Writing Session in full force
So I pulled a 12 hour shift at work. Got in at 08:15 AM and left at 08:20 PM. Reason you might ask? The Writing Session… on one hand it is rather good that we have this much pressure to deliver in these two weeks, and on the other, it could’ve been managed better. For instance the lectures, which are ever so informative, could’ve been delivered the previous week. Namesake agrees with me here. It is as if one finds oneself in a party and is ordered to “Have Fun”. That rant aside, I really am getting into the whole spirit of things. The mind-map complete and the laptop all ready once again (thanks Namesake), I was ready to start writing. Though the pace would’ve probably been a lot slower, had Rob not informed us in the presentation this morning, that the first draft is due tomorrow, Friday, 2nd March 2007, at 05:00 PM CET. Eep. For a person who had not written down a word yet on any sort of paper, this particular bit of news set off alarm bells in me noggin’.
Hans followed up Rob’s presentation, with his APACage guidelines. Soon enough his headaches shall be my headaches since I have taken over the EndNote part. It was quite informative, if not all new. But soon after a walk, I got down to the abstract and then spent the whole day from 01:00 PM to 08:20 PM just working on my paper.
Which brings me to now. Rather tired, and just ready to turn in. Will update the Blog for yesterday, tomorrow ; )
Ich liebe dich liebchen!
Tim@ 11:41 PM
ELAPTOPB0RK3D
Ezel Ezel and Ezel. That’s the way to describe ol’ me. I have just recovered from a serious problem, thrust upon me, by yours truly. ARGH, what a pain in the proverbial behind – the IBM Optical drive, I Hate Thee. Yep now you know why this is categorized as a rant.
The whole saga started with my wanting to uninstall Vista after just two days of jousting with it. The “System” process had the CPU spiking 50% and never did the usage go down once below 30%. I thought it was due to Network Discovery Processes in the background. Really had to disable them all, and yet still the performance was b0rky. The inevitable decision (and sorry if ya break out with a sigh), go back to XP.
Argh, grmph. Doing the thing that I hate best, reinstalling Windows. But anyway, back home, I dug out my CDR and deleted the Partition, and the CD started to copy those ubiquituous files onto the Drive. But what’s this? It got stuck at 11% with drivers.cab! Oh no, I exclaimed, I had to get the laptop ready for next morning. But this basically meant, I had to dig out another working XP CD. Which was tough enough a challenge in itself, owing to the fact that I have some 800-900 CDs/DVDs all over the place. Finally found one that was in a relative pristine condition, popped it in, and same error on another file. Ah, could it be the extry RAM I installed? I dug the RAM out, and tried again. No effect. The DVD RAM drive is well and truly b0rk3d.
Happy Birthday Mom!
What a joyous day indeed, happy birthday dearest Mom! Oh how the celebrations must be at home, and it is on occasions as these, that I miss home ever so dearly. Talked to dad this morning and also to my brother, and found out that a celebration is indeed in the offing. Nagi’s and the Innie’s have been cordially invited and shall be attending. Ah I can almost see it, the rushed activities at home, as they prepare the banquet, not to mention the sweetmeats and Arti’s favorite “Misthi”. I do hope though, that they go that extra mile and make the pudding that Mom was ever so famous for! It was a regular at all the bashes she hosted. That would indeed be, just the best birthday gift. Any pix from the bash, I shall put up here! Happy Birthday my dearest mother!
In the NL however, it is Paper Writing Day II. I have started with another mind-map and am altering the same on the basis of a few suggestions made by the supervisors. A very handy tool this Freemind, and I really love the ease with which one can move betwitxt the maps. I long however, to start with the actual process of writing – Mind-maps are fun and all, but cannot really compare to the joy of writing a paper. In related news, I have discovered I relate best to Enya whilst in a creative zone. Afer Ventus (literally translated from Latin to “African Wind”) is the song that plays right now, and it is just so soothing. Anyways, back to work!
Tim@10:54
So I am done with the Mindmap , and it has been approved. Ok it took some time. But it is ready! For yo reference peeps here you goes!
Tim@14:54
PS: Ich liebe dich mademoiselle!
Apecage Paper Writing Session, Day I
The first day is currently underway. Rob is presenting a general orientation talk regarding paper writing and the science of technology development. Have found and am using this remarkable mindmapping software Freemind, good for whatever ails you.
Update @ 13:29 – Apparently the articles need to be complete by the end of these two weeks, and taking into account the various journal stipulations, the minimum word limit will be 4000 words. That makes it nearly 400 words/day. Doable I think.
Long live Marco K., bless his cotton socks
So goes the common refrain. Ever since yesterday of course. The gracious gentleman let me at his unused piece of RAM, bumping the memory of my Thinkpad to 1,5 Gib! Good enough for… hold your breaths à VISTA! And that was my project for the Friday night. Yippee I know, lame, but well, need to recharge my batteries for the week ahead. I will have some important meetings and indeed some paper writing to do. So, a quiet weekend is just what the doctor ordered.
Being the proud father of a brand new spanking oven, I was rather enthused to try out my baking skills. Looked up a few recipes and decided it was best to keep it kosher… i.e. frozen pizzas and premade/mixed cookie/cake dough. Chicken! AH is a delight for people like me! It was ever so nice buying stuff I can bake instead of having to grill both sides up! Spent a wee too much I am afraid.
But back to the Lappie, I decided to sleep a wee bit before trying to rock the lappie’s Kasbah! That “wee” bit of a nap turned into a full-blown sleepgasm, as I awoke nay four hours later, at midnight. Cussing myself, I started the installation. What is weird is that the laptop managed a higher performance index than my server. Blah, 4.1 compared to 3.something. Everything went well, and soon I found myself installing Office 2007 and Adobe 8 from the server, whilst watching a dreadful C grade movie on Premiere “Manticore” starring that guy from Star Trek Voyager – Chakotay… Not having satiated my appetite for dreadful C grade movies, I switched on “House of the Dead II” on Premiere Direkt. A yawn fest, in spite of the gore. But all said and done, these movies did pull me through the yawn-inducing process of getting the OS up and running.
Vista on the laptop, ever so fast and ever so responsive, with all eye-candy turned on. Indeed, long live Macro, bless his cotton sox!
The evening promises to be quite fun, as the namesake and I plan a trip to Maastricht for the “Flanders” gig at the local Irish pub there. Add to that the novelty of having Guinness in another city, makes this evening, an event to look forward to!
Tim@14:21
