07:50:53 Monday February 09 2004
I am back mostly. My packet sniffer did not quite come out as I would have desired. I am highly disappointed. It came very close to having filters and working properly. However at the last minute I got caught up in a big parsing mess that I never properly resolved. The frustrating bit is that the difficult filtering stuff underneath at least mostly works, but the grader will never know that because it will crash on parsing. I wouldn't feel so badly if I hadn't implemented all the filtering stuff. However having spent all that time working on it and now getting no credit for it just makes me frustrated that I didn't spend a few extra hours in the previous days to get the parser working. It probably would have taken less than four hours. <sigh> Just disappointed in myself I suppose.

I took the day off today. I sat around and played risk (Sara did quite well for her first time playing), did laundry, played Metroid Prime, read the most recent Transmetropolitan and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I also sat around and talked with John which is something that I haven't done in a while. His confidence has improved greatly ever since he got a cause.

I think having a cause is important at our age. John is coming to it a little late, but it is still good for him. To me it seems that a cause is a more adult way to identify yourself. As we grow older I think that we will start to identify less and less with the movies, music, books, and art we hold so dear now and more with our role in society. Causes are the intermediate step. We would like to believe that we can identify with the type of person we are. Supporting a cause is a way of showing others one aspect of the kind of person you are. If you support enough of the right causes others will start to get a better picture of who you are like a scatter diagram. However, nearly everyone falls into the trap of being a "banker" or a "programmer" or whatever. Very few people introduce themselves as environmentalists at cocktail parties. Although it would be nice if we could all list the things we believe in when we meet new people it isn't practical. The things we believe in are often divisive and no one has enough time to learn everyone's take on everything. A first reaction to all this might be that I am some idealist saying that everyone is going to "sell out" but that isn't so. I think it is good that we take on simple roles and identify that way. The bottom line, and something that I think is wonderful about humanity is that we are each amazingly complex creatures. People change. They have amazing, odd, and often contradictory beliefs. To paraphrase Angela: "People are always telling you to be yourself as if yourself is this definite thing like a toaster." It is okay to be a banker because most of us spend our whole lives trying to figure out who we are. Our chances of explaining that to others is practically nil.