You might have noticed that I haven’t posted for a few days. I shouldn’t even have written that post about Celebrity Big Brother, but I couldn’t really stop myself. I didn’t proofread it properly which is why it came complete with a glaring error in the post title for five whole days.
It’s been crazy over the weekend. I had this mad Econometrics project to hand in on Monday. Once upon a time the deadline for it was the 4th of December, but so many people complained that it got moved all the way back to the 22nd of January. I still crapped it up.
You see, it involves using a certain computer program for carrying out econometric analysis. The program probably costs hundreds of pounds, so you’re meant to do it all in the computer labs at the university. I probably spent a couple of hours each day last week, but as the deadline closed in it consumed more and more of my time.
You see, what I was doing was just doing all of the regressions at university and emailing the results to myself so that I could analyse them at home. This was a huge mistake. Every single night — every single night! — I realised that I had made some kind of error that meant I had to start all over again. And I had work every day over the weekend. So I got up at 7am on Saturday morning to trudge into Edinburgh for the library opening at 9am.
It was eerily quiet in the library at that time. When I got there there was only one other person in the usually packed-out computer lab. Some cleaners came along after a while though to lighten the mood. I had to finish up by about half past eleven though so that I could get to work. Not my happiest day ever.
Of course, that night I realised that I had made a mistake so I had to go in on Sunday as well. I turned up at the train station to discover that there weren’t any trains from Kirkcaldy, so I had to wait for the bloody replacement bus service which I had to wait ages for as well. In total it took me two and a half hours just to get to the library. What a waste of time!
Then I came home and tried to write the report. Remember, this was Sunday, and the deadline was for Monday. Inevitably, I had discovered that I had done it all wrong. Sunday evening was really bleak. I was in deep trouble with a project that was originally supposed to be handed in seven weeks before!
So I salvaged what I could on Sunday evening and got up at 6am on Monday morning to get into the library and just do all of the work I had to do and write the report. In the end it was actually quite easy, but that was possibly because I was beyond caring. Obviously isn’t not going to turn out amazing, but at least hopefully it will pass. I had completely finished the report by about 11:30, which left me plenty of time to have a relaxing lunch before handing it in. And then going to work.
I thought I wasn’t going to get a rest, but this morning I woke up at about half past 10. I had no recollection of switching my alarm clocks off, but they both had been switched off. That’s when you know you’re sleep deprived and you know you need to take a rest. I promised I wouldn’t do that. After all, not working at the time probably contributed a lot to my problems with econometrics (that, and the fact that econometrics is the worst subject ever).
But bollocks to that. I have no spare time any more. A couple of hours here and there to blog if I’m lucky. No time to watch the DVDs I got for Christmas. No time to listen to all of the CDs I bought before Christmas. A pile of books that I’ve been meaning to read since last summer. And a huge list of personal goals that I know I’ll never have the chance to meet.
So I took the day off university.
You might sense from this post that I’ve not been in the best of moods recently. And you know what that means. My LiveJournal is coming back into action. Maybe. I kind of drifted away from posting on it, especially after I decided to write more ‘personal’ posts on this blog. I’ve also had some strange log in issues with LiveJournal which I couldn’t be bothered sorting out.
Anyway, now is probably a good point in my life to start writing on my LiveJournal again, but this time it’s going to be friends only. So if you want to read it, add me as a friend and see if I add you back. You don’t have to have a LiveJournal account — you can gain access to LiveJournal using OpenID (if you don’t know what OpenID is, check out the Wikipedia article).
Normal-ish blogging will resume shortly, hopefully.
I feel luckier now – I have a stupid vocal analysis project to do, but we can use freeware software for that (albeit software called “Praat”, which never makes you sound particularly sophisticated when people ask what you’re doing) and work on it at home. It’s just as well because the only other place it’s installed is the linguistics computer lab which is open for about three minutes a week.
Don’t worry about taking the day off, though – I have to quite often (like today! Small people drilling into my skull, or “sinus infection” to most). You never miss as much as you think you will (do the reading and you’re covered) and your head is so much clearer for having had a rest. It’s the one good thing about not living at home – my dad doesn’t have to know and disapprove!
OpenID is great, I love it. You know you can use embed some code into the header here and use their OpenID server to confirm you’re the owner of this site as well if you like?
Also, um, how would you like all the privacy functions of LJ, but with the felxibility of WP? Because, um, working on that currently. Waiting for 2.1 to come out before launching, but the code monkey appears to have done great stuff…