Argh. I'm in major procrastination mode today. I am supposed to be working on the web site for Stockstock, but I can't seem to get started. The remarkable and talented Feng is doing the design and HTML coding, and I am writing the back end ecommerce part. I still have a ton of work to do, and I'm terrified that I'm not going to finish. Sounds like a good weekend to get caught up, doesn't it?

I went to bed last night with the best of intentions - wake up bright and early, sit down at the computer, and get right to work. Like most normal people, I consider "bright and early" on a Saturday to mean no earlier than 9 AM. Today I was awakened at 7:30 to the sound of workmen throwing crap off of the roof onto the ground right outside my window. Is it my imagination, or do workmen make a point of waking other people up on purpose? Are they annoyed because they have to work so early while everyone else is happily asleep and therefore feel the need to take it out on us?

Whatever the reason, they were in rare form this morning. Whap! Whump! Thomp! I literally staggered out of bed and peeked out the window. There was a hailstorm of shingles and black rubbery bits falling from the roof. I knew there were workmen putting a new roof on our building last week, but surely they wouldn't be starting at 7:30 on a Saturday, would they? Whonk! Thump! Whamp! I guess that answered my question.

I tried to go back to sleep but the loud banging was too much. Irritated, I decided that enough was enough - I was going to complain. I padded out to the den to find the number for the property management company so I could call them and give them a piece of my mind. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the number, which made me even more annoyed. Not only was I sleep-deprived, now I was being muzzled by condo association brass. I was really peeved now, but I didn't know what to do. Surprisingly, I decided to take a shower. I don't know if I thought I'd find the phone number inside my shampoo bottle, or if I expected the warm water to make me forget about the whole thing.

It did neither. I got dressed and decided that since I was up I might as well get an early start on the web site. It would be nice to really buckle down and get some work under my belt so I could relax later on. I started my buckling down by surfing the web - you know, just to warm up my typing fingers. You don't want to start working on a web site without warming up those fingers, right? As I hunted around for news of the new 40 GB iPod that I'm convinced is going to be released the day after I buy one, I saw an article saying that Virex 7.2 was out. Wow! Virex 7.2! Awesome! Never mind the fact that I haven't thought about installing new virus software in a million billion years; if Virex 7.2 was out, I had to have it! While I was installing that I found a free game on .Mac called "Super Nisqually". It's one of the many boring Tetris rip-offs that seem to be everywhere these days, which meant that I had to download it immediately and play it for two hours. High score: 112,499. (Beat that, Farris!)

After I got bored with that, I actually contemplated cleaning out my den, a chore that I've put off for about three months. I realized at that moment how low I'd sunk: my procrastinating is so prodigous that the chores I put off are becoming opportunities to put off other chores. This was a profound realization, and I knew that sharing it with all of you was way more important than doing work on the web site, so I thought I'd post it to my blog, which I'm doing right now.

So. There it is. Profound observation. Yep.

I guess this means I should get to work.

*cough*

I bet there's something good on Lifetime right about now.

  I stayed up until about 1:45 in the morning writing commentary on a post made by Sundry the other day in reaction to Uncle Bob's post about the space program. What I ended up with was long, rambling and incoherent, which may have had a lot to do with the fact that it was 1:45 in the morning. Instead of subjecting you to that, I'd like to quickly and succinctly state why I support the space program.

Space is where we will end up.
It is inevitable that humans will inhabit space. Put simply, there is nowhere else for us to go. I think that protecting and repairing our environment is important, but mankind's population growth means that our planet cannot sustain our species forever. We've spent our entire existence rooted to planet Earth. We need to prepare ourselves for a time when that is no longer the case.

Science breeds possibilities.
Scientific research can take us places that we couldn't even envision when we started. Some of our greatest advances have been made by people working on one problem who then stumbled upon something entirely new. Just because we can't see the applications of a particular line of inquiry doesn't mean that they're not there. We cannot afford to be so short-sighted. The technological and scientific gains made by the space program will pay off in the long run.

Knowledge is important.
This is what it ultimately comes down to: do we care about acquiring knowledge? I believe that understanding is fundamentally important, regardless of what the applications of that understanding might be. Isn't it worth something to simply know about the universe we live in? Isn't the pursuit of truth a worthwhile endeavor? If not, then why are we here? The character of humanity is defined by our quest for knowledge. It is what we are built for, and it is how we survive. As soon as we stop learning, our species will start dying. The space program is our best hope of making sense of the universe. To turn our back on it would be to turn our back on ourselves.