my shortcuts

I'm super busy today, but I just want to make one observation:

Spider solitaire is now at the bottom of the little program shortcut pop-up on my computer. This is the first time in my grad school career that spider solitaire isn't right near the top. It's an indication of how hard I've been working - I haven't been playing silly time-wasting games for two months now!

When I was working, I was always afraid that if I played computer games, that little pop-up would betray me if Ihappened to use the computer while my boss was watching. Or that some pinhead network nanny over at corporate headquarters would get me in trouble (hell, they could control my computer remotely). I do realize that my bosses and any pin-headed computer oversight people probably had bigger fish to fry than some illicit solitaire, though.

The one thing I do like about grad school and will miss when I go back to work is the unfettered freedom to do whatever I want with my time and computer, as long as I finish what needs to be done. The downside of this freedom, however, is having to exercise restraint so I don't spend my working hours playing solitaire and finding funny websites and then doing grad school stuff blearily late into the night.