arotau

Mim posted off my thesis yesterday by Special Delivery, and thankfully the Post Office managed not to lose it (or at least, they claim to have delivered it correctly so it probably made it). Another step closer to actually getting it all over and done with. Mim has also made amazing progress with getting the flat sorted out, so there are now only a few little things left to do.

Yesterday I got my new backup drive, a 250GBb external hard drive. I’m very pleased with it: it came with both Firewire and USB2 cables, is solidly constructed and very quiet, has an 8Mb buffer, and best of all a funky blue light strip on the front that looks great in the dark. I plugged it in, reformatted it as an ext3 drive, and then just copied my home directory across to it. It’s also going to be useful once we start doing video editing from Mim’s DV camera, as Firewire should be easily fast enough to cope with writing and editing the DV stream. I still need to get a DVD burner at some point, so that we can do backups that can be stored elsewhere.

I finally got my voice profile for the phone system at work today, and spent some time figuring out how to program the various phone buttons (there are something like 120 buttons on the phone, six screens, 24 speaker channels, two microphones and a handset — quite a change from my old phone). Apparently tonight my second computer will arrive and my less-temporary desk will be setup, but I won’t see the results till Monday as I am spending tomorrow at a charity voluthon day. I have a big stack of books to read over the weekend, and I have started subscribing to some of the company research in a (probably vain) attempt to understand what I’ll actually be doing.

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Here is the last set of wedding photos. In case this is the first time you’ve visited arotau, you can also see the earlier sets of photos.

This afternoon Mim went to the printers to pick up my thesis, which they eventually produced for her after a lot of hassle over whether they were open or not (their website advertised that they were open till 4:30, the sign on the door said that they closed at 3:30, but the staff there claimed they shut at 1pm!). I now have three copies of my thesis bound and ready to be sent off the Graduate Schools Office in York, and I’ve already spotted the first obvious mistake. Now we just have to wait to find out when the viva will be, at which point I’ll have to actually remember all the stuff I spent three years working on and which no longer seems very significant.

I also got my formal letter confirming my new job, and learnt how to use my new phone. The phone thing sounds stupid, but it’s actually not at all obvious on the trader’s phones. Tomorrow I should have access to all the extra computer equipment, and maybe even a permanent desk to sit at.

On Saturday Mim went into town to meet Sheila and Rachel and their fiances, and met up with Rhianon on the way in. I spent the day chilling out at home, and then in the evening we went to watch Wimbledon. It’s another fun movie from the same people who made Notting Hill — very enjoyable but nothing much too it. Perfect Saturday evening viewing!

Today we went to the Good Shepherd again for church, and took Rhianon along as Steve was away for the weekend. We’ve been having an excellent series from Ezekiel, and this week’s sermon from Alan was no exception — really challenging. Afterwards we had Rhianon and Fiona over for lunch, with Steve turning up later having got back from the weekend away.

I’ve just finished off my thesis and submitted it to the printers to be printed and bound. It should be ready to pick up on Tuesday, after which we’ll have to figure out some way to get it up to York before the end of Thursday (the final deadline for my thesis submission). It feels pretty good to have it finally done, though I now have the horror of the viva to look forward to.

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These photos are mostly from the church after the service.

As always, if you would like to look at the earlier sets of photos, just go to the Wedding photos section of the site.