I was in college when my mom bought me my first laptop. It was a Toshiba (Tecra M sieres). I named him Lord Kelvin. Lord Kelvin was a really good and close fried of mine and had been with me for about a year before I entered grad school in August 2009. Until the end of that year I was not provided with a work desktop or laptop. Finally, I move from graduate student offices to the group office which I share with another graduate student, Jonathan.
The work desktop in my office was previously used by another graduate student, Amir, who defended in December 2009. He never cleaned up that computer. There were files and folders everywhere and he would march in and use them whenever he wanted. The computer itself was old, slow and had a bunch of garbage on it. I was really disappointed with the quality of the desktop. My laptop had much better computing power and was much faster.
As a group that "supposedly" did computer simulations we also had a "cluster". This cluster was a collection of 5-10 year old dusty computers. Nobody knew how to operate the cluster except for a previous student, Juan Carlos, who with a phd in chemical engineering decided to run away to peru and become a missionary. I didn't know how to use the cluster and didn't have any hopes that my stupid advisor, who asks me how to open a document, might have even the remote idea how to operate the cluster. I could remotely connect to the server, and run my simulations there. I should have left the day I discovered that but I wasn't strong enough.
Anyway most of my results were obtained on Lord Kelvin. I presented some of those results at APS (American physical society) on March 25 2011. The day before I started having some problems with the backlight on my laptop. The monitor would just go dark but you could see that it was working and sometimes it would miraculously work. For my presentation I borrowed Nati's Laptop. (Nati was another graduate student in our department who happened to present in the same session.) The presentation went really well. You can ask Nati!
My stupid advisor saw that my laptop had problems and I had to borrow Nati's for the presentation. I think a decent advisor at that point would offer to buy a laptop for their graduate student. But I have not seen much decency at Rice. Anyway, I made the laptop work with some tricks for some more months and finally the backlight stopped working and I had to connect it to a monitor to do anything with it. It wasn't much of a laptop anymore.
Around this time Jonathan started to have problems with my stupid advisor. And my stupid advisor's view about Jonathan changed from 0 to 180 degrees in less than a month. He change from this nice, helpful student to this terrible and weak student. They failed Jonathan on the proposal defense but he left with a masters. His father, I was told threatened to sue Rice. I, however, haven't failed any exam in my life and I left with nothing. I left after four successful years at graduate school with no degree. Life is so sweet and fair isn't it? Good job Rice. Go ahead an give each other titles and awards for your accomplishments.
Finally, I gave up on Lord Kelvin and declared him dead. It the first time I had to take the hard drive out and move all my data and I managed to do it. My stupid advisor though has to contact IT for that. He bought at least three laptops in the four years I had to tolerate him and he killed each one of them by repeatedly spilling coffee on them. I was told that they were purchased with grant moneys. I have no evidence to support that but word gets around. Some of my fellowship money was coming from the Welch foundation and some from NSF. I am actually tempted to contact these agencies and ask them to stop funding my stupid advisor.
Grants usually have an expiration time associated with them. If you have not spent the money before the expiration you have to return the remaining money. I know, and that's because my stupid advisor was stupid enough to tell me that he and the department somehow went around that by changing numbers. Apparently, Jonathan was paid by the department and later they switched it back to the Welch grant in order not to have to return the remaining money. Sounds like fraud to me.
Still with all these tricks, I was told that some money about a $1000 was left on the grant. I asked for a new laptop which I think was a legitimate request but my stupid advisor made me order a bunch of polymers which we ended up never using, never. Bottles of 200 grams of polymers which to my knowledge were never even opened. Is he an asshole? Of course! Sure looks like that but anyway he is just a terrible manager. Apart from not buying me a laptop, all this shit seems like fraud to me and I would like to report it. So if anyone knows whether this is actually fraud they should let me know and advise me on who to contact. Please email me to mystupidadvisor@gmail.com .
Anyway, I was cleaning up today and I thought it is time to bury Lord Kelvin and pay respect to him for all he did for me. He was more than a laptop to me. He was actually an advisor to me that the one I didn't have. He taught me, he worked with me and supported me until he died. He was a true friend and companion. I will miss him. He will always stay in my heart.
My stupid advisor would shout "these stupid computers!" whenever he was too stupid to do something on a computers. Computers are not stupid! Computers always do what you tell them to do. If you cannot make a computer do what you want you are just giving the wrong directions. Computers are 100% efficient graduate students. They don't sleep. They don't eat. They don't complain. If you cannot make a computer do what you want you are just being a very very stupid advisor.
