I'm trying to cut back down on my caffeine intake now, since I figured if I'm going to suffer from jetlag-induced headaches I might as well get all the headaches over with together. At this stage it mostly means that I'm switching from mochas to black tea and I'll hopefully switch to green tea, to decaf, by next weekend. Tazo's assorted tea mix is proving to be most useful. I'm currently at the "Awake" stage, which I am probably drinking with far too much sweetener but oh well, I need the extra boost of energy at noon-time.
It is currently 3am in Beijing right now. I am hopeful that I can get through the week without resorting to a stop at the drugstore for chemical aid (though it makes a lot of sense now why so many headache meds make me sleepy). I have picked out (and gotten replies back confirming) the people for my qual committee. I am caught up on my chores (well, all except the vacuuming, but it's 86F today and I think I can excuse myself for a week), my emails, and I have discovered that I've been accepted for the genetics training program, which means I will actually have financial support my third and forth year (the departmental stipend ends in September, the PI of the lab is responsible for our stipend the second year). My choices right now are either to work on my qual draft some more or go out and present shop (oh God I'm behind schedule for this, eek). I think I'll go present shopping because: 3am and if I'm out I won't fall asleep. Unlike the process of working on my qual draft. Also, it's one of the two things left that's still behind schedule.
Not bad, all in all.
Might still need more tea, though.
20090830
20090829
Jitters and steady hands
Currently am trouble shooting the Zen, which is one of the Presario F500 series and apparently EVERYONE's been having trouble with it's wireless card (great, huh) lately. Zen's serial number is covered under the extended warranty and I can't even see the WLAN under the network adapters under Device Manager. From what I've read so far, the chances are that the card itself is fine, but the adapter's dead. ...which really sucks. I'm re-installing the driver to see if it does anything at all. If it doesn't I'm calling the company for the free repair.
32 hours without sleep yesterday and I think I drank more coffee-based beverage in that time than I usually do in a year. (I've developed a fondness for the dark-chocolate mocha-typed semi-frozen things.) That, combined with the fact that I kept my jacket off in the airport so that I'm always a little cold, helped a lot. Unfortunately it also meant that when my transfer flight announced that the plane got down-sized and so 30 people are going to need to get on the next flight out, at 10pm instead of 6pm, and then when my name didn't show up any of the lists showing the transferred, approved, and standby lists, I started shaking, thinking I can't deal with this right now. (At that point I was sleep deprived for around 29 hours and have max'ed out on the amount of caffeine I can take without getting sick.) Fortunately it got sorted out, eventually, and I got really lucky with the buses (which only came once every half an hour after 7pm, so I could technically wait up to close to an hour) and had to wait for less than 20 minutes total for both lines. I did notice, however, that despite of the jitters my hands were surprisingly steady throughout the entire debacle, which means that if I do end up having to do the two hour time points for my 24 hour study on circadian rhythm in my mouse mutant, I am reasonably certain I can still perform the dissection on the brain of a ten day old mouse without mangling anything. (And yes I thought of that as my "upside" while queuing yesterday.)
Also, what's up with the weather? I feel like I left in the beginning of autumn and came back in the middle of summer. Time does not that way flow. Unless I did, how did Lucy put it..."black out" at some point. For an entire year. And all my mailbox dates are wrong and my car and apartment miraculously are still exactly how I left them. Which is logistically improbable but then, time flowing backward is sort of impossible....
Hm...restalling the driver didn't seem to change anything. Call it is.
Ugh, no urge to cook of whatsoever. I wonder if I can just have fruits for dinner. Mmm strawberries.
[ETA]
It's a motherboard problem. HP is sending me a box.
32 hours without sleep yesterday and I think I drank more coffee-based beverage in that time than I usually do in a year. (I've developed a fondness for the dark-chocolate mocha-typed semi-frozen things.) That, combined with the fact that I kept my jacket off in the airport so that I'm always a little cold, helped a lot. Unfortunately it also meant that when my transfer flight announced that the plane got down-sized and so 30 people are going to need to get on the next flight out, at 10pm instead of 6pm, and then when my name didn't show up any of the lists showing the transferred, approved, and standby lists, I started shaking, thinking I can't deal with this right now. (At that point I was sleep deprived for around 29 hours and have max'ed out on the amount of caffeine I can take without getting sick.) Fortunately it got sorted out, eventually, and I got really lucky with the buses (which only came once every half an hour after 7pm, so I could technically wait up to close to an hour) and had to wait for less than 20 minutes total for both lines. I did notice, however, that despite of the jitters my hands were surprisingly steady throughout the entire debacle, which means that if I do end up having to do the two hour time points for my 24 hour study on circadian rhythm in my mouse mutant, I am reasonably certain I can still perform the dissection on the brain of a ten day old mouse without mangling anything. (And yes I thought of that as my "upside" while queuing yesterday.)
Also, what's up with the weather? I feel like I left in the beginning of autumn and came back in the middle of summer. Time does not that way flow. Unless I did, how did Lucy put it..."black out" at some point. For an entire year. And all my mailbox dates are wrong and my car and apartment miraculously are still exactly how I left them. Which is logistically improbable but then, time flowing backward is sort of impossible....
Hm...restalling the driver didn't seem to change anything. Call it is.
Ugh, no urge to cook of whatsoever. I wonder if I can just have fruits for dinner. Mmm strawberries.
[ETA]
It's a motherboard problem. HP is sending me a box.
20090816
It doesn't exist
Dear diary,
Today I discovered the differences between GSM and CMDA phones, as in that my US CMDA phone doesn't have whatever the equivalent of SIM card is, so I can't switch to dad's quad-band GSM phone that's usable both in US and PRC.
Fail.
Sincerely,
S
Today I discovered the differences between GSM and CMDA phones, as in that my US CMDA phone doesn't have whatever the equivalent of SIM card is, so I can't switch to dad's quad-band GSM phone that's usable both in US and PRC.
Fail.
Sincerely,
S
20090815
5 Ps
Long rant ahead, heads up.
For those of you who haven't heard already, I'm flying out to Beijing next Saturday, returning the Friday after. Grandpa (mom's side) is in the hospital, though his condition has stabilized enough in these two weeks that they're thinking of releasing him next week, which would be interesting since he is not going to recover fully, so mom's currently in charge of setting up an "Invalid's Room". They haven't found a good nurse yet (he needs to be fed through a tube every two hours, turned every two hours, etc.) so right now my mom & aunts & uncles are doing rotation (though my oldest aunt's already had a breakdown from exhaustion and that's going to push everyone else closer to their breaking point, as a result). Mom's reported that grandpa's seems more lucid now, though, to the point where he's asking after me. (It's kind of weird that I'm still that much of a favorite, because I keep thinking that I should be standing in my cousin's shadow since he's the one to carry on the family name and he's there.)
I have my visa now (thanks to Lucy, muchas gracias), I am done with moving (courtesy of Glen and Kate, whose vacation I sort of ruined, lo siento), and my stuff packed with enough cash in both USD and YMB that I should be able to navigate the entire thing on my own, if necessary. My dad (house keeping & managing finances &c at this end from Bay Area) just emailed me yesterday asking if I can find the time to stop by and see my grandparents (dad's side) while I'm in Beijing, since my other grandpa's health apparently has been failing too (why do people not tell me these things?) and he wants me to leave them "a happy memory". Also, he hasn't cc'ed, called, or in anyway notified mom of this plan. Not that anyone from mom's side will have the time to deal with either him or point me to the right bus stops (since they've changed all the bus lines prior to the Olymptics and I have no idea in hell which buses to take, since the buses I used to take don't exist anymore). I'm thinking maybe taxi, as seen by the cash withdraw mentioned earlier.
I've had the dubious pleasure of running over my credit limit for the first time today. Admittedly it's mostly because I'm still using the card that I got when I left for Davis and the credit limit on that is 1/8 of the cards I got later and I ordered the plane tickets with them, which is 1.5K right there. But well, interesting. (I paid for groceries with debit today.)
I'm going to try to pay my bills, pick out my classes &c this weekend, because the deadline's two weekends from now and the second weekend...I don't think I'll be good for much the second weekend. I've already brought one of those mocha-mixes to aid with the 15 hour jet-lag, which I have two days to get through. I'm going to try to shift my lab schedule a little so I do cryostat that Monday. It shouldn't require too much concentration and the room is too cold for me to fall asleep (I'll be sitting in front of -20C station with its door open for hours).
In other news: we threw a baby shower for Aiju (postdoc in my lab) yesterday. I made jello and got her flowers. People got her baby clothes and things too, and a cake. It was all very cute.
Been feeling tired all week. I think things will be better in September. I hope.
Knock on wood.
For those of you who haven't heard already, I'm flying out to Beijing next Saturday, returning the Friday after. Grandpa (mom's side) is in the hospital, though his condition has stabilized enough in these two weeks that they're thinking of releasing him next week, which would be interesting since he is not going to recover fully, so mom's currently in charge of setting up an "Invalid's Room". They haven't found a good nurse yet (he needs to be fed through a tube every two hours, turned every two hours, etc.) so right now my mom & aunts & uncles are doing rotation (though my oldest aunt's already had a breakdown from exhaustion and that's going to push everyone else closer to their breaking point, as a result). Mom's reported that grandpa's seems more lucid now, though, to the point where he's asking after me. (It's kind of weird that I'm still that much of a favorite, because I keep thinking that I should be standing in my cousin's shadow since he's the one to carry on the family name and he's there.)
I have my visa now (thanks to Lucy, muchas gracias), I am done with moving (courtesy of Glen and Kate, whose vacation I sort of ruined, lo siento), and my stuff packed with enough cash in both USD and YMB that I should be able to navigate the entire thing on my own, if necessary. My dad (house keeping & managing finances &c at this end from Bay Area) just emailed me yesterday asking if I can find the time to stop by and see my grandparents (dad's side) while I'm in Beijing, since my other grandpa's health apparently has been failing too (why do people not tell me these things?) and he wants me to leave them "a happy memory". Also, he hasn't cc'ed, called, or in anyway notified mom of this plan. Not that anyone from mom's side will have the time to deal with either him or point me to the right bus stops (since they've changed all the bus lines prior to the Olymptics and I have no idea in hell which buses to take, since the buses I used to take don't exist anymore). I'm thinking maybe taxi, as seen by the cash withdraw mentioned earlier.
I've had the dubious pleasure of running over my credit limit for the first time today. Admittedly it's mostly because I'm still using the card that I got when I left for Davis and the credit limit on that is 1/8 of the cards I got later and I ordered the plane tickets with them, which is 1.5K right there. But well, interesting. (I paid for groceries with debit today.)
I'm going to try to pay my bills, pick out my classes &c this weekend, because the deadline's two weekends from now and the second weekend...I don't think I'll be good for much the second weekend. I've already brought one of those mocha-mixes to aid with the 15 hour jet-lag, which I have two days to get through. I'm going to try to shift my lab schedule a little so I do cryostat that Monday. It shouldn't require too much concentration and the room is too cold for me to fall asleep (I'll be sitting in front of -20C station with its door open for hours).
In other news: we threw a baby shower for Aiju (postdoc in my lab) yesterday. I made jello and got her flowers. People got her baby clothes and things too, and a cake. It was all very cute.
Been feeling tired all week. I think things will be better in September. I hope.
Knock on wood.
20090805
20090803
Whhyyy?
Zen's decided that it can't find the wireless. So now I need to use Daemon, to try to figure out what's happened. (Ivy can see the wireless too, so it's just Zen.)
[edit 13:36]
Zen's wireless card died. Aside from that it's all systems go.
[edit 13:36]
Zen's wireless card died. Aside from that it's all systems go.
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