suddenly gains super powers through deus ex machina -- except this time, the machines are inside the protagonist, since his power comes from "nanobots", a reasonably convenient McGuffin). Oh, and the subplot is also familiar to Buffy fans: Jake, the geeky yet charming guy is so caught up with his crush on blonde female lead that he doesn't notice that the brunette science geek with glasses (who scrubs up well when necessary) is deeply jonesing for him [compare / contrast to S1 Buffy/Xander/Willow].

I was looking through the TV listings this evening, and misread a title as "Crime Scene Makeover". Which is maybe not such as bad an idea as it sounds. Talking of misreadings, I know that I've been spending too much time in front of the computer when I misread "Xmas" as "X-Emacs". Can't remember the context though.

You may be wonderin' why I'm going on about TV and such. Well, it's been blowing a gale outside today, and I don't feel like going out. The following arrived in the mail yesterday: Undergrads [Which, incidentally, also has the old two-sided unrequited love triangle going on, in the form of Jesse/Nitz/Kimmy - is this a complete cliche or what?], and Yes Prime Minister -- still not available in Region two, and as for any speculation about Bernard/Hacker/Appleby, let's snip that in the bud right there. The world really does not need any "Yes Minister" Slash fiction. (one hit on google and counting).

Talking of google, last night I was chatting to my source on the West Coast who joined recently, although I didn't get any info on how they were doing with their bits. Mostly, I was just scoping out the place for job prospects. I'll probably do the same tomorrow when I hang out in some google haunts in NY to see if they have anything going in their East Coast Branch. Perhaps I can be the one to fix google. I wouldn't hold your breath.

Anyway, chances are I'll be spending a large chunk of the next two weeks in front of my computer screen, as I desperately try to juggle a couple of submissions to SIGMOD. Damn those databse people, I should be finessing my CV and preparing to make a deluge of job applications. Oh well, that's what Thanksgiving is for, I suppose. Pedants might notice that the SIGMOD guidelines specifically instruct authors not to reveal their identies in their submissions, and also to avoid giving it away, by posting copies of their submissions on web pages and so on. Well, note that this non-blog is anonymous, with the exception that most people reading it know who I am, so technically I think I can get away with it.

That reminds me, servustats seems to have died completely and been domain napped by some dodgy set of redirecters. Don't click on the link, kids, and I'll see what I can do about finding a new search query catcher that won't crap out more than 50% of the time.