storage woes

My Lotro characters have bulging pockets that are terribly unorganised...pretty much like my own storage at home. I spent all evening fiddling with it last night (the Lotro stuff that is) logging in and out between watching TV. I don't think its improved any...perhaps I'll have another shot on Thursday - or i could just sell it all. I would be selling my own stuff if I got organised enough too.

chipmonk eyes

I am suspicious that the decaf coffee I was given at 8:30 last night was not actually decaf - I was still eyes wide open at 1am. Then I had to get up before 7am. The previous night I had stayed up waaay too late killing dragons in Carn Dum. At least I have the gratifyingly sunken and darkly circled eyes of the sleep deprived. I hate it when I feel awful but look fine - there's just no sympathy.

And in recognition of the 19th...Arrgh

My pirate name is:

Captain Jenny Bonney

Even though there's no legal rank on a pirate ship, everyone recognizes you're the one in charge. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate's life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

behind

Still haven't put photos I intended to on here.

I also have a cold - for which I'm blaming Lexifabs plague ridden blog.
I have a bunch of jobs at home that aren't done - which I'm not blaming LOTRO or champions online for (though I probably should).
I also have a bunch of jobs at work that aren't done for which I'm blaming focusing entirely on writing lectures. I now have two weeks to catch up (and write more lectures). Today I will be doing only catch up stuff. Tomorrow I'll start writing again I think.

not a great start to the day

At work at 7:30am for an 8am lecture. Open up my brand new fresh coffee beans and the top comes off the packet so the packet drops - coffee beans on the floor. Set up my dripolator and start reading the lecture - look back and theres coffee all over my coffee table (aka filing cabinet). The top seal on the coffee (which is there to keep the heat in and should pop down automatically when you put the coffee pot in the dripolator) hadn't popped down - so the coffee had run out over the now sealled lid of the coffee pot. Cleaned up and on a second run through the same beans now - not as good as it could have been.

I'm definitely not doing any lab work today.

Champions online - death by rubberbanding

Two days after mentioning I might try this new superhero game, a late birthday present arrives...so now I'm very tired.

The character make up is awesome...I spend at least an hour on each one. 30 seconds to pick a power, then 59 minutes and 30 seconds to get the cheekbones, toenails, insect wings and colour scheme juuust right.

It was ok on day one once I got past the intro screen freezing my computer because zone alarm blocked the game. The game itself in the first section looks very comic booky - which is realistic I guess. My Gold Dragon character sort of makes my eyes bleed to look at her in the sunlighty bits.

I even got my head round the movement controls - sort of. Day two I gave up due to terminal rubberbanding. No-one else seemed to have problems but my character ended up dead due to not being able to run away or fight back. I may check it again tonight and see how it is.

Characters so far:
Hawk blade (female martial artist in pink and white with hawk wings, tail and a head crest)
Dark lightning (male darkness skill, all in shiny metallic black with blue lightning motifs and
a cape and scarf over his face)
Precious Horde: Golden humanoidish type dragon with green trim - she lopes along on all fours rather than running
Tiffany (blonde gadgeteer with pigtails and wearing a green plaid skirt and jacket over a purple shirt, with purple shoes and spectacles)

Edit: tried it - rubberbanding up the wazoo. Tried again this morning and its fine - hope that means they've fixed it and not "won't be able to play in the evenings 'cause it just doesn't work then"

tax return spent

on Frivolous Wii game and now Wii mat.
Of course, I'd just done my knee so I can't use the mat properly till I can put weight on the right leg

tired, sore and a cough

The cough is really bugging me. The tired is a combination of not enough sleep and disgustingly early mornings caused by lectures. The sore is all my own fault. I bought a Wii on the weekend - with sports games. On day one I had a Wii age of 78. On day 2 it was 38. I blame ignorance of the rules for day 1 results....but the soreness seems to match

relaxing in front of the fire in the Inn league headquarters

Bindy, having finally got to level 60, has also got enough cred with the Inn league to get into their secret Lair in Michel Delving. And very nice it is too. I shall attach pics at some time. I managed to buy a new dance move in there and only need some more festival tokens and and a trophy skin to get an animal trophy either smoking a pipe or wearing a silly hat. It would be a great place to meet up...oh wait, no-one I know has managed to get the cred yet.
On other related issues - Bindy is lvl 60 now and its an odd sensation to know if you do quests, you'll get no XP, yet I still have a bunch of deeds and those legendary weapons still get XP, so it will probably keep me working on him.

Anyhoo, back to my huge, real workload

The house

Has a new roof...just waiting on the gutters.

They turned up and put up scaffolding. 2 days later some guys arrived before dawn. At 7 am on the 24th July they came in and had the roof off before morning tea and a new on by lunch time. They left and arrived a week later and did the final trimming. The scaffolder arrived yesterday and took the scaffolding down. Now we wait for the guttering guy to turn up and our house will have a completely new roof. Then, of course, the very, very, very big bill will arrive.

pottering

I have some very big jobs to start, but a lot of not quite finished things that have been put aside during the first two nightmare weeks of lecturing. I'm dithering a bit finishing these off and trying to decide which ones should still be left till after I've done the big jobs. This is because I did a 60+ hour week last week and I'm not really up to jumping in both feet into the big jobs yet. It doesn't help that there's so many smaller, half finished jobs that I keep finding new ones...and some of them have more important deadlines than others. So right now I'm dithering, scrounging through my desk, sorting the order of the things to do, looking over lists, trying to get all of them in my head and in some sort of priority. Add to that trying not to take my eye too far off the ball regarding the big jobs with deadlines that are coming up.

Its an odd sensation, alternately relaxing with paper shuffling and having mild anxiety spurts regarding deadlines.

waiting for the hit

I have exceeded my 40 hour week and am now head down, making sure stuff I need on Monday morning 8am is done. I've also had to repeat those samples in the 44oC incubator, because when I finally went home thinking it was stable, it wasn't. 3 degrees higher meant everything died. This morning I had a low carb Monster in the hopes this would trick my body into feeling refreshed.
Guarana, Vitamin B, Taurine, Ginseng. It tastes ok if you like vitamin B - mmm berocca. So we'll see if the lights turn on.

I want to go home

But here I sit, tidying up work - and blogging - because someone decided to change the incubator from 44oC to 25oC. This is the one with a big label that says 44oC and is used multiple times each week at this temperature. I may get screamed at tomorrow but its actually my lab incubator and I'm the only one authorised to change the temperature.
So, it took me till 6pm to finish setting up samples (2.5 hours of work) & then I discovered the incubators been altered. Now I have to hang round till it gets back up to temp and make sure I haven't set it a degree too high - or the samples all die - its rather fiddly. I'm annoyed that I didn't think to look at it when I started. It would have been fixed by the time the samples were ready.

I took the container that was in there out. It can sit at room temperature. That's roughly what they'd changed the incubator to anyway.

I also have a cold. Did I mention I want to go home?

guilty pleasure for birthday

Ok, get your minds out of the gutters.

My nephews gave me a USB drinks fridge for my birthday. I have always wanted one, but thought it a frivolous use of energy to keep one can cold next to the computer. Now of course, I have to use it, because it was a gift. :D

frivolous purchases...because it was my birthday

As well as some less so because I needed them.

At the markets I bought;
a 15 minute massage that left me very relaxed - though I need another one now (stiffening muscles)
1/2 a cheese and oregano pizza and a big plate of honey puff balls (for dinner)
a pair of stirling silver twisty dangly earrings (which I must wear 5 times to justify my $5 rule for apparel and accessories)
two funny logo t-shirts (geek by day, superhero by night and Don't make me send my flying monkeys after you). I didn't buy the you can get to know a lot about people if you just take the time to inject them with sodium pentothol shirt.
magnetic haematite ring (I usually break them after a week of wear, but they only cost $5)
a cabochon ring with a stone who's name I can't recall right now (brown glass with flecks of copper in it - first made by people trying to create a fake gold look).
jar of pickled garlic....mmmm

I think that was it..except for the decaf cappuccino I got from Juliettes for supper.

V8 thing meant that Stockland was ok to park at today. Now having spent 2 hours at work, I'm off to do a little more shopping followed by lunch and a post-prandial nap. I may even clean the house afterwards....or play LOTRO. One of the two.

PS free play on LOTRO for lapsed players for this week I think...Dave.

Its my Birthday

Dad sent me a text this morning to wish me happy birthday...at 6:40am...after being awake at 4:30am due to a screaming argument at the house across the road. Somewhat sleepy now and drinking coffee.
I was thinking about going out for a nice dinner tonight but we have a V8 race thing on here today, so the centre of town will be nightmarish and booked out. I may still go out to the markets (at 5 so there's some slight chance of a park) and then maybe get takeaway and sit on the strand...with a million other people. Even on Wednesday night this week it was chockas.
I may leave work early. There's a research meeting at 3pm that i have to be at, but after that I'm free to skive off.

Something I learned this weekend

If you put the spa bath mat in the bath and add bath milk instead of bath salts, you get 4 foot high bubbles.

I guess I can tick -"lie in a bath tub covered by 3 foot of bubbles" off my list of things to do before I die. Done and exceeded.

things

I have learned about lotro by reading up on them.
Its 5% cheaper to by stuff at the kin house neighbourhood supplier than the individual house supplier (which I knew was 10% cheaper than generally).
You can buy racial buffs from rep dealers when you get in good with them...I'd wondered how I was going to get the hobbit virtue trait.

now of course I won't read anymore for a while

Sound is overrated anyway

Both my video camera and my computer are in the shop (different shops) for quotes for repairs to the recording component of the audio. In both cases I can play something and hear it, but when I want to use the microphone - nada, zip.

I need to video next weekish to record some work related stuff and I'd like the computer back by tomorrow night to play LOTRO (or I'll be bowing out). My laptop has lotro on it, but plays buggy at the lowest resolution and hasn't been updated for a year. I really need to find a CD version of LOTRO+Moria so that I have a version that won't take 3 solid days of downloading and blowing my limit to do a reset.

Anyone know if they are purchasable in Australia?

On other sound related topics, I've moved 1/2 my birds to the front of the house in anticipation of selling them - and hopefully to stop the neighbour complaining that they are too loud. The remaining birds sound just as loud to me, but the ones out the front sound quieter than they did out the back and I know at least one of them was the noisiest bird out there.

I looked up the old out of date council regs. They defined caged budgies as "quiet birds", cockatiels as "medium" and cockatoos and "loud". The budgies are apparently more annoying than the cockatiels.

using this for the purpose for which it was set up

avoiding starting work.
I have an eyestrain headache that had worked its way back into the top of my shoulder. I'm having some strong coffee to fix the problem before I get into assessing an application. I've actually been pretty good with the eyestrain - I got new glasses and wore them constantly for a week and it went away. Then I was able to wear them intermittently while doing computer stuff. Unfortunately I got cocky and didn't wear them watching TV or playing LOTRO last night and the headache is back.

To do today:
read and comment on an application
finiosh writing the biosafety application for a project I'm about to do
organise transport of biologicals from brisbane to me
monitor the new technician doing the food testing
get prices on a new dispenser
have a meeting at 3pm then unplug the lab gear prior to the power outage this weekend
clean the house before my brother & his family turn up for his Birthday dinner

Andrea comes up trumps

I spent a fair bit of time on the weekend near and on the Bitter Stair in LOTRO. It was, as Andrea said, a good place to earn moola. Of course all of this is gone now due to crafting expences for my alts - greedy little things, but at least they are moving up the ranks and earning crafting rep. On another nice note - I got about 6 recipes that my alts didn't have off the bitter stair people. Roll on Burgundy coloured clothes :D

In addition I realised I have still got animal deeds to do in the area, so I've been alternating the stair and killing snowbeasts etc. Only about 300 of each bear, worm and snowbeast to go to get my deeds completely done :) Then I have to go back to goblin town and finish off the 'find this place' quests there - Bilbo left some buttons behind apparently.

One thing about keeping budgies..you see more birds of prey

Here is my second successful hawk shot. It was on the top of the cage this morning. Dad missed taking a photo of yesterdays hawk - possibly the same one. It slammed into the side of the cockatiel cage and left a dint in it

Bindy is broke!

I have somehow managed to spend all of Bindy's money. This tends to happen when I focus on crafting. Bindy is broker than he was as a lvl2 character. He has 20 copper pieces left. Of course, the reverse happens when I focus on completing deeds where its "kill 500 wargs/goblins" style. Perhaps it would be a good idea to deed crunch for a while.

Melaleuca linariifolia

The council have replanted trees on our footpath after cutting the old ones down when they fixed the gutters. We hadn't had a tree on the footpath before. The original one died of malicious neglect many years ago I think. The old trees weren't suited to the position, they grew too tall and into the powerlines. As a result they were weirdly and probably not effectively pruned. The new one looks like it will be gorgeous and grow to 10m.....what? why plant trees under powerlines that are recorded as growing 8-10M tall? Maybe its the 'shrubby' version that only grows to 2.5meters. The neighbour was told they'd grow to 4m. Stay tuned and ask again in 5 years or so.

my new toy

After doing some research I bought myself a video/DVD recorder combo with an SD digital tuner in it on the weekend. I'd priced it everywhere at $500 & went somewhere with a sale on. I got them to knock $20 off the sale price & saved myself $40. Woot! Now I can use the money to buy some good quality DVDs for converting all my irreplaceable videos & some DVD ram disks for general recording. As a plus, the non-existent reception for WIN is now perfect. My mother thinks I'm rubbing it in.

In other news, instead of playing with my new toy last night, I got all my characters in LOTRO up a crafting level after Chris kindly bodyguarded them through their respective purple crafting quests. Bruse ended up emptying 1/2 of his bank to read all the stored master armoursmith recipes. BTW if any of my kin are armoursmiths with master level, let me know, I have 1/2 a dozen double recipes to pass on now.

huh, what? free time?

Well, not actually free, just free of short term deadlines that I have to work to. At least today.

This means I can cast my eye around my office and do that 8 hours of marking that is sitting there. Also I can organise my accomodation for the conference in July in Cairns. Then there's that gel tank I was going to try to bodgy up the platinum wire electrodes. Hmmm maybe I could take an hour off and go price VCR/DVD recorder combos. Since I've been working long hours and weekends.
While I'm out I could post Caillan's present. For those of you who are supposed to send him something - his Birthday is later this month!! This is your friendly automatic reminder service. I would have forgotten only I put my calendar back on my door after it was painted and there was the reminder on it.
BTW I now have mid colour blue doors in the house rather than brown. Much cheerier.

This free association written blog was brought to you by the number googleplex and the letters R for relaxed and D for delusional.

oh...I forgot to mention

I went to the 50th Anniversay of Pimlico open day. They had colour coded name tags for decades. Lots of the 1st year people turned up (1959) and masses of the 60's. After that the numbers steadily dropped by decade. A sign of the employment demographic I think. We all moved away and only a few of us are still around. Of the 1983 cohort, I saw Sean Mullins, Sandor and Tiffany....and thats it.
After I went home it occured to me I'd taken no photos of any of them, or any photos at all for that matter in spite of taking my camera - I guess you miss out on my happy snaps.
Theres a bunch of new buildings & where we sat for lunch is now reserved for grade 11 and 12 students. The library still looks identical. The Home Ec teacher did recognise my name - because she taught my brother Doug. I was rather invisible in Home Ec, Doug became a chef.

>(

For two weeks I've been getting a practical up and running for next Monday. First one of the reagents was off and it made the results look good when they weren't. I found it, fixed it, tried again and got good results. So I made up more of the samples to run and checked them - not working. Went back and used original samples again -now they're not working....argh.
I'm going to try once more under really careful conditions with every control I can think of. If it still doesn't work, I may be scrounging round for Monday.

There goes my weekend.

Shades of Tolkien!

While watching Midsommer Murders on Friday night, I suddenly realised that the protagonist was played by a young Orlando Bloom..."Hey!" I said to everyone in the room "thats the elf from Lord of the Rings!". "Surely not" they said. But the credits proved me right. (he was skewered by a pitchfork btw.)
The really weird bit was where the killer turned out to be a resident of a property called Lothlorien. The coppers even commented on knowing your lord of the rings content.

So - zero degrees of separation there I think.

typing with trepidation

mainly because I don't want to jinx things.

I did step one of the fix - opening the box, frowning at it and prodding the video card. I also sprayed air on it to remove any dust.

My computer hasn't frozen since. The front audio ports no longer work, but I'm not desperate enough to open the unit again and risk the much more vital video card right now...give it a month or so.

and the fear continues

Well, that didn't fix it. I was starting up in safe mode to uninstall and reinstall my video driver when my cousin called. I mentioned I'd noticed on the worst occasions that I had extra beeps when the computer turned on. She told me to do a search on the beeps. They mean something - mainly hardware wise. Fancy that.

Ok, one search later when the computer chose to turn on and one long beep followed by three short beeps means I either have a problem with my video ram or I don't have a video card.

So, Is my Nvidia 8800GT card frying after 15months? Its working intermittantly. Does this mean its a connection problem? You'd think a hardware problem would happen the same every time. Though every problem I've ever had with computers has been intermittant. Except when my battery leaked all over my motherboard that time. That was pretty terminal.

I also found the forums for my motherboard - ASUS has a forum just for P5K-SE motherboards, Well, well, I learn so much when my computer plays up. Their first suggestion is always to clear the CMOS. They suggest this EVERY time you install ANY hardware. Including those people who had exactly the same video card as me. So, I looked this up. I need to open the case for this and move some pins (or take the battery out for 1/2 an hour). The computer apparently then resets all the hardware so your BIOS and CMOS match - I think. One site had a bunch of "manually reset all your hardware settings after this" instructions - but the others seemed to just say reset, turn back on.

Oh, they also said that ASUS motherboards don't always have the best relationship with NVidia cards, and an ATI card might be better if you want to change.

So, here's my plan.
1. Open up the box, look at it dubiously for a while, prod the video card, looking for physical - jarred out of place issues
2. Turn on the computer and try to get it to freeze (basically by internetting and LOTROing at the same time - high demand as possible)
If I can get it to do it, continue by;
3. Read my motherboard book re resetting CMOS & try this
.....assuming this doesn't cause more issues
4. Go to 2
If 2 still shows issues,

Research good non Nvidia cards & do a forum search on LOTRO with my preferred cards (so I don't buy something that causes LOTRO to crash)

5. Buy and install new card
6. Goto 2.
If 2 still happens,
7. talk to my friendly computer guy and spend more money

Anyone see anything that makes them want to scream "NOOO! Don't do that!" while running forward in slow motion to prevent the disaster?

As an aside, my computer is running at 39 degrees C. If it were human, it would be running a considerable fever. I love my probe software.

Approach the computer with fear and trembling

Lately my computer has been freezing up...requiring a hard boot. I defragged, cleaned my drive, ran a virus check on the whole system. Nada. It started in LOTRO and then moved to when I was trying to do more than one thing even when not playing. Then I got the dreaded BSOD, with a video driver error.
I updated my video driver and its seemed to go away - or not. Crap.
I did some reading and the errors seemed to be identical to some that happened when the video card was new out (way back in 2007). Updating the driver worked then. It also seemed identical to an issue someone else on LOTRO was having earlier this month - so it could have been LOTRO related, but the issue for both of us also happened outside of LOTRO. The suggestion was a corrupted file in LOTRO, requiring an uninstall and complete reinstall of LOTRO (Think 24 hours and a blown out download limit given I don't have the DVDs). The last suggestion was a BIOS issue - out of date for driver or corrupt file. Solution - update the BIOS of the motherboard.
I didn't want to reinstall LOTRO for a guess, so I started reading up on BIOS updating. They tell you how to do it with many dire "unless you know what you are doing don't do this or you'll turn your computer into a brick" warnings. I still preferred this to reinstalling LOTRO.
So this morning I pulled out my files to identify exactly what my motherboard was - go to your manufacturer and get the updated bios for exactly your board, do not try to get it anywhere else or computer death will ensue etc etc.
My motherboard book pointed out I have software on my CD to A - update the bios and B - monitor voltage and core temperature (which I've always wanted to do). Utilities now downloaded I got the update software to save a copy of the current BIOS to a CD and then got it to find the company site, select the available BIOS's and then I picked the most recent one and told the software to flash install - so no effort on my part. Apparently theres also instructions for laborious, careful DOS installing if it doesn't work.
Then the software told me to reboot...ok....why isn't anything turning up on the screen. Crap.
Hard reboot. Now something pops up Checksum error press 1 to fix - takes me to bios altering zone. Crap some more.
Decided to make no changes and just reboot again. Turned on fine. The cold sweat of fear starts to dry. So far no freezes, but I haven't done anything intensive yet. I have a vague suspicion that when I made no changes, the BIOS may have reverted to the previous default state and my computer will continue to crash and burn when Bindy fights a boss.
BTW Sorry about the other week guys - the guardian abandoning everyone just at the start of the "OK, I'll hold off the big boss with 26 000 HP" fight.

some pics

On the way up to the tablelands we stopped at Paronella Park and took pictures of crumbling ruins and turtles...the Ulysses butterflies were too fast for me though.


Skipping everything else for now, here is the blurry, grainy shot of the elusive platypus...as well as probably the best shot of a Ulysses butterfly from the trip. I think the professional shots have probably been doen with dead butterflies. It'd be the only way to get them to stop moving.

had a week off

I've had a week off and have been putting off writing anything till I brought in the pictures of my first live platypus sighting. But then I saw this comic and it reminded me of every time I've taken Berry into a fellowship. And I do believe we were discussing this very idea at one point. Did one of you read it then?

Aprils Blog

Life is still hectic. Summary as follows

I have 130 pracs to mark before Easter.
2 more lectures before Easter plus one practical
exam quesiotn need to be written and submitted - not all lectures written yet, less given.
Biosafety applications need looking at

Should know soon about job. Waiting on interview of last (and absolutely fantastic) applicant. Doom, doom de doom.

Week off at lake Eacham after Easter followed by writing a weeks lectures for a subject I've never done before, plus 11 2nd year (done last time in 2006) and 4 3rd year lectures to update

Research in there somewhere, I hope. I have a good idea but no money or students to do it.

Misc lab things to repair/supervise, Food lab to get up to scratch.

Long term - lecturing a whole subject next semester that I haven't done before.

Bindy now has a Facebook page. There are even pictures.

Hmm, thats enough bloggin in point form...work now.

talking part 1 is done

I've given my seminar - I'm told it went well. The HOS said he understood it which is a good sign. I felt I blathered at certain points, but I kept it mainly to time...phew.
Now I have to wait for an interview at 5pm.

Biggest 2 weeks ever

I'm about 2/3 of the way through a monstrously busy 2 weeks. Masses of lectures and practicals which means I've had to work around them. A grant application went in and I'm preparing for a presentation and interview for a job on this Friday. Samples are coming into the testing lab for something we've never done, so I had to design a protocol for them and make up new and interesting media. I've also been going to a series of presentations by other people for various jobs they are applying for (one a day all week). Then the PC3 lab air flow started to play up...so its been shut down and we are setting up to sterilise it on Monday-Tuesday prior to technicians doing repairs. Oh, I also did a lot of phone calling regarding a complicated order for pipettes. I'm now taking a breath and a coffee before pouring agar plates and tightening up my presentation...must also find out the type of questions that get asked at interviews before Friday morning. This afternoon I will be running a food quality practical and then going to aquarobics.

there's this new toy I'd like

..but I can't justify it.

The smart pen. I don't take enough notes to need one. You buy this fat notebook and pen (replacement notebooks abt $20) and you write your notes with the pen. When you go back over your notes and wonder what they all actually meant, you can tap on a line of notes and the pen plays back audio of what the lecturer was saying when you were writing the illegible scribble that is in the book. As a novelty, you can also draw a keyboard in the book and play notes by tapping it with the pen. My cousin bought one for when she's marking verbal work for her prep/grade 1 students.


Here's an instructional video

On another note, its pouring here again.

cough cough cough

My cold continues on schedule. I have a standard order of
1. sore throat (if I have betadeine I can nip it in the bud here - I didn't have any on Sunday night :( )
2. slight cough and slight runny nose, plus fever & fatigue
3. Heavier runny nose and sneezing, fever is fading
4. heavy runny nose, blocked sinuses, coughing again but chesty this time
5. sinuses clear, runny nose mainly dries up, cough turns dry and hacking
6. recovery

I'm usually feeling at my worst at 2 and 3.
I'm now at 4...should be right for getting online tonight - but I'll sound awful

Shooting myself in the foot

I've said for some time now, that there's no point in me doing longer days and working weekends. All that happens is my brain switches off and I make mistakes or I get sick. If I try to do the longer hours, I pay for it in just as many hours lost later to inefficiency, mistakes and illness. So, I have these really short deadlines for papers/grants/lecture writing & end up spending all weekend working on the paper. Sunday night I get a sore throat and I've lost 2 days of work with brain capacity falling to about 5% of normal, a desperate desire to sleep and feeling generally like crap. I actually feel a bit better today and the woman in the office across from me says I look terrible and wan. My eyes are very bleary. I really should learn and stop paying attention to people who say I should work the weekend/after hours if something has to be done.

spam spam spam spam

I was thinking monty python while I wrote that. I just got my first spam comment. All about power levelling in RPGs. I must remember to write more boring things that don't attract them.

Gah again

So there I was, using my creative time (till 1pm) sorting through data in papers for the purposes of writing a streamlined introduction that supports me doing the work I've already done and am writing the paper for. Suddenly, an email pops up telling em I have until 4:30 to mark the supplementary exams and and have them at examinations. These are the papers I was given 2 days ago, for a subject I didn't teach last year but am going to take over next semester, without a deadline given to me. So of course I put them aside because I knew they'd require much thought to figure out what was actually taught & what should be included in a complete answer. I have now used up the last of my creative energy for today for exam marking. So much for getting my paper written. I need a nap.

GAH!!!!!

Hate writing papers, hate writing papers, hate, hate, hate writing papers.

I feel the more I have to work at them, the more they churn unto mud....and the less the point I was tryign to make gets put across.

Cold up here

The fan is off, I'm considering jumpers for the office (several have already given in). I haven't seen the sun in...hmm when did I last see the sun? Still enjoying the rain though, for two reasons. Firstly, if the sun was out it would be stinky and humid and probably as hot as it is down south, you poor shmucks. Secondly, when it stops raining I have to start thinking about mowing the calf length grass again.

hmm, timing is everything

I'm currently figuring out if I can add anthrax to a vet lecture, as well as public health food poisoning issues without blowing the top off my hour to discuss tetanus and botulism. 18 slides so far without having either in there. Both of these are requests from other lecturers who think my lecture would be a good place to put this in so that its covered.

back to the grind

I did a total of two things today at work...and I finished neither of them. I do not expect to improve tomorrow.

On an up note, I did level Bindy to 50 before my holiday was up :)

On a weird note,
I took my car in to be rustproofed this morning & they rang me before lunch time to say it was ready. I went in & picked it up at lunch because the guy said I was his last customer of the day. When I got there, he was asleep with his feet up. The music was on louder than I could speak and I couldn't find the volume dial. I even poked him and he didn't wake up. His feet were twitching, so I assume he was dreaming. Since my keys were beside him and I'd already paid, I left a note telling him I couldn't wake him, I'd taken my car & to ring me if he needed to tell me anything or I needed to do anything more. He hasn't rung. Everyone at work asked whether I'd checked if he was still breathing.

Blech

I started work yesterday at 8:30am and finished at 8:30pm - all food lab sample processing. Now I'm back at work at 8:30am again. Todays stuff shouldn't take as long in the lab, so for the rest of the day I'm doing all the admin crap I haven't got to. My office is a pigsty and I have a bunch of ordering and number crunching that needs to be done. Biosafety forms updated, new students forms examined, course redesigned to run next month, filing, rubbish to throw...I'm not even going to look at the papers and lectures I need to write :( 14 lectures in 2 weeks at the start of semester, ick!
Edit : also set up old computer and try to rescue data before chucking....I'm stopping now to have a percolated coffee (Red Back Mareeba Arabica coffee)

I love writing lectures

I get carried away, I spend far too much time on it. I wrote my first lecture for this year yesterday. It took 8 hours of work....Given I have 7 lectures and 14 hours of pracs in week one, I might have to pick up my pace a little

woops missed a few

well, so much for holiday resolutions. after the 1st of January, I forgot to comment.

Hmm, what did I do for these three days...grind welds, paint welds, a little bit of LOTRO (none at all yesterday, though Andrea has tempted me with Moria superior crafting benches), read novels (one Pern novel and two Tamora Pierce novels. I'd given her novels a rest when they seemed to get a bit samey, but obviously I've been away from them for long enough that I could enjoy them again). Thats about it really, oh and I bought some cleaning stuff for my new car - now I have to find some time to use it. I go back to work tomorrow :( I think I work too hard doing too many non-satisfying things, since I don't look forward to going back. Even though I have a lot of fun things I could be doing, I don't get round to most of them because of other peoples priorities. Now, off to play some LOTRO before going over to Dot's for afternoon tea.

more grinding

Spent some of the morning and some of the afternoon grinding. Had nephews over in the middle of the day, watched stardust on DVD. Played LOTRO this evening and got Bindy 1/2 way through lvl46. One level a day wont get me to 50 before I go back to work...thats assuming i could get a level a day...oh, and they got my hopes up with a superior workbench in suri-kyla, but it only works if I get to ally status...I only managed that with the mathom society because bindy is a cook & they have cook quests etc.

It was an angle grinding sort of day

Got up, ate breakfast, fed birds, used the angle grinder to grind off the extra concrete lumps on the new aviary base, changes angle grinder head to metal grinding and spent the rest of daylight!!! grinding down welds after dad had welded bits. It really doesn't look like we did much, just extended the entry portal to the aviary - theres sooo much more to do & I go back to work next week. I didn't even drive my new car today :( I did however play LOTRO at lunch time and after dinner - Bindy is now 3/4 of the way through lvl45. My holiday resolution of getting him to lvl50 seems a long way off.

almost forgot

Woops, almost turned off and went to bed without blogging - my resolution almost crached and burned in three days.
today I finished shifting the budgies, did a little shopping and a lot of LOTRO. I also sorted through my old car files - I found the original receipt for the car I bought in 1995, I also shredded a lot of the paperwork. Thats it really. Perhaps there's a reason I forgot.

new car

Dad is impressed because the back seats can recline to several angles and they have an arm rest with cup holder. I'm impressed with the power of the airconditioner. That and I'm now up there with all the 4WD wagons looking down on everyone else. I also shifted a bunch of budgies and leveled Bindy to 45....oh, and I did some filing.

both day and night

...church, coffee with mum, 2 skirts and a new pillow bought at the 50% off sales, nanna nap in the afternoon on my new pillow, finished the mowing and played LOTRO. I also started cleaning up all the misc. paperwork in my back room and planning what to do tomorrow, apart from picking up my NEW CAR!!!!

and so it continued

Today I went shopping. I bought a book, some shorts and got a watch battery replaced. Then I got some photos printed - plus some screenshots from LOTRO. They turn out nice as photos. I ate sushi for lunch. After doing some reading, I scrubbed the bath and mowed the lawn...fun so far yes? I'm watching howls moving castle tonight between getting bindy to forochel to look for the behemoth again. More exciting fun planned tomorrow.

The week off adventure

I've decided to note what I do each day on my week off. This way you can see how dull my breaks are if I don't go away. Let's see how long this pre-new years resolution lasts.
Since I'm starting on the 26th and technically I started my break on the 25th, I'll briefly note what happened yesterday...
Up at 6:30am, church, opened presents (opened Andreas first in the privacy of my room in case she'd sent something highly inappropriate). She hadn't. Read my new Robin McKinley book till 11:30am. Went to Brother and Sister-in-laws place for cold Christmas lunch in air-conditioned comfort, opened more presents, ate King prawns, ham, gingerbread house and ice cream cake, spent the rest of my time putting together a 3D puzzle robot for my 6yr old nephew. All went well, both kids were happy, everyone was relaxed...I didn't expect it but am putting it down to aircon. Came home, read the rest of the book in a long soaking bath full of coconut bathfizzer from the Fellowses.
Today: Got up, watched the Seeker on DVD, finished concreting the base of the aviary & moved two budgies, took my mum post christmas shopping and spent $130 on miscellaneous stuff, came home, put away stuff (including budgie breeding boxes - I'm not letting them breed over summer, it gets too hot), installed my new zippy, glowy gamers mouse...so fast! Decided not to install Crysis until I do some more of the housework I need to do, avoided housework and surfed the web then typed this up...may do more cleaning and putting away now....or go try more bath stuff and reread The Dark is Rising by Susan Cooper in the only cool spot around - the bathtub.

Previously on....

I've just had a week off to buy a new car. I bought (though I haven't had the finance go through yet so its not in my hot little hands) a Hyundai Tucson City. Not 4WD sadly. I like everything else about it. The 4WD version only comes in automatic v6 - boo hiss - neither of which I need or want & they cause the interest rate on the loan to go up. I also shovelled sand till I blistered and poured concrete till I threw up. Its really hot up here right now and it took longer than expected. Once you start concreting, you have to finish so we worked till 1pm, through the hottest part of a stinky hot day....in the sun. I really didn't get all that much else done...except the gingerbread houses, made from scratch, finished last night.

Ptang!

This is the sound my heart rate datalogger made after it fell off my belt at the same time I pulled the mower backwards. The Ptang noise was the sound of a logger shooting off in pieces from under the mower :(

I wasn't using this because I have a heart problem - its purely exercise. I have discovered that mowing my 1/4 acre property with a push mower actually burns more calories and keeps my heart in the cardio zone better than walking up and down Castle Hill. Now I can mow instead of going for a walk :) Of course, I also need a new datalogger. My heart rate monitor watch only gives me totals, not minute by minute logging :(

day off

I had a day off yesterday and had a massage and lots of naps...plus some supreme farming and cooking on LOTRO. I feel rather floaty and relaxed today. I'm wondering if this is how I should feel normally and I've just forgotten due to long periods of stress and overwork. Sad really. Did I used to be floaty and relaxed?

blah

headache, stiff neck, queezy, tired. Doesn't bode well for seeing Australia tonight

rain rain and more rain

I took possession of some more birds yesterday. Five peach faces and four budgerigars. Maybe the timing could have been better. I put their cages under trees and so it rained last night. At 3am I went downstairs with a torch and checked on them. They were still pretty dry but I put some marine ply on the top of the cages anyway & then I went back to bed. At 5 am I got up again and pulled out the powerplugs since the rain was gushing down and the thunder was very, very loud. I was glad I'd done the covering earlier. Then the power went out...woke at 7:15am to the news our street was flooded and I wasn't going anywhere. This gave me some time to wander round in the rain making more thorough covers for the quite damp birds and taking out all their food, which was an inch deep in rain water. By that time the road had cleared..so now I'm at work...Its very black out west, so this might be a short day.
There were hour long delays on the highway north of Townsville this morning for the people coming in to work. My office mate decided she just wouldn't bother. There was also a truck jackknifed on the university round-about, but it had been cleared away before I got there. I only saw one car up on a median strip this morning. So it can't have been too bad, but several cars that were parked on the road in our street have several inches of water in them.

new software

4th times the charm.
I finally got round to installing Dragon. I was testing the tutorial and it took me 4 tries to get the test question right. Even so, overall its better than my typing skills or lack thereof.

Harry I heard that you were starting a new job in San Francisco, Wenders's new jobs start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave.

Harriet I heard that you were starting a new job in San Francisco, Wenders in the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

Harriet I heard he was starting a new job in San Francisco. When does the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

Harriet I heard that you are starting a new job in San Francisco. When does the new job start? I would love to have lunch with you before you leave

marking exams

must..stop..procrastinating

must..stop..blogging

I wos robd!

Someone stole money from my top drawer at work....in an envelope at the back of the drawer. It was most likely after hours through a locked door since my purse was not taken from my open handbag that would have been in view during the day. I also keep my door locked when I'm not there during the day, so it probably wasn't someone just walking in. Someone across the corridor had the same thing happen (probably same night). She too had her handbag in view during the day. We both had stuff like digital cameras and new mobile phones etc etc (also computers) and none of this was taken.
I now lock my drawers as well as the door. There are very few keys floating around that will open my door, so I thought I'd be OK with just the door locked. The other woman who shares my office suggested we get a guard snake...she has a python we could keep in the office, but its a bit cold for it.

roll on wet season

It rained last night. I hope its the start of a lot more. I stayed up waaaay too late reading, so I got to fall asleep to the sound.

Science note: the smell of rain that you get after its been dry is caused by Actinomycetes . I'm not 100% sure of whether the spores have their own smell, or whether the geosmin they produce is fully responsible. Theres also a few other causes, such as petrichor, but the smell I like is Actinomycetes related.

Basically, when the soil dries, actinomyetes bacteria form spores. The new rain aerosolises these spores and they enter the atmosphere where we breathe them in.

I haven't read it...but I have

This time I got a book called "The declaration" by Gemma Malley
I start reading it and something rings a bell....I've read this before too - argh - but I know I read it many years ago and I thought this one was newly published.

I check the publication date...it is new. This makes no sense. So I start stretching my mind back. The other book was darker, less young-adulty, and had a different basis for the "unwanted children locked in institution" theme. The other book had an overpopulated earth being run by an AI that was trying to drop the population. This book has a resource poor earth with an immortality drug that means you can't have children because they won't replace you, they'll just add to the demand on resources. The other book also had more complex twists and a male protagonist. But its interesting how many of the little events at the start of the book are similar or identical.
If I remembered the name of the other book I could compare them.

some people go grey

I'm going silver. I seem to be shedding the occasional hair that is not so much grey as glowing whiter than white. I'd assumed I was going grey (I have Elvira streaks at the temples), but I think I'm going to go straight from brown to silver. I shouldn't be surprised. All my mums siblings are silver haired. If only it would hurry up, I could have that expensive Norwegian blonde look without any effort.

When you can't remember what books you've already read, you're doing too much

I already have "Dark Alchemy" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (with stories by Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman), I'd be happy to pass on the second copy I bought the other week.

The internet has some truly weird sites

16

Created by OnePlusYou

masques and other social events

Today I nipped out at lunch and bought a mask and trimmings to make up a fancy doohicky for the Melbourne cup. We're having competitions for the best dress, hat or mask. I'll put pictures up when I've made it.

I also slipped into dymocks and bought a book of short stories. Now that I've had a flick through, I recognise at least some of the stories. I've either bought it before or read some of them in another collection. I will check my database. Stay tuned. If it turns out I already have "Dark Alchemy" edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (with stories by Garth Nix, Eoin Colfer and Neil Gaiman), I'd be happy to pass it on.

After lunch I went to a biosciences trade display and spent 2 hours just going round the tables...I think the bags of freebies and catalogues weighs about 15kilos. The Biorad guys took advantage of both my hands being full to drape about 6 lanyards around my neck. There was also cake :) Then there were draws from all the trade displays where you had left your details to get them to send you information. I missed out on the bubbly, chocolate and giant teddy bear, but I did win a roche bag with a hat, pen, scribble pad and a book of lab FAQ's - really handy for new students.

are zombies a good model of infectious disease?

The other night I dreamt about zombies. In this dream the previous zombie outbreak had been contained and a large wall built to stop any future infestation. But there was a break in the wall and one small zombie rose from under the ground and shambled in my direction. I realized we could stop this quickly if we could contain it, destroy it & reseal the wall. As is usually the case in dreams, no-one else seemed as concerned to act quickly. By the time I got people moving, the numbers had increased. They continued to increase logarithmically and we were too slow to enact the required responses at each stage. The responses changed based on the numbers you had to oppose. Before I was rudely awakened by a phone call, I was at the stage of locking up the non-zombified in a fortress to keep them alive and worrying that one of them would have been bit before getting in, thus infecting the others.
During the dream I was thinking how interesting it was that zombie numbers were increasing on a standard logarithmic curve...afterwards it occured to me that it looked just like a disease outbreak where no-one had immunity or recovered even down to quarantines and other outbreak control techniques.

high tech..er

I'm now running off two monitors at work. I got a new computer to replace the loud, DVD drive is dodgy, USB drives don't work, blue screen of death computer I've had for 5 or 6 years. The new computer came with a new monitor. I kept the old still working monitor and can now have files I need to look at open in one window and files I'm typing into on the other. I feel very techy. Its brain-numbingly simple to set up. I've even got them at different resolutions as they are different shapes.

:D

High school? Really?

Movie Reviews

I was sorta expecting primary school given the usual level of brain-dead free association typing that goes on when I write this.

Two new budgies, two new brake pads

Completely unrelated but at the same time.

One is a latino (pure yellow with white cheeks). The other is white and grey.

The brake pads are a greyish colour too.

I found out that the squealing of brakes when they wear out is intentional, and if you buy cheap brake pads they won't do it. Its to warn you that your brake pads need replacing soonish...or now.

The squeal is caused by a folded strip of metal (P shaped) that vibrates if the brake pads are worn to the point where the stem of the metal strip rubs on the disk. Clever, no? This P shaped piece of metal serves no other purpose but to warn you so you don't crash through a barrier going 100km/hr down a windy hill when the brakes finally fail.

my second chuckle of the afternoon

was a link to this comic

Fellowshipping is fun :)

Good game of LOTRO last night. We got through some stuff that took Bindy ages to do on his own...plus some things I had overlooked, so Bindy is going to trot off and have another go at them - hopefully tonight. I am reenergised to play. So I must Level Bindy up to 40+ so that he can go off adventuring in the frozen north with Aspy.

In other news, my electrical whizz brother fixed my networking problems. He brought his gear around and tested stuff. Apparently, when we got the house cabled for networking (you just plug in via the wall sockets now) they left the underhouse cabling a little loose. The network cables, if you cut the wire, can untwist a bit and the wires inside start to electrically interfere with each other and mess up the signals. Since it was loose, it untwisted a bit before they wired it to the wall. He trimmed it, twisted it, wired it back up and tested it. All is now groovy. I've been blaming my computers for being incompatible. Good thing I didn't return anything to the store :D

misc bits...while we're all waiting on confirmation

...which could be some time, since they don't commit on things round here..

I spontaneously bought a new laptop/notebook on the weekend. I had been thinking about it for a while...but as a long term thought...then there was a sale and a nifty computer.

I have a white Eee PC (1000H version) Its almost as powerful (and has more RAM) than the toshiba laptop I bought 2-3 years ago for over $2300. The new one cost me $560

Also, see below for bird pics - I've updated finally

Things change

My job just changed..probably. I will not be doing next year what I expected to do..probably.

Watch this space & I'll let you know when it becomes official....or not

mysterious enough? :D

nine, count em, nine

I now have 9 baby budgies out of their nests and flying round...well, the last one is still hanging on the wall, clutching a crossbeam for grim death, looking like it very much wants to go back inside. 5 of the babies look like clones. Yellow heads, blue green bodies, turquoise butts and iridescent blue tails. Photos will follow when they sit still long enough.


And here they are...Some of them anyway. They're just getting faster. The first shot is a bit blurry but shows the colours up well.
the blue and green here are siblings
The bird at the front is the baby (sibling to the bright greeny blue clones) and unrelated to the other one. This is preening, the open beak isn't due to the baby screaming "Agh! she's eating my brain!" but rather "ah, that feels good"

Sleepy again

Semester has just started and I'm sleepy again. This time I'm blaming the fact that I'm housesitting and getting fresh sea air. Once I get used to it I should be right. The getting up 1/2 an hour earlier to get into uni at the same time probably doesn't help. zzzzzz

no time to read my email

When people say "I've had no time to read my email and its the afternoon", I generally assume they are either exaggerating or have poor time management as I can scan through a list in 5 minutes and reply in, at most, 10minutes to any reply needed stuff....then today happened. My email got looked at at 3pm. And now, back to work again.

its only a matter of time

I had yet another almost accident on the way to uni this morning. There is a roundabout (see below & ignore lane closed bits) that has had the same set of rules since it was built. Some of the locals who live in the suburb that comes out at Yolanda drive still have problems with it however. The problem is that the left lane coming out of Yolanda can turn left, go straight or turn right. The round about is designed so that if you are coming from Nathan street and want to turn right into discovery drive, you go straight ahead and when you get to the turn, you go in the left lane. You aren't allowed to cut across the solid line and go into the right lane unless you are doing a U-turn. This is set up because if you were exiting from the right lane into discovery drive and someone was turning right from the left lane from Yolanda, they'd crash into you.

If you are on the Nathan street approach and turning right and you are on the roundabout itself, everyone from Yolanda has to give way, not just the right lane (the same as if you were going straight ahead from that lane) - see below - yellow has right of way if they are on the roundabout first
The problem is that the "red" people often think that they are fine to drive into the left lane. Hence me almost hitting the car that I was assuming was turning left from Yolanda until it kept coming forward as I was turning right - he was assuming I would turn in the right lane and is still probably swearing about the driver who doesn't know the road rules (which I looked up very carefully when the roundabout first went in - the council put maps up with arrows and notes about who gave way).
The left lane at Yolanda needs to be left turn only. It might slow up exiting traffic but it will stop the idiots who don't bother to check the road rules or take note of solid line marking.

Dr Horrible

I found this on the web this weekend. Its a supervillian musical done by some american actors you may recognise - Check out Captain Hammer. You need to let it download or its very jumpy.

not writing...reading

I have been looking at blogs that people have not been updating & thinking "how lazy are they?" Then I realised I am in that number. So I'm going to write. I was making the excuse of nothing to say, but once I actually start typing I remember things

1. Birthday last week - popcorn cake was brain explodingly sweet
2. I bought myself a new digital camera Lumix TZ-15. It even has a smart photo setting for taking photos of food. I got it for $150 less then RRP. It also has a setting for 6x4 shots, so i don't have to crop when I take the jpgs to the camera place to print.
3. I have almost finished a draft for a methods paper. I will submit before the end of July I hope
4. One of the three fans in my computer is getting noisy so i'm taking it into the shop...after getting online tonight.
5. I'm turning into a grumpy old woman - small children related activities are irritating me more and more - not with my nephews and the kids of friends, but with strangers kids. I see this as the first sign of becoming one of those old cat ladies who come out of the house to yell at the neighbourhood kids. Apologies to the perfectly sane and compassionate cat people out there. I think I'm getting arthritis in a finger too.
6. My cockatiels have abandoned their eggs and are looking for a new nesting box. Obviously this lot didn't work - they would have hatched by now if so.
6. I've discovered a bunch of webcomics that I will, at some point, make links to on the side bar. PS238 is pretty fine.

Dr Who

I wonder if our local fanboy has seen this bit of unedited footage, where the Dr has to be seen talking but doesn't actually have lines. Heh.

Filing Time!

I've been writing a paper all day and have got to the point where I just can't make a rational decision about it any more. I've actually caught up with all the "must get this done stuff" - at least the stuff that doesn't require other people who aren't here - hence actually working on a paper. Its too early to go home, what to do?
Aha, I have filing that I haven't got to in the last 18 months - ie since I moved to this office! Actually its probably older than that.
Anyhoo...filing time! Spit could write a song about it.

a new record for me

I got to work this morning knowing that a meeting was scheduled for 9am...last minute thing booked yesterday. I got out of it at 5:30pm. It was still going but I just wasn't functional anymore.
It was fine tuning exam questions - they were all written but needed to be polished for grammar, intent and whether the question was really asking what we wanted the students to answer. It was commented on at one point that answering the questions was easier than writing them. The students won't appreciate it. It was alos only for one exam...there are three more :(

The birds...

I've put nesting boxes in my aviary. I've been having endless fun watching the aerial combat over the best box. The male cockatiel is making keep away noises at the budgies...who are ignoring him & disturbing his lady love. The male budgies are all sitting on top of nesting boxes looking down on the girls. There was one female budgie who chased one of the males around till he agreed to mate with her. Now he's gone off with her mother....the philanderer.

Yesterday there was a loud thump and we saw a great Goshawk on the top of the cage. It (probably she because its rather large) kept coming back to try get the birds. They were dead quiet. Apparently, Goshawks are bird eaters and can grab budgies through the cage wire and eat them by nibbling through the wire. My cage is large and solid, but I could still lose a few. It's a magnificent bird though. The Bird of Prey carer here said if I want to get it back, I should put chicken meat on the top of the cage....but I don't think I'll give it any encouragement.

warm..bah

I love winter. The curling up under blankets, the lack of sweating.
Last night I went to bed, threw the blankets over myself and felt that something was wrong. I was hot. I threw the blankets off, thinking "this is a bad idea, I'll be too cold. Its winter and all that". But I wasn't. In fact, as I lay there I thought "I'm still hot". I checked the thermometer on my clock to determine whether it was the temperature or me with a fever. The former apparently. It was 25oC at 10:45pm!
I swept with the fan on last night...in winter! Last year we had the lowest top temperature in June ever on record. This year we probably won't. I'm hoping it was just because it has been so overcast that the heat hasn't escaped. It's still warm today. I miss my winter :(

This was fun...and quicker than I though it would be

I found this on someone elses blog and copied it

What we have here are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing’s users. As in, they sit on the shelf to make you look smart or well-rounded. Bold the ones you've read, italicize the ones you read for school, underline the ones you started but didn't finish (or are on the shelf waiting for a free week). I'm assuming they don't mean underline those ones you've always meant to go out and get a copy of...

Also of course, I could bold more if they let you do it for watching the movie :)


Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi : a novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books
Memoirs of a Geisha
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked : the life and times of the wicked witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales - maybe, i went through a classics stage and this might have been read all the way through
The Historian : a novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future King
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible : a novel
1984
Angels & Demons
Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and Sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States : 1492-present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves
The Mists of Avalon (reviewed, new,for Baltimore Sun!)
Oryx and Crake
Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed

sleepy, cold-ridden, sore knees and needles

I have a cold...I got it thursday. It didn't stop me climbing Castle hill on Saturday (hence the sore knees that make me clutch the stair rail for grim death while going up). Nor did it stop me shopping for cool t-shirts and sale priced dresses $40 down from $160 also on saturday. Of course with all that I'm now tired. Oh, the needle is due to the flu-vax i got today. Apparently having a cold doesn't stop you from having the needle (you need a fever to stop you...or the first stages of pregnancy, neither of which I have).
Tomorrow I will be supervising an exam from 8am and then toddling off to get some blood sucked for serology -stage two to confirm I have an atypical infection of the lungs - possibly not related to the cold. After that I go on antibiotics

Hmm, its almost like this is my old lady outlet for telling people whats wrong with me. Never ask me how I am to my face. You'll never get away.

champagne tastes

I have discovered the china I would collect if I collected china. I even looked it up online to find out how much it cost..
Since I could buy a new computer for less than the price of a single piece, maybe I won't be doing any collecting...However, if any of my long time fans out there are looking for a gifty for me, my favourite pieces from the 2008 collection are ADORNMENT and FLEUR-DE-LUCE

who has time to blog?

Not me.

day 10 -britain again

This was a relatively short day. I realised I'd been pounding pavements and cobblestones for at least 8 hours a day each day. My feet were starting to hurt. I visited the Jorvik centre (which had a sit down train like tour, Barley hall - which was a hands on museum - I put my butt on seats to read up on the rooms and went to the train museum to stroll around and eat dinner. They have an inside picnic area.
For lunch I had pork and crackling sandwich & viennese truffles from Thorntons chocolates for dessert. This is my most favourite chocolate of all time - or almost - they don't make the dark chocolate one anymore :(
There were some heavy downpours that i missed by being indoors during all of them. I did walk home in drizzle though (5:30pm)

one of the royal carriages - through a window

Jorvik centre. apparently they found fossilized human faeces while digging for viking archeology

these passageways are normal - not just a "didn't join the buildings" they are designed for foot passage

Barley hall...seats mmm

The river had risen somewhat - no sitting for me

The ruins of one of the church/monastery's that had been sacked. Probably by Henry the eighth - though I don't quite recall

I'm not the only one!

It's nice to see someone else had the same response to seeing the Mona Lisa as I did. I'd also like to complain about the 50 other tourists gathered round desperately trying to take photos in spite of the conditions & spoiling my already terrible view.

LOTRO is cheaper

I just installed a piece of equipment that cost the school over $18000. Its a spectrophotometer about half the size of a slimline computer. While browsing through the functions I found a section entitled "games" I then played tetris on this machine for 5 minutes. I resisted sudoku.

I would say that this was the most expensive computer game I've ever played, but I remember playing patience on an atomic absorbtion spectrophotometer that cost the company I worked for over $20000 at least ten years ago. At least that machine had the excuse of being attached to a windows based computer. The new one is a little unit with it's own screen and numeric keyboard.

a real academic

On Monday my business cards arrived. This morning I got a rejection letter for the first paper that I wrote myself. I am now a real academic.
It's one of those "deal with the critiques and you're welcome to resubmit" rejections. Since the critiques were mainly about things I thought were weaknesses in the paper, I'm happy to work on them - but it may take some time :P
I'm choosing to see it as a sign that my instincts about what makes an acceptable paper may actually be right. I submitted because the lab time I had to do this work was over, so I worked with what I had found. Must find more lab time (I do have some funds to do it in).

havent blogged in a while

I've been designing new curriculum (ok, sitting in the room and asking questions while other people design curriculum), writing lectures and pracs - new subject...I'm writing bird lectures and bee lectures and designing a project for a student to do. So lots of things I've never done before. I just came back from holidays and got sick enough to stay in bed for 4 days, then I came back to work, while still convalescing and so I'm quite tired. Things are only going to get busier, so i really should get back on anyway. But those are all my excuses.

I still have to finish the Britain holiday stuff on my blog and I've since been on another holiday. Even my recreation is getting on top of me.

BTW, while looking for a journal article to use as a statistics example for vet students, I came across a paper on measuring dog flatulence on different soy based diets....soooo tempted to use this one.

Shades of British travel

I was on Holidays in Kentucky and Sydney for a week and got home today. My flight from Sydney was delayed due to technical difficulties, resulting in a new plane, a missed connection in Brisbane and my luggage has not arrived with me. They may get it to me tonight some time...I hope.
Anyone want to fly with me ?

so cold

I am training for a trip to the coldest part of NSW in a couple of weeks by doing a walk in Freezer clean up. I'm spending about 2 hours a day in there. My nose goes numb, my fingers go numb, the cold seems through my shoes. And boy, is there a lot of old rubbish in there. I'll probably end up with a cold from the rapid fluctuations in temperature.