I did miserably on the test, I'm sure of it. I forgot basic things. There were only six problems, and I got at least one of them utterly wrong. I can but hope that my instructor decided my painful efforts were worth partial credit.

Tonight I'll get the test back, hopefully, and know the full taste of my doom. I'm not even sure what I could have done differently. I failed to remember a tiny piece of information, which caused my doom. I couldn't have studied any harder, really, although that's my gut response... I have no reason to believe I would have remembered better if I'd studied more.

That's not as loony as it sounds, honest. I knew _how_ to do it; I just froze up on a piece of it when the test happened. Studying doesn't usually solve those problems for me.

Anyway, angsting about it will do no good. It's much better to read Ceej's description of Clarion Hell and think about how calm and sane my life is in comparison.

Reading _Godel, Escher, Bach_ is making me think about mathematics and music again. There's a section early on that goes on about what makes a canon -- it's just a theme, with various techniques applied to it. If you sing 'Three Blind Mice' in a round, you're singing the most basic sort of canon. There's a bunch of other things you can do as well, but it all comes down to 'play the main theme once. have other voices come in doing variations on the main theme, changing them over time or over tone or whatever.'

It disturbs me to realise that I could graph this. After all, singing a round is just saying 'The main voice comes in at f(t), with a second voice coming in at f(t+2) and the third voice coming in at f(t+4) for three full periods.'

I need to find books about people who've done things like this. There have to be some out there, after all. I'd also love to learn about fractal music, which a friend of mine at SGI is very into.

Diane was writing about how radical it is to say 'No, I'm pretty good, and I know I am' in our society. She's right, which is pretty darn sad. Maybe this is why I hang out with all these Techers; they all feel like they've earned the right to say 'I do this well' for at least one skillset.

I'm still trying to adjust to being a good sysadmin. Even as I write those words I feel horribly like an imposter. But, darnit, I am a good sysadmin. And if I'm not, is writing it here in this diary read mostly by people who'll never meet me going to have any impact on what, say, my co-workers think of me? Hah.

Imposter syndrome. I wish I could get over it.