TITLE: Perfection and Partial Order
AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford
DATE: December 09, 2009  8:14 PM
DESC: 
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BODY:
Our town was hit with a blizzard over the last couple
of days.  Not only did it close the local schools, it
even shut down my university -- a powerful storm,
indeed.

I thought I might treat the day off as 'found time',
and hack a little code I've been thinking about...

<BLOCKQUOTE><EM>
I feel a kinship with [Cormac McCarthy's] sense of
a perfect day.  To sit in a room, alone, with an
open terminal.  To write, whether prose or code,
but especially code.  (<A HREF="http://www.cs.uni.edu/~wallingf/blog/archives/monthly/2009-11.html#e2009-11-21T05_54_44.htm">11/21/09</A>)
</EM></BLOCKQUOTE>

... but I never wrote a line of code.  Instead, I
shoveled snow (a lot of snow).  I wrote Christmas
cards in the kitchen while my daughters baked cookies
for their teachers.  We listened to Christmas music
and made chili and laughed.

Unlike McCarthy, I do not think that everything other
than writing is a waste of time.  Today was a perfect
day.

Can there be two kinds of perfect day?  Can there be
different kinds of perfect?  Indeed, there are multitudes.
The sky is always a perfect sky, even as it changes from
moment to moment.

We live in a world of partial order.  There is no
total ordering on experience.
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