next »

[formerly_the_fiver]

Good morning afternoon, All!

It's nice to see you here with me, Bevo, Britmom, Lohai0, Corny, and Crumpet.

Britmom, sorry about that extra pressure. Just do your best to put it out of your mind and focus on the things you can control. Bevo, I'm sure that after shopping, you'll be able to concentrate better. Corny, hope that non-research stuff isn't too draining. And what you write about always finding more that needs to be done makes perfect sense to me. Crumpet, best wishes for the research today. I know how you feel about being sleepy. We really do need to do some recharging on the weekends. Lohai0, hope your rewriting goes well. Publish, Fishprof, Ms. P, I don't see you here today, but I hope your work is going well too. Same to all the other Reluctants.

Me, I slept in till almost 8, and then had a mildly decadent breakfast with Mr. F of oatmeal-whole wheat pancakes with bacon. Now I am at school ready to put in my 30 minutes. I have a lot of other stuff (prep, grading, deadlines for a faculty-development workshop, two conference presentations, and maybe a couple of job applications) hanging over my head. As usual.

As expected, Friday was wasted with the development workshop. Yesterday I got a bit of reading done for the R&R, but not much in the way of actual writing. It's taking me longer to get through the reading than I would like. So it goes...

Good writing/revising/etc., all!

[lohai0]

Good morning afternoon, All!

 Lohai0, hope your rewriting goes well.

The departmental record for R&R's at this journal is 7 or 8. I'm only on 4.

[publish2012]

hello everyone, hope you are all doing well. Britmom, I understand your situation as this is the same with mine too: one just need to make the impossible possible in these days I guess. I am submitting a manuscript by March 1 and also writing a grant proposal, along with advocating a new project at my school (enlisted only as service work but involves teaching). I have become so afraid of losing time and energy over small things and become too exhausted to concentrate. But this weekend is good. I had normal sleeps; and made progress. My editor got back to me with some feedback on a ms too. Overall, I probably will just have to persuade myself I can do this.

Bevo98, thanks for the carrot; I will love some sticks too to pull through the following weeks.
Corny: good luck with the paper; I had same feeling about a chapter which received much feedback recently and has been quite testy; the outcome of all this really just depends on persistent work.
Formerly, bacon and pancakes are heavenly! I am envious! Good food yields much activeness for writing. Good luck.
Crumpet:good luck for the R&R! housework is perfect to keep one awake and also in good shape.

[britmom]

Morning/Afternoon lohai0, publish, formerly and everyone else...

Happy Monday. The weather is beautiful here, yet again. It makes a big difference when the sun's shining and you don't need 15 layers of clothes. (And the rest of the country is knee-deep in snow!)

Publish - sorry you're in the same boat. Yes, making the impossible happen describes the situation quite nicely.

I'm only just sitting down to work (in the cafe) at 12.30pm. Had a rubbish night with a non-sleeping toddler and a snoring husband so I went back to bed this morning. Anyway, my aim today is to get the structure of this article in place.  I know what I want to say and all the evidence I'm going to use. I just can't quite figure out how to draw it all together. Lots of cutting and pasting, I think.

[bevo98]

Good Morning Britmom at all.
Well, I was up at 6:00 to get Finito packed up when I got a rather important message from my dean which meant I just spent two hours updating my CV!  So, now I am hoping to get back to work with Finitio.  Goodness!

[lohai0]

I did not work on Steve yesterday, but I did make significant progress on the data analysis project that has been killing me for 6 months now. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now...maybe another two weeks should clear this out, along with Steve.

[bevo98]

I did not work on Steve yesterday, but I did make significant progress on the data analysis project that has been killing me for 6 months now. I think I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now...maybe another two weeks should clear this out, along with Steve.

Once I get Finitio packed up, I'll be sure to let him know Steve is on his way.

[formerly_the_fiver]

Hi All,

I'm checking in to cheer you all on, even though I did not do any research yet. I had to take care of some paperwork in order to get travel funding, and that cut into my research time. I will try to squeeze in a bit of time this afternoon after my teaching duties are over.

Britmom, sorry about the rough night. I hope the rest of the day goes well for you.

Bevo, sorry to hear about the unexpected change in plans. Hope it goes well with Finitio today.

Publish, glad you had a good weekend. It certainly sounds like you have a lot on your plate, but it seems to me that we generally are able to get everything done when we have to. It may not be fun, but it will be done. Good luck!

Lohai0, glad you mad a lot of progress yesterday. Keep it up!

Corny, Crumpet, and everybody else, I hope you're doing well. Best wishes to all!

I'll try to check in again later.

[fishprof]

I am in shock.

My computer is down.  Really down.  Beyond my not meager skills to revive.

And so, I am dead in the water, research wise.  And, being on sabbatical, I am not easily within reach of my schools IT dept.  With a newborn, I am not in possession of a lot of time to drive to campus and get it fixed (or, more likely, two trips to drop it off and pick it, or its replacement, up).

I am so glad the most important manuscript is out the door, but this is a potentially huge issue for the remainder of the spring.

On the other hand, lots of time to read....

[wanna_writemore]

Many sympathies, fishprof.  Do you live far from campus?

[formerly_the_fiver]

Fishprof, so sorry to hear about your computer. I hope that doesn't mean that you lost work that you've already done. Technology is great, but we really come to depend on it so much.

[fishprof]

With MrsFishProf and myself both off from work, we went to a family house in a summer vacation spot - very peaceful and quiet, but about 2hrs from Campus (but < 10 minutes from awesome research library for me).  So tomorrow, we are arranging for family to stay with MFP and Smolt in shifts while I do the long drive and try to get it fixed and/or replaced in one trip (not likely, BTW). 

It isn't that I've lost anything significant, I haven't done anything in two weeks (research wise, that is), it is the loss of the access to very specialized software.  If I have to rebuild or replace the system, that is about 20 hours of installations and tweaks to get back to data analysis.  Good thing I keep diligent notes.....

I'm pretty sure all the gains in productivity from technology are eaten up in the maintenance, replacement, and recovery of data when it fails....

[bevo98]

Greetings All!  Oh!  I have about an hour to work today and then more departmental intrigue.  I hope to be able to put all this aside quickly it is really not conducive to my writing! Another sleepless night either rewiring my brain for upcoming challenges or worrying too much. In a way, I am thankful for the research and writing, helps me get away from the other cr@p. 

fishprof, I am so sorry about your computer.  I am on sabbatical too and in December despite being really careful, I got hit with a worm.  Unfortunately, we have the IT from hell, I call them the "i don't know IT."  I carted the CPU to campus, they "fixed" it and yet when I sat down with them it was clear that all the guy had done was reboot it and check for viruses.  I tried to explain to him that there were no viruses but, rather, a worm (how is it that I know the difference, but he did not?).  In any case, I needed it, took it home and, two months later had to bring it back because the worm had damaged some programs.  All is well now, but it was a royal PIA.  I hope you have better luck.

Happy Valentine's day to all and here's wishing us all a bit more progress today.

[corny]

Hi everybody! Well, I got a very late start today, which is unfortunate. Still managed to get 2 hours in on the article, though, which is great - it's just that there's a lot more I COULD do today if I didn't have a million other things to do. It's starting to pick up speed at precisely the moment that I have less time to devote to it. Of course.

Bevo, I hope you were able to effectively carve out some time to work (and sorry about the not sleeping - that makes it hard!). Fishprof, I am really sorry to hear about your computer, and hope you're able to get it sorted out soon. Formerly, did you manage to get a bit of research done yesterday? Lohai0, Britmom, Publish, how are things going? I fear Crumpet is buried under a ridiculous pile of admin work somewhere - perhaps we should mount a rescue expedition?

[msparticularity]

Hi, everyone, and Happy Writing Day!

I am spending another day wrestling with R&R #1, which is rapidly feeling nearly as neverending as my actual Neverending Article. Overall I'm happy with what I've done so far, since I think that addressing some of the reviewers' comments has also strengthened the overall line of argument. At the moment, though, I'm wrestling (and wrestling, and wrestling) with how to answer one reviewer's quite directive input on something that s/he believes should be there--but that is actually kind of a red herring. Here's why I'm struggling: this point really represents a quite different area of analysis, and I could conceivably explain exactly that in my responses to the reviewers' comments, rather than trying to do anything in the paper. The thing that has occurred to me, though, is that others might also assume that my discussion ought to incorporate this point, since thanks to the use of a specific term, it appears on the surface to be germane. Therefore, I am trying to introduce the point myself to point out that, even though it appears to be related, it's not relevant to my particular analysis in this paper. But every time I try to do this, it ends up diverting the whole d@mn line of discussion fairly disastrously--argh! This journal uses Chicago Manual of Style, so my plan for today is to see whether I can coherently address this in a footnote.