Thursday, May 7, 2009

Never tell me things can't get worse!

As the title says.  Back at IIT-B, one of my seniors said, "don't worry, Professor X never gives lower than a BB."  Guess what I got?  A BC.  Story of my life - breaking barriers no-one should!

Today was another one of those days.  Started off with a severe cramp in one leg, which got worse through the day, and is only now easing off.  Still, I doubt I will hit the gym tomorrow.
Next, I hear from my landlady about extending my lease.  These days, I am trying to buy a condo, but haven't had much success.  Figured I'd try to get a month-to-month lease.  But my landlady's position was that she couldn't let me stay beyond my current lease, which ends June 30, for two reasons: (a) it's hard to rent the apartment in the middle of the school year (fair enough); and (b) she wants to refurbish the apartment in between my departure and arrival of the new tenant.  I managed to talk her into letting me stay till July 10.  This means I have to find a condo by the first week of June, close on July 1 or 2, and move in the week after that.  Do-able...
Except - I might be in North Carolina the end of June/beginning of July for experiments at the EPA!  So that's going to be an especially joyous time... Might have to live at an extended-stay hotel for a couple weeks while I find another place, unless things fall into place in June.
Things then got even better.  A new policy at work - everybody's documents will be moved to the server, ostensibly for easier back-ups both on- and off-site.  This might be OK for most people who just work with M$ Office and kb-sized documents.  But I work with data - and GOBS of it.  Even with Gigabit Ethernet, I am not sure I trust running my >500 MB Igor experiments, which access GB-sized data files, off the server over the network.  [This is not like running experiments on a supercomputer/mainframe - my local CPU will still be running the processes, just transferring *data*, not commands, to-and-from the server.]  In addition, if automated, regular back-up was the purpose of this move, I haven't seen anything implemented yet for the TBs of data I have on my desktop and numerous external hard-drives (more like a few hundred GBs, backed up on different hard-drives - I know my s***!)  Ended up copying My Documents back to my local computer.  Given the slow network speeds, that was a frustrating 3 hours I didn't want to spend today.

Things can't get worse, right?  D-oh!  I finally get a review on my recent submission, and it seems a nasty one.  Though the paper was reviewed internally by 4 other PhDs (including 3 senior scientists/faculty members) before submission, apparently the paper lacks clarity and organization.  The reviewer stopped short of rejecting the paper, but at the end of this day, s/he might as well have.

Got back home, tried to watch TV... Can't get my mind off the review.  Ended up working on it, taking notes of what I need to do, and found most comments relatively easy to address, even though more data analysis is required.  Oh well.  At least I feel better now.  12yo Glenfiddich helps.
Maybe I will indeed get a pet soon - a King Charles spaniel, maybe, who loves me unconditionally (except for the food part, of course), irrespective of whether my submissions suck, and will always let me know I am a great guy, with no "but..."

4 comments:

Walrus said...

Bummer.

But some food for thought:
"It is time we demand an end to the misguided and abusive concept of animal ownership. The first step on this long, but just, road would be ending the concept of pet ownership."
-- Elliot Katz, President, In Defense of Animals

RS said...

Oh, I am completely on board with Katz. I have never had a pet before - didn't grow up with one, and so I don't feel incomplete without one.
But tending toward adopting a pet from the Humane Society these days - could be a mutually beneficial arrangement :-)

Walrus said...

Excellent. That's what I like to hear. Still, can't help but feel a little sorry for the poor pup that's gonna have to put up with your sh*$.
At least the rest of us can turn off our phones. ;)
A bit too cold? ..perhaps... I might feel bad about this later.

RS said...

So long as you are having fun... Even if it's at my expense :-) We can worry about later... later!