Thinking ahead

Another year. Another slew of to-dos. First things first - Happy New Year my dear visitor!
Right now I'm bent on focusing my generally myopic view on academics. Other than that I have mulled over a few plans/intentions.

• Take up Assembler from where I left it. I'm one of those people who get an innate joy in pushing bits around registers. :P I'll be using NASM for the dissassembler and DJGPP on WinXP initially. After PCasm is done, I intend to move over to linux assembly using nasm or gasm on Ubuntu. The language may not have any intrinsic value as many opine, but it will definitely help anyone who wants to know the 'why?' after the 'how?'.
  
• We'll be having Introduction to programming using C this semester. Which is pretty much a cakewalk. I'll be honing up on gcc on linux while doing the college assignments. There are a few syntactical differences which I have to get used to on linux when migrating from Borland's IDE. Moreover, this'll force me to let go of IDE dependance.
• Re-install Bloodshed DevC++ on Windows. At times an IDE helps. ;)

Who am I kidding? The list of hum-drum to-dos to fill the void of actions that have a meaning. Beyond skill-sets, grades and assignments. The little titters and daily masquerades that etiquette demands. The thing that chills me to the core is the unsettling fact that this new year's day was so much like the one before, which was like the one before it, which was . . .
Think beyond the new calendar, the sliding stocks, the daily litany of horror on the headlines. Those that have been there forever.
The sense of transition is that of a smooth cruise in a sedan. Not the hurtling sensation of motion of a gallop, or the reckless rush of a train viewed hanging half-out of the compartment.
I'm craving for a cataclysmic change like an opiate. Yet in my heart of hearts afraid of what it will entail. Every desire attained presents its bill somewhere along the way. And sometimes the interest accrued is . . . substantially devastating.

One of the few things I look forward to is receiving Neverwinter Nights - Diamond Edition. :D Over this last year I have seen the gifts passing through my clenched grasp like so much water. The words no longer come to my fingers as my mind grapples with the profundity of everydays, baked beans and christmas cake. But I can no longer make the glass glitter like diamond, parade sleights as skill and somnolence for wisdom. The last sky I painted was a flaming sunset, but my ride into it has fallen into the sere, the yellow leaf (hah! How vilely doth this muser qoute!).

The ivory tower of mine, once-vaunted, is now reeking of solitude. Not the splendid isolation of sages, but the miserable bile-in-your-throat nerve-sapping unsatiated yearning of the dark ones that lurk in shadowy nooks for ever, hating the darkness that clothes their frailty.

My eyes are dimming again, the macular degeneration accelerating blithely. But my mind sees frozen lakes, black denuded trees and snow-swept ridges which I should have stood atop. I feel the Keating creeping up, in stiff competition with the Toohey while a remnant of Roark struggles with blueprints. With no D. Francon in sight. Or maybe this is the last vestige of Wynand: "...to the spirit that is yours and could have been mine."
Funny, I had liked none of them unconditionally. It was Galt, always Galt.