Back in November, I gave up caffeine -- that was probably the single most difficult part of starting the diet. Yesterday morning, I made a pot of decaf and had a cup. Just before class, I went in and grabbed another cup and, while I was getting the projector set up, quickly drank it in several swallows. About that time, I realized that the pot of coffee had still been hot, whereas the coffeemaker usually powers off after two hours. That meant that the pot of coffee I was drinking wasn't the pot I'd made -- and was probably real coffee. Boy, was it it ever! It put a real bounce in my step for teaching class!
I gave up caffeine as a part of starting Atkins. The Atkins dieting is still going well. I seemed to hit a plateau for a couple of weeks, but just lately have lost more weight. I went to the clothing store and bought some new pants and shirts that fit. And maintaining the diet feels effortless.
In class, we found a bug in tikiwiki yesterday. We were trying to put references to images in the blogs and, while some worked, other sessions died with a PHP error. Eventually I figured out it was trying to cache the images locally, so I turned off that preference and now it seems to work OK again. But I fear it left some people confused in class. I probably should have installed the 1.7 series, which is more stable than 1.8, but since I was doing it as a pilot test anyway, I figured it was better to test at the bleeding edge and then be ready to install it as a production version next semester.
The BCRC file server has been acting wonky lately -- we've had several unexplained kernel panics. We're beginning to suspect a problem with the hardware -- possibly one of the CPUs is failing. I've heard that 
some of the CPUs in this series had problems with the cache memory, so maybe that's what it is. We have snapper on a service contract and the technician is visiting today.
Tomorrow Alisa and I are planning to attend West Side Stories.
In 1999, Amherst Regional High School’s production of West Side Story was cancelled when several Puerto Rican students and parents complained about what they perceived as stereotypical representations in the musical. It ignited a passionate controversy in the Pioneer Valley that made international news. The dialogue that emerged out of that controversy is the basis for an original theater piece titled, West Side Stories, written by Harley Erdman, Roberta Uno and students from the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts High School (PVPA) and Amherst Regional High School.
I remember when the events happened, but at the time I didn't feel strongly impacted by the decision one way or the other. I would like to think I've become more sensitive to issues of race over the past couple of years and I'll be very interested to see how the community is portrayed in the play.