cigarette principle - noun phrase - The phenomenon in which, if you want something to happen sooner, you should do something that will immediately inconvenience you during the act of that something occurring.  Comes originally from the act of making a public transit bus arrive faster by lighting up a cigarette, which would of course cause you to ditch the smoke, dig out your bus pass or change, board and pay for the ride.  Generalizes effectively.

h/t: Mom

You've already read my opinion of the 2016 election's outcome so I'll not subject you to it again. However, I would like to talk about some weird stuff I (we, really) kept noticing on Twitter in the days and weeks leading up to Election Day.

As I've often spoken of in the past, a nontrivial portion of my Exocortex is tasked with monitoring global activity on Twitter by hooking into the back-end API service and pulling raw data out to analyze. Those agents fire on a stagged schedule, anywhere from every 30 minutes to every two hours; a couple of …

Still here. Still going. Getting ready for HOPE XI and trying to get everything buttoned up and bolted down at work before flying to the other coast for same. That all hell appears to still be breaking loose all over the world isn't helping matters any; I'm certainly not sleeping all that well, consequently.

Rehearsal of my talk for HOPE started today. I really suck right now and need to get this one banged out before I present. At least I've finally stopped writing and rewriting the slides and settled on the text.

This appears to be the week that …

I'm writing this update from Lyssa's parents' house once again - the holiday is here once again (however you happen to celebrate it), and this year we've gone back to visit our families. We left around 1200 EST5EDT yesterday in an attempt to beat the traffic rush headed to points north, west, east, and everywhere but the southern half of the compass rose. Traffic, weather, and being worn out from staying up far too late the night before being what they are, we pulled in around 1730 EST5EDT, a respectable timetable for leaving at noon.

The fairest thing you can say …

Lyssa and I are home from the Ferrett's Doctor Who weekend marathon, having left at 0900 EST/EDT this morning to make it home around 1530 EST/EDT. It's a six hour drive from DC to Cleveland no matter which way you're going, and I'm a little worn out from all the driving, but still we had a good time. We'd started off by watching An Unearthly Child from the beginning collection. It's black and white. The acting's a little dodgy, and not just because it was the first episode ever. Yet, it started it all..

Bit of trivia for …