Got my grades back. I got an A in both classes. No surprises there. It seems I got a 94 on one of the finals. I'm not sure whether that's more or less than I expected. I knew I did fairly well on it. I faxed in my stuff for tuition reimbursement from work immediately after getting the news. Unfortunately, I missed the cutoff for getting it on the next paycheck.

I find it somewhat amusing at times to listen to people who don't have any idea of how the internets work talking about net neutrality regulation and "Big Business vs Big Government" and letting the market sort it out. It's one thing to get into the complicated interplay between different data types and their requirements for transmission (see Google's definition of net neutrality, discussions of how best effort systems can, viz., suck for videos but work well for file transfer), but another completely to take the unsubtle approach of, "No government at all, let the corporations battle it out between themselves."

Which reminds me: libertarianism doesn't work.

Had more socializing with people last night. I inflicted my recommendation of the Boat Books on several people. I'm on Boat Book #19 right now: Bony has escaped from Elba. I've always been a bit disappointed in Napoleon for his return from exile. One kind of expects somebody who surrendered and abdicated to stay down for more than a year just on principle. I'm more disappointed in the Congress of Vienna for mucking things up so much that Napoleon could present a credible challenge less than a year from his defeat, too, but I suppose sending back prisoners of war and dismantling your own armies would have that effect.

I think it might be a good idea to learn how to play belote, given how popular it is internationally. How can one not like a game where one of the rules is, "On ne pisse pas sur le partenaire"?

You know what would be good on an e-reader or something? Good support for chess books. As in, having a board that works and plays through stuff in the book. I noticed that some of them have chess programs these days, which made me think of that. There are a lot of databases out there that have all the positions and stuff from a variety of books so you don't have to input them yourself or play them out on a board, but you still have the physical book you're working with while hacking away at the computer. It would be cool to have something integrated on an e-reader for ultimate convenience.