In which I find html codes of things

Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Outside of Neil Gaiman's "Snow, Glass, Apples", this is probably the best vampire story that I've ever read. It's genuinely creepy, and while the plot is well done and the story is well-written in a stark style that reminds me of GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO, one of the things that stood out is how well the author set up the atmosphere of each scene. There was a fairly large cast of characters and, about half way through the book, all their lives suddenly click together, onto a collision-course track, things speed up, and the book becomes horrifying riveting. By which I mean that this story is much more gory than things I typically read (though less gory than some of the SANDMAN stuff or my brief encounter with Stephen King's tales) but I was so invested that I couldn't stop. That being said, this is as much as psychological horror story as macabre horror, if not more so, and the other thing that was REALLY WELL DONE was how REAL and 3-D each of the characters are, to the point that, near the last quarter of the book, the story had moved on from scary to wrenching. Not sure if this should be an addition to my bookshelves, but it's definitely one of those books that is worth reading from cover to cover at least once.

Well that was exciting. Not.

Adventures in remodeling: construction crew did something that took out the power for our entire floor for around 15 minutes. Unfortunately this was right in the middle of my series of three minute incubations.

...I wonder if this counts as a valid excuse for unreplicable data.

Okay I lied

I didn't post the full quote / discussion that happened yesterday, or why it made me so upset. It's actually kind of ridiculous and in, one sense, I suppose I brought it on myself. On the other hand, I seriously was not expecting focusing on facts would be an issue, as a junior scientist.

Warning for long post and emotions all over the place. 

...I give up

After my presentation the senior professor (also chair of our department) told me that I'm "too rational". He meant it as a criticism. So.

To everyone who's ever told me to "stop being so rational &c &c": at this point I think we can safely conclude that there's no hope for me.

Tomorrow's Wendy's last day in lab. I've inherited a fraction of her reagents (since she's one of the few people whose reagents I trust) as well as the bottle of Blue Water. I have three different experiments to finish and we have to consolidate the mice in the vivarium after my one hour long presentation.

In conclusion, tomorrow will end with me both exhausted and depressed.

I am going to watch Legend of Korra and drown in tea.

Unpleasant discovery: I'm not thick-skinned enough for academia.

Dear Professor-Who-Shall-Remain-Anonymous,

A lab that has consistently only one female member over the years is not a lab that is "bucking the trend" (the trend that you have helpfully pointed out as having 60% of the incoming grad students be female), it's a lab that has failed to buck the convention, since the convention , anywhere from 20-50 years ago, is a ratio of something like one female per medium sized lab.

Sincerely,

Me.

I wander through lab areas so frequently that the construction crew recognizes me. By "recognize" I mean commenting bemusedly that "Hey, you work here everyday!".

Yes, yes I do.

I just wrote "dismal cause" instead of "distal cause" by accident. Brain needs break and it's still morning. WHY.

Does anyone else think that "the optic density of your sneeze" sounds like it could be some kind of a band name?

Mini blow-torches

I often have many things going on at once, and this turned out to be one of those weeks where it felt like too much, with this kind of result. (I will, I fear, have to be lab both days this weekend, which feels like a minor tragedy at this point.) --it is a frustrating week too: I made two really really stupid mistakes, which caused two separate experiments to fail, and the thing that I was sort of painting on my off time as a way to distress just refused to out right (I mean that it's much much worse than the usual "it looks nothing like what it did in my mind") so I ended up starting over for the third time. 

Darn

Okay I'm switching Ivy from Fedora to Ubuntu. The latest version update had an issue with SE Linux that just drove me crazy and made me realize that everyone I know who uses Fedora are comp sci people for a good reason -- I have neither the time nor the energy to learn Linux "properly" (as opposed to via google whenever I have more than 30 minutes free and feel like it). I'm not comfortable enough to operate a computer via command-line and basically eschew 90% of the GUI -- I mean, I haven't kept up with the coding side of things since when C was popular. (Oh dear God I'm so outdated -- who still uses C these days??) and all the mods that I want to do just isn't going to happen on my schedule.

So: Ubuntu it is. Still Linux, still good enough for small projects should I ever find the time, still open source, but a whole lot more user-friendly for none-code-savvy.

Career choice should not be an exercise in Dadaism

I have traumatized yet another grad-student-to-be, methinks.

Couple of things

These things relate to each other only in the sense that they relate to me. Though there's a sort-of book review at the bottom.