more email woes

Just what I needed right now: my email turns out to still be playing up. I think it's time I gave up on my eldan.co.uk address altogether, because it's causing me nothing but trouble. If you have my CWRU address use that; if not then ask me for it (it's pretty obvious but I'm not putting it on a web page because so far it doesn't get too much spam).

posted @ 12:56 AM -

Award time

I'm gradually whittling down my pile of papers to be graded. Many of them are good, to the point that I'm worrying about giving full marks to too many people. However, there are also some prizes I would like to award:

• Stupidest comment
• Most extreme masochism (for people who solve problems in such a bizarre way that it must have added hours to the amount of time required to write the program)
• Ugliest typography
• Most illegibly formatted submission
• Ugliest program (which still seems to work)
• and finally the Rube Goldberg award for the most lines of code used to achieve a task that could be achieved with 3

posted @ 12:14 PM -

It's when things go wrong that you find out how good people can be.

Update: I added the following as a comment, but it seems my comments are playing up (you can leave them, but there's nothing to tell me or any other reader that a comment's been left):

I often think I should be more concise on my weblog. But then when I finally put something succint up, people invent layers of meaning that just aren't there.

A reader, who shall remain nameless, wrote to me asking if I was having a go at someone in this post. Therefore I feel the need to do a Nicholson Baker and add an explanatory note longer than the text itself:

There was no hint of sarcasm in this whatsoever. Several people I know round here—people I hang around with or work for, but don't feel I know well enough to ask for help—have offerred practical assistance and/or moral support way beyond the call of duty, and I felt like saying something about how much I appreciate this. All I meant by the original post was that without a crisis it would have taken me much longer to find out that these people are as good-hearted as they evidently are.

posted @ 10:16 AM -

is there a competent administrator in this country?

I have been waiting interminably long for a reimbursement from medical insurance. It has just arrived. To London. Of course it's a US$ cheque drawn on a US bank, so my parents can't even pay it into my UK bank account for me, not that that would be much use.

If it wasn't for the generosity of my parents I would have had to drop out by now due to lack of money, in spite of the fact that America collectively owes me over $4000, all of which I'm sure will reach me eventually.

posted @ 6:51 AM -

Looking after Number One

Well things seemed to be getting better after the minor disaster of last week, but I think I spoke too soon. It all came crashing down again yesterday, just as I was coming close to catching up with my backlog of work and lack of sleep.

First of all I became violently ill. I think it was food poisoning, and in fact I hope it was, because the symptoms are also rather close to a bug that's apparently been going round and takes a few weeks to shift. At one point last night I was running a terrible fever, and I threw up, which is something that hardly ever happens to me. At this point my temperature's back to normal and I've held down a simple breakfast (porridge). If I can eat my lunch (I have some congee on the go at the moment) I'll revert to real food for dinner. I'm still feeling pretty grotty, but I think this is down to having slept very badly and needing to replenish sugars.

Coincident with this, just to make it even more fun, we had the first significant rain since my roof was supposedly repaired. And guess what? It still leaks. Far less drama this time, because I was at home when it started, so I managed to move everything out of the study before anything important got wet, and catch most of the water in buckets (of which I now have 6 in the room). More ceiling collapsed though (in the middle of the night, as if fever and puking weren't disturbing my sleep enough), and now I just have a strong feeling that this is going to be an ongoing saga.

I have decided, therefore, that I have to move. Anyway I had been thinking it's about time I lived alone, partly because that idea no longer scares me in the way it used to, and partly because I seem to have lost my tolerance for sharing space (let's be perfectly clear on this—I live in a spacious house with a couple of easygoing, quiet people—the problem is with me), but the many good things about this house combined with the amount I have on my plate already had left me thinking I shouldn't bother for a while. Now I just have to wash my hands of this leaking roof situation.

I told Richard (from whom I sublet) this morning, and I felt absolutely terrible about telling him. He's trying to convince me to stay, and I'm being far too weak in the face of this, but really I know I have to go. I don't understand why I find this so hard. Sure I'm leaving Richard with trouble on his hands (both the leak itself and the difficulty of filling a room at a time that isn't a natural break in the academic year), but it's trouble that I didn't create for him, and I keep telling myself that nothing I've done has made anything worse.

The importance of not being my brother's keeper is a lesson that it's taking me a very long time to learn.

posted @ 1:13 PM -

the news in brief

My cousin and my brother have gone home; it was great seeing them. Hanging around with my brother made me painfully aware that I am picking up traces of American speech. I'm a long way from picking up the vowel sounds (which is just as well), but I'm turning 't's into 'd's even more than I used to, and certain choices of word (sick vs ill for instance) have changed.

My parents are still in town, but I'm working during the day and just meeting them for the evening, because I have a large stack (at least two inches at the start of the day) of grading to do by Wednesday. I have had time to plug in test all of my electronics, and everything works except the wireless keyboard and mouse, which is annoying but not crucial, and my palmtop, which I barely use these days because I take my main computer to and from work. The hard drive is a bit temperamental though, so I'll be claiming that on the insurance too, but at least no data's been lost, and it works enough of the time that when its replacement arrives I'll be able to straightforwardly copy the entire contents over. The minidisc player makes strange rattling noises when I press play or seek, but it plays just fine. Another one for the 'could have been so much worse' file.

Oh, and grading LISP makes my head hurt because it has (so (many (bloody (parentheses)))) that after only a few scripts I start seeing stray punctuation marks in the corners of my eyes.

posted @ 5:33 PM -

The clan

It's been good seeing them. My brother is on his way back across the pond right now, and I'm meeting up with the rest very shortly.

posted @ 12:14 PM -

Priceless

Someone actually said the following to my mother:

Do you have Swiss cheese in Europe?

posted @ 11:30 AM -