Take me drunk, I'm home!

Ka wow. Apart from not having an enochsmiles to go home with, tonight's Death Guild was pretty much the Platonic ideal of club nights. Mad props to xthread for sparkling conversation and plying me with drinks (and we must finish that unfortunately-interrupted conversation about traffic analysis sooner rather than later!), ephermata for being a machine on the dance floor and graciously rescuing me from the preppy out-of-place kid who was trying to pick me up, all the DJs for some fan-fucking-tastic sets ("Ocean Rising" in the first hour, and it just got better from there!), and artkiver for sparing me the long lonely bus ride home; it has been a good night. Apologies to perligata for failing to run into you; we shall have to meet up about Debian packaging in the very near future.

But now I am plastered, and it is time for water, sleep curled up with kittens, and a bright tomorrow filled with interesting work to do. Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.

Parody and satire: fair use. Subject matter: not fair use.

Who made me the genius I am today,
The mathematician great politician that others all quote?
Who's the professor that made me that way,
The greatest that ever got chalk on his coat?

One man deserves the credit,
One man deserves the blame,
and Nicolai Ivanovich Lobachevsky Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is his name. Oy!
Nicolai Ivanovich Lobache... Vladimir Vladimirovich Pu...

I am never forget the day I first meet the great Lobachevsky Putin.
In one word he told me secret of success in mathematics economics: Plagiarize!

Plagiarize,
Let no one else's work evade your eyes,
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes,
So don't shade your eyes,
But plagiarize, plagiarize, plagiarize...
Only be sure always to call it please, "research".

(article by way of grepmaster)

GIANT IGUANAS CONTINUE THEIR CONQUEST OF SOUTH FLORIDA

...and other awesome turns of phrase in this week's Harper's Weekly. (Plus: Rummy refuses to support McCain after Older Than Dirt calls it like it is. Do I see cracks in the walls of the Republican party? Oh please, oh please?)

I think I'm a little manic today.

[LJ Genie] Database-internals grad work?

A dear friend is thinking about going to grad school (could be an MS, could be a PhD, depends on what they'll let him get away with), focusing on database internals (the query planner and executor, to be precise). Aside from "Tom Lane's office", anybody got any tips on places he should be considering? He has a bachelor's in CS from McGill and several years of solid industry experience; I figure he should be a shoo-in for a top program. However, I do not know what the top programs are.

jrtom, you were saying good things about UC Irvine, weren't you? I know Berkeley has some interesting work going on with streaming databases, but is that just something they specialise in, or do they have a solid database-backend team?