Poor computer

I had a blue screen of death today. I didn't think XP did blue screens of death, that is sooo Windows 98.

I have momentarily blamed Windows Live Messenger, which I think is the only programme I installed recently. It lasted a while before the problems began, but it seems a likely candidate to blame. So I've closed that down and prevented it from starting itself up again. Same with Skype.

For the geeks:

KERNEL_DATA_INPAGE_ERROR
****STOP: 0X0000007A (oXC02016E4, 0XC000000E, 0x805B709C, ...)

I couldn't write down the last one before the computer shut itself down. Oh, it did a disk check thing and froze after giving me the results.

Please... does anyone have any ideas how to cure my computer?

Ceilidh

It was rather dead. I think tigger_boing nearly fell off her chair at the following bit of IM conversation...

her: "Dunedin was very quiet. We only had three sets."
me: "Oh, you beat us then."
her: *blinks*

Instead of the £530 we had budgeted to fundraise in our endless optimism, we ended up fundraising -£150,44. Yes, that is a minus sign right there. Joy. We did give out some flyers at the end to interested parties, so we may see some people again. Or maybe not.

Bold statement

Now here's someone who's confident of his own theories:

"Of course, as Mufwene concedes (2001: 76), the founder principle works unless it doesn't."

In other news, I have finished two of the books I wanted to finish (Schreier 2003 and Trudgill 2004, from which is the above quote), sent off the PhilSoc essay, and e-mailed EUSA about when the Pleasance booking is, but I haven't heard back from them and I guess they don't know themselves either. I have also made flyers for our dance classes and sent them to ylla to print.

Lists

More or less inspired by ylla.

Recent accomplishments
(not in chronological order)

• Sorted out the New Scotland money box. We have very many banknotes and coins of higher denominations and therefore are rich!
• Sent a New Scotland cheque to Stanley Mackay. We are now slightly less rich.
• Typed up the minutes from the New Scotland GM. Found out that TeX’ing tables goes easiest by making the table in Excel, copying to Word, then doing Convert table to text with “&” as column separator and then replace line breaks with “\\” plus line break; then copy result into .tex file.
• Formatted the crib sheet for the New Scotland Beginner’s Dance and sent it back to ylla for printing. It looks reasonably okay, but for some reason it didn’t seem possible to make it look as good as last year’s crib sheet.
• Updated the New Scotland constitution with changes from the GM. Yawn.
• Went to Teviot to book rooms for Inters Highland (in vain). They’re redeveloping the entire thing and sending all the dance societies to the Pleasance because they have more space there. No, the Pleasance only has two rooms that are suitable for dancing. That’s why all the dance societies are begging to please be allowed to use the concrete floors in Teviot.
• Read chapters in Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). Their books are better than their article on Tristan da Cunha English phonology, which makes the article even worse. If you know what you’re doing (sort of), why don’t you make an effort in that article? Plus they still need to look at their data a bit better.
• Formatted my entry for the Philological Society’s essay contest according to PhilSoc rules. That would have been so much easier if PhilSoc just make a LaTeX style sheet.
• Became a member of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain. Or at least, filled in the form, copied my matric card as proof of my unwaged status, and included a cheque for £16.50 for membership including the Journal of Linguistics. The envelope is in the mail and I should be hearing from them at some point soon. (They give LAGB members a discount at Oxford University Press!)
• Wrote all the details from my cheque book on my bank statements. New Scotland and Dunedin are both excruciatingly slow in cashing cheques.
• Brought the Palaeography folder to the office. So that Oksana can pick it up at some point and learn all about Old and Middle English handwriting.
• Laundry. But not ironing.
• Chinese Food dem. Which had a very high number of Chinese people, many of the girls in high heels, but contrary to last year, was very low on actual Chinese food. We had to make GH lobby for us being fed. (Yay for a Mandarin speaker in New Scotland!) In the end we all got a pot of noodles. I hope they send James a big fat cheque.
• Marked EL1 assignments. Some know what they’re doing. Most have a reasonable idea, which is definitely enough to pass the exam. There’s a couple who are in real trouble. Actually going to lectures and tutorials may help there.

Still to accomplish

• Send off the PhilSoc essay. Which includes getting a letter from April saying that I am indeed doing a Ph.D., printing the thing off umpteen times and sending it to London somewhere.
• Read the rest of Schreier (2003) and Trudgill (2004). And come up with a reasonably flowing train of thoughts about what could be improved in the books and what they need to look at more. Or less.
• Read Guignet & Lottin (2006) in the NLS. Which probably involves re-applying for the book as it has been more than 6 days since I was there last. It is also a very boring book which doesn’t help.
• Remember what the other thing was I wanted to become a member of. I’m sure it was something languagey but can’t quite remember what. It may also have been Time which I thought about subscribing to a while back but have now decided it would be a waste of money.
• More dancing. Greek dancing, dem class, Halloween ceilidh, Thursday classes, possibly including inters country if it doesn’t rain.
• Sort out committee meeting. Involves pestering more committee members for when they can make the meeting and then try and figure out if there’s a date before the Beginners’ Dance that everyone can make. (That looks particularly unlikely at this point.)
• Call Mrs Wilson. Must try to book Kirk O’ Field for Inters Highland.
• E-mail EUSA. When are we supposed to freeze to death in early morning hours so that we can have rooms at the Pleasance to dance in?
• Pack. To go home on Saturday morning for all of four days.
• Claim. I spent £38.40 on train tickets to and from Aberdeen last week. It appears I can claim this back from Aberdeen University. All I need is for them to send me some forms. Which they’ve said they’ll do.
• The umpteen other things that I can’t remember right now.

Train journey up North

Is incidentally a very nice and easy (yet seemingly complicated and liable to mess up) dance that has been done at Dunedin for the past umpteen weeks, until everyone gets it right. Apart from that, it’s also what a large part of my Wednesday this week consisted of.

I went up North to Aberdeen to give a talk at their Linguistic Circle-type seminar thing. Quite nervous about the whole train journey – well, not so much the train journey as the buying a ticket for it. There was quite a long queue so I decided to try the machines. Seemed easy enough, Aberdeen was a popular destination so it had its own button. But then something happened that my simple brain was not prepared for: I had to choose between ten different ticket types (all with different prices). So how am I supposed to know what is what? So I joined the queue after all.

The journey was quite nice and uneventful. Hid from Creepy Graeme upon arrival in Aberdeen. It appears that he works for First Scotrail or whatever the company is called this week. Got picked up from the station, was given tea, did the talk, answered questions (none too difficult), was fed dinner and transported back to the station for the train back South. I was home at 11.30pm.

Then back to the normal rhythm of teaching tutorials on a Thursday and Friday. The guy on (e) continues to amaze me with his ceaseless attempt to impress er... don’t know who he wants to impress but he’s clearly doing his best. His homework contained a selection of slightly garbled transcriptions of English words, and the phrase

honeyboner = English language erection

which is a word play on the name of the phonetics lecturer. Hilariously funny, of course. But why exactly he thought it was a good idea to put this on his homework I have no idea. I shall have to ask him.

New Scotland GM went by rather painlessly, although I think JF’s mumbled suggestion to lock JB up in a cage somewhere before the next GM should perhaps be seriously considered.

Friday tutorial as usual completely different from the Thursday one. It’s not a question of the amount of linguistics vs. lit students like it was last year, I think it’s more personalities this time. No one feels the urge to be on (e) on Friday, I guess. The Friday group is collectively cold, but there is a kettle next door. Not sure if I should bring cups and tea/coffee next week or whether it’s their own responsibility.

I like the tunes Calgary Fiddlers’ Welcome to Shetland and Tam Lin. In general, tunes that are in some way or another related to Shetland are generally very stomachable.

Must. Stop. Rambling.

Things not to say in tutorials

One of the guys in my tutorial was asking questions about a question that we hadn’t discussed yet. We were still debating all the possible answers to question (d), but he had moved on. So the other students were confused and didn’t know what he was talking about. I clarified:

He’s on (e).

Everyone started laughing, I realised what I’d said... and the only person looking completely clueless was the guy who was on (e).

It’s not as bad as Amanda last year, when dividing her group into smaller groups that had to work together to write down all the characteristics of the consonants in the word smoothing:

So if you guys do s and m, ...

Hmm... it seemed funnier at the time.

Accomplishments

Okay, I can’t remember everything that happened since the last post. A more detailed overview of part of last week follows below. Things that also happened: tutorial groups, meeting Zakaris, dancing, AF’s birthday party, generaly work-type things.

On Tuesday I...

• ... went to Dem Class where we learned a completely new step that goes with a menuet. Step right, step left, close right behind. Step left, step right, close left behind. It caused a lot of confusion but we’d better learn it as it will be part of the SUSCDF dem. I can see the other universities going “What the...?” already.

On Wednesday I...

• ... went to the National Library to read two chapters from a book about the history of the North of France. As it’s mostly not entirely relevant, I can read through it at a reasonably high speed.
• ... had a budget meeting for New Scotland with AL and CI. Being slightly optimistic we managed to get the budgeted expenditure within £250 of the budgeted income. Unfortunately Freshers’ Weekend is hideously undersubscribed so that’s the budget out the window already.
• ... went to the New Scotland cupboard in McEwan Hall with AL to retrieve our kilometer of cling film. It is quite an impressive stack.
• ... learned about norms in Computer Hong Kong English and attitudes about the esthetics of language among speakers of Swiss German. Also known as the Language in Context research group.
• ... went to Dunedin and danced. Train journey up North or whatever the dance is called is a nice dance.

On Thursday I...

• ... went back to the National Library to read two more chapters in the French book, and wondered why people need to sit in the chair directly next to me if there’s plenty of space elsewhere.
• ... went to the first year lecture on morphology and taught a tutorial.
• ... went to the Linguistic Circle which was reasonably interesting, and to the drinks and nibbles afterwards. There were exactly zero other students at the drinks and nibbles, which was slightly annoying. But Miriam did suggest ‘we’ (i.e. ‘I’) do something about the Tristan da Cunha article. (See Friday.)
• ... left the Linguistics building at 5.40, went home via my office, stuffed New Scotland stuff in my bag, left the flat at 5.50, then on to LG’s to deliver the kilometer of cling film, left LG’s at 6.03 (having also gulped down a cup of tea – thanks LG!), and was at Lutton Place at 6.10.

On Friday I...

• ... did assorted bits and bobs on the taboo language, the Shetland marriages, the Aberdeen talk (which is basically an amalgamation of the other two anyway), and some other things.
• ... had a meeting with HG and all the other tutors about the morphology module.
• ... went to the English Language Research Group where we thrashed an article on the origins of Tristan da Cunha English.
  
• ... didn’t go to the first year lecture on morphology (we were late out of the ELRG and decided it wasn’t worth it) and taught a tutorial.
• ... waved goodbye to the bus for Freshers’ Weekend.
• ... read things on the history of Tristan da Cunha.

Today (so far) I...

• ... did laundry.
• ... went on a Big Shop in Cameron Toll and spent £40 on food and other stuff.
• ... read two chapters from the morphology textbook and another article on Tristan da Cunha English. Now I really wonder why, if the authors did have all this historical population data available, they didn’t use it in the article we thrashed on Friday. They could have done a much better job.
• ... spent the afternoon in the kitchen chopping meat and veg and making a big pot of pasta sauce (3 boxes for the freezer, and dinner for myself), and a big pot of goulash which was filled to the edge until it started boiling and little bubbles of goulash exploded out of the pot. Still I expect to have at least 3 boxes, maybe 4. (These are still to be filled out.)
• ... updated my blog!
  

Body

I have a sillily shaped body.

I went to buy a slightly more wind- and waterproof jacket than the ones I have, but all the ones in the outdoor store – at least all the ones in a slightly affordable price range – seemed ridiculously wide. I guess they don’t make these things for people who are skinny. So I didn’t buy anything, because I didn’t feel I should spend £120 or more on something baggy.

Having failed in that mission, I went into H&M and bought a black shirt (yay! designed for skinny people!) and a zipped hoodie. I also tried to buy jeans but even H&M doesn’t do 29/36. They had one 29" waist one that would have been okay but it had loose threads here and there and I didn’t want that.

I also want new shoes. I always want new shoes, but I now want new shoes that fit into a category in which I have no shoes at present: the dressed-casual category. They had a couple of nice ones but they were rather expensive and I wasn’t sure they were the absolute nicest ones that I would find within a reasonable timespan, so I didn’t buy them.

I also went to Coda to buy Marieke’s new cd, but they didn’t have that one (neither did Virgin and HMV). So I bought some odd Norwegian folk instead. The ploinky-ploinky instrument which I don’t know the name of does tend to get annoying after half an hour...

All in all a very cheap day, considering the stuff that I didn’t buy...