Journal Entries
Bad news.
Posted May 24, 2005
Sorry peeps, I feel like I've been so negative here lately.
I hope you don't take it personally that I use my online journal mostly as a rant; an outlet for the stress I've been under.
But it's not enough. The stress is more than I've been able to deal with and I can't handle it any more. I'm too stressed, and I'm not strong enough.
As of the night before last (11pm sunday night my time), I no longer consider myself a uni student. I quit. I'm a dropout.
After spending the last three weeks having minimal social life; no money; no time; and no help from the university, my RL friends (not their fault I haven't seen them though), or my family; the two assignments which were due in on monday remained then, and remain now, unfinished.
After having three panic attacks, two nervous breakdowns, and a blackout lasting about four hours, I've decided I can't do this to myself any more.
Unfortunately on monday I wasn't able to cope with anything either, so I stayed at home instead of doing what I would have liked to do but couldn't: go to work, come to uni, hand in the work I'd done, go to my councelling appointment, go to the pharmacist to renew my prescription, and talk to the admin staff to see if the papers I've already done can be transferred to another (easier) degree, because I might actually get something out of it then.
But I didn't, because I'm too weak to cope. 
I've come in today to say goodbye for now. I'm going to go back to working again, so I don't know how often I'll have access to the 'net from now on. I'm not leaving hootoo for good, though, 'coz I like you and I like it here.
After I sign off I'm going to go rebook the councelling appointment I missed yesterday, go to the pharmacy, and go to the admin centre. If I'd thought to go to rebook the councelling before I came to the lab to write this, I could tell you when I'll next be back. If it's important I'll probably text Arisztid and she can post the date here.
Hugs to you all. This isn't the end, I'm not horribly depressed about it (well not as much as I could be), I'm not going to do anything stupid; I just need time to accept my decision and learn to live with the fact that I've been working so hard, and put up with so much, for the last five years and have nothing tangible to show for it apart from a fifty-thousand dollar debt.
Discuss this Journal entry [78]
Latest reply: May 24, 2005
The enemy undermined my subject lines!
Posted May 19, 2005
(Skip this, Job. It's just another assignment rant.)
I was going to call this entry "D-day", and use it as a form of online countdown to the assignment supposedly being handed in at 5pm today... but the lecturor just gave us all an extension until monday, so that's not gonna work as a subject...
The extension is gratefully received, though. I could almost feel significant amounts of stress evaporating from the room when the lecturor told us. 
So the story so far (in case anyone genuinely doesn't know already), is that I've been working pretty much continuously for the last ...two? weeks. (It's getting hard to tell, as you'll soon realise.)
It took me the first week or so to be able to conceptualise the problem, to figure out exactly what the hell I needed to do. I spent a day taking apart an existing class which was similar to the one I needed to write.
I spent another day trying to work out which bits I needed to remove from it, apart from the bits I'd already taken out.
I spent another half-day on this, and then had a panic attack because I didn't really know what I was doing, and just thrashing (search engine term for picking random things in the hope that one of them might give a better clue of what to look for). So I took a break. And then went back to it. And then had another panic attack. So I went home. And then I had a nervous breakdown.
And then I cleaned my house, because it was more fun than thinking about my assignment. I even did the dishes, and I /loathe/ doing dishes. But it was still more fun than thinking about the assignment.
Then it was saturday, and I was planning to go in and work on assignments more, but I got kidnapped by S and spent the day being miserable at her instead. Same on sunday. Sorry S. 
This week(?), I had an epiphany about what to write, so I spent half a day removing the bits from the class I'd butchered that I didn't need, and changing the rest to fit the data I was going to use it with. That took about nine hours of continuous work.
The next day, I wrote extra bits for the class, to make it into a theoretically-working object. 12 hours.
Next day (wednesday), I bugtested. Not all bugs: just the compile errors. The runtime errors were thursday's job. Combined: about 26-28 hours' work.
Actually, I can't remember which day it is, but I'm pretty sure I've got it wrong here somewhere. At the end of the day I'm calling thursday, I had a program which does what I want for a while, and then crashed spectacularly in a ball of flame. After a couple of hours trying to figure out where/why/when the problem occurs which does this, I gave up and went home.
The day I call friday (not the actual friday, since that's today - I only know 'coz I turned off my alarm this morning... god I hate that thing.) I tried a couple of things which I'd thought of as soon as I got home and into bed (typical) the night before. You know how it is when you pull a loose thread on a jersey....
By friday night, I had only two errors left (so it seemed), and one of them was probably causing the other as far as I could tell, so I really only had one error. But by this point I'd put in an incredible amount of effort and time into this project, and I hadn't spent more than twenty consecutive minutes at home and awake, in over a week and a half. Plus I still wasn't sleeping very well, and was far more than just dog tired.
So I was unable to figure out the problem, and decided to see if the lecturor could help. I went to his room, but there's a note on his door which says "I'm in G.1.07" So I tootle down to G.1.07 but he's not there either. The department secretary hasn't seen him, and nobody else knows where he is.
I try to resort to e-mailing him, which I was hoping to avoid since the nature of the problem was one that needed to be dealt with in person, but the school's webmail system had crashed. 
So on "saturday", I went to a lecture, went to a lab, and then went to find the lecturor again... the note was still there, but at least this time the lecturor was in what is aparrantly his new office, in G.1.07
Talked to him, and although he wasn't able to help specifically, while describing the structure of the program he pointed out a couple of things I could be doing better, one of which was quite major.
I figured by cleaning the redundancy he pointed out, I might be able to figure out where the other errors were coming from... actually now that I think about it it might just have done that. I'd also noticed a couple of other things which could be optimised, so now my code is /very/ clean, /very/ fast, and still doesn't work.
Luckily, I noticed a slight glitch in the output which gave me a hint of a small something wrong... which when I traced the thread far enough, turned out to be quite major; my main formulae was entirely the wrong one to use.
Today, I'm hoping that if I clean the (new and freshly altered) code a bit more, I can figure out why the program won't run for more than a couple of seconds now: it seems to be the same problem as I had four days ago but just making everything crash sooner. Stink.
Still, at least I now have the weekend to work on it. As well as the /other/ assignment due in on monday. 
As my posts to this journal go on, I imagine they're going to get more complicated. If you're already bored, you should unsubscribe now. And remember to unsubscribe to any other journals as soon as you see me tell Job not to bother reading them, too.
If you're not bored, then you're weird.
And if you're not weird, then what the hell are you doing reading my journals in the first place? 
Oh, and I've managed to get at least four hours sleep a night for the last two (three maybe?) nights, and I'm throwing as many vitamins as I can stand down my throat, so I'm feeling heaps healthier than I was a few days ago. Stop worrying! I tend to look after myself, wherever possible...
Ye gods I talk too much. I wish one of the voices in my head would tell me to shut the hell up.
Discuss this Journal entry [15]
Latest reply: May 19, 2005
[This space for rent.]
Posted May 16, 2005
I need to go for a wee. Whee! Ah, that's better.
I need a holiday again. I've decided I work too hard. Yet somehow, I don't feel productive enough. My assignments are looming and making me stressed - same old story all over again; I'm getting used to not having enough time. People are trying to catch up with me without any kind of success at all, to the point where I've been getting random texts at 2am saying things like: "Visit, dammit! I have ice-cream and fruit salady goodness..." and: "Busy little ! The university OWNS your white ss." Etc.
But I haven't actually wanted to do anything with anyone recently, even the people I really like. But I don't want them to feel that they've done anything to make me avoid them personally.
And some of them (the ones who actually own cars, mainly) have been randomly turning up to see if I'm actually home, and then ordering pizza and insisting on staying to watch a movie or something. I appreciate the sediment (oops I mean sentiment - I always say that wrong for some reason,) but I've just wanted them to not be there just now, recently.
Sleep would be nice. I miss it. I was so late to work this morning that I didn't actually make it there at all. By the time I was able to function enough to leave the house it was already time to be coming back, swapping bags and going out the door to uni again.
Stupid assignments.
I keep forgetting to take vitamins too, dammit. Vitamins would be good. I've already got a sore throat and itchy eyes, and I'd prefer that not to get worse.
I like the word 'mint'.
Yeah I'm still sick of my degree. Well parts of it. And I'm sick of sundays always whizzing past with a small thunderclap, and then monday hurtling along at the great rate of a herd of tortoises stampeding through peanut butter.
The pills are good. I'm so glad I have them. Now getting decent night's sleeps are the next major priority. Still working on that one.
As a side note: all the bits for the robot seem to be falling together quite nicely. If I had only time, motivation, resources, tools and skills, I might be able to successfully make something really neat. Mint, even. I expect it'll get shelved as a good idea to make later on when I can, instead. Same as all the others. Sigh.
Oh, and the chainmail machine is pretty much a wasted cause. This current engineer has been making the same kind of noises in the same kind of pattern as the previous toolmakers and engineers before him: "Oh yeah we should be able to do that... about $16,000 I reckon." "Er, yeah, sorry, I've had a bit of a talk with the guys in the workshop and it's a lot trickier than I'd first thought... probably more like $150,000." "Um, heh, we're going to have to look at a different design. Have you thought about buying one of the machines which already exist instead?" 
I've also come to the conclusion that I should think less and be more hedonistic. Unfortunately, it took 21 consecutive hours of disagreement and misunderstanding to figure this out.
Monkeys. The lot of them.
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Latest reply: May 16, 2005
Isn't it interesting where distractions lead?
Posted May 10, 2005
Okay so further to the last journal entry where I mentioned the possibility of hang-gliding to Canada, (via Australia, Asia, Russia, Alaska,) I've come to the conclusion that I would simply need to go a lot faster than glide-speed, in order to make it, due to factors like exhaustion etc. So, I've been looking at microlite designs instead.
The major hurdle here is that I know bugger-all about engines, and if I'm the one putting my neck on the line, I'd like to know how to keep it attached to my body. Which means if I fly to Canada using an engine as propulsion, I'd want to know how to fix it myself when it breaks.
Further observation: petrol engines I know nothing about. However I've realised that /induction/ engines, I can probably figure out. So I started looking for basic designs for induction engines on the 'net, to make sure I'm heading in the right direction. (Can you tell I really should be doing assignments instead? If you can't, you soon will...)
When I google 'how induction engines work', the first link is for the website of a guy who's a programmer in Texas, who also happens to be a rollercoaster enthusiast living not too far from the world's first rollercoaster powered by induction motors. Or something. So I spent ages looking at various design features and photos of this rollercoaster, which is always fun (I like kinetic art, remember), but not very productive.
His site also has a nifty idea on it (a separate idea, although I thought it was related to the induction motor thing, which was confusing for a while,) basically summarised thus:
Expensive cars and cheap roads are efficient only when you have a small number of people travelling a large distance.
When a large number of people are travelling a small (on average) distance, it's much more efficient to built expensive roads and cheap cars.
Building expensive (note 'expensive' is only a relative term here) roads and cheap cars also has the advantage that you can:
- reduce pollution
- reduce (or eliminate) crashes, and pedestrian impacts.
- And heaps of other things I forget what; there's a list of them but I got sick of reading about it. Expecially since they kept repeating themselves.
But anyway the upshot is this proposal:
http://home.comcast.net/~gep-2/uprtsumm.html
I quite like it. Apart from a few basic design flaws (all of which I can see an immediate solution to anyway,) I can't think of anything wrong with it. I hope that the momentum of the populace can be shifted on this topic.
I'm tempted to make a mock-up model, just to test the idea further for my own interest.
Unfortunately, that doesn't get me any closer to Canada at this point.
And I still haven't found what I was looking for on induction engines.
As a side note, I'm not sleeping very well, and haven't been for ages. My concentration and mental health are suffering, and I'm getting sick of it. And getting sick, I guess.
Don't get me wrong, I'm trying to take care of myself. It's just tricky when I keep waking up for no reason at 4am or some unforsakenly-similar time.
And then I can't get up when my alarm goes off, so I have to rush to make it to my lectures on time, without doing the things I wanted to get done before leaving the house, and then by the time I get home again I have no energy to do them anyway.
Actually now that I think about it this problem would be a whole lot more simple if I was only mentally awake at the same times as when I'm physically awake. It would save me lying in bed thinking alternately: "Wake up! Get up, dammit!" and "Hey, if I use a collection of coiled capacators in conjunction with two sets of AC, then I can have a four-way split rotational matrix which can ensure a single direction of motion without friction..." and so on. And it would also mean I could think properly during the day, which means I could get my assignments done quicker and have more time to be creative.
Gee this was going to be a short post, too.
One more thing: I've been very antisocial in RL, lately. Most of the people I tend to hang out with I find to be mediocre, small-minded, socially irresponsible, and pointlessly demanding. Basically, I'm finding yet again that I need to be in a society where people grew up with different values and traits.
And I've decided I don't like being a second-best choice. Nor do I like the concept of making someone else feel like a second-best choice, either. This is probably why I'm currently still single. If I'd played my cards right I might not have been by now, but I don't play cards, let alone playing with emotions. Still, S and I will continue to see each other occasionally, and will still remain friends, so I guess it's better than being completely alone. I think.
And just to link two ideas together: S's mother is a sleep therapist, and has agreed to perform a sleep test on me at some point. Embarrasingly, she agreed to this after S told her that I stop breathing occasionally at night. To which her mother asked: "How do you know?" 
I'll let you know if/when the sleep-test happens.
Discuss this Journal entry [25]
Latest reply: May 10, 2005
They go up-diddly-dup-up
Posted May 2, 2005
Okay so I can't remember the lyrics so well, but never mind!
I woke up this morning to the remnants of a dream in which I was sailing across the ocean in a largeish yacht, with one other random person who doesn't like sailing; I think it was my mother? Anyway the waves were kinda largish but not horribly so, enough to make the other person a bit worried and to make me busy trying to keep us on course and the sail tight etc.
Okay so there wasn't much interesting about the dream, but of course when I wake up with those kind of images in my head I always have them simmering in my brain until I wake up a bit more, by which time this morning I had gone past thinking about sailing to Canada (because I can't afford to buy a big enough yacht, and I don't have the skills or resources to make one,) I'd gone past remembering that my dwarf aparrantly spent a bit of time in Finland or somewhere working with a load of boatbuilders and medieval enactors (leading to the assertion that he was going to (quote) "...invade New Zealand with a boatload of Danes." (Wait, maybe it was Denmark...) ) but he's probably not going to be back here before I leave anyway, so asking his help in sailing out of the country is a bit pointless.
So sailing to Canada is probably out of the question, but wouldn't it be cool to fly?
Queue images of those old wooden hand-made flying machines; of the type where you attach large plywood wings to someone's arms, or jitter them to pieces as they pedal furiously in the middle of a bouncing, flapping contraption. I think it was at this point I got the song stuck in my head: "Those magnificent men in their flying machines/ they go up-diddly-dup-up/ they go down-diddly-aargh-crap!" Or whatever.
It would be supremely cool to actually get one of those contraptions to work, especially well enough to get me around the world. Instant fame, just add water.
Queue more images, slightly more modern: Richard Branson in his hot air balloon (too expensive for me to build); A giant balloon with a ship-type shape under it (like the classical one in the movie the mummy returns, if you've seen it)... imagine how cool that would be... but then imagine the resources I'd need to be able to make it. Damn.
So something simpler then. Like a hang glider. And this is the thought that has been bugging me since I had it. Why not a giant hang glider? Do they get more efficient as they get larger? Can they travel higher; or longer distances? Or with less updraft? How well do they cope over water? Could I make it to Australia? Or further? Would I need to only travel during the day? How fast would I have to go to be able to do that?
Okay so there are a lot of questions, but at least it's something I could probably do. The theory is simple enough; tubing plus material. Anything else is details, right? Food, water, warmth, comms, GPS, what about lights? Weather protection? Satellite tracking? International border passes? I'd draw the line at carrying chaff to distract any missile fire above the coast of China or something. But all the rest I could either scrounge, make myself, or get sponsorship from someone wanting to support someone doing something weird which will probably make them very famous and possibly make them very dead.
It's worth thinking about, right?
Discuss this Journal entry [26]
Latest reply: May 2, 2005
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Jerms - a Brief flicker and then gone again.
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