bored
well, okay, not so bored. after i wrote that title, i decided i should read through the editing suggestions on the two chapters RK looked through on his way to India and gave back to me today. (according to him, there would be a comma before "and gave back to me today". why can't i have a professor who actually follows English grammar? or uses standard editing marks for that matter? or has legible handwriting?) so i've been doing that for the past couple of hours...and yelling obscenities a lot. the people in the lab next door probably think i'm nuts. well, fuck them too. it's not that i disagree with everything he suggested. some of his suggestions are quite good. others, though, are not very good at all or incredibly useless. for example, when someone puts "not clear" next to a paragraph, that suggestion is itself not clear! i mean, what isn't clear? is it the information in the sentence or the sentence structure? or are you just stupid and unable to understand it? oy. anyway, there's a reason that i don't like face to face editing sessions. in private i can curse and yell. with someone, i try to hold all that in and be reasonable. generally, i end up crying instead. it's not pretty. and i'm taking a break now because i just got pissed off enough to wad up the chapter and throw it across the room. (incidentally, fourteen page thesis chapters neither wad up well nor fly well.) he corrected a term i used several times. in truth, i can see where he's coming from; the term in question has a different meaning in systems theory. however, i'm using the term as used by ecologists, and i'm using it correctly, damn it!
anyway, the reason i titled this entry 'bored' was because i was expecting to be just that. i picked up the last bit of data that i needed. i now have all the fractal dimension numbers in my spreadsheet and added into the thesis chapter that was almost finished. i also discovered a slight error in one of my calculations and fixed that. go me. not that i'm feeling particularly triumphant right now. *grumbles* i was intending to go home once i got that data and entered the new numbers in the thesis chapter. when i left home, however, the power was out. apparently, it was turned off in the area because there's a fire a few blocks away from my building. i saw the police cars and fire trucks when i left, but i didn't see any flames or even smoke. hopefully, we'll have electricity again by the time i get home. i didn't want to go home immediately after getting my data in order to give them time to finish mopping up from the fire. of course, it's been over two hours now, so i could probably give it a try. i should probably go retrieve that poor, abused thesis chapter first, though, and take it home with me. i know i shouldn't take the editing process personally, but it's so annoying. *grumbles some more*
i was going to talk about other things, but i don't feel like it any more.
anyway, the reason i titled this entry 'bored' was because i was expecting to be just that. i picked up the last bit of data that i needed. i now have all the fractal dimension numbers in my spreadsheet and added into the thesis chapter that was almost finished. i also discovered a slight error in one of my calculations and fixed that. go me. not that i'm feeling particularly triumphant right now. *grumbles* i was intending to go home once i got that data and entered the new numbers in the thesis chapter. when i left home, however, the power was out. apparently, it was turned off in the area because there's a fire a few blocks away from my building. i saw the police cars and fire trucks when i left, but i didn't see any flames or even smoke. hopefully, we'll have electricity again by the time i get home. i didn't want to go home immediately after getting my data in order to give them time to finish mopping up from the fire. of course, it's been over two hours now, so i could probably give it a try. i should probably go retrieve that poor, abused thesis chapter first, though, and take it home with me. i know i shouldn't take the editing process personally, but it's so annoying. *grumbles some more*
i was going to talk about other things, but i don't feel like it any more.