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I should be doing supervision work. But I've done some of it. I should be tidying my room. I'll have to do it tomorrow morning anyway. But I'll have more motivation then. I should be doing some kind of Bible study. But I did, just not for very long. I should be writing up what I've done the past however-many-days-I-haven't-written.
This week I have mostly been stressed.
Today I got Tick 4 done, which will probably have kept me in the 'A Little Behind' category (with at least half the year there or below) rather than in the 'Very Behind' category. It was, as suspected, trivial; there were a few irritating gotchas when I ran it, but mostly it was just a matter of trawling through and picking the bugs out. I gave up on doing it the correct way, though; my hack worked better than most other people's hacks did.
There were some lectures before that. I'm sure some of them might have taught me something if I hadn't missed the first one due to staying in bed being so much more appealing than dragging myself into wakefulness - irritatingly I've forgotten all the interesting and entertaining dreams that were keeping me there - and spent most of the others writing bad fiction about a fictional LARP group. I even missed the interesting bit about new hard drive technology, because I was writing plot for D&D on Sunday. Ate my becoming-traditional lunch of a 60p flapjack from the cafe, supplemented today by a 30p cookie for Children In Need. It was meant to be Bear Shaped, but it was really Cookie Splodge shape. On the other hand, it tasted really good, which was a more relevant metric by which to measure its success.
Geoff phoned me whilst I was stumbling through the snow on the way to lectures, but unfortunately I was busy all day so couldn't help with what he wanted even though he had got through because I was late. Hall was actually quite passable (the same thing I would have cooked for myself, but with more mushroom sauce and leeks and strange rice pudding with slightly citrusy jelly on top and rasberries underneath) although I think the poor female-baby-compsci probably thinks I'm stalking her now as I arrived too late to spot anyone else I even tangentally knew. There were a group of people dressed in a generally mediocre impersonation of Over The Top, Toff-Like formal clothes, having Informal Hall; they even got the Catering Manager to ring the gong for them.
The people getting ready to actually go to Formal Hall had just smashed a full bottle of wine as I made my way down the stairs to try and creep quietly past the bar. Someone was trying to drink the remains of the wine from the broken, jagged half-bottle they had left. I didn't see the results of this daring feat, because a tall gentleman who for some reason resolves in my head as 'not actually wearing drag but looked like they *ought* to be' asked me where 'K' was. After some questioning I worked out that he actually wanted room 11K, and directed him appropriately, including walking in the right direction for a bit to show him.
Since then I have made up for doing something remotely useful by sitting in my room and spodding.
Yesterday I managed Not Very Many of the things on my list to do; I did manage to get up by 10am but then I spodded until I had to run off to the lab at 12:45 to be there for the 1pm session on CVs, because Citrix want a CV. It looks like there are actually sensible rules and standards, so I should be fine when I get around to constructing one, which I shall do when I actually have some free brain time - i.e. when term's over.
After that I spent an hour doing vaguely ECADy things, and got all of the work done on Tick 4 that I could do without a board. (I had got a board too but I ran out of time to do that bit.) Then I had a Numerical Analysis supervision, in the Engineering corridor which is still the most funky place in the WGB, in which I gave my supervisor a question he couldn't answer (why do three guard bits magically transform floating point to infinite precision under addition?) and he taught us the sensible way to do error analysis. Trooped back to Churchill and meant to do CS&A questions but instead spodded for a while before having to head off to the bar for the second Computer Design supervision. Rhys and I waited for 15 minutes before giving up on our supervisor, who obviously didn't care about us anyway as he hadn't set any written work. According to later email (I sent him an email explaining why we were no longer there when I got back to my room and remembered after about 5mins spod), he'd cycled all the way from his house at the other end of town only to arrive 15 minutes late with us vanished. Oops.
Nicholas showed up and made me do work, so I got 2/3 of my CS&A work done before I became too tired to write code. He also got Hall Curry Surprise, in which the Strange Brown Goop actually turned out to be Hall Curry in disguise, and not a very good one at that. I almost got it, but ditched the Brown Goop at the last minute for Mushrooms In Batter, which were also pretty dodgy that day. The strange dessert of the day was nice and tasted vaguely of dates, though.
Wednesday
There were lectures. I even managed to show up on time for them so I didn't have to sneak in the back. This doesn't mean I actually remember any of them. There was a supervision at 2pm; I skulked in the Intel Lab for the hour before, but I also don't remember what I did there. I had been informed during lectures that the briefings for the IB Group Projects were up, so I went to look at them, but they were scary (on account of being Dull, Dull and Dull). The supervision was Continuous Maths and in the Engineering corridor, which some kind soul let us into when walking past. In it our supervisor explained what a Fourier Transform was actually for (which the course had neglected to mention). This meant he talked all hour, but it was interesting talking.
I went home in order to do work, which is always a mistake. I managed to get one supervision's worth of work done, anyway. Then there was Hall, and fairly soon afterwards there was Enemy, which was actually entertaining enough to keep me there past midnight this week - partially because the party actually stayed together and did something exciting, and partially because I spent the time I wasn't involved reading the Dragon-Blooded book for the campaign I'm supposedly running on the Portal.
Tuesday
I spent the morning putzing around online working out next term's schedule and discovering that I could actually attend every course next year if I felt particularly suicidal. In general, the day contained me doing laundry; four loads of laundry, three of which had some items which could go in the one load of tumbledrying, including my duvet cover. I got the one supervision's worth of work that really needed getting done and handed in done and handed in. I ate Hall food. I went to Games Evening, not in a car because that would be cheating, but walking, with Requiem.
I played Cambridge Pit, which I was not good at. I played Carcossone, which is just as fun as the Hunters And Gatherers expansion especially as the people I played it with didn't take it too seriously. Then I played Domaine, which was fun but Douglas and the other guy whose name I didn't pick up were being far too deeply strategic (read: I lost). Then Nicholas had finally called me enough times that I demanded he come and rescue me from Games Evening, and incidentally put my duvet back together. I found out that you can actually still get through Wytchfield quite merrily on foot, and I have just discovered that I'm not sure of how to spell Wytchfield. I was also Intolerable and Snappish, so soon after all of that excitement I went to sleep.
Monday
After lectures, I went straight into town (almost getting lost halfway down the West Cambridge site looking for the footpath). I managed to acquire bread, fruit, salad and another scarf to replace the two I've lost this term. I now have a pretty scarf in many reddish blueish shades; it's woven synthetic instead of fleece, and I'm not sure if this is good or bad - the weave is more open, which means I can breathe through it for much longer but also that the air is slightly colder through it. Amongst the fruit I got some fresh dates; I ate lots on the day I bought them and one or two the next day, but they'd started to go slimy even then so I threw them out after that. (I looked up online how long fresh dates kept but all anyone would tell me was 'indefinitely unless they're growing fungus' so I thought it'd be okay.) Dates are very nice but quite fiddly to eat because you have to peel them and they don't like being peeled.
My ambition to do something quiet-time-like was thwarted by ending up trawling through lots of various websites in search of a cogent explanation of the general Christian view of sexuality. I didn't manage to find anything which I didn't already know, namely 'The Bible talks about it a lot and the old Law gave messing up with it the death penalty, so it must be really important. As it's really important, it must be really important to save until the only union it's encouraged in.' and people extending 'adultery' to mean 'before marriage' as well as 'when married', even though it appears (from other online and hence possibly slightly dubious sources) the original word only meant married *women* having sex outside the marriage and nothing about the men at all, and people starting from the viewpoint that sex outside marriage is bad and then attempting to justify it. I did quite a lot of work after that, and even more spodding, and quite a lot of frantically learning lines.
The latter part was in aid of the sketch that Ark were doing for Speak on Monday evening; Speak are a Christian charity doing general campagining on Issues, as far as I can tell, and their current Issue is Fair Trade. So last Monday we wrote a sketch about Fair Trade in the style of Yes Minister, and this Monday we performed it in a small room in Robinson College to about a dozen people. They were all very polite about it, but helpfully Speak had put us on after the talk when they'd originally said to write something for getting people's interest before the talk, so we basically just said what the speaker had said in slightly less detail and with a few more jokes. At least the only one of us who managed to forget their lines had cunningly printed out the script on the letter he was meant to be referring to through the sketch and so got away with it quite masterfully. (I should say that I managed to fluff my lines during the hasty rehersal beforehand that almost made us late getting there, many times over, and probably only survived because I had the least lines of everyone; as we hadn't agreed on a script until Friday I have no idea how the two with more lines coped!) Afterwards we went for a curry at the Ghandi, which was very nice indeed (they do very nice curries, the Best Mango Chutney Evah which we managed to get through a whole serving of, having specifically requested nothing but Mango Chutney with our poppadums, and I discovered quite how nice peshwari naan dipped in korma is).
Sunday
On Sunday I went to church, by car on grounds of Extreme Laziness and over-spodding (like over-sleeping but having spent the last part of the sleeping in front of a computer). We had a guest preacher from Africa, and I'm afraid I couldn't really get past the hard-to-listen-to accent to get much out of it; he seemed to be saying that we should live as the Chosen of God, as prophets and great warriors, and that we here should do so especially because Cambridge was important (his evidence for this was that his school had used a Cambridge exam board and much of his country's government hailed from Cambridge). The most inspiriation this provided was unfortunately an idea for an Exalted campaign set in Biblical history, due to the preacher's explanation of Samuel and David making them sound very much like Zenith and Dawn caste Solars.
Then there was D&D, which went fairly well due to having some stuff to do and some properly-levelled combats for once. Currently I have plans to finish the campaign this term, which I haven't actually informed the players of yet; I was planning to do in-session this week with email to those who don't make it. I've had a bit too much work to keep running it this term, and apparently it only gets worse, so I need my Sunday afternoons back - and the preparation time, as little as I've been using (which means the sessions have petered out a lot easier).
I'm sure I did something after D&D because I entirely forgot to put my note in the Plodge box to get a MMR jab, but I can't remember what.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mdavison reminded me it was his bithday thing (doh!). I'm not sure why I forgot it, because there was a lot of huddling and being cold (because I'd lost my scarf by leaving it at home, and the room we were in basically didn't heat until it had many people in it), some very nice food (mint dumplings and stew! I like stew. Not enough people feed me stew.) and much Futurama. Ran off home at the first oppertunity, though, because I was already dead of tired from having driven home so late the other day.
Saturday
Saturday was quite rushed. There was fairly slow start, with the first event being our first Computer Design supervision at 11am; it went predictably badly, as the work which we could actually do being trivial and the material we were meant to be covering in it also being entirely straightforwards. Our supervisor insisted on keeping us there for the whole hour despite running out of things to say within 10 minutes; I asked him a few questions about ARM assembler for my ECAD labs, which he didn't answer in a satisfactory manner anyway.
Then I perfomed the Cat-Herding Dance when I thought I needed to book for the TT Banquet *now* and so sent my poor hapless Nicholas off to try and chase around LARPers. Thankfully Tom hadn't quite left so he just hung onto him until he'd got the paperwork and cheques together. Eventually I managed to recover the Nicholas, and hence I was ready to journey back home to Braintree.
The occasion was a Charity Barn Dance that Pete and Ju (the parents of the girl I ended up being a quite shoddy god-parent to - there must be a single word for the relation, if not the quality) were holding. We were officially leaving early to get to Braintree in time to also visit my grandparents, but in fact when we got there we sat around and talked to my parents until it got dark, ate chocolate cake, watched a bad SF film called something like 'The Tomorrow Man' about a shapeshifting android from the future, resolved to write slash about it, and then went to the dance. It was full of people even I didn't know and we thought we were too late to get a table due to having stayed for the end of the film. We weren't, but we'd courteously hung our coats up outside the hall and so someone had nicked it when we finished the first dance. We'd also forgotten to bring anything to drink (i.e. large water containers) so we had to make frequent kitchen visits, which led to us doing a Bread Production Line (and getting some bread to eat before the food arrived, which was useful as I was starving).
There was a buffet, at which I ate until I was Very Full Indeed and then danced some more. There wasn't really enough room, though, and there were vast quantities of anklebiters so you couldn't really dance properly because then you'd squish them and their parents would complain. (My god-daugther got knocked down several times, but knew that it was her own fault for charging about amongst the legs of dancing people and only started wailing when her brother intentionally knocked her over and hit her.) It was quite entertaining nevertheless. I left my jumper at the hall by accident because I felt a bit ill about two dances from the end and had gone outside to get some air in just my coat and no jumper, then forgot about it when my parents came out when the dancing was over. Nicholas went back and got it, because he wanted to not feel useless and apparently had. Then I drove us back to Cambridge, in a slightly scary 'it's dark and I'm tired and I'm in control of a slightly busted-up Metal Box Of Death' kind of way.
Friday
On Friday - there were lectures. There were ECAD labs. I grabbed the Head of Class at the start of the practical and wouldn't let him go until he'd fixed Tick 3. Eventually we fixed it by noticing that the input to my frame-buffer was inverted, after having finally managed to persuade it to show us arbitary Stuff in the simulation. This took the entire three hours, and all of the time he was as stumped as me as to what was going wrong; he insisted on staying and working out why our fix had worked after we finally got it working. But I got Tick 3, only two sessions late.
Then I had to food quickly in order to be in town at 7pm, for rehearsal of the sketch for Monday and watching of Yes, Minister. Nicholas tagged along, which distressed Neil slightly (he said "We'll discuss what 'Ark rehearsal' means later", in a very Meaningful voice), but everyone was polite and Yes Minister was funny and we knocked some bugs out of the sketch.
Thursday
As you can see from LJ, Thursday morning was spent with Teh Spod. After lunch, I mostly had supervisions; a DS&A one which I can't remember much of, and our last L&P one in which our supervisor ran over by a quarter of an hour explaining all the things we didn't quite understand yet. Unfortunately I made my usual mistake of not taking adequate notes and hence no longer understand them. In the evening was Cell, in which I said that I would have a meaningful quiet time every other day at least (because we were all saying one thing we would do); you can see my 'progress' (read: abject failure) above.
It is now past 11pm, and therefore over an hour past the time when I ought to go to sleep. (If I get to sleep at or before 10pm, I have a fighting chance of actually wanting to wake up at a reasonable hour. I never do, so I always want to stay asleep instead.)
The rest of the list still to come:
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can (drama classes...)
35. Held a lamb FSVO 'lamb'
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster
42. Hit a home run
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day East Coast American
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer
49. Visited all 50 states/every county
50. Loved your job
51. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
53. Had amazing friends
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign
57. Backpacked in Europe The UK
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government's official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
66. Visited Japan
67. Benchpressed your own weight No, cause I'm really heavy
68. Milked a cow
69. Alphabetized your records
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving though my licence is no longer current
75. Got it on to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theater
80. Done something you should regret, but don't regret it
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
82. Discovered that someone who's not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog
83. Dropped Windows in favor of something better Partially dropped, anyway; I have two boxes.
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken yet...
86. Toured ancient sites on the continent
87. Taken a martial arts class
88. Swordfought for the honor of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married
91. Been in a movie
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn't have
96. Had sex at the office restaurant
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch Well, biscuits.
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
105. Got flowers for no reason
106. Masturbated in a public place
107. Got so drunk you don't remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music
112. Eaten shark
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried one/both of your parents in sand...
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship
121. Spoken more than one language fluently
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read - and understood - your credit report
126. Raised children
127. Recently bought and played with a favorite childhood toy
128. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did Signed Ann Boleyn's death warrant
132. Called or written your Congress person/Member of Parliament
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. ...more than once?
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge/Q E II Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion or your female partner did
138. Had plastic surgery
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
140. Wrote articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane - A glider. With an instructor sitting behind me.
144. Petted a stingray
145. Broken someone's heart
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a T.V. game show
149. Broken a bone
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced Not on purpose. I once had an accident involving a 3 inch metal pin stuck through my foot.
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild I gathered them. Though my front garden isn't very wild, I didn't plant the things.
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery Appendectomy
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states (Three US states, five foreign countries. Yes, the US *is* foreign.)
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat It's nice.
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper Several times
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime
173. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Parasailed
177. Changed your name Unless the taking of pseudonyms counts...
178. Petted a cockroach
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad
181. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them
183. ...and gotten 86'ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch Does singing count? Does GMing? Creative writing?
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196: Dyed your hair
197. Been a DJ
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal
199. Written your own role playing game Several.
200. Been arrested
201. Shot someone
202. Sang a solo in public, while sober
203. Kissed a hummingbird
204. Given birth
205. Eaten some tree-bark
206. Baked your own bread, without a machine
207. Braided the bread
208. Foraged and eaten wild food, and/or used wild herbs as medicine Wild mushrooms picked from the front garden, scrumping, berries and sloes for sloe gin.
209. Climbed a waterfall
210. Walked in total darkness
211. Went snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef
212. Been mistaken as someone of the opposite sex, and they never realized it
213. Had a supernatural experience Does faith count?
214. Performed at a poetry reading at school
215. Been to a fetish party
216. Been strip searched
217. Gotten a lapdance at a strip club
218. Gotten hate mail from something of yours that had been published
219. Met someone in person who you first knew on-line repeatedly, and loved 'em as much in RL as online
220. Cross-dressed
221. Told off your boss and quit your job.
222. Held a Hummingbird
223. Played the tuba
224. Been walking in Memphis
226. Seen a screaming child and ACTUALLY wanted to kill it
225. Had to go to the emergency room for a completely ridiculous reason
227. Taught yourself to play a musical instrument Voice *is* an instrument, dammit...
228. Eaten ice-cream from the tub
229. With someone else eating from the same tub
230. Roleplayed for more than five continuous hours
231. Decided one day to change your life in a major fashion, and actually gone through with it
This week I have mostly been stressed.
Today I got Tick 4 done, which will probably have kept me in the 'A Little Behind' category (with at least half the year there or below) rather than in the 'Very Behind' category. It was, as suspected, trivial; there were a few irritating gotchas when I ran it, but mostly it was just a matter of trawling through and picking the bugs out. I gave up on doing it the correct way, though; my hack worked better than most other people's hacks did.
There were some lectures before that. I'm sure some of them might have taught me something if I hadn't missed the first one due to staying in bed being so much more appealing than dragging myself into wakefulness - irritatingly I've forgotten all the interesting and entertaining dreams that were keeping me there - and spent most of the others writing bad fiction about a fictional LARP group. I even missed the interesting bit about new hard drive technology, because I was writing plot for D&D on Sunday. Ate my becoming-traditional lunch of a 60p flapjack from the cafe, supplemented today by a 30p cookie for Children In Need. It was meant to be Bear Shaped, but it was really Cookie Splodge shape. On the other hand, it tasted really good, which was a more relevant metric by which to measure its success.
Geoff phoned me whilst I was stumbling through the snow on the way to lectures, but unfortunately I was busy all day so couldn't help with what he wanted even though he had got through because I was late. Hall was actually quite passable (the same thing I would have cooked for myself, but with more mushroom sauce and leeks and strange rice pudding with slightly citrusy jelly on top and rasberries underneath) although I think the poor female-baby-compsci probably thinks I'm stalking her now as I arrived too late to spot anyone else I even tangentally knew. There were a group of people dressed in a generally mediocre impersonation of Over The Top, Toff-Like formal clothes, having Informal Hall; they even got the Catering Manager to ring the gong for them.
The people getting ready to actually go to Formal Hall had just smashed a full bottle of wine as I made my way down the stairs to try and creep quietly past the bar. Someone was trying to drink the remains of the wine from the broken, jagged half-bottle they had left. I didn't see the results of this daring feat, because a tall gentleman who for some reason resolves in my head as 'not actually wearing drag but looked like they *ought* to be' asked me where 'K' was. After some questioning I worked out that he actually wanted room 11K, and directed him appropriately, including walking in the right direction for a bit to show him.
Since then I have made up for doing something remotely useful by sitting in my room and spodding.
Yesterday I managed Not Very Many of the things on my list to do; I did manage to get up by 10am but then I spodded until I had to run off to the lab at 12:45 to be there for the 1pm session on CVs, because Citrix want a CV. It looks like there are actually sensible rules and standards, so I should be fine when I get around to constructing one, which I shall do when I actually have some free brain time - i.e. when term's over.
After that I spent an hour doing vaguely ECADy things, and got all of the work done on Tick 4 that I could do without a board. (I had got a board too but I ran out of time to do that bit.) Then I had a Numerical Analysis supervision, in the Engineering corridor which is still the most funky place in the WGB, in which I gave my supervisor a question he couldn't answer (why do three guard bits magically transform floating point to infinite precision under addition?) and he taught us the sensible way to do error analysis. Trooped back to Churchill and meant to do CS&A questions but instead spodded for a while before having to head off to the bar for the second Computer Design supervision. Rhys and I waited for 15 minutes before giving up on our supervisor, who obviously didn't care about us anyway as he hadn't set any written work. According to later email (I sent him an email explaining why we were no longer there when I got back to my room and remembered after about 5mins spod), he'd cycled all the way from his house at the other end of town only to arrive 15 minutes late with us vanished. Oops.
Nicholas showed up and made me do work, so I got 2/3 of my CS&A work done before I became too tired to write code. He also got Hall Curry Surprise, in which the Strange Brown Goop actually turned out to be Hall Curry in disguise, and not a very good one at that. I almost got it, but ditched the Brown Goop at the last minute for Mushrooms In Batter, which were also pretty dodgy that day. The strange dessert of the day was nice and tasted vaguely of dates, though.
Wednesday
There were lectures. I even managed to show up on time for them so I didn't have to sneak in the back. This doesn't mean I actually remember any of them. There was a supervision at 2pm; I skulked in the Intel Lab for the hour before, but I also don't remember what I did there. I had been informed during lectures that the briefings for the IB Group Projects were up, so I went to look at them, but they were scary (on account of being Dull, Dull and Dull). The supervision was Continuous Maths and in the Engineering corridor, which some kind soul let us into when walking past. In it our supervisor explained what a Fourier Transform was actually for (which the course had neglected to mention). This meant he talked all hour, but it was interesting talking.
I went home in order to do work, which is always a mistake. I managed to get one supervision's worth of work done, anyway. Then there was Hall, and fairly soon afterwards there was Enemy, which was actually entertaining enough to keep me there past midnight this week - partially because the party actually stayed together and did something exciting, and partially because I spent the time I wasn't involved reading the Dragon-Blooded book for the campaign I'm supposedly running on the Portal.
Tuesday
I spent the morning putzing around online working out next term's schedule and discovering that I could actually attend every course next year if I felt particularly suicidal. In general, the day contained me doing laundry; four loads of laundry, three of which had some items which could go in the one load of tumbledrying, including my duvet cover. I got the one supervision's worth of work that really needed getting done and handed in done and handed in. I ate Hall food. I went to Games Evening, not in a car because that would be cheating, but walking, with Requiem.
I played Cambridge Pit, which I was not good at. I played Carcossone, which is just as fun as the Hunters And Gatherers expansion especially as the people I played it with didn't take it too seriously. Then I played Domaine, which was fun but Douglas and the other guy whose name I didn't pick up were being far too deeply strategic (read: I lost). Then Nicholas had finally called me enough times that I demanded he come and rescue me from Games Evening, and incidentally put my duvet back together. I found out that you can actually still get through Wytchfield quite merrily on foot, and I have just discovered that I'm not sure of how to spell Wytchfield. I was also Intolerable and Snappish, so soon after all of that excitement I went to sleep.
Monday
After lectures, I went straight into town (almost getting lost halfway down the West Cambridge site looking for the footpath). I managed to acquire bread, fruit, salad and another scarf to replace the two I've lost this term. I now have a pretty scarf in many reddish blueish shades; it's woven synthetic instead of fleece, and I'm not sure if this is good or bad - the weave is more open, which means I can breathe through it for much longer but also that the air is slightly colder through it. Amongst the fruit I got some fresh dates; I ate lots on the day I bought them and one or two the next day, but they'd started to go slimy even then so I threw them out after that. (I looked up online how long fresh dates kept but all anyone would tell me was 'indefinitely unless they're growing fungus' so I thought it'd be okay.) Dates are very nice but quite fiddly to eat because you have to peel them and they don't like being peeled.
My ambition to do something quiet-time-like was thwarted by ending up trawling through lots of various websites in search of a cogent explanation of the general Christian view of sexuality. I didn't manage to find anything which I didn't already know, namely 'The Bible talks about it a lot and the old Law gave messing up with it the death penalty, so it must be really important. As it's really important, it must be really important to save until the only union it's encouraged in.' and people extending 'adultery' to mean 'before marriage' as well as 'when married', even though it appears (from other online and hence possibly slightly dubious sources) the original word only meant married *women* having sex outside the marriage and nothing about the men at all, and people starting from the viewpoint that sex outside marriage is bad and then attempting to justify it. I did quite a lot of work after that, and even more spodding, and quite a lot of frantically learning lines.
The latter part was in aid of the sketch that Ark were doing for Speak on Monday evening; Speak are a Christian charity doing general campagining on Issues, as far as I can tell, and their current Issue is Fair Trade. So last Monday we wrote a sketch about Fair Trade in the style of Yes Minister, and this Monday we performed it in a small room in Robinson College to about a dozen people. They were all very polite about it, but helpfully Speak had put us on after the talk when they'd originally said to write something for getting people's interest before the talk, so we basically just said what the speaker had said in slightly less detail and with a few more jokes. At least the only one of us who managed to forget their lines had cunningly printed out the script on the letter he was meant to be referring to through the sketch and so got away with it quite masterfully. (I should say that I managed to fluff my lines during the hasty rehersal beforehand that almost made us late getting there, many times over, and probably only survived because I had the least lines of everyone; as we hadn't agreed on a script until Friday I have no idea how the two with more lines coped!) Afterwards we went for a curry at the Ghandi, which was very nice indeed (they do very nice curries, the Best Mango Chutney Evah which we managed to get through a whole serving of, having specifically requested nothing but Mango Chutney with our poppadums, and I discovered quite how nice peshwari naan dipped in korma is).
Sunday
On Sunday I went to church, by car on grounds of Extreme Laziness and over-spodding (like over-sleeping but having spent the last part of the sleeping in front of a computer). We had a guest preacher from Africa, and I'm afraid I couldn't really get past the hard-to-listen-to accent to get much out of it; he seemed to be saying that we should live as the Chosen of God, as prophets and great warriors, and that we here should do so especially because Cambridge was important (his evidence for this was that his school had used a Cambridge exam board and much of his country's government hailed from Cambridge). The most inspiriation this provided was unfortunately an idea for an Exalted campaign set in Biblical history, due to the preacher's explanation of Samuel and David making them sound very much like Zenith and Dawn caste Solars.
Then there was D&D, which went fairly well due to having some stuff to do and some properly-levelled combats for once. Currently I have plans to finish the campaign this term, which I haven't actually informed the players of yet; I was planning to do in-session this week with email to those who don't make it. I've had a bit too much work to keep running it this term, and apparently it only gets worse, so I need my Sunday afternoons back - and the preparation time, as little as I've been using (which means the sessions have petered out a lot easier).
I'm sure I did something after D&D because I entirely forgot to put my note in the Plodge box to get a MMR jab, but I can't remember what.
mdavison reminded me it was his bithday thing (doh!). I'm not sure why I forgot it, because there was a lot of huddling and being cold (because I'd lost my scarf by leaving it at home, and the room we were in basically didn't heat until it had many people in it), some very nice food (mint dumplings and stew! I like stew. Not enough people feed me stew.) and much Futurama. Ran off home at the first oppertunity, though, because I was already dead of tired from having driven home so late the other day.Saturday
Saturday was quite rushed. There was fairly slow start, with the first event being our first Computer Design supervision at 11am; it went predictably badly, as the work which we could actually do being trivial and the material we were meant to be covering in it also being entirely straightforwards. Our supervisor insisted on keeping us there for the whole hour despite running out of things to say within 10 minutes; I asked him a few questions about ARM assembler for my ECAD labs, which he didn't answer in a satisfactory manner anyway.
Then I perfomed the Cat-Herding Dance when I thought I needed to book for the TT Banquet *now* and so sent my poor hapless Nicholas off to try and chase around LARPers. Thankfully Tom hadn't quite left so he just hung onto him until he'd got the paperwork and cheques together. Eventually I managed to recover the Nicholas, and hence I was ready to journey back home to Braintree.
The occasion was a Charity Barn Dance that Pete and Ju (the parents of the girl I ended up being a quite shoddy god-parent to - there must be a single word for the relation, if not the quality) were holding. We were officially leaving early to get to Braintree in time to also visit my grandparents, but in fact when we got there we sat around and talked to my parents until it got dark, ate chocolate cake, watched a bad SF film called something like 'The Tomorrow Man' about a shapeshifting android from the future, resolved to write slash about it, and then went to the dance. It was full of people even I didn't know and we thought we were too late to get a table due to having stayed for the end of the film. We weren't, but we'd courteously hung our coats up outside the hall and so someone had nicked it when we finished the first dance. We'd also forgotten to bring anything to drink (i.e. large water containers) so we had to make frequent kitchen visits, which led to us doing a Bread Production Line (and getting some bread to eat before the food arrived, which was useful as I was starving).
There was a buffet, at which I ate until I was Very Full Indeed and then danced some more. There wasn't really enough room, though, and there were vast quantities of anklebiters so you couldn't really dance properly because then you'd squish them and their parents would complain. (My god-daugther got knocked down several times, but knew that it was her own fault for charging about amongst the legs of dancing people and only started wailing when her brother intentionally knocked her over and hit her.) It was quite entertaining nevertheless. I left my jumper at the hall by accident because I felt a bit ill about two dances from the end and had gone outside to get some air in just my coat and no jumper, then forgot about it when my parents came out when the dancing was over. Nicholas went back and got it, because he wanted to not feel useless and apparently had. Then I drove us back to Cambridge, in a slightly scary 'it's dark and I'm tired and I'm in control of a slightly busted-up Metal Box Of Death' kind of way.
Friday
On Friday - there were lectures. There were ECAD labs. I grabbed the Head of Class at the start of the practical and wouldn't let him go until he'd fixed Tick 3. Eventually we fixed it by noticing that the input to my frame-buffer was inverted, after having finally managed to persuade it to show us arbitary Stuff in the simulation. This took the entire three hours, and all of the time he was as stumped as me as to what was going wrong; he insisted on staying and working out why our fix had worked after we finally got it working. But I got Tick 3, only two sessions late.
Then I had to food quickly in order to be in town at 7pm, for rehearsal of the sketch for Monday and watching of Yes, Minister. Nicholas tagged along, which distressed Neil slightly (he said "We'll discuss what 'Ark rehearsal' means later", in a very Meaningful voice), but everyone was polite and Yes Minister was funny and we knocked some bugs out of the sketch.
Thursday
As you can see from LJ, Thursday morning was spent with Teh Spod. After lunch, I mostly had supervisions; a DS&A one which I can't remember much of, and our last L&P one in which our supervisor ran over by a quarter of an hour explaining all the things we didn't quite understand yet. Unfortunately I made my usual mistake of not taking adequate notes and hence no longer understand them. In the evening was Cell, in which I said that I would have a meaningful quiet time every other day at least (because we were all saying one thing we would do); you can see my 'progress' (read: abject failure) above.
It is now past 11pm, and therefore over an hour past the time when I ought to go to sleep. (If I get to sleep at or before 10pm, I have a fighting chance of actually wanting to wake up at a reasonable hour. I never do, so I always want to stay asleep instead.)
The rest of the list still to come:
33. Photocopied your bottom on the office photocopier
34. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can (drama classes...)
35. Held a lamb FSVO 'lamb'
36. Enacted a favorite fantasy
37. Taken a midnight skinny dip
38. Taken an ice cold bath
39. Had a meaningful conversation with a beggar
40. Seen a total eclipse
41. Ridden a roller coaster
42. Hit a home run
43. Fit three weeks miraculously into three days
44. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
45. Adopted an accent for an entire day East Coast American
46. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
47. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
48. Had two hard drives for your computer
49. Visited all 50 states/every county
50. Loved your job
51. Taken care of someone who was shit faced
52. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
53. Had amazing friends
54. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
55. Watched wild whales
56. Stolen a sign
57. Backpacked in Europe The UK
58. Taken a road-trip
59. Rock climbing
60. Lied to foreign government's official in that country to avoid notice
61. Midnight walk on the beach
63. Visited Ireland
64. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
65. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
66. Visited Japan
67. Benchpressed your own weight No, cause I'm really heavy
68. Milked a cow
69. Alphabetized your records
70. Pretended to be a superhero
71. Sung karaoke
72. Lounged around in bed all day
73. Posed nude in front of strangers
74. Scuba diving though my licence is no longer current
75. Got it on to "Let's Get It On" by Marvin Gaye
76. Kissed in the rain
77. Played in the mud
78. Played in the rain
79. Gone to a drive-in theater
80. Done something you should regret, but don't regret it
81. Visited the Great Wall of China
82. Discovered that someone who's not supposed to have known about your blog has discovered your blog
83. Dropped Windows in favor of something better Partially dropped, anyway; I have two boxes.
84. Started a business
85. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken yet...
86. Toured ancient sites on the continent
87. Taken a martial arts class
88. Swordfought for the honor of a woman
89. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
90. Gotten married
91. Been in a movie
92. Crashed a party
93. Loved someone you shouldn't have
96. Had sex at the office restaurant
97. Gone without food for 5 days
98. Made cookies from scratch Well, biscuits.
99. Won first prize in a costume contest
100. Ridden a gondola in Venice
101. Gotten a tattoo
102. Found that the texture of some materials can turn you on
103. Rafted the Snake River
104. Been on television news programs as an "expert"
105. Got flowers for no reason
106. Masturbated in a public place
107. Got so drunk you don't remember anything
108. Been addicted to some form of illegal drug
109. Performed on stage
110. Been to Las Vegas
111. Recorded music
112. Eaten shark
113. Had a one-night stand
114. Gone to Thailand
115. Seen Siouxsie live
116. Bought a house
117. Been in a combat zone
118. Buried one/both of your parents in sand...
119. Shaved or waxed your pubic hair off
120. Been on a cruise ship
121. Spoken more than one language fluently
122. Gotten into a fight while attempting to defend someone
123. Bounced a check
124. Performed in Rocky Horror
125. Read - and understood - your credit report
126. Raised children
127. Recently bought and played with a favorite childhood toy
128. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
129. Created and named your own constellation of stars
130. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
131. Found out something significant that your ancestors did Signed Ann Boleyn's death warrant
132. Called or written your Congress person/Member of Parliament
133. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
134. ...more than once?
135. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge/Q E II Bridge
136. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
137. Had an abortion or your female partner did
138. Had plastic surgery
139. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
140. Wrote articles for a large publication
141. Lost over 100 pounds
142. Held someone while they were having a flashback
143. Piloted an airplane - A glider. With an instructor sitting behind me.
144. Petted a stingray
145. Broken someone's heart
146. Helped an animal give birth
147. Been fired or laid off from a job
148. Won money on a T.V. game show
149. Broken a bone
150. Killed a human being
151. Gone on an African photo safari
152. Ridden a motorcycle
153. Driven any land vehicle at a speed of greater than 100mph
154. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced Not on purpose. I once had an accident involving a 3 inch metal pin stuck through my foot.
155. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
156. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild I gathered them. Though my front garden isn't very wild, I didn't plant the things.
157. Ridden a horse
158. Had major surgery Appendectomy
159. Had sex on a moving train
160. Had a snake as a pet
161. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
162. Slept through an entire flight: takeoff, flight, and landing
163. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
164. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states (Three US states, five foreign countries. Yes, the US *is* foreign.)
165. Visited all 7 continents
166. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
167. Eaten kangaroo meat It's nice.
168. Fallen in love at an ancient Mayan burial ground
169. Been a sperm or egg donor
170. Eaten sushi
171. Had your picture in the newspaper Several times
172. Had 2 (or more) healthy romantic relationships for over a year in your lifetime
173. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
174. Gotten someone fired for their actions
175. Gone back to school
176. Parasailed
177. Changed your name Unless the taking of pseudonyms counts...
178. Petted a cockroach
179. Eaten fried green tomatoes
180. Read The Iliad
181. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
182. Dined in a restaurant and stolen silverware, plates, cups because your apartment needed them
183. ...and gotten 86'ed from the restaurant because you did it so many times, they figured out it was you
184. Taught yourself an art from scratch Does singing count? Does GMing? Creative writing?
185. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
186. Apologized to someone years after inflicting the hurt
187. Skipped all your school reunions
188. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
189. Been elected to public office
190. Written your own computer language
191. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
192. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
193. Built your own PC from parts
194. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you
195. Had a booth at a street fair
196: Dyed your hair
197. Been a DJ
198. Found out someone was going to dump you via LiveJournal
199. Written your own role playing game Several.
200. Been arrested
201. Shot someone
202. Sang a solo in public, while sober
203. Kissed a hummingbird
204. Given birth
205. Eaten some tree-bark
206. Baked your own bread, without a machine
207. Braided the bread
208. Foraged and eaten wild food, and/or used wild herbs as medicine Wild mushrooms picked from the front garden, scrumping, berries and sloes for sloe gin.
209. Climbed a waterfall
210. Walked in total darkness
211. Went snorkling in the Great Barrier Reef
212. Been mistaken as someone of the opposite sex, and they never realized it
213. Had a supernatural experience Does faith count?
214. Performed at a poetry reading at school
215. Been to a fetish party
216. Been strip searched
217. Gotten a lapdance at a strip club
218. Gotten hate mail from something of yours that had been published
219. Met someone in person who you first knew on-line repeatedly, and loved 'em as much in RL as online
220. Cross-dressed
221. Told off your boss and quit your job.
222. Held a Hummingbird
223. Played the tuba
224. Been walking in Memphis
226. Seen a screaming child and ACTUALLY wanted to kill it
225. Had to go to the emergency room for a completely ridiculous reason
227. Taught yourself to play a musical instrument Voice *is* an instrument, dammit...
228. Eaten ice-cream from the tub
229. With someone else eating from the same tub
230. Roleplayed for more than five continuous hours
231. Decided one day to change your life in a major fashion, and actually gone through with it
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no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 12:24 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 09:54 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2004-11-20 01:14 pm (UTC)From:I do wonder about whether there are words for people who are related to your godparent/child. Because I refer to my 'godbrother' and 'godsister' often enough for it to be worthwhile having words for them. :)
no subject
Date: 2004-11-23 05:41 pm (UTC)From: