In Which My Day Vanishes Before My Eyes

Certainly today's unpleasant weather (rainy) and my headache haven't helped to make this a good day.

Spent a decent amount of time this morning playing phone tag with contractors who find the project I want to start to be too big of a job. Often I get the brush-off from contractors because I want a small job done. This time it's because the job is too big. I don't understand the contracting business. Just send a bunch of guys to my house to work on the project and keep collecting money from me. It's not particularly difficult work, either -- just a lot of work.

Also spent way more time than it's worth filling out the Title IV paperwork. I don't really see the reason that we have to fill out Title IV during the fifth week of the term. We're late enough into things that the fin-aid should have already been disbursed, so reporting that a student hasn't shown up to class isn't going to prevent the money from being handed out. And yet, there is still plenty of time before the end of the semester for the students to start attending. Since I'm going to have to re-do this paperwork at the end of the semester, it seems sort of silly. Plus, I think that all a student needs to do is to attend one class sometime after 60% of the semester has passed, and he/she will be entitled to the full aid amount.

Haven't had a chance to work on the last two problems from my CS homework. Due to some well-chosen search terms, Google has found me solutions written by one of the textbook co-authors for the similar course that he teaches. However, I don't understand the solution, so that's not very helpful.

It seems that both the first and second derivatives of the length of my list of things to do are positive while I accomplish tasks at a linear rate.