I can't be bothered today.
Tag: ducks
I neeeed sleeeeeeep
Katy's bed in leicester is a torture device masquerading as a bed. It's physically impossible for two people to sleep in it comfortably. As such, my back now feels like somebody has been dancing the mambo on it for 48 hours. We are not amused.
My pickling/preserve project will probably die a horrible horrible death because I can't find mason jars in the UK. If I buy them online, they will cost me 15 pounds for jars and 45 pounds for shipping. We are not amused.
I discovered yesterday that both my shoes leak, so I spent the afternoon walking with squishy feet while we were shopping. We are not amused.
It's not all bad news though. As of 11:15 today, I will have been in the UK for 5 months. I also discovered the goodness of Kt Tunstall.
But I need sleep.
Which I can't get.
So coffee will have to do.
The joys of passport control.
I got home at 1am last night. I am le tired.
Luton sucks ass as an airport. Customs control has to qualify as a lower level of hell. It's always the same. Since I don't have an EU passport, I have to go to the special queue with the rest of the foreigner scum (as we're treated).
Two fully loaded 737 planes landed at the same time. That's a few hundred people. There were maybe 20 people in front of me in that queue. The rest, EU nationals, in their separate queue WERE ALL PROCESSED BEFORE I REACHED THE FRONT OF THE LINE!!! In the half hour I was waiting, I was hot, was lugging my laptop and other carry-on luggage, had a screaming baby bawling right behind me, a jerk that kept hitting me with his bag in front of me, my feet hurt because of all the blisters on them and I needed to pee.
There was only one customs agent checking passport for non-EU residents. He shall henceforth be known as Mr. Efficiency. He was reading every page of each passport. When all the EU residents were processed, the four other agents started processing the people in my queue, so that started going a bit faster. Sod's law being in full force though, when it was close to my turn, another plane landed so we were forced to wait on Mr Efficiency again. Grrr. Finally, I'm at the head of the line and what should happen? Two security guards come up and start chatting with Mr. Efficiency. At this point, all that was needed to make this the lowest level of hell would have been that his tea break was due and he'd just get up and go. Finally, it was my turn.
It's always the same, and this is the most frustrating bit. The chat with Mr. Efficiency and his brethren always goes something like this:
Mr. E: Where did you travel from?
Me: Geneva
Mr. E: Where are you going in the UK?
Me: Cambridge
Mr. E: Do you work in the UK?
Me: yes.
Mr. E: *stamp* NEXT!
30 seconds of fun for 30 minutes of waiting in line.
Joy.
Things I've discovered from Geneva
1. There's dogshit everywhere on the sidewalks. The Swiss have been badly influenced by the French. Le poo. Literally.
2. Campeed blister bandages work quite well but they melt if your feet get warm enough after two hours of walking in the hot sun. Picking wax out of your socks is a really nice way to spend the evening.
3. The morning session of the meeting lasted 3 hours. The content of what was said can be distilled down to a very simple powerpoint slide. The consensus is that “we're going to do it”, but the *it* part still needs to be defined properly. Joy.
4. Walking around a topless beach with a camera might not be the brightest thing I've ever done.
5. The chairs in the conference hall add strength to Sod's Meeting Law that stipulates that the comfort of a chair is inversely proportional to the length of time you spend in it.
Brain on pause
3:45am is not a civilized time to have to wake up to go to the airport.
A painful end to a decent trip
…or why it's sometimes annoying to travel with other people.
Yesterday was a painful, annoying, tiring day. The conference ended at 4pm but my flight was only at 9:50, so we had a few hours to kill. The plan was to leave the bags at the hotel, wander around the viktualenmarkt, then head to the airport. I had planned to browse he duty-free shop for a few things. Of course, things didn't work that way.
Things started ok, but my foot started playing up rather quickly. I knew I had a blister, but it was only when I got home that I was actually able to inspect the damage. Not good. More later. The market was really nice, but I got annoyed when the guys decided to stop at a little shop that sold a bunch of foodstuffs. Everything smelled wonderful and looked great but I couldn't eat anything of it, which was really frustrating (in case you're thinking I was just being paranoid, the stall specialized in selling spicy exotic fare, and had peppers and garlic hanging everywhere. Ya, no). By that point, I'd been eating crap for 4 days and I was fed up. I thought we would have had a decent dinner somewhere, not have a picnic in the friggin parc where I couldn't eat jack shit. I was less than impressed. Also, by that point, I was steadily limping.
So the people I'm whit are faffing around in the parc and declaring that their food is excellent, while I'm just twiddling my thumbs and getting hungry and hot and grumpy. In retrospect, I should have just left then and there and gone to the airport on my own. Blergh. So anyway, they finally get off their duffs and we head off to the airport. To make a long story short, we got there 20 minutes before check-in closed, and every store and duty free was closed. I was fucking pissed. That whole afternoon was a bust for me. I was hot, tired, hungry and generally ready to commit homicide. I just wanted to go home.
So fast forward to a nondescript flight that I slept through, baggage claim and uneventful passport control and a 45 minute ride home. My foot, but that point, was a constant throb. I have a raw blister the size of a 10p coin. The epidermis is completely gone, with raw dermis open to the elements. Nice. I'm going to be limping for a while I reckon. I'm staying in today because I'm exhausted and – since I worked through a weekend and a bank holiday – I'm not even slightly feeling guilty about it.
Today didn't go according to plan
I had plans for today. They didn't happen. I'd have wanted to visit some museums in town, cause the weather was going to be bleh, but we ended up not even going outside. Katy had a migraine all day and my shoulder was playing up again.
My breadmaker, which is excellent at making bread, sucks donkey balls at making pizza dough.
All in all, not the best day I've had in a while.
I feel a bit bleh today
I feel a bit homesick today. Don't get me wrong, I still heartily believe that coming over here was the best decision I've made in a long time, today, I'm feeling a bit low. I think it's the whole birthday business that brought it to the forefront, but I miss the boys. I miss the gang in Montreal. I miss my family.
This, too, shall pass…
I miss my frost-free fridge
I've just spent the last 2 hours defrosting my fridge. There's water everywhere in the kitchen and I'm aggravated. Today hasn't been the best of days.
Oy
I'm glad it's friday, cause I can't really take any more of this week. Quack. Quack. Quack. We were supposed to release the new version of PRIDE to the general public this week. It didn't happen, and it's not looking good to happen next week either. The problem is that we're waiting for things that are out of our hands.
Pride is a repository of proteomics data. Groups can submit their experimental results for peer review and collaboration. We have tons of data right now but it's all private. The groups haven't published it to the scientific community at large so it's not available yet. The only source of public data we have hasn't given us the data files that will work in the new version, and only they can make them. Joy. We can't release without public data, it's ludicrous.
Other nasty item: Oracle is a pig. We did all our testing on local installations of mySQL on our laptops and it runs fast and smooth. We dump all the data on it and still, it's fine. We dump the same data on Oracle and now the database queries take roughly 60 times more time. What used to take 5 seconds now take 5 minutes. We need to talk to the DBA group to tune our database, but that's not going to happen overnight. We can deploy to a mySQL database on the EBI systems network, but we're waiting for them to greenlight it and give us access.
So, basically, we're waiting on people.
Quack.