Lauren Dempster

Heyo folks,

Another Thursday of “great” lectures AP3, PSD {Philly G stylee} and ALGS3 {Muffy is BACK}. The only highlights are falling asleep in AP3, Phil’s “pop” quiz and the fact that the guys got really interested in Computation when Muffy bent over to pick someones pen up…

However the main highlight (although possibly best described as major embarrassment) was in the PSD workshop. Phil started by going over the answers to this mornings “pop” quiz. By question three I was sufficiently depressed by the fact that I knew nothing and had rested my head on one hand. I suppose to the now legendary Philly G it may have looked like I was trying to answer his question - I wasn’t. Queue him pointing at me, and me thinking it was probably someone else and looking behind me, to get my attention he goes:

“You with the lovely straw coloured hair”

The whole class erupts into laughter, and then to make everything ten times worse I got the question wrong. Classic.

A great moment but maybe one I wish had happened to someone else….
Laurenx

Now in even saying this I have already broken my own rule, on this (unfortunately now upon us) Season.

I believe whole heartedly that there should be no work up to Christmas until the 4th of December.

No Christmas Adverts on TV
No Christmas Decorations in shops
No Christmas songs in shops/radio/TV/full stop
No Christmas Shopping

The only possible exceptions to the no Christmas Early rule is Mince Pies (I had my first of the season, on Monday and it was damn good too) and christmas outfit shopping. Girls you know what I mean, you need time to prepare your Christmas wardrobe for cold nights and lots of partying.

Personally I decided when the adverts on TV started this year to not go to any shop that had started the hype this early, so far I can not go to : Woolworths, Argos, Index, Curries (although these are bad all year round), Iceland, Boots (plus the fact that their adverts are especially bad - even for Christmas adverts…), Marks and Spencers and Virgin Megastores.

Now don’t get me wrong I love Christmas, but before December it’s just plain ridculous.

Laurenxxx

So I think the effects of third year Comp Sci have finally gotten to me, my geek rating has probably sky rocketed (and no I’m not redoing the test to check) a few things over the last couple of days have only proved this to me.

While sitting in the QM this lunch time as usual with Matt, I sort of got thinking about how much we were probably annoying other people. You know there is always that one couple sitting at a table looking “loved up” and I normally have to admit that I hate them. At the moment it seems less of a problem for me - I have no idea why
Anyway I mentioned this to Matt and somehow we got on to the conversation about how people may have names for us: like Annoying-Couple-who-sit-in-the-food-factory (my suggestion) and couple.dcs.gla.ac.uk (Matt’s non-surprisingly). So we sat there laughing at this (and sorry for any non-CompSci folk reading this I’m sure it’s extremely dull and pointless) we thought about how we are TOTALLY the compsci couple (at undergrad level at least) and how we should get t-shirts to celebrate this fact so

couple.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~his

and

couple.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~hers

matching t-shirts, what do you think?

Lauren xx

Howdy folks!

Last night the strangest thing happened….

There is this cat that lives in the close of my building, I don’t know who it belongs to or who feeds it, but it stays there all the same. It’s always been a little scary as it tends to suddenly appear everytime you go to open the main door. It also does this weird sitting outside the door of my flat and staring at me (or whoever seems to be entering or leaving my flat). This has lead me and my flatmate to believe that the cat is possessed and is the devil. It’s just weird, ok.

Anyway last night I had the door open to my flat for a little while, it was quite late at night and Lisa (my flatmate) was in bed. I closed the outside door, and got the shock of my life…

Scary possessed Cat was in my flat. God knows how the cat got in without me noticing. Not only was it in my flat but it was in my bedroom. I managed to get it out of there just for it to go into the sitting room. Eventually my incredibly slow brain realised that if i closed all the doors I could shoo it out the front door. After many “come here kitty kitty” and “I’m not going to hurt you” and “why are you in my flat? you pretty little thing”. Eventually I resorted to “get the **** out of my flat, you stupid cat”. It gave me a look that could kill, turned around and left.

Moral of the story? I don’t think there is one, but we all have our own possessed cats sitting outside the door and eventually you just have to tell them to leave you alone.

Laurenxx

So yet again I have had another fun filled day in the lab with Matt, I would like to say that I got a lot of work done and my IS3 Assignment is finished - I would be, of course, outrageously lying.

If you want to look at the site I am in the (never ending) process of evaluating, www.getinlane.com. I’ll let you make up your own mind but it does have a really “groovy” background which, I think, changes colour depending on what time of day it is.

Never ending of course because I am continually distracted, which while they are all extremely welcome does mean that i will have yet another week of late nights in the lab
To be honest even taking in to consideration the PSD-and-Team-project-god-awful-nightmare-which-I-am-living-on-a-daily
-painfully-stressful-basis I am absolutely FANTASTIC. I love my course and I love University.

Somebody even said to me the other day, before an AP3 lecture

“You are the happiest person I have ever seen in an Computing lecture.”

I would agree with him while AP3 may not be the worst module in 3rd year, it doesn’t have many people grinning from ear to ear.
Well to be honest it wasn’t AP3 I was grinning at either- sorry Rob but had to clarify that before people started phoning the men in white coats.

I feel like I should finally state what I have been alluding to for some number of posts. I am this happy not just because of the joys of Computing Science, but because I have a very damn ace boyfriend. So here’s hoping for yet more days in the lab just like today.

Keep smiling….

Laurenxx

Hey folks so I really should be working away on the IS3 assignment I have for a week today, but ah well…

Would first of all like to give a big shout out to all those who that were at the Compsoc Pub Quiz last night (especially those that worked so hard over in the Compsoc social committee, a great night all round you should be damn proud of yourselves!!) It was a really fantastic night, even if my team did come about 6th (or maybe 7th no one can really remember!)

Watch out for the new Compsoc Promotional video, it’s going to be fantastic, might make Captain Jackson look good… (sorry Matt). So lots of highjinks were had after Curlers and it seemed like most of the summer DCS crew were back together in the BO building at 11 o’clock at night, fun
So although yesterday was a really shit day (please just don’t mention PSD or my project team to me - ever again - no I’m not joking I really mean it) i had a great night.

Also came home to find a letter from one of my good friends from back home, she’s studying in France this year so it was really good to hear from her. I’m sure when I get another spare minute I’ll be writing an especially long reply to catch up!

Anyway best be off have the joys of GMM3 to attend…

Keep smiling (I know I am),

Laurenxx

So everything has been extremely hectic this week, don’t think I know whether I am coming or going. The PSD project has been a major problem for me and I have spent so much time in the lab I feel like I haven’t left it at all.

So the stress is really getting to me and I think I may have already developed the nervous twitch PD said I would have by the end of OS3 next term… Although it could just been the amount of caffene (sp? can’t be bothered fixing it) I have been drinking to try and stay awake.

What I am trying to say is give me it a bit of break folks. I may not deserve it but hey I’m only a human and sometimes things get way too much for me. I stress too much about stuff.

While in saying all this, I’m still incredibly happy
Laurenxx

I realise that as yet I haven’t made any post on the joys of my brand new 20Gb ipod. It is the best thing I have ever bought. Even the awful task of cleaning my kitchen and bathroom could be exciting with music blaring from my very stylish white earphones.

The adverts for the ipod are true, you do find yourself not realising that other people may be around when you have music on, I was dancing around ipod in one hand, mop in the other. Fantastic.

Not so fantastic however when I almost broke my whole body. This may take a little explaining and there is absolutely no logic to what I was doing.

Picture the scene. My kitchen has been flooded I have just mopped the floor and cleaned as much of the excess wetness on all the surfaces. I realise that the water had been coming from the ceiling and therefore could be lying in huge puddles on top of the wall units.

I got up on top of the worktop (I had at least taken my heels off at this point figuring that would just be plain stupid). Dancing around to Britney Spears’ “My Prerogitive” on top of the wet worktop, when the obvious happened and I slipped.

This is probably one of the only times (and I’m sure it will probably be the last) when I thanked god that my kitchen is so small that you can’t fit more than two people in it. Instead of plummeting to a certain painful landing on my back, I bashed my arm on the opposite wall hence not doing myself any damage whatsoever.

But don’t worry ipod i don’t blame you at all…

Till next time

Laurenxxx

After not getting any work done this weekend (thanks Ali for the great dinner on Sat night) I thought I would rectify this by going in early to the lab. Sitting there at 10.10 I get a phonecall from my flatmate. Ten minutes later i am back in my flat watching the rain fall in my kitchen.

I mean pour down the walls and drip off the light fittings. I had the joys of trying to switch the water off, trying to unscrew stuff while being rained on by water from an undisclosed source which smelt “funny” is not fun at all. After switching the water off made no noticable difference at all - I phoned the plumber.

The man was possibly the most annoying person I had ever spoken to, he seemed to find my plight funny and what’s worse kept saying “calm down love it’s only water”. However by far his “funniest” comment was when I asked when he could come and try and fix the problem.

“Is tomorrow morning ok?”

Before I started screaming at him down the phone, he said “Don’t worry I’ll be round ASAP.”

Ha bloody ha, some sense of humor on that bloke.

The only good thing is that he was actually round within 10 minutes, turning out to be just as annoying in the flesh as he was on the phone. The problem turned out to be the old women on the third floor flooding her washing machine, so no need for a plumber and I still managed to make it in to be only 5 minutes late for my 11 o’clock PSD lecture.

So really it may have managed to waste what could have been a complete mornings work, but only 50 minutes to get back to the flat phone a plumber, them to turn up, isolate the problem and then leave I think is pretty damn good going.

Laurenxx

I have realised that I haven’t posted for a while, I was intending to say that it wasn’t because I couldn’t think of something to post about but mainly just cause i was too busy.

However after starting to write up the above idea for a post I realised that I don’t actually have anything of note to say. At all. In fact I am feeling the continued stress of trying to come up with new and interesting things to say. In fact for tonight I think I may just give up and hope some time tomorrow I have some sort of brain wave with a decent idea to write about.

Anyway sorry for wasting your time with the most completely pointless post ever… (is there worse?)

Laurenx