[5:12am] Ah, yes, Winter and time for the internal clock to start whacking out. Yesterday it was wide awake at 4:30am, this morning 4am. Not much open on the way to work at five and not much traffic either. There is really only one place you can go at this time of morning to pick up something quick for breakfast: the truck stop. The faces of five o'clock truck stop customers are not cheery, bright, and welcoming. Smoke fills the air, eyes are red and watery, and you feel like a bug they've discovered underfoot. The waitresses are always nice, as if they embody the lyric "if I can make it here I can make it anywhere."

So what's a scrawny computer geek with headsets drapped around his neck to do? He John Wayne's it over to the pastry case and orders up something for breakfast...to go. There, that looks pretty good, but how to ask for it? The last thing you want to do in a Truck Stop at five am is correctly pronounce croissant.

Can I help you sweety?
Yeah, how about one of them...uh, chocolate things?
That's a croissant dear.
Oh...
Very rich, almost too much.
Uh huh
Of course I can't eat that kind of stuff anymore. I dunno, maybe it's my age, but they are way too much for me.
[sympathetic smile]
Here ya go... You're going to need more than that dollar, hon.
[nod]
Yep, they are almost exotic, kind of like a dessert. That'll be a dollar thirty five. Oh, you had coins too, well aren't you the prepared one.

And it was rich. Super duper chocolatey goodness that cut right through the morning coffee and made fillings sing along with the radio station they were picking up. Zowee, gonna do some massive coding this morning, yessiree. In the harsh light of the coming day the code and I will likely be a little jittery and unstable, nothing you want to deal with.

All of which is just my way of leading up to this link, not even related, about applying Genetic Algorithms to solving the the travelling salesman problem.

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