One in a thousand

Today I bought a mini-rose. It's a sad looking little thing that I pulled out from the back of the shelf, with browning leaves and half-dead flower buds. I got it because it still had managed to keep one flower half-opened, and among all the pots there this one is the only one with the color that I wanted. I have trimmed it and re-potted it. Hopefully it can recover. If it can't ...well...I accept full responsibility for being a fool.

It had to be exactly that shade of dark red.

So what's wrong with taking the back streets?

Pasta is cooling. I feel like typing a long post today.

As I drove to lab this morning I suddenly realized that, even not counting the classwork, I've a lot going on this quarter, or at least in the next few weeks, and I have no idea how that happened.

In terms of research I suddenly found, to my astonishment, that I am now apparently doing stuff with zebrafish and fruit flies in addition to mice. I went in this morning to collect samples from four day old fish. I am not entirely clear on the physiological differences between day three and day four, but from the practical perspective, day four is apparently when the fish gain the ability to swim back out of the pippet when you're attempting to transfer them. It makes counting out 100 fish that much more difficult. What all this means is that I have currently five collaborators on my project: two for mouse behavior, one for fruit flies, one for zebrafish, and one for lamprey (yes you read that right: lamprey). It's cool and fun and also insane. Just in terms of communication and emails. I think I need more inbox folders.

I am the student hosting a seminar speaker for lunch next week. I still need to go in to the department office for that. I also was involved in inviting a few other students to go along (this is the grad student hosting speaking type of deal). My inbox was swamped on Monday.

Victoria and Anna are coming to SD in two weeks! Lusine's also coming that weekend, so it should be fun. Though we still have to figure out the actual schedule.

I'm the student host for a student for my program's recruitment weekend in three weeks. She's flying in from New Mexico on Thursday night. I also have to go to someone's office at some point for this.

Classes together have bumped up my reading volume to about five papers per week. Not quite as insane as eight or something per week from a year ago, but still more details that I can retain. Oh well, at least those details are not what I'll be tested on.

In general though, the abundance of recruitment events and the fact that so many of my friends are going through the grad school application this year made me feel strange. I wondered at this for a while until I realized that, for a lot of them who I'd met in high school, while in high school we were all on the same page. By which I meant, AP and honor classes aside, we are in the same high school, experiencing the same environment and for the most part, the same education. Since school was so much of our life then (like it still in now for most of us, heh), whatever our differences are at home and such wasn't as important. Anyone of us could have done what any other one of us had done, in theory. You'd think that the different majors once we've entered college would have cued me on to something but no, it isn't really until now that I realized that with the specificity of our higher education and how we've ended up not only in different college and vastly different grad programs, each one of my friends have gone on to somewhere where I figuratively could not follow. Somehow, when we're not paying attention, time has wrought the changes that we didn't find the day after our high school graduation. All the "welcome to the real world" jokes that had seemed to applicable then are applicable now in an entirely different fashion, as we managed to find our first jobs, pay rent, bang our heads against car insurances and so on.

Some important things have remained the same, and most of us are happy, or at least content, in our own way. That, I think, is still more important than anything else.

...I totally did not have a point planned, in case you were wondering.

Urk

Why am I so exhausted? The workload for this week hasn't been that bad, and yet I find myself buying black tea on campus to stay awake. It's the end of the month, which means I'll have chores to run this weekend, but that's no worse than usual, either.... Oh well, I'll make my to-do list tonight and then go to bed early. Maybe sleeping lots will help.

Huh

Dear Diary,

Today while I was talking with one of my collaborators in his office, which has a very nice ocean view, I saw a small plane fly back and forth over the beach area, trailing a banner which said "Emily, will you marry me?"

I think this is the first time since high school and Mr. A and Mr. Morse's tales that I've seen such an elaborate way to propose.

It was sweet though.

Sincerely,

S

Public voting

Which do you think is the weirder fruit: the durian or the cherimoya?
(I mean, I wouldn't know what to do with either one of them, to be honest, but spiky vs. armor-plate?)

[Edit 12:52]
Okay I really need to sharpen my knife. My parents are the ones who have the whetstone and the honing tool -- whatever you call that thing. Anyone know of a chain store name where I might be able to find these things? I couldn't find it in any of the stores I've looked in so far.

Jump-start

I've discovered that all my drawings of people feature people in really boring clothing, and so have started going through deviant art & clothing catalogues (okay, catalogue, because I forgot to keep the other ones) and trying to draw random people in them. As I've discovered when learning to draw other things, the best way to find my own style is to not worry about it and keep drawing, trying to emulate other's ideas and then...it just happens. Presumably this is also what happens in terms of writing, which mostly leads me to conclude that I don't write enough (and unless I plan to work less or give up drawing, on my current schedule this won't happen, so it's not happening).

There was a new rabbit in at the Shelter today who is HUUUUGE. For those of you who remember Kate's rabbit, this one is about three times her size. Honour was using him to demonstrate to me how to handle a large rabbit (because I have no experience with them and that is one large rabbit). Fortunately the giant rabbits (FYI: this one's an albino) are usually less high strung than the dwarf varieties, though this one did, during initial meet-n-greet process, manage to steal Honour's animal crackers. We were thinking of naming him "Crackers", since he still needs an ID card to go along with the tag. He was very friendly though. There was also a white rabbit with dark eyes, which is really rare since the white rabbits I usually see are full albinos and have red eyes. She was pretty. Also sheddy. (Aww darn it, it's almost molting season isn't it? And I'll have to change clothes after every visit to the Shelter.)

It is strangely sunny here today, after a week of rain. I'm glad. It's Wendy's birthday today.

Week-long deluge

South Cal was not prepared for this much rainfall, and neither was I. A lot of places have flooded and I need a new umbrella.

I wonder if this means that it won't rain on Recruitment Weekend. It's a running joke around grad students here that this place only rains two weeks a year but it will always rain on Recruitment Weekend.

Dude

I got Photoshop to work under Linux!

...however the tablet pen sensitivity only works with Gimp, not Photoshop.

Darn it.

Miscellaneous

Trying to work around my class schedule has been sufficiently challenging. Next week I'll be attempting something that will, most likely, take me five days to do. Given that I have classes three days a week, I will probably be on a very tight schedule.

I have also managed to wow and amaze one of the PIs this week by running part of a GWAS (Genome Wide Association Study) on Ivy. He was amazed by the computation powers of a netbook and reminisced about the days when he was doubtful whether the student could run GWAS calculations on a regular laptop. (Well, some of my classmate's computers did crash, but they shouldn't have, given they're running on 2G of RAM while Ivy has only 1G and a lot of them are REALLY new laptops.) Ivy has pretty good specs though, all things considered. Things have updated enough since when I graduated from high school that Ivy's specs are, in fact, better than Daemon's. Zen has the super shiny WXGA display screen, but it's also 1G. In terms of processors Ivy is on Intel Atom and Zen on dual-core. Daemon is still on Intel Pentium M. Wait. Zen is supposed to have 2G I think, 'cause dad installed an extra one. Whaaaaat?

My coverslips finally came in during lab yesterday, along with a trashbin that no one remembers ordering, so that caused some excitement for a while. Unfortunately our lab tech wasn't there yesterday (I think she's out sick) so our hypothesis could not be validated one way or another.

The recycling bin for my apartment complex has disappeared. What. On. Earth. What the heck would someone do with two dusty old recycling bins? (They're the blue plastic ones.) I am boggled. Then I asked my neighbors. It turns out that we're getting them replaced with smaller ones since the large ones are too heavy when filled (it's over a hundred pounds; the neighbor guessed at around two hundred but the point is that I can't drag it out, I don't even try). Well then, hopefully the new ones arrive soon. My place doesn't exactly have a lot of room to store empty containers of things.

February should be exciting! I also volunteered to host a student for my department for recruitment weekend (the first one) so we'll see what I get signed up for. Meanwhile, I'll need to make a note to myself to remember to house clean again in the beginning of February. And get snacks.

Classes makes the day go faster

The genetics course continues to be three hours long despite of the promise that it should be shorter. I'll hold out for another week before giving up all hope. The reading material is usually quite long too. There was a 23 paged monster this week. At some point, around figure Too Many, I read "controls" as "carrots" for some reason and had a moment of utter incomprehension. Then I decided I needed a break from the paper.

My PI poked me yesterday and informed me he somehow might probably have found a collaborator to work on the zebrafish aspect of the evolution portion of my project. Then he insisted on spending nearly two hours (or so it felt like) looking through my sections today. (Mostly pointing out their flaws, of course, but at least I know the ones he looked are ARE bad quality so it wasn't as bad as it could've been). He is strange and strangely angry at the image program that came with the camera. I noted that he has gotten considerably less PG since I joined the lab, though usually directed at things not me, so I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.

Cold has gotten much better now. I suspect I may have passed it on to Wendy.

Same quiz

It's been years since I've done this same quiz.
The results look like that my overall personality has remained the same since high school, though the individual values have shifted a little.

Advanced Global Personality Test Results Extraversion |||| 16% Stability |||||||||||| 50% Orderliness |||||||||||||||||||| 83% Accommodation |||||||||||||||||| 76% Intellectual |||||||||||||||| 70% Interdependence |||||| 30% Mystical |||||||||||||||| 70% Materialism |||| 20% Narcissism |||| 20% Adventurousness |||| 20% Work ethic |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Conflictseeking |||||||||| 40% Need to dominate |||| 20% Romantic || 10% Avoidant |||||||||||||||||| 80% Anti-authority |||||||||||| 50% Wealth |||| 20% Dependency |||||||||| 40% Change averse |||||||||||||| 60% Cautiousness |||||||||||||||||||| 90% Individuality |||| 20% Sexuality || 10% Peter pancomplex |||||||||||| 50% Histrionic || 10% Vanity || 10% Artistic |||||||||||| 50% Hedonism || 10% Physicalfitness |||||| 30% Religious || 10% Paranoia |||||||||||||| 60% Hypersensitivity |||||||||||| 50% Indie |||||||||||| 50%

Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were high which suggests you are overly organized, reliable, neat, and hard working at the expense too often of flexibility, efficiency, spontaneity, and fun.

Extraversion results were very low which suggests you are extremely reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

trait snapshot:
clean, secretive, does not make friends easily, observer, hates large parties, risk averse, perfectionist, reclusive, solitude loving, more practical than abstract, does not like to stand out, high self control, intellectual, mind over heart, very cautious, takes precautions, respects authority, irritable, emotionally sensitive

Dear God

I was visited by bible teachers this morning, who tried to teach me the scripture despite of the fact that I informed them right off the bat that I am a graduate student of the discipline of biology and that yes, I believe in evolution. They even read from their book a quote to prove that the scripture is actually very Scientific (I can't help but picture the capitalized letter when every time they said the word). In return I decided that trying to teach them evolutionary biology is fair play, and I'm game for as long as they are.

They only ever got to read one quote.

It was interesting, since the two people were a lady and her husband, and they supposedly had background in Science. At one point we were talking about the idea that the world was round and referencing Copernicus and Hypatia, while at another point we were talking about the Dead Sea Scrolls and Book of Ezra (or was it Ezriel? There were a lot of Greek pseudepigrapha around). P-values and Lucy the Australopithecus were involved too. By the time that I was explaining that Latin grammar has no articles and how some things can be interpreted different ways, depending on the translator, I was wishing that Annie was here, because then I'd actually have someone who knows all the different main scriptures and the more detailed information about Homo erectus &c. and the discussion / debate could be really fun.

Or Kate, possibly, because she's much better with historical figures and dates than I am, though possibly the lady-teacher's comments might offend her at some point, cause an explosion of sarcasm, and then it'll be carnage. (I suspect that amongst my friends I'm the least adept at figuring out what AD, BC, CE, BCE all are relative to each other, but at least in biology we all reference things to events like the formation of the Pangea, so I'm not entirely hopeless.)

(Does Greek have articles in its syntax? Either the classic or modern form. According to these people, it doesn't.)

Then the lady said she had a class she had to get to or something and left, and her husband followed shortly afterward. I was amused and wondered how much of I've explained about random mutations in genes leading to embryonic lethal phenotypes in animals they would remember, especially as pertaining to intelligent design. (They insisted they wanted to continue the discussion on intelligent design after I hold them I work in genetics, so fair is fair.) Admittedly the lady claimed that what I have said was useful information to them, though it could be that she was just being polite at that point. (We were all very polite this morning.)

...

I still have a cold.

I have drank a cup of herbal stuff, a cup of hot chocolate, and a juice box today. (The scripture / genetics lesson occurred between the hot chocolate and the juice box.) At least the runny nose part (my second least favorite thing about being sick, because it never fails to amaze me with how utterly disgusting it is) has gotten better, for which I'm deeply thankful if only because my nose bleeds when I blow it too often.

Bleh

Have caught cold. Will most likely be spending this weekend huddled over copious amount of tea.

In which there is fake-math

Or at least, that is what Mike has always called statistics.

My first class of the quarter is a combination of biomedical statistics (one of the reading material is hugely entertaining because it's sort of "stats for dummies" except the target audience are physicians; it's published in a journal for emergency medicine) and, well, bioinformatics for dummies. Or at least for biologists. I expect that the people who do this for a living will look at the material we're reading and feel the same way about it that I did for the "biology for computer scientists" thing that was in the BMI course material Victoria sent me a while ago. (This is an allele, and this is a gene &c.)

Today's course is taught by my PI, who whilst talking to a student during our ten minute break, was heard exclaiming "jumping Jesus on a pogo-stick!". The students in the class who knew him already just gave each other a knowing look, so it looks like that the fact that my PI is strange (and entertaining) is general knowledge.

Also, he tried to draw for us today, for the mutagenesis screen in mice portion. He tried to draw mice, which when he looked at it, he decided could be a mouse, a rat, or any rodent we wanted. At that point someone said, "Whale!" and everyone started laughing while my PI challenged the student to "grab a pen". I have to agree though: my first thought when he started drawing was also "whale". (I'll leave you to conclude what the mouse that he drew looked like.)

It's hard to do three-day-long experiments with three days of class a week, I've concluded. I think I need to re-think my schedule for next quarter. Or go insane, but that would not be very productive.

Snark hunters

First full day back at the lab and I remained strangely undisturbed by the PI all day, despite of the fact that he was out to harangue Wendy, who shares a bay with me. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed their break, and over the course of the day we got to swap a little bit of our holiday adventures in between taking turns to go down to the Mouse Room to take care of our mice. (I had mice to wean today. Weaning age mice are so cute.) Dorothy recommended going to the wild life zoo around this time of the year, because it gets crazy hot. She also served to remind me that oh right, Martin Luther King's Day is in January. My enthusiasm lasted until I remembered that I am a grad student and so probably will spend that day in lab as well. Then Wendy and I pondered over the fact that one of the PIs I know apparently does fencing as a hobby. The idea of the PI going around, whacking people with sharp objects, is a little terrifying. Mostly it's just very incompatible with the image of the PI. It's like trying to imagine your dress shoes & tie wearing professor loving sky-diving.

I have a crazy amount of paper to read, considering I only have two classes. I wonder if the PI seriously believe that everyone will be able to read through the six different articles that was only posted today by Thursday. At least the stuff seems fairly simple...for five of them.

Whoohoo

Ivy had another round of black-screen no-boot-up issue. It was a repeat of the same problem as last time (corrupted bios) and this time took me exactly one hour since I arrived home to fix, counting the time I spent on lunch.

Win!

In other news. It's 74F in SD and sunny. Google thinks it's raining. I have no idea why.

Dude

I just watched New Year's fireworks from two different locations by the simple acts of sitting up on my bed and pulling open the curtains. How awesome is that?

New decade's here, guys. Cheers.