I attended two one-hour long teleconferences today. One was interesting and educational, the other one was, well it just was.
The educational one was a “technical vitality session,” on how to edit messages in Computer Message Guides. Avoid blaming the user!
This is not a good error message:
| The database update failed because you did not start the database service. |
About the only thing that would make it worse would be:
| The database update failed because you did not start the database service, you idiot. |
During lunch, I ran to the post office and mailed, among other things, two letters — one to my parents, and one to my niece and nephew — with directions to the restaurant for Sunday, and a copy of the menu to start drooling about.
Next, I ran into the Family Dollar store, where I bought 10 bags of Bit-O-Honey candy. That was every bag they had on the shelf.
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After that, I stopped by the post office on Lake Dam Road to pick up a package for which I missed a delivery on Saturday.
It was my amazon.com package, and contained the book, “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries,” and the CD, “Sensus,” which is by a Portuguese artist, Cristina Branco, and is a gift for my dad’s 75th birthday on Sunday.
Oh no! You are not going to see me being one of the people in front of the classroom tomorrow crying about how my computer — the one holding the only copy of my final research paper — got fried in that severe thunderstorm that passed through last night. Not me.
It was storming like a mofo out there, and with the first roll of thunder and blast of lightning, I copied my paper from my PC to my flash drive, and powered off my PC.
I loaded the paper from my flash drive to my laptop, with which I worked using the battery only, while three red candles flickered next to me for the inevitable. The lights blinked twice.
One of the candles looked like it had gone out, and when I tipped it see if it had, hot wax poured out over my cited scholarly papers and my fast-typing fingers. Ouch.
I attended the second night of ENG 675 Project Defenses tonight. Landra, E-Ching, and Erin presented. Good stuff.
Landra’s project was a Usability Report, which brought back fond memories of ENG 508.
E-Ching’s project was a feature article about genetically altered rice being planted in NC. This article is about the subject.
Erin’s project was a website that she created on Complementary Cardiac Care, which I found particularly interesting in that its niche is that it addresses both Western Philosophy Medicine and Eastern Philosophy Medicine all in one site.
I worked all night on my final research paper, which is due tomorrow at 4:30. I stopped at 2AM, with just the conclusion remaining to write, to be followed by cleaning up the citations and adding the figures. Seems manageable to get done by 4:30.