Spam: UNIVERSITY DIPLOMAS FOR YOU, LIKE TODAY! (degree in English not available) "Obtain a prosperous future, money earning power, and the admiration of all!" Geez. They might as well advertise 1st place medals or "employee of the month" plaques for sale. The admiration of all, it says. You can obtain it, just by having a University Diploma which you don't have to earn. They should just advertise that: ADMIRATION OF ALL, LIKE TODAY! Sell official "admired by all" certification, that ilk of things.

I'm home and my house is toasty warm. All the heaters are off, and all the windows are closed, only the essential computers had been left running. Where does the heat come from? I think it leaks in from the neighbors next door, or maybe from upstairs, somehow. It's possible that the pilot light from my fireplace puts out a few BTU, but I kept all the doors closed, and even my normally icy bedroom is warm. I bet my neighbors' heating bills go up when I open the windows. I think I'll go open them. Ok. It is now getting down to ideal operating temperature for the machines in here. Maybe my upstairs neighbors' bedroom is also cooling notably. This would be an excellent way to increase ambient annoyance in their household. Even with my headphones, I hear someone up there jumping around like an idiot at 5:30 am. I suppose I don't really hear it so much as feel it in my ass, transmitted up from the floor through the air piston in the unnamed office chair.

Maybe I have it easy, though. My upstairs neighbors have people above, below, and beside them, whereas I only have neighbors up and south. This could mean that my apartment is one of the quieter ones in the building, but I don't think so. I am over the garage. Imagine living over a family of SUVs, constantly arriving and departing through the front door, which happens to weigh 150 lbs. and have a motorized chain drive. This is now reminding me of Joey's plan to install garage-door like hatches on everyone's office and making them operable through a web interface. I'm sure he had visions of exposing the entire staff to him with a single click on the floor map. (Joey was my boss at the, uh, place I worked before the place I work at now.) Mmmyep. See, when you become a leader, your wacky ideas get credibility and prestige upgrades and become "vision". This word seems to have lost its mystical-prophecy-witnessing connotations and is now primarily associated with predicting markets, creating paradigms, and leadershippy stuff like that.

My personal business leader sent me a scented candle for Christmas. I didn't use to like candles, but I think I picked up the habit a couple years ago.

One of the cool things I got in Hawaii is an ultrasonic mister. It's a chrome cylinder, an inch tall, about the radius of a reese's original peanut butter cup, with a ceramic disc set into the top and a power cable. When power is flowing into the puck and it is submerged in water, it agitates the water in such a way that dense white mist sprays from the surface, similar to dry-ice fog FX. I don't have a specific use in mind for it, other than putting it into one of those desk fountains and creating my own CrEePy DeSk SwAmP, but it is fun to misuse around the house. I put it in my little brother's bathroom sink before I left and caused sinkfuls of spooky white haze to cover the counter, creating an environment of druidic mystery in which to shave and floss.