Developing a healthy case of neurosis, among other things

There was a few rounds of email exchange with a PI who is a collaborator of mine (in the sense that I work directly with him in the other vivarium and not someone in his lab), who also happened to be on my thesis committee, that went something like this:

Me: "...and so given this has happened in the past, I'd appreciate it if all the vivarium can set up a system for double-checking the animals as they are being transferred."

PI replied: "Paranoia is a very, very important trait to cultivate, I'm happy to do the checking in this vivarium...."

Me, post the second shipping mix-up this week: "If unjustified anxiety is paranoia, what's justified anxiety?"

PI, after apologizing for the mix-up: "Woody Allen said that paranoia is having all the facts...."

I cannot even begin to count the number of times the various post-docs / students I've worked with have cracked jokes about certain parts of the protocol being "probably unnecessary" but how it's better to be safe and paranoia's useful. (Doing it with a PI is a definite first, though.) This is one of the oft overlooked facts of doing research in biology, I think -- the development of paranoia and patience, by sheer force of necessity.

...

I have finished the Avatar cartoons and, amazingly, found it to be as wonderful as everyone kept saying. It manages to cover a lot of important issues without making either the main characters, who are kids, less child-like, or dumbing down the concepts. The art / music / style is amazing and I've never seen a western production of anything Asian-based that got so many of the cultural details exactly right. Also? The sense of humor. Oh the humor. It wins at life.

My favorite character is Toph, I ship Zuko / Mai, and I'm heartily thankful I never saw the action movie. Of course I'm not going to let that stop me from enjoying the comments made by people who poke fun of it, the Macarena video being a key example. (It gave me a good laugh, especially the bit near the end with the group earth-bending dance because..."Go Little Rock go!" And then I got the hiccups.) Then there's, of course, Deviant Art, where I was inspired enough by Rufftoon's tea comic to make a new lj icon from it. (For those of you who haven't seen Avatar, the spiky guy in there is Zuko, who, for 99% of the cartoon, seems to be very very allergic of things such as zen, being well-adjusted, and tea.)

Speaking of tea, the dark blue honey stick is the one that I think should be blueberry, though it tasted like grapes. Given that it's blue, however, "grape" doesn't make much sense and I always thought that dried blueberries tasted like raisins anyway, so: blueberry.

And while I'm typing about food, I caved in to my curiosity and brought a dragon fruit (also known as red pitaya, I think).

It tastes, to me, like a strange cross between daikon radish and honeydew melon, with tiny black seeds that crunch between your teeth like the kiwi fruit. Maybe it's just the one that I happened to get, but it was pretty bland.

Lastly, since I have a phone that allows me to upload photos, I'm going to share a random plant photo of the rose I got a while back (yes the one that I insisted on getting because of the flower color, even though the plant looked like it was dying). First rose of the season?

Vexing

After seven day's worth of "meme-ing" here I am again, ready to blog about the inanities of my day. Today's little blurb is brought on by the animal transfer this morning, where there was enough confusion with the vivarium staff to warrant two trips to the vivarium while we sort out the animal IDs (and yes, these are the animals that take six months to get). There was some degree of communication error between the two people in charge, which resulted in the staff writing down "1 animal per cage" instead of the animal's ID number. Luckily, the delivery people were late so we managed to get everything sorted out before the animals got shipped. Then there's the issue of the undergrads in our lab who tend to forget to write down items on the "to be ordered" board when they take the last of something, which resulted in me discovering, mid-experiment, we're all out of the coverslips I use to mount specimens. Round off that which the email to my PI about a certain protocol in which I briefly mentioned at the end, as an aside, that it's been a really long time since I submitted my thesis committee for approval, and is it supposed to take this long?

Turns out that, guys? My PI had already received a letter approving my committee -- guess when? July 28th.

Why do people not tell me these things?

Given that today's August 26th, I am not going to be doing the candidacy exam before the end of August. So if I've spent the in-between-experiment breaks for the past few days frantically putting together figures for that grant that the PI wants to try for and these two days sorting out the transfer paperwork, guess what I'll be doing in the next...oh foreseeable future? (Admittedly these days I don't see very far.)

Well, cheers.

It's summer here. I should perhaps not be so surprised to wake up and find that it's both warm AND sunny outside.

Are they serious?

Exposure to excessive cold or heat will result in malfunction, damage and / or catastrophic failure.

Now I suddenly have a mental image of a doomsday scenario. All caused by one cell phone. Or maybe one type of cell phone. Geez.

You should consult with manufacturers of any personal medical devices such as pacemakers and hearing aides to determine if they are susceptible to interference from your mobile phone. Turn off your phone in a medical facility or at a gas station.

1) Can you imagine what the company consultants would say if you were to really call them up and ask, "Excuse me, but I was wondering if using my cell phone might accidentally deafen / kill me?"
2) Why gas station? The phone is so volatile that it'll set off an explosion?

Never place your phone in a microwave oven as it will cause the battery to explode. Do not dispose of your battery by fire or with hazardous or flammable materials.

This is one of those "Caution, content will be hot after heating" things, isn't it?

Unplug the power cord and charger during lighting storms to avoid electric shock or fire.

Based on this logic you should unplug all power cords and chargers in your house during lightning storms (aka thunder storms). We never did that in Beijing and dad has gone through an experience where the lightning actually managed to make its way inside (but you can't exactly "unplug" the ceiling light in an apartment). Maybe it's a US thing. Annie, let me know if you find out anything? There're, I think, more possibility for this sort of weather where you are now than where most of us are in CA.

Never store your phone in temperatures less than -4F or greater than 122F.

Dude, why would you?

While we're at it: don't ever drop your phone into a volcano, as it may cause a premature eruption and will damage your phone in a way that will void your warranties. Do not throw your phone at people, as it may cause a concussion and/ or damage the inner circuits.

Seriously, people.

Do not place or answer calls while charging the phone as it may short circuit the phone and / or cause electric shock or fire.

I've seen this warning before. I have also placed and answered calls while charging the phone.


In conclusion, aside from the pacemaker bit, the rest of it is pretty similar to what it was 3-4 years ago. Or in other words, it sounds like the phone is not so much a phone as a unstable, explosive tool of the apocalypse.

Oh oh this part is good:

If you are listening to music whilst out and about, please ensure that the volume is at a reasonable level so that you are aware of your surroundings. This is particularly imperative when attempting to cross the street.

On the second thought, no, it's just depressing. A phone manual is giving advise on something that should be common sense. Com'on guys.

(Whilst?)

Also my phone also comes with, it looks like, a small build-in mirror (at least that's what the manual calls it). Why would I need a build-in mirror that's, in terms of practicality, too small to really see anything, on my phone?

Important! You should insert battery before charging.

(And this was in an orange box so that we know it's important.)

Oh my god.

OH MY GOD THERE IS SOMETHING MOVING INSIDE THE FLUE OF THE HEATER AND IT'S QUACKING LIKE A DUCK.

[edit 9:04]
It managed to get back out. I think.
Oh hell. I have no way to check, have I?

Shininess

My phone came!

By which I mean that I checked the tracking number, saw that it has been delivered, and sat around wondering why I didn't see anything yesterday. Turns it that this time they'd left it sitting on top of the mail boxes instead of leaving it in front of the doorstep like they used to (and I don't always check my mailbox on Saturdays). So now it's here, and charging, and supposedly after it finishes charging and I turn it on the new account balance will show up within an hour.

Oh yeah and the cable for it also came, which is cool but, you know, not as exciting as the phone itself.

Off to read the manual.

-----------------------------------
Honey sticks:
The transparent pink one is watermelon, and I have no idea what the palest yellow one (there are four yellow ones) is. It...just tastes like honey.
Watermelon honey + masala chai = weirdest mixture ever. A bit like one of those watermelon jolly ranchers mixed with gingerbread.

Food post, mostly

I was at 99 Ranch today when I saw shao-mai (or "shumai", as wikipedia calls it) and thought, "Huh, I haven't had that in a long time. I wonder why." Then around lunch time I remembered that oh yeah, I don't have the apparatus for steaming things. I mean I figured out a rough estimate using the microwave, but it's not quite the same. The difference (somehow) becomes more pronounced when the food cools, which is a problem for me given that I tend to cook more than I can eat in one meal. Despite of that, the Kimbo shrimp shao-mai was quite good.

I am still sampling different gum. The Trident strawberry one was not very good. It's too sweet for one thing, and has this weird aftertaste like it's thinking about being minty, but never quite got past the thinking stage to the doing stage. To complete the short but very recent dislike of strawberries: one of the ones I got this week had a caterpillar in it. The outside wasn't noticeably marked either. I just took a bite, looked inside the empty space that sometimes form inside the fruit, and saw a very green, very plumb, and no doubt very confused caterpillar.

Now I'm paranoid and don't dare to eat anymore. At least not while I'm occupied with other stuff such as reading.

There was also chayote. One of these days I will remember that one chayote is enough to last me a week, because when I'm buying them I usually think "hmm, vegetable is about the size of my fist. I should get two." Then after I finish cutting one and see the pile of it on the cutting-board I'd think, stupidly, "Oh." And possibly, "Oops. Maybe I can freeze the other one?"
(I also tend to have a similar problem with potatoes, leading usually to a scenario where I'd have one lonely potato sitting in the fridge.)

The darkest red honey stick (there are four reddish ones) is, I think, cinnamon.

And now for something completely different:

Today as I was exiting the store I saw a dog on a car. It was sitting on the roof, over the driver's seat. The car is empty and not moving. The dog (smallish in size) looked kind of bereft -- it'd shuffle around a little, sit down, and stare off into space. I don't think it's tied down, though it was wearing a collar and I didn't get close enough to investigate. But dogs -- even the non-Diefenbaker variety -- should still be able to get off the roof via the hood or the trunk if they wanted to, right?

While walking through downtown PB I also saw, in front of an empty, abandoned store, two TI-83s laying on the ground, side by side. The calculators were off. There was nothing else or anyone else nearby. They were laying face-up in the yin-yang orientation. There were no stores nearby that sold calculators, so I'm at a loss. Besides, those things are pretty expensive so ...I don't know. The little mysteries in life. Or rather, in this case there is only one mystery: people.

Anyone else heard about the window phone 7? I'm actually pretty excited with the policy they're employing to attract developers. Gives the product a lot of potential if it survives the initial debut.

Small vials of unknown liquids, we need a dungeon

We are due for a lab safety inspection, and yesterday, while cleaning out a cabinet, my labmates and I discovered unlabeled vials of colored fluids, in three different colors. In our lab colored usually means toxic, but because they are unlabeled, we didn't know what to put on the toxic material disposal forms. The purple one is too red to be coumaussie blue or any of the loading dyes, but too blue to be hematocyclin. The blue one is not blue enough to be coumaussie, we usually leave trypan blue in the container it came in, and its not viscous enough to be any of the dyes. The pink one had stuff growing in it.

After much deliberation we had to label it as "unknown liquid" and hope that the Haz Mat people can figure it out.

I realized that I should never ask my PI to score phenotype for me, because though the instructions state to put down either 0 for wild type, 2 for mutant, or 1 for uncertain, I get numerical values such as 0+. How the heck do you run statistical analysis on 0+? What does that even mean, if you try to plot it on Cartesian coordinates? What's a negative zero, then?

In other news. OkCupid does this thing called "quick match" where someone indicates they're interested in you, and then the site sends you an email with nine photos, one of which is the person who is interested in you. If you pick the right one the site'll alert the person to let them know you are interested as well. If you pick the wrong one, nothing happens. I wanted to mention this because of the nine photos I just received, one of them is a photo of a boat.

Now I may have misunderstood, but isn't a profile photo supposed to be a photo of a person?

Com'on girls, didn't you always want to date a boat? (It's even one of those ones with sails!)

Neuromancer has a graphic novel? Why wasn't I told this?

[edit 8/11/10 8:19]
The brown opaque honey stick is either chocolate or coffee, but more likely chocolate with a strong chemical taste. (It tasted like how some of my reagents smelled.) The peach opaque one is ...either plum or very sour peach. More likely to be peach, but I'm used to artificial peach taste being really sugary sweet and this was surprisingly sour, given that it's, well, honey.

Putting the "mort" in mortified

I just had to go introduce myself to my new neighbors, in the sense of "Hi you don't know me but I live next door and the walls here are thin so did you know that when I sit on my bed I can hear EVERY SINGLE WORLD you are saying?" (And by "you" I meant "you and your girlfriend".)

I feel like such a jerk, or at least one of those scary librarians who keep shushing you violently for being too loud, but the other options (in addition to possible cases of sleep deprivation because my god are morning people an endangered species here)are to try to muffle out the sounds with my pillow (I tried, but asphyxiation is really not the way I want to go) unsuccessfully (denser pillows? Because I can't sleep with ear plugs in my ear), or feel horribly guilty that I'm overhearing things clearly not meant to be overheard, or possibly die from embarrassment because yeah, clearly not meant to be overheard.

Guilt over overhearing things and embarrassment trumped (clearly) guilt over being a killjoy / scary librarian girl.

I'd try to become a heavier sleeper except I don't want to, even if I could. Being a light sleeper is safer.

But at least it's quiet now.

Yeah, some times I really am awful.

The things you learn about a place

I live in a city where the nearest public library only operates five days out of seven per week. (And two of those days it opens at noon, one of those closes at 2pm.)

And here I thought I'd finally gotten over my earlier misgivings about this place.

Tourist cities are weird.

Unrelated: the transparent light green (there are three different green ones) honey stick is lime flavored. Yes I am trying to keep track. I think I may need to print out the photo so I can label it or something.

Because explody things can be fun

Okay so I did end up closing two of my accounts (the intell' ones) and opening another one under OkCupid to maintain my three-accounts count. (Still haven't found the stalker button yet, Lucy.) Which then promptly sent me ... well several emails, but the one that caught my attention and caused much lolz is one titled "World Map of Your Matches" where, as the subject line indicates, they generated a heat map of where each person's best matches are around US and around the world. According to my map within the US I should be thinking about Hawaii, North Dakota, Alaska, Virginia, and Delaware. (Hawaii is warm. I approve.)On a world map US didn't even make it onto the list. Instead I got Slovakia (yes I know), Sweden, Israel, Singapore, and Slovenia. (And I had to look up where Slovenia is because I can't for the life of me remember.)

Also? I messaged someone, who did message back so now he's teaching me how to make potato-cannons! (No I didn't message him just to get the instructions. OkCupid did send a message with all possible matches and this guy's over 90% matched.) Given the email exchange this is probably going to the extend of my involvement with the Cannon guy, but oh my god projectiles. I was disappointed that we didn't do any projectile stuff (egg drop doesn't count) in physics the way I was disappointed we didn't do any origami stuff in geometry, so this is very exciting. (Do people still fire actual potatoes?) Not that I can really build one because although I know where to get pvc pipes I have no drill. Which is a crying shame but alas, life is cruel that way.

(It's worth signing up for these instructions alone.)

...does anyone own a drill and want to collaborate?

(P.S. Yes I'm still penpals with Xylene. We've moved on to medicare-type dilemmas now, I think. With lingering hints of alien conspiracy theories.)

---------------

Not related at all, but those vanilla Almond Dream Bites (chocolate-covered non-dairy ice cream balls) are way addictive. Think chocolate-covered almonds. Except as ice cream.

The fun's just begun

Placed order for new phone, phone number transfer not allowed. I'll send out the new phone number when I get it, one way or another. I also forgot to mention that while I was gone the mint came down with a sudden and severe onset of spider mites and I have not been able to rescue it in time, so now I have dead mint. Which is depressing since I've had this particular batch since Davis and the thing's practically invincible, or so I thought. Except obviously not. (Mortality is a nasty shock. Yes, even with plants.)

Have mac computer in lab that we want to install something on but the PI doesn't remember the password. We could get the department tech to override it, but meanwhile the rest of the lab and I are engaged in trying to guess the password based on the hint. It's amateur hacking as a side hobby, whenever a few of us have a few minutes between experiments.

On Thursday there was a sudden flood of cheerleaders (mostly jr. high, high school aged by appearance, of all different kinds of uniforms) and you can hear them coming a mile away. They went past the bookstore to the fields where presumably there is either some sort of cheer camp or competition going on. They are very thin. Were they always this unhealthy looking?

On Friday there was a sudden horde of marathon people, in purple and black uniforms, that ran past our lab. I dubbed them "the invasion of Fedex" (because of the uniforms), much to the amusement of my labmates. There was a person driving alongside, shouting something on a megaphone, but no one in lab could make out what he was saying.

And then the PI came out and we got distracted for a bit.

I've had "Brand New Day" (yes Lucy, the one from that DW video...have you been able to find an mp3 yet? Because my mp3 player doesn't play the video's format) stuck in my head for two days. It comes and goes, much like my state of sanity. (Oh right I should go and run more chores now. Later!)

Evidently not meant to be

I've gotten worse at updating my blog regularly, even though these past few weeks there's actually been stuff happening in my life. But these days I get home at around 7:40pm and by the time everything (read: food, shower, dishes, brush teeth) is done I look around hey, it's 8:47 already. At which point I'd assess my own level of energy, take into account that I have to be up at 6-ish the next morning and generally turn in early.

Which means no updates about the bay area trip, the stapler that clonally-reproduced and mutated into hole-punchers, or the arrival of my cells from Germany when there's no one else around for me to deliver them to or flail at. At some point I was going to also mention the time when my PI asserted that he was secure enough in his masculinity to use a purple pen (I think he's gotten stranger in the few days I've been away) and that the bugs have gotten into my rice and that I still have not heard back about my thesis committee yet, but I think this is about the extent that I will mention those events. I am limited to short posts. Until the weekend. At which point I may find the time to watch more Avatar, update, and figure out what to do with the kiwis.

Quick post

Have uploaded photos from the weekend to my Flickr account (go to the main site and search under "people" for my yahoo user name) since Kate requested that I not post anything with her in it on Facebook and I'm too lazy to load separately / twice with my at home internet speed.