I wanna have Time 5.

Man, I can't believe two weeks have already passed since my last post. Time is running fast this year.

To think that in about two months I'll be defending my masters is a bit frightening, to be honest. I'm not sure I'm prepared for that, and there is still a lot to do.

At least now I don't have any more data to collect. All I have to do is write write write write write. And then write some more.

I've been practicing a lot on the guitar, and a few tunes are beginning to come out of the amp; although they are not THAT good - they are actually very simple songs used for practice - at least it's something. A month ago I wouldn't have been able to do even that. There is still a long way before I can do anything for real. And, to be honest, practice can be very frustrating sometimes.

I realize that frustration is actually part of the process, and therefore I will keep trying. The more difficulty I have, the more I will practice. That's the way I believe we may overcome difficulties.

In other news, my field exam for obtaining my driver's license in on next wednesday. I feel fully prepared and, to be honest, I'm very confident. In the classes I've had so far I really learned more than just enough to be approved; I learned a bit of how to really drive - out on the street, in traffic, having to withstand other (usually less careful, less educated) drivers. Surely, the fact that the car had the sign "driving school" on its side may have made a difference on other people's behavior (which is frankly quite hypocrite). But even so, it was not a futile exercise.

All in all, everything seems to be going well. I just need to pay a little more attention to my dissertation - it needs a lot of work.

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Lack of planning

I hate it when people do not plan ahead.

My PIXE studies for my masters are linked to other studies by other people with other objectives. A scientific initiation student from the Chemistry Institute, is one of them.

She's planning on attending a congress on thermal analysis in september, and the abstract submission deadline is May 5.

The problem: she only called me to ask for PIXE results last friday.

I have to say, that's not how it works. I didn't know she would need those data. That's because she didn't bother explaining that to me. I actually never had any idea about what the hell she wanted with my data - only that she and her advisor kept bugging me about them. For all I knew, I was going to be the only one directly using those data.

What really ticks me off is that her lack of planning is causing me stress, because that's the way I react to that sort of things. From where I stand, she's likely to miss the deadline. And that's a VERY frustrating perspective.

I can't say I don't care about her work, but if something goes wrong and she misses the deadline, I will not be upset.

This time, the noob was not me.

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Learn less, do more

I don't really have an idea for this post. I suppose this time of the year it should be about evaluating the year, pondering good and bad things that happened.

I made a lot of progress with my work. Not the amount I would consider ideal, though - I've procrastinated an awful lot this year. I'm also running late with my dissertation - I should have it almost complete by now if I had really begun writing it several months ago, like I was telling myself over and over.

I also made a lot of mistakes. I do not complain about them, though, because I tend to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and grow. But I really wish I could "learn" a bit less in 2008...

I failed (again) to begin some serious running. I also failed to get my driver's license.

However, despite this year's less than satisfying progress, I am satisfied with other things I accomplished this year. The first and foremost is swimming. I finally overcame years and years of apathy and learned how to swim with a minimal level of decency.

All in all, I don't think 2007 has been too kind to me. I had a LOT of problems with banks. I procrastinated too much. I failed to exercise my discipline.

Looking at the bright side, when I look back there's a lot of good results to gather, and it actually looks like I've been produtive this year. I just wish I were more efficient.

For 2008, there's a lot to be done. For starters, my dissertation and defense, which I want to happen before April. I need to get a PhD going, after that. I want to get my driver's license. I also want to be able to show my friends how much I appreciate them.

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Spooky

My advisor has just scared the shit out of me. She sent me an email asking me to write an abstract for a meeting I didn't remember about. 

The good thing is, I did know about it and I did make my registration. And I did send my abstract - exactly the one my advisor asked me to write. Actually, I'm not sure why my advisor asked me to do that, I think she's probably under some stress and didn't remember us submitting it more than a month ago. Actually, it was even a troublesome submission. 

I sent her my answer, telling her that we have already made the registration and submitted the abstract. This actually makes me feel a bit odd, since usually it's me who doesn't remember stuff.

Actually, I've been feeling a lot more confident about my work. In part, it's because my advisor has been praising my work recently. But it's also because I'm much more self-assured about things I have to know and do. I am feeling a bit guilty, however, mostly because I haven't done a lot of productive work in the past few weeks. I do have to work on my dissertation - I have been claiming to be writing for some time now. It's time I make it true.

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Jinxed

I'm coming to the conclusion that I'm jinxed somehow.

Now seriously, I don't know what happens that something always goes wrong for me. Maybe I'm doing something the wrong way, or perhaps I'm failing to notice some obvious detail that makes everything go out of control.

The fact is, Murphy's Law seems to be stronger around me lately. A lot of things that shouldn't go wrong to terribly wrong.

This is not a kind of generic post - it's actually about something that happened to me very recently, although I'm keeping that to myself.

But what really bugs me is that, although everything is going to be alright, I'm still feeling a bit nervous about the whole thing. Something is out of place.

Besides that, there's a lot of things going on. Not only there are new and exciting experiments to run, but now I'm going to do some programming, too (electronic density maps, your time is about to come!). Also, I finally began to understand a lot of things about my work, and all of a sudden everything started to make much more sense.

There's nothing like following references...

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Still looking for answers.

I honestly don't know what to write about here. I guess it's because so many things have been happening in the last few weeks I haven't had the time to sort it all out.

However I have been doing a lot of thinking. I've been thinking mostly about the way I live and the way I want to live in the future; and I made some decisions concerning my own habits that are very difficult to implement, because they need a lot of discipline - and that's a quality I have less of than I would like to.

Many people may call it paranoia, but what actually catalyzed the change in the way I see the world were two movies I watched only recently.

The first was 'Super Size Me'. I'm not sure if everything shown in the movie is actually true, but it scared the crap out of me. I was already concerned about my eating habits, but after that I completely stopped drinking soda, for example. I'm trying to eat less junk food, and to reach a better balanced diet.

I'm also trying (not very successfully until now) to make some exercise. I'm still not sure what, but I'm doing something.

The other movie that caused this change was Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth". Until watching it I didn't have an opinion about Global Warming. After that, although I still feel that I need to learn more about it, my habits did change - I'm trying to do my part, and I'm encouraging other people to do so.

I've been giving a lot of though to my future, too. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do after I finish grad school. I guess this is because there are too many variables involved. One thing I know for sure: what I want the most is to raise a family. There are a lot of things that have a weight on making such a decision, such as, 'is it worth it to bring a child to this wrecked world?'.

I'm still looking for answers.

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Today is THE day.

Hello everyone.

After a long, long, long while I've logged in to blogger once again to write another post. It's been a while, although there is no good reason whatsoever for me to have taken so long to do this.

There's a lot of things I want to write about, but unfortunately they will have to wait. Right now I'm making measurements that comprise almost all the data I need for the work in my masters degree. After this, I will be left only with some data analysis and writing my d**********n.

I only hope that the worst problems that could have appeared already did so. The ones I faced earlier this morning trying to set up the experiment were already almost unrecoverable... all I want right now is to have a long, nice day of productive work, without any further problems.

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