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Whee! I'm feeling happy today.
Kinda.
Well yesterday started off really bad though.
My sis was driving me to work, traffic was really heavy and we were crawling in the expressway. Moving really, really slowly. We were going to exit the highway and like a mere 5 fives away from my work place when suddenly a huge jolt and bang happened... and basically we were crashed into by a car from behind. Quite a huge impact, but thankfully I didn't fall off my seat or twist my ankle or anything. But basically the back cover of our car was completely ruined. The bad things of having a car with a flat backside and low bumper. Loads of storage space and very roomy, but if any accident happens it gets ruined really bad. The impact made us bump lightly into the car in front. The car in front only got a few scratches, but our's the front and back were pretty badly damaged. Was a four car pile up, some prof from my uni crashed into the car of some lady, who crashed into us. The last car's windscreen was all cracked up and the front license plate fell off. My mum wondered if the lady driver completely didn't brake, or even pressed the accelerator by accident cos the crash into our car was really bad. And it was her car that became un-roadworthy and had to be towed away, whereas the prof still drove his pathetic beat up car to school for work. I got a ride from the first car to work - he's a student at my uni, so I got him to drop me off at my workplace since it was just outside the uni. The institute where I'm working at is part of the uni actually, but we are housed in a building just off campus. The uni is like... a 3 mins drive away from the highway exit, and it was school/worktime so that explains the reason why 3 out of the 4 accident cars were going to the uni. Still. I have no idea how that prof from China rammed in. The traffic at that time was moving at a crawl already, just how could he be driving at such a fast speed that caused such a bad crash? In the end the car repair fees will all have to come from his insurance of course, since it was definitely his fault. Still... its like... my sis just got her driving license about... 2 weeks + ago? And this horrid accident happened. She hasn't even received her proper driving license from the mail yet, since they take like a month to make and send out the cards. Third day of uni school, my 2nd week of work... was the first time that student drove to sch at that. Really, really bad luck.
But now on to the monster. I ended up reaching work at around 9 yesterday, about half an hour late, which is no biggie because my supervisor only comes at like... 10am or something. They are actually... pretty lax on the work hours... ppl come late but leave work on time. Pretty amazing imo. By the time its like 7pm i'm almost the last person left in the entire office. But I guess if there's lab work it'll be different. You don't have a choice if something unexpected crops up and you end up having to stay late to finish the experiment and all. But that's the life of a scientist and its not different anywhere else if you're doing science. But well I was working on the task my boss has assigned me halfway, when the lab manager guy suddenly came up to me and said that he's going to change a computer for me. I was like... huh? Then he asked if I needed to backup stuff from my comp, I said yes, then transferred the stuff to the company issued thumbdrive... I asked him if it was a mac or something and he was like, it's a workstation, a very good one. I had no idea what a workstation was but I didn't ask. I was still kinda surprised and wondering what the heck should I do - like i've got all my apps like evernote and mendeley on the comp, logged in to my account and all... when a guy came carrying a huge HP CPU. I decided that at least I need to log out of msoft outlook, but the lab manager just asked me to delete my windows account instead. So I hope that settled all my apps login issues. And then after the comp was shut down, we unplugged everything and the guy who came with the HP CPU took my previous CPU to use. The lab manager fetched me another monitor that he said was part of the set. Once everything was set up, I made a new user account and started settling into the new comp. Only 'problem' for now is that there's no microsoft office install here, and the IT guy was on MC yesterday. Still waiting for him to show up and do the installation, and till then I'll still be stuck with using google docs. Anyway... this comp... I went to check the specs yesterday and it confused me. 3 hard disks partitions, total storage space of a whooping 2TB. A nice 12GB of ram. 2.4GHz processor, duo core. Which surprised me. Duo core isn't much... But a very nice huge screen - did a search on the model and its 21.5 inches. So this morning I decided to check out the specs properly again, and when I checked the device manager, there were 8 identical processors listed. I was like, 'is this for real?', and when to do a search on the model. First thing was saw was that this CPU houses 8 cores. An 8 core processor. Like. FUCK. HOLY SHIT EIGHT CORES! Its not the fastest processor out of all the options this model can come in, but its right in the middle. And a Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card. Once again a mid range type graphic card for workstations. Still... this thing is a freaking monster! Like what did I do to deserve such goodness OMG!!! I bet this comp is like way better than the one my boss is using... no idea on the specs but the monitor is like... even smaller than my previous one. Which is a mere half the size of my current screen. This guy aint as big as a mac desktop but still. Its pretty substantially big. And the comp specs are a MONSTER. I wish my home comp was this good. Its like... suddenly my christmas wishlist is no longer alienware, but a badass work station. But apparently this thing was used by an ex-staff in the research group I'm in, and he/she used to do computer modeling, hence the need for this monster. The software and all are still installed, but apart from matlab - which is very normal, i've not even HEARD of the rest of the software before. Sleek! I'd definitely like to poke around those software if I have the time. No idea how far I can get with them though. Hopefully I'll be able to continue using this monster even after this project ends. Besides, its quite a pain to have to re-install all the apps again. As if it wasn't a pain enough to find windows equivalent of the apps I'm used to having on my mac already. So far I've got phrase express to replace typinator, ArsClip as a clipboard manager - though phrase express has a clipboard manager feature already... But I needed a one click hotkey for pasting text with formatting removed, plus I didn't know about phrase express's clipboard manager till later. And then I just got WinSplit Revolution to set up hotkeys for resizing windows, because those available by default on windows 7 ain't good enough. Plus, hotkeys like win+right/left arrow key are a no no for me. It defeats the purpose of a hotkey if i have to execute it using two hands, because my default mode when browsing and all is left hand on the keyboard to execute any shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+v to paste etc), while my right hand is on the mouse to scroll, select stuff etc. Only when I have to type long text like this will both my hands be on the keyboard.
So yup. Already using my own mouse since I had bought an extra last time to leave in my bag when bringing my lappy to school... I MUST use mouse with a back and front button, and a good scroll wheel. The standard issue one I got had a pathetic scroll wheel that gets stuck on a certain point every round. Now all I'm lacking is a good keyboard. The issued one I got feels sticky and yucky, even though I'm wiped it a million times already - wet wipes, dry wipes, with water... still feels yucky every time I type. And the keys aren't the most solid thing in the world... and one side of the plastic mechanism to prop the keyboard up is faulty so I have to prop that side up with tissue else the keyboard would shake every time I type. Thinking of buying a better keyboard... when I can walk and go shopping and all. I can claim that through the benefits allowance anyway so why not...
Alright. I guess I have slacked off work enough already. Wonder if the IT guy is still on MC. Still no msoft office. Got a group meeting later and my boss asked me to take minutes... hmm...
Kinda.
Well yesterday started off really bad though.
My sis was driving me to work, traffic was really heavy and we were crawling in the expressway. Moving really, really slowly. We were going to exit the highway and like a mere 5 fives away from my work place when suddenly a huge jolt and bang happened... and basically we were crashed into by a car from behind. Quite a huge impact, but thankfully I didn't fall off my seat or twist my ankle or anything. But basically the back cover of our car was completely ruined. The bad things of having a car with a flat backside and low bumper. Loads of storage space and very roomy, but if any accident happens it gets ruined really bad. The impact made us bump lightly into the car in front. The car in front only got a few scratches, but our's the front and back were pretty badly damaged. Was a four car pile up, some prof from my uni crashed into the car of some lady, who crashed into us. The last car's windscreen was all cracked up and the front license plate fell off. My mum wondered if the lady driver completely didn't brake, or even pressed the accelerator by accident cos the crash into our car was really bad. And it was her car that became un-roadworthy and had to be towed away, whereas the prof still drove his pathetic beat up car to school for work. I got a ride from the first car to work - he's a student at my uni, so I got him to drop me off at my workplace since it was just outside the uni. The institute where I'm working at is part of the uni actually, but we are housed in a building just off campus. The uni is like... a 3 mins drive away from the highway exit, and it was school/worktime so that explains the reason why 3 out of the 4 accident cars were going to the uni. Still. I have no idea how that prof from China rammed in. The traffic at that time was moving at a crawl already, just how could he be driving at such a fast speed that caused such a bad crash? In the end the car repair fees will all have to come from his insurance of course, since it was definitely his fault. Still... its like... my sis just got her driving license about... 2 weeks + ago? And this horrid accident happened. She hasn't even received her proper driving license from the mail yet, since they take like a month to make and send out the cards. Third day of uni school, my 2nd week of work... was the first time that student drove to sch at that. Really, really bad luck.
But now on to the monster. I ended up reaching work at around 9 yesterday, about half an hour late, which is no biggie because my supervisor only comes at like... 10am or something. They are actually... pretty lax on the work hours... ppl come late but leave work on time. Pretty amazing imo. By the time its like 7pm i'm almost the last person left in the entire office. But I guess if there's lab work it'll be different. You don't have a choice if something unexpected crops up and you end up having to stay late to finish the experiment and all. But that's the life of a scientist and its not different anywhere else if you're doing science. But well I was working on the task my boss has assigned me halfway, when the lab manager guy suddenly came up to me and said that he's going to change a computer for me. I was like... huh? Then he asked if I needed to backup stuff from my comp, I said yes, then transferred the stuff to the company issued thumbdrive... I asked him if it was a mac or something and he was like, it's a workstation, a very good one. I had no idea what a workstation was but I didn't ask. I was still kinda surprised and wondering what the heck should I do - like i've got all my apps like evernote and mendeley on the comp, logged in to my account and all... when a guy came carrying a huge HP CPU. I decided that at least I need to log out of msoft outlook, but the lab manager just asked me to delete my windows account instead. So I hope that settled all my apps login issues. And then after the comp was shut down, we unplugged everything and the guy who came with the HP CPU took my previous CPU to use. The lab manager fetched me another monitor that he said was part of the set. Once everything was set up, I made a new user account and started settling into the new comp. Only 'problem' for now is that there's no microsoft office install here, and the IT guy was on MC yesterday. Still waiting for him to show up and do the installation, and till then I'll still be stuck with using google docs. Anyway... this comp... I went to check the specs yesterday and it confused me. 3 hard disks partitions, total storage space of a whooping 2TB. A nice 12GB of ram. 2.4GHz processor, duo core. Which surprised me. Duo core isn't much... But a very nice huge screen - did a search on the model and its 21.5 inches. So this morning I decided to check out the specs properly again, and when I checked the device manager, there were 8 identical processors listed. I was like, 'is this for real?', and when to do a search on the model. First thing was saw was that this CPU houses 8 cores. An 8 core processor. Like. FUCK. HOLY SHIT EIGHT CORES! Its not the fastest processor out of all the options this model can come in, but its right in the middle. And a Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card. Once again a mid range type graphic card for workstations. Still... this thing is a freaking monster! Like what did I do to deserve such goodness OMG!!! I bet this comp is like way better than the one my boss is using... no idea on the specs but the monitor is like... even smaller than my previous one. Which is a mere half the size of my current screen. This guy aint as big as a mac desktop but still. Its pretty substantially big. And the comp specs are a MONSTER. I wish my home comp was this good. Its like... suddenly my christmas wishlist is no longer alienware, but a badass work station. But apparently this thing was used by an ex-staff in the research group I'm in, and he/she used to do computer modeling, hence the need for this monster. The software and all are still installed, but apart from matlab - which is very normal, i've not even HEARD of the rest of the software before. Sleek! I'd definitely like to poke around those software if I have the time. No idea how far I can get with them though. Hopefully I'll be able to continue using this monster even after this project ends. Besides, its quite a pain to have to re-install all the apps again. As if it wasn't a pain enough to find windows equivalent of the apps I'm used to having on my mac already. So far I've got phrase express to replace typinator, ArsClip as a clipboard manager - though phrase express has a clipboard manager feature already... But I needed a one click hotkey for pasting text with formatting removed, plus I didn't know about phrase express's clipboard manager till later. And then I just got WinSplit Revolution to set up hotkeys for resizing windows, because those available by default on windows 7 ain't good enough. Plus, hotkeys like win+right/left arrow key are a no no for me. It defeats the purpose of a hotkey if i have to execute it using two hands, because my default mode when browsing and all is left hand on the keyboard to execute any shortcuts (e.g. ctrl+v to paste etc), while my right hand is on the mouse to scroll, select stuff etc. Only when I have to type long text like this will both my hands be on the keyboard.
So yup. Already using my own mouse since I had bought an extra last time to leave in my bag when bringing my lappy to school... I MUST use mouse with a back and front button, and a good scroll wheel. The standard issue one I got had a pathetic scroll wheel that gets stuck on a certain point every round. Now all I'm lacking is a good keyboard. The issued one I got feels sticky and yucky, even though I'm wiped it a million times already - wet wipes, dry wipes, with water... still feels yucky every time I type. And the keys aren't the most solid thing in the world... and one side of the plastic mechanism to prop the keyboard up is faulty so I have to prop that side up with tissue else the keyboard would shake every time I type. Thinking of buying a better keyboard... when I can walk and go shopping and all. I can claim that through the benefits allowance anyway so why not...
Alright. I guess I have slacked off work enough already. Wonder if the IT guy is still on MC. Still no msoft office. Got a group meeting later and my boss asked me to take minutes... hmm...
