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Welcome to GlassHalfEmpty, my own little corner of the Wired. My name is Dan, otherwise known as Pewterfish in some circles, and I have collected a miscellany of occasionally interesting material in the following pages.
Go ahead, browse. You might find something worth your time.
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TODO list before Thursday morning (maelstrom pickup)
Shouldn't be too hard, right? There's LOADS of time until Thursday morning. Kinda wish there wasn't, because then I'd be on the road, but...
It occurs to me that I've got a fairly busy few weekends coming up. I should write down roughly what's going on so I don't collapse into a screaming pile of flail after misorganising something, particularly in terms of travel arrangements.
Yep, that's every weekend from now to mid-August booked. I hope noone expects me to be good for anything the weekend after that last one... :)
So, I have placed several mail orders recently, including a 2ft tall rack case and a rackable gigabit switch to go in it. The switch ... is a problem. I invite you to read the following to find out why.
Complaint to Citylink:
As is, by now, more or less expected, your delivery driver has left me a "Sorry we missed you" card instead of the package I was expecting. Given that we have a loud doorbell, I was sitting in a room a few metres from the door and expressly listening for it at the time they claim to have attempted delivery, I can only assume that your drivers have been mistrained in special operations or ninja sneaking, rather than in delivering packages.
Given that another firm both found and used the doorbell this morning to deliver an eight-cubic-foot package into which the item sitting in your warehouse needs to be inserted, I know that both the doorbell and indeed the door work perfectly well. I am, frankly, curious as to how you you can fail this badly.
Complaint to Misco, who used Citylink:
Good afternoon,
Regarding order reference ****************
It may interest you to know that Citylink have failed to deliver a parcel to my home address, while I was sat in a room next to the front door. We have a loud doorbell. The only way I could have further increased my chance of detecting their ninja-like delivery operatives when they arrive is by staring out of the window from 0730 (the beginning of their delivery window) until 1730, and assuming they're going to block the sunlight briefly at some point. Or, alternatively, some kind of laser tripwire sensor in the hedge.
It is somewhat inconvenient to have to take a second day working from home to compensate for their inadequacy. I don't actually expect you to do anything about this, other than possibly to ask Citylink what they think they're doing (because it's possibly not quite what you think they're doing, to whit, delivering your packages).
Thanks for your time
I ... wish I was surprised. I don't know how they're still in business, really. So that's a day working-from-home mostly wasted.
Well, I've not had the silly-hat ceremony yet, but I received the relevant letter in the post this morning. It's no longer in question. My thesis has been received and examined, I've been examined and not found wanting, and I've managed all the administration on time. I have a DPhil.
The acknowledgments section of my thesis follows, unaltered and unabridged. I think it says everything important.
I would like to thank my supervisor, Dr Elias Stipidis, for his guidance, patience and support during the research supporting this thesis.
I would also like to thank my second supervisor, Dr Falah Ali, and my colleagues and friends in the Vetronics Research Centre: in no particular order Dr Periklis Charchalakis, Dr Ian Colwill, Dr Obowoware Obi, Panos Oikonomidis, Dr Georgios Valsamakis, Dr Matthew Fowler, Dr Ireri Ibarra and Ioannis Melentis.
Finally, for acting as an anchor in the unpredictable tumult that has been the last five years of my life, I would like to thank my family and friends, in particular Yvonne and Christian Summers, Fouad Sethna, Rachael Acks, the Wayward Scholars and the denizens of #maelfroth and #afp.
Dedicated to the memory of Eileen Hewett and Frank Summers. Gone, but not forgotten.
Well, the trip to Cambridge went well. I managed to get there in plenty of time, due to having taken the entire day off work, met my friend Pufferfish for coffee etc, then headed out to ARM HQ. The recruitment evening was pretty good: several tech demos running, including a pair of speedcubers and a big 3d display driven by a smartphone GPU, and several people from ARM who were advertising posts in their departments. I got some fairly positive noises from processor toolchain, verification and technical publishing, and will be following them up soon. Not bad, given my lack of preparation.
After work comes fun, so they tell me. Pufferfish led me back through the Cambridge bus system to her house, where I stayed the night, and the next day I saw a bit of Cambridge, had lunch with a group of friends from up here and went home. I ended up travelling during the tail end of rush hour, and there wasn't a seat to be had all the way between Cambridge and Brighton. So today I have tired legs, but I'm glad I went. Saw friends, and a new city, and somewhere I might well end up working.
Today I'm not as strong as I'd like to be, mentally. I'm tired, can't shake this headache and my legs and shoulder are playing up. So it goes. I wish I were a better person: stronger, able to shrug off things like this and get on with life. I guess that one's a work in progress.
Speaking of progress, I have five copies of my DPhil thesis in my bag. I'll be handing it over the desk at Sussex Uni at about 1615, and that'll be it, done. Thesis finally staked. Thank goodness for that.
So, back from Craig's wedding, and my suit is straight off to the dry-cleaners. Why? Well, on Wednesday night, ARM are holding a recruitment evening at their Cambridge campus. Working with them would be Quite Nice, and they've been on my to-apply-to list for some time. The recruitment evening blindsided me to some extent (a friend who works there heard about it on the internal mail and passed it to me), so I'm not prepared, but I'm capable enough.
Unfortunately, it's set to start at 1830 in the evening, and Cambridge is a good three and a bit hours away by train, so it's going to eat a good part of my day. In order to retain my sanity, I've decided to take the day and the following day off work, and travel earlier in the afternoon to be there in good time. So my wednesday currently lays out as "collect printed thesis from the binding shop, hand in to Sussex Uni, come home, put on suit, pack bag, go to Cambridge". I'll be staying with friends overnight, and coming back the following day, more or less off-comms for the duration.
It's exciting, and slightly terrifying. I've been thinking that I'd like to work for ARM for quite a while now, they seem like my kind of people, and they do work that interests me. And now I'm going to meet them, and see their campus, and hear about some of their projects and vacancies. I don't quite feel grown-up enough to be doing this, which is kind of tragic, but not overly surprising (I've been in academia a little too long). But it'll be fine. I shall wear ConferenceFace and ConferenceDemeanour, and I will hopefully impress people and so on.
For now, though, I'm frantically attempting to hack together some business cards and finish my CV, so I can run it past reviewers tomorrow and find out what needs fixing. Hackety-hack, hackety-hack...
...fuck.
So, here I am in Cornwall. Tomorrow will be Craig's wedding, and the reception, and hopefully it'll be good. Tonight, I'm sat in the bride's parents' garden, with a buffet and a group of people, some of whom I've even met before. And it's alright.
But, my heart's in a field in Banbury, I can't deny it. I'm missing Maelstrom event 2 for the wedding, and I'm ok with that, and I'm missing the people I'm not with (players and characters). There's a gazebo set up here that I daren't enter, because it might throw me into the wrong brain.
Have a good event, guys. See you when you get back. I'm off to have a good time.
Currently proofing thesis, before sending it to the publishers tomorrow morning. One hundred and sixty pages of dense material that I know, but can't skim because I need to catch typographical errors that have missed other readings.
By which I mean I'm kinda paranoid that this, in a hundred years, will be the only record of my life, lodged in the dusty depths of the British Library, and that any mistakes I don't catch will be recorded unto eternity. And that future scholars that read it will point and laugh if it isn't utterly perfect in every possible way.
I'm missing one person, and have just made the conscious decision not to go to London on Wednesday to see several other lovely people because I don't really have the time.
When I'm done with this edit-pass, I need to try to finish my CV and make a creditable attempt at writing the paper I should have been writing last week, but had to back-burner due to continuing faults and failures in the project that is my immediate source of funding. More on that later. I have coffee, and an IRC connection, and some Daft Punk on the speakers, to keep me sane and processing.
Tonight, I fear that it may not be enough.
So. Nearly done.
So nearly done.
My corrections have been accepted, and the postgraduate office has received notification of this within the deadline. I'm on course to graduate in July, in the stupid hat and weirdly multicoloured robes that Sussex Sciences DPhils wear.
Now, I just have to find a bookbinder and give them a PDF they can work from, and get a hard copy in to the postgrad office by the 17th of July. Doable. That, and polishing the CV, and all the rest await, but for the first time in a long time, my todo list is shrinking faster than it's growing.
That, and a relaxing weekend that recharged reservoirs I didn't realise I'd depleted, and maybe I'm starting to get a handle on life again. Here's hoping.