Well, it had to happen. And it almost made it all the way. I finished off my second, and last, crossword puzzle calendar. And forget about trying these bizarre Brit puzzles. It goes along these lines: 8 letters: "McWhirter was one to Fripton, and don't be left at Finsbury." And of course, that has to be Chiswell! Where have you gone Will Shortz?

I finished The Life Of Pi this morning. It's a tough book. It looks and starts off rather lightly and pleasant. It changes. Boy, does it change. And in the end, you're left with some doubt if what happened is what happened. Or not. He used a couple of plot devices that weren't easy to understand until you were about a third of the way through the book. And then you realise he had another one close to the end. Pi can be a bit annoying at times, and his fascination with certain details are less than compelling, but in all you're glad you went along for the ride. And you'll really like his friend Richard Parker. Now it's on to Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World.

I'm not quite in the home stretch on my project, but I've definitely hit the final turn. My biggest problem is crunching the data. Excel is a pig (Who's surprised? Raise your hands). I just did a sort of 14,000 records and it took nearly 40 minutes. I actually thought it crashed, but I was just ticked and went back to working on the report in Word. And it magically finished. Worthless. I can do a sort of 100,000 records in FileMaker and it takes less than 15 seconds. But I need Excel to add formulae. And I was taken aback when I did the math yesterday. I've got more than 100K records, with 30 to 40 fields. That means I've got 3 million data points. I cut it back to just the 10 or 12 most basic fields, so we're only talking 1 million, now. Phew! That's a relief.

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So I was sitting around last weekend trying to think of something to do. I got hold of John and suggested we tie a squirrel to a fishing pole and tease the local dogs. He rightly pointed out that not only was it cruel, but there are very few squirrels in this town and fewer stray dogs, so not worth the effort. He suggested we go to the National Theatre to see Koyaanisqatsi on the plaza. Sort of a London Drive-In. Since it is an "art" film, we stopped on the way to pick up the requisite cultural goods (more kingers and Doritos^®). The film was quite good. It's part of a film triptic (the QATSI trilogy) that is "an apocalyptic vision of the collision of two different worlds -- urban life and technology versus the environment." The music was Philip Glass.

Glass' sound all but overpowered the images at times. But when they worked together they worked very well. Maybe it's the times I grew up, but all these "threatening" technologies I found very exciting. The images of Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, massive rivers, clouds, etc. are all great, but I really liked the giant mining trucks as big as office buildings, the fighter jets screaming by at a zillion miles an hour, Hoover Dam, even the hydrogen bomb tests. Before you get all freaky I know there's no good use for a hydrogen bomb, but it's still an amazing technology that can create a fireball hundreds of times hotter than the surface of the Sun. On the other hand the filmmaker claims that it's supposed to be about whatever the viewer thinks it's about, so I guess he could be right. But I think he's just trying to be inscrutable. Or a self-important artsy jerk.

And I'm just going to work and doing my project. I'm actually writing the dissertation by now. I'm up to about 25 pages and I haven't even done any of the data results or conclusion write up. I'm limited to forty. But I can't get the damn table of contents to compile correctly. Stinking Word.

Started another book, too. I'm reading The Life Of Pi. Though I think that's pronounced "pea," since his name is Piscine, as in la maison feesh. Last week I was reading Notes From A Small Island on the way in while it was absolutely pouring out. I had just started the chapter that begins talking about the news clipping Bryson always carries with the weather report, "Outlook: Dry and Warm, but cooler with some rain." Funny enough. I got to the office around 10 - I was smart enough to actually take my umbrella. At about 1 O'clock I was looking to close the shade because the Sun was blinding me. I then remembered the clipping. Amazing but true. This morning the Sun was shining, the sky was mostly blue except for a couple clouds in the distance - and it was misting? I stil haven't figured that one out.

Oh. Speaking of hydrogen bombs... There was a piece on Weekend Edition Sunday about Tom Dowd, the producer of records by Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane, and Cream, among others (anybody but Gib: who plays the guitar duet with Clapton on "Layla?"). What's that got to do with the hydrogen bomb? Well, he was a bit of a genius as a young man, and ended up working on the Manhattan Project at Columbia. When the war was over he enrolled to get his physics degree there, but they were teaching all the old stuff he already knew was no longer "true," and they wouldn't give him credit for the work he did as part of the project, because he couldn't tell them since it was classified. So he got frustrated and quit, and used his physics to become a music producer. Another odd twist in life.

Perhaps there is a method to my madness. If you figure it out email me. It might be of help.

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I know I seem to be fixated on Thameslink, but this is only in a secondary sort of way. I took the Tube to Kentish Town to get the train because Kings Cross, my usual stop, just looked too crowded to fight. I get off, go up to the connection, and can't find anyplace to buy a ticket in either the Tube or Thameslink stations. I go to the Tube person and ask where I get my ticket. Very nicely she says, "Go right out back to the window." Easy enough.

I go outside, and look for the window out back. Well, there's a big wall, with four rail tracks behind it in "back" of the Tube station. So I cross the bridge/tracks and head over to the building on the far side of the Thameslink platforms. I get there, and it's a construction company. I double back to the Tube and go to the ticket window and ask this guy. He says, "Right here." I buy my ticket, grumble to myself, and go to the platform. Then it hits me. What she said wasn't what she said. Huh? What she tried to say was," Go right out [comma] back to the window."

Now, I've always felt, with nothing but anecdotal evidence, that commas, as a general rule, are an important, if not indispensible, part of communicating, whether written or spoken, in a sensible, easy to understand, concise manner, and certainly when compared to not using commas, or at least not using commas properly, which only leads to confusion, consternation, and wild goose chases, so to speak, in blazing sunshine on a sultry, oppresively humid day, and makes you walk around only to arrive right back where you started, which is where you should have been, at least if people, or some people, knew how to use commas, awaiting the next train, when instead you could have gotten the earlier one, if only that person had understood the value of commas, and their proper, beneficial use.

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The trains were all on time. They weren't crowded. No cancellations. No rerouting. No signal problems. No power outages. No rain. And I even got mail.

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It's about 3:30, and I'm looking out the window in St. Albans. The sky's a little green and you can smell a good storm brewing. The rain starts, the thunder rolls, and I turn to Claire, the department's administrative assistant, and ask, "Do you lose power here during these storms?" She looked quite surprised and a little confused, so I told her that back in East Granby we expected to take power hits whenever we had thunder storms. But no, she assured me that doesn't happen here. So I sit back and start to enjoy the lights and sounds - like I said it was a good one, nice and loud! I started back to work on trying to find Postal Code information for Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire (There are almost 64,000 unique codes; pretty much one for every building), and a really good crack of thunder shakes the place.

And the lights go out.

Well, I'm feeling pretty superior, both for appearing prescient and because I have my notebook, which is now running on the battery. But about 12 seconds later I lose the NPR program I'm listening to. And then my email. This is bothersome. So I check my connection to the network. I quickly realise that none of the routers has a battery backup, so my connection to the outside world is dead. Think of it like a cordless phone. When the power goes out the phone lines are still up, and you've got a full charge in your receiver. Only problem is that the base, which connects you to the line, needs electricity. The base is your router. So no connection. Since at least 5 out of 8 in the department use notebooks, I think Simon (the boss) might want to ask about having battery backups put on the routers. So I'll be the good little sycophant and mention it tomorrow.

I gave up at a little past 4, but the two highlights before I left were one woman who made a joke about this must be God's way of saying they'd done enough work for the day, which was immediately (immediately) followed by a huge clap of thunder. She jumped about two feet in the air. The other was when most everyone was at the back windows looking out, and a big cheer went up. I looked over and saw that someone had figured out how to open the gate, and people could go home. Take another look at that gate. I was trying to find out if there was a technical name for those gates, and this was a from random search on Yahoo! for parking, lot, and gates. It was the first image I clicked. Spooky, huh? (If you're dumbfounded, email me and I'll explain it to you)

And, of course, the lightning made a mess of the trains. The express gets to the station 10 minutes after the local, but to Kings Cross (London) ten minutes sooner. And since the local was already 8 minutes late, it doesn't take mathematical programming to figure out which to take. Uh, oh. Better add some statistical analysis to that; this is National Rail. Despite reporting being just 3 minutes behind the local, the station manager tells everyone that if they want to get to London, get on the local. No explanation, just that I better get on this one. So I took the local about halfway, switched to Underground at West Hampstead (which I've recently found is not the same place as West Ham), hopped on the Jubilee line for one stop, switched to the Metropolitan line, and from there I'd get on the Northern line at Moorgate. Uh, oh. The storm took out the signals on part of the Metropolitan line. So they tossed us off at Baker Street, where I took the Bakerloo to Elephant, and then the Northern to Borough. I made it home. A bit sweaty - but that's nothing new for the last few weeks - but home.

Now, this isn't really meant to be a travelogue, nor do I expect anybody really followed what I was saying, or was all that interested. The real message is that in just a couple weeks I've actually started to understand the Tube lines. Which is which, where to change, and even which car to get in to be closest to the next change! I'll walk up to a mile to get my train, or a half mile to get to the Tube, or a third to and from the St Albans' station. I'll walk a couple miles home from school. I've got my bag on my shoulder, my iPod jammed in my ears, I'm getting a bit of a sunburn and I'm ripping through books on my commute. It's been almost year, but I may be slightly urbanised.

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