Not enough sleep. Again. You’d think I’d pretty much get used to it, but no. Anyway, off to Databases I go, where we have an interesting discussion on the application of ‘eddies’, which I won’t go into. After that I went and talked to Lindsay, my grad advisor, and got the low-down on how things actually work here. How the courses work, the seminars, the special courses, theses, study options, some of the degree options and generally how it all fits together. It’s the kind of session I wish I’d been able to have before I started working out what I needed to enroll in, but ah well, such is life.

Then off to the HUB for a snack and some computer stuff before heading off to the Colloquium talk. However, it wasn’t in the usual room and I’m not on the mailing list to be told where they actually are yet, so it’s a bit tricky. I ran into Linda, a CS lecturer who also was in the same boat, but just hadn’t read the email. We walked back to the CS desk, then to the right room. Turns out she was one of the faculty supervisors of Mark Billinghurst, who was one of my lecturers in 2004, is the director of the HITLab at Canterbury and is generally a great guy. Very funny to hear about him in the context of him being a student, though! Anyway, on to the talk, which was by Jorge Cham on being a grad student. Jorge is the writer and artist of Piled Higher and Deeper and it was a very entertaining lecture on the student psyche, how procrastination should not be confused with laziness and how procrastination could help you survive. Afterwards there was a snack in the CSE Atrium (where I grabbed one of Jorge’s books and got it signed) and then I went back to my apartment.

Back at the apartment I managed to get talked into getting a magazine subscription by a telemarketer on my landline (I can’t remember if I even knew my own number at this point)… it sounded like a good deal, but on closer inspection was a total rip off. I’ll have to get rid of it somehow. I talked to Anastasia and made some more progress on my graphics assignment. I then read the rest of a transcript talk with Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade from their ‘lecture’ at MIT. To try and relax a bit more I did some general surfing, which I haven’t done for a while. After that I did some design work-work (which is a lot of thinking) for about two and half hours, then realized that it was very late and my brain was still in work mode. I guess I’m not helping my sleep patterns much by doing this kind of thing. I watched an episode of anime to vege myself out, then crashed.