The dithering of astrologers about how this was known already to ancient astronomers (sure, Ptolemy was pretty bright, I give him a lot of credit for a lot of things) and that the Western tradition is "really" tropical astronomy and is based on the positions of the equinoxes rather than the constellations, but, then, what's the friggin' relation between Aries (the constellation) and being the astrological sign Aries? Isn't it really just "1st sign after the equinox"? I'm not going to try and make sense of this obviously stupid pseudoscience. However, I do prefer Carl Sagan's method of treating astrology to some others'.

I will say one thing for it: at least it doesn't kill people, like anti-vaccination pseudoscience or "alternative medicine" or "home birth".

Training has been really spotty since the end of November. I'm down at least 10# in bodyweight as a result. I think things will be a bit better. I'm kind of half-considering signing up at the gym at the office (it just opened). I'd still go to the real gym for real training, but I think it would give me some more options when I'm short on time, especially if I switch to a four-day schedule with two upper body days and two lower body days - I could do the upper body days at work for sure.

I hope my textbook arrives before the homework is due. I want to do my homework. I ordered it on Monday, the homework is due on Wednesday.

Speaking of classes, both only have ~10 students. One is the continuation of one of the classes I took last time, one is the stochastic processes class. Only half the people continued on, it seems, which is odd, since the sequence is required for the degree and the second semester is apparently easier than the first. Seems I'm the only one with a background in measure theory in the stochastic class. I covered that in freshman year of undergrad, man. The way the prof is teaching it, it's not necessary, but it helps.

Chess: very rusty on tactics. I think I'll play a G60/5 against the computer tomorrow morning until the wifing unit is up. One thing to do, though, is to remember not to put it into tournament mode, since the computer never resigns and I'm not sure how strong the computer opposition will be. I don't want to have to deal with an annoying situation where the computer drops a piece on move 6 and I'm stuck playing a boring, but won, game for 2 hours. I want to be able to force it to quit or something and start a new game. There has to be a level where you can specify that the computer might drop a pawn and won't let you get away with anything that drops more than a pawn, but plays at a moderate positional level. I remember that every time I tried to tone it down to a "reasonable" level, I had games where the thing would just throw a piece at me. A "1900"-rated personality dropped a knight on move 6. And sometimes the 1400-rated personalities would play extremely accurate combinations. Anyway. Frustrating.

Speaking of which, very rusty on measure theory. Reading up on Caratheory's extension theorem, which is pretty heady to encounter as a freshman, I tell you what, but makes more sense now.

Great, somebody needs information I'm not completely sure I can get directly from a query and needs it by Wednesday, but I have a pile of other stuff to do by then. And we have Monday off. Fortunately, it's about, like 20 people, so the worst case is that I take an hour and look it all up manually. Actually, I might just take that approach in the first place, since I'd rather do that than spend two hours hitting the database with a hammer trying to get the right tables to join... Yeah, this got a little more complicated, they clarified they want data that is harder to find correctly, I'll just look them up by hand. It's 20 people.

Wifing Unit still looking for job-type things.

Which reminded me: Shakespeare got to get paid, son. I should be making more money.