Dear blog

I will update later, since I started typing my blog entry that covered the past few days and the entry turned into a (battery)power sucking monster. I am updating now just to say that SD weather is wonderful and ThinkGeek is freakin' awesome (I got the catalog in the mail today).

Holiday rush

I'm wondering whether or not to bother coming into lab at all tomorrow, since I've got most of the stuff planned so that all experiments can be wrapped up by the end of today. Transit by bus to and from campus will take me two hours. I need to arrive to the airport early, also by bus, which will take me at least one hours and thirty minutes. If I have a flight at two-ish that means I should probably leave house at around noon, which means I need to leave lab at eleven, which means even if I got to lab by eight in the morning I'll have a grand total of three hours which...is enough to run PCR and maybe a gel. Purify RNA maybe if already have samples prep'ed (which I don't, since I finished a fresh batch yesterday). Do some cell culture (also finished yesterday). More likely, I'll be doing comp bio stuff, and now that the initial downloading and compiling portion part is over, I'm collecting sequences, which I can do at home just well as in lab. Which leads me to ask why the heck would I come to lab tomorrow?

Therefore, unless I forget something important (such as an incubation) I probably won't even be in lab tomorrow.

...

I got the wheels changed on my car over the weekend, since they are pretty old and while a bit of dry-rot isn't too bad on the locals I didn't want to take the chances when Lucy and I drive long distance. I also had some time to make up my Christmas list for this year and spent some time staring at the calendar, trying to figure out when I need to mail what to whom so that it arrives on time, given that the speed of delivery by USPS seems to asymptotically approach zero the closer we get to Christmas. (Well no, it isn't that bad. I'm exaggerating by a lot. The point is the speed will be slower and the margin of error greater and if I were to plot it it would probably look a little like something from the half-life decay graph.) I have not yet heard from Malvina (does anyone have her current email address? Does anyone mind checking the emails I've sent out to make sure that I am using her current email address?) but I think we're good to go for everyone else.

...

My mice had two litters last week. One of which got eaten over the weekend. Lab mice are very inbred and strange. (Read: disgusting.)

...

I went out to dinner with some of my labmates (and whichever of their spouses that could make it) last night. It was fun. The atmosphere was a lot more relaxed since the PI (who is, when all's said and done, our "boss") wasn't there. Wendy and her husband were nice enough to give me a ride so I won't have to navigate the two highways that's between where I am and where the place is. There was a lot of ribbing involved for everyone regarding lab and life. Considering the fact that it was a Monday night, it was very relaxing.

Radioactivity: day 3

Did you know that ethanol is now considered to be a toxic controlled substance? As in a) we're no longer allowed to dispose of it down the drain (even though I'm sure people are allowed to pour liquor down the drain without having to fill out a gazillion forms) and b) we can't order more ethanol without going through paperwork. Lots of paperwork. Like hospitals and many other labs around, we use 70% ethanol to disinfect working surfaces, add to that the fact that we are a genetics lab and need ethanol to precipitate DNA and such, we go through a lot of ethanol. Supposedly they changed b) because they were worried people would just order ethanol from lab and then drink. To which I say: you know, given where we are, there are easier ways to obtain better drinking-quality alcohol illegally than navigating the forms for lab reagent orders.

Silly EH&S people.

I've successfully labelled my probes and my blot is now hybridizing. The washing and the exposure starts today which means that today is the last day I have to deal directly with high beta emission before Thanksgiving. I used about 15 mCi yesterday and all went well. The sweep for radioactivity gave all clear down to the 0.1mCi level. No one will have to die from radiation poisoning. Life is good.

In between I've also figured out how to compile all the programs on Daemon for my comp bio stuff. (Had to download a bunch more packages for xorg to support the cladogram-drawing functions, and Fedora 11 put the X11 files in weird locations, but otherwise wasn't too bad.) Now off to class!

I drink from the keg of glory

Or at least the keg of geekdom. I've finished configuring Fedora and this time around with Linux I've managed to add in the configurations for my tablet including pressure sensitivity. Everything works! I have wireless! Also, Fedora continues to be super shiny and very much faster than my xp system.

That just makes my day.

My PI quoted Tolstoy at me to illustrate the process of antibody synthesis (which I will be making for my protein at some point). It is awesome, horrifying, and hilarious at the same time. I mean, Anna Karenina? Really? Was that necessary?

Sometimes I think I like my thesis advisor because of his strangeness. Other times I just wonder.

On Daemon again. Now running on Fedora (the Ubuntu CD had an error in it and didn't check out with the system). I have internet. And also a very shiny GUI that has 4 separate desktop spaces. Huh.

Hee

Daemon says its "respawning". Which isn't good, but I'm too busy being amused.

Respawning. Really.

This week's been a lot more productive, lab-wise, than I have been in a while (read: before qual took over). I finally got an in situ to work, got some qPCR data, and some E14.5 mouse embryos (the dissection of which is truly nasty). My radioactive reagents have also arrived later in the week, which means that I'll probably be shifting my focus to that the next two week while the material's still fresh (beta particle radiation, in case anyone's wondering). I've also had to collect material from adult mouse brains and got bitten many times in the process, since my strain is, unfortunately, one of the most aggressive (I call them bloodthirsty) strains. Mostly I feel bad though, because Wendy got bitten too while she was helping me scruff the mouse (she's been working with mice for years and years, after all) and she bled a whole lot more than I did with my multiple bite marks. Eventually Dorothy had to rescue us and I learned one more thing to add to the Unexpected Uses for Tweezers list.

We also had to defrost a freezer. The ice build up in it was preventing the door from closing properly and so things weren't freezing like they were supposed to.

At the home front...well when I last posted it was already this week, and not much generally happens during the week. Plane tickets have been ordered. I will be flying out Wednesday afternoon and returning Sunday morning. Christmas plans are in the making. For those of you who haven't heard yet, Lucy and I will be driving up for Christmas. I wonder how well cookies travel. (All of my baking material are here.)

Okay, time to head into lab briefly, and then do the grocery run.

Knock on wood

I've called ATT and things seem to have sorted out on that end. I've also called my mom and found out that my grandpa's officially stabilized. It seems like I've reached a resolution of sorts with life.

At least, for the first time since August, I'll be able to go through the mental run-down of recent events in my life without the knot of dread in the bottom of my stomach. I will not miss it.

I feel very cheery now. The sun's out today, without the foggy haze, and the sky's so blue that looking at it gives me an afterimage that tinges everything yellow. It's warm enough that I'm sitting around in my shirtsleeves with my sleeves rolled up. I should get tea. Then it'd be perfect (though I probably will not have the motivation to finish the experiments I'm currently running) (am boiling an enzyme while waiting for the reagents for my next two reactions to thaw).

Also: holiday emails. "If I'm an emoticon right now my symbols would be colon capital 'd'."

Someone should be enjoying this

I went and got the tire changed yesterday (it had been sitting too long with a flat + it was old = tire was beyond repair) and then ran my chores. Afterwards I felt so cheery and productive that I went and cleaned my apartment, made lasagna, and put in the new extension cord so that the lamp in the corner of the apartment will be actually usable. Unfortunately that meant unplugging and then re-plugging my wireless, which then promptly stopped working.

By which I mean the DSL was on, my computer was connected, by neither the ethernet or the wireless were connecting me reliably.

After some phone calls I was told that this was because I didn't register my new internet connection when I moved (leaving me to ask, indignant and more than a little confused, why on earth did my internet work for three month without registration and probably would have kept on working had I not unplugged it?) (the agent didn't have an answer). (Also she was just...unhelpful. Somewhat less than competent. I like the other guy I had to call in the summer better.) Then it came on that for whatever reason, I could register, because the connection was intermittent even with ethernet and so the agent unhelpfully told me to keep my computer open and see if the page ever loads and scheduled me for a technician on Monday, from 12 to 4pm, without telling me that she'd scheduled me for a technician. (I discovered this from another phone call, four hours later to try to figure out why the hell she had't called back like she said she would, and had to reschedule the appointment for Wednesday because they need a date and time when I'll actually be home.)

(Meanwhile I finished two books, made food, backed up my files and finished season 2 of Due South.)

But yeah, this morning, for whatever random reason, I've managed to register, without downloading that hideous help program that the other times the att page keep insisting I need (which would then take forever to load and my connection would always cut at sometime around 76% done). I appear to have internet now. I have no idea what happened. But I'll go and see if this lasts and if it does, then I'll call on Tuesday and cancer my appointment.

That was my little adventure (read: frustration) this weekend. I've a peach pie baking in the oven. When it's done I think I'll go and walk to the beach. Too bad my mp3 player is still broken and no amount of troubleshooting on my end seems to fix it. (I need to get a set of those small tools. You know, like the one you use on watches?)

Well, cheers. Fingers crossed on the internet!

[edit 10:21]
Verified: both ethernet and wireless now works. What the hell, 2wire? What the hell?

Passed. (Then went home directly afterward and slept.)

Well, onwards and upwards.

I...just...

Got a flat tire today. In addition to not knowing how to change a tire (someone really should teach me that, one day, before I try to navigate it on my own based on some print out from Google) (which will not end well) I know for a fact that I don't have the tools I need to change a tire.

Annie used to say, when these sort of things happen, that this just proves that there is a God and that He hates me. Although I, for the most part, remain agnostic, sometimes I have to wonder at fate's sense of humor.

[edit 11:09]
AND I just found out that the ATT account I thought I'd closed when I moved is still open and they are, apparently, still billing me. In addition to my current address's billing I mean. The phone system at ATT claims my number doesn't exist (no doubt due to the fact that I closed it) and the actual people who are in charge of this sort of thing work normal M-F hours.

[edit 12:13]
AND I think I have termites in the walls of my apartment. What the hell, life?