all things me

I just got to work and the first thing I do is go get cold water from the … water… thingy. On my way there the Libraryman came. Quite a library man: probably 2 meters tall, bearded, crazy hair (Einstein-style), a black beret, and a handbag. He said good morning to me Last week the cleaning lady was just polishing the corridor in which “my” room is and she also said good morning Very kind people I must say. Maybe they had noticed me before and realized I’m a “regular,” e.g. yesterday I left from work at the same time with the Libraryman (Libraryman, Libraryman, Libraryman, Libraryman, Libraryman — I wonder if he’ll come kill me now… Oh, sorry… that was *Candyman* ).
Oh well. I’ve also said good morning to the janitor but that’s because I had to do key business with him. Twice. (I changed rooms on the first week.)

Oh yeah, I finished reading Carrie last night. I gave it * * * *

I went to pick up my translation studies paper this morning (actually, I went to pick it up yesterday afternoon but the darn English dept was closed — “Notice: during summer this door closes automatically at 4pm”). We were encouraged to get the paper after it was graded because the teacher had written comments in it. Well, I got 3 for the course (grades 1–3) but I already knew that… There was a comment in the end (in addition to the ones in between the text) “Very interesting report and funny too!”

That’s all I think I should sign off before Mozilla decides to crash on me (it has done that, twice already… and I’ve got this far on both times…) And besides, we have a meeting at 10.

Dear Constant Reader,
Song of Susannah came out yesterday!! Not in Finland though, I presume.

Didn’t update (i.e. go online) today; I was playing Tomb Raider AOD all night… whoops. Addictive, especially cause I’m doing so well
Anyway, I had a dream about a flying squirrel that kept flying (or gliding) around and landing on people’s heads. It was a cute creature though. [Note to self: look for a picture]

Oh yeah, Hmph, some people (I sent myself notes on email from work about that dream and this)
I know my, let’s say, “formal restrictions” (I’m formally challenged in politically correct terms) and I dress accordingly. Not some people… noooo. There’s this girl whom I’ve seen at the bus stop a few times now, and she wears a pretty short college shirt and her belly shows from under it. You know, sagging from under it. You get the picture. And if you don’t, be glad about it.

Day 17 without my TV: BUT I got it back! And it seems to work! *hugs* ahh… smells good. TVs have a strangely good smell about them… maybe it’s all the dust and electricity and components. I don’t know. Anyway, yay! \o/

A bee got in while Dad was carrying the TV from the car. It (the bee) bumped into me even though I tried to shut the door quickly (but the wind/pressure change sucked the bee inside). Scared the bejesus out of me. (I’ve never been stung by a bee, and I’m not planning to be.) Funny, I had just read Man in the Black Suit (Everything’s Eventual) on the way home.

Yesterday I almost got photographed at work; they insisted there should be a photo of me outside the project’s room as there’s a photo of the others (but it’s so nicely arranged now that there’s 6 people, 3 pictures in a row). Well, as one of them said on the day I “moved in”, I would be teased They “threatened” to take a surprise shot one day.

Today at work I was invited to the coffee clique so tomorrow I’ll take my “Toxic Waste” coffee mug with me and leave it there for the time being. *gasp* What if someone steals it?!

Still listening: Maroon 5 This Love

Talking about listening… Today I took some CDs with me to work meaning to listen to them in the quiet hours (I’m there around 8:30am, others come around noon, they’re working part-time). Well, I did the necessary Linux stuff to get the CD working, plugged in my headphones — they were broken the other earpiece didn’t work at all, and the other made a crackling sound and only worked when I held the cord. Well, I went to ask if there’d be earphones to borrow and it started a Key Hunt. It was embarrassing!! The computer guy went to ask for keys from the office and the lady there (our other computer person) didn’t find them and kept looking everywhere. I kept saying it’s not so big a deal but they wouldn’t listen. Well, finally they gave up and I retreated to my corner. Luckily he/they didn’t appear with the headphones later in the day. Hopefully they’ve forgotten about it. Tomorrow I’m taking my other headphones which actually work.

Eh… it’s only 9th and I’ve produced this much cr….text. Do I have to start archiving semi-monthly? This text is already longer than the left side column… And me complaining about it only adds to the length Nitenite.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! DT5 finished in a horrible cliffhanger!! I can’t wait to read Song of Susannah! (it has to come out first (on Tue), and then arrive in Finland)
The series just keeps getting better and better (I didn’t think that was even possible…)

I missed my May book (A Year of Reading clique) but I’ll just have to read a few extra in June.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Day 12 without my TV xD
Went to watch Bachelorette on Dad’s tv but it started flickering (on/off, not just simply bad picture) so I went to the livingroom. Mum said I was just being paranoid, that the tv worked fine. I told Dad that I must have some sort of magnetic field around me that destroys TVs… But it DID flicker!

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh! Meredith chose Ian. What happened?! Maybe Matthew will be the next Bachelor then…

Updates: Apart from updating the fact that I’ve read DT5 (booklog, King site), I went back to the tiny text. Sorry to say, I like it.

Oh yeah, I moved to a new room today, the project’s room (i.e. where all the students are crammed). Hopefully I returned the correct key…. you see, I had two while I was moving the computer from one room to another.

I have a new website project in mind… *mwahahahahaaa*

I’m living in yesterday… Anywhooo.

Updates: FINALLY a Splinter Cell Fanlisting; I was this –> <– close to starting my own…

Been very tired today. Slow start in the morning. Don’t know why though cause I slept perhaps for… about 6 hours. Maybe it’s the sleep deficiency from the beginning of the week.

Oy vey! A tv critic claimed in the newspaper today that the Sleepwalkers is based on a Stephen King book that “experts say is thicker than Xmas ham”. And what book might that be, Mr. Critic?

Started playing Tomb Raider: Angel of Darkness today because my sister stole the Morrowind…….. I had problems with the sound though (think of chipmunks and Lara…) but I found a tip how to fix that so I’ll try with better luck tomorrow or w/end.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving to a new desk at work. I’ve been separated from the other people working on the same project so I’m really out of the loop. I mean, they should be telling me what they need from the ontology. I’ll also get my hands on the parser soon.
Hopefully my lunchbuddies will remember me even though I won’t be on their way… If they don’t, I’ll be eating 1 choco cookie per day for lunch…

Announcement: Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah out in 5 days (June 8)! And DT VII: The Dark Tower is coming out on September 21 — King’s birthday

If Meredith chooses Ian tomorrow in the Bachelorette, I’m going to cry! Not of happiness!

Bummer, May without reading a book. Not properly at least. I’m so CLOSE to finishing DT5 that I ought to be ashamed (of not finishing it). But school (and sleep) and work have to be prioritized, I’m sorry to say. And I have. Very much so. Very bonkers-goingly so. I have, however, almost-read Carrie and Everything’s Eventual. And pages and pages of my own scribble and to be exact nine of my peers’ too! (bachelor’s theses — still have that to revise).
But now (after DT5) I’m going to read Carrie (1st read [noun] ever!) and maybe in Finnish too (although the translation is paiiiin paiiin paiiiin — bad in other words). But I’m definitely going to read Everything’s Eventual in Finnish. It was such an ordeal to get it an’ I ain’t givin it up so easy. (I know the correct grammar, so clam it!)

Anyway, printing out the [translation study paper] 16 pages (hurry up!) now so I can go to sleep. Have to find a used envelope for the teacher (yup, strict orders). Up again in less than 5 hours. And work till 5 pm. But on the way back from handing-in-the-paper I’m going to go buy some nice cookies for faint-prevention (I won’t bother going to eat, there’s no Unicafe within stone’s throw). Maybe chocolate chip.

Day 8 without my TV: Today Dad had called the repair shop, and they told that the guy who repairs combo-TVs was on a sick leave last week… soooo… it’ll take YET another week. Just my luck.

Day 7 went easily cause there was nothing on TV (Felicity and As if ended last week)

I wrote a paper (comparison of translations of King’s Carrie and Everything’s Eventual) last night till about 3:30 am and then I gave up and went to bed cause I had to wake up at 7 am for work. I did get a bit light headed at work but that might’ve been because I hadn’t eaten anything (‘cept breakfast). Now I’m writing the paper again. I’m going to hand it in tomorrow, a day late. The first, ever, time I give an assignment late to a teacher. Uh… hurts.

I changed my WinXP theme to an old Windows theme and made it purple (modified the Lilac theme). It looks pretty nice. Or pretty pretty?

(and all the Minnas out there, of course. And whoelse has a nameday today)

Updates: Huge update!! Changed the method for mailing forms entirely. Now it works the way I want it to and doesn’t mess up my frames. And I can have a thank-you page for each section and not a shared one.
Added “other sections” in the menu image there <— (hmm, what other scribbles I could add) [edit: June 25] old version of the site [/edit]

Now I have to read the paper for today’s proseminar presentation (bachelor’s thesis stuff)…

@ 17:26
<ha ha>
Day 3 without my TV: My heart overjoyed for a while when Dad remembered something he had in the car (reminded by “concrete”) and I watched as he went to get it, open the trunk and lift something heavy. I didn’t see what it was before he disappeared behind the hedge and when he walked to the front door my heart sank. It was his scanner slash printer slash photocopier – slash toy – from work.
</ha ha>

Updates: Bought myself a nameday present — Dark Half by Stephen King, so that means I updated TGWLSK‘s bookshelf and the list of books I own, at all things me

Worried I (hurried ) went to the department today to do a final assigment of the Semantic Web course. I sat down at the computer, opened programs (assignment instructions, GATE), loaded documents on GATE, created a corpus, ran ANNIE (a information extractor, tagger), saved a DAML+OIL exporter, created a corpus pipeline with the DAML+OIL exporter and fiddled with the settings to get it to work (to output files to the correct place, or at all, to tell you the truth). Checked that it output the files and went to see what next. Nothing. *jaw drops* That was it. The professor (the “it’s trying to rain” professor) had planned on a more challenging assigment with an ontology we had had to make ourselves but it turned out to be very difficult to do. So, with the term swooshing by, he had had to give us some assignment whether it be quite trivial.
I’m not complaining. I was worried it would take a LOT of my time and require continuing tomorrow or something. Instead, I was able to hunt down a book which I’ll use for the theory part of my translation study.

Been pondering: It feels strange to write to a person (professor usually; maybe I should think that I’m writing to more people than me and the course teacher, but let’s be realistic, besides, I don’t actually ever write TO anyone. I just write. Like now. No offence.) and quote their work in the paper. I can only wonder what it would feel like to write a paper and quote one’s OWN work in it by referring to oneself with full name… Schizophrenic?

“It is trying to rain”
Before I forget this completely (what on earth made me think of it now — I haven’t a clue), I have to write it down. Sometime ago (a long time) our professor acted out the sentence “it is trying to rain” by impersonating a cloud trying to rain. I can’t remember what the whole thing was about, but it was on the context-free parsing methods. Anyway, the professor impersonated a cloud trying to poop. Picture it yourself. Or try it out. Preferably in public.

<ha ha>
Day 2 without my TV: Today there wasn’t much on TV. I watched 24 and taped Sex and the City cause Mum and I watched a documentary about strange childbirths (Born against odds, or something like that it was called).
</ha ha>

MegaOxymoron of the Day: Minna giving a presentation without a panic
Minna + presentation + no panic = oxymoron Strange things do happen. It actually went pretty well. Meaning that my face wasn’t red (I think), my heart didn’t pound in my ears and out of my chest, the words didn’t come out all mushy. And I actually was funny too! On purpose! I noticed the ambiguousness of something I was about to say before I said it so I was able to make it clear that I was aware it was ambiguous. Ambiguous in the bad way I mean — “dirty”.
And the prof said my presentation (slide show) was “unique”. In the good way. I had taken time to prepare it and had nice (but not too flashy and disturbing) animations. And nice colours: black and purple I didn’t wear my purple sweater/cardigan because otherwise people couldn’t have told me and the slides apart… besides, purple doesn’t go with army boots anyway (See Thought of the Day).
Anyway, now it’s done. The opponent (a person how makes questions and comments about my work and pinpoints places that need changing) gave me good tips on how to improve my thesis. So, technically I still have that paper to write. Shouldn’t be that much of a problem. Only thing is it has to be done by the end of this month — as if I didn’t have enough big things to write

Thought of the Day: Don’t judge a girl by her shoes.
Not that anyone has judged me (or how could I know… maybe some old lady crossed the street when I was coming towards her and I just didn’t notice Although, it’s my *sister* who does that to people…), but I was just thinking that today when I was walking from the department to the bus station wearing my army boots. Yeah, the ones skinheads use. Don’t worry, I still have my hair intact. And my wonderful personality too.

Brain-itch of the Day: (I’ve been told that brain-itch is something that keeps going around and around in your head, e.g. a song; let me know if it isn’t ) Ukraine’s Eurovision Song Contest song: Wild Dance
Shi-riki-dai shi-riki-dam-dey