hello everyone! Seems forever since I was on here however i've had major saga's!! a few weeks ago while enjoying a chinese and South Park, i'm knocked my OJ all over my lovely macbook! :( 3 days of drying etc lead to nothing and it was totally fried! got death certificate but due to flooding etc had to wait for insurance company to find time to process claim! total mayhem between them, another company and curries, but finally today I got a brand new macbook :) very annoying as i could have got a nice 800quid to spend in curries but my thesis is all in mac office and compatability for styles is rubbish so decided to save the hassle and get another one! although now it has arrived i'm in love again already and for the price of my excess have another very good, hopefully sturdy laptop (minus the orange juice!)

You can all breath though, luckily I had just done a massive back up and had my whole thesis and associated files on network storage and email! 8-)

Anyway, just wanted to say hello and remind everyone that laptops don't like juice!! :( BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP!!!!
I have just finished my college lecturing, it was great but glad to be finished as now I can get stuck into one full time job! going to concentrate on that for this month and then in January the writing starts up again big time! Very scary at the moment as seem to get email every week from uni telling me someone else from my induction year of PhD is getting viva'd, and i'm no where near! oh well, i'm thankful to have a job, even a low paid one!

Anyway, hope everyone is doing well and not too stressed in this yucky season of cold and dark - i have winter blues and can feel my SAD getting worse every week, but trying to just not think about it and keep busy. I think if I had lost all my thesis with the laptop breakage though i would have taken to my bed and not been up for a while - also possibly would have made me want to give up and not bother with submission etc! so remember to keep multiple back ups, I think email is probably the best as likelihood of losing it is VERY VERY slim!

I seem to be rambling so i'm off to finish customising laptop and setting everything up!
Cheers (up)

sorry not sure why this posted twice! it wasn't me....?

Hi alpaca, was wondering how you were getting on. Thank God you'd just backed up! Nice to see the universe working in harmony with a phd student for once :)

Hi Teek, good to hear from you? Hows things going for you, hope all is in harmony in your world too! I'm actually pretty surprised, but I did have quite a bit of hassle actually getting the new laptop, but at least like you say i'd backed up! I'm sure in the usual topsy turvyness of this world, that was my one bit of really good luck in the last while and now something horrible will happen....:-s

Don't tempt fate alpaca! The Gods have (sort of) smiled upon you, let them be ;-)

All is, tumultuous in my little realm, hence the return to pro+ and l'express de midnight!

yes, you are right, i'll shall keep completely schtum and enjoy my good fortune! 8-)

I shall, now that i've have received my luck however, put it on the midnight express with first class delivery and send it on to you and Wal! I hope you have a good night and i'm sure it will all be worth it.
Proud of you all working so hard, i'm feeling a complete lack of motivation, so tired, just want the quiet life for a month and then must crack on - however the dreich weather is driving me insane, why can't humans hibernate??? Actually is there a thesis right there? I could be the experiment! ;-)

Thinking of you!

Thanks for this: I'm rubbish at backing up but this has prompted me to send everything I've done to a dedicated email address! At some point I shall burn it all to disc too and then send copies to all my relatives in case my flat burns down and the email strategy somehow fails... :-)

I've recently registered with dropbox.com - a secure file backup and file sharing site - and use this to backup my thesis files very frequently, and to share the latest versions of my thesis files between my various computers. I'm still sending copies to myself at the uni, and using an external backup drive. But dropbox has made it easier for me to work with my files on my various computers. I wish I'd found it earlier. It's ironic it makes such a difference to me right at the end of my PhD!