kareina

I worked 212.2 hours in December in order to get my thesis done on time to submit on the 30th. The last week was especially intense (ramping up: 9:44 hours on Thursday, 15:11 hours on Saturday, and 16:47 hours on Sunday), as my supervisor didn't have time to start reading it and making suggestions for improvements till after Christmas. However, she is very good with her suggestions, and kept adding them for several days, during which time I was doing the work to make the changes as fast as I could, while she kept reading and making suggestions... which meant that I wasn't able to complete the full list of suggestions, which means that my examiners are very likely to ask for corrections before I pass. I can cope with that. Done enough is beautiful for now.

This has been an interesting document to write the whole "your funding is up, you failed to bring in new funding, so now it is write the thesis this term or you start paying tuition out of your own pocket" thing meant that everything got really compressed. In terms of Durham regulations, I still have a couple of years half-time left to do the work. I don't have that kind of budget though, so nope. Done.

So to write it, I came up with a document structure, wrote the outline, and started writing sections. Saw how little time was left, went back to other sections and stuck in a little rough skelton-level text to seperate the some of the headings from one another a bit, then went back to work on the hard science parts that are the meat of the thesis. Got one section more or less done, and fleshed out a little of the skeleton bits. Then went and worked properly on another hard-science sections. Then tossed a little more meat towards the exposed bones in the archaeology sections, before working on the final hard science bit and getting it properly done, intending to go back and do a read-through and figure out what more needs doing to properly round out the barely fleshed over (and in some places bare bones) parts, but... that was when my supervisor started making suggestions, starting with the archaeology chapters, so the suggestions were very much along the lines of "you need more analysis here", and "why have you cited so few of the important papers here--add the rest" kind of level. This made deciding where to start easy, I started from the beginning and worked through the suggestions as fast as I could. Then, when she sent me the "done" note, I jumped to the discussion and conclusions sections, and did all of those changes before jumping back to the middle and continuing working, right up to the point where I really, really needed to just compile out of Scrivner and check the Word document for issues with headings and figure numbers. At that point I check my word count totals for the sections, and I was at 62K words for the thesis itself, not counting figures and tables, references, or appendix.  The web page I had last consulted had said that the MPhil is max 60,000 words, so I decided to move the research paper draft from Chapter 9 to the appendix, which brought the total to 54k words. Then I did the compile and check for issues with headings and figure numbers.

Solved those issues, and finally got a good copy.  Then it was just formatting and sticking in the appendixes, which had already been compiled to a good version weeks ago, and adjust the page numbers so that before the introduction they are i, ii, iii, etc., and then it goes from page 1 at the Introduction, and keeps counting across the borders to the appendices.  I managed to get it to a clean pdf and submitted around 20:00, and sent my supervisors an email, with a link to the pdf for their records, letting them know I had moved the paper, and why.

The next morning I woke to an email from my main supervisor saying that it was a shame I had moved the paper draft, as it had important and well developed discussions, and the examiners don't have to read the appendix, and the paper is a better length with it, as it should be "around 60 k words, and without it, it is a little short". That was a Sunday, so no human would have seen it yet, so I decided to make a new pdf, with the paper back in place as Chapter 9 and upload it as well, along with a note about my supervisor preferring the version with it as chapter 9, and I would leave it to the admin office which version is given to the examiners.

Having spent a couple of hours doing the clean up of the compiled document to fix the formatting and make a nice pdf I wasn't looking forward to doing it again, and was feeling tired, kinda brain-dead, and rushed to get to the part of spending time with my houseguests, who had arrived the day before, while I was still working. This probably explains why I didn't think of the easy solution right away, and tried to just power through the ordeal of a new compile. I powered too hard.  I opened Scrivener, and the second the program looked open I grabbed the paper, and dragged it to the correct location in the binder. And things froze up.  Tired, frustrated, and totally lacking in patience (see above list for hours worked, and understand that sleep hadn't much happened all week), rather than waiting for whatever process was happening in the background to finish, I opened the windows task manager and closed the program. I Do Not recommend doing this. When I reopened Scrivener it gave me an error message about problems with the search index and suggested I try rebuilding the search index. I did this, after which the program happily presented me with the complete list of all of the documents, sub documents, and research sections that should be there, but said that there are zero words in any of them.

For the past months I have been backing up my data every evening when I was done.  Scrivner makes a backup file automatically each time I shut down, and the next day overwrites it with the next day's backup file, so, in addition to synchronizing all of the folders I use with their copies on the external hard drive,  I have also been copying those backups over, into alternate day folders. Right up to Friday night. Saturday, when I submitted the thesis I didn't have the attention span left to wait for that backup to finish being created, and walked away from the computer, and didn't remember to copy it to D drive before I opened Scrivner to make the change to the position of that paper, and it somehow also got corrupted in the process of breaking the file. Oops.

In my panic I decided that I needed to take the backup of the day before, which is nearly complete, but lacks more than 16 hours of work, and start copying in the revised text from the thesis. So saved a copy of the broken version, in case it becomes possible to fix later, and moved Friday's backup into the active folder, and started copying over the changes from the Word document. It didn't take long to realize that this was going to take ages to do, and I wasn't going to be able to enjoy the company of my house guests during the day, before the New Year's party started. So I went out and asked for suggestions as to what to do, and Sofie came in, got me to explain the problem, what I had done, and that while the Scrivener file has problems, both the Word doc and the pdf have all of the data.

At this point I realized that I don't actually have to do anything in Scrivner to move that Chapter. It is a simple copy-paste job in Word, and then I need to change the chapter title by hand for three chapters, only one of which has a single sub heading that also needed a new number. It took no more than five minutes.  If I had had the brain to do that in the first place, I wouldn't have broken the Scrivener file, nor had an extra hour of stress and misery on Sunday morning.

So, the revised file got submitted, along with a note saying:


Yesterday I got a note from the admin office that recieved it saying they would pass on the second version to the examiners, and that the max word count for the MPhil is 70K, so I am good.  Today I have sent Scrivener support an email asking if they might be able to fix the corrupt files, if so please let me know how best to share them. If they can't (or won't) I will have some hours work to get Scrivener files up to date again, but it is doable. In that case, I think my best bet will be to import the Word document into Scrivener in a new section, labeled "as submitted--archive", and then open each section of the document with the original and as submitted side by side to see what is different and update the original (which has lots of links to the cards for the things cited, and for other sections, etc, which are worth retaining, which is why I am not going to just completely replace the text using the Word version--those links don't exist in the complied to Word version).

Luckily, it will be some weeks before the examiners will have had time to read it, and I only need these files working by the time they come back with a "make these corrections" suggestions.

I tend to be one of those people who keep using the same computer for at least 8 years. ( lots of issues related to changing computers slowly over the course of months behind the cut ) Again something that he will be able to solve when he gets home, but that won't be till tomorrow, at which point he may or may not have time/energy. However, his not being available gave me time to type up this, for your entertainment.

Since I am here I may as well include an update of the past few days, too. When last I posted it was Wednesday of last week, and I had no plans as of yet. How quickly our days fill up.

Thursday I did my workout in the morning, biked to the office to water my plant in the afternoon (this time my key opened the door no problem, unlike the time I tried a week or two before), went straight back home, curled up with a e-book and audio book in Norwegian for a few hours, helped David re-arrange stuff in the shed so that we can fix the back wall next, and enjoyed hanging out with him a bit afterwards.

Friday I helped out my friend Louise and her mom, both of whom needed to go grocery shopping, but neither of whom has a driver's licence. Normally her dad takes them, but he is out of town, so she asked me if I would. She also said we could use their car, so I biked over there, we drove out to the big grocery store, and each got our own cart and agreed to meet at the bench by the door when done. They warned me that they would take a while, so I wandered slowly through the store and picked up the few things I needed, and stopped to chat with my friend Siv, whom I ran into in the dairy section. Eventually I paid for my things and went and sat on the bench with my e-book and audio book for a little while till her mom joined me. I had just enough time to eat the croissant and pear I had bought specifically to eat while I waited before she arrived (she was convinced that she would be the last one to the bench, but she beat Louise by about a minute and a half).

After that I had dinner and then helped David with some yard work, did some things around the house, and got in a couple hours reading in prep for my interview. That night I enjoyed visiting with a friend on line, and it was really good to catch up and connect like that. Sleep is clearly optional.

Saturday during the day I was productive, with some uni work, some harvesting red currants, some cooking, a workout, etc. In the evening I got in three hours of soapstone carving, and decided that the outside is now done enough to start on the inside.

Sunday morning I baked a yummy carrot-red currant crumble (with an oat and almond topping). During the day we went to "Grundet", the island on the Luleå river where the local SCA now has its home (and storage of stuff). There were about 30 of us from Frostheim there, some doing archery, some (including me) sitting in the shade with sewing project or just talking or playing with the baby, some in the smithy making stuff, etc. We were there some hours, and then I came home and relaxed for about an hour before some of my friends from Phire came over. We did some music, some acryoga, ate some of that crumble, and played games (cards and Quirkle). After they went home I did my yoga, then got some cuddles from a friend who dropped by for a bit. He went home at 23:30, and I expected to go straight to sleep, but another friend was feeling down, so instead I spent a couple hours chatting with him (and doing duolingo lessons in between typing), and finally got to sleep at 00:55.

today (Monday)Much to my surprise I woke up full of energy at 05:15, so I got up, packed my computer and some food, and biked in to the office, arriving well before 07:00. I worked till 08:30, and then I biked to town to take my dance shoes to the shoe repair shop, which has just re-opened after their summer holidays. I got there just after 09:00, and showed him where I have worn through the outer sole of the shoe, and explained that I am heading to Norway at 05:00 on Thursday for another folk music/dance festival, and asked if it would be possible to have them fixed before then, or if I should keep them and bring them to him after the trip? Luckily, he said he can have them done by Wednesday afternoon, so I left them there and enjoyed a pretty ride back to the office, where I worked for another couple of hours, then went and took a nap in the massage chair in the next corridor while it ran the "recover" program, and then, when it stopped 20 minutes later (and woke me), I pressed the "refresh" button and sat through another 8 minutes of that massage before I was ready to return to the office for another two hours of work. Not a bad first day back after holidays!

I haven't really done much in the way of uni work in the past week, since we have been in the process of moving house (nor had I expected to). Therefore I resolved to head into the office today to see if I could remedy that situation, and used the self-bribe of "it will be good exercise to walk in" as motivation to actually do it. Now, when I woke up and saw the rain (which has long since washed away the beautiful snow we had had) I almost changed my mind and stayed home to do more unpacking, but somehow the lure of exercise outweighed the rain, and off I went.

I left at the same time as lord_kjar did, and we walked together for the 8 minutes it takes to get from our house to the main road. At that point he walked up to the bus stop with the obvious red shelter to keep passengers dry whilst they wait for a bus and I took the side road (which has pretty much no traffic!) to the bike path to the uni. The plan had been for him to take the bus and for whomever got to their work first to call the other, so we could see how the times compared. However, it turns out that the big, obvious, easy to see, bus stop is NOT the one the bus actually goes to. Instead the bus turns onto the same side road I took just before reaching the bus stop. He saw it do this, so he walked home, got the car, and drove to work instead (the bus runs once an hour, so he knew it wasn't worth just waiting for the next one).

My walk took 50 minutes, and other than being rather wetter than ideal was actually fairly pleasant. Consulting the map I think it would have been slightly faster if I had taken the branch of the bike path that goes over the first bridge over the road the uni is on, rather than waiting for the second bridge, but further experimentation is in order.

Once I had settled into work and done a bit of reading to get my mind into the correct mind-set I decided that it was high time I returned to using that 3D modeling program which is meant to be the corner stone of my work. So I opened the program and opened the project and got an error message that the program couldn't find one of the files it needs. I checked, and sure enough, the file was not in the folder where it belongs. I checked several other possible locations, to no avail. Then I checked the recycle bin, and found it, with a date of deletion listed as 18 October.

This struck me as odd, since there would be no reason for me to have deleted the file, so I checked my log of tasks done and saw that on 18 October I was in Boliden collecting rock samples. All I did with the computer when I was down there was record notes about the samples and file samples into folders. I didn't have any energy left over to do modeling, and certainly didn't go near those folders on the computer. Therefore I am quite certain that I am not the one who deleted those files (it turns out that several of them from that folder got deleted on that day).

I restored the files and mentioned the incident to a colleague across the hall. A third colleague heard me, and told me that she had had a number of vital thesis files deleted while she was in the final stages of thesis writing, and that the problem turned out to be the uni-provided sync program which makes certain that the files on our C drives match the backed up versions on the uni H drive under our log in names. Apparently when that program loses contact with the server it can decide to delete files, since it can't copy them. She solved the problem by uninstalling that program and taking the responsibility to do her own backups.

I, on the other hand, am a lazy creature. I want my computer to back itself up, so I don't have to. I know that "data which exists in only one location does not exist", but I don't want to have to be the one to do the backing up. Therefore I sent a note to the Uni IT guys to explain my problem and then started actually doing some work with my data. An hour or so later one of the IT guys came to my office to say that he checked and my computer is from the batch that has a problem with that program, and that the solution they have found for the problem is to do a complete re-installation of the computer and then do certain upgrades to the program.

Now, I don't like having my computer re-installed any more than the next guy--it takes days to get all the programs I need back in place and to change all the preferences to what I want them to be. However, I don't want the program deleting any more vital files, and I also liked the excuse to go home early and not come in at all in the morning (he doesn't think he will finish doing the complete back up and re-installation before mid day tomorrow) so that I could do more unpacking at home. Therefore I agreed to the plan, took careful notes about the incident and what work I had started and what the next step was, and took a walk home. A much nicer walk, with clear skys and no rain at all. In the process I confirmed that there is, in fact, a small, easy to miss, sign on a stick, with no shelter for passengers, that says that the bus stops just a short way down the side street. Perhaps tomorrow he will try the bus again, or maybe he will just take his bike--it might be faster.

Tonight is Nyckleharpa class, and I haven't practiced anywhere near as much this fortnight than I did last fortnight. Even so I am getting more comfortable playing the tunes I have learned--they start to flow together like music, rather than being disconnected phrases with pauses in between while I try to remember what keys to push next.

Having had quite enough of airport security on the flights to Australia I opted to book a train from Canberra to Melbourne and avoid having to play the whole "you can't have water" game. I could have taken a bus, but I don't like buses, and I do like trains. (The train was also noticeably cheaper than the cheapest flight I could find, which contributed to the decision.) Sadly, I found out when it pulled into the station that the first leg of the journey is by bus. The take us from Canberra, through Yass, to Cootmundra, where we were finally able to board the train (the bus took from 09:30 to 12:30).

Once aboard the train, where there is room to spread out, and a table upon which to put one's computer I was delighted, and promptly unpacked my computer. There were still a good 5 or 6 hours to go on the journey which wouldn't have internet access--I could actually make progress on my papers! Alas, when I went to turn on my computer it started making a truly hideous stretching noise that was making the other passengers look somewhat distressed. Concerned that it was a symptom of something inside the computer having broken loose and causing problems as things spin around in the turning on process I hastily turned it back off (had to pull out the batteries to accomplish that). Darn!

So instead of being productive with uni work on the train ride I finished reading a Swedish Children's book (Det lilla stuga i stora skogen av Laura Ingals Wilder, which is a translation of The Little House in the Big Woods, which I read fairly often as a child, but have not read since the early 1980's) and worked on my nålbinding project in progress. Our train was running around 40 minutes late when it picked us up, but they managed to make up enough time as to be only 20 minutes late into Melbourne. However, it did mean missing the 19:26 train out to Belgrave and having to wait for the 8:06 instead.

That train got me to my step-sister's house around 21:20, which gave us a little time to visit before heading to sleep for the night. They don't have a guest room here, so she and her husband have given up their bed for my mother's use when she is here, and they are using an air mattress in the living room. I am sharing the bed with mom, as it makes more sense than trying to put a third person in the living room. This means that I need to do my yoga fairly early each evening so as to be done with the floor before they want to set up their bed.

I opted not to try to turn on my computer that evening, because the kids (two boys, one just six, the other nearly three) were asleep, and that noise would certainly wake the dead, let alone sleeping children. However, I did come up with another theory as to the cause of the sound--one which I liked far more than some sort of damage caused in travel. When I had been talking to archinonlive around 03:00 (darn time difference means that the best time for us to talk is between 02:00 and 06:00 Australia time) on my last night in Canberra I was a bit loud and disturbed the sleep of vikingrose, until archinonlive came up with the cunning plan of setting my headset to "listen to this device"--as soon as I could hear the sound of my own voice in the headset I got MUCH quieter (and also became disinclined to actually say anything at all, which is sad, but it did mean that my host could sleep in peace). However, I didn't actually turn that setting off before shutting down the computer. Perhaps the cause of the noise was only feedback?

Once we were all awake in the morning I turned on the computer, waited through the painful noise as it turned on (noting that it got worse if I touched the machine near the speakers), and once it was on I opened up the speaker control properties dialogue box and unticked the "listen to this device" button. Problem solved, instantly. If only I had thought of that in the morning on the train, I could have had hours worth of work done. Oops. Sadly, our brains do not always present us the solution to our problems in as timely a manner as we might like.

That was yesterday morning. Since then I have managed to apply for a job at the uni which is 10 minutes walk from my home in Luleå, work on a booklet the Mobile Women in Science working group of the Marie Curie Fellows association is doing to provide young women scientists role models who have accepted moving to new countries as part of their research career, agreed to give a talk at UTAS on the research I did in Italy and started updating the last powerpoint presentation I had done on that research to show the latest information, and also made time to hang out with my family, including building the marble races tower for my nephew (they are going to let me play with cool toys? bonus!). I also finally got around to removing the underarm gores in my bliaut and started the process of putting them where they should have been in the first place (my arm pit, not hanging in the air to the side of my lower ribs) so that it will fit nicer. Hopefully I can get it reassembled properly before I need it again.

This month's exercise log looks pretty bad at the moment. While in Canberra I did only my daily morning sit-ups etc. routine each morning and my yoga each evening, and SCA dancing one afternoon. Today's walk helped the total though--this neighbourhood is in the hills to the east of Melbourne, and as a result the roads are so not in a grid pattern. I went out and managed to find a loop without using a map, but it took 1 hour, 13 minutes to complete it. Now if I can just do that sort of thing regularly for the rest of the month, perhaps the log will recover...

I have a few more days to enjoy here (and hopefully accomplish lots, too) before I fly to Tassie at way too early Sunday morning. I am looking forward to being there, because I hope that it will be ok to be talking to Sweden in the way early morning hours there. Here I don't dare call till after the boys are awake in the morning, which has been after 07:00 the last couple of days, which means not much time for me to chat. (We can just take it as a given that I would far rather go home and be able to talk to him in person, but we take what we can get...)

I just found out that the SCA has decided to eliminate the personal e-mail addresses that many of us have been using for years. I didn't find out because they sent me a message. I didn't find out because of an announcement via any SCA source. I found out because a friend of mine, who has also been using an SCA.org address for years sent me an e-mail to ask if I knew what was up with the SCA addresses being eliminated, so I checked the web page (see link) and saw a notice. This notice says that the addresses will cease to exist as of 31 October. This is barely more than two weeks away. If he hadn't have called my attention to it, I might not have heard from another source, and at the end of the month when they closed the account and things started bouncing who knows how long it would have taken me to notice? I am very grateful that he mentioned it, but wish that they had 1) given me notice themselves and 2) done so at least 30 days in advance of the change.

Heck, while I am wishing, I wish that when they first decided to offer these accounts as a "fund-raiser" that they had also made it possible for people to pay for subsequent years. I paid for the first year, and have tried on numerous occasions to pay for subsequent years, including writing letters to the BOD to ask how I can pay, and was told that it wasn't possible to pay again.

Oh well.

Since that address has been killed I have just set up a new address for myself, kareina (dot) sca (at) gmail (dot) com I would have gone with just "kareina" as the user name, but, alas, it was taken. Since the address I have been using for years was kareina@inthe.sca.org, I decided to go with a variation on that. I could have used my title, but didn't want to, and my SCA surname requires the two little dots over the final a to be spelled correctly, so I didn't want to use it. Besides, I think an e-mail address should be easy to spell. If you had my old address in your address book please update it. The new address, and my work address are listed on my facebook info page if you ever need it.

Yesterday was a very productive work day, and the evening was fun baking cookies, cooking yummy food for today's lunch, working on a sewing project, and just hanging out with my mother.

Today I was kind of low energy and tired, so after making something resembling progress on work in the morning I decided to do something different and mom and I went shopping. Yes, you read that correctly. The two people in the family who go out of their way to avoid shopping went shopping. I took her to a toy store to look for gifts for my nieces, and we picked up a beautiful blue cashmere sweater for me. Yes, I already had one, but the one I had is the kind that opens up, and the one we bought is v-necked and closed front. So will be nice for job interview(s).

I've printed my boarding pass for this weekend's Finland adventure with mom--we fly in the morning. It will be interesting to meet family I've not met before. Mom's grandfather was the eldest of 10 children, and he moved to the US. Our contact in Finland is descended from his youngest brother, who stayed behind. Cousin Kimmo is the same generation as mom, but is younger than I, thanks to the age difference of those brothers.

I've also got my tickets for my trip to Scotland the week after mom returns to the US. I will buy a new computer while there--I am desperate for a new one--this one crashed, again, while I was trying to post this. I am so over the constant computer problems. The next one had better turn on faster than this one--it takes way, way to long to re-start every time this one has issues.