Brain Passion

I note well that most of my entries for the last two weeks have been about Jotto programming.

I'm realizing that I haven't felt since college such a combination of intellectual challenge and the passion to meet it. I'm finding it surprisingly rewarding to crack different parts of the project and then see the corresponding perl code fly off my fingers. It's serving as a reminder that I am Quite Bright, and that I haven't been using that faculty nearly as much as I would in my fullest and happiest life.

I'm going to see this through as far as the passion takes me, and then take a good look back at what I've learned as a result. Are there new ingredients I want to add to my calendar? Would I ultimately be happier spending the computing part of my work-week as a programmer rather than a sysadmin? Do I need to take a closer look at my passion for games and penchant for teaching them?

Update: I have completed a first draft of Evil Jotto. I haven't demonstrated yet that it outperforms the basic AI, but I did put in diagnostic code so I could see what it was doing once the wordlist got small enough, and it is indeed picking the most efficient guesses. Next steps will be to come up with an opening book of good starting words, and a less processor-intensive way of picking guess #2.

I'll post the answer to the anagram-frequency poll tomorrow. Anyone else want to guess first?

Health of my kitty

After being fine this weekend, Simon was all lethargic on Monday, only moving around to change sleeping locations. It was enough of a behavior change that it really set off my warning bells. I gave him a kitty treat and he wasn't even interested, which made me think he might not be eating. I wasn't able to tell right away because he has a food tower.

By Tuesday night I determined that he was barely eating or drinking, so I took off work and brought him to the vet today (Wed). Results: ear infection, probably unrelated. Gingivitis and a big ol' cavity, which are probably making it too painful for him to eat, hence the lethargy. The vet took blood and urine to rule out liver and kidney trouble, and if those are fine I'll be bringing him in for dental surgery tomorrow. Vet was really impressed by Simon's demeanor: "He's a great cat, he'll sit for anything!"

So, he's probably going to be okay, but it brought up mortality fears, and some guilty-pet-owner feelings. The same vet *did*, after all, tell me 3 years ago that Simon had a lot of tartar on his teeth and I should be brushing him regularly. I even came home with kitty toothpaste and brush, which I pitched during a purge just a month ago, on the realization that if I haven't used them for 3 years, I'm not going to. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if after all is said and done here, I'll have been convinced to brush his teeth regularly after all. SIGH.

I came home with 3 different kinds of wet food, formulated to be palatable to cats in various kinds of health trouble, antibiotics for the tooth infection, and ear drops. I opened the first can and he went right at it, so things are looking up.