The new chat thread - now with bitter arguing

nf: like, INSANE. today, i'm supposed to be working on a simulation that forecasts the mayhem in ordinary electronic payment activity if a bomb hits a bank, but i am so tired that i cannot make any sense whatsoever of what i am doing. deadline is oct 1st and i am so lagging behind that the idea of getting it done on time just makes me laugh - i wish i had an actual bomb to perform the experiment in corpore vivo and be spared some work.

tomorrow, i have to travel to milan to negotiate the final index for a textbook i am supposing to be contributing to, but i definitely will not have any time to finish what i am supposed to finish before the end of the month (does this mean i will negotiate the index and then say "it's all well and good, but find another author?").

oh, and through all of this i am also supposed to have my debut as a political commentator in a fortnight or so. thanking the heavens, i will be starting really small, i think i am not up to making a fool of myself on the mainstream media just yet.

finally, i woke up 2,514 times last night, and during one of the manic i-am-so-awake moments i was hit by a realization concerning my personal life: these last days i was happily celebrating out of the fire, but i made the mistake of overlooking the fucking frying pan. *headwalls*

i SO want to sleep.
 
Hrm, your story raises a question I once had and forgot to ask. How much of your work is, for lack of a better term, more "theoretical" economics, vs. these types of situational analysis? I only ask because I could see the example you were talking about delving into the realms of data security and storage as well and economic disruption.

~kov.
 
@kov: about 50% of my job is research, 50% is hands-on stuff. this specific project is halfway. the research part has to do with how agent-based modeling can be used to predict complex scenarios such as the one i mentioned. the hands-on part has to do with the fact that the final version will be implemented as an actual monitoring tool (if it works, that is).
 
Ah, makes sense. I only ask because my father works for Citigroup on the data-storage side of things, and so I've heard him talk about storage methods and data sharing, etc. Of course, it's more along the lines of intra-company data, rather than customer based data, but it just seemed rather familiar.

Actually, I remember bullshitting on the computer about 5-6 years back when he used to do nightly conference calls with some of the data guys in other parts of the world, and we used to laugh at how they'd find the most stereotypical people in their respective countries to represent them. For reasons totally unrelated to weather, the British rep would constantly bitch about the flooding that would occur in their office on at least a semi-annual basis; if something went wrong in the German office, guaranteed there was someone new in charge, and the previous rep had been 'dealt with'; and of course my dad's boss was from Texas, and spoke in the most stereotypical southern drawl I've heard to this day. It seemed like a really bad casting for some kind of commercial for 'international' banking.

Short Version: Wow, banking! I understand some of it because 70% of my male relatives work in the field! Listen to boring anecdote!

~kov.
 
For a bit I had, but not seriously for some time.

And my little summary was just a shot at myself for something I'm always criticized about. Apparently (and we've realized this to be true after the fact) my family only communicates through anecdotes. Seriously, we just tell stories. I've started trying to cut back on that and actually engage in 'real' conversation, but it's still rather funny.

~kov.
 
nf: still tired, and i need at least a full weekend of doing nothing in order to recover properly, but at least i am less worried than i was a few days ago. what looked like signs of unrestricted insanity were, in fact, most probably just hallucinatory accessories to exhaustion.
 
i just came back from the doctor, since my migraines changed a bit i asked him if he had some ideas about what to check. now i should: 1-do a...i don't know how it's called in english..they look into your head with a machine, 2-try out a medicine that's supposed to prevent migraines, the doctor though sounded so skeptic that i'm not convinced, 3-try doing some particular kinds of physical exercise, but i have to figure out how.
i'm in a sort of "do i really want to start another round of exams and side effects of meds to come up with nothing, again?" mood.
 
Computed tomography (CT), originally known as computed axial tomography (CAT or CT scan)

Good luck with those migraines. Im very sensible when it comes to changes of air pressure, due to weather changes or longer travels. Travelling pretty much always leaves me with quite the headache
 
Yeah I'm just swining by cos for the first time in a while I have a totally free night, and I'm listening to DT and smiling as next month they're playing my city. Hopefully get a chance to get my album sleeves signed and say hi to a few of the guys. Only the second time I'll have seen them since adopting them as my favourite band in 2001. depressing.

For anyone who cares: Life is good. Putting alot of time and money into music and my girlfriend. Not reading as much or watching as many movies, or working out at all. Gone from self improvement to just being a tad more sociable. Managed to pretty much bury my depression, minus the odd totally manageable anxiety attack here and there. Hope all's well for those of you I miss.
 
@Taliesin: thanks :) i'm sensible to everything is seems :p i doubt my migraines are the product of a serious condition, considering what doctors told me and all the years i've had them, but they are pretty annoying since i can do nothing when i have them and they come very often.

nf: bored, i need to go study for the next exam, but it's one of the most boring things i ever read, all i want to do when i study it is to die.
the organization of subjects in my course is weird, even if there are different specializations (environment, humans, industry and so on) in the last year, we have some very specific exams about environment also in the first 2 years (that are in common for everyone). i think it's a remainder from when the course was 5 years long and same for all. still, i couldn't care less about the physiology of plants.
 
i couldn't care less about the physiology of plants.
botanics is annoying... when i was in middle school, the subject of our first class was "plants with flowers"... really it didnt make you get some interest for sciences... and made me choose an option that has nothing to do with what i now study :p
 
my tangled relationship with no use for a name: i underrate them for ages, and then i overrate them for two weeks.
anyway, their recent best of release will be overrated for a while more, since they picked more or less the same tunes i would have picked. this is a first - bad religion didn't even come close when they released all ages.
 
anyway, their recent best of release will be overrated for a while more, since they picked more or less the same tunes i would have picked. this is a first - bad religion didn't even come close when they released all ages.

I agree. Which begs the question: if they know which of their songs are the very good ones, why do they insist to make crappy new records with no songs in that vein?
 
@rahv: i am too lazy to check which record was their last, but i kind of loved their albums up until the one where "Bullets" is.

nf: weekend spent working = very bad for the soul

edit: fun for the italians from a random political website

Le trentamila persone che solo una settimana fa a Cittadella si sono riunite, nel silenzio generale dei media, solo grazie all’opera di una giovanissima associazione – e del suo giornale in lingua veneta Raixe Venete – che è stata inizialmente creata da due ragazzi veneti che ancora non hanno trent’anni, Davide Guiotto e Patrik Riondato, dimostrano in realtà che la causa veneta è viva e vegeta e sta cambiando interpreti politici.