Hallways and Computers: A Classy Segue It Ain't

I learned something about myself today. When entering a place where I'm going to take off my shoes and/or coat, I don't come in and do that immediately. Instead, I traipse in, take a few steps forward, and just sort of idle for a moment. I've become aware of this behavior for a while, but it's just today that I figured out why. When I was growing up, whenever I came home, it would be in someone's company. And in the childhood home, our hallway was pretty narrow. Since I was often one of the first in, I'd move forward as quickly as possible, to make room for the next person. And then I'd fidget a bit, so I wouldn't have to compete with them for reaching into the closet to hang things up. And this habit, apparently, has stuck with me, even after more than one year where I've lived alone. I'm not saying this particularly fascinating, or revealing, or even mildly interesting. I wonder, however, how many other habits I've perpetuated that I don't even notice.

And speaking of habit-forming activities, my laptop's back! Hurray! To the shop and back, in less than a week! Hurray! Wiped clean of all the data and information that I've put on it! Hurr---aw, nuts. I'm reasonably tranquil about this, because I've taken to backing up all my school stuff on Dropbox, a"a Web-based file hosting service operated by Dropbox, Inc. that uses cloud storage to enable users to store and share files and folders with others." (Thank you, Wikipedia.) And anything before September of 2011 is backed up on external hard drives and my tabletop computer. The only thing that may be inevitably lost, then, is the data from the course I taught in the fall term on digital media. I sent the students and myself a list of their marks on every assignment before the course ended, so I still have those notes. And my own lectures were all written on looseleaf, and the course blog still exists. But a lot of my copies of the students' presentations may be gone for good. Still, that's a lot better than it could be. At least I didn't lose any research.

I also lost about 150 hours of play on Skyrim and Shining Force II. Not going to be getting those back in a hurry. I guess the cheesy accented Norses'll have to save themselves from the dragons.

Later Days.