Merry? Christmas
Well, its pushing 3am on Christmas day 2003, and I can't say I'm feeling particularly "christmassy", been a bit of a strange week, getting used to being at home again, and I don't really feel like I fit in as I used to , things have changed quite a bit.
Laptop battery died on saturday, swiftly followed by the screen just displaying nothing but white (it seems OK on an external monitor) and I am assured that this is just a problem with either the Inverter or a loose connection somewhere. Scouring ebay for a new battery, it's a shame i never took up those ones i saw for £30 brand new :| Got a reccomendation off a friend of this person who fixed a similar problem on his laptop, so I shall give them a ring on thursday and see if they can get it fixed for me before i go back to uni.
Got loads of revision to do, and i am only 10% of the way through my operating systems book, eep.
Still not decided on what I am going to do about a change of degree scheme, I would like something higher than just a BSc but I don't really want to do ANOTHER year in industry.
Considering going back to aber early to look at houses and things.
A Computer Scientist's Attempt at (un)Creative writing. Ok, well it's not, it's a Blog.
Wednesday, December 25, 2002
Friday, December 20, 2002
Noticed that blog isn't archiving properly on sunday and started fiddling around, now there is no archiving at all :|
Was really tired all weekend as a result of doing an all nighter last week for the group project, and then went out on saturday night, meaning I didn't sleep from 9am on Thursday until 3am on Saturday :S
This week I worked monday - wednesday, was the usual fayre of radio 2 and mince pies, but i managed to finish some tasks that were in need of completion.
I'm finally back at home now for christmas, and am writing this sat in front of the TV... Decided that home needs broadband and might set up a local campaign website there might be more pre-registrations, then at least BT might even look at the exchange.
Just watching bravo, and a bit of a strange quote from come guy who picks up long needles with his eyelids.. "I do it all for god" Where do they find these people?
Was really tired all weekend as a result of doing an all nighter last week for the group project, and then went out on saturday night, meaning I didn't sleep from 9am on Thursday until 3am on Saturday :S
This week I worked monday - wednesday, was the usual fayre of radio 2 and mince pies, but i managed to finish some tasks that were in need of completion.
I'm finally back at home now for christmas, and am writing this sat in front of the TV... Decided that home needs broadband and might set up a local campaign website there might be more pre-registrations, then at least BT might even look at the exchange.
Just watching bravo, and a bit of a strange quote from come guy who picks up long needles with his eyelids.. "I do it all for god" Where do they find these people?
Saturday, December 14, 2002
All finished at last
After working throught the night on thursday (the quality of the work done at 3am is unknown) I finally finished the personal project at 8am on Friday, and exhausted I walked up the hill to hand it in at 9.30, when I returned after saying my goodbyes to a few people on my course, I made the mistake of taking a half-hour "power-nap" before I had to go to work (1PM), however, this made me feel worse :|
Friday night, we went to scholars then up to the union, was generally an alright night, apart from getting quite drunk, as usual, but then again, it was the union. Today I ended up sleeping in until 6pm - eep! Tonight I shall have to fix the MP3 player ready for the journey home on wednesday night, hope it isn't too difficult.
Learned:
Don't take naps during the day :|
After working throught the night on thursday (the quality of the work done at 3am is unknown) I finally finished the personal project at 8am on Friday, and exhausted I walked up the hill to hand it in at 9.30, when I returned after saying my goodbyes to a few people on my course, I made the mistake of taking a half-hour "power-nap" before I had to go to work (1PM), however, this made me feel worse :|
Friday night, we went to scholars then up to the union, was generally an alright night, apart from getting quite drunk, as usual, but then again, it was the union. Today I ended up sleeping in until 6pm - eep! Tonight I shall have to fix the MP3 player ready for the journey home on wednesday night, hope it isn't too difficult.
Learned:
Don't take naps during the day :|
This post was actually written on Thursday the 5th of December, but I never got around to sumitting it
Projects
Today and yesterday have quite possibly been the strangest of the last few days. Yesterday I had intentions of doing lots of work, however it turned out that I didn’t… While group project is almost complete, I have done next to nothing on the personal project apart from a class diagram, and learned a bit about the Model View Controller architecture that we are supposed to use (I must have been asleep in the lecture), speaking of being asleep in lectures, I am actually writing this is in a lecture on data structures, suppose really I should listen, but since all the shit that’s happening at the moment, I can’t really be bothered, so I shall do personal project instead.
I spent almost all of yesterday moping around doing nothing, and went to bed quite late having faffed for almost an entire day (minus going to work), however I did one useful thing :- fixed my housemates computer, which for some reason would not access the network. It was a windows ME machine, and I have had problems with network cards before, so I decided after around two hours of uneventful driver updates and reinstalls, I was finally about at my whit’s end, so unplugged the machine from the wall… surprisingly it worked after that !! must have been a fault with the hardware or something. Bizarre.
This morning I woke up late having missed another hardware lecture – joy. But it seems that I got a few jobs around the house sorted and bug will finally clean the bathroom later : )
Learned:
Advent computers sometimes have random hardware faults
Current MP3:
Robert Miles - Children
Projects
Today and yesterday have quite possibly been the strangest of the last few days. Yesterday I had intentions of doing lots of work, however it turned out that I didn’t… While group project is almost complete, I have done next to nothing on the personal project apart from a class diagram, and learned a bit about the Model View Controller architecture that we are supposed to use (I must have been asleep in the lecture), speaking of being asleep in lectures, I am actually writing this is in a lecture on data structures, suppose really I should listen, but since all the shit that’s happening at the moment, I can’t really be bothered, so I shall do personal project instead.
I spent almost all of yesterday moping around doing nothing, and went to bed quite late having faffed for almost an entire day (minus going to work), however I did one useful thing :- fixed my housemates computer, which for some reason would not access the network. It was a windows ME machine, and I have had problems with network cards before, so I decided after around two hours of uneventful driver updates and reinstalls, I was finally about at my whit’s end, so unplugged the machine from the wall… surprisingly it worked after that !! must have been a fault with the hardware or something. Bizarre.
This morning I woke up late having missed another hardware lecture – joy. But it seems that I got a few jobs around the house sorted and bug will finally clean the bathroom later : )
Learned:
Advent computers sometimes have random hardware faults
Current MP3:
Robert Miles - Children
Wednesday, December 04, 2002
Organisation
Well, social last night was a bit of a failure, at this late stage in the term I am going to put it down to the stress of projects that all years are under at this moment, maybe that's a good excuse.
Today has been a day of sorting out odds and ends.. I now have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow about my knee, which has annoyed me every winter solid for about the last two years. Also the group project hand in was technically today, and we did indeed have a CD of all the needed files, however, the one that had been burned to CD was the wrong one, due to some sort of general fuckup with versions, and it also turns out that the design spec wasn't to, err, spec, so that all has to be sorted out by Thursday... Unfortunately, I lost my rag in the meeting today and ended up raising my voice to the design team, not something I usually do very often, but I just about think I had good reason. More stress than I can possibly cope with at the moment.
Also today I had a meeting with Lynda, one of the tutors in the department who I was recommended to talk to about my issues with deciding on a course/route to take. She was very helpful, and after explaining my situation (I had not spoken to her of it before), she said it seemed that I had already made up my mind to stick with the BSc and not to an Industrial Year, in a way that was kind of true, all I really was waiting for was a member of staff to agree with me :)
After all the other things today, I phoned work, and sorted out going to see them all on the 20th for a chat about next summer, and going for a meal afterwards, now I have to email people and get them to come :)
Feeling a bit strange again, probably because I have quite a lot of things to sort out, like a house for next year, now I know I am staying in aber next year, but I suppose more importantly, I have to decide who I am living with.
Going home on the 19th, and looking forward to that, surprisingly, but as a back up I am going to spend a tenner or so on getting a GPRS bundle for the “festive” period.
Learned:
Deadlines are something that needs to be enforced with a large gun
Current MP3:
DJ Sammy - Heaven
Well, social last night was a bit of a failure, at this late stage in the term I am going to put it down to the stress of projects that all years are under at this moment, maybe that's a good excuse.
Today has been a day of sorting out odds and ends.. I now have a doctor's appointment for tomorrow about my knee, which has annoyed me every winter solid for about the last two years. Also the group project hand in was technically today, and we did indeed have a CD of all the needed files, however, the one that had been burned to CD was the wrong one, due to some sort of general fuckup with versions, and it also turns out that the design spec wasn't to, err, spec, so that all has to be sorted out by Thursday... Unfortunately, I lost my rag in the meeting today and ended up raising my voice to the design team, not something I usually do very often, but I just about think I had good reason. More stress than I can possibly cope with at the moment.
Also today I had a meeting with Lynda, one of the tutors in the department who I was recommended to talk to about my issues with deciding on a course/route to take. She was very helpful, and after explaining my situation (I had not spoken to her of it before), she said it seemed that I had already made up my mind to stick with the BSc and not to an Industrial Year, in a way that was kind of true, all I really was waiting for was a member of staff to agree with me :)
After all the other things today, I phoned work, and sorted out going to see them all on the 20th for a chat about next summer, and going for a meal afterwards, now I have to email people and get them to come :)
Feeling a bit strange again, probably because I have quite a lot of things to sort out, like a house for next year, now I know I am staying in aber next year, but I suppose more importantly, I have to decide who I am living with.
Going home on the 19th, and looking forward to that, surprisingly, but as a back up I am going to spend a tenner or so on getting a GPRS bundle for the “festive” period.
Learned:
Deadlines are something that needs to be enforced with a large gun
Current MP3:
DJ Sammy - Heaven
Monday, December 02, 2002
What happened to this term then?
Well, I seem to have just spent an entire weekend faffing and doing nothing useful at all, so when i finally got to bed tonight, I felt that I should at least blog!
It was again, a busy week, but it was one of getting a few things sorted out, and also one of bringing up more questions that don't really have simple answers. The group project phase I is almost complete, my project plan was completed on tuesday after being too tired to do anything constructive after returning from Durham, it luckily passed QA first time, which was a relief... that shows those many hours of writing reports to company standards have had some positive effect on me. This weekend I intended to get the personal project underway too, but unfortunately that did not happen... On saturday I woke up to reports of the washing machine being broken, which was sort of impled as if it was my fault, hey, I only brought the thing here after repainting the front :) It turned out that me and si got it working again after draining it out, and tightening a few screws... It then seemed to work until today when it broke again... Upon a bit more investigation, it seems that the vibration of the washer shakes it apart, causing the door interlock to shut off the machine... Bring on the duck tape! Bloody hardware!
The big question whirring about my head at the moment is the question of what course I carry on with at Aber, it's vastly complicated and I shan't go into it all here (if you know me, i've probably mentioned it), but if i convert to a course that has a compulsory industrial year, I think that I would be wasting my time doing another year of work (at lower than the rate if i graduate a year earlier)... Until this time last week i was certain that i was going to convert to Meng and do the industrial year... but now i am not so sure... until friday I had more or less decided on sticking with the Bsc, but I don't know... going to speak to some more tutors and things tommorrow, so hopefully they can provide me with some inspiration.
The whole course uncertainty isn't good because I have to sort out accomodation for next year - and SOON!
Current MP3:
Badly Drawn Boy - You Were Right
Learned this week:
Life isn't really all that bad, maybe.
Well, I seem to have just spent an entire weekend faffing and doing nothing useful at all, so when i finally got to bed tonight, I felt that I should at least blog!
It was again, a busy week, but it was one of getting a few things sorted out, and also one of bringing up more questions that don't really have simple answers. The group project phase I is almost complete, my project plan was completed on tuesday after being too tired to do anything constructive after returning from Durham, it luckily passed QA first time, which was a relief... that shows those many hours of writing reports to company standards have had some positive effect on me. This weekend I intended to get the personal project underway too, but unfortunately that did not happen... On saturday I woke up to reports of the washing machine being broken, which was sort of impled as if it was my fault, hey, I only brought the thing here after repainting the front :) It turned out that me and si got it working again after draining it out, and tightening a few screws... It then seemed to work until today when it broke again... Upon a bit more investigation, it seems that the vibration of the washer shakes it apart, causing the door interlock to shut off the machine... Bring on the duck tape! Bloody hardware!
The big question whirring about my head at the moment is the question of what course I carry on with at Aber, it's vastly complicated and I shan't go into it all here (if you know me, i've probably mentioned it), but if i convert to a course that has a compulsory industrial year, I think that I would be wasting my time doing another year of work (at lower than the rate if i graduate a year earlier)... Until this time last week i was certain that i was going to convert to Meng and do the industrial year... but now i am not so sure... until friday I had more or less decided on sticking with the Bsc, but I don't know... going to speak to some more tutors and things tommorrow, so hopefully they can provide me with some inspiration.
The whole course uncertainty isn't good because I have to sort out accomodation for next year - and SOON!
Current MP3:
Badly Drawn Boy - You Were Right
Learned this week:
Life isn't really all that bad, maybe.
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