The Blog - The Archive

   I need a crippled Chibi-Catherine icon...

Well, it's certainly looking busted. All black and blue and ouchies, but it's mostly stopped hurting. Oh, it aches when I put any weight on it, and it feels completely mongey most of the time, but at least it's not actually throbbing like it was last night and this morning.





I guess that's why they call me Catherine the shocker.

The rest of the conference went well, I had a lot of fun and talked to people about many things. It was mostly interesting (there's a certain speaker who is notoriously bad, but we were very short on speakers so in he went, but it did mean that everyone fell asleep in the first session after lunch today.

So that's one conference done, another one to go, and all I need to do now is figure out why my laptop has stopped responding to the charger. I plug it in, and instead of turning amber the light flashes amber and then goes green, and the percentage charge on the battery continues to go down. I'll jiggle the cable a bit when I'm done with the blog, and hope that it sets things right, but I really need to get this sorted before the other conference on monday. *sighs* At least I have three other batteries to last me a few days if it really is kablamo. Maybe I can rush over to the shops to get myself a macbook (although they don't accept student discounts anymore, so I think I'm screwedd in that regard too).

Anyway, I'm going to stop stressing now and go to bed. Maybe I'll even find the time to go to a doctor tomorrow.

Labels: conferences, iCatherine, pain, suck

   Now in pain...

I think I may have broken a toe. *sighs*

Last night after the conference dinner there was observing of the moon and jupiter through the patchy clouds (okay, they were less than patchy after a bit, hence the fact that we didn't try for anything else). Anna didn't make it to the observing, because her jet lag had hit and she was very, very tired.

The point of that digression is that when I got back to the room, it was dark and I didn't want to wake Anna with a light. So naturally I smashed my foot into a cupboard, and now many hours later it still hurts. My toe is swollen, and a little bit bruised. This is very unfun.

The good news is the talks are really interesting, and I'm having a lot of fun. Most of the speakers have embraced the theme of "tell us about your scientific process", which is great because they're all giving such different talks. It's lots of fun.

Labels: conferences, pain, sickly-Cat

   *big big sighs* ...

Well, that went a lot worse than I was expecting. Not the conference, it seems to be going swimmingly; no, the problem is that when you take one Catherine, deprive her of sleep for most of a week, keep her too busy to eat for a day and then ply her with alcohol, she ends up spending large chunks of the night curled up with a toilet vomitting the little bit of food she ate before drinking anything. When she wasn't asleep on the floor, of course.

*is ded from embarrassment*

A random student (her name was Sarah, and for most of our relationship I was convinced she was hotel staff, which makes me even more embarrassed) found me and held my hand for a good half hour or more, and then Korinne and Anna helped me back to the room I'm sharing with Anna.

And of course, I suffered from surprisingly-lucid-but-terribly-honest-drunk syndrome, which I really need to get over. Telling people that you think they have the potential to be great isn't the best way to win friends, although I think she took it in stride. I'm always worried by how I seem to think more about what I'm saying when drink, but I still say all the wrong things.

It's time for the next session of the conference to start, so I'm going to take some rocky road and apologise to Sarah, because she seems like the nicest person I've met in weeks.

Labels: conferences, losing sleep, yay vodka

   Ye gods and little fishies...

I'm so very tired, but I'm done now. Just have to live through the next few days. Not sure what kind of access I'll have, but if you don't hear from me, expect me to be drunk and happy and back on sunday.

Labels: conferences, I want to go home now, losing sleep

   Believe me, this isn't dark...

Dude, we're providing two computers, a Mac and a PC. We're using the university's own system, which takes a bit of learning to drive, but I've managed so far, thanks for asking. The sound system appears to work, and maybe if we're lucky I'll manage to figure out how to record the talks to put online later. Oh, and the lecterns have a full internet connection.

No, we don't have a wireless remote control for the PC. This is a university, and such things tend to wander if they're wireless. Yes, you have to stand at the lectern to speak.

The dark ages would be the slide projector that was used two years ago at Sydney University. That was pretty dark, if I do say so myself.

Labels: conferences, stupid people

   In ur web, hitting ur sites...

lolGoogle

And while I'm at it:
lolcode.

Labels: lol-Cat, love my boy

   Dear L...

Stop sending out group emails that make it seem like I am completely incompetent. I mean it.

Yes, we're missing 2.5 abstracts. I am well aware of that, given that I formatted the website / book so that those abstracts were just headings, and not proper outlines of their talks/poster. I even talked with the boss and we decided not to include the .5 of one person's abstract that we did have, preferring to leave hers out and include it in a page of errata after the fact, rather than have an unprofessional half-abstract in the book.

And yes, I have repeatedly chased those people up. By sending out your own chasing emails, you make me look completely incompetent in front of people from outside the university.

And yes, I am more capable than you to proofread this book. Just because you used to proofread joe's astronomy newsletter does not mean you have a better grasp of the English language than I. All it does is make you look like a bragging bitch.

Fuck you,
Me.

PS. "Monday lunchbox" is the most dumb name for a lunchtime meeting ever. I hope A smacks you down for it.

Labels: conferences, hating myself, stupid people, unhappiness, uni, wasting my life

   No, I'm not really here...

But I got to thinking too hard about things, and then I got confused. So I thought I'd take my query to the few readers of my blog.

Is the phrase "stellar astronomy" redundant?

I thought it was, but then I found that it had its own (albeit a stub) wikipedia page. I mean, I get what they're getting at, that astronomy has branched out and everyone needs a category these days, but still... It confuzzled me when I started thinking about the words themselves.

Labels: astronomy, don't ask about the commas, uni, wasting my life, yes I am dumb

   Catherine in 3-D land, series 2...

Still no scarf post, because I am oh so lazy about such things. Or maybe just too busy doing everything else, which also seems likely. Anyway, I got more toys in the mail today, and here is my lazy montage of photos, now with even less narration:








Also: Woo for Safari on windows! And also for Heroes puppets (spoilers for season one), which are love.

Labels: damn you CLAMP, heroes, montage, send me love

   Gratuitous Scarf Post...

So, I've been busy. We got to that horrible point in the semester where I end up with two assignments and a test to mark within two weeks, and it's always nasty. So between the maths department and the conferences I'm organising I've not done much since I last posted.

That said, I did get to do a little last Saturday.

As you can see, the red was where I was up to the last time I took photos, and I hadn't done very much since then. I got to knit a lot that day, as once we got Heidi moved in and she started unpacking there wasn't much else for a large group of us to do (no one wanted to unpack her stuff into the wrong places).

A better photo will follow in the next day or so as I finish catching up and my brain re-engages enough that I can make with the image-editing-fu.

Labels: conferences, crafty-Cat, doctor who, Heidi, knitting, losing sleep, Tony is a legend

   "You're just one graph away from feeling good about yourself"...

That's true, and it's actually pretty profound, but it's still one graph, and I'm a long way away from getting it.
On the other hand it's nice to know that the boss understands and knows how to make me realise that things aren't that bad.

And before we get totally emo about how much my PhD sucks, the producer got in touch with me today and we're going to meet up in person to discuss the project and whether we can work together. Sounds exciting, maybe something really will come of this.

Labels: it's about singing and dancing and making people happy, never going to graduate, phd, quotes, unhappiness

   Conversations with the Tony...

This post contains spoilers for the end of heroes, and while I can hide them on my blog, and the planet, if you're reading this in your rss reader you should know that now is the time to bail if you haven't seen the ending yet. If you're reading it on my blog, or the planet, you probably want to highlight the text below.

So this morning I sent Tony the link to this picture (heh, that's going to look funky for everyone who has spoilers hidden), with the caption "Spider-Nathan!". The following is our very amusing (to me anyway) conversation:

Tony: Spider-Nathan! preparing to drop into camera
it must be so weird having to do something like that, which is probably fairly normal, in a suit. And having to look pristine and and composed as you land.
Catherine: It does look like fun.
Tony: it also must be so weird for the actors having to do the scene with nathan's bum hanging between them.
Catherine: giggles* I'm never going to look at that scene the same way again. I'm forever going to look for the flicker in Peter's eyes as he notices Nathan's butt in his peripheral vision. Again.
Tony: *laugh* it's so true!
Tony (as Peter): Shoot me! Shoot your uncle! Strike me down so Syler can't become more powerful than you can possibly imma... nathan, your butt is in shot again!
Catherine (also as Peter, our messages crossed): this is my serious face! I'm about to explode! Nathan's mooning me!

Okay, well I thought it was funny.

Labels: heroes, Nathan's butt, spoilers, Tony is a legend

   Snippets of an Update...

• Got enough HWWS conference registrations (and enough speakers not attending the dinner and pizza nights) that we can afford to give everyone gingerbread in their conference bags. Bags are still cheap ones, but they now will contain mq-branded mugs, books and pens, and star-shaped gingerbread, along with some tacky 'health bars' that we're getting for free. Yay team budget!
• The PhD is suffering because of the stupid conferences. Fortunately, I think that after today I'll be back on top of things (currently coding up the schedules and the like, which is horrible).
• I have knitted about ten rows since the last time I posted the scarf, which meant that I was in no rush to take photos this week (the fact that I've only had one night off this week may have also had something to do with it). I might do something about it tonight, but I might just go home and sleep.
• Heidi and Tony got to move in to their new house on Wednesday night. It's great, perfectly suited to them (no lawn to mow, just enough of a garden that it won't take Heidi forever to manage it and huge lounge rooms for having lots of people over to watch movies). Their furniture will follow tomorrow (hooray for moving days!), the internet will arrive in 2 weeks and then it really will be their house, full of their stuff. I'm so jealous.
• On the subject of jealousy, Manda (*Star) has gotten engaged to her boy, and it looks like they're going to live happily ever after. Congratulations you guys.
• I got an email wednesday about a film producer seeking a 'physics consultant' for a new screenplay they're working on. I replied yesterday morning, but haven't heard back yet. I hope I do.
• And blogger's autosave feature let's me know when my html is broken. I approve. (There's nothing quite like having to wait until it finishes uploading to see that you screwed up and now your blog is broken.)

Labels: blogger, conferences, feeling lucky, happily ever after, Heidi, knitting, never going to graduate, nice people are nice, phd, uni