The Year of the Monkey is approaching, and I have been celebrating by playing the code monkey. I don't think we saw any other code monkeys at the zoo yesterday, unless they were wandering around with small children outside the fences. Perhaps they were hiding behind the endangered wheelbarrows.

I automated the setup of the tunnel I use to access library resources from off campus. I reorganized the sources for my interface between Matlab and FEAP, and finished adding the new functionality I needed to extract the appropriate matrices during thermoelastic simulations. In the process, I found and diagnosed a bug in FEAP in the nonsymmetric mass matrix formation. This evening, I spent some time trying (eventually successfully) to figure out a bug in the memory manager code that I wrote for FEAP.

I also paid bills, talked to Winnie, and visited with a friend from the geotech department. And I missed most of the news, but I did listen with interest to a segment on the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, a panel discussion on the role of Sandra Day O'Connor in the court. I have heard one of the panelists, a law professor at Berkeley, in several other discussions. I think I have yet to agree with any of the positions he has taken.

• Currently drinking: Hot water with lemon