Typically ... I am not a procrastinator. But lately, I have been.
I know part of it is that I am squeezing in small things I enjoy like reading (Salt by Adam Roberts) an hour between things I need to get done like chores or studying; and the other part of it is that like many I'm looking at the depressed recession outlook.
Stores seem to be closing everywhere. There are killer deals for just about anything from cars (no interest for 4 years on loans) to buying houses (zero federal APR, and banks are *only* charging around 5%). But no one really has any money to buy anything. Not anything big like a car or a house at least.
And not like buying anything should matter to me since right now I have no job and my unemployment benefits have been temporarily suspended. I had to float my bills on my credit card. Ah, I digress.
The reason I opened with procrastination is that I should be, absolutely should be, working on my first laboratory report for organic chemistry.
Well, I couldn't and was stressing about it last night, while studying for my first exam (I'll come back to that in a minute), because I didn't have a cd to install Microsoft Office. Apparently we had a 2003 version. I have a serial number but no cd for the software and can't seem to find it on the internet for download. However there are plenty of things out there if I want to crack Office 2007.
Not interested when I have a legit serial and hey, I believe the developers should get what they work for. I just also believe they shouldn't charge an eye and leg for home users.
So in light of not having software to even LOOK at my work from last semester I was a little bewildered. Yes, as Adam suggested, I could go to the library. But who knows how long this will take and hey, I like to be at my computer at home snuggled on a cold overcast day like today by a nice fire. Plus, I reiterate, I have NO IDEA how long this will take. I'll cap it at 6 hours, hopefully .... my mind shrieks and collapses at the thought.
The software I stumbled upon was OpenOffice. I vaguely remembered something else out there that was (1) importantly free (2) available for immediate download and (3) compatible with Microsoft Office.
OpenOffice so far is much better than the old software of Microsoft Office we had, so honestly I may stop my search and just use it. The least I can say is that I'm stoked.
Tomorrow I'll be stoked on my copy of Photoshop CS4. I'm a huge fan of editing pictures. I can't wait to see what all these programs with Photoshop do.
Arg, back to organic chemistry. Today I get to write up a synthesis I did with zinc. It's supposed to be a green friendly approach involving a grinard reagent with zinc, an allyl system, by way of a radical reaction. Ah, maybe some poor future organic chemistry may need my reports ... might find a way of posting them.
As for going back to speak a minute about my exam, aye, the two biggest problems I fumbled over. Those were worth over 20 percent of the exam. I guess the best I can hope for is a B, but I may end up with something closer to a C. Ah well, all I need to do is pass to get my degree.
That will be so nice, to finally be done!
