Sunday 31 October 2010

Why you should look after your coach

Let me recall a conversation I had with my coach the other day at weights.

So, to set the scene, I had stopped swearing at the weights for enough time to wonder over to Peter as he sat on his throne (a.k.a. the static pec machine thing that no one uses) from where he distributes his pearls of wisdom. Namely "More weight!" or for me "Less weight!" or "Use your bloody glutes!". He looked a little zoned out, to say the least.
There was some mild scolding for not telling me before so I could've bought him a muller rice or something (how amazing are muller rice???). We then had a nice conversation about how awesome homemade rice pudding was before I drifted off to do more squats.
The sad thing is that Peter's now introduced a swear jar for the gym, so I am going to be either (a) very poor very quickly or (b) will get *really* inventive with the word "badger". It's part of his plan to do the movember thing with the Cambridge WCS group, though it seems a little unfair to me as the guys just have to put in less effort than usual by not shaving while I have to shell out a load of £££ because I like swearing more than everyone else put together.  VERY UNFAIR. It does however promise to be a rather amusing month:
The hulk hogan
The handlebar. He'll have to speak with an accent for this one I think
The grizzily. Probability of getting arrested for something increases exponentially with time.
EDIT I've also just noticed he's now got one arm a lot shorter than the other. This will probably not happen if he grows a beard. Probably. 
 But anyway, the lesson of the day: look after your coaches, people. Unless they demand money out of you for swearing. Rage.

***Digression***

So, I've had a pretty crappy weekend (cue sad violins). Basically I've just started my Part III project (title:Pre-mainsequence stellar evolution in population synthesis and N-body models" Oh yeah.) and desperately want to do a good job of it, so I spent the weekend learning Fortran.  I was initially naively full of enthusiasm and energy (though the energy was provided by coffee) and attacked it with gusto.
I am not a programming genius.
Nothing like grim realisation!
Click for bigger-er. And yes, I have a picture of Kath Grainger as my background. Do you really find that surprising? This photo is a couple of strokes from the end of the 2003 W2- World Champs final (spoiler - they won). It's easily my favourite race ever (you'll have to watch it to see why - watch it here). FUCKING EPIC. Hero worship? YES. I am sooooo looking forward to her 2x in this year's World Champs.

But I should probably stop procrastinating and actually do some work now :-(

11 comments:

  1. Age of Mythology still on your desktop? WIN.

    At work, I have turned the text of my command prompt green so it looks cool. I felt kind of sheepish when I explained this to my manager.

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  2. @ David: Unfortunately AoE3 makes my laptop explode with its prettiness so I can't play it :-(

    But I am so turning my command prompt green right now.

    @ N: All astro-y programming is in Fortran, so I kinda have to comform tbh. Especially as I am a bit stupid when it comes to computers :-s

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  3. Good luck with Fortran ... I hear it is really logical in its own way, it's just that its own way is reeeeally old (my husband learnt it and really liked it - it 'clicked' for him). But yes - definitely the right thing to do learning the program that everything else is written in.

    Also: I love your cartoons. I know I've said that before. But I suspect you don't mind hearing it again :)

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  4. @ Eudoxia: Well, one thing's for certain - it's much easier than the horrors of C! *bad CATAM flashbacks*

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  5. @ Eudoxia again: Please don't be insulted! :-)

    http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/oC--u5a3WT-kKtXT5_4_gahOUKt9mm8nnLi4V_LV0v0?feat=directlink

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  6. Kath Grainger is my hero!

    Double is going to be AWESOME!

    :)

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  7. Programming makes me sad.

    The C(K)ath x2 story is a good one too, they had to fight their way up basically from the bottom of the women's squad rankings and ended up with a World Champs gold and Olympic silver. Not bad!

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  8. @Chiara: she's my hero more! :-)

    I am LOVING the World Champs. Ooooo yeah.

    @Tom: That world champ race just sums up everything that I think is awesome about rowing. Just wow.

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  9. I am right now having to rewrite some code from Fortran 77 into Fortran 95. NO-ONE USES GODDAMN FORTRAN, SO WHY FORTRAN 77?

    It makes my life epically sad.

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  10. @ Anonymous: I spent a couple of days trying to understand the stupid numerical recipe things I needed because the code I had for them was in fortran 90 but the goddam examples books they have are *still* in fortran 77.

    I ended up giving up and using NAG instead.

    I FEEL YOUR PAIN.

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