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got to work today at about 11am, left work at about midnight. 13 hours of work, never left the office for anything, never stepped foot outside the building until it was time to go home. i had that laser-guided precision focus today. despite the fact that i still wasn't able to complete all the code i was scheduled to finish for today, i completely know how they're going to be pieced together, so i feel pretty good going back to work tomorrow. at this point in time, the outlook appears optimistic.

today was the day of the dual elizas. during the day, eliza hoover was our guest worker, bug testing the program. it was a mini-reunion of sorts, with eliza, john, and myself sitting in a row all upstairs. eliza showed us her new glasses for farsightedness.

a little bit of excitement today. we had opened up a few windows for better air circulation (the stuffy office had a real stink this morning when we arrived). i was walking around the office, taking a short programming break, when i saw this little thing moving on the carpet. i blinked. it's a bird! a real live bird! a female sparrow to be exact, must've flew in from one of the open windows, probably to escape the cold (high 40's today). "hey, there's a bird in the office," i calmly exclaimed to my fellow coworkers. "um, come here, take a look, there's a bird!" so we spent the next few moments trying to drive the bird out the office. we thought about maybe trapping it with an overturned waste basket, or maybe herding it to an open window or the hallway. this bird would have none of that. it'd hop around, flying from work station to work station, and in between find time to peck at some of the crumbs on the carpet. everytime it came near us we'd reel back in some irrational fear of flying animals. finally we were able to drive it into the bathroom, where it eventually flew out the window after being locked inside. we quickly closed all the opened windows after that little incident. i personally didn't mind having a little bird in the office. we've had dogs and cats before, why not a bird? but i guess the fear was it'd fly around and poop somewhere inappropriate. not like i haven't seen some office dogs do the same thing!

at night, when eliza hoover left, eliza jones took her place as the designated eliza, having returned from a halloween party the night before in new york city.

for dinner, we ordered take-out from bertucci's. eliza and i split a salad and a large chicken & portabello mushroom pizza. this was my first full meal of the day, having not eaten either breakfast or lunch. i was able to sustain myself by snacking on the various caches of junk food i have stored around my work space. not very healthy, but it kept me going. we sat around to eat and chat a little bit and then everyone returned to the final few hours of work. eliza ended up only having a single slice of pizza (i had 3-4 slices) but i made her promise to take the pizza home and eat the remaining portions. we all disbanded close to midnight, with grand plans of coming back to work tomorrow morning, plus that extra hour of sleep we gain from the end of daylight saving's time.

tonight my parents also came back from their 2.5 weeks vacation to southern china, hong kong, and taiwan. surprisingly, they didn't buy a lot of souvenirs, but came back with close to 2200 digital photos. it took me almost 2 hours to go through 3/5 of all the photos they took with explanation. i then quickly scanned through the rest, with explanation for the remaining 2/5 photos to be continued for tomorrow.