Pensieve

It was with some amusement that I read J.K. Rowling's description of the magic "pensieve" in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Its owner, Prof. Dumbledore, used it it store thoughts and ideas he had no immediate use for, so that he might later retrieve and peruse them. It also connected related thoughts to one another, including thoughts that might not have been connected when he initially and separately input them.

This is more or less exactly the sort of thing I'd like with BrainDump, and I think it'd be fun to pull-quote one particularly descriptive sentence from the story, for display in a README or an About box. And bring down the hounds of DMCA, aaaaaagh

My UI won't be as sexy, though... you'll actually have to type in your thoughts, rather than transfer them directly from your forehead, and you'll also need to create the connections yourself. I'll put that other stuff off until version 2.0.

Fool

For a while I have felt like, from a financial perspective, my life has resembled the latter stages of a CRPG where the in-game economy breaks down because you have far too much money, and earning money to buy things ceases to become a challenge. This is not to say I'm filthy rich, but the fact is that I don't spend money on anyone but myself (not counting small loans and donations here and there to friends and allied causes), and my spending on myself is pretty minimal; I choose to live simply (if a bit messily), because my hobbies and personal projects don't require a lot of money. Oh, I could blow my bank account on stupid things if I wanted (does The Sharper Image still exist?), but I don't, and so I am left with a hideously bloated checking account and nothing else, because I have no clue what else I can do with my money. This makes me uncomfortable.

So: I have started to poke around The Motley Fool, which seems in some ways to be the O'Reilly of financial information. I've known about them mostly through the delightful NPR program Marketplace, which I've listened to for years, more for entertainment than education. But reading the start of their intro to banking article humbles me: Yes! I am stupid about all this stuff! Just as I suspected!

Anyway, it's something new to do, and it may end up being good for me. I wonder what will happen next.

Give me a lollipop

Perhaps spurred by my kindling interest in financial cluedness, I just now finally chose a primary care physician (which is to say, I said "sure" at the first name read to me from the "doctors at the Longwood campus who are taking new patients" list) and scheduled an appointment for a physical. This will be my first non-emergency doctor visit in my adult life. Hope to make a habit of it.

Next, dentist. mrf