I realized that I'd enabled a broken XFBML (aka Facebook Like Button / Open Graph) instance, which not only referred to an incorrect Open Graph entity, but threw off my layout and made the page appear generally down ±1(±.2) chromosomes. Argh! Such moments always remind me of Joyce's magnificent "Araby", something of a ne plus ultra case study regarding epiphany (more precisely, anagnorisis [0]) in short fiction:

Gazing up into the darkness I saw myself as a creature driven and derided by vanity; and my eyes burned with anguish and anger.[1]

and yea indeed I did ponder drinking the bathroom cleaner to its dredges, for playing the Fool torments this soul like unto a venereal Rot. I drew strength from Nick's First Observation Regarding Startups:

Your startup is, to the great majority of humanity, no more important than a snowflake.

Those who do care likely bear prior grievance, and wish you general ill-will. Otherwise, they're your competition, and wish you specific ill-will. Happy customers wish you were cheaper and faster and better-dressed; unhappy customers will wish you the illest will of all (an absence of customers wills you no ill, but ill must in that case seem already willed [2]). Your parents secretly fear being outstripped; what becomes of the King Stag when the Young Stag is grown? What, your spouse? No one likes a hero, chief. Thus: there will be many Setbacks, but none so awful, humiliating or disgraceful that they can't be overcome.

Remind me to tell the story about cutting off Korea Telecom back in 2003 some day. I wish I was joking.

In brighter news, a major Midwestern university today selected Sprezzatech to design and implement the job management / dispatch system for their new HPC cluster! It is our largest contract amount to date, and a big win for this fledgling enterprise. w00t! We'll be looking at platforms like the software driving SESL's PaSTEC and CoC's Jinx [3], especially Adaptive Computing's Torque cluster management suite (not to be confused with our own libtorque). Hack on!

0. Thank you, 2006 National Spelling Bee.
1. Questionable pairing of semicolon with coördinating conjunction sic.
2. Italian hendecasyllable (endecasillabo): unintended, but appreciated!
3. Formerly the Hogwarts Cluster, home to much CSE 6230 fun.