Mostly lemon based

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  • Woot! One less thing to worry about

    I passed my IP3 module. Not brilliantly, but I didn’t expect to pass it brilliantly. I passed it okay though, 60% which for a module I did mostly while on Holiday in Alaska… well, I think that’s not so bad. I’m happy anyway :-)

  • Future Tense

    So, I have various things impacting on my life at the moment which have the potential to cause me stress. The first and most pressing of these is my university work; this comprises a dissertation – which I should be working on right now (although I think I’ve found yet another paper – something that would bring great joy); the EU packs (because reading about maternity is enough to make you a safe midwife, and reading about kids makes you just as good as a children’s nurse. Yes.), there’s also another assigment and lots of learning outcomes; these are stressing me out less than they should.

    There’s the whole Canada thing, which is becoming markedly more stressful – as I realise just how much work I’m setting myself up for. I’m planning to move to a country which won’t recognise my qualification – so I’ll need to take the nurses board exam for wherever I end up, and depending on where I go they may not recognise my drivers licence (fracking BC) so I’d have to take my driving tests again (bike and car, and lose, presumably all my shiny big lorry privilages). Ack, ack. Stress. But that I don’t need to really consider until I’m qualified and (ideally) working because at that point I can start the application process; but right at this moment – everything I read might change before then – so I should really stop trying to research it. I was trying to be prepared, but instead I think it’s probably better to concentrate on other things. Of course, that doesn’t stop the desire to find out what I’m trying to let myself in for appearing.

    But the final thing that’s stressing me out is home. (more…)

  • To Alaska? Who knows…

    So I posted of some little jiffy bags of joy today; one to the creature of bouncing that is Trey, one to the very generous creature who sent me electro-conductive-paint (because I’ve got bored of putting patches in my heated rear window and have come to a stage in my life where I can accept that it’s a piece of shit not worth my time or effort), and one to the Alaskan Mountain Dwelling creature known as Kara.

    Well, Kara’s was more of a box filled with packing gribbles and some DVD+Rs (this is because packing gribbles bring joy to the masses and may, just may protect the DVD+Rs from the fear that is the Royal Mail, Air Mail or ‘par avion’ as the sticker proclaims, and the Alaskan Huskies required for transporting the package from the USA to the Alaskan Wilderness).

    Why the Alaska / Wilderness / Huskie remarks? Well, the conversation ran like this:

    Kate: Oh, how long will the package to Alaska take?
    Bloke in Post office: Normally? 3-5 days to the USA, but to Alaska? Who knows… depends on the Huskies.

    Oh so helpful :-)

    Clearly, the solution is for me to move to Canada, get a pilot’s licence, and buy a plane of my own. Yes.

  • More shiny upgradefu

    So, I’m very good at avoiding work. I’m feeling better today, actually – and as part of my feeling better I decided to upgrade WordPress. Again. Yes.

    Anyway, in the time it took to run the upgrade – with the die spam sucking bastards plugin disabled I had 2, count ’em, 2 spam comments. Jeeze guys, you’re really beginning to make me think that death by forcing you to eat printouts of your spam is a reasonable fate. Mind, there’s one site which manages to spam me anyway. Persistantly. 2 posts seem to get spam comments on them, even though I’ve closed commenting on them. Grr.

    Anyway, it’s shiny around here isn’t it? Shiny and new. And all upgraded.

    And now I’m going to go and stare at some papers some more. Aren’t I the lucky one :-)

  • A couple of interesting sites…

    The Institute of Official Cheer – I recommend the Interior Desecrations section. I nearly died laughing…. This whole site appears to be a vast repository of sarcastic humour and has left me laughing good and hard.
    Revamp – it looks like Bristol is going to have it’s own electronics recycling. This is very good.
    Related only in so far as I’ve visited them on the same night .

  • Concentration span of a goldfish

    Hello humans, this is Kate here. Kate has a cold. Kate is not actually particularly unwell with her cold, and is more frustrated by her body’s unwillingness to do what she’s telling it to do. For example, work is hampered by a stinking headache and the concentration span of a goldfish. Still, she’s managed one and a half papers of critical reviewing, which means there’s only one and a half papers left to do before she starts writing like a demon for her next meeting.

    She’s trying to drink plenty, but mostly this is making her feel sick. Well, actually, she feels sick anyway (as is pretty much normal for Kate-with-a-stupid-cold) but drinking is making it worse. Bah.

    She’s burned some DVDs for Kara and some for Aunt PeterAnn (she hopes); and will shortly start on burning the final one. She’s also watched an episode of Changing Rooms, and one of Quincy. She’s listened to Tapping the Vein and Goldfrapp. She is, fundamentally, very bored but hasn’t really got the attention span to do anything else. She was tempted to write a howlsthunder like post about her past, but has decided that it’d not really be that interesting, and she’d probably get bored halfway through.

    Kate wishes to point out to her body that getting colds, while somewhat rarer than it used to be remains a frustrating habit, and one that it should perhaps consider attempting to break. Thus ends todays Kate announcements.

  • Tonight there’s a new community on LJ

    All for Trey: Splats_of_Lyric. Trey it seems has touched many many lives with her special brand of joy… No, seriously. She has this way… it’s just Trey, and… yeah, anyway…
    Trey’s a star, and she’s got a community to prove it; so those of you with happy happy Trey memories, go share :-)

  • Why I shouldn’t go to tesco when I’m sick

    I just spent 10 quid. I went to get: Milk, lettice, maybe some orange. Came home with Milk, Lettice, Orange juice, Tortillas, Cake, Tissues…

    *Sigh*

    On the other hand the balm tissues are far nicer than the kitchen roll, the choclate muffin is making me feel better and is quite definately what I wanted.

    The heating is working today too, which is incredible. In fact, if anything it’s gone a bit over-zealous. I just looked at the boiler and it’s indicating 3ish Bar, which is definately into the red – too high – zone. I’ve turned the boiler down a bit hopefully like, but I think that the engineer does need to come look at the heap of crud. I’m vaguely expecting the radiators to explode now ;-)

    I can’t decide about work tomorrow. If I go, I’ll almost certainly be more productive than if I stay at home – and I’m not really that ill; but if I go I may well become that ill, and I don’t like taking colds to work; especially when I’m supernumary. Bah. More pondering. We’ll see how the orange juce and sleep diet I’ve taken today affect it.

  • Fracking NHS

    She (the receptionist) tried to blame me for not attending an appointment (when I rang to query the sudden change from my appointment on thursday, for which I’ve taken the day off, to June) until I pointed out that it’d been moved (once already) from the 9th, when I alledgely did not attend to the 16th of March – and that I’d already taken that day (the 16th) off work. Eventually she admitted that no, I hadn’t “not attended”; oh no, they’d fracking moved it to the 16th and put me down as a ‘did not attend’ for the 9th. Only the 16th of March it turns out is not an General Endocrinology; so then they had to move it *again*, but they didn’t spot that until a few days ago. Fracking brilliant.
    Of course, now I have to wait until June, when I get to take *another* day off work, although I shouldn’t think that it’ll actually go ahead on that date; because it’s now like a whole new appointment for them to fuck up. This whole idea that I get to choose when my appointment is something they clearly imagine makes me feel better, but I may as well tell them to make it up themselves, they clearly do.

  • Woe is my video.

    So, I installed the IBM signed Nvidia drivers… no joy though. The machine still struggles with video playback – which is seriously taking the piss. This is a Sempron 2800 processor powered machine. The TNT2 may be long in the tooth but it’s certainly capable of full screen video – and has been before. Hell, my K6-II could outperform this machine’s video at the moment. Anyone got any suggestions – is it XP unhappy with 64bittyness? Is it TNT2 doesn’t play well in a 64bit machine / or with XP on a 64 bit machine?

    Help! I need my decent video playback back. And a performance hike’d be nice, this machine’s hella-slow quite a lot of the time. It’s got half a gig of ram, is that way too low (it’s more than the old one had and that outperformed this one by a substantial margain).

    Suggestions on a comment to the usual address :-)