It's done
So my degree is finished. Last week, I handed in my thesis. There was vague drinking, but it was at midnight, so there was the "Rave in the Cave".
The next Thursday (The one just gone), I had a presentation to give on my work. God I hate Tahar with a fiery passion where only a belief in animal rights would stop me from sexually assaulting him with a tobasco-coated armadillo. The man adopts bully tactics when questioning. I don't mind hard questions. But what I do dislike is people asking a question at a weak spot and consistently picking at it after you've gotten the answer you want. This isn't a good way to tear people to shreds. Sure, if you don't get what I'm doing, fine. But if you want to dismantle my work, do it in a way that doesn't just end up with you just asking "but did you make X component? How does it work?" Guess what, asshole. I already told you that I saw it and picked it up and used it because there were interesting properties. I can tell you how I adapted it for use into my actual project but I can't always tell you how everything works. Why? Because sometimes you just have to let the little detail go. To a large degree... he has his preferred targets, and I feel I've been on that list for the entire year. But he's head of learning in the school, and friends with the head of school - a lovely man who doesn't like complaints going outside of the school - so he's pretty secure. But put simply, he is a bully.
Friday had me doing a poster presentation. This means we put up posters, which were nothing more than barely edited slides, to be perused by all and sundry interested parties. I realise that Multi-Agent Systems is a nebulous field at best, so the people who didn't get it, really didn't get it... but surprisingly the people who were into the field really liked the work. Ok, I had no deliverable at the end, but I had something that seemed very very promising.
The other thing was that I put myself in for IBM's open source competition. I figured since every component of my project involved it or used it, why not. However, the rep that turned up was a guy that turned up was someone who came to give a talk about IBM's involvement with Open Source. I happened to rip into him when he tried to present "Project Zero" (groovy on grails alternative) as open source, with "So, you mention PZ is something you're showing to the OSS community by hope to take commercial", "Yeah, we do", "Will there be a community fork that's open source?" "No, that's not planned. We just want their feedback for what they'd like to see in the product, and to make us aware of any bugs", "So you're leveraging the open source community without giving anything back?" "Um... yes" - cue laughter... Me: "That's all I wanted to know".
So this is the guy who turns up to review our open source work. He comes up and asks "Did you work in IBM?" "Nope. I had an interview once for Extreme Blue, but didn't get it" "No, that's not it. Your face looks familiar?" "You did the Open Source presentation here, last year..." *he brightens up* "Yeah." "I was the one that grilled you about Project Zero." "Oh."
Then, I make it even worse... "So what's your project about?" "It's about visualising multi-agent systems. Do you know much about them?" "No." "Well, are you familiar with IBM's autonomic computing manifesto"... he gives an answer to the extent of acknowledging it exists...
In short (on the IBM front): amidoinitrite? I'm going to be the one winning the laptop, amn't I?
Anyway, it's over. Now to let the hair grow back.
The next Thursday (The one just gone), I had a presentation to give on my work. God I hate Tahar with a fiery passion where only a belief in animal rights would stop me from sexually assaulting him with a tobasco-coated armadillo. The man adopts bully tactics when questioning. I don't mind hard questions. But what I do dislike is people asking a question at a weak spot and consistently picking at it after you've gotten the answer you want. This isn't a good way to tear people to shreds. Sure, if you don't get what I'm doing, fine. But if you want to dismantle my work, do it in a way that doesn't just end up with you just asking "but did you make X component? How does it work?" Guess what, asshole. I already told you that I saw it and picked it up and used it because there were interesting properties. I can tell you how I adapted it for use into my actual project but I can't always tell you how everything works. Why? Because sometimes you just have to let the little detail go. To a large degree... he has his preferred targets, and I feel I've been on that list for the entire year. But he's head of learning in the school, and friends with the head of school - a lovely man who doesn't like complaints going outside of the school - so he's pretty secure. But put simply, he is a bully.
Friday had me doing a poster presentation. This means we put up posters, which were nothing more than barely edited slides, to be perused by all and sundry interested parties. I realise that Multi-Agent Systems is a nebulous field at best, so the people who didn't get it, really didn't get it... but surprisingly the people who were into the field really liked the work. Ok, I had no deliverable at the end, but I had something that seemed very very promising.
The other thing was that I put myself in for IBM's open source competition. I figured since every component of my project involved it or used it, why not. However, the rep that turned up was a guy that turned up was someone who came to give a talk about IBM's involvement with Open Source. I happened to rip into him when he tried to present "Project Zero" (groovy on grails alternative) as open source, with "So, you mention PZ is something you're showing to the OSS community by hope to take commercial", "Yeah, we do", "Will there be a community fork that's open source?" "No, that's not planned. We just want their feedback for what they'd like to see in the product, and to make us aware of any bugs", "So you're leveraging the open source community without giving anything back?" "Um... yes" - cue laughter... Me: "That's all I wanted to know".
So this is the guy who turns up to review our open source work. He comes up and asks "Did you work in IBM?" "Nope. I had an interview once for Extreme Blue, but didn't get it" "No, that's not it. Your face looks familiar?" "You did the Open Source presentation here, last year..." *he brightens up* "Yeah." "I was the one that grilled you about Project Zero." "Oh."
Then, I make it even worse... "So what's your project about?" "It's about visualising multi-agent systems. Do you know much about them?" "No." "Well, are you familiar with IBM's autonomic computing manifesto"... he gives an answer to the extent of acknowledging it exists...
In short (on the IBM front): amidoinitrite? I'm going to be the one winning the laptop, amn't I?
Anyway, it's over. Now to let the hair grow back.