pulling out of the tailspin

[trochee]

hah. Phone call on the way out of the apartment: "yeah, your suit for your wedding? that adjustment you wanted? our tailor says it can't be done, and it'll look bad. we'll refund you the $35 for the adjustment but we won't do it. Do you still want the suit?" great. yes, I say, I still want the suit. But I may look for another....

Got to the lab and my swipe card doesn't work. Lovely. Most of the students in the lab have the same problem. We jerry-rig a system to make sure someone's always inside to hear the knocking. I set to work on my slides for the talk.

Oops. I discover that i forgot to check in some changes I made at home over the weekend, so my slides won't recompile on campus. I texted imtboo, who was still home: "Could you turn my computer on so I can retrieve a forgotten slide? Merc retro in full effect."

The laptop I'm borrowing needs a password, and I don't know it. I walk over to the linguistics department to get the warrant for the exam, and get the password. On the way I run into a fellow ling grad student, who is on his way to another generals practice talk. I ask him to pass on my apologies; things are too nuts. When I get to the department: "Oh, we didn't promote your generals," says the admin. "I'll do it right now." Not expecting many attendees with this kind of lead time. This isn't all bad; I don't need extra faculty there.

Off to meet with summer workshop students: two are blind; two are deaf; we have interpreters in the room for one of the deaf students. One of the interpreters asks me "how do you spell /lɑtɛk/?" I fingerspell the answer to him. "Oh," he says, "like 'latex'". Yep. I have pizza lunch with the students and talk linguistics and CS shop, making sure to keep my face where they can lip-read.

Printing out handouts: the lab's TeTeX version is deeply out of date. I install a local tweak to the one module that I needed (worked fine on my home Ubuntu system, which isn't running Late Iron Age Linux). One printer runs out of paper. The lab stapler is out of staples.

Nevertheless, I'm almost ready to go. Just to test the slides on the projector in the next hour, and then upstairs to set up....

Comments

[boobirdsfly.livejournal.com]

oh my god, sounds like you had a day.
maybe you should get the suit refunded and just buy a new one.
it's kind of their fault if they said you could get it tailored.


also, not promoting your exam= um... okay.
it's nice that so often people act like you are so disposable over there.

i am sorry love.
you'll get through it and you'll pass it.
then you can move on to work that satisfies and excites you and other people eventually. i can't wait for that day actually. the day where you work somewhere and feel valued.

i love you.
good luck !!!

[trochee.livejournal.com]

heh. it's been quite a morning.

They offered to refund the suit. I think I like it enough that I want it anyway; I need to see what I think about the detail they can't take care of.

Re: promoting the exam? too bad, but most of my fellow students who might have come, came to my practice talk. My friend L. who now works at MS can't come, but wrote to cheer me on, which is nice. and honestly, there's at least one lab faculty member who I would really rather *not* have there, so I don't mind.

I feel valued -- some days more than others. These papers have been a headache, but I'm excited about the one I'm moving towards, so that's good too.

thanks for your support, love. :)

[ctseawa.livejournal.com]

Printing out handouts: the lab's TeTeX version is deeply out of date. I install a local tweak to the one module that I needed (worked fine on my home Ubuntu system, which isn't running Late Iron Age Linux)

Did you try it on a Nikola 4 box?

There's a reason I'm trying to get people to move, you know.

[trochee.livejournal.com]

I didn't think of trying it on a Nikola 4 box. I wish I'd thought of that. Now that my generals are over, I think I'm a candidate for upgrading.