The culmination of all of my organization and routine is this: it’s Friday night, and all I want is to get a good night’s sleep.

I’ve made my November stats page public! You can now assuage your burning curiosity as to how much coffee I drank every day this month.

Here’re the stats, folks:

That’s nearly a record for water. However, on 2005-11-06 I drank 90 mL more than that. (ADDENDUM: I’m quite thirsty tonight. I just had another glass, breaking the record!) The glass of wine and three beers from yesterday slowed me down this morning. It was nice running in proper gear for the weather, though. Switched up to two glasses of half-caff this morning on a whim, rather than quarter-caff. I only had one beer at happy hour today. I had enough last night.

In other news, Google Analytics now recognizes that my site has the little tag installed, but well over 12 hours (their estimate) after it was recognized, I still have no analysis of data from them. I’ve heard that it can be a little slow to get started. I wonder if it’ll be more useful than what I’ve been using — good old webalizer.

As I was walking to work today, listening to Audio Dharma, I was reminded of what I really like about the practice of mindfulness and meditation. The practice of Zen is basically a process of hacking your own mind. Now, it’s important to know the correct definition of hacking to understand this particular statement. It’s not hacking as in with a sword. It’s not hacking as in breaking encryption and destroying data. It’s the definition of hacking from the Jargon File:

One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.

Actually, that’s the seventh definition of “hacker” in the Jargon file. The definitions for hacker and the verb, to hack, don’t line up very well in the jargon file. However, that’s the sense of hacking that I’m referring to. Creatively overcoming and circumventing the limitations of one’s own wetware (read: brain).

I’m not a cognitive science expert, though it’s one of my lesser hobbies. If I recall correctly, one theory on the development and structure of the brain breaks it down into two major functional components — the reptilian brain, and the neocortex. The neocortex is what makes higher animals, including humans, ‘special’. We are able to reason, to predict the consequences of our actions and the like. However, in many situations, in those involving real or percieved danger, hunger, lust, joy, the reptilian brain’s influence is quite strong. If the neocortex does not take notice of this influence the results for a person in modern society can be disastrous.

The practice of Zen, as I see it, is essentially training the neocortex to be more aware of the reptilian brain. It seems to work pretty well, but of course I have a long way to go with it. Bearing these things in mind, perhaps the much sought-after goal of enlightenment is realized when the neocortex always has full awareness of, full attention to the actions of the reptilian brain.

By the way, I don’t claim to be the originator of these ideas. I don’t recall hearing them anywhere else, but I very well may have. If you know of any existing books/articles/blogs regarding this subject, I’d be very interested to hear about them.

Today I finally managed to convince everyone to have dinner at Saleem’s, which I’ve been craving since Tuesday. They have a very nice vegetarian platter, but it’s always too much. Tonight I just had soup and a sandwich instead. I ended up feeling a lot better.

They’re a lot like Lebanon’s Cafe back in New Orleans, but pricier, and with not-as-good hummous (sp?). Tonight was $1-PBR night, hence the 4 drinks in the stats:

As a reminder, I didn’t run today because it’s quite cold outside. However, I did go to Target after work and get some cold-weather running clothes, so I shall go tomorrow morning, and the morning after that and so on.