I've been reading Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson. I've been working at it for a while, and I'm almost done with it. In the chapter I'm in now, Stephenson uses the metaphor "the chimera hunt" in reference to looking for something that's talked about, but not really there (in the book it was the Seattle music scene). It made me wonder how many times in my life I've been guilty of hunting the chimera.