I'm flipping through Terry Tao's draft of his measure theory book, I like its approach and might work through some things to remember what real analysis is like. I've only looked at the first chapter so far, though. I'm going to buy a copy of Royden because there's a new edition, which means the old edition I am used to is cheap.

Dr. Zoidberg is one of my favorite characters ever. I empathize. I feel like Zoidberg at work, except people like me and I don't quite smell as bad.

The wifing unit and I watched Ghostbusters last night because she had never seen it. She also has been sick, so she has not done much.

I'm not terribly productive at the moment. Or for the past couple weeks.

Do not like new gmail layout. Other layout was adequate. Unsure if new one is bad or if I am just grumpy.

Annoyed: I'm going to be at my parents' for Christmas and the church there hasn't posted the Christmas service schedule. They've sometimes had midnight services for Christmas, sometimes just doing it in the morning. I don't care either way, but I want to know so I can let other people know.

I read a little bit about the Argentinian megacolony. It's mildly spooky until you realize that the technical sense of "colony" is different from what one would usually expect. It essentially means the ants recognize each other and play nice. I think the mental model we have which makes it disconcerting is that it involves interconnecting tunnels or communication or something. Argentinian ants are apt to form megacolonies in this way because, unlike most other species of ant, they have a high tolerance for each other. With most other species, anthill A will attack the members of anthill B across the yard because they recognize that, although they're the same species, they're in different hills. Essentially. Exact details may vary. The Argentinian ants play cool.

The next two matches we're supposed to play in chess are against university teams, and it's been a struggle to schedule them because of the end of the semester. So we're bumping them all the January and seeing if we can get one of our January matches out of the way before Christmas. Should be good.