Referencing Issues....

I regularly lose my endnote cwyw toolbar. It just disappears. I have to delete and then recopy the addins to the startup folder. Then it automatically opens EndnoteWeb even though I have never in my life used Endnote web, and I have to go in to the preferences and select for endnote.

This all started happening a few months ago and I'm not sure why. Sometime the field codes are switched on or not. The firts time that happened, that was a couple of hours of fun trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

After using endnote successfully yesterday, I opened up my library today, and as usual, in word, went to select for Endnote over Endnote web. Couldn't. Endnote was greyed out. WHY?? Less than four days and Endnote decides to feck up in yet another new way. Always full of surprises that program!

I tried deleting and reinstalling the cwyw files. No go.
I tried reconfiguring the program. No go.
Tried repairing the program...No go.
I deleted and reinstalled the cwyw files again, just for the fun of it...nada.

So, I turned to google. A bot of googling later, a few more failed fixes, I find that it's possible word has disabled endnote. Sure enough, word has disabled Endnote.

When? What? Why???

Either way, one click and it's back working as normal again and now I have another thing to add to my growing list of ways to fix endnote when it's being stupid.

Ugh. That was a half hour of headwreckingness that I could have done without.

I must now return to the super fun of what we've dubbed, "Turning lead into gold" as I finish this chapter. It's so much harder to spin negative results. It's not that there's not much to say, there's loads to say about what may be going on, it's just presenting it coherently and getting the message across that, "Yes, I realise this looks like it should work, but here I have lots of reproducible data showing that it really doesn't, and here's why....we think...." hence, my spinning of lead into gold, wool into silk, all those kinds of analogies. Mr. S. suggested polishing a turd but I liked that one less.

Only three more sleeps (provided there's no all nighters involved...)

*Edited to say, this officially sucks. I hated the machine used to collect this data for not working for so long. Then I hated the titrations cause I knew they weren't going as anticipated. Then I hated the fitting of the data, then the results of the fitting (or non-fitting, more to the point) and now, I really hate trying to present this data. SUCKS!

Countdown

Heard back from the postdoc and had a meeting with my supervisor today.

It lasted an hour!!

I don't think I've ever had an hour long meeting with him in four years!!

The data is what it is, and it's reproducible, so we are going to outline it, draw some conclusions and suggest what may be happening in solution. The final conclusion will probably be that these compounds are rather complex and that further study may be necessary to elucidate the data we want with 100% confidence.

But I don't really care anymore.

Aiming to submit on Friday!! ARGH!!!!

:)

Progress/no progress/want sleep!

I took a nap today and had a dream where I was eating with a group of people, and I fell asleep during the meal, IN MY DREAM!

Now that, my dears, is tired on a whole new level.

I have once again had an unproductive day. But the appendices are done. So the list now looks like:

Appendices
Abstract
Abbreviations
Declaration
Cover
Summary
Table of contents
Renumbering
Fittings....

Not doing the table of contents until the very, very end. Mostly cause this unfinished chapter is right slep bang in the middle of my thesis.

Renumbering-total pain in the ass. I realised around the time Ms. R. ran into this problem, that at the end of my intro I outline the work of the thesis, showing some generic structures of what I synthesised etc. Then I renumbered some of these compounds in Chapter two. Ms. R., as payback for the formatting, is going to go through the thesis and renumber everything properly for me. She's wonderful.

The Fittings. As I said, I've the first half of this Chapter fitted and written and put to bed, and it's unlikely to change. And it's not going to be a huge chapter. We're talking a 25-pager. And I already have twelve done. For the second half, we tried a new method that should work (hahaha), as opposed to all the other methods out there that DON'T work (at all) but I'm having the worst time refining the data to within error. It's difficult to do at the best of times, and although I trust my data, I just think due to the nature of my compounds, this is a tricky system to refine. And I have lots of compounds.

So do I just write the thing with large errors? Try and refine them a bit more before my viva. Or write it from a, "this is not the perfect technique" point of view, but we ran out of time and funding? Technically I'm aiming to fit within a certain Chi-squared and s.d. and it's not really happening at the moment. If i get one down, the other is usually up...the post doc who trained me in this technique, and is so patient, is going to have a look at the data tomorrow, see if a pair of fresh eyes can come up with anything.

Once I'm happy with the data, I need, I'd say two days, not even to write it into this chapter and the discussion, make sure my supervisor is happy and correct it. And that's it. I could submit the damn thing.

Appendices...

...are really annoying.

Time consuming, mindless editing of graphs for the most part. Some are ready to go, most of the NMRs that I have to include, are not.

I'm tired and not up to concentrating on anything today so I decided it was the perfect time to tackle my appendices.

The nice part: Because there's only so much concentration needed to ungroup, delete, delete, delete, change font size, edit, regroup, save and insert, I can listen to some great music. The kind of music that normally interferes with my train of thought.

I LOVE music. It's the background to my life. And of late I just haven't been able to indulge as I normally would.

For the most part of late I have been listening to classical music as I work, in particular a collection of Bach's music for the cello perfomed by Yo-Yo Ma. Bon Iver and Jose Gonzalez get a look in too sometimes, as well as some Mozart. Maybe Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens, depending on how much I need to focus.

But today I have gotten to listen to Tegan and Sara, Stars, Julian Casablancas (which I have decided I like), Snow Patrol (when it's all over you still have to clean up), The Decemberists, Yeah Yeah Yeahs. And Florence and the Machine. I have been listening to Florence over and over and over again.

Wow. Love, love, love her. I swear, listening to her album is getting me through at the moment. How can you not feel like it will all be done and ok soon listening to a song like Dog Days are Over? I was talking to Ms. K. about this the other day, and we both got the album around the same time, and she said the exact same thing. She listened almost exclusively to Florence when she was finishing. Said it got her through. Totally feeling the same. When I listen to this song, there is nothing I can't do. Go listen...*

*Yeah, I can't see anywhere on the page to embed the video, which I think is what I want to do, so you'll just have to trust me that it's worth opening youtube. Trust me!

Robbed!

Just seen the French goal that won the world cup qualifier between Ireland and France. We were robbed!! It was a total handball by Henry!

So sad. We're a little country and sporting achievements mean so much to us. We were incredibly lifted as a nation by the Irish Grand Slam win in the six Nations rugby earlier this year, and qualifying for the world cup, well I think that would have lifted the spirits of us just when we needed it.

The news has been about cuts and increased taxes for so long, that we needed some good news.

The only good that came out of that match this evening is we saw the Irish soccer team play as a team with their calibre of players should be able to. From what I've heard, it was one of the best performances by an Irish soccer team in a long, long time.

And it wasn't good enough.

Because Henry scored from a handball and no one noticed!!

So sad :(

On the plus, my supervisor gave me back the first half of the last chapter and there was hardly a mark on it!! Wow wow! He massacred the first drafts of the other two discussion chapters, so this was a lovely surprise.

ARGH!!!!!!!!

My charger is broken!!!

A week or so ago I noticed the cable attaching my charger to my laptop was cut/frayed at the connection to the charger. But it was still working for the most part, and if it stopped working, it could just be wiggled until it started again.

There is no more wiggling today. Well there is, but the wire sparks when you get the power being transferred and that's not good. And ebay will sell me the charger for about £10. Or I can buy a universal one in a shop for €60 minimum.

I need it now, but I do not have €60.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

The program I am using to refine the data for this last section is only on my laptop.

Which means I should probably spend €60.

Fuck.

I don't normally curse so much, but this situation, it needs it.

Irritating Corrections

My supervisor knows I use Endnote. He himself does not. He manually references.

He is also aware that only a couple of weeks ago, I essentially formatted Ms. R's entire master document for her thesis.

Which is why I had to roll my eyes when the first correction of chapter 2 was "you know you will have to renumber these to start from where chapter 1 finishes".

Seriously!

Sometimes I wonder what he must take me for. I have proven myself more than competent as a chemist and researcher, I practically ran his lab for him the last two years, and I am the person who fixes pretty much all technical issues in the lab, and am recently referred to as the formatting Queen. I have proofed sections of up to eight other PhD theses while in his group. For the most part, he treats me in such a way.

But really? Did he really think that I wasn't going to combine my references?? Really? Or if I hadn't used Endnote, I would have employed such lousy reference numbering to date? Give me some credit man!