Day 1330

Went through the 3 hours of lectures, caught the 12.35 bus back. Home via the library: intended to get The Return of the Shadow but forgot my ticket; the woman kindly offered to put it by for me.

Went to the bank to apply for a credit card: spoke to the same woman I did when I applied for the cheque guarantee card. I could've had a £600 overdraft, a £249/month personal loan or a £1500 limit credit card! Declined the latter for £500, the lowest they've got and much less than I could comfortably pay off even were I back on the dole (Goddess forbid).

Walked home by three, spent the afternoon putting my databases assignment together. Got it finished - yes! Can do the engineering over the weekend. So I'm managing to hold everything together.

Day 1329

Did solid work running the INGRES assignment queries and making .PS screen dumps to put on disc. Collected a project options form, got the 2.25 bus, caught the 1507, home by four.

Tested putting the .PS files into the Word document I've got my assignment on - used Corel PhotoPaint to convert them to .PCX, with good results.

Watched Star Trek: TNG - good multi-layered delusions (Frame of Mind). Finished OHB.

I have developed a Jobcentre-queue type irritation with the overcrowding at Effolk. What is the positive response? A better view of the workload might help; there's the database and software engineering assignments by the end of Week 9 (this is Week 7), the science assignment and the concomitant exercises.

Day 1328

Went to the studies lecture. Wish he wouldn't let Gollum ask such stupid, irrelevant questions; last week I heard the bloke next to me whisper 'Oh, shut up' when he asked one.

The database lecture was cancelled, so I made some assignment notes in the library and went home (1.35/1407/about three). Typed out a template for the assignment with spaces for screen dumps that I'll make tomorrow. Got quite a lot of work done actually.

Carried on with Of Human Bondage, found it so interesting that I put off starting drinking ½ hour.

Budget today (stupid time of year to have it): nothing on beer, wine or hand-rolling baccy. 1p off tax - surely that isn't enough of a bribe with a maximum of 18 months before the election (equivalent of Oct. 1990)? According to the Guardian John Arse Major's been prime minister for five years today - seems like five hundred. Hurry up Tony, come on...

Day 1327

Got to campus about 10.20, sorted out my e-mail. Went to the lecture; explaining factorials to the others, he said they'd've encountered them if they'd ever put on a Yankee or any other multiple bet.

After lunch went to the class; made good progress with the new recursion exercises, as my supervisor told me. Home by about 4.35. Made X Windows notes, e-mailed T, watched a good but eerie X-Files.

Carried on with Of Human Bondage. Must make some notes for the database assignment tomorrow.

Day 1326

Left about 1.20. Got to Liverpool St at 2.10, read Viz till the train went at three. Home just after four, read Of Human Bondage . Went out for a spin in C's new company car.

Day 1325

Was surprised to sleep without interruption till after twelve. Read the paper till 2.30 when T got up. She went out to shop for various things and I did a first draft of the sotware engineering assignment.

When she got back we had a big meal and watched telly and X-Files videos till 2.30am.

Day 1324

Got to T's before five. We had a good conversation and agreed that since I've got studying to do the two-day visits take up too much of the weekend. Sorted out her telly reception instantly by estimating the direction of Crystal Palace. Went to bed at 3.30.

Day 1323

Got to campus about 8.20. Exchanged frank but friendly e-mails with T while cleaning up the two-day backlog. Found staying awake in the lectures rather hard but got through to noon; after dinner put in 90 minutes' solid work on the INGRES 4GL exercise. Very much like Visual languages but worth the practice.

Day 1322

Beginning to get back on the course track. Went to the doctor: he listened to one respiration and prescribed antibiotics and steroid inhalers. The former made me a bit queasy but they are working.

Read 2 chapters of the Software Engineering book.

Day 1321

Stayed at home recovering. Found I could ward off the cold feeling with paracetamol.

Had an irritating e-mail from T to the effect she'd run out of cash and would I come and see her? She rang up and we discussed it. Actually the £13 my tickets'll cost is probably about the same as meals and drinks had she come here. I'll miss a bit of reading time but T suggested I take the book with me. She promised to come and visit me twice in a row to make up, but we'll see whether that happens or not.

Sent the database lecturer an e-mail about his lab; he replied that he didn't make any announcements.

Day 1320

Had a terrible night; kept dreaming the same bit of dream about INGRES over and over again. Eventually dropped off about 4 am, after the heat subsided and I started sweating.

Felt better when I woke up at eight; got a lift from C as I didn't fancy walking to the station in the cold.

Got a spot of work done, made 75 minutes in all. About two started shivering again, got the bus home from the station. Took to my bed four till seven after attempting to do that job enquiry for M - they wouldn't give away any info. While I was watching The X-Files she came round and borrowed my serial cable.

Day 1319

Wrote copious notes about views. Went round to M's to borrow E's SQL book; he also lent me a 4GL manual. Had tea & talk with both of them.

Felt a bit achy and cold in the evening, as if with flu, but not sick or feverish (yet). Hopefully tomorrow's lectures won't be disrupted.

Day 1318

Did my Christmas shopping. Spent nearly £25 - it's getting a very expensive festival. Got a very useful INGRES book from the library.

Spent a peaceful afternoon getting away from the course for a few hours. Watched the first Coogan's Run I taped last night - Get Calf. Quite clever.

Went on Compuserve and downloaded some great Psion stuff - a brilliant version of FORTH outstanding.

Listened to amusing J.B. Priestley R4 play When We Are Married.

Day 1317

Worked on my new improved quote and comment-aware FSA C token getter. Caught the bus home with about 1-3 seconds to spare, and the train with 5-10 seconds to spare. Home by 5.40.

About eight M rang with some complicated story about wanting me to ring up some job ad to see if it was placed by her company. Went round for Blake's Seven, spent a very pleasant evening discussing INGRES and WWW. I could hardly tear myself away.

Well cold today - 5°C, -½°C at 6.30pm. It snowed for a bit about 8.40 - the earliest I can remember. I said we were in for a harsh winter last month when I saw the quantity of berries on the pyrocanthus and acorns on the oaks. I had to dig out my Lowlands scarf for the walk to M's.

Day 1316

Up at six, got a lift at 6.50, got the 0706. 0748 bus, campus at 8.14. Not bad going. Guts played up a bit but everything went well. Got to the lecture on time.

in the afternoon got some more solid working and reading done. Improved my WWW pages.
Home about 5.15. Taped a Young Ones ep which I found out about from a WWW page which gives personalised telly listings.

Day 1315

When I got to Dulchester the weather had changed, much colder and clearer. And the Sun came out for the first time in a long time. Cheered by this, got some solid work in; INGRES and .HTML and C shell scripts (batch files). Did some Elmasri reading.

All in all was on campus for six hours; home by five. More dbase work. Had an e-mail from T postponing the weekend.

Going to get the 0706 tomorrow, but not get up any earlier, so I'll have to move fast. I'm sick of being late on Thursdays.

All in all I think I've got the course bedded in. It's nearly six weeks now and that's a significant point. A hope undeferred for a change. Got to keep putting effort into it though.

Day 1314

Back in touch with T - she's got her MA result.

After the database lecture hurried to the lab for the class. Got an hour's solid INGRES done, had a few laughs over the crap instructions.

In the evening learnt by example the HTML script. Very easy to get impressive results. Our assignment for the studies course is to design our own WWW pages. That will be fun.

Watched The Thin Blue Line which I taped yesterday; Rowan Atkinson's new thing. I could only stand the first 5 minutes. Like a horrible cross between Blackadder and Bean.

Day 1313

Got some solid software engineering notes reading done in the library, at last, and went to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. Except he didn't turn up (his train was delayed) so I went back in the bar. Back at eleven, watched (taped) X-Files.

Day 1312

Wrote a C token extractor, as a preamble to the C violation detector. Used that finite-state stuff I learnt in the first year at Lowlands. Now I reckon I should write a FSA interpreter - I could change the grammar then without changing the code.

Did the assignment - think I've sorted out the maths 'proof' element.

Day 1311

Woke up just before eleven with a hangover - what a night out that was. Went to the library; renewed the Software Engineering book, got another about mathematical proofs, and the computer ephemeris book. (It had a renewal date in the front in my writing from 3½ years ago).

Went out again in the afternoon; got shelving materials and Christmas cake ingredients. Made the cake; put the shelves up. Made a good job of both. With the four extra shelves I managed to get a lot of tidying up done; nice to have a clear floor again. While I was doing it, listened to sad R4 play Body Language.

Drew up a FSA state diagram to base my C syntax violation detector on. Will start implementing it tomorrow.

Day 1310

Having discarded the Prolog found things much easier. Had a conversation with the serious oldish bloke with the briefcase about the drinks machine's user interface.

Software engineering lecture rather uninteresting - what is the point of these slide-based lectures, there's no real opportunity to make notes or anything!

To the Crown in the evening with S, met M and E and had a great time.

Day 1309

Up at 6am, off at seven; had a terrible long wait for a bus. I was 10 minutes late for the lecture but it didn't matter. The other lecs were rather boring; afterwards posted the letter to D I wrote last night. Got a lot of practice done in the lab.

Natalie's friend got on the bus back and we had a long talk about the course all the way to the station. He and N and some others were at Effolk last year.

Gave C his Kenneth Williams diaries present. KW's problem was that in many directions he wasn't happy with what he was. The secret of life I think is to be happy with what you are; if you aren't, change it.

Day 1308

After a long delay got to campus at 12.30. I've resolved to always stay at least three hours from now on; got the C exercises finished. If I see 'Segmentation Fault' one more time I'm going to be cross.

Day 1307

Owing to train delays got to campus too late for the Prolog, so decided to stop going. I think I've learnt enough about Prolog. Got the ephemeris working in the lab.

Had a good talk with my adviser after his lecture. He asked me how things were going

Vintage London Pris tonight owing to sport on Anglia.

Day 1306

The lecturer turned up late again. I bet he'll do it on Thursday too; so it'll be hard to find anywhere to sit in the next lecture. Had and replied to an e-mail from T - nice to be in contact in my somewhat isolated Effolk situation.

Worked very hard in the lab on the ephemeris, bunging in tons of trace statements to track the errors. You can't have a sun function, so I changed it to haul.

Oh dear, in the seminar we had to do maths proofs. I never could stand that stuff. Suppose I can manage it though.

I've been on the course a month today; as usual it simultaneously seems to've been going on ten minutes and ten years.

Day 1305

Worked hard on my C ephemeris. Had some trouble with the maths library but solved it indirectly by referring to the UNIX notes. It works, but Pluto is 10° out. Why? I'll work on it tomorrow in the lab.

Day 1304

Went into town by bike. Got the Kenneth Williams diaries for C's birthday present, and an X-Windows book from the libe.

In the afternoon listened to a version of Shane on R4; very good. Read some of the KW diaries - amusing in bits but pretty depressing on the whole.

Was invited round to M's: looked at OS/2, which is very good and can run Windows progs in separate windows. On the way fireworks were going off everywhere, like the descriptions of Gandalf's pyrotechnics in The Hobbit.

Am still plodding on with the C ephemeris. Bloody hard work!

Day 1303

Still very cold. A couple of e-mails from T had arrived on campus - cheered me. Found the I'm in control mantra extremely helpful. You have to take some responsibility in this life.

Went to the lectures, listened to the others talk. You never know with this sort of situation, there may well be a way across despite my social ineptitude.

Walking back from the station I stopped outside Jim Bob's, where T wants to eat, to scan their menu. Almost all their vegetarian stuff is rather insistently Mexican.

Started the long job of writing a C versh of my astrological ephemeris prog. After converting the original BASIC2 version to Pascal, OPL and QBASIC, it's a task I'm fairly used to, but it'll be a long job, as I said.

Day 1302

Spent hours in the lab failing to get the UNIX prompt to show the correct directory. Home by three, practised some of the unfamiliar but very handy UNIX commands.

Had a nice e-mail from T re her planned visit on the 18th. She wants to have a meal at Jim Bob's, where we went for a drink on my birthday pub crawl. After the success of our Pizzaland visit in September I think it's a good idea.

Made another advance in the anti-anxiety campaign: a lot of the things I worry about are losses of control - running amok, flipping out etc. But perhaps the basic prob is that evading responsibility has caused me to fear I'm not controlling my own direction.

Day 1301

Put in some work in the lab, wrestling with getting the shell prompt to display the working directory. Went in the libe and made ANSI C notes, found a copy of the student paper in the coffee shop and read about last week's raping and groping incidents. Can't say I noticed any 'tension' on campus.

Bought the Elmasri book; £25.95, ouch.