Oh hi there. It's been a bit, eh? Like 5 days or so.

It's been a hell of a couple of days. I finally have a little bit of time to breathe, so I finally have the emotional state to write a blog post without being unnecessarily emo/rude/something else.

Timelines + Thesis

So, some context as to what's been going on. I'm on the 6th year of my PhD, and I'm defending this year. My advisor and I decided that I will defend in the spring, but graduate in the summer because it seems like I might be able to get funding through the summer through my... externship? I dunno how to describe it and it's not worth describing. Basically I'm working at the same time as my PhD, because my work is research-focused and aligns enough with my thesis that it can be considered part of it.

So basically -- I need to be employed and the fuck out of here by the end of the summer, but I am defending my thesis in May. So that means I need to have a presentation prepared by then, and 2 weeks before that I have to have actually written the thesis itself. Plenty of time, right?

Except I'm applying to jobs in research. Which means I have to present on my research, because that's what they're interested in. Which means that in three days, on monday, I have to present on my thesis that I wasn't supposed to present on until May. -2 months.

Of course, I mentioned this to my boss, because she has been extremely supportive about the whole deal (and works in the field I'm trying to get into, so knows people who knows people and can put in a great word for me. In fact, I think it's thanks to her that they responded to my application within 2 days of me sending it in.) Which means she went, "You know what would be very helpful for you? If you could give a practice talk! Why don't you present to the team meeting on Thursday?" Which means that I had to, with two days warning, prepare a presentation I wasn't supposed to present until May.

Dearest reader.

I was a mess.

It happened, of course. If there's one thing I can say about myself, it's that if my nose gets put to the grindstone, I get it done. And I got it done honestly fairly fuckin' well. I got great reception from the team on my presentation, with some very helpful feedback that I was kind-of-sort-of expecting since I rushed it in two days. The presentation itself was great, they said the overarching storyline was great (I had to tie together two very separate projects), and I explained things very clearly and very confidently. I just need to, you know, actually fill out the slides with stuff you can't do easily in two days, like figures and examples.

So... yeah. I survived. My mental was through the floor the past few days which only got worse with some rough times I was having with Blazblue, which I'll rant about (maybe?) in a separate post. Now that I know I have a workable presentation, even though I gotta actually be interviewed and present it on Monday, I feel a hell of a lot better.

Which hey also, if you're reading this, you probably know me well enough for me to say that if you're interested in attending my thesis defense, feel free to reach out and I'll send you an invite to it. It'll be streamed online and I got the go ahead to share the link with whoever once it's made.

Blog Issues

Oh hey, I finally hit that point I predicted where my blog theme breaks because I broke pagination. I'll add that to the todo list and possibly update this entry as I fix it.

Other

Not much else to put here yet. I'm taking today to mostly recover from the past week so I might actually work on some fun projects today. I'm planning to just kind of bounce from coffee shop to coffee shop while waiting for locals to happen.

• Continue working on my pngtools nonsense
  • Character script parsing
  • GUI nonsense -> This'll be a little complciated because of the fact I code using WSL, so doing GUI dev is always a bit of a mess. I might still see if I can call pythong from C# or something because I despise tkinter.
  • Usage guide
• Catch up in FFXIV
  • Raid is starting soon, and I need to remember how to play.
  • I also need to craft the new crafting/gathering gear, so I can be prepped to make pots/food. A friend offered to do it for me, but y'all know me. I try to be self-sufficient.
• Read some classical scifi-fantasy fiction
  • I met a very fascinating person at the local coffee shop recently which was an awesome experience. He comes from a very different era of fantasy and D&D, and he listed off some authors that I really think I should look into.
• Draw
  • I have a few gliterumi emote ideas I want to draw.
  • I also still need actually draw a character sheet for gliterumi so I can decide on his outfit. I can't decide how much I want to deviate from core Terumi, but I do want to add a bit of a personal spin to it.
• Video edit
  • I keep "forgetting" (ADHD putting off) to edit together + upload my tournament VODs because I've been too upset over my gameplay. I've already lost the replay of my first set against Zander, which sucks because I distinctly remember forgetting to press record until after the first round. I might ask if it's OK for me to pull a clip from the BBBO recording so make up for it.
  • I also owe another match compilation, but I accidentally ammased 3 hours of footage I have to strip down to 30 minutes of gameplay, so again I keep having decision paralysis and putting it off. I might just nuke the old gameplay and pick from newer matches, because I've had some bangers since then.

The unfortunate bit is I can't work on 90% of this because I'm on my laptop, and most of this has to happen on my desktop. So... we'll see what happens!