computer woes, part 58

While I'm sitting here waiting for pages of my thesis to print, I should tell you about the computer problems that have been causing me grief. Firstly, Micro$oft Word decided, in its infinite wisdom, that five consecutive pages should all be numbered "55". I thought it was only two pages and was going to leave it, but five's a bit much. Then, when I tried to correct it, it refused to give me anything other than "55, 56, 57, 59, 60". It really objects to page 58 for some reason. I've had to turn off page numbering for that section and write them in myself with a black biro. I hope no one complains.

Then, this morning there was a lovely smell of TCP in the computer room. I didn't think too much of it at first, then I thought it was coming in from outside, then I thought it was a nasal hallucination caused by lack of sleep. Eventually I realised it was being given off by one of the machines, and remembered that polychlorinated phenols are used in PCB manufacture. So eeek, one of my circuit boards was melting. But which one? Turned out the fan in the server was so full of dust it had died, but that's really not something I needed to have happen today.

entering the home straight

Thesis is on its way to the binders by wuzzie transport. I am now trying to complete all the forms that go along with it. Apparently I have to submit both an "abstract" and a "description of thesis", but an abstract is a description of a thesis, so what's different between them I don't know. Have sent a text message to thekumquat about it and will email the physics department postgraduate secretary. Or PG tutor, not sure which.

The server is smelling of TCP again so I'd better get offline. Microsoft Word is still evil. (I thought I could add this to the end of every future LJ entry I make, in the same vein as the Secret Diaries of LOTR characters with "Still not king", in the hope that one day Word will not be evil).

not enough sleep

The thing that's pissing me off most about this thesis panic was that prior to staying up for 33 hours in increasing states of stress, I had managed to get up at 8am every day for the previous six days. That's the longest stable sensible sleep pattern I've been in for literally years. (I can stabilise my sleep pattern to getting up at 3pm for 10 days or so, but that's not ideal for Real jobs). Bah.