How could I be so...

...STUPID???

The Grad School at Cornell supports students presenting their work at conferences with up to 650 dollars once a year. I banked on this support for the Cologne conference. Today I sat down to fill out the application and almost got a heart attack.

See, I thought that the deadline was the first of the month of the conference. Turns out it is the first of the month BEFORE the conference. Here I am with my application, a month after the deadline.

Moron!


Update 07/31/07: The lady at the Grad School said I could submit my excessively belated application and so I did. Instantly. Now I'm waiting to see what comes out of it.
Update 08/01/07: They saw aumur á mér and gave me the grant. Nice.

On me way

Ok, I will go to Iceland this summer after all. When it became clear that the trip to the Philippines would stretch into September, it became a necessity to renew a certain somebody's visa. The itinerary is:

Syracuse, NY - JFK
JFK - KEF
KEF - Frankfurt

and back the same way, with 6 days in Iceland. They better keep the embassy open while I'm there!!

Then as I'm back in Ithaca, it'll be no more than 48 hours before I'm on a plain again headed for the Philippines. Two weeks of work there (and maybe a short splash in the ocean) and back home, only long enough to stuff my new samples into the fridge and get ready for my in absentia plans (let's hope the grad school approves of them... spennó spennó)! Never a dull moment, as the man said.

Compliment

It doesn't take a lot to make a little heart happy:

Yesterday I parallel parked my car into a really tight spot. A car that was driving behind me waited until I was in the spot, then drove on and parked nearby. As I walked past, the driver, who was putting some coins in the parking meter, stopped me and commented on what a great job I'd done getting the car in there.

Needless to say, I was walking on air for the rest of the day :)

It's a tie!!

Which Harry Potter Character Are You?
	You are part Fred and George. You're a joker at heart, but when push comes to shove, you know what's important.
	You are part Dumbledore. You're the wise sage in any group. With your guidance, any situation can be resolved in the fairest way possible.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

My foot and a baby cardigan-to-be

Here are a couple of pix of the baby cardigan I'm working on. They're taken with my phone camera on the walkway around my house (remember, the walkway whose bricks are slowly being "harvested" by some unidentified tenants... I wonder if they think there is such a thing as brick growing season... *muhahahahahahhaaha*):

A close-up of the cardigan shows the texture, a moss stitch for the bottom and a ribbed stitch for the body:

It's knitting up faster than I thought it would (with 2.25 mm needles, which is just insanely small!!) so I might make a cap and booties to match. Yum!

P.S. I finished Harry Potter!

Buttons

Since I'm at it: How do I turn nice little buttons, like this one:


into a link in my sidebar? All suggestions welcome!

You won't believe it...

... but I finally put some links and stuff in the sidebar!!!!!

Tales from the back yard, cont.

I haven't updated you on the situation in the backyard recently.

So, no more dead pets since last time. Only one cigarette butt or two. No candle wax either. Nice enough. Problems over?

Not quite. Now bricks are disappearing. Not just the ones forming a division in the flower beds and which I excavated from under years of neglect earlier this summer, but also the ones forming the walkway into the house. Yes, you are right - the "sidewalk" around the house is disappearing. The maintenance staff seems to think that some of the (former) tenants are harvesting the bricks for... something...

Any idea from my loyal readers as to what might be ailing those poor morons' souls??

Spreeeeeeee

Sometimes when I go to amazon.com, I cannot contain myself.

Today I have placed three separate orders there. Yes, I know, I'm insane.

The first two are for work stuff. An Atlas of Hawaii, of which I have already purchased a copy, which disappeared. There used to be at least 2 if not 3 copies available in my lab; now all are gone. I'm going to put a trace on this thing when it gets here. You know, like they put on underage wizards.

I don't think people will be as keen to "borrow" the other work-related book I ordered: Core Python Programming. I need to learn some real programming if I want to skip over insanity on my way to a Ph.D. There's just no way around it.

And then the yummi stuff: Knitted Fits... smuff, no, it's Fitted Knits... hard to get that one straight. This book's knit-along (you're entirely forgiven for not having a clue here) is a great ad for the book, I wasn't really interested in it until I saw what knitters out there are doing with/for the designs. And, for good measure, I threw in a book about the history of Islam...

Potter

Of course I was part of this record. I haven't finished the book yet (had to read the Half-Blood Prince first!) but so far it's not letting me down.

Hair

I just called my hairdresser:
"Hi, this is Herdis"
"Oh hi, how are you? You need a hair appointment?"
"Yes, in fact I do"
"Great! So, what's a good day for you?"
"I was thinking sometime next week"
"Ok, so tomorrow at 9:30 am?"
"erm... yeah, I guess..."

Interview

For the first time in my humble life, today I interviewed someone who's looking for a job. The search is on for a replacement for the graduate/undergraduate coordinator job in my department and I represent the grad students on the selection committee (see, our insistence on being taken seriously by the faculty seems to be paying off). It was an interesting experience, not to mention what a relief it was to be at my side of the table :)

Las Islas Filipinas - again?

My adviser popped into the lab today to tell me that we are 99% sure to get the grant to go to the Philippines this summer. Erm... I know what you are thinking... isn't the summer half over? Well, yes.

So, getting a grant is always excellent, and sometimes even sprexellent, as in this particular case. It's not a lot of money, but enough for what it's intended for, and coming out of a pool that sees stiff competition, I think we can be pretty pleased with ourselves. The only problem is that... well, now that the summer is almost over and The Conference looming ahead, there's just no TIME to go! But we'll figure something out. I'll keep you posted.

Hard drive woes over

Yes, you read that title right: My worries about backing up my hard drive have been firmly put to rest. My brand-spanking new Western Digital 60GB external hard drive arrived today and now all my invaluable junk has been backed up on it. Nice!

Other than that, life's pretty much the same. I had a bizarre dream last night, that I was chasing a bus around a rugged countryside... similar to Iceland... and the driver was a total psycho, toppling the bus over into gullies and driving it up insanely steep mountainsides... and I was trying to save the passengers, all bloody and injured, from the wreck before it fell off into the abyss.

I had cold mango soup with coconut and mint for lunch. Delicious, but left me just as hungry as I was before eating it.

Aimless

I just don't know what to work on. It's all in a big tangle in my head.

The Goldschmidt conference in Germany is coming up in a month's time. I have to have at least 12 minutes of at least decent science ready by then to present. I can't even put some blurb on a poster and make myself disappear, no, I'm giving a talk. So, it better be good. And here I am, sitting at my desk for nearly 4 hours straight, and all I accomplished was to open a couple of Excel files. I seriously need more structure in this endeavour of mine. Or motivation. Or both.

The funny thing is, I think that what I do is really interesting. As far as I can analyze things myself, my lack of progress is mainly caused by two factors: 1) It feels like my project is so gargantuan that I will never be able to finish it in the allotted time, and not being able to finish it, what's the point in even starting... and 2) I hate working alone. I am alone at my desk all day, my thesis adviser is never here (and even if he were, it wouldn't change a whole lot since we hardly ever talk about science anyway... at least not on a peer level) and I don't get a chance to interact with other scientists in my field on a regular basis.

The good news: I had a meeting with my stats adviser this morning and it was excellent. He gave me lots of good research-related advice and was really interested in hearing and discussing my future plans. Very encouraging.

Sins

Stína tagged me, and so I have to tell you about 8 sins I have committed. Is it a problem that I don't believe in the concept? Oh, whatever, here are the most gruesome things I've ever done:

1. When I was 11, I kicked my cousin in the balls because he preferred playing with my brother.
2. I've been known to put stones into my hiking partners' backpacks, just for fun.
3. I cheated on an exam once... no wait, twice!
4. I am a sloth by nature
5. I read too many non-work related books
6. My fascination for exaggeration sometimes carries me away, leading people to believe that yes, I did climb a HUNDRED MILLION stairs or that it was really a THOUSAND degrees out.
7. I'm not as driven as most academic advisers think you should be.
8. And lastly, the ultimate sin: I don't believe in a personal God.

See, you probably never guessed I was THAT evil ;)

Ka-rasj!!

My external hard drive has been giving me some headache recently, since it won't imbibe more than ~10GB of data (although it is a 60GB drive). This started happening after I reformatted the drive and changed it from 2 partitions to one. My computer tells me that the drive is healthy and well, but obviously my computer doesn't know the first thing about hard drives.

Usually what happens is that when 10GBs have been copied to the hard drive, the back-up software freezes. If I then try to close it or terminate the process, the computer freezes. If I then unplug the external drive, the computer freezes. If I then go and paint my toenails pink, my computer freezes.

I talked to a tech at the manufacturer's who suggested it might be the USB cable. I suggested in return he/she was a moron. No, of course I didn't do that but it is a moronic suggestion. I'm sure you agree. Why would a USB cable refuse to transfer more than 10GB in a setting? Please let me know if you figure that out.

However, having nothing better to do (such as working on my Ph.D.) I did try to use another cable. Lo and behold, this one managed to ferry 5GB over before all hell broke loose. Not only did my computer crash spectacularly; when I restarted the poor wounded thing all my Firefox/Thunderbird profiles and accounts had been WIPED OUT. Is this the great IOGEAR anti-Mozilla crusade??

A few S**T and F**Ks later, I found that all the data is still on my hard drive or (God (a convenient time to assume such a being exists) thank them!!) on the Firefox servers. I had to reconnect my browser to the Foxmark server and I have to somehow retrieve my Thunderbird account and get all the mail to show up again.

All this, and I still haven't gotten my hard drive backed up. ARG!

What a pain. If it weren't for my fabulous optimism in the face of adversity and stunningly positive personality (ehem...) I would probably be crying by now.

I hope they don't have a dog!!

Can you find the dead goldfish in the picture??

Update: Honorable mention will go to the one who can find the second dead goldfish too!

The neighbors

Guess what I found in the flower bed outside my apartment as I came home from the (soaking) 4th of July BBQ. A dead goldfish!!!

I don't want to throw stones, but it some of my neighbors - I don't know yet who - are not very pleasant. I've found some pretty nasty stuff in the flowerbeds - cigarette butts, candle wax, broken glass, more cigarette butts, and now, the latest charming addition. I have a feeling it's the kids above us, who spend a lot of time by the window overlooking the backyard (and out on the roof) smoking and, apparently, throwing their dead pets out and not knowing how to dispose of burnt-down candles. I'd really like to take this stuff back to its rightful owner and tell him/her to shove it where to sun don't shine, but not knowing for sure who the culprit is makes that rather undoable.

Also, last Monday when I took our recycling bin out to the curb for pickup I noticed that there were four sixpacks of beer and vodka-drink bottles in our recycling bin that neither I nor Shan had put there. We keep the bin on our porch and I suspect that one of our neighbors just put their recycling in our bin. Common guys! I took the sixpacks out and put them on the common porch for the other apartments in the house and there they are still. I might have to remove their dead pets from my flowerbed but I am NOT taking the remains of their parties to the curb for them. ASSHOLES!

So, what do the Danes do then? At the time when Shan first moved in here he was promised that only grad students (read: grown ups) would live here. That held true for the first year or so but by now we feel that we are orders of magnitude older than most of the people living in the house. I don't have anything against young people (being so fabulously young myself... ehem...) but I don't want to live in the same house as they, at least not in Ithaca. We are pretty pissed off that the landlord has defaulted on his promise so severly.

Moi

Warm asphalt

In Gateway, Colorado it was so hot (122F, i.e. 50°C) that even the asphalt was soft.

Snapping Turtle Skirt

Wanna see my new skirt? I made it all by myself! The pattern hails from the book Knitting Nature, which has become my bosom buddy and the place to go to for all things knitty. The skirt took me a couple months to knit and while I was at it it looked so bad I honestly thought that I would chuck it straight into the garbage can when it was ready. Alas, that did not happen; the skirt came out much better than I ever dared to hope. It's pure wool so I won't be using it a lot over the summer but you can bet that I'll wear it to threads once the weather gets a little cooler. That's when I'll start knitting some more stuff from the book too.

Currently knitting: Just starting a cardigan for a newborn... actually an unborn nephew/niece* of Shan's.

-----

* Shan's best friend since pre-kinder is pregnant. Well, his girlfriend/wife is.

The Jesus people...

... knocked on my door just a minute ago, inviting me to a Jehova's Witnesses' event. I politely declined the offer. Maybe I should I have ushered them inside, offered them a cup of tea and a reading from "The God Delusion" or "The End of Faith". I wonder how they would have liked that.

Finished The Road a couple of days ago. Shan't say much about it, just this: Read it.