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A mixed bag

A mixed bag

Submitted by Chris Salij on Sun, 2009-10-18 16:38.
This week has definitely been a mixed bag. So lets start with the good stuff. 

I went to the innovation conference on Thursday evening that was held in CSI:UCD. It was a very enjoyable evening to say the least, even though I was left hanging by some friends after they had to rush home. But I wasn't going to let that put a dampen on my evening. There was an exhibition of various new technologies and websites on show and I got talking to one or two of the guys. There were a fair few faces I recognized from around CompSci but I'd say about half the exhibitors were from outside UCD. After the exhibition there was a presentation from a guy from Bell Labs/Alcatel-Lucent. He was talking about interplay between pure research and commercial research, as was the general topic for the evening. Then there was a roughly 40min long debate on that same topic, 'Should all research be informed by commercial interests?'. It was a good debate I felt, and although I don't really have any opinion yet in the area, it was good to get an insight to some thoughts on the subject. In the next few years those issues will be affecting me, should I choose to go for Masters or Ph.D..

That was on Thursday. Friday is when things started to go pare shaped... I got up as usual in the morning. Did some pottering and went in for my first lecture at 9. After my lecture I headed across to the 2nd Year labs to do some study, and wouldn't ya know it. My laptop wouldn't start. As in no power was getting to it. As in it was unusable bar breaking open the back and seeing if I could reconnect the power to the motherboard. Not wanting to do that in college,understandably. I left it and went to one of the SUAS machines and did some googling. Apparently its an issue with the Sony Vaio Laptops. After a while certain makes tend to get like this. 

So after a stiffed tear I shoved it into my bag and went to my second lecture of the day. And wouldn't ya know it. The lecturer didn't show up. I was faced with a 3 hour wait for my practical, and then it hit me. I couldn't use my laptop, so I couldn't do the practical. Evening if I ran home and got my little netbook I couldn't do it cos I have to use MS Access and my netbook runs Jolicloud (A modified Ubuntu Linux distro). So I wandered around college for a little bit, and decided to go home. 

After an afternoon of mooching around, getting some work done and other such studenty things. I get dressed to go out. I had a fancy date all lined up. So there I was, beard trimmed, hair done, shirt on. And what happens. Well about 2 mins after I leave my house, I'm cycling along and I get hit by a car. Yup. That about sums it up. Luckily I'm grand, not a scratch on me, but still, my front wheel was bent in half and I had to get a lift off the guy that hit me to my gf's house. I managed to get the cash out of him to pay for replacing the front wheel, and I was on time for my date to boot.

So far not the best run of luck eh? Well things picked up on Saturday. In the afternoon I settled down to do some work. I worked from the late afternoon through till midnight and got a few assignments finished and submitted. Then at midnight I did a stupid thing. I didn't turn off the laptop. The next time I look at the clock its 5:15 in the morning,but the great thing is I managed to fix the problem I was having on my website. Its the same reason I put ads up around CompSci. So that'll save me the €100 for getting someone else to do it. Finally its Sunday, and even though I'm only operating on about 4 hours sleep, I managed to get all my work submitted, my room cleaned.

And the good thing to come of all this? Well I finally have an excuse to replace my ancient laptop with something a bit more modern. I just put in my order for a brand new MacBook Pro 13". It should be here by the end of the week. I can't wait.