Laurence’s Blog

Since my last post I have received, filled in and returned all of the paperwork required for my job, which I am now starting on June 10th, one week after my exams finish.

My first exam, neural computing, went well – I had little problem completing the required number of questions without struggling for content, in the case of the essay portions, or forgetting the required equations in the case of the maths. I was quite encouraged by how the exam went, having had severe doubts about my ability to complete the exams satisfactorially in the weeks leading up to it.

My sister, who is still in a secure mental health unit in hospital, now seems to be moving from one crisis to another. In the past few weeks, she had taken a potentially fatal overdose (despite being in a ’secure’ unit) and has been unable to eat properly until recently as a result. My mother, one of my other sisters and I went to visit her today (my parents have been visiting her almost daily since she was first taken to the unit) where we took her to a bookshop and bought her some hot chocolate in Sinsbury’s cafe. Since leaving her at the unit this afternoon, she has apparently tried to force her way out and has now been sectioned under the mental health act to prevent her from leaving (presumably due to the threat she poses to herself outside of the unit).

The ongoing situation is putting massive stress on the family at home to the extent that my mother now feels unable to go to work and I eventually fled back to Coventry last week (I felt unable to leave earlier in the week because of the state of my mother) as I could no longer cope, despite the fact that it ment leaving my mother sobbing on the doorstep. I feel terrible as a result.

At Church this morning we also found out that the husband of one of the members of the clergy team died suddenly yesterday afternoon, with no apparent cause or warning. As a result the entire service was very subdued and we are all thinking of his wife and children at the moment.

A lot has happened to me recently, so this is going to be a long post mostly about my miserable life – hence the quote.

The third year project report was completed and handed in on time (after much blood, sweat and tears) as was the neural computing coursework.

During the holiday three members of my family ended up in hospital with various ailments, and I am still receiving ongoing treatment for my missing teeth. One of the implants I had failed quite soon after it was inserted, however when the consultant came to fit the false teeth on the other one it too came loose. It has now been removed and the consultant has decided that I am to have bridgework done instead (I was offered the alternative of being refered elsewhere for a more substantial bone graft than was done the first time around followed by a repeat attempt at the implants).

My grandfather ended up in hospital after coughing up blood, has been diagnosed with lung cancer and is shortly to begin radiotherapy. My father has been in hospital to investigate if he has bowel cancer (fortunately the samples which were taked showed he did not) and my sister is in a secure mental unit after attempting suicide at home.

On Tuesday, during the evening, I was returning home (from hospital) when my car was hit from behind by a 4×4 whilst I was waiting to pull onto a round-a-bout. At the time the damage seemed minimal, just a broken tail light (the 4×4 got off without a single scratch to the paintwork!). Further examination at home revealed a dent to the corner of the boot, multiple broken bulbs and a significant bulge to the inside of the boot where, presumably, the bumper on my car has been pushed in. Life’s a bitch. The driver of said 4×4 has admitted liability for the accident so his insurance is paying and Endsleigh (who my car is insured with) have been fantastic. I’m going to be sorry when I have to return the 07-reg courtesy car and get my little P-reg Peugeot 106 back.

On the plus side, I had a phone call at 17:20 on Tuesday asking if I could be in Birmingham the following day for a job interview. I quickly changed my plans and made the necessary arrangements to attend. Following an unexpected test (all programming related questions – what does this code do, what’s the output of this, etc.) I was invited to another room for the interview. At the beginning of the interview the panel of three explained their normal recruitment process, with a first inverview followed by a second interview for candidates they think are suitable possibly followed by a job offer. I proceded to have the interview, in which I discussed the system I have been developing for my holiday job as well as explaining the concept of ‘LAN Parties’. Following the interview I was led to another room whilst the panel chatted among themselves and was then led upstairs to a side room where they proceded to offer me a job on the spot!

I am yet to see any paperwork for this job, but it is entirely possible that I may be working straight after my exams. Yay!

One of the really useful new features in Vista (and Server 2003, apparently) is the `clip` command, e.g.:

echo foo | clip

This nifty command copies whatever is piped into it to the clipboard, for easy pasting into other Windows applications. Of course, Linux users have been able to do this trivially for ages in both GNOME and KDE.