The Lair of the Emerald Serpent

Izzie is one pissed off python indeed. The map is so so not the territory. Had made a little arrangement that Monday evening’s online slinking would be dedicated to completing a certain Coursera exam. The deadline is 3pm today local Oz time but with the weird weather over in the States, it would be reasonable to expect all sorts of power outages

Not to mention the ridiculous nonsense on this side of the fence. In order to avoid temptation of any kind had put the old Mac in sleep mode so the relevant page was displayed. Therefore there would be no need to go near the internet and time could be devoted to revising assorted slides and stuff.

The fact the computer got itself into such a state of slumber that it could only be awoken by touching the on button was the first omen. The pathetic wifi dongle then decided it would fart around and take a whole 30 minutes before letting the Izzie visit Cyberia.

There’s a strange sort of exhaustion induced by the frustration of a badly behaving portkey to Cyberia. It is much more draining than doing a decent day of physical work. Maybe it is a control freak thing. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall.

But there was still the minor matter of that last minute cramming to do. Lucky these files were already on the computer downloaded at the super zippy speed of 13kbps. It was only after starting these courses when the serpent realized just how seriously sucky our ISP really is. Until then most online activities consisted of reading and sending email, visiting assorted blog and journal sites and of course the recent lurking in Nanoland.

The original intention was to do the first of the two attempts allowed that night so that if there was any more connectivity dramas at least the serpent score would be something slightly larger than a big fat zero. Had spent so much time on this stuff it would be silly to waste all the work within sight of the finish line.

Got a pissy little 6.75/13 on the first round. Then got to thinking that it was time to just bite the bullet and get the whole thing over and done with so we could get back to the scheduled bitching about the old toad and jellyfish and other assorted corporate zombies. After all, it’s time for a clean slate at the stroke of midnight tomorrow evening

Could not do the second attempt straight away as there is a ten minute delay. Not sure if it is a cooling off period or some geekish system requirement that gives rise to this rule. Waited patiently only to discover that the pissy little portkey had decided to play the game of leaving all the lights on and the signal on full strength but simply refusing to deliver the goodies. It was some twenty minutes later being turned on and off several times that it finally started to do its job. Just wanted to get the damned thing done and turn off the infernal computer and go to bed. It is possible to ‘game’ even the final exam but the opportunities are limited with only two attempts instead of the previous four allowed on all the other homework. So the Izzie had to choose very very carefully. Being able to peruse a printed copy earlier in the day made a big difference in eliminating possibilities and stacking the odds a little more in the Izzie's favour

At least the next day we could start with a clean slate and dedicate the morning to some serious catch up squiggling. But silly Izzie must be a glutton for punishment. Just one quick peek at the Nano forums and gmail and then it is time to write. Needless to say such a suggestion would be hosed down very quickly if today had been on the other side of Halloween. There’s something about a deadline that brings out the inner beast.

This time it was easy to get on. It just so happened that within five minutes it became impossible to actually go anywhere. The browsers were full of spinning wheels and those dreaded DNS messages. A normal creature would have got the message damned fast and got the hell out of there. But in some perverse way this just made the Izzie more determined to feast on all this ‘forbidden fruit’
In the end all we had to show for it was a lot of frustration and two hours of the morning totally wasted. Thirty mins of those was on a nano forum post only ten lines long. It took that long for Google to fetch and deliver the links needed

Will be at Petunia’s place this evening where their internet is nice and zippy. But it is a bit wasted on the old 2005 laptop with the infernal spinning beachballs and the zombie O key.
Apparently Halloween is huge this year in downtown Dursleyville. There’s all sorts of vampire and zombie stuff going on. Will be off to Zapata’s Mexican restaurant tomorrow evening to feast on Zombie Vegan Nachos (sounds as likely as vegetarian vampires) before going to a free evening of local ghost stories

By now a certain Halloween ‘care package’ will have arrived at Toad Hall. If it gets past the filthy fingers of dearest Dolores, there is going to be lots of amusement indeed. Professor Lupin would be very impressed

It's hard to believe that it is exactly two weeks since the Goblin Inquisition and still not gotten around to posting about it. That had been the intention this evening but the gods giggle when serpents make plans
It's sucky enough having a snailish internet provider with supersonic speeds of 13kbps but now the serpent has found an alternative source for downloading Coursera lecture videos, these miserable snails have found new ways of pissing off the Izzie. Last night it took a good ten minutes for the black wifi dongle to change its status from 'connecting' to 'connected'. Tonight it excelled itself and took a ridiculous 30 minutes. Was most murderous indeed. Already had a splitting headache induced by the bus ride from hell. This was just the last straw

Needless to say that little episode well and truly nuked any enthusiasm for serious squiggling. Just as well the serpent had no plans for doing the Crypto final exam this evening. But now there's the serious worry that this piss poor pathetic Portkey to Cyberia is going to get into such snailish habits all the time.
Pretty much given up on the Python programming course at this stage. Finally remembered to copy the files downloaded last week at Petunia's place. Not even looked at a single video yet and the course is already in its second week. Will just have to make do with downloading all the video lectures and looking at them some later time when the old skull is not in such a scrambled brain dead zombie state
Will be staying away from active involvement in any online courses now until the end of November. Having all that extra time is no use when the old grey cells are totally sizzled

Yet another item to add on the payback list for a certain old toad

Still cannot believe that the decision back in late August to wait one week to even look at the Coursera video lectures could have had such cumulative consequences. The littlest peek in that first week would have led this serpent to immediately snatch the stuff from a more user friendly location. Had not completely neglected the course and had been looking at the slides and pdf files during that time but they were completely incomprehensible without the video key to unlock the mathematical mumbo jumbo.

At least Nanowrimo does not require half decent internet connections. In fact the less time spent online the better. It's a low tech and very cheap form of amusement. This is all good news for the inner control freak.

Maybe Friday will finally be the day that all the assorted loose ends get tidied up.