Day in the life

• Get up. Coffee. Tease flatmate.
• Taylor's theorem, integration by parts, Cauchy-Schwartz. Rinse and repeat. Get error estimate.
• Check numerically whether estimate holds for simple test case. Discover algebra errors in the proof. Correct proof.
• Discover algebra errors in the test program. Correct test program.
• Discover errors in the compiler. Swear. Let out cat, who is spooked. Lower optimization level.
• Decide result looks too simple not to be standard. Search through references for something similar.
• Discover promising reference. Wade through ten pages of dense functional analysis, decide that it's not quite the same, but close enough. Add citation to my notes. Let the cat in.
• Add page to thesis. Get up, stretch, dance in circles to a song on the radio. Spook the cat, who I let out again.
• Lunch. Let cat back in.
• Go onto campus. Check mail. Read blogs for half an hour.
• Add feature to HiQLab.
• Index error, index error, type error, core dump. Swear. Rinse and repeat.
• Fix index errors. Run test case. It fails. Swear.
• Discover error in the test case. Fix it, discover a sign error meant I was computing the negative of the quantity I wanted. Fix sign error. Test passed! Code crashes on exit.
• Swear. Spend half an hour figuring out and working around quirk in the dynamic linking system which led to the crash.
• Walk home. Talk to Winnie on the phone as I go. Make dinner, which is salad, since there's nothing much in the fridge and I actually remembered to eat lunch.
• Recommence work on HiQLab. Stall out. Take a tea break.
• Tease flatmate.
• Decide to work on compilers stuff for a while. Write an LL(1) parser generator in Lisp. Chortle after I reduce the code size to under 200 lines. All tests passed! Realize that it's 1 am.
• Brush teeth. Fall into bed.