this will be the exception

IN HONOR OF 6/6/06:

• 666: Number of the Beast
  
• 664, 668: Neighbor of the Beast
  
• DCLXVI: Roman numeral of the Beast
  
• 660: Approximate number of the Beast
  
• 666.0000: Number of the High Precision Beast
  
• 0.666: Number of the Millibeast
  
• 1/666: Common Denominator of the Beast
  
• 666i: Imaginary number of the Beast
  
• -666: Negative number of the Beast
  
• 0.005015: Reciprocal of the Beast
  
• 1010011010: Binary number of The Beast
  
• -0.80902: Sine of the Beast
  
• 443556: Square of the Beast
  
• 25.807: Square root of the Beast
  
• 295408296: Cube of the Beast
  
• 0.58779: Cosine of the Beast
  
• -1.37638: Tangent of the Beast
  
• 2.8235: Log of the Beast
  
• 6.5913: Ln Beast
  
• 1.738E289: Anti-log of the Beast
  
• 6.66E2: Scientific number of the Beast
  
• 29A: Hexadecimal number of the Beast
  
• 666!: Factorial of the Beast
  
• 2, 3, 111: Factors of the Beast
  
• 665.5-666.5: Range of the Beast
  
• 660: Beast rounded down
  
• 670: Beast rounded up
  
• $666,666: Annual salary of the Beast
  
• 1-666: Area code of the Beast
  
• 00666: Zip code of the Beast
  
• 1-900-666-0666: : Live Beasts! One-on-one pacts! Call Now! Only $6.66/minute. Over 18 only please.
  
• 1-888-666-6666: Toll free number of the Beast
  
• $665.95: Retail price of the Beast
  
• $399.96 (net), $359.86 (30 days): Wholesale Price of the Beast
  
• $55.50: Monthly cost of the Beast in twelve easy equal monthly installments
  
• $699.25: Price of the Beast plus 5% state sales tax
  
• $769.95: Price of the Beast with all accessories and replacement soul
  
• $656.66: Walmart price of the Beast
  
• $646.66: Next week's Walmart price of the Beast
  
• Phillips 666: Gasoline of the Beast
  
• Route 666: Highway of the Beast (aka Highway to Hell)
  
• 666º F: Oven temperature for roast Beast
  
• 666 Minutes: Weekly news program about the Beast
  
• 66.6 mHz: FM station of the Beast
  
• 666 kHz: AM Station of the Beast
  
• 666k: Retirement plan of the Beast
  
• 666 mg: Recommended Minimum Daily Requirement of Beast
  
• 6.66%: 5-year CD interest rate at First Beast of Hell National Bank, $666 minimum deposit
  
• DSM-666 (revised): Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the Beast
  
• 999: A Beast and a half
  
• Lotus 6-6-6: Spreadsheet of the Beast
  
• Word 6.66: Word Processor of the Beast
  
• 66686: Old Mac CPU of the Beast
  
• G6/666GHz: New PowerMac CPU of the Beast
  
• K-666/300: New PC processor chip of the Beast
  
• 666GB: Hard drive capacity of the Beast
  
• http://www.sixsixsix.com: Home page of the Beaast
  
• Beast666@aol.com: Email of the Beast
  
• 665.99996973: Intel Pentium number of the Beast
  
• Windows 666: Bill Gates's personal Beast
  
• SIX6SIX: Vanity license plate of the Beast
  
• Q666: Infiniti of the Beast
  
• Mazda 666: Economy sedan of the Beast
  
• 6 city, 66 hwy: Mileage of the Beast
  
• 6, uh... what was that number again?: Number of the Blonde Beast
  
• up 6/66: What the Beast did on the Dow today
  
• NCC-74666: Federation Starship of the Beast
  
• 666 of 666: Beast of Borg
  
• 666 Sunset Strip: Old TV series about the Beast soon on Nick-At-Nite
  
• 66.6: A Mini-Beast
  
• 665.9999...: The Beast's fraternal twin
  
• WD-666: Spray Lubricant of the beast
  
• 333: Half brother of the Beast
  
• Formula 666: All purpose cleaner of the Beast
  
• 666-66-6666: Social Security number of the Beast
  
• 6666 6666 6666 6666 EXP 6/66: Credit card of the Beast
  
• 666 lb CAP: Weight limit of the Beast
  
• 6.6.6b6: The new release of the Beast
  
• 666 Verbal, 666 Math: The SAT scores of the Beast
  
• 666 Park Avenue: Trump Tower of the Beast
  

— From Evay
http://www.triphammered.com/

Where did winter go? It's been freezing cold all week -- it frosted over the other night, and snowed the week before. Now today it's jacket weather, even at 2 a.m. Seems very abrupt somehow. Can global warming be capricious and sudden like that?

I've was looking over the offerings for the fall in ancient history at school, and it didn't take me very long -- there's nothing at all. The pickings are usually slim anyway, and now Prof. Roberts is goingon sabbatical -- I had learned and forgotten that particular piece of information, and seeing the schedule was an unpleasant reminder. Fortunately there are a couple courses I can take through the consortium at NYU and possibly Columbia. Nick, who's a year ahead of me and preparing for his orals (*shudder*), suggested getting the ancient history students together and holding our own class on Roman Republic or Greek history before the 4th century, which haven't been offered recently. Kind of reminded me of the fifth Harry Potter book, where the Defense Against the Dark Arts classes are useless and the students get together to teach it to themselves.

Speaking of which, my Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire DVD arrived yesterday. It was great to see the movie again -- I've enjoyed each film more than the others before it. And the DVD has a lot of good stuff on it -- though no commentary track, which at this point I regard as simply a crime. But Mike Newell did a good job with this one. The fifth movie is being directed by David Yates, whose IMDb profile is filled with movies I've never heard of.

Anyway the study group thing sounds interesting. I plan to spend the summer working on my languages and studying anyway, so this should segue nicely. I really need to push myself this summer -- I feel tremendously behind. I really have a chance to get a lot done this summer -- if I don't let myself get distracted, which (alas) happens all too easily.

Fortunately I won"t be teaching. I just finished grading the huge stack of midterms from my Brooklyn College classes. They did seem to think that rather too much writing was involved, but they weren't too keen on my alternative suggestion -- one essay worth all the points. On the other hand they were very happy with the study guide I gave them -- which was a spin-off of the all-semester study guide I gave my students before the finals last term. I'm not thrilled with how the class has been going -- I've not been at full power during a couple of the most recent classes, and I think I'm seeing more glazed expressions than before. But then, the early 1800s bore me, too. We're moving into Crimean War, Realpolitik and the American Civil War, all of which I can get more excited about. Reconstruction is interesting to talk about because the North basically destroyed their own victory, with effects that lasted deep into the next century and down to today. Anytime you can tie in the material with sometyhing they've seen has some potential to engage them. That's why I hope to talk a little bit about the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, since something similar has happened recently.

Chiyo is shedding at a fever pitch -- I was wiping Chiyo hair off my laptop keyboard the other day. That's how I know Sping is coming. She's still kind of a puppy. The other day I accidentally left out a full jar of jelly and when I came home the jar was under my desk, completely empty and spotlessly clean. She's very thorough when she sets her mind to something...

Just me. What's going on?

Weird week. The snow's all gone already. Chiyo's disappointed. She loved diving into the snow. She always does her business in the grass verge between the sidewalk and the street, and after the blizzard she kept doing it in the same place even though her spot was now covered with 15 inches of snow...

Meanwhile I'm annoyed because they've blocked access to JSTOR at work, so I can no longer download journal articles for school. I've got a presentation on the Chalke Gate of the Great Palace of Constantinople next week, and I may have to actually *go to the library...*

Just put out an issue of the Advocate too. I think it looks pretty good. We've switched over to Adobe InDesign -- with any luck I may never have to use Quark Express again. (Actually I probably will -- they still use it at Credit Suisse.) InDesign is a great page layout program but it's a powerhouse -- I had to upgrade the memory on the Advocate's G4 just to install it.

I'm enjoying my Western Civ class -- now we're progressing into Napoleon and I can talk about someone who likened himself to a Roman Emperor -- one step away from the real thing. I can't wait to be able to teach classes in ancient history -- maybe in a year or so I can swap a section of Western Civ for a Greece & Rome class.

Next free-time project: more online parodies to write ... because I have lots of free time. I haven't even finied unpacking yet! I still have four boxes of kitchen stuff in the foyer. Oh well, not hosting any dinner parties soon anyway. :)

I got to explore an interesting new sensation this week -- insomnia. Fortunately it only lasted a day or so, but it had me wound up and nervous: While it's happening you don't know when you'll be able to sleep again, or if the need to sleep will suddenly overpower you at an inconvenient time (while you're at work, say).

I've been getting used to my new schedule. What throws it off are the nights I don't have work, I think, because then I'm tempted to sleep in the evening instead of during the day like I normally do. Anyway I slept some Thursday afternoon, studied and did some programming stuff Thursday night, and then Friday for some reason I couldn't sleep at all. I was working on school stuff in the morning and then I got to bed a little later than I planned, and then lay in bed and couldn't sleep. The dumb part is I was getting more and more upset about it, which was not helping. Finally I realized I was going to either have to go into work and pull a 10-hour shift on no sleep, or call out sick. I figured that was the safer choice, and when I called in it seemed O.K., but something in the supervisor's voice was nagging at me. Staff is thin on Friday night, I was probably causing a problem. So I went in after all. Turned out two people had already called in sick (well, one of them was actually a sick cat), so they were grateful I came in after all. And my insomnia stuck with me -- I worked the whole shift no problem.

So this morning I went home and I knew I was still too awake to sleep. I decided I needed to tire myself out physically. So I walked out the door of my central Brooklyn apartment with the idea I would walk south until I felt tired. Instead, I ran out of land and ended up in Coney Island. So I walked around the boardwalk at Coney Island, looking out over the ocean, and chuckled at the silliness of the situation. I had lunch. I went home on the B68. And by then, I actually was tired. I tumbled into bed and slept so deeply that when the alarm went off to get up and get ready for work I had no idea where I was or what day it was.

So remember: If you ever have trouble sleeping, all you need to do is walk to Coney Island.

I've said this before many times, of course, but I'm determined not to feall of the face of the earth this year. At least, not very often. So I'm going to try to sort of stay in the loop and say hi.

Today -- yesterday, now, actually -- Monday was my second day of classes teaching this semester. It went fairly well, I think -- I tried not to rush things and ended up not quite having enough time to cover everything, but I was only short on one item. My nightmare is running short and standing in fromt of the class hemming and hawing, while they stare at me in disbelief. Of course they stare at me in disbelief anyway, but hopefully I'm telling them something cogent while they're doing it.

I do look forward to teaching, though. As much work as it is, and as much as you can't always expect appreciation for the students, it's a positive thing for me. I was reading emails on the history department listserv and there was a call for an emergency adjunct to fill a hole at one of the CUNY schools, and I actually thought to myself -- for a second -- hey, I could fit that in... Then I slapped myself. Part of the appeal was that the course then needed the adjunct was Western Civ I, which would have meant I would get to talk about the ancient world. That's the one drawback to the teaching I'm doing now: Western Civ 1700-present is interesting, but it's not my area. I want to talk about Rome and Carthage.

I guess I'll get to do that in the Roman Empire class I'm taking. Last night was the first class of the Intro to Classical Philology course I need to take for the ancient history major. It's cool to have a relatively easy class with a professor who you know and who knows and seems to like you. My other classes, the professor knows me, but the course won't be easy...

Anyway things are going well, I'm well, and I am hoping to keep more in touch. Stranger things have happened.

Mark