Day 1605

Last day of summer. Printed out vol. 6 of T's e-mails. More diss work, got to 9,200 words. Carried on with Our Mutual Friend which I started last night.

C came round in the morning, at least I got some straight CV answers out of him.

Left M a message in the morning, never got a reply. Don't like being deprived of company at the weekends, it recharges my batteries. Still, as the 1994 experience shows, my capacitors retain enough charge to keep me going for at least 6 months!

Day 1604

Over 1000 project words again today. 4500 to go. Got a long (5K) email from T giving me lots more good advice about jobs. I'm beginning to wonder if my policy of always assuming the worst in order to avoid disappointment is working. What puts me off is that I got optimistic at ABC, most horribly just before the crash. The experience unnerved me a lot. But unless I allow myself to be a bit more optimistic it'll be hard to get anywhere.

There are 3 awkward questions that are going to be asked jobs-wise: (1) Why did you leave ABC? (2) What were you doing 1991-95? and (3) Why are you looking for a first job at age 26?
I have put this to M, and S and Barber, and T, and no-one has given me a straight answer as to what to do. (Barber suggested I could say I'd been writing a book, which wasn't such a bad suggestion).
I wonder if they are Insoluble Questions, and people don't want to depress me.

Anyway. Finished Dombey & Son. (Everyone got married).

Day 1603

Cold, wet and windy. Rode into town to the libe, got a couple of go-ahead American careers books, the sort that make you feel worse after you've read them because you daren't try what they suggest.

Got another thousand words of diss done. I'm quite pleased with the progress I've made since I got properly started. For light relief, rewrote that QBasic LISP expression evaluator in QuickC - worked first time, no trouble. Pleasing.

Put a Diana Profitometer on my Geocities web site to show how much interest she's made on the divorce settlement (all in Javascript) and suggest better uses for the money.

Last night watched QED about happiness. It mentioned in passing that smiling voluntarily only generates happiness if you smile fully, involving eye muscles etc. It works too! It's the most fun you can have on your own.

Day 1602

Worked extremely hard on the diss, getting 2000 words down (1500 over quota). Corresponded quite deeply with T about Star Trek and post-modernism in The Perishers (they've gone self-referential about the 'eyeballs in the sky' annual plot).

Looked up how to spell Capt. Kathryn Janeway's first name.

Day 1601

Got some project done in the morning. Back in contact with T, who sent helpful job-finding tips. Went up to Dulchester: exciting thunderstorms visible from the lab. Went and saw #Martin, who was moved by evidence of work on my part to become quite helpful.

Came back, carefully went through the adverts in Computer Weekly. Perhaps looking for a job won't be so bad this time round.

Watched Star Trek: Voyager, the first ep which I taped last night. I liked Janeway, very commanding especially in a crisis, also the Vulcan and the holographic doctor. A couple of irritating characters but you can't escape them in the modern Star Treks, or so it seems.

Day 1600

Started some serious diss typing in the morning. In the afternoon M&E took me up to Thrush Green, via Grainley to look at the register office, and we had drinks by the duckpond. M said this was in return for my services last week. Had a good talk, then wandered round looking at things and half expecting Lovejoy and Lady Jane to appear.

E had found out somehow that I'd only managed to get 7 interviews in 4 years - I refrained from pointing out that the true figure was 5, not 7 ('No ma'am, it's generally known that you have only flown two missions.')

Later C came round, facing redundancy no less poor lad, so we watched Alan Partridge to cheer him up.

Evening of Star Trek stuff - including the 'Bastards' bloke we saw round T's that night. Gave Dombey & Son a read - it'll be on R4 soon so I'd better get it finished.

Day 1599

Nice weather, cooler and sunny. Made extensive notes for the diss. The JavaScript prog was a big source of trouble and I'm not sure Netscape is interpreting it properly. I'll have a go at writing it in proper Java, if I get the time.

Little else to report. A spot of reading in the evening. Bank Holiday tomorrow - correspondingly high levels of drunken shouting tonight and last night.

Day 1598

Cooler and sunnier. Got a lot of project work done. Rode to Sainsbury's before dinner for extra wine.

More project in the afternoon - followed up an idea I got yesterday from looking through the listing. Now at least my program looks vaguely as if it does what it's supposed to. Made even more notes on functional languages.

Cooked tea, watched Dad's Army, the one where Mainwaring declares martial law. Very good.
After tea spent some time on a JavaScript lottery simulator while listening to The Bruce-Partington Plans.

Day 1597

Rained all night and all morning. Then it suddenly brightened up with strong wind, sun and small cumulus. Usually we don't get this extended rain till September, so it's come a week or so early.

Made extensive project notes; made a breakthrough in understanding how SK combinators act as steering agents at graph nodes. My book about The Roman War Machine arrived.

Also made good progress with Java, swiftly working out how to get a graphics context. I need a good editor that can recognise long filenames.

Might give Dombey & Son a carry-on later.

Day 1596

Rode into town in the morning, went to the bank. At the library drew copies of maps of Bournemouth and Guildford for the nox gallinae on the grounds that forewarned is forearmed

Back at home more notes. More program. No Lovejoy, as the cricket's on again.

Interesting bit in the paper about why one should not make platonic relationships romantic.

C came round in the evening, watched that G. Formby film he had me tape. Devised a background image for his web page.

Watched Hancock, the Lord Byron one.

In rather a dull patch Dombey & Son-wise.

Day 1595

More diss (2248 words, 9752 to go), more diss notes, more program. Found the problem with the cell grid assignment operator - misplacing uninitialised variables for member vars and attempting to allocate a 15,000 x 15,000 array!

Also cranked up my own computer for some FORTH. I wrote a recursive factorial off the top of my head, right first time (except, as usual, I forgot 0! is 1 not 0. 0 still makes more sense, I think).

Watched that triffic ep of Only Fools and Horses where they go on holiday and Rodders has to pretend to be 14. He is 26 in that ep and in the early stages with Cassandra, so if I just catch up a bit... It's a pretty pass when Rodney's more socially accomplished than you are. To be fair, I think I do tend to underestimate my capacities in this regard. The trouble is that I tend to assume I can get away with gradually assimilating myself; the problem is that people take my initial reserve for stand-offishness. I go way too far to avoid rebuffs.

Carried on with Dombey and Son. I was caught out by Paul dying. I assumed from the title that he must recover. Very much standard for Dickens though.

Day 1594

Hot, humid and unpleasant weather. Project in the morning, went to Dulchester in the afternoon and spoke to my supervisor. He was more encouraging than last week. Got a copy of the 32-bit beta for Netscape 3. Came home; it had rained but everything was damper than ever and very uncomfortable.

Just had a thought. Assuming I can put together the presentational, financial and fortunate resources necessary to get a job and survive in it (these being two separate Hills of Difficulty) I need never fear anything again if I'm lucky.

Posted the letter to T. Included a scan of that photo of me on Southend Pier pretending to be in the new Minder credits.

Day 1593

M rang up at 9.30am asking me to do a favour. Would I go to C&A where her mum works, get her mum's house keys off her, go to her mum's house, get the keys to M's house from the kitchen, go round to M's house, lock the front door, go back to C&A and return her mum's keys, then take M's house keys to E's work, the cause of all this being she'd taken his keys by mistake. Presumably after this I would then be free to make my own way home.

Took my bike. Then I discovered it was boiling hot, though it was calm with a little mist at first. It was like a summer morning in a dream. Home again by 11.30, via Wilton's bookshop for a triffic C++ book by the bloke who wrote the language. 10.8 miles in 63 riding minutes.

M rang at 12 to thank me. Nice to be trusted to go into all these people's houses.

Alternated project programming and project notes all day. Notes were quite encouraging, I think I might be able to do a decent diss after all.

I have often found seemingly ordinary transactions in banks, shops etc a trial. I noticed it again today. I wonder if I'm imagining it though.

Day 1592

Beautiful weather, very hot with a steadily increasing wind. Worked all day on the thesis and program: could not get the program to use the assignment operators I'd provided. Made a little progress on that by the evening, after writing various tests.

Some bastard was using a chainsaw over at the school; the amount of noise was appalling for a Sunday. I was strongly tempted to complain to the Environmental Health.

Had a terrible twinge in my back while eating Sunday dinner. Will have to start sitting up straight again while I'm typing.

Made some minor modifications to my GeoCities home page. Read on with Dombey & Son.

Still experiencing the 'fast forward' effect associated with working very hard and not doing much else. Not actually a bad thing.

Day 1591

Got cracking on my dissertation in the morning, had 1,166 words done after only 3 hours. At this rate I'll have the 12,000 done in less than 2 weeks.

Weather very hot, classic summer stuff. Went back to VT3 (my project program) and saw that the problem was to do with all that copy constructor/assignment operator stuff, ie I'd forgotten to provide said things.

Carried on writing to T. Little else to report, I fear; except that I was thinking in the evening about what a good influence E has been on me.

Read more Orwell essays. It is exactly one month since I gave up smoking.

Day 1590

Got a decent night's sleep, and started on my project. A letter from T arrived; I was writing a reply when M rang up about noon. She was skiving off work so I went round and ended up staying till 5.

For the first time I told her exactly what happened at ABC: she saw nothing unusual in being escorted (or 'closely followed') out of the building. She said this happened when people gave in their notice, let alone anything more suspicious. So I was quite wrong, or rather quite right and should never have believed mum on this subject, to've thought they suspected me of anything other than the old 'unsatisfactory performance'. Not that that was fair either.

In the evening to the Crown with her and E.What a great day. I'll be well justified in leaving 'em alone for the rest of the weekend.

They both confirmed my own strong impression that I ought to start thesis-writing NOW. Will do so as soon as I sober up tomorrow.

Had fun coming back in the dark - thought 'this is the cutting edge of danger, if I was really the coward I take myself for sometimes I wouldn't dare be here.' We advance!

Day 1589

Started work at 7.30 am. Went into town, got a helpful C++ book from the libe and last year's ephemeris for 10p from the bookshop (for the Pluto positions).

Did the project almost all day: broke for Lovejoy, and The Bowmans is on soon.

Day 1588

Felt very sleepy and under the weather in the morning; nevertheless got on with my project, after two hours' cleaning up the house. Ran into an error in the compiler-generated part of the prog - what am I supposed to do about that?

Jo J rang up at seven with the latest hen night info. This threw me into a foul mood (nightclub apprehension) so when M rang up at eight I immediately started continuing the argument we had on Sunday. (I must admit though that arguing with M does represent a certain increase in self-confidence).

If my project wasn't being so troublesome I'd've been in a better mood, and I told her so.

Day 1587

Got some projecting done in the morning, went to campus. I arrived at the lab at the same time as K and let her in. My supervisor arrived later and actually, me and him had a bit of an argument about list implementations. It was embarrassing as K and the others heard everything. Afterwards she came over and said meaningfully, 'so he's your supervisor then'.

Did a bit of searching for graph reduction stuff on the WWW, found the GeoCities home page. I've come across geocities.com URL's before: they give you a free home page and e-mail address. I thought 'What's in it for them?' but signed up straight away.

In the evening George Orwell, and more project. I'll have to work intensively to get these new modifications done.

Quite a constructive day really.

Day 1586

Did some more project, then went down to Lakeside to look at suits. Decided to dress up smart to do so. Followed E's advice and looked at M&S's reductions, ended up with a £99 one as worn by Scully or the woman detective on The Bill.

Made a leisurely way home via PC World. Got MS Arcade 2. It's great - Galaxians, PacMan, Pole Position and Dig Dug. Stopped for a pie at the Chafford Hundred Safeway, home by about 1.40.

Further followed E's advice by wearing my suit all afternoon to get used to it. Did a bit more project in the afternoon and in the evening, also scored 7.8 million on TDK Pinball.

Day 1585

Straight to work on the project. Solved the timer problem: it was where the init was being called from that was the problem, not yielding control.

After dinner rang M up and invited myself round. Had a long, intense discussion about the hen night and jobs. E wanted driving practice so we went out and visited M's dad's grave. I pointed out the buildings in Mugsborough I'd worked in.

To the Crown with them in the evening. M mentioned she worked with people who were younger than her and on their second job. I said it was the same at ABC. Now I can just (just) think about the latter without wanting to set fire to the building. I suppose it's a kind of progress. And at least, if it had to happen, it happened right at the beginning of my career rather than the end.

Today a bit of proper rain at last. A drop about 10am, a shower about 5.45; then, on my way to the pub about 7.50, it started really raining and hasn't stopped since (3 hours or so).

Day 1584

Listened to R4 all afternoon; documentary about epidemics, a what-if about Britain being neutral in WW1.

Nipped up to the shop for fizzy water, was a bit troubled by the old association with going out for fags but got by it with the good old 'Don't think about it for the next 3 minutes' rule (apparently any craving for anything only lasts that long).

Day 1583

Had some more of the cheese and onion flan I made yesterday, which was nice cold. Terrible R5 reception this evening for some reason.

Day 1582

Went into town to the library and to pick up the film (the one with me pretending to've lost my wallet on Southend pier, like on the new Minder creds). Went to Staples for discs, a nice girl found the DS/DD ones for me.

Got back to work on the project. Have got to the stage where even if I had to hand it in tomorrow it would recognisably resemble the Progress Report. I've got another 6 weeks to finish it, quite a long time really, but I'd better not slacken off. I find getting 4 hrs/day in hard.

I am going through all my albums one by one, listening to them while I work on my project - got to Live Killers so far.

Day 1581

Despite a rotten hangover got back to work on the project - made more progress today. Cycled to Sainsburys for more wine. Another Lovejoy in the afternoon, what an unexpected treat they are. I don't really know why I like it, probly the combo of Lady Jane and envying Lovejoy's competence. Then more project.

Thinking about how different it will be looking for a job again, I realised something about my time at ABC that I had never realised - I reckon the things that went on there, including getting slung out in the end, distressed me so much because I liked working there. Whatever next? Pity it always takes me about 2 years to realise these things.

Day 1580

Made substantial project progress in the morning - spotted a new without a delete. Did 2 1-hr sessions, with the Java book for light relief. Exciting blustery showery weather. After dinner Lovejoy, then another 2 project sessions.

In the evening some impressive sun and dark clouds and wind.

Day 1579

At 4.30am got up for a wee, saw dawn preparing, with a spectrum of colours coming up in order from the eastern horizon; and Venus riding high in the East. I don't think I've ever seen her as the morning star (Hesperus) before. Eala earendel eangla beorhtast I thought.

Got up properly somewhat later, and went into town. Took that film to Boots, the one with the Southend pier pictures.

Had an extremely frustrating project session in the afternoon with memory leaks etc. Then the compiler started crashing. In the end I temporarily gave up and composed the Captain Pugwash theme with the MIDI prog while running MS Anti-virus in the background. in the evening worked out a new approach.

Watched Lovejoy, the one about Napoleon's commode. There was a terrible turn by Alexei Sayle trying to do a Cockney wideboy, it was like his Brian Damage but worse. Also the Files (Born Again), pretty good.

Carried on with The Knight & Knave of Swords. Fafhrd and the Mouser are never troubled by computer science projects or lacks of sexual confidence. Give me the titan diamonds etc any day.

Day 1578

Had one project frustration after another, but am gradually approaching the goal (very gradually). I might up the effort to 4 hrs/day instead of 3 - be a shame to cack up my exam results with a poor project mark.

Didn't need any nicotine gum till 4.25pm - amazing.

In the evening watched a rather dark drama The English Wife. Couldn't stick it till the end, turned off after there was a rape and 2 murders all in 90 seconds.

Reading the paper discovered Ben Elton shares my distaste for the current cult of violence in films (Q. Tarantino etc.) I never know about Ben, I mean: PRO - wrote The Young Ones, CON - wrote a load of wanky novels, CON - slagged off Benny Hill in a way that made it obvious he'd never watched him, PRO - atoned somewhat with that 'Benny Elton' sketch on Harry Enfield. So I suppose this puts him 1 notch ahead. Oh no, I forgot the CON, 'I want you to know that I am seriously rich and money is no problem', so he's level on 0 points.

Taped a promising-looking film called Nashville.

Day 1577

On with the project. A certain amount of progress with the derived classes. M rang up about 2pm to relate a complex comms problem. Comms are ever an evil mystery etc.

Cycled into town in search of the program segment prefix format and new shirts. Found a big white one and a green silk one in C&A for £7.99 each. In the libe found a great Java book plus an assembly language book which told all about the PSP. Nice one. It was 4.24 when I left town - dangerously late as you might say, with afternoon turning into evening.

Had rather a good evening at M's, a pity to have to depart into the cool dark water of the way home, which I covered in under 8 minutes.

This is the 18th day of not smoking. It's not been as hard as I feared, though I am occasionally tormented by thoughts of lapsing, and also by dreaming that I am smoking (apparently quite normal).

Day 1576

Got a good 9 hours' sleep, was up refreshed and got straight back to work on the project. Bashed it about until I had the slot store working as a derived class of the pointer list, and the compiled code reader working on top of that. Now I've got to do the chain as a derived class, then I can do the cell grid, then I can get the running display going.

Discovered that the no-mail-waiting indicator on Compuserve has been playing me false, when I more or less randomly decided to go 'Get New Mail' anyway. Spent some time composing a reply to the 7 messages from T that were waiting.

Got washed and brushed up for the weekend. I've been working dead hard on the project this week and deserve a rest.

Day 1575

Claudius' birthday... Managed to do the hares/rabbits thing again, got straight to work on my project, then cycling into town. Treated myself to Parklife with some of the cash I've saved by not smoking. By cutting the gum into quarters I got down to 2 bits yesterday and saved another £1.05.

Went up to campus, saw K as usual rooted to the spot in front of her terminal in the engineering lab and was moved to ask if she ever left the room. She shook her head sadly.