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Nothing says crazy like deciding at 3:30 that you want to wear a sweater you haven't finished yet to the company holiday party tonight x_x (And yes, I do have a back-up plan). |
... and this is nothing like a good book. Today's reading is from "Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Software Developer's Manual Volume 2B: Instruction Set Reference, N-Z". Actually, that's unfair - it's very useful, just not at all entertaining. Some days I think I should have gone CompSci rather than CompE, but then there's days like today, when I find myself mixing saturated and unsaturated math and overflowing the registers on purpose, and I'm grateful for the hardware knowledge kicking around in the back of my brain.Current Mood:  geeky |
It's Friday, woohoo ^_^
Work continues apace. Finally squashed the last of the known bugs in my current software project, so now I'm down to just known wrong design decisions to fix. Alternating between that, writing, and working on job prospects. Which, today, means literature digging, and reorganizing part of the introduction after realizing that the people working on a particular subfield have done a really poor job of classifying what problem they're actually attempting to solve. Also, this might just be my academic elitism creeping in, but misspelling the first word in your abstract? Seriously?
Gaming: Nethack has been on hiatus after a run that was pretty well into the late game suffered from a series of unfortunate events. Not sure how I'm going to get myself out of that particular predicament, but I'm really reluctant to just ditch it and start over. FFXI - hit 38 on WHM, and now can teleport to Dem/Holla/Mea/Altepa/Yhoat, which definitely simplifies travel. Once we get back to Norg to turn stuff in, I'll have all jobs unlocked. Finished Lost Odyssey with my 1000 achievement points, but I'm cheesed that it's not counting at 100% just because I have no interest in the DLC.
My sadly belated summer sweater still isn't seeing much love, although I did go back and do the finishing for the neck and cap sleeves, so now when I eventually go back to knitting the body, that's really all that's left. New projects for my yarn stash keep jumping around in my head, but I really don't have time to start them now. The 18th c. dress is a vision in stripes, although the instructions which had started out really clear and detailed are getting increasingly vague. And there's so many other projects I want to work on but can't seem to find the time. I'm really looking forward to a couple months of time off after graduation, and hoping that it isn't all taken up by moving (either cross-town or cross-country, but we're definitely not staying at the same place).Current Mood:  busy |
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Nov. 2nd, 2009 @ 11:52 am
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My cat is a very effective, and very annoying, alarm clock. One which cannot be instructed to "fall back" when the clocks change. You'd think we were starving her to death, the way she was yowling for food at 6AM.
I declare the weekend a success. Friday night: tag-team cooking ("Simply in Season" = new favorite cookbook), laundry, bill management, and other responsible things, followed by sewing. Saturday: hand wash laundry, bound off cap sleeves on a sweater, achievement progress in Lost Odyssey, two bug fixes for work. Sunday: Nethack, one bug fix, more Lost Odyssey grinding, one realization of a bug which I fixed this morning, and broke out the Firefly in FF since I finally managed to get bullets for the dang thing.
As for Nethack, the name of the game might as well be Yet Another Stupid Death. However, I've got a fairly promising run going at the moment (Sokoban and Mines' End done; plus a nice bones file which included SDSM, cloak of magic resistance, bag of holding, and a large number of smaller goodies). Up next: Quest, once I level up enough that they'll let me do it.
Today: more bug hunting. It'd be nice if I can get stuff into working order before lab meeting tomorrow.Current Mood: accomplished |
I'm so enthusiastic about Halloween that I completely forgot to dress up, I haven't bought any candy, and I completely avoided the sweets being passed around at the activities fair at work. (Previous years' experience indicates that we will not get a single trick-or-treater, so I'm not worried about my lack of goodies. There's a small bag of pre-wrapped stuff that D got at the office which I can raid if we do get someone.)
Work is... well, it's the source of much of my malaise. Time slips through my fingers at an alarming pace; I'm faced with dropping an entire chapter from my thesis because the results are worse than bad; and I'm so nervous about my job search that I've dropped in to paralyzed inaction. Carryover from the stress at D's work, and the odd and extensive hours that it has entailed aren't helping either.
This weekend: hrmmm. I'd thought about getting out for some clothing/fiber classes, but it looks like the weather is going to dampen my enthusiasm for leaving the house. As always, there's piles of cooking, cleaning, and laundry to be done, and countless hobby projects in progress. Not to mention that I really ought to be working through the weekend, either on code or my thesis intro. Blarg. Who knows, I might even squeeze in some Nethack.Current Mood:  intimidated |
| » Home of the weird |
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Finding the parking garage still 30% empty even when getting to work an hour late: weird, but good.
Apparently, this state-of-the-art research facility does not have the capabilities to print on envelopes. Or address labels. So my professional correspondence is going out with hand-addressed envelopes. Weird - WTF with lacking basic office functions.
And, for the kicker, asking someone who used to be a graduate student with you to be on your thesis committee: weird. And by weird, I mean horrifically awkward.
Oct. 19th, 2009 @ 11:34 am
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| » Trick or treat |
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Because the weather has been pretty miserable (four straight days of cold rain - yuck) I essentially stayed home and gamed all weekend. With a few breaks for knitting and laundry. For FFXI, that means: acquisition of Halloween staves and hats; unlocked SMN, BLU, COR, PUP, PLD, and DRK; and collecting most of the teleport spells, which I can learn with just a few more levels on white mage.
In other gaming, I'm playing The World Ends With You on DS, which I've enjoyed so far, but I just hit a minigame which is resulting in controlling-hurling frustration. Which is a particularly bad thing with a portable system. Lost Odyssey is seriously dragging at this point, mostly due to my obsession with collecting everything rather than just beating the game, which I probably could at this point. Wii Sports Resort is even more fun than the original, and may result in next-day soreness.
I guess I never blogged about my sister's wedding last weekend. The site was great, we got a lucky break in the weather (outdoor wedding), and a good time was had by all. Also, went to the aviary with my parents later in the weekend to relax from all the work that went into the wedding. Which was actually pretty cool, although admission is pricey considering that you can see the whole thing in 1-2 hours.
Oct. 19th, 2009 @ 07:49 am
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| » le sigh... |
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Galen and I have a bad habit of joining games about 6 months before our friends quit x_x That's twice now (different groups of people). Seriously, next time around, I really need to get in closer to the ground floor. We haven't decided what we're going to do yet... City of Heroes we kept playing for a long time, but it was much more solo/duo friendly, whereas now that we're not looking to catch up with a group that plays regularly, FF loses some of its appeal. On the other hand, we've really enjoyed being able to game together again, and there aren't any other MMOs out at the moment that appeal to us. The next ones on my radar are Star Wars: The Old Republic (mostly on the strength of the KOTOR games), and FFXIV, which it sounds like they're trying to make more accessible to the 'casual' gamer; but both of those are 2010 at best. Hrmmmm....
Sep. 27th, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
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| » So sleepy... x_x |
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I stayed up way too late last night, and I am definitely paying the price for it this morning. Still, I was actually in a party in FF, and that never happens. RDM48, wheee. Galen's been updating so regularly on FF that I haven't felt like I needed to... I've mostly been levelsync-ing and duo-ing with him. That and occasionally running off to dangerous places (why hello, Dvucca Isle Staging Point), flagged BLU and COR job quests (gotta collect 'em all!), fun with chocobos, etc. Sometime soon we might need to call in some assistance for Windy mission 2-3 for Galen (/poke Quufer and Eyeriss).
Work is somewhat frustrating. An unacceptable number of my jobs are failing silently, and it's been a pain to try and comb through the results files to figure out which ones are missing and restart those. Some of it's because the cluster's been unstable after a power failure, and I'll get an e-mail from the staff saying basically um, sorry, some of your jobs failed. But I'm getting other failures without any notices, so either they're not always noticing and/or bothering to tell me, or I've got a bug somewhere that's my fault. But by my estimate it's only coming up once every 500,000 samples or so, making it hard to track down. Blarg.
In my sewing room, I currently have: 2 unassembled dresses in pieces laying on the ironing board; fabric for two more dresses ready for cutting; 1 knitted spring/summer sweater that is barely past the armholes (and top down, so there's a long way to go); 1 sadly neglected lace shawl in progress; piles of old t-shirts cut up into quilt squares; plus a couple of winter tops that have been waiting for mending for like 6 months now. My enthusiasm for starting things seems to be much higher than my energy for actually finishing them...
Sep. 22nd, 2009 @ 09:46 am
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| » All-purpose update |
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It's been a busy weekend! Thurs-Fri was a quick trip out to the thesis defense of one of my coworkers. He gave a great talk - much better than his practice talk at the office - and now may be rightly called Dr. Looking forward to hit that milestone myself, but there's a lot left to do first.
Then on Saturday, hit our first event since January. A bit hot out on the field, but it was a good day with some excellent food. Got a lot of compliments on my new smocked apron, and I finished half the eyelets for my armguard - probably only a half day of work left on that (or a whole day, at my sometimes languid pace).
Home is a bit of a mess, thanks in no small part to that cat's daily bout of nausea. Can't wait til we're done with this course of antibiotics.
Aug. 31st, 2009 @ 05:53 pm
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| » Asynchronous |
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) galenb3r has been working odd hours lately. For a few years now, he's been on an early-morning-to-mid-afternoon work schedule. It's not ideal, but worked pretty well once we got used to it. The past couple weeks have been afternoon-to-evening shifts instead, which isn't too bad, but this week it seems to have circled all the way around to overnight x_x Here's hoping for going back to something 1) predictable and 2) that allows us to both be home and awake at the same time.
FFXI: RDM41, among other things. Picked up RSE hands and legs the other day; will probably go for the other two pieces as soon as the timeslot rolls to something convenient again. Dancer is Teh Fun; maybe I should have picked a melee job all along o.0
I finished knitting my Pomatomus last week; need to remember to actually take pictures sometime soon. Sewing projects are stalled while I allow video games to eat all my free time.
Work-wise, my first set of simulations finished a bit quicker than expected... only two weeks on 100 processors! The brand new cluster we switched over to last month definitely helps. Simulation #2 is now filling in the queue behind it as the first set of jobs spool off. And then only like 5 more sets to go after that... The CPU time, I burninates it.
Aug. 25th, 2009 @ 10:04 am
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| » The very model of a modern Major General |
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To demonstrate that I am not yet 100% curmudgeon, I will post about something other than work
Gaming: Currently obsessively watching a chocobo egg. Leaning towards training for digging rather than speed, although I'm not entirely certain. Levelling... well, not so much. Did play the event mini-games and pick up some cute but AFAIAC useless swimsuits and yukata. In Xbox land, just finished disc 2 of Lost Odyssey, which I guess means about halfway done. It's a bit wordy, and some of the plot 'twists' have been stupidly obvious, but I'm still having fun. I also wrapped up Final Fantasy 6 (Advance) while I was traveling. This was supposed to be my completionist do-everything-there-is-to-do playthrough, but as I was running around the Veldt for hours and hours trying to learn rages, it started to feel more like a chore than fun, so I figured screw it, and marched up the tower to kick Kefka around. It lets you run around the world after beating the game, so I can always go hit the bonus dungeons later if I feel like it.
Fiber-y goodness: 1.5 socks done on my pair of Pomatomus. Love them so far, although the toe's not my favorite. Finally picked up a bolt of muslin so I can start prototyping some of the new sewing projects I'm planning. I'm working on a new armguard for archery, too, now that I think I've figured out a design that will neither look intrusively modern or interfere with my clothes.
As for the title, NPR featured some Gilbert & Sullivan this morning, and I think I'm going to be stuck with that in my head for the rest of the day.
Aug. 13th, 2009 @ 09:35 am
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| » Benasque Day 13 |
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The conference has wound down at this point; I even have a free day today since they ran out of talks to schedule. Tomorrow's the bus back to Barcelona, and then Sunday I fly home. It's been a good conference, although the second week seemed to drag on a bit - a lot of the stuff I was most interested in got scheduled for the first week. My spanish has improved a bit too, seems like every day I remember a couple more useful words.
Aug. 7th, 2009 @ 04:31 am
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| » Benasque Day 9 |
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o "Dos Dias en la Naturaleza"
Since we had no meetings over the weekend, I spent most of both days hiking. I'm pretty sore now, and going down stairs is a bit painful, but both days were a lot of fun. Saturday I went out with a former lab mate (she graduated from the same lab 4 or 5 years ago), and we went up to Cerler, which is one of the highest towns in the area, and the base of the local ski area (not that there's any skiing at this time of year). It's about a 400 meter climb, and it's got some nice views down to the town where we're staying, and we added a few spur hikes to some additional panoramic outlooks.
Sunday I went out on my own, for what ended up being a much longer hike - based on maps, I estimate 11.5-12km each way, with 800m rise from the lowest point to the highest. The weather was fortunately a bit cooler than most days so far, so that made for a more pleasant time. Still, in retrospect, I should have turned back for town a bit sooner, like maybe when I got to the waterfalls.
Aug. 3rd, 2009 @ 06:38 am
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| » Benasque Day 4 |
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The conference has settled into a rhythm - two blocks of talks a day, 11:00 and 18:00, supposedly going for 2 hr each, but in practice generally 2.5. The rest of the day is open for small group discussions, collaboration, etc. Weather's great, although a bit too warm in the late session, what with the complete lack of A/C. Looks like there's nothing scheduled for the weekend, so hopefully I'll be able to arrange a hike or two.
I'm unreasonably nervous about the talk I'm giving tomorrow... I mean, what's the big deal about doing a chalk talk (no slides) on a very technical topic in front of 75 of the leaders of your field? X_X
Jul. 29th, 2009 @ 04:28 am
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| » Benasque Day 2 |
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So, twenty RNA biologists walk in to an airport cafe... actually, not sure where I was going with that.
Arrived at the conference with only minor incident. Nice view of the lights of Paris, flying over before there's even a hint of dawn in the sky. Had an aborted landing on the flight in to Barcelona, always a bit unnerving. The kind of mountain roads they use for car commercials have great views, but are a bit, shall we say, interesting in a charter bus. Stopped oncoming traffic more than a few times because the bus needed both lanes in order to get around the curves. The hotel room is tiny, but there's a patio that nearly doubles the size, which is where I sat knitting this morning since the first meeting didn't start until 11AM. (Most relaxed conference ever ^_^)
Jul. 27th, 2009 @ 10:12 am
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| » Pie-blogging |
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My distraction of choice this morning is a comment thread about pie. Mmmmmm, pie. These are just some links that got passed around that I want to keep handy for my own reference...
Cherry Pie
Pies in tiny jars
Steak, Guinness, and Cheese Pie
Schadenfreude Pie
Jun. 4th, 2009 @ 11:07 am
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| » Vacation's over, but summer's just begun |
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D and I had a great time in Stockholm last week. We saw tons of Cool Things, walked a lot, and generally enjoyed ourselves quite a lot. I've started working on picture sets on Flickr, although there's a lot still to upload, and they're largely focused on items in museums. That might be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on your preferences.
Between a series of family obligations and another conference trip, it looks like my summer has suddenly gotten completely booked up. I really don't purposely try to over-schedule myself; I'm happier when I don't, but sometimes it just works out that way regardless. (I get tired just thinking about how much I used to pack in to my calendar... not sure how I survived it.)
What else is new? hmmm. Diverse fiber arts: I realized I had actually worked through better than half of the grand sewing project list I had made a few years ago, so I took an evening to plan out a lot of new projects, and assign fabric from the stash. (Like the yarn stash, the fabric stash is threatening to overflow its storage containers.) It's a dizzying array of ideas to work on (12th through 16th centuries inclusive? check. plus the 18th), and only adds on to all the stuff from the previous list that I hadn't gotten to yet. Knitting-wise, finished the baby jacket and am pleased to be back to working on socks, which I am enjoying much more. And if the parents-to-be don't get me info soon (like say, a due date, or a mailing address) I might just save it for someone else.
Video game land is the same old story - massive backlog. Finished Mass Effect (thumbs up), re-playing Persona 3 before I start Persona 4, FFTA2 has taken over the DS refuses to share time with the other games. FFXI - hit 30 on RDM, going back to level WHM and BLM to 20-ish so I'm covered for subjobs until 40. Actually, having a bit of fun with BLM at the moment. Zorch! LOL. Might unlock Ranger just because I can. I tend to have a strong reaction to how archery plays out in games, either very good or very bad, but I think I'll at least want to try it out at some point. Speaking of, it's time to leave for practice ^_^
Jun. 1st, 2009 @ 03:58 pm
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| » Some people want their Muse to speak to them. I wish mine would shut up. |
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Why is it that when I get inspiration for a project, it's always something batshit crazy abso-fucking-lutely insane?
So here's what my brain has come up with this morning: a feather shawl. Not real feathers, lace knitting in a feather pattern. But not an abstract, geometric, repeating feather pattern, a this-is-what-a-bird's-spread-wingspan-looks-like feather pattern. In a semi-solid black colorway with blue or purple undertones, and maybe in a silk thread for extra shininess.
Yeah. Crazy. Even if such a pattern existed, it'd be beyond my skill. The only piece of lace knitting I've ever started is languishing in it's project bag because I seldom have the concentration to work on it. And such a pattern does not, as far as I can tell, exist. Oh, sure, there are plenty of feather-theme shawls (you'll have to be a Ravelry member to see these links):
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/Yosemiteelp/peacock-shawl
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/peacock-feathers-shawl
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/laytonius/gail-aka-nightsongs
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/SpinningJenny/irtfaa-faroese-lace-shawl
http://www.ravelry.com/projects/kydawson/pretty-as-a-peacock-shawl
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/icarus-shawl
But again, they're all pretty abstract, unlike the thing dancing around in my head taunting me. So I'd have to design the pattern for it too. I, who have never knit anything without a detailed pattern and have never finished a piece of lace knitting, would have to design a complex, non-repetitive, representational lace shawl pattern that would probably be considered a masterwork among even serious lace knitters.
This is is making my brain hurt, and I still can't stop thinking about it. Well, I'd want the stitches oriented like this, and I could use that double decrease to make the spine of each feather pop a little and...
May. 15th, 2009 @ 10:38 am
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| » Rainy Monday |
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I find myself completely unable to face my code this morning (not feeling so great), so let's post to Livejournal instead! ^_^
Had a great time and Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival on Saturday. Missed most of the rain, thank goodness. I spent about $100 on the following: hand-painted sock yarn, more hand-painted sock yarn (socks that rock, woot!), semisolid wool-bamboo blend sport, hand-painted merino worsted, more sock yarn, and some buttons. All of which should keep me well supplied for projects for the foreseeable future. (Not that my stash wasn't already well-supplied for the foreseeable future, but well, how could I resist?)
The weather means that archery practice is almost certainly cancelled (again). D expects to be working very late pretty much every day this week, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself. Probably some knitting and gaming. I've been spending a lot of time on Mass Effect; still really enjoying it. Alternatively, if I put my mind to it, I could probably hit 30 in FF by the end of the week. Plus there's literally a dozen other games I'm theoretically playing at the moment.
As for the code I'm avoiding, I'm in the middle of moving an algorithm from 4x vector single-precision floats to 8x vector 16-bit signed integers, which is a prelude to going to 16x 8-bit uchars. It'll be interesting trying to make sure that the round-off errors are actually bounded.
Morning Ritual Tea:
1 Tazo Organic Chai teabag
2 packs Splenda (substitute sugar or your preferred sweetener)
~2 tablespoons whole milk
The key is to have everything in the mug before you pour on very hot water. Delicious - kind of like a chai latte, but without being so sweet and creamy that it completely overpowers the taste of the tea.
May. 4th, 2009 @ 10:58 am
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