Too close a call...

There are times when I get to appreciate just how lucky I am.  Forget winning the lottery, that'll never happen (not that it stops me trying), but when it comes to the day-to-day stuff, that's where favourable circumstances really make a difference.

Take today, for example....

I have never been a morning person; trying to get out of bed in the morning is significantly harder than getting a woman to admit she's wrong.  As such, I am on the road towards becoming Doc Emmet Brown, with my slowly increasing number of clocks and alarms (if not by hairline alone).

At this point time, I have roughly nine alarms set to go off:
  • A Pure DAB unit that has four alarms set - two to beep and two to turn the radio on
  • A battery operated unit that likes to shout at me to "Get up, now!" and which has had more than it's fair share of early morning beatings
  • My HTC Hero which has four alarms currently set, but which I can add a bundle more to if I so choose (might have to consider this)
    Now, you would think that with all this noise going off around the flat, I would have no reason to oversleep as you probably think that this number of alarms is a little on the excessive side.  Haha, if only!

    On a normal day, this is just about enough to get me out of my groggy slumber.  However, this turned out to not be a normal day!

    After a very late night trying to write a reflective essay for my first year's portfolio - and which still needs finishing - I decided to go to bed so that I wasn't too tired for the rest of the day; this was at around 02:00 this morning, a time which seems to have become quite common lately.  What I had not counted on was that I'd already reached the point where my body had had enough and my brain decided to put on it's traffic cop hat and take me out of the driving seat for a while.

    All I vaguely remember is dismissing one of the alarms on my Hero ... and that's it. No radio.  No beeping. No shouting alarm clock to thump.  Nothing.  Just pure, blissful, undisturbed sleep.

    Really not good on the day of an important programming test.  At 12pm.

    I woke at 11:30am.

    Groggy, bleary-eyed and wondering what day it was, I picked up my phone and found two messages wondering where I was.  Seeing as they were from the guys at Uni, it couldn't be a weekend...

    @$#&!!!!!!!!

    I had 30 minutes to get dressed, drive ten miles to Uni and get to the lab in time for the test.  I was screwed.  Hoping for things to go in my favour, I started...

    Underwear, jeans, t-shirt, ON; wallet, license, ID, keys, change for parking, POCKETED; window closed, door closed, flat locked, RUN; in the car, try to leave car park, someone enters car park, blocked in, EXPLETIVES; released from car park, onto road, tree surgeons in road, stopped, EXPLETIVES; moving again, more tree surgeons, stopped, EXPLETIVES; moving again, lights turn green before reaching them, YES, keep moving, round corner, police filming, FFS; passed the cops, moving freely, lights green, hit the motorway, foot down, leave the motorway, A405, A414, clear traffic, Hatfield lights green, next lights green, following lights green, into the Forum, space available, ticket bought, pen from glovebox, drink from side pocket, car locked, RUN; across campus, into corridor, turn left, wrong way, turn back, head for lab, arrive, 12:00 ... immediately behind tutor ... BREATHE!!!

    By some miracle, every set of traffic lights either turned green before I reached them or stayed green just long enough for me to get through them, though I paid for this when it came to running across the campus; as I had not thought about putting a belt on, I kept losing my jeans and showing off more boxers than the underwear section at Next.

    Unfortunately, because I was still hyper from racing to get to the test, I didn't pay much attention to the side of the paper where the marks were recorded, thinking that the text above was instructions.  It wasn't.  It was tasks 2 to 5.  I had spent ten minutes doing the first task and a further ten trying to tidy it up and document it, leaving twenty minutes left to do the remaining tasks.

    What a numpty.

    This is the first programming test where I have had to use all the time available and I'm pretty sure I messed things up as I did not give myself enough time to test what I had written.  I just hope that I haven't gotten a ridiculously stupid mark, or I will definitely not be happy...

    Comments

    Foogoofish said…
    OMG Poor you... WHat a Day? :-(
    OddThomas said…
    Well, at least I got there!!!

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