Weight

Today was one of those days whereby a helpful collection company give you the time slot of 8am to 8pm and I was stuck in. My university license issue hasn't yet gone away and thus I had an unproductive day of the highest order.

Nat returned home (late again after another shocking day on the trains; morning cancellation of service, then return journey 30 mins late and half the carriages == travelling like sardines) exhausted and less than enthused by the Foundry. However, for me, cabin fever had truly set in and we were soon Foundry bound and recieving a soaking of the highest order on the ~5 minute walk.

Having now done a large proprtion of the problems (look at me etc. [actually I think its a fairly easy set]) and then doing most of them again on features I couldn't really work out what to do. I'm still in the stage of upping the intensity at a slow pace and the board and campus board all seemed a bit too much for my notoriously fragile fingers. Instead I had the genius thought of resurecting my weightbelt. Made from Decathlog ankle weights and some cheap webbing it is actually very good but I've never actually used it with intent.

During school time (you see what I did there?), I'd occasionaly add plates to myself, gain assistance (as my feeble legs weren't enough) to the bar and attempt to emulate a level of zippyness that I never truly managed. Other times I'd stick a few plates on and ladder on the moon board (on the system holds of course). A few times I'd attempt a problem Joe le Sauasage style (Basic Knitwear if you want the true tick). Never repeatedly and never with much focus.

Tonight I saw clearly. Problems, problems on features, problems with added weight, problems with added weight on features. Double the amount of problems; Result! Weightbelts seem fairly in vogue right now and what a difference a few Kg's make! Even sitting seemed like a lot of effort. Technique took a serious hit as I fought to keep myself in contact with the bendecrete wall of choice and with every completed problem came a joyous crunch to my knees as I hit the deck with added oomph. Reversing wasn't an option, I'd barely made it up there in the first place. I was having fun, recieving a spanking of my own design.

My better half was not; continually face planting on a problem wasn't (for some reason?) making her night. Towards the end of the session I felt compelled to see if my Gym Boss was still working (the answer is; barely) and took it next door to beneath the beastmaker. Belt in tow, I somehow felt Encores were a great idea. 3 sets of torture to be exact.

Sitting here now (on my tiny netbook, I miss my desktop already), my shoulder blades feel more worked than I can remember.

What a relief to unclip the buckle and drop a few kg's instantly. I bet all the fat bastards out there wish they had a buckle.

But they don't.

Steaming

I've had a fairly frustrating few days...

On Friday my home PC started to bork. It looked as if it could all be down to my own stupidity of keeping it next to my Xbox 360 (which up until recently has been unloved). That thing (being an early elite) kicks out some heat; in the direction of the PC cooling fan. I rescued the poor Acer from its Microsoft cell mate and lo' and behold, the problems vanished and I managed to do a successful backup. Rosy.

Last night, I took the decision to have a late one busting out some work to start on the grid computing facilities. Roughly 30 simulations each requiring about 8 hours of run time + another hour to do some post processing. I finished at 4am and tried to upload them to my ftp account. But stupid me, I'd forgotten just how long it takes to transfer files of that size and number from home. I fell into bed, exhausted. This morning, I awoke to find a PC recovery console as my desktop with a big fat 'Failed' error message. It quickly dawned on me (over my morning green tea with lemon) that yesterdays hard work was all for nothing. I wasn't happy. Then again, I hadn't lost all 'that' much and set the PC recovering from a handy system image. Its completed but no longer seems to believe it has a network adapter. It wouldn't play nicely with Ubuntu either, or MemTest for that matter. Basically, its f*cked.

A little miffed I headed into uni/work and begun re-making my files. It always feels tedious doing large batches but even more so the second time. I finished at about 7 this evening and put them onto the grid computing system to find out... that there are currently no licenses for the given software.

So since taking over Fluent, Ansys have removed my standalone license, invoked a university wide license (which isn't currently active) and transferred the grid licenses to Fluent 12, which has failed. I'm effectively a hydraulics experiemnt which is short of a fluid. Having access to three grid accounts I'm now effectively 18 times slower without it. Thats a lot and makes any effort at the minute seem absolutely futile (but necessary?).

There is an upside to this all however (in fact a few):
1. I'll finally sort out my woefully inadequate 500Gb filled to the brim passport backup.
2. I went to the Foundry tonight and tore the place apart

I know its the done thing to claim general weakness when asked but without blowing my proverbial trumpet, I feel quite strong. Not my strongest ever mind you but certainly something approaching decent. It may seem from my recent postings that I've lost sight of my previous epiphany, that is not the case. Time is conspiring against me at the moment and there's nothing I can seemingly do. Indoors will have to suffice for the most part and the nature of training goes a long way to destroying the memories of a frustrating day.