Tag Archives: study

Grrr Argh!

Am totally irritable today. Like PMS without the M. My studying is erratic because of it, and I just can’t get into any sort of groove. Minor little issues from a couple of BBs are getting under my skin, so procrastinating on there is not even helping ๐Ÿ˜ก So instead, I’m day-dreaming about my month off ๐Ÿ˜†

Exam number two is on Monday evening. Evening! An exam that starts at 5.45pm! Crazy behaviour. My plan on finishing that is to come home, open a bottle of red wine, and have a long, long bath. I’m not even going to stitch that night (or at least, not much!) I plan on getting the first of many early nights – at least pre-11pm, I hope. Not having enough sleep lately (…for the last 6 months) is no doubt contributing much to my current mood.

For the time I have off, I have 3 planned stitching finishes:

  • Something secret… for my seasonal exchange partner. It’s approximately half stitched, but I have some fancy ‘finishing’ to do on it as well.
  • Little Angel Birth Sampler, for an expected nephew. This will only be a near-finish… obviously I’ll have to wait for the name/date/details to stitch on later.
  • Waiting For Ships. Waiting to be finished. This will be my first Mirabilia finish, despite having bought my first two Mira charts some ten years ago! There will be much rejoicing!

After that I plan to have another attempt at setting up a rotation. I expect it will all turn to mud again in the first month or so of my next semester, but I do hope to get a bit more stitching done in the 2nd half of the year than I have in this. The focus piece of my rotation will probably be the dreaded Noah’s Journey. It’s supposed to be a ‘birth’ piece for Finn. I might have mentioned he’s 2 and a half already. ๐Ÿ˜ณ Oops! It’s such a pain to stitch (Dimensions colour chart, need I say more?), but I really do want to finish it. I’ll post a WIP picture here soon, but trust me, it’s not that impressive.

I also plan to do a bit more hand-dyeing. I have some white Quaker cloth and some Cashel (I think), and I want to get a good colour for my planned Lilly conversion.

The most important non-stitching plan is a trip across to the Clare Valley (South Australia) for several days of camping and cellar door hopping. We haven’t done that since before Finn was born – that should be fun, what with the 10 hour drive each way :ill:

Anyway, I have to survive until Monday night first. Nose back to grindstone then… ๐Ÿ™

Good Riddance to SeC

Exam number one went better than could be expected, considering my lack of motivation to study for this one. I expect around 80-85 overall for the unit… better than I expected, but sadly a bit of a blemish on my overall program results (I would have been in raptures with an 80 in my undergraduate degree – I was far less conscientious back then :giggle: ). It’s a public holiday here tomorrow, so OtherHalf is home. I’m planning to head off to the library for a while to start reading up for exam number two.

But tonight, way hey, I’ve stitched! I think my goal of finishing WFS during my month off school is achievable, I really do. Last weekend I managed to sneak enough stitching around my exam revision (told you I wasn’t motivated ๐Ÿ™ ) to finish off her arms, and tonight I’ve stitched her face and neck. I toned down the “Adam’s apple” she seems to have. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t like this design at first. Added to the fact she has a fairly prominent chin, I felt it made her quite masculine. Come to think of it, she’s fairly flat chested as well. Hmmm… perhaps she’s a merman in drag?! Well, you’ve got to admit, it would explain that rather lurid shade of pink lipstick ๐Ÿ˜‰ !

I’m teasing. Really, she’s very attractive. And now, with a smoother neckline (I didn’t alter the chin), I’m really glad I’m stitching her. The only thing bugging me now is that I’ve left all the beads for last, even though I swore I wouldn’t do that again after Celtic Christmas. I’m considering an alternative to YLI Invisible thread for stitching the beads on this time… I hate wrangling that stuff. I know some stitchers use blending filament, which is a bit more visible, and it gives a nice extra sparkle too. Perhaps I’ll try that.

FUWAT, Need a GLD*

So in case you didn’t gather already, I have an exam tomorrow afternoon – great way to spend a Saturday! Anyway, for fun (!) today, I wrote out a list of all of the acronyms I have to know and love in this unit (it’s “Secure E-Commerce”). Let me now present, for your viewing pleasure (and in no particular order): Acronym Hell!

B2B ยท B2C ยท C2C ยท G2B ยท G2C ยท TCP ยท IP ยท HTTP ยท FTP ยท SMTP ยท MAC ยท MAC (yes, a different one) ยท NIC ยท POP ยท IMAP ยท ICMP ยท SYN ยท ACK ยท DoS ยท DDoS ยท SQL ยท DNS ยท DES ยท DESede ยท IDEA ยท ECB ยท CBC ยท OFB ยท CFB ยท RSA ยท DSA ยท CA ยท PGP ยท GPG ยท DSE ยท SSL ยท TLS ยท WAP ยท WTLS ยท SCP ยท RFC ยท SOCKS ยท IETF ยท P3P ยท W3C ยท LAN ยท IDS ยท ARP ยท LDAP ยท AS ยท TGS ยท RADIUS ยท PHP ยท MD5 ยท VPN ยท PPTP ยท L2TP ยท SET ยท SWIFT ยท RGP ยท EDI ยท ebXML ยท SOAP ยท UCE ยท XSS ยท RSS ยท XML ยท PDF ยท NFS

Actually, now that I type it all out in one block, it doesn’t seem so scary as it was in a long list. And yes, I do know what all these mean, and no, there’s no prize if you do too :giggle: You note that my handy dandy Acronym Replacer plugin is helpfully telling you what some of them are… but not all… gotta keep you guessing!

Here’s an interesting bit of guff I learned from wikipedia (knower-of-all-things) a while back:

an acronym is a pronounceable word formed from the initial letter or letters of the constituent words, such as NATO (nay-toe), and an initialism is an abbreviation pronounced as the names of the individual letters, and is formed only from the initial letter of constituent words, such as TLA (tee el ay).

Who knew! I thought they were all just acronyms. Anyhoo… off to study more, must turn brain into complete mush. Wish me luck!

*Fed Up With All This, Need a Good Lie Down!