Sounds of Nature

Ugly, cellophane-wrapped, animatronic deer have taken up residency outside the Vanderbilt Hospital. I have yet to figure out what purpose the cellophane serves other than to compel me make a sympathetic gasping noise every time I pass. Breathe, little guy, breathe!!

Hooray!

Unless something important strikes me as I sleep, the Thanksgiving Thesis project has been successfully completed. There will certainly be revisions, but it's good to turn in to my advisor tomorrow morning for his leisurely browsing.

Doing a little happy dance...

...feeling a little insane.

Phase

I'm in the save-your-work-obsessively phase of the thesis writing. I have all the sections compiled into a single document. The figures and tables are all labeled and listed, there's a table of contents, and a bunch of words to go around the whole thing.

Whatever state the thing's in when I go to sleep tonight is what it will be in when I turn it in. I think.

Yea! Major progress!!

Crunch Time

The Thanksgiving Thesis Project has reached an important milestone. All the chapters are in (very) rough draft form. Now, it's time for the fine-toothed comb to come out and make sure that figures are numbered correctly, references are cited, and the bullshit I'm making up is at least convincing.

Let's see, refine 5 chapters in 30 hours. It's do-able.

What I'm dreading: Combining into one document.

What I'm happy with: A figure that took 2.5 hours to complete that nicely illustrates the process I'm working on.

Outlook: Optimistic, but getting easily distracted with real life (laundry, the need for groceries, the homework due Wednesday, the project due Friday, the exams -- THE EXAMS this week, Christmas shopping, the 15 little administrative things I need to take care of...sigh).

**Update**

Thanksgiving Night: 4 chapters out of 5 in very rough draft form.

Actively avoiding: The last chapter (results section).

Happy with: My data

Outlook: While it will be tight, but I think I'll have something that I'm not completely embarrassed about late Sunday night, ready to be delivered Monday morning. Optimism at its finest.

Thanksgiving Thesis

I am to write my master's thesis over the Thanksgiving holiday. This wouldn't be much of a problem except for my inherently social nature. AAA flew into Nashville on Monday, we drove to IN yesterday. I spent most of the day writing, but took an hour for a massage this afternoon. Today, I refined the outline, identified most of the figures that I want to include, and got rough drafts of two out of five chapters complete. Tomorrow, I hope to get at least one more chapter in draft form and the other two on Friday and spend the weekend cleaning up the whole thing. If all goes well, I'll defend sometime the week of the 3rd. Wish me luck!!

If I manage to get all this done, all I have to do in November is finish a math assignment, a project for another class, and take two exams while putting in corrections in the thesis. No problem, right??

Sesame Street

The first two seasons of Sesame Street are now available on DVD! Yea!!

Rumor has it that there's a warning for parents on the DVDs that these early episodes may not be appropriate for today's children. First, they tell us that the Smurfs was someone's giant hallucination, now, they're taking away Sesame Street.

No wonder we all turned out the way we did...

Green Christmas?

I have no idea how well this works, but Catalog Choice gives you an option to decide which catalogs you want to receive. Sounds great, eh?

Thanks Susan!!

Colossus

While listening to NPR this morning as I was heading to work, I heard in the hourly news summary that a British group has rebuilt Colossus, the computer designed to decipher German codes during WWII.

That's great! It'll be the size of a pocket watch!

No, no. Evidently, a computer museum (in the original location of an original Colossus machine) rebuilt the original design as accurately as possible (starting from a picture).

A computer museum--it's like seeing your childhood lunchbox in an antiques store!

The project took 14 years.

Huh? How long did it take to build the first one?

I dunno. Not 14 years. The difficulty is that all 10 original machines and their plans/specs were disassembled and/or destroyed for security reasons. The rebuilt computer will be pitted against a virtual Colossus running to demonstrate its blinding speed. Codes will be generated and transmitted via radio for this exciting head-to-head competition.

From Germany?

Yes.

Appropriate. Authentic.

Yes. Absolutely. The testing should be underway shortly. There are delays due to that fact that "we are at a bad point in the sunspot cycle."

Interesting article. Worth a read.

Names

I saw this article today and couldn't help but think that there may be some validity to this.

I remember drawing water associated with my lower-case script initials (SEA). Coincidence?

The sign of a long week ahead:

Walking to class this afternoon, I sighed and thought to myself, “At least it’s Friday.”
I then realized that it wasn’t.

It’s going to be a long week.