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my new office and a bit of journal catch-up
I had started a post talking about the SCA event in Germany and how much fun I had before the event being the one to coordinate the plans for the Laurel Ceremony* and vigil for SvartulvR, the current Prince of Nordmark (who was totally surprised by it all--it never occurred to him that the Crown would present any sort award, let alone a peerage, to a reigning prince), but I never got around to actually finishing it, and another week has slipped past and my new job has started. If I don't just admit defeat on that post and move on none of you will hear about the new things happening in my life, either.
Suffice it to say that the town was pretty, the event a joy, and the travel there and back with other SCA folk from Nordmark much fun.
Then I enjoyed my last week of the extended holiday I have been on since my job in Italy ended with the end of 2010. Today was my first official day of work, but since my boss is off to Finland for a big conference starting today we took care of getting me settled in yesterday. At first he thought that there wasn't any office space available for me anywhere near the corridor where he and the colleagues with whom I will be working are located, and after much negotiation he had managed to find a room on a different floor and a couple of hallways away. Fortunately for me at the last minute one of the rooms on our corridor opened up as one of the team, N, headed off to accept a job in industry.
As luck would have it I actually got to meet N before he departed--there was a short course last week on how to operate Leapfrog, a high-end computer program which takes a variety of different kinds of data and turns it into 3D images one can rotate at will. Since this is exactly the sort of work will be doing I went to the course and got to meet many people from Uni and from industry.
N cleared out his office either on Friday or Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon I got the keys to the room. Normally the office would have been cleaned by janitorial staff at the uni in between occupants, but we moved too quickly for that to happen in this case. However, I was totally ok with that--to me an important part of moving into a space and making it mine is the cleaning thereof.
The office is rather narrow compared to its length, and when N used it the desk was along one wall and wrapped around in front of the window as well, with bookshelves along the other wall. The downsides to this configuration, as I saw it, was the fact that the computer part of the desk was in the corner of the room such that one's back would be to the door, and the nice coat rack that was mounted on the wall was directly over the desk in such a way as my nice long coat wouldn't be able to hang freely.
Therefore I decided that step one would be to rearrange the furniture. Closer examination revealed that the desk was actually two separate sections that were held together by optional metal plates screwed to the underside of the desk. As a single unit the desk was far too long to fit along the narrow end of the room, and simply switching which wall has the desk would have meant that the bookshelves would have to be in front of the cork board (which had been on the wall above the desk).
Therefore I took apart the desk and put the large part (suitable for spreading out a geologic map upon) against the window along the short end of the room (which left just enough room to hang my coat from that hook between the desk and the wall). The smaller part of the desk, which is designed to fill a corner, I rotated into the room so that I could sit at the computer and face the door--that way I will know if someone comes to the door without relying on my hearing to announce them (it is never a good idea to rely on my hearing unless I know that there is something I am meant to be listening to).
I now have one bookshelf on each of three walls, and the path from the door to the coat rack sweeps nicely through the room and through my work station. I can sit in my chair and face the computer, or I can swivel around and face the desk. Cleaning and rearranging and then unpacking my books took all morning, which left me some time this afternoon to actually start work. So far that means doing a literature search, since I have no office computer (and so no 3D modeling programs) and no data, but just reading up on the topic will take up plenty of time as I continue to get settled.
This weekend we head to Umeå for a gaming convention and then we have a weekend off before a local SCA event the following weekend(this will be the first one I attend locally since I missed Coronet by being in Australia).
Oh, I almost forgot--that ear exam last week--I got to look inside of my ears! He has a nifty camera set up, so for the first time ever I got to see my own eardrums. He tells me that from the pattern of my hearing loss (mostly U shaped, but not quite as U shaped as the last time I was tested--I have lost a bit of the high frequencies sometime in the past 7 years) he thinks that my hearing problem is one I was born with, and the many ear infections I had as a child and the tubes I had in my ears and the surgery to correct a hole in my ear drums are only coincidence, not the cause of the problem. He confirms what the Australian doc said, surgery won't help my hearing problem, but new hearing aids might make a difference. Now I just need the appointment to actually get those ordered...
*Note for people who actually click on the ceremony link above--it is a video of the segment of Friday evening's court that led to SvartulvR being sent to vigil, and the actual ceremony from Saturday's court. The quality isn't the best due to having been filmed on an ordinary camera (not a video camera), with some supplemental footage coming from an iphone (where that was better than what the camera did) The ceremony was written by Master SigmundR, and I think he did a good job at getting an Old Norse feeling into it. The filming was done by
Suffice it to say that the town was pretty, the event a joy, and the travel there and back with other SCA folk from Nordmark much fun.
Then I enjoyed my last week of the extended holiday I have been on since my job in Italy ended with the end of 2010. Today was my first official day of work, but since my boss is off to Finland for a big conference starting today we took care of getting me settled in yesterday. At first he thought that there wasn't any office space available for me anywhere near the corridor where he and the colleagues with whom I will be working are located, and after much negotiation he had managed to find a room on a different floor and a couple of hallways away. Fortunately for me at the last minute one of the rooms on our corridor opened up as one of the team, N, headed off to accept a job in industry.
As luck would have it I actually got to meet N before he departed--there was a short course last week on how to operate Leapfrog, a high-end computer program which takes a variety of different kinds of data and turns it into 3D images one can rotate at will. Since this is exactly the sort of work will be doing I went to the course and got to meet many people from Uni and from industry.
N cleared out his office either on Friday or Monday morning, and on Monday afternoon I got the keys to the room. Normally the office would have been cleaned by janitorial staff at the uni in between occupants, but we moved too quickly for that to happen in this case. However, I was totally ok with that--to me an important part of moving into a space and making it mine is the cleaning thereof.
The office is rather narrow compared to its length, and when N used it the desk was along one wall and wrapped around in front of the window as well, with bookshelves along the other wall. The downsides to this configuration, as I saw it, was the fact that the computer part of the desk was in the corner of the room such that one's back would be to the door, and the nice coat rack that was mounted on the wall was directly over the desk in such a way as my nice long coat wouldn't be able to hang freely.
Therefore I decided that step one would be to rearrange the furniture. Closer examination revealed that the desk was actually two separate sections that were held together by optional metal plates screwed to the underside of the desk. As a single unit the desk was far too long to fit along the narrow end of the room, and simply switching which wall has the desk would have meant that the bookshelves would have to be in front of the cork board (which had been on the wall above the desk).
Therefore I took apart the desk and put the large part (suitable for spreading out a geologic map upon) against the window along the short end of the room (which left just enough room to hang my coat from that hook between the desk and the wall). The smaller part of the desk, which is designed to fill a corner, I rotated into the room so that I could sit at the computer and face the door--that way I will know if someone comes to the door without relying on my hearing to announce them (it is never a good idea to rely on my hearing unless I know that there is something I am meant to be listening to).
I now have one bookshelf on each of three walls, and the path from the door to the coat rack sweeps nicely through the room and through my work station. I can sit in my chair and face the computer, or I can swivel around and face the desk. Cleaning and rearranging and then unpacking my books took all morning, which left me some time this afternoon to actually start work. So far that means doing a literature search, since I have no office computer (and so no 3D modeling programs) and no data, but just reading up on the topic will take up plenty of time as I continue to get settled.
This weekend we head to Umeå for a gaming convention and then we have a weekend off before a local SCA event the following weekend(this will be the first one I attend locally since I missed Coronet by being in Australia).
Oh, I almost forgot--that ear exam last week--I got to look inside of my ears! He has a nifty camera set up, so for the first time ever I got to see my own eardrums. He tells me that from the pattern of my hearing loss (mostly U shaped, but not quite as U shaped as the last time I was tested--I have lost a bit of the high frequencies sometime in the past 7 years) he thinks that my hearing problem is one I was born with, and the many ear infections I had as a child and the tubes I had in my ears and the surgery to correct a hole in my ear drums are only coincidence, not the cause of the problem. He confirms what the Australian doc said, surgery won't help my hearing problem, but new hearing aids might make a difference. Now I just need the appointment to actually get those ordered...
*Note for people who actually click on the ceremony link above--it is a video of the segment of Friday evening's court that led to SvartulvR being sent to vigil, and the actual ceremony from Saturday's court. The quality isn't the best due to having been filmed on an ordinary camera (not a video camera), with some supplemental footage coming from an iphone (where that was better than what the camera did) The ceremony was written by Master SigmundR, and I think he did a good job at getting an Old Norse feeling into it. The filming was done by