Exciting times at JCU high

It was 8:45am, I'd just arrived at my building after a 30 minute bike ride. It was the first day of lectures, so I'd ridden the bike to avoid all the main road traffic jams caused by inexperienced first years going up each others rear ends. I walked into Ray's office to get a drink and was informed we'd had another break in and theft. One more lap top bites the dust. I walked out of Ray's office and Phil tells me I can't touch anything in mine as they broke in via my first floor window and the Police will want to look at the crime scene. Leigh tells me they didn't take my really old desk top...I wonder why? In my office, the window is open, the piles of junk on the window sill have been removed - either shoved to one side, shoved onto the desk or taken out onto the ledge. My coffee machine, right beside where they'd have step down, is untouched - and it was rather delicately balanced too. The police arrived, had a look round, checked that the window would lock again and decided they wouldn't take finger prints becuase the window was too grotty to hold them - and nothing was stolen from my room. Now, somehow I'm going to have to focus and get all those things done that I didn't get round to Friday. Most embarrassing moment - when I had to say, "No, nothings been disturbed, it always looks this way."

Eggs

I've just cut a window out of my first duck egg - very strong egg smell - I'll wear gloves next time. I'm doing some faberge egg craft (or at least checking it out to decide whether I like doing it - since I like the results). I'm using a diamond drill bit to cut the shell. The tricky bit is avoiding shell dust as it is humongously toxic - somewhat like asbestos. Bet you didn't know that.
On work related stuff, I expect to have the intro to chapter 5 finished this week, and most of the discussion. Still some lab work to do to tidy it up but that's not a problem. Next week I'm starting a new part time job, which I hope will pay for a trip to Tasmania at the end of the year. Much saving will be done. I am a little concerned about the thesis writing. Its been going like a glacier when I'm doing it 5 days a week full time. Sigh, I must become more organised and waste less time on things like......umm......this actually.

yes, I was right

It's next Friday and I'm still writing chapter 5. I haven't got to the discussion yet even. On an up note I do know what I'm writing, things are accelerating and I may even get most of the intro tied up today. I'm also fiddling around with the set up of my lit review so it could take a while.
This weekend I'm going to the busy metropolis of Ayr. I'll be buying cheap craft goods, watching DVD's and pretty much lazing around. I won't even be doing any scrapbooking - except maybe to think about some of it.
I've been dreaming about my dog a lot lately. My mother thinks that means it's time to get a new dog. I did think that a month ago, but right now I'm ambivalent. I know how much time a new puppy would take up - or even an adult dog. My budgie is demanding enough and as I may have mentioned before, there's that thesis I'm trying to write.

The limits of my iron stomach

Yesterday I had to unexpectedly gut a fish that I'd put in salt water to purge (we have fish at uni). I'd been not expecting to do it for another week but it died on me - bad fish. I took the guts up the back to throw in the industrial waste bin in the refridgerated PM room - post mortem container for animal post mortem remains. I had been feeling queezy all day but I would have been fine if I hadn't opened the door and found an entire horse in there. I couldn't walk in the door. I'm ok with small dead animals, but not those bigger than I am.

Its a pleasure to be at uni

Its stinking hot up here in Townsville. Humid and 33 degrees C. So I'm finding uni lovely with ice cold air conditioning. On the thesis front, I've pretty much written the results of chapter 5 now. I just have to check a few facts in the 5 lab log books and three years of work that it covers. Then I can do the intro and the rest of the discussion. I did some of the discussion the other day when I was creative and inspired (but not too creative - this is after all, supposed to be factual).
I have delusions of having this chapter finished by Friday. I will of course, realistically, find I have to get about 4 iterations of journal articles to reference before that is truly the case, therefore at least 4 more days after I start writing intro....and tomorrow I'm doing some lab work too.

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.

Yes - Jenny works at last

Today has been a good day. I started out with some productive data crunching on my computer at home then got into work and everything clicked. I wrote a whole creative page and a half of discussion for my thesis (not creative writing, just creatively described). Come to think of it, thats pretty bad really - just better than usual. Then I found a web site that had a whole bunch of data for more crunching already in the format I wanted it and I figured out how to download into the program I wanted it in. I'm hot today! Now I'm going home on a high to lie around and do nothing and bask in the feeling of achieving something for the first time in two weeks.

back into it..

After two weeks of lethargy and a distinct lack of focus, I'm going to write this morning. I have had coffee and I'm psyched. So why am I procrastinating by writing this?

biting the bullet

Today I'm going sit down and do chapter 5. I've been alternately procrastinating and nibbling at it and its becoming counter productive because I have to wrap it all round my head to write about it. So today is the day to get large amounts of discussion done. I so don't want to do this. Maybe I can find a job I want to do less so this will seem like a desirable option......no, no I can't.

I feel like I'm bludging

I don't feel like doing PhD stuff today so I'm writing that paper that I've been meaning to write for a month now...ironic that the work I can write up and get published isn't actually anything to do with my PhD but rather to do with my part time research job. Still, a paper is a paper.

On other news I have bought a bike and my brother is going to come round and chack the brakes for me before I ride it. I went swimming last night and the instructor was sick so I just went swimming - without flippers - man oh man it's hard to swim without flippers. On an up side though - I can get a lot further down the pool before I have to stop and spit up inhaled water than I could before i started lessons. happy me.

AAARRRGGHHH!

What else can they hit us with.
First it was the "as of the 6th of December, the CSIRO access to the ring road will be blocked off for road works". Since our precinct is on the CSIRO access road, we will not be able to get to our buildings from the ring road and will need to use the CSIRO road - which is chained shut after 7pm and on weekends. This building runs 24/7. After protests we have got "It'll stay open till 9pm and from 6-6 on weekends". After these hours we need to ring security and get them to come open the gates for us...this can take 1/2 an hour or so. Very inconvenient when it's midnight and you just want to go to bed.

Then this morning came the email; "As of Monday refurbishment of the virology lab will begin. Working bees will be required to move out contents prior to this. The lab will be finished some time in January"....
1. No notice whatsoever
2. Huge lab and no idea where everything will fit (or how we can move it in that short time).
3. Used for such things as cell culture and PCR 1 (clean area) which can't be contaminated by bacteria or plasmids/general DNA, so limitted places they can go
4. Contains an expensive robot which shouldn't be moved/vibrated under pain of death - will take hours to move if we can find somewhere safe for it to go

Then later this morning came the email; "work on the Tea Room ceiling will be starting shortly. They hope to have it all completed by Christmas. This work will mean that the room will be closed for the duration of the repairs (2-3 weeks).

It will therefore be necessary for the tea and coffee facilities, fridges, microwaves etc to be located elsewhere for that time."

We are going to have a christmas party in front of this room (using the fridges to store desserts/salad etc) slap bang in the middle of this time...and no idea where to put all this gear/find people to move it all while we are moving the virology lab....

Excuse me while I lie on the floor and gibber a bit.

Champing at the bit

I meant to go swimming again on Thursday, but an experiment ran long and I didn't leave Uni till 7:30pm - 1/2 an hour after the pool closed. I'm going back tonight - all excited. As expected, chapter 5 is nowhere near finished and I'm writing this instead of that right now. I'm making the excuse that I'm having a planning day and getting everything organised for the rest of the week - when i won't have much time to write either - thesis of doom.
I have taken stock and decided I have gained way too much weight. shorts that were getting loose are now getting tight, I may have to buy a bike (and actually ride it), swim and hike up castle hill at least once a week (preferably twice)....and of course stop eating a chocolate bar/bag of lollies a day - where did my self control go?
On the weekend I did hike up the goat track on castle hill - now I have a sore butt. I also ate quite healthily. I did spent most of the weekend housesitting in airconditioning while watching cable on a metre wide TV...but I did climb castle hill.

In spite of my new found alertness....

I still don't expect to be able to finish writing chapter 5 in a week, which is what I need to do to stay on schedule. There are too many distractions, lab work I need to do, people I have to supervise, people who expect me to supervise and explain things (in spite of the fact they aren't my supervisors students), procrastination page to write. My alertness stems from a combination of "it rained last night so I slept well and its cooler" and " I had my first learn to swim lesson last night, so I'm well exercised and buoyed up :)".
I finally made the decision to learn to swim properly so I can do laps for exercise rather than short period of wild splashing followed by gasping and spitting up water. I spent last night practicing breathing technique which swimming up and down the pool with flippers and a kick board. By the end of the night I graduated to just flippers. I'm so chuffed. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I swam the whole 50m without stopping to recover once. yay me.

money money money

In an idle moment today I thought I might do a web search on the availability of all the DVD box sets of series I collect and see how much is currently out there (too busy over the last 3 months to look in the shops) . Not including the 2 seasons of Stargate which will be released before April next year (~$180), there is about $600 worth of box sets I'd like to buy. While I'm at it, I need a new bike and don't want the cheap and nasty price range of Kmart $99 - so think another $250-300). My job finishes at the end of December...maybe I should hold off and have something to live on after that till a new job crops up.

What irritates me

OK, I don't mind being sent an email like the one noted below, using the official university bulk mailing system. It's more a reminder that a particular official event is on than a political or personal view. But what irritates me is when someone does a reply to all with a current political opinion.

I'm not interested in reading a perfect strangers political views on current wars/conflicts/politics and whether something has been done or not done for selfish/monetary reasons. At least not at work, on an official email list. There's plenty of places to find this stuff and engage in spewing personal vitriol/slander/reasoned and insightful debate should I wish to.

Now I'm expecting a whole swag of reply to all emails going back and forth between different viewpoints, and people complaining that they don't want to be sent any more emails - for days, filling up my email, wasting my time as I open them thinking "this time it may be from someone with a legitimate email, personally sent to me" (which I do get from complete strangers, and people who's name I have just forgotten).

I'm tempted to start blocking all emails from this time forth from anyone inconsiderate enough to use bulk mail inappropriately. That'll serve em right when they turn out to be someone who does want to contact me later...and get bounced.

Hmm, longest post yet...must rant more some time.

Remembrance Day

In 1918 the armistice that ended World War I came into force, bringing to an end four years of hostilities that saw 61 919 Australians die at sea, in the air, and on foreign soil. Few Australian families were left untouched by the events of World War I - 'the war to end all wars' most had lost a father, son, daughter, brother, sister or friend.

At 11am on 11 November we pause to remember the sacrifice of those men and women who have died or suffered in wars and conflicts and all those who have served during the past 100 years.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.