(no subject)

[Kragen Sitaker]

An insurance inspector is coming to look at the apartment where
Beatrice and I live today; it's not clear why.  Perhaps our landlords
want to sell the place?

Today, I'm taking BART downtown to visit Morgan Kauffman, a
recently-independent book publisher that was acquired a couple of
years ago by Academic Press, a subsidiary of Harcourt.  They sent me a
check for checking a programming book for them a couple of years ago;
I just found the check while cleaning up my files, so I'm going there
to see if I can get the check reissued.

What a job cleaning up my files has been!  Over the last couple of
years I've accumulated a several-foot-thick stack of technical papers
I've printed out.  Cleaning up my files has mostly been a matter of
putting these in file folders, categorizing them, and putting them in
files so I can have quick access to them.  I think I need a document
management system.

After Dave Long FoRKed the URL, I've been reading Edsger Dijkstra's
recent EWD papers; I didn't realize he was still sending them out.

Morgan Kauffman was interesting.  It seems Harcourt just got bought by
Reed Elsevier, the monopolistic multinational intellectual-property
combine.  The editor I talked with (with whom I've corresponded for
some years) turned out to be frighteningly hip-looking and kind of
cute.  She assured me she'd let me know if there are books she could
use my services on.

My laptop screen hinges don't have much life left in them, I'm afraid.
The metal has become fatigued and will break soon.  I hope I can get
it repaired --- the alternative is buying another old laptop, and I
don't have a lot of spare cash right now.

Last night I installed four 13-watt compact fluorescent bulbs in the
ceiling light in the study.  The light is now so bright that it
brightens the study noticeably even in the daytime.  It fooled me into
thinking it was earlier than it was when I went to bed last night!

I managed to get the study clean and neat in time for the insurance
guy to come.  It took a lot of rushing around at the last minute.