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Hmm, massive entry alert, I had no idea I'd written that much! Under the lj_cut I felt obliged to do for such a massive entry is an account of my wonderful day. (context: Work Experience at APU, I'd been told to report to Professor Dave King (and 'Dave' is what he's known by, ask for 'Professor King' and everyone says 'Who?') at 9am, got there at quarter to nine because of the train being unfairly on time, found no-one but the cleaner in, went into the office I'd been told to wait in and got very apologetically and nicely thrown out by the cleaner who cited security reasons, and then sat on the steps and wrote the first part of the below. The second part, after '...glorious', was written at the train station waiting for the train home.
Landscape. Mindscape. Sitting on the dusty stairs at 9am, shut out... it's 9:03, where are they? Obviously they weren't joking when they said 'Turn up when you like, go when you like, this is a university', 'cos they do it themselves. Maybe unfair, citing traffic and duties elsewhere, and the cleaner's still here, maybe they're always this late.
Gee, I'm so glad I read that New Scientist article on carpets now I'm getting an unhealthy dosage of carpet dust. Five past. No, six. at least the minutes are flying, they have to get here sometime. Tis a shame the cleaner had to throw me out of the room tho, that report was interesting. Actually no, it was pretty dull realistically, it was just the written word... and not written by me, trying to throw away minutes. 7 past. I thought I was going to give up at ten past, but give up how? I don't know how to get to where I'm meant to be, and I've got paperwork to sort out before then. And I don't even know where Security is, despite having lied to the cleaner about that due to not wanting to complicate his life further. Eight past. Punctuality is obviously a very dead art. Nine past. Now it's just getting silly. I'm rather fed up of having only the cleaner and my Psion for company.
Ten past.
I've never heard the phrase 'taking the bung'... I probably misheard. Eleven past, and no signs of life, except cleaner noises. I feel rather abandoned. Twelve past. Thirteen past. Cleaner's being helpful and looking for people. I wish I hadn't lied to him, 'cos he's going to expect me to go to security and then I'm going to go off in the wrong direction and end up in Security by a different route. Ah well, at least that will mean something will happen. Fourteen past. This is...
...glorious.
I've had a glorious day.
After the above-narrated half-hour wait the cleaner brought Roger from his office, who sheepishly confessed to having forgotten what week I was coming. No sign of Dave, so Roger found Raj for me, and Raj took me down to the room behind W1 where I'd be working. Discovering it was still fully occupied with builders and paint fumes (a window's been put in *grin*), she then took me up to Paul Ingle's office. Which was empty depsite the fact she'd talked to him just a moment ago. So we went to search the coffee room for him (apparently this is his favourite haunt, *grin*) and then over to the office who also said he'd been there 'just a moment ago'. We gave up and headed back to the paint-fumed room, where we retrieved the unbound manual for the new version of Mimics (the software I was to be using). Then we went back up to his office, and this time managed to locate him on the way. Retrieving the proper manual from there, we went back to behind W1 and opened the door, then Raj and Paul engaged in a spot of furniture and computer moving while I read the manual. Having discovered that this 'complicated software it'll take you two days to learn' really wasn't that difficult at all, I demolished the tutorials (the difficult part was undoing all the changes that had been done to them by whoever had practiced on them last), read the rest of the manual, and then phoned both the numbers that I had to contact Paul and Raj, both of which produced an odd, very fast tone I now know means 'engaged'. So I walked over to Paul's office ('cos it was closest) and waited while he finished his conversation - comparing sponsor money raised for some charity event (a walk for ppl with hip replacements) - then he phoned Raj and got through to her, so we went over to Raj's office. After failing to persuade Roger (by phone) to come and install Windows NT so I could teach everyone the new version (everyone was seriously impressed with me by this time), we downloaded some images from the 'net to work with on the old version and put them on a zip disk. Then they sent me off (the door code was on the same piece of paper as the phone numbers) to have lunch and go install Mimics 7 on the win98 box we were going to install NT on. Paul led me to the refectory where I could eat (scary, full of students!) and I found my way back! I actually have a sense of direction! Yay!
I did this and this time got through to Raj when I phoned... the Mimics software needed an unlock code, so she sent off an email with the product code to register it, and came down to try and locate an external zip drive for the computer that had mimics 6.3 on it (the one I'd just installed 7.0 on didn't have one). We then got diverted trying to connect a running computer to the network so that Raj could check her email for the unlock code in this room, which took quite a while. After wiring the network up in several different correct ways, Raj called in someone she knew who poked at it for a while, brought in another cable, and finally got it working when we thought of rebooting the computer. Windows, huh?
Now we had a network connection I pointed out we didn't need a zip drive because I could just redownload the file onto the local HD (well, one of them, it had three). So I did that and played with a couple of the files (this was the actual work, marking up the files into wireframes - just data-processing really, but I found it very fun - I think it'd bore anyone else to sleep). Raj left me to it, and eventually Roger came in and started installing WinNT. After a bit I'd finished everything I could think of doing with those images and went to 'help' Roger. It was all pretty straightforward until we had to connect this computer to the network - one of the cables was too short and we couldn't quite reach it over. So Roger went off to fetch cable and I went off to annoy Paul again for more work to do. We located Raj by phone, and she said for me to do all of the bones on that website, so after Paul insisted on taking me to the coffee room and getting me a drink from the insane water cooler (well, the cooler itself was fine, but the paper cups were *conical* - which can easily be tyoped to what it was, comical) I went back to the computer and started going through the others. Roger came back with cable and sorted out the WinNT box, and I finished off three more datasets before installing Mimic 7 on the now-NT box. Just as I was rebooting that after the install the phone rang, it was Roger telling me that Dave had finally shown up. So I went up to throw paperwork at him, and remembered I wasn't going to be around tomorrow (unfortunately, grr, nasty exams, I love it there!). He was just typing an email to Raj about it when she turned up at the door, and she said 'You've done three days' work already! Take the time off!' - sounds like she needs some time to think of more for me to do, given how fast I'm going through these datasets. Haven't used that second program I got shown when I went tho, that looks more complicated and less labour-intensive, possibly I won't get it at all. And then I just left, because it was only ten minutes before I'd planned to leave anyway and it would take a good five of them to get back into the room.
And now my wrist really aches, although perversely not the one I've been using the mouse with therefore using the most. Chocolate time.
Chocolate consumed, I remember I forgot the radio and when Raj discovered I knew more than she thought. When I was working with the first lot of website data, Paul brought me down a radio and basically instructed me to use it. I guess they felt embarrassed about me being so industrious and quiet. So I put it onto Radio 3 (I didn't know that until later, I just found the clearest station playing classical music which wouldn't distrub me too much). Raj came in later (while Roger was finishing installing NT) and insisted on reopening the door (I'd had to close and lock it when I left the room and didn't reopen it becuase the paint fumes had gone) because 'even prisoners get sunlight in their cells'. She came over to inspect my work, went through it and complained that the second one was a bit rough. I explained how it was a very dark image and pointed her to the 'windowing' (setting what range of values would be given shades to make the picture clearer) settings. She said I'd got it wrong, so I loaded up the original images and showed her, and she admitted that what I'd got was right, although she did show me one other thing (which doesn't seem to have made any difference, but I did it on the others anyway). So she accepted that the edges were rough because the darker areas of bone blended into the background colour and that I had to deal with scan artifacts with theshold rather than editing by hand (which I'd done for the worst ones) because there were just so many when you took the threshold down. That's the worst scan I've dealt with so far tho, although some of them were more fiddly because they had other bones in the way which were basically very bright artifacts - one had them on every frame, so I had to edit the mask by hand on all of them. I really enjoy it, tho... I'm so much more dextrous with a mouse than a pencil. Raj turned the radio down a bit when I made her concentrate. And I didn't go to Paul, he came down and took me off to the water cooler when I was between datasets.
Grr, my phone's lost signal so my parents will be ringing about now, and won't get through, and will think I left it off. 5;32. Train left at 11past, which was just after I typed the I left bit. Nice timing really.
Landscape. Mindscape. Sitting on the dusty stairs at 9am, shut out... it's 9:03, where are they? Obviously they weren't joking when they said 'Turn up when you like, go when you like, this is a university', 'cos they do it themselves. Maybe unfair, citing traffic and duties elsewhere, and the cleaner's still here, maybe they're always this late.
Gee, I'm so glad I read that New Scientist article on carpets now I'm getting an unhealthy dosage of carpet dust. Five past. No, six. at least the minutes are flying, they have to get here sometime. Tis a shame the cleaner had to throw me out of the room tho, that report was interesting. Actually no, it was pretty dull realistically, it was just the written word... and not written by me, trying to throw away minutes. 7 past. I thought I was going to give up at ten past, but give up how? I don't know how to get to where I'm meant to be, and I've got paperwork to sort out before then. And I don't even know where Security is, despite having lied to the cleaner about that due to not wanting to complicate his life further. Eight past. Punctuality is obviously a very dead art. Nine past. Now it's just getting silly. I'm rather fed up of having only the cleaner and my Psion for company.
Ten past.
I've never heard the phrase 'taking the bung'... I probably misheard. Eleven past, and no signs of life, except cleaner noises. I feel rather abandoned. Twelve past. Thirteen past. Cleaner's being helpful and looking for people. I wish I hadn't lied to him, 'cos he's going to expect me to go to security and then I'm going to go off in the wrong direction and end up in Security by a different route. Ah well, at least that will mean something will happen. Fourteen past. This is...
...glorious.
I've had a glorious day.
After the above-narrated half-hour wait the cleaner brought Roger from his office, who sheepishly confessed to having forgotten what week I was coming. No sign of Dave, so Roger found Raj for me, and Raj took me down to the room behind W1 where I'd be working. Discovering it was still fully occupied with builders and paint fumes (a window's been put in *grin*), she then took me up to Paul Ingle's office. Which was empty depsite the fact she'd talked to him just a moment ago. So we went to search the coffee room for him (apparently this is his favourite haunt, *grin*) and then over to the office who also said he'd been there 'just a moment ago'. We gave up and headed back to the paint-fumed room, where we retrieved the unbound manual for the new version of Mimics (the software I was to be using). Then we went back up to his office, and this time managed to locate him on the way. Retrieving the proper manual from there, we went back to behind W1 and opened the door, then Raj and Paul engaged in a spot of furniture and computer moving while I read the manual. Having discovered that this 'complicated software it'll take you two days to learn' really wasn't that difficult at all, I demolished the tutorials (the difficult part was undoing all the changes that had been done to them by whoever had practiced on them last), read the rest of the manual, and then phoned both the numbers that I had to contact Paul and Raj, both of which produced an odd, very fast tone I now know means 'engaged'. So I walked over to Paul's office ('cos it was closest) and waited while he finished his conversation - comparing sponsor money raised for some charity event (a walk for ppl with hip replacements) - then he phoned Raj and got through to her, so we went over to Raj's office. After failing to persuade Roger (by phone) to come and install Windows NT so I could teach everyone the new version (everyone was seriously impressed with me by this time), we downloaded some images from the 'net to work with on the old version and put them on a zip disk. Then they sent me off (the door code was on the same piece of paper as the phone numbers) to have lunch and go install Mimics 7 on the win98 box we were going to install NT on. Paul led me to the refectory where I could eat (scary, full of students!) and I found my way back! I actually have a sense of direction! Yay!
I did this and this time got through to Raj when I phoned... the Mimics software needed an unlock code, so she sent off an email with the product code to register it, and came down to try and locate an external zip drive for the computer that had mimics 6.3 on it (the one I'd just installed 7.0 on didn't have one). We then got diverted trying to connect a running computer to the network so that Raj could check her email for the unlock code in this room, which took quite a while. After wiring the network up in several different correct ways, Raj called in someone she knew who poked at it for a while, brought in another cable, and finally got it working when we thought of rebooting the computer. Windows, huh?
Now we had a network connection I pointed out we didn't need a zip drive because I could just redownload the file onto the local HD (well, one of them, it had three). So I did that and played with a couple of the files (this was the actual work, marking up the files into wireframes - just data-processing really, but I found it very fun - I think it'd bore anyone else to sleep). Raj left me to it, and eventually Roger came in and started installing WinNT. After a bit I'd finished everything I could think of doing with those images and went to 'help' Roger. It was all pretty straightforward until we had to connect this computer to the network - one of the cables was too short and we couldn't quite reach it over. So Roger went off to fetch cable and I went off to annoy Paul again for more work to do. We located Raj by phone, and she said for me to do all of the bones on that website, so after Paul insisted on taking me to the coffee room and getting me a drink from the insane water cooler (well, the cooler itself was fine, but the paper cups were *conical* - which can easily be tyoped to what it was, comical) I went back to the computer and started going through the others. Roger came back with cable and sorted out the WinNT box, and I finished off three more datasets before installing Mimic 7 on the now-NT box. Just as I was rebooting that after the install the phone rang, it was Roger telling me that Dave had finally shown up. So I went up to throw paperwork at him, and remembered I wasn't going to be around tomorrow (unfortunately, grr, nasty exams, I love it there!). He was just typing an email to Raj about it when she turned up at the door, and she said 'You've done three days' work already! Take the time off!' - sounds like she needs some time to think of more for me to do, given how fast I'm going through these datasets. Haven't used that second program I got shown when I went tho, that looks more complicated and less labour-intensive, possibly I won't get it at all. And then I just left, because it was only ten minutes before I'd planned to leave anyway and it would take a good five of them to get back into the room.
And now my wrist really aches, although perversely not the one I've been using the mouse with therefore using the most. Chocolate time.
Chocolate consumed, I remember I forgot the radio and when Raj discovered I knew more than she thought. When I was working with the first lot of website data, Paul brought me down a radio and basically instructed me to use it. I guess they felt embarrassed about me being so industrious and quiet. So I put it onto Radio 3 (I didn't know that until later, I just found the clearest station playing classical music which wouldn't distrub me too much). Raj came in later (while Roger was finishing installing NT) and insisted on reopening the door (I'd had to close and lock it when I left the room and didn't reopen it becuase the paint fumes had gone) because 'even prisoners get sunlight in their cells'. She came over to inspect my work, went through it and complained that the second one was a bit rough. I explained how it was a very dark image and pointed her to the 'windowing' (setting what range of values would be given shades to make the picture clearer) settings. She said I'd got it wrong, so I loaded up the original images and showed her, and she admitted that what I'd got was right, although she did show me one other thing (which doesn't seem to have made any difference, but I did it on the others anyway). So she accepted that the edges were rough because the darker areas of bone blended into the background colour and that I had to deal with scan artifacts with theshold rather than editing by hand (which I'd done for the worst ones) because there were just so many when you took the threshold down. That's the worst scan I've dealt with so far tho, although some of them were more fiddly because they had other bones in the way which were basically very bright artifacts - one had them on every frame, so I had to edit the mask by hand on all of them. I really enjoy it, tho... I'm so much more dextrous with a mouse than a pencil. Raj turned the radio down a bit when I made her concentrate. And I didn't go to Paul, he came down and took me off to the water cooler when I was between datasets.
Grr, my phone's lost signal so my parents will be ringing about now, and won't get through, and will think I left it off. 5;32. Train left at 11past, which was just after I typed the I left bit. Nice timing really.
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no subject
Date: 2001-06-25 01:02 pm (UTC)From:You seem to have gotten the names in to your brain and you seem to have been doing stuff that you actually understood. So, yeah, I think you are doing fairly well there.
Good for you Chessypig.
oooh stuff!
Date: 2001-06-27 03:52 am (UTC)From:I wish I was going to do work experience with ppl I don't know in an interesting place.
Pah, is there time to change it for next week?
(I was never doing it this week cos my mum has this week off and refuses to ferry me anywhere).