The sign lay around left over from the abandoned reception office nearby. The bin is positioned strategically so that everybody entering my office can see it once they're close enough to communicate with me.

The phone rings. Hmm, an external call, maybe I should get ungrumpy. Alright. "hello, this is alex speaking."
"hello, is this mr. garagedoors?" (some east-european accent)
huh? "no. no garage doors here."
"i'm calling because of right motor on my garage door doesn't work."
...
*sigh* "this is a university."
"oh, i must have wrong number. sorry." *click*

Hamming-coding for phone numbers NOW!

Finally, I'm about to graduate with a (hard-earned) PhD; but as expected I'm boycotting/avoiding the ceremony on the 3.2. because neither do I want to wear a dumbo hat and a batman cape in public, nor do I value speeches by our First Apes; such political shenanigans are only good for frothing rage, brain rot and stomach ulcers and are avoided by hardcore technologists like me for ood reasons.

But nevertheless I'm done! The Shiny Paper will be in the (internal) mail soon post-ceremony and thus I've got another title to add to my name.

But I'm hardly proud of that or the title. I am, however, semi-proud of the achievement: I had a totally original idea of my own, I built it into something that works (idea+code) and I showed that and how it works. I'm also somewhat proud of the fact that I managed to convince Manfred Hauswirth, Stefan Conrad and Warren Toomey that what I did was worth a doctorate (as they were my examiners).

But enough drunken rambling. Time to go back to layer zero and fix the pergola on the house and install the whirlybird ventilator and do the committee-mandated painting in ugly colours and...you know, all this other "life" stuff.