The computing situation here in Genova is going downhill. It really is pretty poor that the Ph.D. students have to manage the computing infrastructures themselves with shoddy old hardware. Now the hard drive with the home directories on is dropping sectors, the power is randomly cutting out, and to add to our discomfort, all the servers are now in our tiny office. That's 9 system boxes with large noisy fans blasting away about 3ft from my head. You have to shout to make yourself heard.

There are also no backups made of home directories, so you have to remember to do that yourself which is a pain. I just send all my stuff to Edinburgh.

My thesis has been bound, and sent to college today. They should write to me about graduation next week, but the letter will go to my home address and my folks are on holiday, so I won't find out until the week after next at the earliest. It looks like I should make the July ceremony though, which takes place while I'm at the IJCAR conference in Cork, coincidentally on the same day that we make a social trip to the Jameson Whisky distillery...