Still no music at work today -- my headphones continue to reside in my going-to-Oklahoma backpack. Unfortunate, as I was in the mood to listen to the Levellers while attempting (still) to put the finishing touches on the search tool.

On the cheerful side of things, they've finally figured out what I'm going to be working on, so as soon as I'm done with this I can move on to new and exciting (and terrifying) projects. I'm about to get many screens of my own, and with them a bunch of deadlines. In some ways being a programmer is more nerve-wracking than being a sysadmin ever was. At least as a sysadmin I got to be in crisis mode whenever I was under a lot of pressure. Here the only pressure is me, knowing I need to produce something every day, and that we can't meet our release dates if I don't do my share. More satisfying in many ways, but definitely higher stress.

Except, of course, that the stress doesn't stay with me. I used to come home from work every day with my neck & shoulders tied into solid knots that no amount of dedicated massaging would remove. Now all the tension is transient -- however knotted I get during the day (and it varies based on how much of an imposter I feel like) it's all gone by the time I get home, or shortly thereafter.

I'm reading A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin) and enjoying it much more than I expected to. So far I've noticed that Catelyn really needs to be shaken until she gets a clue, that the Lannisters are the Woodevilles, and that Ned Stark (if he is clever) is going to end up in Richard III's position of having to remove a too-young kid from power (Joffrey) so that the living family of the kid (Lannisters) don't use him to run the kingdom. All this, and only on page 350! It's interesting to read high fantasy modelled on history; it ends up making me want to read more of the history itself.

What else? Jon Snow seems set up to be the most sympathetic character, in an odd way -- but I'm not sure how to pinpoint it. Maybe because he's in some ways the outsider (not culturally, but emotionally as a bastard son), and thus watches more than he acts? I'm not sure.

Jim got home early, to my great delight -- he showed up about two minutes after I got done with dinner. Trip and I ended up going to Thai City, as Su Hong was closed; it was good food, but I think Thai is more interesting with more people, as that allows me to eat a little bit of a lot of yummy things. Anyway, Jim was able to take an earlier flight out of LA (he was flying back from Chicago via Phoenix and then LA -- Southwest is cheap, but not exactly direct), so he got home early, and we had many hours to discuss our respective weekends in.

Plus the waterbed is assembled, filled, and heated! Now all we need is to make it up properly, and we can start sleeping in it.