Route Kanal

Another week, another party. Tonight is Henrik's thrash to celebrate his return from Australia. I've been working this week, ok, but not as much accomplished as I would have liked. That's the problem with having to take courses, they suck up so much of your time. Also, there are always students to deal with and other such things. I could really work 7 hours a day and not get a stroke of research accomplished. This week I've been working on the actual PhD thesis itself, rather than coding. It's been fun to play with the the thesis itself and see if I can make anything out of it. There's a lot of work still to be done. Per is on holiday next week though, so I plan to have something ready for him when he gets back. Hopefully it'll be in some sort of a quasi-readable state. Then it's back to some furious coding to get something working. I got a hot tip from Olof about NS2, which may help.

Still waiting for news from Japan, the XBox and for notification of rejection from the Global Internet Symposium.

"Forget About Freeman"

It's been a while since I updated, so what's been going on? The party on Friday night was a resounding success I'm pleased to report. Pretty much everyone showed up at one point or another. Music was played, much b33r was drunk and Sandra & I got some very nice presents from our friends. The next day I had a brutal hangover (surprise!) and the rest of the weekend was very slow. We went out for fika on Sunday, but that was about it. We've also been catching up on my video collection whilst we wait for the XBox to arrive. Hopefully it will come sometime this week.

Work-wise not too much has happened. I have started taking a course on "Advanced Compiler Technique" since I desparately need course credit. It's a pain since it's a waste of my time, but I just have to grit my teeth and do it. Today I'm going to start on my thesis corrections that I got from da boyz and see how that goes. Need to get a new version to Per by the end of the week. Then I will probably go back to my code and try to get that into shape. It's been good to have a break from coding and to work a bit more on the "big picture" stuff.

I've mailed a guy in Japan about going there, but so far no reply. He was probably so shocked by my direct approach that he fell off his chair. Oh well, we'll see if anything comes of it. The project resubmission goes in March 22nd and so we should get some notification in June, whilst I'm still teaching. I think then I will make a decision about what I'm going to be doing in the future.

28 Days Later

Today is the party day! I'm very curious to see how it will turn out, since we haven't really had a big party at our place before. I should do some work stuff today too, but it'll just be bits and pieces since I don't want to start anything big before the weekend. I plan to get back into high gear on Monday and start with the thesis writing to give me a break from the dreaded ns2. This week has been a bit lazy since the deadline got extended (no surprises there! ;) and I felt like I needed some time to relax. Plenty of things to sort out in the flat too. I'll try to put up the shelves and the pinboard in my work area and put up my Penny Arcade cartoons that I've printed out. Should give ppl something to discuss tonight at least! I'm also gonna update my thesis timeline and send it out to da boyz, and also write a mail to the research group in Tokyo who seem to do some cool stuff. Per should write to the opponent today, I'm very curious to see what his reaction will be!

On A Rail

Bought a new TV yesterday. 28" for 2100SEK, it wa a pretty good deal. Unfortunately the XBox hasn't arrived yet, so there's nothing sensible to plug it in to. I tried connecting the laptop via S-Video through a SCART adapter, but that didn't work quite right. It sometimes gave a colour picture (I managed to watch a whole Johnny Bravo episode though), but most of the time to was Black & White. Which is kind of a pain, but it's not really going to be connected to the TV, so it's not a problem. Also couldn't get the video to work over co-ax. *sigh*. So, I'm just gonna get a SCART connector for it, which should just do the trick. I'm really excited about the xbox, I can't wait for it to arrive! :) Too bad that it probably won't arrive in time for the party though.

Today I think I'm going to reinstall my box at work to bring it up-to-date. Since I have a little bit of breathing space, I think that now is a good idea to do it, 'cuz I won't get another opportunity until I finish the thesis. There's a few other bits and pieces to do too. Then tomorrow night is out Moving In party which should be pretty fun! There will be a real mix of ppl there, so I'm quite curious to see how it pans out. Time for some coffee!

At Dawn They Sleep

Sprang out of bed at 7am, dashed off a mail to Per, did some exjobb supervision with Mats, showered, shaved, had breakfast, read slashdot and now I'm off to work! Phew! I'll probably collapse at 1pm, but who cares?! ;)

Anomalous Materials

Just talked to Per and we've agreed to push back the date of the defense. Provisional date is now 6th May which means I would submit 1st April (how appropriate! :). This is really, really great news since it means I now have nine weeks to wrap everything up, which I think is certainly manageable. Turned out that because of Per's schedule and Christian & Ian's long feedback loops plus how much work actually needs to be done, it's a good idea to push it back. One drawback is that I'll have to integrate the thesis work with preparing for Datakom II since there will be a bit of overlap. I'm very happy to have the extra time. I hope I will be able to make use of it.

Snowblind

Got to work on the bus today since Arnold brought me and the monster TV home in his car yesterday. Couldn't get the TV hooked up to the video unfortunately, but I'll have another go at it tonight. Today is payday! w00t! That's very good news indeed since I have been flat broke for the last week. Moving into an apartment is expensive! I'm glad that hopefully there won't be too much more to buy. So, with my ill-gotten gains I bought a modded xbox, which is pretty exciting. It seems to be the best price/performance combination for a media centre in the living room. I hope it arrives before the Moving In party on Friday so that I can get drunk ppl playing games on it! ;) So now I have to restrain myself from buying anything unnecessary this month. As I'm fairly bored of being broke. OTOH, it shouldn't be too hard since the flat is in pretty good shape now with most stuff being present and working.

I'm trying to get a final piece of the code puzzle solved today before I drop it for a while to go back to the thesis writing. However, I'm so tired I'm about to black out. It was not the best night's sleep I've ever had last night, too much stuff running around in my head. I hope that I'll get better as the day progresses. Hopefully I'll get to quiz Per a bit today about what the future will hold. Watch this space!

Today's Fortune

Do not sleep in a Eucalyptus tree tonight.

Sounds words indeed...

Ergonomics

The ergonomics person dropped by to help me with the pain in my fingers. She's tweaked my sitting position a bit, so we'll see if that helps. Also she gave me some exercises to do which should help me a bit. As per usual when I get to work there are all sorts of other distractions happening which prevent me from getting anything done. Er... like this, in fact. So, time to start work.

Power Up

Crawled out of bed to find out that Arnold is gonna pick me up at work and drive me home with the TV. w00t! That's really cool! Currently we're using a monitor that I borrowed from Olof as a TV which is fine, but it would be great to have something a bit better. I'm still not decided what the long term solution is renting/buying/whatever, but that's for another day. I'm still not decided about what to do today: A) try and implement a few more features in my code or B) try and start with the thesis. I'm leaning towards getting the code fixed so that I can start on the thesis stuff with a clean conscience. Hopefully it shouldn't take more than a couple of days.

Trying to find some good "drum music" for Sandra. She said that she really liked the drum solo that Mickey Dee played at the Motorhead gig, so I'm trying to find some other classic drum solos. Other than Buddy Rich Orchestra, I've found a live version of "Moby Dick" by Led Zep which has quite a cool John Bonham drum solo.

Time to go work, I guess...