Local goals reviewed

This weekend, I successfully

• emptied one inbox (zero!),
• finished my grading,
• straightened out business with former landlord,
• had two synchro practices and went running,
• cooked (a week's supply of daal and cookies),
• did laundry (necessary),
• gained another RSS subscriber (yo R.!),
• caught up on my desperate sleep debt from the end of last week, and
  
• ordered a new keyboard (but not the swanky one C. lent me).
  

It remains to

• empty the other inbox (41),
• read a paper before the M11 seminar,
• find my ballot,
• complete an assignment,
• achieve my weekly thesis-writing goals (particularly large this week),
• find the necessary receipts to be reimbursed, and
  
• follow-up on the many contacts I've made this month.

I could accomplish all these things tomorrow if I set aside the thesis-writing, but that strategy generalizes poorly. And if all I do is thesis-writing, then I won't accomplish any of the goals, plus I'll burn out all my mathematical neurons in one session. Moderation.


This post's theme quote reflects my puzzlement at some students' solutions:

On two occasions I have been asked, ‘Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?’
I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. -- Charles Babbage