RL update
The set up of the new laptop is proceeding apace. So far so good. Getting set up was mildly painful, cause doing a disk image of the old laptop, like I did without thinking, didn't work, on account of the two computers having different hardware, and therefore needing different drivers. But now I have all my data off the old HDD, and my brother's happily formatting it to reinstall things to his liking.
Me... I'm struggling a little to get used to this new keyboard. It feels weird, on account of having the Mac-style keys -- raised with a little bit of plastic in between each -- and having a number pad. I keep attempting to hit home or end, and getting backspace or 4. Mildly annoying, but I'll acclimate. It almost feels a little less zippy than the one I used to have, though... oddly. And I suspect that's due to all the random bloatware it shipped with. And I also have yet to have a chance to properly defragment it. I'll probably do that once I decide to crash for the night. In the meantime, I'm downloading the newest updated graphics drivers for my video card. It's just taking for bloody ever, since my connection is very slow for some reason. -_-;; Grr. The tubez! They are teh clogged!
As to the end of the week... some was good, some less so. I went to talk to the bossman on Wednesday. The upshot was that I needed to focus more on my subject area and less on his. So I'm having to rethink pretty much all of my planned research for the next 12-18 months. And he wants me to write up a grant for him. Which I'm fine with. I'd been considering doing that anyhow. I'm just not sure about the timing. There's suddenly a lot going on, now. Cause, with the budget cut that's looming in our collective future as a university, everybody's suddenly gonna have less funding. Which means he wants me to apply for a fellowship he's found, for PhDs that are on track to finish their degrees in a year. And if I get it, it would be the university funding me, rather than my PI. Essentially. I'd be getting about the same amount of money, though. But I'm having to go through and put together an application packet. -_-;;; And so, I've been spending the last two and a half days or so frantically writing. I managed to get together enough of a draft to send to the bossman today. I still have some stuff to finish, though; some research (meaning reading) that he wants me to do on some new materials -- both waaaaay outside the realm of what I'd been planning to attempt in terms of their properties -- after which I'll have to rewrite one or two sections of the draft, and I need to try to dig up one last abstract for one last conference from back in 2010. I can't seem to find it on my HDD, or on the interwebs. And I'm not sure I will, given that it was an internal symposium type thing.
But. Anyhow.
We went out to eat on Wednesday. Hibachi. Tasty stuff. And yesterday was half cooking, half wrapping of gifts, and half messing around with computers. Followed by an outing (perhaps a trifle ill-advised?) to go bowling. For the first time in years. For all three of us that went. It was filled with some pretty spectacular fail on all our parts. The highest score any of the three of u s attained was a 106. ^^;;; I don't remember what my highest was. 80-something, I think. I didn't care much about keeping track. *shrug* Today... well, we bowled from 9 until midnight. And then I ended up getting distracted by the data transfer I was attempting until about 1 am. (*facepalm*) Aaaand I had to get up again at about 6:30 for the conference today. And I use the term loosely. It was a bit of an uncoordinated shambles. No one seemed to have a clue. Period. I got there at about 8 am, walked over and got my nametag. One of my officemates -- who was also presenting her poster -- walked with me. My nametag was in the box. Hers wasn't. And we registered for the event at about the same time. That was our first clue of the impending fail. The second was the lack of a designated room to go to, to put up our posters. Although they did provide everybody with pushpins, and I have to give them points for that. The last conference I attended on campus didn't do that. But w e put up our posters at about 8:15, and then wound up sitting around for an hour or so, until a third of our group members gave her presentation at 10. We'd found out at the registration desk earlier that the poster judging wouldn't take place until about 3:30. I wanted to throw something -- preferably heavy -- through a window. So after our groupmate's talk, we went back to the office. I worked on my fellowship application some more. And, at that point, I was already dead tired. But by the time noon had rolled around, I'd more or less finished my draft, and mentioned as much to the bossman. About halfway through that procedure, I was asked to come back to the lab and help with something involving the XPS. (Our problem child that hasn't been working too well, of late.) Buuut, since the only halfway lab-worthy shoes I had with me were my heels... yeah, no. Not happening.
At noon, I said fuck it, and went out to lunch.
By the time I got back to campus, it was about 1:30. I spent some more time on the fellowship application. Cleaning up, and polishing a little. At about 3, I sent it to the bossman. Then, between 3:30 and 5:15, I wound up standing around, waiting for the poster judge to come around. The session was supposed to last until 4:30. He essentially ended up coming up to me, and asking me to condense all of my findings into 5 minutes. A decently long while after the session was supposed to have ended. And my feet were absolutely killing me. -_-;;; So, I did the best I could, and he moved on the the next poster. Before we left the building, I insisted on changing over to my flipflops. Holy hell, It hurt just to put them on. >.< Ow.
So I limped back to the office, put away posters, packed up and headed home. And now I'm setting up my shiny properly. In another hour or two, I may just crash and sleep off the tension headache I somehow picked up about 5 hours ago. Meantime, I'm going to go find a painkiller...
Me... I'm struggling a little to get used to this new keyboard. It feels weird, on account of having the Mac-style keys -- raised with a little bit of plastic in between each -- and having a number pad. I keep attempting to hit home or end, and getting backspace or 4. Mildly annoying, but I'll acclimate. It almost feels a little less zippy than the one I used to have, though... oddly. And I suspect that's due to all the random bloatware it shipped with. And I also have yet to have a chance to properly defragment it. I'll probably do that once I decide to crash for the night. In the meantime, I'm downloading the newest updated graphics drivers for my video card. It's just taking for bloody ever, since my connection is very slow for some reason. -_-;; Grr. The tubez! They are teh clogged!
As to the end of the week... some was good, some less so. I went to talk to the bossman on Wednesday. The upshot was that I needed to focus more on my subject area and less on his. So I'm having to rethink pretty much all of my planned research for the next 12-18 months. And he wants me to write up a grant for him. Which I'm fine with. I'd been considering doing that anyhow. I'm just not sure about the timing. There's suddenly a lot going on, now. Cause, with the budget cut that's looming in our collective future as a university, everybody's suddenly gonna have less funding. Which means he wants me to apply for a fellowship he's found, for PhDs that are on track to finish their degrees in a year. And if I get it, it would be the university funding me, rather than my PI. Essentially. I'd be getting about the same amount of money, though. But I'm having to go through and put together an application packet. -_-;;; And so, I've been spending the last two and a half days or so frantically writing. I managed to get together enough of a draft to send to the bossman today. I still have some stuff to finish, though; some research (meaning reading) that he wants me to do on some new materials -- both waaaaay outside the realm of what I'd been planning to attempt in terms of their properties -- after which I'll have to rewrite one or two sections of the draft, and I need to try to dig up one last abstract for one last conference from back in 2010. I can't seem to find it on my HDD, or on the interwebs. And I'm not sure I will, given that it was an internal symposium type thing.
But. Anyhow.
We went out to eat on Wednesday. Hibachi. Tasty stuff. And yesterday was half cooking, half wrapping of gifts, and half messing around with computers. Followed by an outing (perhaps a trifle ill-advised?) to go bowling. For the first time in years. For all three of us that went. It was filled with some pretty spectacular fail on all our parts. The highest score any of the three of u s attained was a 106. ^^;;; I don't remember what my highest was. 80-something, I think. I didn't care much about keeping track. *shrug* Today... well, we bowled from 9 until midnight. And then I ended up getting distracted by the data transfer I was attempting until about 1 am. (*facepalm*) Aaaand I had to get up again at about 6:30 for the conference today. And I use the term loosely. It was a bit of an uncoordinated shambles. No one seemed to have a clue. Period. I got there at about 8 am, walked over and got my nametag. One of my officemates -- who was also presenting her poster -- walked with me. My nametag was in the box. Hers wasn't. And we registered for the event at about the same time. That was our first clue of the impending fail. The second was the lack of a designated room to go to, to put up our posters. Although they did provide everybody with pushpins, and I have to give them points for that. The last conference I attended on campus didn't do that. But w e put up our posters at about 8:15, and then wound up sitting around for an hour or so, until a third of our group members gave her presentation at 10. We'd found out at the registration desk earlier that the poster judging wouldn't take place until about 3:30. I wanted to throw something -- preferably heavy -- through a window. So after our groupmate's talk, we went back to the office. I worked on my fellowship application some more. And, at that point, I was already dead tired. But by the time noon had rolled around, I'd more or less finished my draft, and mentioned as much to the bossman. About halfway through that procedure, I was asked to come back to the lab and help with something involving the XPS. (Our problem child that hasn't been working too well, of late.) Buuut, since the only halfway lab-worthy shoes I had with me were my heels... yeah, no. Not happening.
At noon, I said fuck it, and went out to lunch.
By the time I got back to campus, it was about 1:30. I spent some more time on the fellowship application. Cleaning up, and polishing a little. At about 3, I sent it to the bossman. Then, between 3:30 and 5:15, I wound up standing around, waiting for the poster judge to come around. The session was supposed to last until 4:30. He essentially ended up coming up to me, and asking me to condense all of my findings into 5 minutes. A decently long while after the session was supposed to have ended. And my feet were absolutely killing me. -_-;;; So, I did the best I could, and he moved on the the next poster. Before we left the building, I insisted on changing over to my flipflops. Holy hell, It hurt just to put them on. >.< Ow.
So I limped back to the office, put away posters, packed up and headed home. And now I'm setting up my shiny properly. In another hour or two, I may just crash and sleep off the tension headache I somehow picked up about 5 hours ago. Meantime, I'm going to go find a painkiller...