Dr. Mats Heimdahl:
one of the seven known people on the planet who can out-talk me.

Sssh, secret: Big seminar next week in Oregon. Can't tell you what that is about. Spending whole weekend working on presentation. Watch this space.

Helen: Been living back with Helen for a week after her working for a term in Vancouver. Can't remember all those months away from her. Who was that hermit? How did he live like that?

Diet: Too fat. Started Aitken's diet five days ago. Doing this induction thing to reset the metabolism. 20g carbs per day (recommended usually is 300)! No sugars! No caffeine! Thursday, Friday were rough++. Both very tired and cranky. Helen had a bad time- at home all day, affiance withdrawal headaches, nothing to do except obsess on body image and hunger pangs. But if we get through this, and stay low on the carbs, then we can do wine and cheese till the cows come home.

Work: After Tuesday's research-Had the money boys in Thursday, Friday. All the gang working on the economics of IV&V. Four groups, now planning some big unified project.

Great to sit on the sidelines and watch synergies actually work.

Movies: The Apartment (5): Jack Lemmon and Shirley Maclaine (did you know that, once, she was young?). Standard wild and wacky trimmings to seduce a 1960 audience into watching a morality tale about abuse of woman, depression, suicides, seduction (by power), and redemption. Almost a medieval tale about a loyal prince at court torn between duty to the realm and private honor.

Drumline (4): Stupid premise, ridiculous costumes, bizarre American cultural icon (the school marching band). BUT, well acted, well filmed. And the final confrontation scene between the drum lines: chilling, powerful, and cool! Warfare without bloodshed. Very promising.

X-Men2 (2): Can't believe that they could somehow take this plot and make it boring. Go figure.

Web site: Failing to meet its "PDA-compatiable" objectives. Just can't cope with 160 wide screen. Gone to 200 wide as a minimum. In other bad news, the OPERA browser has view-as-PDA option and my sites look like crap on those. But Helen's, built using DIV's and CSS, come out o.k. Sigh.

Today was all paperwork and meetings. Actually, its paper-not-work since it piles up and up and never stops and we stand there like that kid with his finger in the dike- immobilized, stopping anything new happening, but never actually doing anything.

Movies: Matrix reloaded (3): almost not a SciFi, mostly a shoot 'em up. Tedious explanation sequences. Some fantastic effects. A functional film which time will soon forgot.

Ishtar (5): Unlike everyone else in the whole world, I loved it.

Buffy: ended last night. I've been watching that thing for nearly as long as I've known Helen. And now its over. Hellmouth is closed, Sunnydale is no more, and there are no more lame seasons. The last three years of Buffy have been like the curate's egg: good, in parts.

ICSE 2003: Days and days of geek heaven.

HELEN: Wife was missing-in-action for two months. But I can report that she is still alive, very live, and living in Vancouver. Her job seems sooo sweet: hanging out in front of cool new media tools all day with students talking to her about information architecture and the like all the love long day.

We leave for Yellowstone Park, then WV, on Saturday. Much geekiness between then and now: ICSE is on-going and we have dinner with the BioCommerce folks from Quebec on Thursday.

Life: So tired of NOT living with Helen. Leave tomorrow for Portland and the summer of lurv. Driving back from there to here via Utah. Should be cool++.

Lost Australian: Phone call to lost Aussie with dream job in dream location. But all is not what it seems in this paradise. Every morning, he leaves his sensational flat in Venice Beach and peddles to the other end of the beach to, wait for it, the Rand Corporation. Everything in life SEEMS good BUT there's no one to show it too. Its an evil time for him- one I really relate to. He's so alone- surrounded by aliens called Americans who speak English but think like nothing else on earth. Took me years to assimilate here. Everywhere I looked it wasn't Australia and that shocked me. Then I had a crappy year in Vancouver so, on arrival back in M'town, everything wasn't Canada and that was just fine by me.

Movies: One Hour Photo (4): I always suspected that supermarkets were designed to take away your soul and drive you insane. Now I know. Williams' "man on the edge" is fantastic. Sometimes he acts the shit out of everyone in the film, by sitting rock still and saying nothing. I've heard folks complain about the ending- but that's just folks who can't handle the cliches being threatened.

Secret World(5): This one, you gotta see. Peter Gabriel bouncing round the happiest show on earth, all the while with this very BRITISH dour expression on face. I've seen this thing five, six times. The whole band dances around like pixies, high on fairy dust. Its so much FUN. And the title track is just sensational.

This session: Got to be a pretty dreary time. No Helen for foot rubs. Two basically new classes, both of an evening, two days in a row. Crawling home after the second one, dead tired. But its so nearly over.

Marking: Been racing to get marking done as soon as I get it. I'm at a conference or on the road the next two weeks and this is all due May 12. Currently, on top of things: this quiz to mark and some odds and ends from V&V.

Papers: Sent to ISSRE 2003: simple defect detectors.