Lament - mistaken break-through

It's hasn't been a good week last week. The research project that I've been doing is due to have a progress presentation this week followed by a large presentation to the project's sponsers 3 weeks from now. Unfortuantely my work hasn't been going quite as I have hoped. I've been able to implement something others have already done and published, but havne't been able to come up with my own new idea or understanding of the system.

Last week I thought I had a break-through twice. Once when I was playing around with the system diagram and made a miscalculation and thought that I was able to extract a very important property from the system with only a simple change to it. I even checked it twice knowing that I am not the most careful of person when it came to these things. However, the excitement must have over taken my sensen, and I informed my profressor of my findings since he happened to be around at that time. Only to find out a few hours later that I've made a calculational mistake. It's embarassing that I had to tell him the next day that I made a calculational error.

After that in the same week I thought that I could understand the system more when I was talking to a collegue and the talk gave me an idea to model the system differently. Unfortunately that didn't turn out as I have planned either.

Um... time is pressing