So I woke up with some Upper Respiratory invasion on Saturday morning, and didn’t feel pretty much normal until yesterday sometime. That was no particular fun!
It did allow me to determine firsthand that, while the New Employer do as a general rule like team members to interact in person, if you need to work from home for three days because of an invasion of replicators, it is No Problem.
Also, they do Working From Home, like everything else remotely technical, very very well. Really very well. Remarkably. Quite.
Today I went in again, feeling more or less normal, and got to play with the toys and do coding amidst the team, and like that.
I attempted to upgrade my employer-supplied MacBook to Mavericks (“Mavericks”), and in the process it died entirely (won’t even netboot, a word that for some reason the iPad thinks should be BiCapitalized). So now I have a teeny Samsung Something as a loaner, and have sent away for a ChromeBook Pixel as a replacement just because that seemed like a cool thing, and I am going to need ANOTHER Aperture Science sticker.
Fortunately I had no important state of any kind on the unfortunate MacBook, except for the set of (quite a few) open tabs in Chrome. I wonder if that is saved in the Cloud anywhere…
Some words have been speaking to me again. Here is a fragment from the Mountains and Rivers Sutra, one of my very favorite Sutras, up there with the Heart and the Diamond.
Now in Great Song China there are careless fellows who form groups; they cannot be set straight by the few true masters. They say that the statement, “The eastern mountains travel on water,” or Nanquan’s story of a sickle, is illogical; what they mean is that any words having to do with logical thought are not Buddha ancestors’ Zen stories, and that only illogical stories are Buddha ancestors’ expressions. In this way they consider Huangbo’s staff and Linji’s shout as being beyond logic and unconcerned with thought; they regard these as great enlightenments that precede the arising of form. “Ancient masters used expedient phrases, which are beyond understanding, to slash entangled vines.”: People who say this have never seen a true master and they have no eye of understanding. They are immature, foolish fellows not even worth discussing. In China these last two or three hundred years, there have been many groups of bald-headed rascals. What a pity! The great road of Buddha ancestors is crumbling. People who hold this view are not even as good as listeners of the Small Vehicles and are more foolish than those outside the way. They are neither lay people nor monks, neither human nor heavenly beings. They are more stupid than animals who learn the Buddha way. The illogical stories mentioned by you bald-headed fellows are only illogical for you, not for Buddha ancestors. Even though you do not understand, you should not neglect studying the Buddha ancestors’ path of understanding. Even if it is beyond understanding in the end, your present understanding is off the mark. I have personally seen and heard many people like this in Song China. How sad that they do not know about the phrases of logical thought, or penetrating logical thought in the phrases and stories! When I laughed at the them in China, thy had no response and remained silent. Their idea about illogical words is only a distorted view. Even if there is no teacher to show you the original truth, your belief in spontaneous enlightenment is heretical.
Yay, bald-headed rascals! And yay, the thunderclap laugh of Dogen!
And here is Fiona Apple:
If there was a better way to go then it would find me
I can’t help it the road just rolls out behind me
Be kind to me or treat me mean
I’ll make the most of it I’m an extraordinary machine
Which seems so appropriate to just about everything, really. :)
Are we not all Extraordinary Machines?
(Written on the 6:15 express from Grand Central, all but the text of the quotes from ol’ Dogen and Ms. Apple, which I had to look up once I got home. The 6:15 was apparently in a rather leisurely mood for most of the trip…)
ceoln 
Hm?