Day 23

More progress!! I've gotten through the boring part of my current chapter, sorta. Methods are now complete. The results and discussion portion should have lots of nice photos. :) Wow, dare I be optimistic and say this chapter will get done early next week? Or reaaaaally optimistic and say this weekend?

Day 22

Same old, same old. At least I made some progress today.

Day 21

Took this weekend to recoup a bit. I think I feel better. I finally exercised. Good stuff. Put in about half a page of text today.

Day 19

Today was a low day for thesis writing. It all seems so pointless. This current chapter is just pointing out to me what was not achieved and how lame it all was/is. I stopped pursuing this a few years back but I guess I'm supposed to include it.

If I didn't know so many Drs. I would think that

1. this is impossible
2. this is pointless
3. this is a character building exercise that you're supposed to suck at

Oh wait, I still think 2. and 3. are true when applied to mediocre scientists like me. Sigh.

I find it ridiculously difficult to be optimistic about The Thesis.

Day 18

Another chapter has begun. This chapter covers work I haven't touched in over three years. I hope it will still be coherent. On the plus side, part of this chapter is coming from my thesis proposal. Which was 20 pages of lies, er, optimism. That no one read because my PDF maker was screwy. No one told me they couldn't read it until the day of my proposal. During which my advisor didn't even show up for because I was less important than a 4-star general.

I'm not bitter. Really.

Day 15

Well, this chapter is more or less finished. I should say less. The English sounds terrible. It's so embarrassing, but I'm glad I got it all out. There are, of course, some holes and filling in holes is going to take forever. 80/20 rule. GAAAAH.

Looks like I'm going to need to start planning out another chapter. The data I was hoping for from this weekend didn't work out. Bleh. So now lab will be busy redoing stuff better.

Let's see, 15.5 - 1 (TOC) single-spaced pages (with figures) for one chapter. I'm not complaining.

Looks like I need to use Microsoft Word's master-document-subdocument feature for the per chapter bibliography?

Day 14

Forgot to celebrate going to double digits. Yay! Okay.

In other news, chapter not done, but close. The cork to my Balvenie scotch snapped in half, so now it's covered with plastic wrap. I guess I'll have to finish it. Good thing scotch is my drink of choice.

How do I set up a separate bibliography for each chapter? I'm using Endnote. There must be a way to do this. Phyllis?

Day 13

I think the goal for this weekend ought to be me finishing this chapter. Realistically, though, I have some data at school that I need to fish out and that requires me not being so lazy.

I'm pretty lazy. And distracted. I have other things to do! (Unfortunately)

But since new data is coming in on Monday, yes, the right thing to do would be to finish up this chapter.

Day 12

I know the day is not over yet, and there's a good chance I might write later tonight. Except lab is darn busy since I still have experiments to do, and there's RL obligations to tend to also. I'm banking a page now. Like in The Weakest Link.

I think I'm at a slightly easier section to write right now since it's mostly pre-written for a paper already. Gaaaaaah, that paper needs to get out before I stop caring about it.

Day 10

This is a backdated post.

In a fit of inspiration and lack of free wifi at SFO, I worked on my thesis. So ha! I did manage to get some progress in during vacation time.

I should note that there has been a slight change in accounting.

• The bibliography page is now included in the count.
• The page count is rounded to the nearest half page.
• A self-updating TOC was added on its own separate page.

So, the "drastic" increase in the number of pages is partly explained by new accounting but ALSO explained by the fact that I wrote several more paragraphs. Yeehaw! I'll take victories where I can. The TOC was more fun with figuring out what else Microsoft Word can do. Quite amazing. I never knew....

Does this post sound oddly optimistic? Maybe vacation was a good idea. Or, maybe CALIFORNIA is a good idea.

Day 7

Sheesh, so many days without progress! Wedding festivities are over, not back at school yet. I guess it's time to get back to writing. Maybe tomorrow. Ugh.

Day 3

Today I made some more progress on my thesis. Actually, I added another figure, which took up some space, AND added a table along with a few more paragraphs. Hmm. Meanwhile, I also backed up my thesis. I had to do some HF work today. Wrote for a few hours, then went out for 10 scoops of free ice cream.

I also found out that you can insert "captions" in Microsoft Word. And you can "cross reference." Wow. I'm too lazy/bored to learn to TeX like all the cool kids. Blaaargh.

Alas, I may flatline for a couple days because I'm heading out of this darned place for a wedding. Of course, now that I know there's at least three people who have heard of this blog, I guess I will attempt to do some work while away from lab. For a whole week! I'm so excited!

At this rate, this thesis will take forever. Blaaargh.

Day 2

Today is day 2. Instead of working on my thesis some more, I've now spent at least an hour figuring out

1. how to publish only graphs on Google Spreadsheets such that the chart automatically updates when new data is added
2. whether I should start another low-audience blog to clutter up cyberspace

Well, the answer to number 2 is clearly yes. So here it is. The graph will update as I write. Or not write. I have no idea when the end will come. With my lack of motivation and interest, it is sheer willpower that will get me to graduation.

RAWR.

Leave some comments. I'll read them because I'm always looking for a way to procrastinate.