Thesis: In Memoriam

I just finished my final defense presentation. It went more quickly then I was hoping, but I know that I always tend to speak too quickly during these things. I was shooting for about 30 minutes, it took about 20-25. The questions I received were good, and had the unfortunate effect of highlighting issues that I should have covered better in the presentation. Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20.

Friday is going to be a day of bureaucracy. I have to print up several copies of my thesis report on nice paper (nice = expensive). Two unbound copies go to the graduate school, two bound copies go to the department, one of which specifically goes to my adviser. One bound copy I keep for myself. With each copy being about 90 pages long, that's 450 sheets of good white paper that I need to have available, at least.

The graduate school needs two copies, as a I mentioned, although they are going to review the formatting and kick it back to me if it doesnt meet their specifications. It should, of course, but in the unlikely event that they don't like it I will get it back and have to fix it. I may only submit one copy to them on friday for checking, and submit the second when I know it's been accepted. May 5th is the last day to hand it in to them if I want to get my diploma in May.

I also need to get all my source code put together, cleaned up, documented, and verified. I need to get a zip file to my advisor, something that I also hope to have done by friday. There are one or two bugs still that I want to try to iron out before I submit it to him, however, bugs that I should be able to resolve by tonight.

Besides these few loose ends, this basically marks the end of my thesis and the end of my master's degree. I have no finals this year, just a two final projects of varying complexity. Those should not take too much of my time, in comparison.