"What's the 465th digit of pi?" I was asked online today. 37 seconds later, I had the answer. Here's how this magic happened:

1. Open a browser
2. Google search for "1000 first digits pi"
3. Glance through the results and click on the 4th one (most likely seeming to contain the first 1000 digits, rather than just discussion about the digits).
4. Copy the first few lines of digits
5. Open a Python interpreter
6. x = """3[paste]"""
7. x = x.replace(" ", "").replace("\t", "").replace("\n", "")
8. x[464]

BAM! The information age is r0x3rz.

I have a new mission. A goal. A purpose to my existance. One of the most frightening things in the world is waking up to discover that George Clooney's head is growing out of your arm. One of the second most frightening things in the world is a Catspaw with a mission.

Before I describe this mission, you're going to need the right background music. I highly recommend: this. Go on, click, I can wait. Are you listening to it? Is it setting the proper mood? You're not listening, are you? You just mouse-overred the link and kinda chuckled. You're a jerk.

This is the Fields Institute. Founded in 1992, it is a center for mathematical research activity. It has little else particularly exciting about it except for one thing: it just so happens to be the building directly south of the Bahen building -- the main Computer Science building at UofT.

With me so far?

Getting into the Fields Institute isn't so easy: there's a receptionist at the door who wants all visitors to check-in. Once past the receptionist, most rooms are locked. Also, the community who hangs around the Fields Institute is relatively small, so newcomers would be noticed.

My mission, should I choose to accept it (I do), is to social engineer my way into the Fields Institute, social engineer my way into the large meeting room in the Fields Insitute, and stick a floor-to-ceiling picture of a stickcat against the windows, so that it's pointing and facing the Bahen building.

I'm doing this because of a conversation I was having flaps in which I joked it would be cool to have it done. On the bikeride home that night, it occurred to me that there's no reason why I can't do it.

So I MSNed the second best liar/social engineer I know, Lou, got him to agree to help me out with the scheme, and it was decided. Soon there'll be a floor-to-ceiling stickcat picture out the Fields Institute window.

More photos and stories forthcoming as intelligence is gathered.

There is a constant battle waging between the side of me who dislikes change, and the side of me who seeks to one day rule the universe. I can tell when my desire for stability starts winning and I'm becoming too comfortable: my stress levels decrease, life feels easy, and I'm not inclined to take any large risks. I start scheming fewer and fewer hours of the day. Intensity drops. I can go from day to day in cruise control mode.

Today I sat down with a large pad of paper, some blaring music in the background (the Descent II videogame soundtrack), and a cat on my lap, and decided to break the stability. When undergrad ends for me (in 83 weeks), I plan on having more than enough ammo to bust my way into anywhere I want to jump next -- whether it's grad school, industry, or seed planting. (Weather girl is also a good option. I should start taking lessons from my Weather Pixie. "There's a cold front coming in from the north. Chance of rain." What do you think?)

I reminded myself a few times that undergrad is a sandbox: like high school and elementary school before it, it's just a practice run. Now's the time to try jumping and see exactly how far I can get before I fall. Once I convinced myself of that, stability seemed silly.

Back into scheming, conquering, ruling mode. Dance, little puppets, dance. Mwahahahahahahaha.

This song answers that question. Thanks to Mud for sending it to me, and Ender for introducing it to her. Heehee.

Seven feet tall, in traditional overlord pose, looms a giant Stickcat who now watches over the Bahen Centre. Some may feel comforted by its Big Brother stare, while others should flee in terror from its ever-watching gaze. As for me? I stood with both hands on my hips, a grin on my face, and admired its glory while I danced in the thrill of another mission well done.

Today I gave a lecture to an ECE class at Ryerson. It was a potpourri of Catsy: MOOs, computer security, internet censorship, surveillance, women in CS, hacking, cracking, google, stalking, all my favourite media-whoreable topics.

What really impressed me about the students I spoke to was how willing they were to try things. If you stick your average UofT CS student infront of an abstract problem, they freak out until you give them a very clearly defined problem space with very clearly defined goals. These students were willing to poke at things over and over until they got them working. They were actually willing to explore to find solutions. This is absolutely unheard of at UofT CS. It turns out we just need more Ryerson ECE students.

Somehow we got onto the topic of my mission for this evening and the reactions were awesome. Raised cynical eyebrows and impressed grins. Doubt and amusement crossing paths to create very genuine reactions.

"Hacking is hacking", I shrugged, while we discussed it. "Not cracking, but hacking -- wanting to play with the insides of a system and see exactly how it works and what you can do with it -- it's the same to me whether it's a computer system or a social system or a physical system. Breaking code or social engineering my way into getting a huge stickcat in a window: they have a whole lot in common. You just don't hear about it much because most computer hackers are too antisocial to be social engineers, and most social engineers are too busy ruling the world to be computer hackers."

I got out of the Bahen elevator at 4:25 and Lou was already walking towards me. We exchanged only a few words, most of this would have to be improv, and set out to complete our goal. The details of how we actually accomplished this will forever be a secret. But we agree that the most challenging moment during our adventure is a tie between running from the robot guard dogs and trying to fool the retina scans on the doors. The car chase scene was too short to be a major hurdle, though surviving the explosion was quite a feat.

One week prior. Notice the lack of stickcat. :)	This evening. w00t!

It doesn't matter how long the stickcat stays up there tomorrow before someone sees it and takes it down. What mattered was the thrill of the hunt and the delight of success. I'm a happy Catsy.

"The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, an awesome chix0r and a stupid CS female who thinks she can code but doesn't deserve to be in the program, are walking down the street....." For some reason this incomplete joke I invented makes me laugh, even though it's so wrong.

Anyway, here are some of the reasons why I think that Santa Claus would be an awesome software developer manager:

• Delivers on time.
• Makes a list and checks it twice. (Bugtracking software?)
• Manages a large group of little elves. (s/elves/coders/)
• Arranges meetings with the customer to ensure the delivered product is what the client wants. (Sittin' on Santa's knee at the mall.)
• Problem solving skills during time crunch. (Rudolph assigned to lead sleigh.)
• Shields workers from clients. (North Pole is invisible.)
• Calm, jolly appearance.

Oh, and in case you were wondering how the joke ended:
"The stupid CS female picked up the $20 because all the rest were imaginary." You can fill in the rest.

Last night I turned on the Kenya flash video and then somehow fell asleep with my laptop next to me. I wasn't supposed to fall asleep, I had work to do. I woke up ten hours later, and it was still quietly playing. Listen to the song for about ten minutes and you'll only begin to comprehend what it's like to have it playing for ten hours. It's a good thing I wasn't weird to begin with...

I feel like I'm going to be telling this story to a psychologist one day.

If you're still visiting your blogs by hand, you're either:

1. Someone who reads few blogs. Let me know when you reach the 21st century.
2. Someone who requires approximately ten hours each morning to visit them all and check for new entries.
3. A liar.

Why would you still read them by hand? All the cool kids use an RSS aggregator of some kind to check their favourite blogs for recent updates. Life would be very, very difficult without an aggregator, since I tend to read about 40 blogs religiously. (Plus google news, but fortunately only the right hand side of news.google.ca ever has anything interesting, so it's easy to scroll through quickly.)

Without further ado (well, perhaps with a little bit more ado), here's most of what my RSS aggregator contains, divided into happy little categories.

Feel free to let me know if I'm missing anything important. I'll feel free to call you names and ruin your self esteem for making such an ignorant suggestion.

Friends

• Catspaw (yes, I do read myself)
• Daedalus
• Dr J
• Ender
• fLufFy
• Graeme
• Harald
• Hildegarde
• Hippo
• Jon
• jrrmz
• Lao
• Rappie
• Salvo

Comics/Flash

• Ctrl Alt Del - Videogames, evil, and nerdity with classics such as this one.
• Homestar Runner - Because life without Strong Bad just isn't as funny.
• MegaTokyo - Required reading for the even casually 1337. And some of my favourite comic strips of all time.
• Penny Arcade - More videogames and nerdity; sometimes frightening true.

Geekery - Smart people

• Lawrence Lessig - Lawyer dude who says wiser things about FLOSS than I.
• Ted Leung - Open Source, Java, Python, and OSX.
• metac0m - Internet Censorship Explorer that positively rocks.
• Bruce Schneier - Cyptography n1nj4 who stood in line next to metac0m at HOPE. But I'm not jealous...
• Joel Spolsky - I'm still not sure why this isn't required reading for a Software Engineering degree.
• Jon Udell - The genius who brought us Practical Internet Groupware. Remember the pic of him on Rendezvous with me?

Geekery - Python, OSX and geek news

• David Ascher - Of Python Software Foundation, Active State, Learning Python fame.
• Daily Python URL - Links to the best entries from a large number of Python-related blogs.
• PyWebOff - I soooo need to get back ontop of this.
• Mac OSX hints - Title says it all.
• 43 Folders - OSX hints, discussion, tools, etc.
• Boing Boing - A nice mixture of geekery and politics.
• Slashdot - I only read it so that when people say "hey, did you see that article on slashdot that --", I can reply "yes" and end the conversation as quickly as possible.

Other

• Daily WTF - Examples of painfully poor code. Always good for a chuckle.
• [daily dose of imagery] - Daily photos posted, mostly ones taken around Toronto.
• FTrain - Witty and often wise remarks by Paul Ford.
• ThinkGeek - Learn about the coolest gadgets, t-shirts, blankets and more. "I read your email" came from here.
• Pyre SVN log - An RSS feed for a combined group of Subversion logs has to be the hottest thing...well, ever...

Some mornings I'm relatively cheerful when I wake up [1], but on average there's approximately an hour [2] of hatred and ranting that occurs before I'm willing to even consider the remote possibility that there's even a glimmer of anything positive in the universe.

This is made even worse when it's cold outside.

So I'm on my bike. I'm wearing the usual (jeans, t-shirt, hooded unzipped sweatshirt, running shoes that are about to rip apart in approximately seventeen places, biking gloves) and a bunch of extras because it's cold out: jacket, winter gloves over the biking gloves, warm socks, anger.

I get to a stop sign at this intersection where it's really hard to see if cars are coming. More than once it's looked completely clear and only halfway into the road I've noticed a car zooming towards me. So I sorta lean out into the intersection a little to try to see more clearly. There are lots of cars in both directions, so I have to wait. Meanwhile, a car pulls up beside me. It leans its way out too, trying to see into the intersection, and we're both waiting.

A few seconds pass, and the driver rolls down his passenger window and leans out. "Excuse me, could you lean back so I can see the intersection?"

Let me recap: the guy in his nice warm car is asking if I can move so that he can see the intersection that we are both trying to cross. If I hadn't been cold, I would have rolled my eyes and ignored him. However, I was cold.

"Oh I'm sorry!", I said, rolling my bike back a few feet. "I hadn't realized that with this huge jacket on in the freezing cold wind that I might be blocking you while you're in such a rush to get from your nice warm car with heating to the next indoor building you'll be visiting."

He rolled up the window (understandably; it was cold out there) and ignored me.

At least my grumbling kept me warm for the rest of the trip.

---

[1]: Not all of my stories are true......this one isn't.
[2]: More precisely, the exact amount of time it takes between my alarm going off and when I grab a coffee upon arriving on campus.

This is what they say it is.
But this is what we all know it is.

I think that says it all.

Some entries have no content: paragraphs and paragraphs of nothing but white noise to fill the page. Some entries are stuffed with content, but it can't always be said out loud. So sometimes the short entries have the most content behind them. This is one of those.

Repeat to self: I can always go be a seed planter, I can always go be a seed planter, ....

2) Jack puts either a black marble or a white marble in a bag and hands it to Sally. Sally puts a white marble in the bag. If Sally then pulls out a white marble, what is the probability that a white marble remains in the bag?

This question was on my stats midterm yesterday. Almost everyone wrote 3/4 and moved on.

But in the back of my head, nagging me loudly like the little voice that tells me to stop drinking so much coffee, I couldn't help but remember a paragraph from the highly recommended novel "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time":

The game show host shows you three doors. He says that there is a car behind one of the doors and there are goats behind the other two doors. He asks you to pick a door. You pick a door but the door is not opened. Then he game show host opens on eof the doors you didn't pick to show a goat. Then he says you have one final chance to change your mind before the doors are opened and you get a car or a goat. So he asks you if you want to change your mind and pick the other unopened door instead. What should you do?

Most people think there's a 50-50 chance because there's an equal chance that the car is behind either door, but the answer is actually to always switch doors. (For an excellent description of why, see the novel.) The author continues...

This shows that intuition can sometimes get things wrong. And intuition is what people use in life to make decisions. But logic can help you work out the right answer.

Once this passage from the novel occurred to me, I decided to rethink the problem.

Later, miles (also in my class) asked me about the question from our midterm:

Catspaw (@play) says: (12:15:28 AM)
your answer?

miles says: (12:15:29 AM)
2/3?

Catspaw (@play) says: (12:15:32 AM)
yep. it was a trick question.

Catspaw (@play) says: (12:15:46 AM)
most people got 3/4

miles says: (12:15:48 AM)
It reminded me of the Curious incident.

Catspaw (@play) says: (12:15:52 AM)
me too!

miles says: (12:15:55 AM)
I had 3/4 initially.

miles says: (12:16:44 AM)
Finally! Fiction does some good.

It is an odd world where one's grade filter in a statistics class is based on one's literary experiences. Either way, thanks to Christopher Boone (and Mark Haddon) for explaining the problem well enough to help both miles and I out.

Midterm season has arrived. This weekend, fondly dubbed "midterm weekend", has involved a whole lot of not-moving-very-much except for occasional trips to the fridge. Two assignments, two midterms, a rather large programming task, and a whole lot of trying to convince myself not to freak out.

Blaring over-dramatic music, occasionally reading a few pages from a good book, some recent DVD purchases (South Park seasons 3-4, Fahrenheit 9/11, Super Size Me, etc.), and a whole lot of kickass food, has been all that's kept me even moderately sane. ("That fact is up for debate." Ha ha. Yes, we all think you're a comedian.)

As such, I have neither witty nor insightful comments to make this weekend. Therefore, all I'll be able to provide you with is some second-hand amusement. Here's a funny video (link from Ellen's Mom). And if that doesn't cut it, you can just watch Lard Man on repeat.

What is context switching and how does it apply to my life?
By Cats-"you can explain anything with metaphors"-paw.

Context switching is a term that comes up a lot in the following situations:

• Any book on Operating Systems, parallel programming, or technical-words-to-throw-around like "XSLT" and "database-driven".
• Operating Systems class. If you took the same O/S class as me, chances are that it was used out of context.
• Trying to convince workpeople that no, if you add 15,000 more threads to your application, it won't speed everything up. (This really happened.)
• This entry.

To explain what context switching means, let me put on my "condescending hat" (also known as the "teacher hat") and tell you all a little story.

Inside every computer is a little man named Jim. Jim's job is to run the programs on your computer. He's given a really big calculator (which makes him fall prey to the recursive-homunculus argument), a huge bottle of coke, and a pair of sneakers that lets him run around the inside of your computer really, really quickly.

Now let's say that you're playing Tetris and simultaneously listening to music from your computer. There's only one Jim in your computer, so how is he simultaneously going to make the blocks fall and play the music for you? Well, what Jim does is that he runs around really quickly and does both for very short intervals of time. He plays a very short note of music, and then runs over to the Tetris game and makes the block fall a little bit, and then runs back to the music and plays a bit more of the song, etc. And because Tetris is kind of slow (compared to Jim), he can spend almost an entire second playing music before he has to run back to move the Tetris block down a little bit.

Because he runs so fast, we don't notice the starts and stops, but they're there. Every time Jim switches activities, we call this a "context switch" because he's switching activity contexts.

Now, what if instead of just playing Tetris and listening to music, you were playing Tetris, listening to music, downloading the latest episode of the Ellen show, having your RSS aggregator check all its feeds, retrieving new e-mail, checking with the MSN server to see if there are any new incoming messages, running Norton anti-virus, letting five trojans have their way with your machine, and sending the solutions to your numerical methods homework to a friend over iChat? Poor Jim is going to have a lot of running to do. In fact, he's going to be doing more running than actually getting things done.

Still with me?

Context switching is great because Jim juggle multiple tasks, except for that time that Jim has to spend running around and remembering what he was doing each time he gets to the next activity.

The exact same advantages and disadvantages exist when you replace "Jim" with "Catsy", "playing Tetris" with "going to classes", "listening to music" with "working", etc. The advantage is that I get to do a gabillion (which is, mathematically speaking, slightly more than a bazillion) activities that most undergrads can only do one or two of, but the disadvantage is that I'm starting to find that the context switching cost is rapidly increasing.

Teaching my brain to context switch faster has been my goal over the past few weeks, and though I can tell that I'm getting better at it (which is kinda scary), I still need a few minutes to get into "the zone" (insert quotesy fingers here) whenever I start something new. I counted today that the number of major context switches was 16 so far. At a few minutes each, I'm losing an hour to an hour and a half each day to just trying to reorient myself.

I think what Jim needs is an assistant-Jim who can drive a little golf cart that Jim can ride in the back of, while assistant-Jim briefs him on what the next activity is going to entail. Assistant-Jim would also sometimes help with the mundane tasks (like lowering a Tetris block), and would feed Jim during the context switches. He would be allowed to wear a t-shirt that says "Team Jim".

I'm now accepting job applications.

Yesterday at lunch, Ellen's Mom mentioned that she doesn't really "get" personal diary blogs. Greg replied, in his blog, that he uses his mostly to keep himself honest. I replied that I read friends' personal blogs to keep track of their life. I could tell you all about how Ender and Daedalus have been doing, even though I chat with them maybe twice in a year. And I know that Rappie had ants crawling in his Raisin Bran even though he's a bazillion miles away.

But for some reason, insanecats feels different to me. I know that doesn't make sense -- it's a blog, just like all the others (though Mud doesn't like it when I call it that) -- but it just feels different for some reason.

So this morning, while sitting in 336, I started asking a few insanecatsers who were on IM at the time: What makes insanecats different from other blogs?

Here are their [anonymized] replies.

Your flash videos are hilarious.

Not a bad form-letter response. Except for one problem....I haven't put any of my flash videos online for more than a year, dumbass! Have you just been coasting for the past year? Desperately hoping that maybe you'll wake up tomorrow and a flash video will be posted? Sorta why I keep watching the Simpsons: maybe this one will be funny like the old ones! It never is.

Weird shit always happens to you.

I'm sure "weird shit" happens to other people too. If you toss a coin, it has an equal chance of landing heads or tails. So it's not odd that it would land heads eighty times in a row. Therefore, it's not odd that all the weird shit would happen to me. </Rosencrantz> Besides, this way the movie of my life will be more exciting.

It's not different, I guess. I like to hear what you're up to.

It's sweet that you care.

You use it to entertain your readers, not whine about your life.

That's not entirely true. I do whine about some things. Like when a TA screws me over (see entries in 2001/2002), I'm perfectly happy to rant about it for several entries in a row. I just don't go into any of that wussy touchy-feely, "today I am sad" or relationshipy crap. But there is whining: make no mistake.

This is going to become a historical document one day, and I'm hoping my comments will make it into the footnotes.

I'm sorry. You seem to be under the incorrect impression that anyone cares about you.

Squeeeeeeeee!

.........I have no idea what that means.

The URL isn't insanecats.livejournal.com.

Heehee. I actually made an anti-livejournal comment at the lunch in question. Sorry to all LJers.

It's different from other blogs because it is inherently about keeping a readership happy and entertained, with the implicit function of hiding any truly personal reflective content behind a happy-go-lucky facade.

Sssshhhhhhhhh, don't give it all away! ;)

So there you go. A few opinions about what makes insanecats different. I notice that "because you're cooler than the rest of the human race" was never mentioned. I assume that's because it was just too self-evident to bother mentioning...

You don't need a Ninj4 sweatshirt to become a Net Ninja (though it helps). All you need to do is follow these simple steps:

How to become a Net Ninj4 in just 10 steps.

By Wednesday evening, I came to a gradual acceptance that mediocrity should be my realistic goal for the Numerical Methods midterm on Friday morning. Upon accepting my fate, I gradually came to realize that if I aimed for doing decently on the midterm, instead of fabulously, that I had a chance of actually accomplishing my aim, rather than failing miserably. The healing can't begin until you admit that you have a problem. Numerical methods was going to be a problem.

So you're taking a course and you don't understand the content. How do you ensure that you get a solid B- and not a nice, happy D-? You have to think like an instructor. Remember that the evaluation scheme works like this:

Students who fail: didn't understand squat.
Students who get a D: know what course they're sitting in and how to write long paragraphs about nothing to do with the course content. (I like doing this too.)
Students who get a C: understood some of the very basic concepts but can't apply any of them.
Students who get a B: have a clear idea of what the important major concepts are, but screw something up when trying to apply them.
Students who get an A: have a clear idea of what the major and minor concepts are, and sometimes make small errors.
Students who get an A+: totally get this shit.

If you want a solid B-, you need to be able to list off the Things You Should Know. You don't need to be able to use them or even understand them, just so long as you can show that you know all of the Things You Should Know. Fortunately, when you're allowed a one-sided cheat sheet and you can handwrite in 3pt font, you just need to write down the Things You Should Know and then find some way to squeeze them all into your midterm answers somewhere.

At least...that's my theory. It worked with Calculus! and Linear Algebra, let's see if it works for Numerical Methods. It'll be two weeks before we're getting the results back of the crap I wrote this morning.

This story happened almost two weeks ago now, but I've been saving it for a time closer to the elections. For those of you who don't know, I had the fortune/misfortune of being born in California while my parents were there for a bite into the silicon valley action in the early 80s. Everyone else in my family is from Canada so I've inherited their Canadian citizenship, making me one of those happy little American-Canadian dual citizens. Up until this month, I've thoroughly ignored my American citizenship, but with the upcoming elections, it occurred to me that I should probably look into how I can vote.

Before I could do so, I had to visit the American consulate to confirm myself as an "active adult American citizen". It took me two tries to just get into the consulate, but finally I was able to speak to someone about this.

He looked through my Canadian passport and at my birth certificate and started typing a lot of things onto his computer. Possibly looking up to see whether I was a wanted felon or an escaped convict or Osama Bin Laden. Then the questions began.

Confirming me as an "active adult American citizen" was a procedure kind of like ripping out my morals and then stomping on them, burning them, and throwing the ashes out the window.

First of all, he was upset about the fact that I'd worked for the Canadian government before ("Sec. 349 (a) (4) of the Nationality Act says that this subjects you to a loss of American citizenship") until I convinced him that I had been a minor (sixteen) at the time and had not done so with the intention to relinquish U.S. citizenship.

The next thing that pissed him off was the fact that I had been to the States several times in the past few years and had used a Canadian passport each time. "They didn't stop you? Dual citizens may not enter the U.S. as a Canadian. They must enter as Americans. This is certainly not allowed, and it most certainly won't be permitted once you're registered as an active adult American citizen." Apparently it has now become my duty to get an American passport as soon as possible. Watch how fast I run.

And then I had to listen to him read out a list of "liberties" (read: lack thereof) that I was about to agree to. My favourite of these included being registered for the military draft lottery if applicable. "It's not applicable to you, because you're female," he pointed out, "however if the laws change, you will be subject to this change." Oh good. Join the US army. Can't wait. Then there was a list of things I could do to lose my U.S. citizenship. And finally we got to the good stuff.

"You need to pledge allegiance to the U.S."
"I have to?"
"Yes."
"I don't just inherit the voting right from birth but can be non-allegiant to the States?"
"No. 'Non-allegiance' is treason and you can be charged for that."
"There's no middle ground, huh?"
"Do you not want to pledge allegiance?"

I didn't. But on the other hand I did want to vote. And lying had never stopped me before. Fortunately, I didn't have to put a hand on my heart and recite the pledge ("Ipledgeallegiancetotheflagoftheunitedstatesofamerica *gasp* andtotherepublicforwhichitstands *gasp* onenationundergod *gasp* indivisiblewithlibertyandjusticefornone...err, all."), he just gave me a form that I had to sign.

I read through it. Twice. I disagreed with almost everything on it. I silently wished that I'd arrived very drunk so that I could later claim that I hadn't been of right mind. Then it occurred to me that I could probably get more than enough witnesses to prove that I was insane already. The thought made me feel a little better.

I signed and he pulled the paper away. Entered something into the computer. Held out his hand. "Congratulations, you are now a registered US voter and an active adult American citizen." I shook his hand but the whole process felt slimy.

My one little tiny vote in the state of California has been cast. It cost me an hour of my life and the permanent feeling that I officially belong to an institution of intolerant filth. And no amount of Lady Macbeth scrubbing is going to get that out.

On the bright side, I can now be charged with US treason. And that's something worth gloating about.

It is a sad year when Catsy is too busy working to celebrate her second-favourite [1] holiday. Fortunately, there's nothing that a little store-bought candy [2] and background TV [3] can't fix.

For those of you who weren't work-bound, how did you spend your Hallowe'en?

---

[1]: April Fools Day is number one. Duh.
[2]: As in years past, I ate too much candy and feel simultaneously hyper and sick. Isn't Hallowe'en great? ;)
[3]: After several years of looking upon the show with scorn and mockery, I decided to give Buffy a try. I admit it. I was wrong. Now leave me alone so I can keep watching.