lonely phillip

eyal and i were going to go drinking last night after the AAAi submission website closed at midnight. but the considerate AAAI allowed submissions until 3am pacific time or later, so my friends kept submitting, and eyal had to stay at the happy donut to help them. hannaneh went 40 hours without sleep, all of them working. by the end it was a blessing when the website closed. bless you, AAAI. we celebrated at denny's instead of a bar, and that was basically the end of college. maybe it was the moons-over-my-hammy, but it was a bit of an anti-climax. the real problem is i got interested in what i'm doing. a long time ago i had to stop believing so i wouldn't be frustrated all the time - just go on auto-pilot, do what i'm told, and get the degree. i didn't believe we'd get into AAAI, but i put myself under the gun anyway, because the project deserved that. by last week, i'd given up class, work, weekends, friends, exercise, and real food. and i still don't know how it happened, but somewhere in there i took the reins, and by the time i got here the whole project had crystallized. how do i explain this? i'll have an unnoticed thesis, a small paper ready to publish in november, and a project to be published next year that'll get me some respect. but it doesn't take away the feeling of disappointment right now that i didn't produce something great when it really counted.