Archive for March, 2010
Wednesday Woes
So, Monday didn’t go all that well. It went very, very badly, in fact. Plus, my conked up printer is still conked up. (Though I sort of got it working again with a screwdriver.) Things look horrible.
I’ve managed to get back to work on my current project. I don’t want to say that my ability to work seems related to the way things are going around me, but I will anyway. It’s not exactly proven, but I’m keen to believe that history cannot be explained purely by coincidence. It goes well. I wish I could say the same about so much else, but it goes well.
Having spent much of my time on lab reports, papers, and projects, I now realise that I have quite a bit of catching up to do reading-wise. There are so many readings. I started yesterday. There’s plenty of work still to be done. I just don’t want to still be in debt by the time it gets to Week Thirteen.
My homework list seems reasonably stable. It really is the end of the semester, isn’t it? Few things get added and it’s just a matter of crossing things out now.
I have been reunited with my closest friend. We are doing Waiting For Godot next. Perhaps there is reason to believe that things will start looking up. Perhaps not.
I have added a couple of books to my (immediate) shopping list. This cannot be healthy for either my wallet or my shelf space. Maybe I should have a one-book-a-week policy. That means I’ll get 52 books in a year. With the way my shelf looks, that can’t be good, but I’m sure it’s less painful than the oh-I’ll-just-get-these-fifteen-books-for-this-month plan.
There are two pairs of glasses that I swap between every now and then. I realise that neither of them sits very well. One of them is too short and narrow, so it doesn’t hook onto my years properly. The other is big and heavy, and falls off my nose easily. I love them to death, though.
And just as all of these unexciting things are happening, “Researchers find a way to make drops on a surface move in just one direction.” [via PhysOrg]
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Week Eleven
Week Eleven. Exciting times. Things stop accelerating about here. In fact, someone’s jammed the brakes before you could even get to changing the gears. A few points of interest:
Today is a scary day. Very, very scary. It is potentially one of enormous disappointment. I suspect that it will be. Oh well, as Orwell wrote, somewhat out of context maybe, “…one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.”
Or, in the words of the old Otis Rush song, “Hey hey, to make it you’ve got to try. That’s no lie.”
I’ve spent a good portion of my weekend fixing up a paper. I hope it turns out okay. Another box ticked in the road to the end of the semester, regardless.
There appears to be an inverse relationship between the amount of happiness that I experience and my football results. I’m conflicted.
I’ve been playing Torchlight. It’s certainly fun, if you like your Diablo. That said, I’ve been victim of a bug that gets my character stuck apparently randomly. What happens is that I’m happily left-clicking my way around when left-clicking suddenly becomes purely attack, even in the absence of enemies, and I’m left attacking thin air, unable to move. I thought it had to do with the inventory, because it tends to crop up after I open my inventory (and my cat’s). It might also have to do with the summoning, because this started once I began summoning things. But basically, since it first began I’ve discovered that it’s down to the Shift key getting stuck. I reloaded every time it happened initially, but now I just Alt-Tab my way out. Frustrating, but not exactly game-killing.
One week to Easter.
One week to the new Doctor Who.
My recent expenditure has left with scant little I can afford to spend on myself. Still, I have every intention to bolster my library with a number of books soon. Dickinson must come in soon; I’ve been without her work for too long. Rimbaud too. I’m also interested in the writing of Kawabata and Mishima. Recent writers of interest (that is, for me) include Javier Marías and Macedonio Fernandez. So, plenty of work to be done.
Although… I should really keep in mind that my waiting list has only been growing.
Oh, some new T-shirts arrived. One of them has a panda on it.
I’m supposed to get a haircut. Supposed. I don’t really think I need one yet. But I guess I’ll try to get one today.
Right. Have a good Monday everyone. Including all my working friends. Who will no doubt not have a good Monday, but it would be mean to hope otherwise.
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Printer Villain
I have a strange printer. What happened was (I can’t remember if I told you) my previous printer, old and trusty and mostly reliable, printed its last sheet when the drum gave way. Replacing the drum was almost as expensive as buying a new printer, so I bought a new one. It’s the same brand, and in the same bracket too, I think. It just has some fancy wireless capability now. So, I think it’s fairly reasonable to expect it to give about the same level of performance as the previous one.
And you know what I’m going to say next.
The first problem is, paper gets stuck. It gets stuck very often. Paper jams were not such a big problem with the previous printed because they happened very rarely. Besides, whenever they actually happened, I could always get the printer to sort itself out by holding a button (which would make the rollers spit the paper out). No such things here. This printer chokes up once every couple of days, sometimes twice, sometimes thrice, and the only way to take the paper out is to pry it out with your fingers. Sometimes, when it gets stuck deep inside the guts of the printer, you have to open up all the plastic and hope that you can fish out the paper.
More recently, however, it’s been giving me a new kind of problem. It thinks it’s out of toner. That is, it’ll go on a long bout of warning me that my toner is running low before actually saying it has no toner left altogether. At that point, it just refuses to print.
This is impossible. The toner cartridge was brand-new. It’s an authentic cartridge. All my printings don’t show any signs of toner shortage at all. And most of all, after I smack the cartridge around enough, take it out and put it back enough, pray enough, the printer prints again and it looks as if nothing was wrong in the first place.
So, my conclusion is that I have a sly printer that’s just being lazy.
Computer and electronic problems don’t tend to irritate me, but I have to admit that this one gets on my nerves. There’s something insidious about this printer. To think that it sits in a corner of my room, mocking me as I sleep. Maybe it’ll read this blog post when I turn it on. That would be cause for concern.
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Oh look, a test.
Test
Literature. One of my last tests for the semester. I suspect that there’s one or two waiting on the other side of the week to ambush me, but for now, this is the last confirmed test of the semester. It is slightly frightening to think about it. I think I’ve said half a dozen times that it’s been a while since I last did any literature, so the prospect of it is actually far more intimidating than it ought to be.
No pressure, I keep saying to myself. If you think too much about it, you’ll just goof up. Which is perfectly logical, but you don’t always buy into the logical things. As with so much else in life.
After this, I am supposed to turn my attention to a project, and after that a couple of other odds and ends. It’s the tail end of the semester. Sure arrived a lot faster than any of us had expected. And I know we say that at the end of every semester, but it’s only because it’s true.
Poverty
Having spent slightly too much of late, I will have to restrict my spending for at least the next couple of weeks. There were a couple of books that I wanted to get but thank goodness I don’t have all the space in the world and the cabinet where I store my queue of unread books is kind of full.
Documentary
Oh this looks nice. [via Amazon] I suppose Life is a bit of an obvious title, but it still sounds great. Planet Earth was disappointing in parts, somehow, so I hope this lives up to its billing. That said, I did just mention that I was out of cash, so I better put this out of my sight for now.
Two
I’ve drafted the first part of my current project. It means that I’m supposed to move onto the second part, except that I’m not entirely sure what to do, so I’m still figuring things out in my head. The first part is looking a little strange, very rough, but overall fairly interesting. I’m just not convinced that it’s interesting in any good way, but we’ll decide as we get on with things.
Right, onto the test. Fingers crossed. Godspeed, and all that. Wish me luck, because lit nerds are just lit nerds — nothing suggests that a lit nerd should do okay in a test.
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Joyce
“The pity is the public will demand and find a moral in my book — or worse they may take it in some more serious way, and on the honor of a gentleman, there is not one single serious line in it.” [Joyce to Barnes, Vanity Fair]
Oaksongs
Oaksongs by Humpback Oak. Support your local musicians!
More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cactusbeetroot/sets/72157623663054876/
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