End of the exams!

I may be completely wrong in saying this, but I actually think that the network exam went quite well. In fact, I would go so far as to say it went as well as the Software Engineering one - I could answer most things and make educated guesses at the rest. It was also the exam which I finished the most quickly out of the four I had this semster, and it left me about 20 minutes at the end to sit back and ponder the question of whether we are alone in the Universe.

The graph question that I was relying on didn't come up, but he asked one of the same questions as he set in the practical, and that was one of the few areas that I had revised. I was just lucky, I think. But we'll see what happens when the results get through.

By the way, even though it'll be too late by the time this goes online, best of luck to gh and anyone else taking Component Technology that reads this. I'm sure your exam is going to be exponentially more horrendous than Machines and Computation.

Unfortunately I didn't have the chance to take part in Roger's post-exam plan ("We get out of the hall, we all pile in to my car, and we drive to the pub, where I drink until I can't see any more") because I was being transported back home for my dad's 50th birthday.

I'll be staying here for a couple of days before I leave to see whinknee in New York, and am once again staying in the coldest room in the house (which is only marginally preferable to actually living inside the fridge). Getting the Internet to work on this computer without disturbing any of the others' cables is like trying to solve a puzzle from the Crystal Maze, with too many computers, not enough phone sockets, and a large number of cables with differing lengths, but all being slightly too short.

The tools of a modern dentist.

As if I hadn't endured enough torment recently, this morning I went for an appointment at the dentist. As I waited in the reception area, watching assistants walk between surgeries carrying various instruments of terror, my thoughts turned to why going to the dentist is so frightening compared to any other medical visit. What's done there is meant to help rather than just hurt a lot, even though it might not seem like it. And it does hurt. On this particular visit to the theatre of pain, I had to bite on a sharp plastic thing while my mouth was irradiated, and then I was descaled, a process that involved vigorously rubbing a sharp instrument along the cracks between my teeth. And then I had to pay £18.50 for the privilege.

However, now it's out the way, and I can just concentrate on getting ready for America and then not doing any work for the next two and a half weeks. Even now, that's still a completely alien concept to me.

I had already forgotten the curse of 56k combined with Internet Explorer and a P2 laptop. It's so slow and awkward to do anything at all - the image above had better display correctly in people's Friends lists, because it was a huge effort to get right.