An October update for 2021

I've been pretty busy since starting my new job on the 10th between the job itself and my continued efforts to procure a car and place to live, so this'll just be a quick note to say, "Yes, I'm still alive!" The good news is that I'm enjoying my job so far. This week I found my first (very minor) bug in DRAGONS and submitted a fix, so I feel like a real programmer now. It's also quite relaxed and non-stressful, which is great, because the bad news is that I'm still busy getting a car and a place to stay. 'Tis a long tale so I won't go into it now, but it's also kept me pretty stressed out, which isn't conducive to writing interesting blog posts. For various reasons I'm hopeful that this week might see some progress on one or both fronts, so hopefully I'll have some more good news to report soon. Anyway, that's it for now. A hui hou!

Pandemic! Earthquakes! Thesis submission!

It's been a long time coming—four years and one very long week, to be exact—but today I finally, finally submitted my thesis. It's an odd feeling, now, having...free time again. I've been living with the sword of Damocles over my head for so long at this point that I've forgotten what it's like to not have something I should be doing at the back of my mind every waking moment. It's a pleasant feeling.

To be fair, two years—almost a full half of my thesis—was spent in a (hopefully) once-in-a-century pandemic. It's hard to tell if that contributed to the delay (remember, this was originally supposed to be a 3 or 3.5 year program), but it certainly didn't make that extra time very fun. I'm incredibly thankful I've been able to move back to Hilo, because I'm honestly not sure I could face moving somewhere new with all the additional stresses of moving during the pandemic. (Like needing to get a negative COVID-19 test both to fly back to California, and to fly to Hawaii, and the extra hassle and stress that came with that.)

This last week in particular has been pretty brutal. Most of that is the stressful-but-ultimately-mundane work of endlessly writing, editing, re-writing, addressing comments, writing, surprise updating thesis \(\LaTeX\) template, and, you guessed it, more writing that I'm guessing accompanies the race to the finish for every graduate student. Part of it was realizing on Thursday that I needed to update the official title of my thesis on record with Swinburne (untouched since I scribbled something down in my admission paperwork four years ago, before I'd even settled on a project). Another part was realizing on Friday (Saturday in Australia) that I didn't have access to a critical Turnitin module on Swinburne's online student management system, which provides a report that must be included at submission time. Yes, this module is critical for students to actually submit their theses. No, I don't know why it isn't enabled for default for all graduate students (I wasn't the only student it'd happened to, I learned). It worked out, at least, in the end. However, I also had a few slightly less...usual things to contend with this week. (To set the stage, I should briefly mention that Gemini has very graciously set me up with a rental car and a temporary apartment for the first month I'm here, while I'm finding more permanent forms of both for myself.)

1. Sunday I went back to back to the church I attended before leaving Hilo (where I had a very warm welcome back), then afterwards went grocery shopping. When I came out, my rental car wouldn't start due to a dead battery. I was able to call roadside assistance, and they got someone over to give me a jump after about an hour and a half. I once drained the battery on the car I had when I lived here before, so like that time I went for a long drive to charge the battery up figuring that would be the end of the matter. (It wasn't.)
2. Tuesday I felt a little earthquake as I was sitting in my sixth-floor apartment, just strong enough that I wasn't entirely sure it'd even been an earthquake. (It was magnitude-4.6, officially.)  I only remember feeling two earthquakes in the eight years I lived in Hilo before (and none in Melbourne, though I actually missed out on a magnitude-5.9 earthquake that rattled Victoria less than a week after I left) so this was an interesting event. (And, like the car problem, I thought that was the last of it...)
3. Friday I went for a quick pre-breakfast shopping trip to Target, and my car battery died again in the parking lot. This time—I kid you not—it took over six hours before I was able to get someone to come by for the 30-second job of getting a jump start. Thankfully in the meantime I'd talked to my contact at Gemini and they'd talked to the rental car company, so as soon as I had a working car again I high-tailed it up the road to the airport and got it exchanged for one without a dud battery. This wasn't a particularly pleasant experience on its own, but I also had the added "fun" of losing six hours of prime working time two days before my thesis was due for submission. (At least the new car—SUV, actually—is nice, and working so far.)
4. Finally, today, Sunday again, we had another earthquake, meaning I've now felt as many in the last fortnight since arriving in Hilo as I did in eight years previously. This one was a lot bigger, at magnitude-6.2, though at least the epicenter was off the southern coast of the island and about a  hundred miles away. That didn't stop my sixth-floor apartment from swaying alarmingly for a few seconds, though! I haven't heard any reports of damage or injuries, thankfully, but I'm definitely looking forward to having an abode back on the ground again; I don't mind earthquakes half as much when I'm not vividly thinking about how just how high up in the air I am.

However, at the end, after a gruelling week of writing to the point where I could barely put two concepts together in a coherent fashion anymore, my thesis is submitted. I'm free. Well, until tomorrow morning, when I start my new job with Gemini, but hopefully that'll be a bit less demanding. The beauty of a normal job is that when you're off the clock, you're actually off the clock. And with that, I should wrap this post up. Perhaps I'll have some more happy things to blog about before too long! A hui hou!