Day 1482

Had group project meeting. Things are cruising along towards a 50-60% result, I think - was annoyed with K for not saying earlier that she couldn't come up with the stuff.

Great Labour party political in the evening, continuing last week's giant stalking Tory theme.

Day 1481

Had a 2-person meeting about the group project with N after the science lecture.

Went in the library and studied crime statistics (for diversion). At home had two C++ revision sessions.

I'm going to scrap the policy of staying on campus every day till five. It's no good for revision and leads to me sitting about trying to find things to do rather than going home. Whereas the at-home 30-minute reading revision sessions have been rather successful. (32 revision sessions of all types so far). I'll start on Wednesday with a home revision day incorporating at least 6 reading sessions.

Day 1480

Miffed to remember the current run of Star Trek has finished.

M rang up at 2pm while I was revising engineering, suggesting we have an 'early evening drink' at the Crown. Met her and E; E is after a receptionist's job at the poly as he can do it part-time if she does a PGCE. I told him it was beneath him.

Back to Effolk tomorrow for more revision and more agonising about whether to change my C++ assignment again.

Day 1479

Did a lot of own-bat programming in the morning, then moved on to serious revising, getting 3 half-hour sessions in. I feel 30 minutes enough when reading is the dominant activity over note-taking.

Took my bike for a 4-mile test run to Halfords. Average 11mph.

Glad I got that revision done.

Day 1478

Went to the science - he went through my makefile question. Discussed the full design with N, waited for C but eventually gave up, made emendations in pen and handed it in. C turned up later and we discussed the project. Apparently the department know about his dyslexia (he gets 10 minutes extra per hour in exams) so we should be OK.

Transferred my C++ assignment files to disc. Home, ate fish and chips ravenously. M rang up about 8.15 suggesting I come round as it might make her mum and her man friend leave. I warned her it might backfire and it did: I got there at 9.30 and they didn't go till 10.25. Had a good talk with E though.

When they'd gone we watched episode 1 of Snakedance, with Martin Clunes, would you believe it. Much better than I remembered.

Walked back through another warm night, home at 11.30.

Day 1477

Went to lecture on Z.

In the afternoon got to work on the full design, spent 3 hours bashing C's execrable prose into shape and another 3 hours printing out the 71-page document.

The vast majority of the group project work is now finished. I can start revising again tomorrow

Could do with a stiff drink tomorrow, and several more like it. Only fair after all that hard work.

Day 1476

Ploughed through the C++ transcription, finished it. More discussion about the project, got most of the files together. Bus home was 10 minutes late, got the slow train which waits 11 minutes at Dulchester.

When I got home, plunged straight into collating the project Full Design. Could not convert C's AMI Pro files, fortunately managed to download a converter from the Microsoft forum on Compuserve. Compuserve proved its worth there emphatically.

Eventually got it bashed into some sort of shape. N's Word-format diagrams were a pleasure by comparison. It's a monster document though, 60-70 pages.

Day 1475

Went to group project meeting; K actually turned up but said she'd done very little work and was worried about getting thrown off the course. We're going to have to ask for that to be taken into account in the marking. What with that and C declaring he's dyslexic 4 days before we hand the damn thing in, the group project is turning into a big pain. 'Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit drinking'. Actually though it would be harder to cope with if I was on the piss.

In the evening got LOADLIN working - it loads Linux from DOS with no need for a boot disc, and is much faster too.

Watched a triffic Labour party political broadcast, with a giant Tory stalking the land destroying things. Subtle as a brick but very good.

Day 1474

Felt hungry when I arrived on campus, so had a cheese and onion pasty for breakfast. Got straight to work transcribing the C++.ps files into .txt by hand - very tedious. Had science revision lecture, knew most of it already but made notes on what was new.

Had group project meeting. Relatively useful, though worryingly K. didn't turn up again. C. revealed he was dyslexic. I was pleased because I thought on Friday his mistaking G for J was peculiar.

Heard someone talking about the C++ assignments, realised I hadn't used a template in assignment 3. This crystallised the vague unease I've had about the assignments, so I e-mailed odylan. He said a template might be used in 3 but not 2. Luckily my assignment 3 program was well-structured and very easy to adapt to using a TQueue. It took about 15 minutes in fact.

Got the 3rd science assignment back, got 70%.

In the evening watched an exciting programme with film of them rushing a liver for transplant from Stansted to West London, right through the city, 36 miles in 25 minutes. Made me wonder why they couldn't use a helicopter though.

Found a 'thesis' I'd written about Out Of This World on an old disc. Quite good. Might put it on one of my pages - nothing about OotW on the WWW yet. Mind you, there was nothing about Carry On till 2 weeks ago. Incidentally, managed to restore a lot of my home page .html files from Emacs backups.

Day 1473

Beautiful weather, quite hot. Worked on the references in my progress report. After dinner went to PC World in Dulchester, got a great combo disc box and copy holder plus more DD and HD discs.

Had a look through the pseudocode document. It'll be nice to finish this damn group project and get some revision done.

It's been a great weekend, really very summer-like.

Day 1472

Put in some more work on the pseudocode, played Sim City. Went to Asda to pick up PCW. Very warm day, real warm-front weather.

Rang M but her answering machine was malfunctioning. However, this didn't matter as she rang me later to suggest I come round. Got on excellently with E as always. Walked back through the warm fragrant night, 'pressing summer scents from spring flowers and grasses', as Afreyt says.

I think I have two 'summarising' tendencies, like the Sun and the Mirror. The Sun reports everything as 'It's been going on forever, it's terrible' and the Mirror is saying 'You've come on miles, you've made great strides, you've improved everything'. Just recognising that neither is gospel truth is a significant step. If I can avoid ever being completely convinced by either of them I'll be fine.

Day 1471

Worked really hard on the group project. C. came up and monopolised my attention in the afternoon and I ended up running the 3rd and 4th revision sessions together. Plus the break this made up the 5th session so I took the rest of the time after 3.50 off. Actually the discussion with C. was quite constructive so no complaints really. Hopefully I should get the pseudocode finished off over the weekend. We got 60% for the FRS so that's 15% of the whole mark accounted for.

Found the Carry On web page and voted for my top 10 films. In the evening watched Red Dwarf VI: Rimmerworld, held over from the Dunblane massacre owing to 'setting off psychotic killer' references.

I feel very tired but have achieved a lot today. A rush and a push and we can finish the project, and I can get some revision done.

Day 1470

Rather surprisingly N. and C. turned up for the meeting. Got a lot of things arranged, felt much better about the project, worked on it solidly all afternoon. Accidentally deleted almost all of my web page files, ran up a temporary replacement during a break.

T e-mailed me to say she got the job. She is now Marketing Executive on 18 grand and all the trimmings. She says she'll never have to borrow 98p off me again!

Was in a positive mood again. As I've said before, I obviously benefit from hard work. I think I'll concentrate on the group project for now, after which I can really start revising.

Have decided adversity is better taken on the chin than dodged. I think I've got quite a high capacity for absorbing blows. I shall just remember: Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Day 1469

Got in by 10.40, gave my adviser a ring on the internal phone and went to see him. He moaned about an invitation he'd had 'to Don Beech and partner'. I wondered why, till he got up his CV to illustrate how to refer to papers. He said 'I'll have to change the bit about "married with two children"'. The poor man is obviously embroiled in some messy divorce. What could I say? He said my project progress report was very good though. I hope his troubles haven't clouded his judgement.

Saw that fat skinhead who mutters objectionable comments whenever I'm in the vicinity in the library again. What a wanker. Like that other fat objectionable skinhead from the Green Man in 1992.

Worked very hard on the group project pseudo-code. N had better turn up tomorrow for the meeting, I am not best pleased with his failure to communicate.

Day 1468

Into town for a haircut. Got the bus home, walked up to the dentist's. Needed a filling; insisted on the plastic composite even though he told me removing mercury amalgam fillings had made MS patients worse. But when I got outside the dark grey morning had been replaced by a hopeful broken sunny sky. I felt great, and equal to ten word salad women in formation or a hundred exams.

Got in 3 revision sessions altogether, hampered by the need to repair the keyboard on the computer. Did it though. Also, I could only manage to eat soup for dinner due to anaesthetised jaw, had to have two tins as soup isn't very nourishing.

Day 1467

Renewed my season ticket. Got five full revision sessions done. The effect the hard work had was great.I was able to speculate that that intrusive self-destructive rumination I found so bad last year was an unconscious feeling of having to change radically. Because part of me isn't sure about changing it comes out as a negative thought.

Was having dinner in the square when S. hailed me. We had a good talk, she said she was glad of an excuse to give up the course as it was the fourth non-functional attempt she'd made to get into computers. She now conducts tests for the Psychology department and I agreed to do one. Got paid £2.

Day 1466

Watched Star Trek: Errand of Mercy. A good one. Ipswich v. Norwich in the afternoon, we won 2-1 thanks to a ludicrous own goal in the 80th minute.

Printed out my draft project progress report.

I am a bit worried about the group project - the others are being rather slow in coming up with their portions and their attendance record during the holiday has been poor. Still, there are 6 modules, so for an average of 50 I need 300 marks, which even if we got no marks at all for the group project, 60 marks each in the 5 others would do the trick.

Very much back to work tomorrow - I've got to get the revision going. Got to get a new season ticket too which means getting up earlier. Ah well. A little application will sort this one out.

Day 1465

To town in the morning to the library; took £50 out of the building society, £25 to pay Visa and £25 for next week's subsistence.

Pottered about in the afternoon; M rang up about four to invite me to watch Death To The Daleks. Duly went, had a great time as usual.

Day 1464

Labour won the by-election on a 22% swing: -7,000 to +12,000. Tories down to a majority of one. Come on Tony!

To campus after stopping in Dulchester to renew my bus pass. Put in 45 minutes' solid revision of the studies,forgot that transferring between buildings takes time. Got some database revision done too.

Left about three, home via Sainsburys for antacid and wine. Mindful of the day's revision mistakes, drew up a revised revision timetable taking full account of transfer times.

Got a reply to my e-mail from Stew and Rich, the Fist of Fun blokes.

Day 1463

T advised me on my revision very helpfully. She wanted to come up for my birthday but we arranged for June, after the exams.

SE Staffs by-election result due later. Hope it goes well.

Day 1462

Got to T's quicker than I expected. Poor start when she begged me not to stay the second night as she had so much to do, but like Thorin I eventually said 'Pray don't mention it.'.

Ate pizza, watched telly and drank wine till 4am. Quizzed T about the adventures of everyone after the end of uni and wrote it all down.

Day 1461

Listened to great (for a change) Radio 5 phone-in in the car with mainlanders ringing up to condemn the Orange marchers.

For some reason, a lot of old e-mails from T came through today: four last September via Compuserve. In one she said perhaps it was good I had one thing (alcohol) that I couldn't regiment, otherwise life would be too easy for me.

Day 1460

Worked on the pseudo-code for the group project. M rang up about 1.30 suggesting we go down the Sebastopol in the evening. When I got there, early, a karaoke session was in progress. I immediately turned in my tracks and went to the Red Lion. 'I don't blame you love' said a bloke sitting outside. From the payphone rang my brother to get him to tape The X-Files and M to apprise him of the situation - we agreed to meet at the Crown. Had a great time.

Day 1459

The long Easter weekend continues. Up in time for one of my favourite Star Trek eps, The Devil In The Dark. Finished (?) my project progress report.

Rang T. J was there, we talked politely but I'm still fairly sure it would be unprofitable to meet him.

When I eventually got to talk to T I checked everything was on course for Wednesday at 2pm. She's run out of money again so it looks like the Science Museum idea is out. It's all very interesting, don't you agree?

Day 1458

Worked on my project progress report after a quick trip into town for an audio cable adaptor. Used the latter to create .WAV files of the theme on my Genesis of the Daleks LP.

Day 1457

You could tell it was Good Friday by the lawnmowers going in the morning. Got the new Viz, still quite amusing.

Made some progress with my project progress report. My brother came round and I printed a CV and covering letter for him.

Day 1456

Only C. turned up for the group project meeting but we had some useful discussions. Then worked with XView, typed more science notes, had a cuppa in the square.

Came home, played Sim City. Might give the story another go later.

I must get that group project substantially advanced over the long weekend. We've got to hand the bugger in in 3 weeks. And there's revision to be done...

Day 1455

Parents are on holiday so am house-sitting. Drove to campus, got some useful work done on XView colours for my project, typed yet more science notes.

Watched the eclipse of the Moon.

Added a third part to my Dr Who story. Unheard of for me to go back to a story three times. I was particularly pleased with my creative resource because a book dropped off the shelf, knocked out the power cable and lost the new part. But I was undeterred because I'd swapped out to DOS just before. I found and undeleted the swap file, loaded it into Word just as it was, searched for 'Sarah', copied all relevant text into Notepad and stitched the bastard back together. It was interesting to see how Write works, where I'd gone back and changed stuff the swap file preserved the revisions in order.

Excellent ST: TNG ep in the evening, almost as good as Who Watches The Watchers and on the same theme. My Star Trek encyclopaedia reveals the title to've been - oh bugger. My encyclopaedia was printed too early. Looks like a WWW search tomorrow...

Good Friday on Friday (!) and the long weekend, so I'd better retrieve from campus tomorrow anything I think I'll need.

Day 1454

Typed more science notes, did more work on the C++ assignments. Had a quick meeting with my supervisor about my project - he said I wasn't making any obvious mistakes. We discussed the group project too, he seems thoroughly pissed off with it but I get the impression he'll treat our group fairly enough.

Day 1453

Borrowed mum's car and drove to campus, did some revision, typing up my notes and working on the C++ assignment.

In the evening played Sim City, revised the engineering, watched The X Files: Squeeze.

Looking through my diary for 1991 I realised I'd forgotten how fucked up I was then. Something happened in 1988 and 1989 that set me on a path that I am only now coming back from. If only I could remember what it was. Or is it a case of 'The only way she can be cured is to forget everything that has happened to her' (X4 Master of the Desert Nomads).