countries, respect for boss

"Focus on knowing everything." That would be a laughable goal! I think, in terms of countries, I would like to visit every country beginning with "I" and try to learn as much as I can about those countries. So far, I have been to Italy, Ireland, Iran, Israel and India. I would like to visit Iceland and Indonesia next, perhaps in that order, and leave Iraq for much later. Perhaps in some senses Iraq is not even a real country -- that is: its borders were defined by the British, who left it independent in 1932, and many people living there identify themselves by their religious or tribal affiliations first, before their national affiliation.

Yesterday my boss asked me about my passions. I mentioned chess, even though I am not that good at it. I told him about the best available chess program Rybka and he said he had read about it in the "IEEE Spectrum" magazine. I was really impressed that the magazine would mention the program as I didn't know it was well-known outside computer chess circles. Also, I mentioned that one of the designers of Deep Blue, Murray Campbell, said that "a present-day Cell processor has as much processing power as that entire [Deep Blue] system did in 1997." My boss knew that a Cell processor is the one in the Playstation 3, but at the time I read the article, I had to look that up in Wikipedia to check what a Cell processor was -- I couldn't remember. Anyway it seems my new boss has a wider variety of interests than my old boss did!

I feel sad about the deterioration of my Persian...