Ash the Mighty

When you see this on your flist, quote Firefly.

I am easily influenced by others. That, and I’m insanely excited to see
Serenity again, so I’m going to have to go with this slightly edited
quote from Serenity which I was lucky enough to see at the Edinburgh
Film Festival:

“As sure as anything, I know this . . . I aim to misbehave.”

~Cap’n Malcom “Mal” Reynolds

And thanks to
for continually reminding me by her geek rants how fantastic
Firefly/Serenity is (and now CSI to which I say “took you long enough
to realize!”). Oh, and I’m pretty sure the quote should be “I’m goin’
to my bunk.” Which is now code among my friends for . . . well . . .
YOU figure it out!

I’m done! My good good God. Never thought I’d see the day. You might notice that it’s a lot later than I said it would be when I finished. Well, Sunday morning at about 8am I gave up. I was at 9,800 words (I had taken a whole section out right after my previous post) and just could not think of anything else to say. It was ugly. So I gave up. I went to sleep for about 4 hours. Got up, watched some TV. Tried to print out Elise’s dissertation. Discovered I was out of ink (eek). Went back to sleep from 6pm until almost 12am (I had planned on sleeping the night through, but my body had other ideas). Got up, watched some more TV. Had a late dinner of rice and brownies (I’ve been living like a monk so haven’t been to the grocery store for over a fortnight . . . despite the fact that I can see it out my bedroom window). Sat back down to edit and discovered that at some point my brain had come up with more things to say. So now here I am three hours later. I once again rewrote a decent sized section and added several paragraphs elsewhere. Here are the stats:

Number of Words: 10,203
Number of pages: 24
Number of footnotes: 87
Footnotes per page: 3.625
Number of Bibliographic sources: 44
Number of Bibliographic sources which have the name “DTA Rhodes” in it: 1
Number of papers I’ll ever have to do again: 0!

I’m happy. Tomorrow I buy more printer ink; get Elise’s and my papers printed up; get Braden’s, Elise’s and my papers bound and turned in; buy myself a paperback novel because I’m more or less forgotten what they look like!

Take care everyone. Soon Ash Rhodes.com will be suffering a major change because I’ve been informed that the code massively malfunctions when viewed with IE (yet it passes W3C validation . . . how weird is that?). We’ll have to see what new and trippy design I can think up!

Slainte.

“So don’t try to deny it pretty baby,
You’ve been down so long you can hardly see
When the engine’s stalled and it won’t stop raining
It’s the right time to roll to me”
~Del Amitri – “Roll to Me” – Glasgow band!

So here I sit at almost 2 in the morning typing on my computer. It could only mean one thing. That’s right, I’m writing my dissertation! In fact, you may very well be thrilled to know that I’m actually almost done with my dissertation! Huzzah! I’m sitting at almost 9000 words and I still need to write a mini-chapter on the Aftermaths of the battles of Alexandria and Agincourt and then there’s always the Conclusion. Between the two of them I should be able to squeeze out another grand of words. Here’s hoping at least.

I just popped open a can of Red Bull and have already declared that I’m not going to bed until this thing’s done. That way I’ll be able to sleep in guilt-free tomorrow. Maybe even go see a movie or something. Then tomorrow night I’ll start some editing and finish it up on Monday. Then I figure I’ll drop Braden’s, Elise’s, and my dissertations off at the copy place for binding, hit the gym while it’s still free, then pick those badboys up and turn them in (possibly even a day early, shock of all shocks!).

I’m of course way ahead of myself and still have some finishing to do. I don’t think words express how happy I’ll be to see the the arse of this thing. On that note, sitting here allows me lots of time to daydream (when I’m staring at the screen with no idea what to write). I’ve decided that I’m going to spend at least some of my last few weeks here going around Scotland on a photo-trip. Just me and the camera. Maybe I’ll even get a few good shots for once! Yeah, it’s not quite as fun as a backpacking trip across Europe, but it’s cheaper! . . . oh wait. No it isn’t (stupid film processing costs). Well, at least it doesn’t involve weeks at a time on my own in countries where I don’t speak the local languages!

Slainte.

“O Fortuna
velut luna
statu variabilis,
semper crescis
aut decrescis;”

“O Fortune,
like the moon
you are changeable,
ever waxing
and waning;”
~Carl Orff – “Carmina Burana” – “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi” – “O Fortuna”

I’ve been making small tweaks to this site over the past few weeks and the tweaking will undoubtedly continue . . . mostly because I really hate the way this thing works right now. What I’d ideally like is for the window in which you are reading this right now to adjust size based on the length of the document showing within it. That way I could just have a single scroll bar on this page rather than the stupid double one that we’re stuck with at the moment. Ugh. Drives me crazy and I wrote the code for the damned thing!

And in other news I’m trying desperately to write my dissertation and am very upset by my lack of progress. It’s so disgusting how badly I’m doing that I’m not even going to give details. Just rest assured that it’s bad and if I pass it’ll only be because the graders have taken pity on me. But I’ll take their pity if it’ll give me a degree!

Slainte.

“Call me irresponsible.”
~Frank Sinatra – “Call Me Irresponsible”

I’ve wanted to have a PhD for as long as I can remember. Seriously. At least since the beginning of highschool (so at least a decade). Everyone always told me that it would be lots of hard work, but I don’t think I really believed them. Academics had always come easy to me all the way through primary and secondary education and into college. By the end of my stay at the UofA though I had experienced truly difficult classes that I had to work hard at to even pass much less excel in. Still, I thought I’d be able to at least stick with my education because it was what I wanted. I jokingly told people it was because I wanted to make my granddad (Dee) call me “Doctor” just once . . . this is before he died of course at which point the joke rather lost its amusement factor.

Now I’ll say to one and all that you really can just shove all that. It is really not going to happen and I couldn’t be more thrilled. I sit here and look at my very good friend Chris Bowles and see what he’s going through trying to get his PhD done all the while trying to figure out what he’s going to do with his life because there are no jobs in the United States for Archaeologists with a speciality in Late Roman/Early Medieval British Identity to be found, and I just have to say “is it really worth it?” The dude is bloody brilliant and has written 300 pages of a thesis that must be good since I don’t understand a word of it and he’s still horrified that he may not even pass! What kind of a life is that, I ask you?

So those of you who may not have gotten the not-so-subtle hints previously that I would be ending my academic career once I’ve (finally) finished my dissertation, let me say it plain: I’m outa here!

That’s not to say I’ll never step foot in a classroom though. I quite fancy officially learning all about the photography that I’ve been loving so much. Is it too late to become an artiste?

Slainte.

“Through all the streets ours ran; they slaughtered, slashed and killed – why, twenty thousand Saracens or more they finished off!”
~Guillaume de Machaut – La Prise d’Alixandre, pp 75 – ‘Cause if I have to read this crap then so do you!

Lauren Smithson is the perfect example as to why it doesn’t pay to start early at any endeavor. She came to Glasgow already knowing what she was going to write her dissertation about and began researching said topic some time in November. She’s back in town for a week to meet with Strickland (which isn’t going to happen BTW, due to his being out of town), is sitting at about 17,000 words, and is still worried that she isn’t going to finish by her due date of September 30th.

The lesson to be learned? You start early, you just end up working harder. Yeah, I’m stressed and am going to have to work like a madman for the next fortnight, but at least I’ve not been doing it for the past 10 months nor am I going to have to cut my paper down by at least 5,000 words (and even money says she’s just as stressed as I am!).

In other news, BBQ today over at Chris’, so I better get my trousers on and get moving. Got an awful lot of dead flesh to buy before the festivities begin. And those who are curious, my last night at Jinty’s was truly awful. But at least it’s over and that’s all I care about. I’m never going to have to babysit this particular set of drunks ever again!!!! Yay!

Slainte.

“That ain’t workin’ that’s the way you do it
Get your money for nothin’ get your chicks for free”
~Dire Straits – “Money for Nothing”

You know me, always trying to better myself and my own surroundings. Ah, hell. Who am I kidding? We all know that anything is better than writing dissertations. So I’ve completed the first of what will likely be several changes for this website. Now you don’t have to go digging to find my blog. It’s right here on the front page. It’s really the only reason for this page anyway, so why not just have the most recent entry sitting there staring at you?

In other news, the University of Glasgow sucks at maths too. I got both my papers back from earlier this summer. They’re not the best grades in the world, but I passed and that’s what matters. One of them however intrigues me. They do this double grading thing where they get someone from outside the Uni to check to make sure the standards are high enough. Dr. Strickland was my prof for the Agincourt paper and gave me a 68% (well into “pass” territory) whereas the external examiner gave me a 62% (not nearly so good). Instead of getting a 65%, I got a 63%. I know it’s only 2 percentage points, but it’s still pretty rubbish if you ask me!

Tonight marks the last Friday of my career as a Door Steward for Jinty McGinty’s. I’m excited to be done with it all, though the accompanying lack of fundage is going to put a serious cramp in my travel plans . . . alas! But the paper must be written so these little sacrifices have to be made . . . and this is all without mentioning that once I’m done at Jinty’s, the pool of hot women for me to stare it shrinks drastically. Now that’s something to say “alas” about! Alas!

Slainte.

“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer. Swab one down, run it through CODIS, ninety-eight bottles of beer on the wall.”
~Eric Szmanda (as Greg Sanders) – CSI: Las Vegas