Doings

Yesterday I took a 4.5-hour canoe trip on the Haw river with 13 other people from the marine sciences department. The most interesting this that happened was while we were stopped on the bank for lunch: a great big water snake crawled up the bank with a catfish in its mouth. Unfortunately, fearing water damage, I didn't bring a camera, though somebody else did and got a couple of shots.

Like the N.O. floodwaters, gas prices have receded only slightly. I finally gassed up for the first time since the hurricane yesterday and paid $3.04.9. Just over $50 for a tank.

Today I'm attempting to install Mathematica and get it activated, transferring my license from the old desktop machine I no longer have. What Wolfram Research makes you do to accomplish this seems to be modeled on the bureaucratic procedures Jews had to go through to emmigrate from the old Soviet Union.