pterosaur

Aaand now it looks like I have 3 weeks to finish my masters thesis. I'm trying to do my oral exam on it before my advisor leaves the country for all of August. And I'm gone the last week of July for a conference. So shit just got real.

Germany's not leaving anytime soon. If anyone, France would leave next (has the highest disapproval of remaining EU countries), but the government there doesn't want to leave the EU and they're not stupid enough to call a referendum like the UK. There won't really be major changes in the immediate term because it will take about 2 years to negotiate the UK exit. After that, travel likely won't be difficult (look at how easy it is for Americans to visit Europe), but actually living and working in EU countries is another story. A lot of it boils down to what the UK ends up negotiating, but at this point no one has any idea what that will look like. We're in uncharted territory.

I was following the results and finally decided to go to bed. I just got up and I'm so angry about the results right now. I'm going to stare angrily at every on the tube like e they're personally responsible.

Oh crap. This talk of doctors made me realize that I was supposed to send my health forms by... June 15. And they require a doctor to sign off on a health form who's seem me in the past year. I haven't seen a doctor in the past year, and I was also too lazy to ever register with a GP because I found the NHS confusing/intimidating. Crap.

@Cat_Robutt - I don't have a car, though. But my bike is currently my second most-valuable possession! Also, turns out I own more stuff than I thought. Aaand half of the value of everything I own seems to be electronics.

BRB making a list of all my possessions. Should take about 10 minutes...

On a more pragmatic note, have any of you looked into renter's/student insurance? I'm not sure if I'm still covered by my dad's home insurance, and in retrospect this is probably something I should have had when I had an apartment in undergrad. And now. But anyways, this recommendation was in the info I got from Harvard about housing: https://www.collegestudentinsurance.com/ I've never dealt with insurance stuff before. Anyone have experience with them? Or with others? Or any other suggestions?

Haven't read through everything since the relevant post, but @MarineBluePsy. - absolutely do not put packing peanuts and bubble wrap or any other packing material inside your computer case!! Alltoo the components should be secure enough not to fall out in a car ride, and the packing material could build up static electricity that can fry your computer. You're also almost certainly fine leaving the hard drive in, especially if it's not an epic adventure of a drive. (Though it could provide more sense of security having your data safely in your hands.)

I don't budget. I hoard money like Smaug hoards gold. Except I have way less of it. And I'm about to drop $65 on new bike tires so my current tire doesn't blow up and crash and kill me while commuting.

Aaaaaaand I'm the genius who just got into a relationship less than three months before switching continents.

@sjoh197. - If you want indestructible and don't care about looks: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005KDBHWM/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?qid=1464735693&sr=8-1&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=mil-tec+backpack&dpPl=1&dpID=515bLkIaPAL&ref=plSrch Turns out 2 other people in my lab also have the exact same bag. I use it for everything, including travel. Maybe also consider the original LL Bean backpack. Similar style to the first bag you linked to, but they're super high quality and have a lifetime warranty (which they'll honor with no questions asked, even if it wears out). http://m.llbean.com/product.html?bc=null-816&skCatId=62856#62856 (Also comes in printed variety.)

Could you bike? 3 miles would be a quick bike ride, and a great way to stay in shape. I was commuting 12 miles round trip every day for awhile in undergrad. Once I got in the habit it was really therapeutic.

I got my housing info! I've already found my specific window on Google Street view and read the 122 year history of the building. And it's literally across the street from my lab. Is it possible to be too close?

I can't even imagine how incredibly frustrating and perhaps panic inducing that must be. Give yourself a night to be angry about it and eat a pint of ice cream, then come back and look at things with a fresh set of eyes tomorrow to figure out how to proceed. Can you talk to your advisor again (or someone else in your lab group) to figure out if you can salvage at least some of what you've done so far? Will analysis setups, experiment design, etc. carry over to a redo that will make things go faster a second time around?

For my Sims houses, I tend to make them after historical designs. I think my best is based off of a mansion from the early 20th century in Pennsylvania, which fell into ruins when the estate tax was introduced and the heirs couldn't pay to keep up this insane house. Also I like making castles. For money, my school hands out the first stipend check on orientation day in August. Except I'm paid directly by my fellowship, for which the first payment doesn't come until the end of September. But that hasn't stopped me from procrastinating by designing my perfect computer build after the suggestion here of getting a desktop. It's definitely harmed my research productivity. But dang, it's so shiny. Also, the longer I spend with it the more expensive it gets. @hippyscientist - $180 for the year? That is a sweet deal... that's less than 2 months of tube pass (£87/month...)

Someone else started a thread for Harvard SEAS and I'm the only one who responded. :/ I'm also surprised there aren't more Harvard peeps hanging around here. My program doesn't do rotations (I already have an advisor, who I'm really excited about!), and I'm currently cramming in the end of a 12-month masters program. So I will first be showing up at Harvard for the August 24 orientation, likely incredibly jet lagged.

@janetjanejune. Hello, fellow Simmer. I'm on TS3. I normally use Linux, which reduces the temptation to play since I have to reboot into Windows for it. I play less than I used to since I program a lot as a hobby now. I tend to spend more time designing and building houses than playing out extended games. I honestly don't think I've had a family go more than like 3 generations. And I generally habe one "main" family I play in each neighborhood. I don't like giving up control of Sims I care about. Most recently I've been playing multiple generations with a family where 6 of the members are confined to a solarium and spend their entire lives painting to earn money for the other 2. @Pink Fuzzy Bunny. - what shortcuts are you referring to for tab? Changing floors? I always used page up and page down.

I can also use the money for conferences and buying a computer later, so I don't want to blow the whole 5k up front. I also don't know what I'd do with that much computer.

On the topic of computers: my current laptop is pretty decent (2 year old thinkpad), but my PhD fellowship comes with $5000 I can use to buy a computer. I'm not sure whether I should get a laptop or desktop. I use my laptop as my daily driver, carrying it back and forth and using it for all my lab work, which makes think I should go with a laptop. But you can get a lot more bang for your buck on a desktop. In particular I'm thinking of RAIDed terabyte hard drives to store all my photos, etc. In addition to running most things off of a SSD. But damn, something like the Dell Precision 5510 is so shiny . It's more of a workstation machine than a gaming laptop. I'm not a regular gamer (occasionally games like Portal and the Sims, but unfortunately FPS makes me nauseous pretty quickly).

Fun fact: the German word for male cat is the same as the word for hangover (der Kater).

I just had my first winter without snow. (Dammit, London!) I did hike to the top of a snow-capped mountain in Scotland, but I don't feel like that counts. Last winter in Boston (with the 6 feet of snow) was great. So I miss my snow. It's like a drug.

What desk did you go with? I recently came to the realization that since I have a bit of money saved, I can actually buy something that's not the cheapest version of what I'm looking for. And then I won't have to spend more money in the long run to upgrade it later. So I think I'd spend a bit more to get something solid wood. (With that size desk and the amount of technology I put on top of it, I wouldn't want it to start sagging.) Or, alternatively, if I can actually move stuff come a year from now, I could steal my own desk back from my brother, who took it when he graduated from college.

I'll be in grad student dorms and don't have a way to get my stuff from my dad's basement, so I don't think I'm going to be too strong on the interior design front. What I'd love to do is make a giant desk out of an Ikea butcher block. You can never have too big of a desk. But I have another year before I'll possibly be somewhere semi-permanent enough that it's worth getting real furniture and artwork.

@hippyscientist. @Cat_Robutt. - My exoskeleton research isn't iron man level awesome, but I think it's pretty cool. I'm working on developing balance recovery assistance control for the exo. Basically, it means I push you and help you not fall down. So much code debugging crammed into 3 days while I had access to the robot. Now I have a gig of data to process, but hopefully it's the last I'll need for my masters thesis!

Did someone say backups? I keep an external hard drive that backs up weekly by USB, keeping my entire home directly and storing versions in case I realize I deleted an essential file a month ago. (My computer could blow up, and I'd install Ubuntu on a new computer, hook this sucker up, and be back up and running in under an hour. It's awesome.) I also keep a backup on Dropbox. And I have a home server set up on my Raspberry Pi, which is running OwnCloud (like a home Dropbox) and a plex media server for all my movies. I currently only use Google Drive to back up photos (I just got a DSLR and I'm getting into photography), and I have unlimited storage for it with my university email account! But I can't really use it for my primary backup since they STILL don't have a Linux client for it. (They've been promising for years...) As for banks, I went all through undergrad without opening a local account, but I'm looking at being a grown up now. I'm planning to open an account at the university credit union. If your university has one, they tend to have good rates and services and potentially low rates on future loans/mortgages (if you want to really think like a grown up). In other news, I spent hours today strapped into an exoskeleton programming it for my research experiment. Maybe debugging it while wearing it wasn't the safest idea? But I didn't die. And my supervisor says if things continue going according to plan, I should be able to finish up by the end of July, which is fantastic since I don't technically end until September. Sweeeeeeeeet.