Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Marti Gras Par-tay!

I'm such a wild child!

This weekend I worked really hard - 9 hours each on Saturday and Sunday, and then 6 more on Monday before going to GIS (thankfully it was only 3 hours instead of the scheduled 5 hours - I might have died if it were the full length).  I somehow managed to be not-tired as soon as I got home and only went to bed at 1 am, and somehow managed to sleep until 11 am.  Then I had to rush off to Sam's Club to get the rest of my groceries - I got some of my groceries from Ralph's after work on Sunday so I wouldn't starve to death.

I had a hurried lunch and then went to class and spent the period listening to Dr. Lee lecture and then struggling to unpack .tiff files onto my 4 gig flash drive.  It's appalling to me that files can BE that big - now I'm going to have to bring my external hard drive to class instead.  Hopefully I won't rack up 500 gigs in class, although considering a single one of my "practice" folders from GIS class can be 2 gigs...you never know!  Luckily, I don't have to save my practice folders - they're not turned in or graded.

When I came home I cleaned up my apartment; I'll vacuum tomorrow - it's a little rude to vacuum after 4-5 in the afternoon, and took out the trash. 
Once that was done, I segmented the chicken wings I bought from Sam's Club, mixed up my bbq "marinade", separated them into two ziploc bags and they are now curing in the fridge.  They just taste so much better after a night or two of absorbing the marinade.  Plus, mine are baked (not deep-fried) so they're a lot healthier (and cheaper) than restaurant chicken wings, even if they aren't crunchy.

Then I started working on my spring fair poster - I really have no idea what to do now except use white paint to correct a few splotches here and there.  Guess it's going to be very simple...oh well.  I never said I was a poster genius!
I still have to make up all the trivia questions.  I wonder if there's a site on the internet that gives anthro/archae trivia questions and answers?  That would make my life SO much easier!

Right now I'm making chicken soup with the tips from the wings, three chicken thighs, and Mom's time-tested recipe...it smells SO good! 

Tomorrow I have vacuuming, a doctor's appointment, and my thesis to do.  I think that's everything on my list...it feels REALLY good to get stuff done, but I'm still a little sick and I'm not sure how long I can keep this virtuous boost up.  Oh well, I guess if I keep trying and sleep and eat properly I should be okay.

So there you have it - my wild, crazy Marti Gras!  I haven't even had a beer, nor do I think I will.  Maybe I'll feel like having one tomorrow.

Saturday, February 18, 2012

One Hot Minute

So it's been awhile since I posted last, but things have been incredibly crazy and they haven't really settled down even yet.

I got a violent attack of something - the flu, I assume - and was confined to my bed for a full weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) , meaning I missed two days of work, and was so ill and miserable I couldn't even sleep, not even with sleeping pills.

Monday I spent most of the day in bed, but I did drag myself out for grocery shopping and class that night (which I barely survived) and felt so awful in consequence I skipped class on Tuesday (my prof was sick and skipped class too so I didn't feel too bad about that part).  Wednesday I didn't have class so I stayed in bed again, except for a doctor's visit, and Thursday I made it to class. 
Friday I intended to spend doing nothing, but I had a meeting, and when I got there, there was no one else present!  I got home and checked my email and the girl had canceled because I was the only one who had RSVP'd.
That Saturday and Sunday I had work again, and was still fairly weak, so by the time I got home both nights I just ate some food and collapsed onto my armchair until I dragged myself into bed and let myself sleep.

This past Monday I had GIS again and it was good, except I did four of the five practice assignments in the lab portion of class (it's technically 2 hrs of lecture and 3 of lab after the prof leaves) in about twenty minutes, and spent nearly an hour trying to get the fifth one done, and finally gave up in frustration when the twenty-seventh dataset finally downloaded and was found wanting.

Tuesday we were working on a modeling/vector lab in remote sensing and I finished the lab with the exception of one section no one in the class (not even Dr. Lee) could make work.  It was Valentines day, and I was so disgruntled I went home and drank a litre of beer and watched all the violent movies I own (The Expendables, Tropic Thunder, Iron Man).

Wednesday was spent grumpily staring at my thesis.

Thursday I was in remote sensing again, and since I'd already finished the lab I spent the entire class alternately reading some articles Dr. Lee assigned and twiddling with that one section I mentioned earlier.  We all kept getting the same error message: that there was "No Attribute Table".  Naturally, we all thought it was the raster image attribute table that caused the error, but finally I tried running the vector as points instead of polygons, and it ran to 99% before crashing (which is only to be expected, as the whole thing was set up for polygons).  So then, after some more twiddling, I opened the vector as an image and looked at THAT attribute table - lo and behold, though there WERE attributes for the points, there was none for the polygons!
So, I called over Dr. Lee, and HE said Aha! and that when the exemplar files were copied from the discs to the N drive that all students download our examples/base files from they were done with a regular copy function, and NOT the special vector copy that is  necessary to save all the vector attributes.  So he's trying to find the original file and run the whole thing on his personal computer and see if that indeed is the problem.

I really hope it is, because that means I did something GOOD and SMART on a COMPUTER!!

This weekend is dedicated to work - I worked today, and will work tomorrow, and Monday, although I get to leave early on Monday to make it to class.  Monday is going to suck - work from 9:30 am - 4 pm, and then class from 5 pm - 10 pm...oh man, it is going to be a microwave meal kind of night!

Tonight I am also making a poster for the mandatory Spring Festival this upcoming Tuesday (some days I really, really wish I weren't AGSA president, but mostly because the vast majority of my organization doesn't ever reply to bloody emails, or turn up when/where I want them to), and praying the things I ordered from Oriental Trading get here on time - they're due to be delivered ON the 21st but I don't know if they'll get here before I have to leave for campus or not.  If not...bah, CLASC agreed to provide beads, they'll have to provide them for me.

I'm planning on making flash cards with questions about anthropology and A) B) C) answers - if the person guesses correctly, they get beads.  Hopefully I can make enough questions to make it interesting. 

Oh well, poster is dry, time to paint some more letters on it.  And for the record, I am NOT the best poster-maker in the world...nor calligrapher...le sigh!