Journal Entries
Hopefully the last journal...
Posted Jul 20, 2008
For the neverending LumpQuest.
Just been sorting my lab results and various other medical records for tomorrow's doctor's appointment, and getting very cross in the process!
Now, compared to what I've been hearing from fellow hootooers, I have nothing to whinge on about, but I will anyhow, so look away if that kind of thing annoys you.
This has been going on for over a year now, and my neck and head are still sporting those lumps - there have even been new lumps on the other side recently! And yet, if the visit with this specialist doesn't produce any results, they simply want to send me to a psychiatrist next. 
So far, the results have been absolutely zilch, except the damaging and subsequent slow healing of the nerve in my right arm and the discovery that, oh joy, I'm allergic to a wide variety of antibiotics and a few painkillers, as well as just about any other new substances at present. 
Now I wouldn't complain - at least not so much - if the slowness of it all weren't due to hospital intrigues and politics. 
Certain tests - ones my GP can't do - haven't been done simply because one department refused to follow directions given by another. They've been ordering one another to do them for months and nobody will. If they still need to be done, I certainly hope the reason they don't do them is because it annoys them how loudly the patients scream. 
Lack of communication is another one - those of you who have been following this neverending narrative will know that the biopsy results took four whole months, and I only got them then because of, well, connections and espionage. The results I did finally get tell me nothing, though, because they say "we concur with your diagnosis" - what exactly that diagnosis is, nobody seems to know.
Graagh! I just want to know what's happening so I can get on with things! 
So wish me luck, please, if you happen to have any left over.
Discuss this Journal entry [65]
Latest reply: Jul 20, 2008
I'm baaaaack...
Posted Jul 14, 2008
Went to bed a bit earlier than usual Wednesday evening - there was a big thunderstorm, thought it would be safer to turn the computer off...
Got up Thursday, turned on the computer, scanned and coloured my comic, decided I'd check my mail - internet connection wasn't working. Went to Uni, came back - still no internet. 
So I went down to the provider's shop to complain. They said they'd do a line reset, and if that didn't work, I was to call the hotline to complain.
Called the hotline - they told me a technician would be by the next day between noon and four to do something about it.
Friday came and went - no technician. I called the hotline around five, they told me to wait a bit, maybe he'd still show up...
He didn't. Called the hotline again, they did another reset and told me if it didn't work, the technician would come by Saturday between ten and three.
Waited around all of Saturday morning. No technician. Went back to the shop to complain, they said it was my problem, not theirs, and gave me another appointment for Monday - between eight am and eight pm sometime! Had my laptop with me, checked my mail and hootoo briefly at a friend's.
By this point, my dreams were featuring the helpline hold music. And I've heard such a variety of dialects and accents now at their call centre, it seems they hire them for their lack of ability to speak High German! Five internetless days just when I really needed it do research various papers...
Today, phoned them again to ask when the technician would show up - couldn't spend 12 hours sitting here. They told me between one and three.
*Two* technicians finally showed up around six - only 74 hours late 
. They fixed the line - it had been scrambled by storm damage, it seems - and then reconnected my router, and it *still* wouldn't work. 
Seems the router - or rather, the modem inside the router - was fried, too.
Went down to the provider's shop again, they said they couldn't sell me the hardware without switching to a different, more expensive package. Went to the electronics store. They had routers, but not with modems. Bought the router anyway, and they told me where to get a modem, the funny little computer pawn shop just up the road.
Went there, too - he didn't have any DSL modems, either, but at least he had a router *with* modem... The next generation of the model I had that was fried 
Bought that, must return the other one tomorrow.
Came home, set it all up, configured it...
And no internet! Turns out my firewall was blocking it, I had to reinstall that, too... 
But I'm back 
Did anyone miss me?
Discuss this Journal entry [30]
Latest reply: Jul 14, 2008
Findewolf
Posted Jun 13, 2008
Busy babyproofing the flat 
- for a canine baby. That means hiding all the shoes.
We're picking up our puppy tomorrow, they're bringing her down from Hungary. My mother will be taking her back to the ol' home farm, but I get to see her first! 
http://gallery.site.hu/u/zsuzsazsuzs/2008_04_22_Bimbi_Poempi/080606_Pompi_mit_Ballrest_0.JPG.html
She's a rescue dog - they took her and her sister off some homeless drunks who traded the puppies for a bottle of booze. Probably about 3/4 German Shepherd with who knows what else
It'll be good to have a dog again! 
Though we're not sure what the cats will think about it.
(The title of this journal is a reference to "Der Findefuchs", one of my favourite books when I was little - about a vixen who finds an abandoned fox cub.)
Discuss this Journal entry [31]
Latest reply: Jun 13, 2008
Every prof has a silver lining...
Posted Jun 6, 2008
Something really 
happened today.
One of our profs was suspended recently, for a list of charges that basically boiled down to never showing up at work because he was drunk out of his skull, and then phoning up his female students at three in the morning instead.
Why did I take the semester's main course with this guy in the first place? He was the only one that was offering a course I still need, and though he gives little input, he leaves you enough time and gives relatively good grades, so I thought I could go easy there and just get in as many secondary subjects as I could this semester...
Now we've been reassigned to a different professor - the most strict and disagreeable one in the whole Uni. Fair but cruel, if that makes any sense. He taunts people whose work he doesn't like. I've had bad experiences with him before - in a course that cumlminated in my hallucinating falling down the stairs and nearly failing the semester - and have avoided him since.
He started us right off with a colloquium on Tuesday - where we're expected to show our designs so far as models, drawings, etc - the trouble was, we hadn't even had enough input from the other professor to really produce anything, no official description of the project or materials, so it was a mad scramble to find the official land-registry office maps of the area and get *something* drawn. 
Oddly enough, we all survived, though he was dour and harsh the entire time, and we had a second presentation in another building at the same time - both required in order not to fail. 
Today, we had to give ten minute oral presentations on various harbours - normally not a problem, except that he assumed we had already been given our topics by the other prof, and had had time to work on them, so we all had to pull them out of our hats in two days, next to regular classes. 
And then, the strangest thing happened. He smiled. He didn't tear us to shreds. He gave us a little speech that while worrying in all that he demanded of us, was actually *encouraging*. He said that we probably only new his exam and colloquium persona, since he usually leaves the regular meetings about our projects to his assistants, and that actually, he can be quite relaxed if he needs to be. We came out of there with our jaws dropping, all psyched up and ready to get working and really, really confused, wondering which aliens had replaced *him* with a human being. 
None of us knew that side of him at all.
Ok, he's still arrogant and pompous, a real diva, and still talks *almost* like a lawyer - he chooses each of his words very carefully, and uses long words, but doesn't achieve any real precision, because he misuses them. 
And he still looks a lot like Robert Llewellyn, especially his facial expressions, which is a bit disconcerting - Kryten would not be my first choice for a professor.
All in all, I'm actually 
starting to be *glad* they suspended the other guy, even if it's going to be a *lot* more work this way - I even had to give up my favourite class to fit this in, and the exam will be much earlier and much harder. Of course it helps that he gave me a 2.0 - the best grade he generally gives out - on the presentation I knocked together in the wee hours last night. 
It looks like I might actually *learn* something this semester, rather than learning how to get by without input! 
Discuss this Journal entry [33]
Latest reply: Jun 6, 2008
Towels And The Hootooers That Love Them
Posted May 29, 2008
Calling all hoopy froods!
Tav and I are working on an AViators (hopefully) project, and we need your help - we need pictures of your towels, at home or having wild towel-y adventures, with or without Researchers attached. (If it can be pried out of your fingers for the time it takes to take a picture.)
If you'd like to contribute, and give us your permission to use the photos in a video, please e-mail me at malabarista[underscore]h2g2[squigglything]yahoo[dot]co[dot]uk 
We already have some glamour shots of Opti's towel (she owns more than one! 
) and of KB's adorable dog and his towel, but we'd like to have about 24 of them for the video. 
Discuss this Journal entry [62]
Latest reply: May 29, 2008
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Malabarista - now with added pony
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