Atkins Day 5. My sister called and I told her about it. Surprise! She also thinks it's a crock. “The diet is bad because once you get off the diet you gain the weight back.” Of course, any diet you stop following will fail in that way. It's amazing how much resistance there is to this diet, and how much of the resistance is offered a little too quickly to be in earnest.

First homework assignment in over a year: implement a specific FOR loop in the assembly language of a fictional computer called SIC (Simplified Instructional Computer). Then, implement the same loop for the next-generation fictional computer, which has a couple general-purpose registers. Got the assignment done. My only experience with real assembly language is with that of the Z80 processor found in many Texas Instruments graphics calculators, when I was in high school and worked on ticalc.org.