I just spent oh three or four hours recoding one of my web pages at work. Originally written with Netscape 4.7, it was modified with Mozilla (and none to well due to its editor limitations) and I was modifying it again by hand when I looked at the code and thought "this is ugly!" Everywhere there were <font> tags, non-breaking spaces, excessive line breaks and haphazardly indented lines all leading up to one horrendous looking piece of html code.

After my makeover, not only is it a lot shorter (lots of redundancies and "empty links" removed) but it's, for a lack of a better word, beautiful. There's just something about nicely formatted code that makes you sit up and take notice -- appreciate the harmony and flow. It says "here's something that's both functional and aesthetic." It shows genuine care for the art of programming. It's just the programmer in me, but I think that there are few things better looking than a functional piece of code that's both efficient and readable...

Once again I got my Angband character killed. After I reset the scores this was my fourth character. The first two died quickly. The third got up to level 17 and dungeon level 14 before a Master Yeek killed him by summoning two groups of monsters while he was in the middle of the room with no place to run.

This last one was level 26 and in dungeon level 21, very well armed and armored. So well in fact that I became complacent. On seeing a room full of orcs (who woke up and started coming at him), I backed up down a tunnel, then as usual hit the move key and kept it down. It's fun to watch my character mow down the opposition quickly. Unfortunately this time he met a unique that was quite tougher than him and by the time I noticed and took my finger off of the key my character was dead. Oh well, that's what I get for being lazy.

It's a bit frustrating that you have to start all over if you die. I could cheat I suppose but that would be against the spirit of the game. This is my first time playing Angband, I played a little Moria years ago. It's a fun game for now and hopefully I won't lose interest before I kill Morgoth...

Speaking of Angband, I'm playing that game way too much because my wrists are starting to hurt after longer sessions. I take a 10 minute break to play Angband and then half an hour later I'm still playing, ignoring the pain. That way leads to very bad things for your hands. Like I usually say, you just have to stop for a day or two to give your wrists time to heal. People who get RSI are the ones who don't. You have to realize that not even work is that important, especially since if you get an RSI your work output will go way down...

The first phase of the Bush tax cut went into effect (or will go into effect real-soon-now). One percent for the highest tax brackets, what amounts to a few dollars a week for middle-income people, and nothing for the lower tax brackets. Yup, that's "compassionate conservatism" for you. Damn, he makes Republicans look bad. I can only hope that after his term he leaves the armed forces strengthened, the coast guard well funded, the FBI and CIA and NASA and the sciences with plenty of money (although it already looks like NASA and basic research are getting the shaft). Oh well, no government is going to do everything right because there are too many people to please (heck, one person is too many)...

Apparently, the problem with GenCon is that it's on a weekend when too many people want to do things. Last year it was Shannon's wedding. This year Donald has a wedding to go to and Dave Sweet has a family gathering. So now we don't have a camper and with Dave's precarious job position he wants to take as absolutely little vacation as possible. So we're thinking about driving to GenCon in a normal car (at least it's not a compact), 24 hours or more straight. The biggest problem I see is that you can't take that much luggage with a car full of people. I should look into renting a van instead of a camper, which Dave quoted at $1000. And there's some hint about visiting Billy afterwards and dropping off Dave's nephew at Oklahoma.

It will be nice to see Billy again, at least. Too bad he can't go to GenCon, but he's covering for a coworker who *is* going to GenCon. Dave is only going to be there for a couple of days. It's going to be hot and cramped and maybe not that comfortable. But I'm still looking forward to the drive there and back and being in Milwaukee for a few days.