rain drops keep falling on my head

Its been raining here since Thursday. I was house sitting and decided to water the lawn...so it started raining. The ground has finally been saturated (after three days of constant rain) and the pools are building up. On Saturday we put all the important things under the house up on bricks but we are yet to flood. I'm expecting that tonight. Everything is a little clammy, my sheets feel like they haven't dried properly even though I didn't wash them. On an up note, everything smells nice, its cool and I'm sleeping well.
I've just had two cups of coffee and a philosophical discussion. I'm all perked up and am ready to start writing chapter 5 again.

lets see if this coding really works

I found a link on Dave's blog for a japanese name translator...

This is what happens when you enter first name first.

My japanese name is 遠藤 Endoh (distant wisteria) 弓美 Yumi (beautiful bow, as in bow and arrow).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

When I tried putting my name in surname first , I got a different name;

My japanese name is 秋本 Akimoto (autumn book) 美晴 Miharu (beautiful clear sky).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Yesterday afternoon went well after I gave up and went home to process prictures of bacteria on a computer with reasonable computing power (1gig of ram) instead of 256meg (P4) instead of P2
This is rather bizarre. I usually can't work at home. Too much distraction in the way of TV and books. I guess having my nephews over when I got home helped. If I hadn't been doing work, I would have been expected to help babysit - no books or tv and the possibility of being bashed with a building block.

I was going to have a good day

The first thing that happened this morning was a call from a debt collection agency. Apparently BOC gases thinks I owe them $199 from 2002 from the place I lived in Charters Towers.

I moved from Charters towers in January 1998 ( I think, I'd have to check exact details for the exact month)
I paid cash up front for my gas (which cost about $50 a bottle and I only bought one at a time).
When I arrived there were two gas bottles attached to the house. When I left there were two gas bottles attached to the house.

The debt collection agency is now getting a proper invoice from BOC as they don't know specifically what the debt is for and I will be spending my free time tonight going through my files looking for what few pieces of paper I have from 7 years ago to show I don't owe them any money. The only thing I can think of is that after I left someone took a gas cylender and it took them 4 years to figure it out. A real stretch.

Weekend lazing

Apart from one walk up castle hill...which I am now paying for in the butt department... all I did this weekend was laze around in airconditioning in front of a large screen TV and alternately read journal articles (till my eyestrain headache got too much for me) and watch movies/cartoons. Oh, and I slept a lot. I think I might get stuff done this week because my stress levels have dropped somewhat - I'm very relaxed.
Movies I watched;

The Hulk - somewhat confusing (I missed the first bit)
Terminator 3 - somewhat depressing
Spirited away - truly delightful
Signs - logically flawed

Movies I attempted to watch;

Johnny English - had to go out just after it started.
Amazon women on the Moon - very, very bad. I turned channels and watched Jimmy Neutron cartoons instead.

All in all I got a lot done - if you include catching up on movies you missed at the box office.

Day three - going down hill - the state of minimal energy

On my first day back at uni, things went well. I got lots of papers downloaded and filed in endnote. While I was doing this I also scanned about 8 boxes of slides. A good day.
On Wednesday I continued downloading papers until morning tea, when the last of my slides was scanned and I decided to burn them to CD....the CD burner was dead (did I just hear the first nail being hammered into the coffin?). I put in a work req. for it and decided to go to morning tea. When I got back the network was down...no more paper downloading for the day (my, that sounded like a second coffin nail). Well, I thought, I could go analyse some DNA sequences and determine the next step in processing them, which I did. As a result I needed to order a new primer....but we do that online and the network, as I have already established, was down (Nail 3). I went home thinking "that wasn't great, but at least I got that sequencing numbercrunched."

Today I came in and tried to order the primer. The network is up! Yay! But I find I am no longer on the books as staff so I can't get an order number to send with my online order and must get someone else to do it (they didn't get to it till 4pm and I still don't have an order number. The person who actually does that is not back at work yet - Nail 4). OK I thought, I really don't need it yet as i need to concentrate some more DNA before I can work with it, so I'll just use our brand new rotor in the ultracentrifuge. It stopped at 14600rpm (instead of 40000)...um...several phone calls, much checking of paperwork later (after we actually found the lost paperwork)...It appears we were sent the wrong rotor (a 40L instead of a 45L) The 40L isn't designed for our centrifuge - apart from that it looks physically identical. I probably should be glad nothing blew up really. It took 3 months for that rotor to arrive. I'm not expecting a quick turnaround to get the right one...Nail 5 slamming in there.

I mentioned this at smoko and was reminded that the universe is sliding towards chaos and I should just give in and accept that this will continue and get worse. It all falls apart and the centre cannot hold. Philosophical bunch in my uni department.

I think I might copy this before posting. No point in tempting fate

Happy New Year

I'm back at uni...though I dropped in and out all last week anyway...and I'm ready to get going. Just waiting for an academic to arrive so I can access a secure room with our only copy of a vital computer program in it. We really need combination locks on those doors. Or swipe cards. Or microchips inserted under the skin of our palms, so we can wave our hands blythly over the lock and hear it disengage.....Hmm, I think the break has rejuvinated my creative glands finally.