I spent the majority of the day in a committee meeting. I ignored some parts of the meeting to work on a calculation. I missed the details of some arguments, but I paid enough attention to be sure they are arguments I've heard before.

The dinner conversation turned, as it often does with this group, to old computer lore. Today's topics were the i860 and the evolution of various programming languages. It was interesting enough, though these conversations always make me feel self-conscious about my age. I wasn't programming in 1968. In fact, I wasn't around at all until nearly a decade after that.

But I was distracted through much of dinner, since I was still thinking about that calculation.

The calculation is done, and this time it's in a sufficiently simple form that I feel confident I haven't blundered. In the unlikely event that someone reading this cares about variations of electrostatic and elastic energies with respect to boundary geometry, you can now ask me about it and be either enlightened or bored to tears. Sounds exciting, doesn't it?

I'm going to read fiction for half an hour and go to sleep early.

• Currently drinking: Water
• Just finished drinking: Rooibos