Wednesday night I went to a student piano recital. The first half was all Chopin, including the B flat minor scherzo, which I played in college (though only after a long struggle--and I can't play it anymore). The student was big on dramatic contrasts, full of technique, and could play louder, softer, faster, and slower, than I could ever hope to. But he was also kind of sloppy--not just isolated missed notes, but one or two places where he seemed about to go off the rails completely--and the logic of the music got lost in the blur sometimes. Still, I enjoyed it.
We're in a little two-week window that comes about every two months where new changes are accepted into the kernel, and it looks like I'm almost certainly going to miss it for the project I've been spending most of my time on recently. And the second project I had in mind for this time around also isn't proceeding very smoothly--I haven't been able to get the kind of review I think we really need before it goes in, and just as I was going to give up and try just sending it straight to Linus anyway, I found another last-minute problem today. So now I can't quite decide what to do.
My laptop finally came back to me today, after over 3 weeks at the IBM repair center, to fix a problem they'd caused themselves the week before. Given that record I examined it a little more closely than I might have otherwise, and noticed they managed to strip the heads of one of the screws completely smooth. But I guess I don't want to send it back now just for that. At this point, if it's going back again, I want it to be for a refund. I'm not normally one to make a fuss, but for once I think I should write an angry letter to somebody at a company. Oh well. Hopefully it'll just work from now on....