Journal Entry for January

If you want nothing, don’t ask for something. Today is a day for a writ­ten jour­nal. The gaps bet­ween jour­nal entries seem to be inc­rea­sing expo­nen­tially, it would seem I have less time to write about my life on the inter­web, or in hind­sight I have nothing to write about. Well, at least I’m not like that loser from links​.net, did you all see that? Some guy, let’s call him David for name­sake; David made a video of him­self having a break­down. David fil­med him­self going crazy and pos­ted it on his jour­nal. His cra­zi­ness was indu­ced by 11 years of inter­net blog­ging and no one to lis­ten to “his shit” in real life. The baw­ling video was quite pathe­tic, his speeches and crying were con­tra­dic­ted by the whole fil­ming pro­cess. Howe­ver, look at me now.

My inte­rac­tion and min­gling with words is not of the highest cali­ber today, so I apo­lo­gise now for any gram­ma­ti­cal errors. It’s pro­bably because I had a 9 o’clock this mor­ning follo­wed by three more lec­tu­res — four hours of lec­tu­res in a row from 9:00–13:00. I have another lec­ture this after­noon at 5 but I can skip that one as it has prin­ted notes and there is no exam on it, as such.

Let’s start with the imme­diate issues in my mind; then I can be calm after I have suf­fi­ciently ran­ted. I’m currently anxious about a cer­tain labo­ra­tory assign­ment con­cer­ning my “Ana­lo­gue Design” module. It con­cerns the soft­ware pro­gram, “Orcad PSpice” which is a stea­ming pile of bug rid­den crash worthy shit. My lack of expe­rience using the pro­gram, the program’s lack of built in help fea­tu­res and the steep lear­ning curve all con­tri­bu­ted to my first 3rd for an assign­ment in my degree — appa­rently I plot­ted the wrong things against each other in my analy­sis which ren­de­red ALL sub­se­quent work inco­rrect (who cares for methods, we want results!). The ins and outs of this pro­gram are so com­plex and non-user friendly that there is a whole module telling peo­ple how to use it. This module was taught last year, I mis­sed out as I was on a dif­fe­rent engi­nee­ring string at that point. It took me half an hour to actually design the cir­cuit I wan­ted let alone analyse it. Now I am faced with another PSpice pro­ject, worth 20% of the module. I can’t do it and anything I have done is most likely wrong because that’s how things are going for me. My ina­bi­lity, inep­ti­tude and igno­rance con­cer­ning PSpice will set me back con­si­de­rably. It doesn’t help that the pro­gram crashes every five minu­tes. I like to envi­sage the scene from Office Space, the one in the field; it calms me somewhat before I log out and go home.

Work loads this term are get­ting a little ridi­cu­lous. I have three lab reports to start so that they can be han­ded in next week. I also have some upco­ming labs to report on, lec­tu­res to write up and ques­tions to finish or at least attempt. I need to write an email about sum­mer internships and blab­ber for help to my orca dolphin lec­tu­rer. Ha!

As you pro­bably do not know, one of my current hou­se­ma­tes is moving out next year and we have had to fran­ti­cally try and find a new stu­dent to fill her gap. Our first eager par­ti­ci­pant was a Miss Di who very kindly bac­ked out at the last moment (opting rather for an ille­gal sub-letting option with her friends) when we wan­ted to sign con­tracts. Thus we were given a week to find a new hou­se­mate before the estate agents star­ted get­ting ratty. Luc­kily a friend of a friend knew someone and we met him on Satur­day, he liked the house and is coming over to sign the con­tracts tonight. This has been a major hea­dache for all invol­ved, spe­ci­fi­cally my girl­friend who had taken it upon her­self to sin­gle han­dedly sort and orga­nise everything, bless her. So, not coun­ting my chic­kens, we SHOULD have this lovely (cold) house I am sit­ting in now as accom­mo­da­tion next year albeit at an extra £10 a month.

The Sorcerer’s Appren­tice is now bla­ring from my spea­kers down the aural canals and ratt­ling my ear drums.

Last Wed­nes­day was my birth­day. Hoo­rah! I am 20 and am no lon­ger affi­lia­ted with all that is binge drin­king smo­king whi­ning tee­na­gers. Hoo­rah! My girl­friend pulled out all the stops for me this year; a fine cand­le­lit three course meal (A crab and salad star­ter, sal­mon steak and exo­tic vege­ta­ble main course and tof­fee chee­se­cake for desert), an array of won­der­ful gifts such as a fra­med 40inch God­father pos­ter, a repla­ce­ment for a bro­ken Kit Kat mug that pre­viously ador­ned my exis­tence and a ‘puzz­ling’ IQ card game that I com­ple­ted much fas­ter than I should have. The cele­bra­tions ended on Satur­day when I was trea­ted to a party at the local bow­ling alleys with ten of my friends; a pac­kage that gave us a free drink and a bottle of champs for the win­ner. I bow­led spec­ta­cu­larly well and achie­ved a score of 131 in my second game (I won). Our pro­ces­sion of stu­dent pro­wess moved onto Fran­kie and Benny’s pizzeria/italiana res­tau­rant for pizza, steak, lasagne and helium filled balloons. Thank you Samantha for orga­ni­sing everything.

Samantha is ill at the moment with a very nasty and pain­ful sto­mach pro­blem which isn’t just indi­ges­tion as she had thought. I have an inkling she is in so I am going to wrap up now and go see her. CIAO.