This is a little appalling, but

I think I've had too much tea today, as that I am currently exhausted, unable to sleep and harboring a strong urge to scrub out the kitchen and the bathroom. Unfortunately I do not have bleach, which, in my current state of mind, seems like a minor tragedy. (No, you do not understand. Detergents contain bleach won't do it. I'm at the mindset where I need to pour liquid bleach into a large container and soak things in it so they'll be nice and disinfected.) Clearly what I need to do tomorrow morning, in addition to going to the lab to put away my in situ stuff and stow my slides at -20C, is to buy bleach. And tea, since I'm running low.

I'm on the 6th draft of my qual now. Not counting all the v3.2, 4.5 and so on that I've taken to doing (because the comments between the PIs on what I should change are almost always different).

Oh God. I've wanted to sleep since 8 this morning. What is wrong with me?

Yes that's rhetorical.

On the bright side, my current bout of insanity should end before Thanksgiving?

(Admittedly it's not just qual right now so much as qual + four different experiments of mine that keep on failing + Stuff In Beijing. It's a lethal combination that managed to do what GRE + grad school app + scholarship app + senior thesis + classes failed to do two years ago.)

(And you know what? I still think grad school is most likely the best thing to have ever happened to me. Clearly I am insane.)

D:

My qual has a vestibular dysfunction.

It's going around in circles.

Prognosis, anyone?

This is sort of a wtf_nature type post

I found out what a tenrec is, while going through the cladogram again for my protein of interest.

Have I ever mentioned that my lab has a rubber duckie in the 37C waterbath?

Hm, a new phase

I'm experiencing a sudden and inexplicable urge to eat hotpockets and do system maintenance sort of stuff to all three of my laptops. I think it's a sudden spike in geekiness level, which is more fun than spike in hormone level, but less predictable. However, this spike did not in anyway increase my desire to work on my qual right now. It's a shame, since I think my enthusiasm for the qual has reached an all time low around this point. The fact that the people on my committee are giving contradictory advise could have something to do with it, though more likely it's just that I've reached the inevitable low point all large long-term project-type things must reach and I will spent a couple of evening on the floor with my laptop, surrounded by far too many piles of papers and abandoned mugs of tea.

(I've incidentally discovered that black tea that's been left to steep for too long, without the addition of any kind of sweetener, is actually quite vile. They remind me of those meds I used to take when I was four that usually resulted in me throwing up.) (Mom claims that the smell of those those will even make her nauseus. Then again, of the two of us, I'm the less squeamish one. Got nothing on Annie of course.)

The seminars and talks have started again for this quarter. I am still trying to average at least one seminar/talk per week. Yesterday there was a talk by a student who reprogrammed skin fibroblasts (cell type) from Alzheimer's patients back to being stem cells so he can differentiate them into neurons to study patient specific phenotype & genotype changes for Alzheimer's. It was pretty cool. Afterwards I had lunch with my labmates and Wendy and I (via a long, somewhat convoluted line of conversation starting around lost wallets) ended up reminiscing about Davis. The post-doc in the lab looked at us askance when we said that yes, Davis weather is nowhere near as nice as SD, its water can be toxic to plants and fish (and humans), and the allergen level has a way of giving people who never had allergies before allergies, but we still miss Davis.

What's in a place?

Dry ice in ethanol looks just like Sprite with ice.

Way too many mugs of tea

I'm re-writing my qual. Again.

This time I'm changing one of my specific aims -- getting rid of the comp. bio. one and adding in one where I directly look at the central vestibular system, because that is apparently more cogent.

I find that the amount that I care is inversely proportional to the number of drafts I write (and I haven't even started on the powerpoint yet), and directly proportional to the mugs of tea I've ingested during the writing process. Though admittedly the latter might be correlation without causation, since the amount of tea is probably an attribute to the number of papers that I've had to read for this stupid thing, which does lead to diminishing enthusiasm. (I cannot claim diminishing marginal utility any more than those of you applying to grad school right now can claim diminishing marginal utility over the days you spent on your application. Maybe increasing marginal cost, in terms of sanity?)
(Though I also suspect, given the news lately, that it's a buyer's market on sanity out there right now. See: pirates and Nobel prizes. It's a crazy world out there. Therefore selling sanity would be like, selling air -- unless it comes with some property not found in nature / super shiny packaging, it's a no-go.)

(Can you sell pressurized sanity?)

(More importantly, I suppose: who'd want to buy it?)

Dear Diary,

Today I noticed that there is a lone, life-size stone statue of an owl on the roof of the apartment building next to mine. I am having a little trouble thinking up reasonable explanations for its presence there.

Sincerely,

S

Someone called me at 10:40pm last night. It is a 408 number that I don't recognize off of the top of my head & it isn't stored on my cell phone either. Did anyone who got a new phone number recently called me?

The replay button's stuck

I'm being very productive today. I have been very productive all weekend. I am becoming astonishingly zen about the whole qual thing. It's either that or something like the mechanism (forgot what it's called -- maybe Anna knows?) that people use to train other people out of their phobias: after a month (and a half), I've simply run out of energy to keep panicking. My energy can be better spent elsewhere. Such as washing my car the next weekend around.

Pragmatism is reassuring.

Random list of things, in no particular order:

I spent half an hour yesterday trying to figure out how fruit flies can tell which side is up / down when they're flying, then another half an hour figuring out that fish have really bad proprioception -- but it's okay, they don't need it. Much. Most of the time. Either way they seem to live perfectly fulfilling lives. For fishes.

Today I discovered that gummy worms (or at least the CVS brand of gummy worms) have eyes. And a smile. At which point it officially joined my list of "food that are creepy to look at." (There is something very disturbing about eating something that is SMILING AT YOU.) (Yes I have a problem with chocolate bunnies around Easter time, too.)

Anyone know what, if anything, will happen if I mixed formamide with paraformaldehyde?

I miss my Intro to Genetic Analysis book (yes Annie, that green one from BIS101). I think it's the only book that I sold back that I regretted.

I currently have "Henry Martin" stuck in my head. It feels weird to be pipetting things and hear in my head "Hello, hello pirate Henry Martin...&c." I suppose, though, that it's no weirder than yesterday when I had the Log Song stuck in my head. Ms. Seidl apparently taught me more than I realized.

Have called Beijing so now at least the guilt's gone.

... ...

I thought I heard "I'll be your scarlet letter" as part of the lyric in one of the Taylor Swift songs. Taken literally, I translated that to mean that the person is going to be someone else's sign of adultery.

...what?

Gah

Yesterday's Mid-Autumn Festival. Mom's managed to ship me a small tupperware full of mooncakes, wrapped in more tape (the tupperware, not the pastry) than even my anti-serium shipment, which had to be sent on dry ice in a box inside another box. But hey, food. It was nice of her. I also had grapes, and didn't call my relatives in Beijing like mom asked me to, for which I feel extremely guilty about but I just can't bring myself to, even after I remembered. ...and it's hard to feel happy after that. Even with the mooncakes.

I also forgot to mention that I did, in fact, finish Persuasion during the retreat, and liked it better than Pride and Prejudice. There's less of the witty repartee, but also less of the Prince Charming On A Horse Of White feel. (Oh come on, Bennet was marrying into wealth and class. Even Darcy had said that her family is way below his but he loves her anyway.) (Well, maybe not in those exact words.) Mostly though, I just like Anne Elliot a lot more than I ever liked Elizabeth Bennet, or the Dashwood sisters for that matter (those two seem to spend most of the book moping, if I recall correctly).

Now for something completely different: I nearly got in a car accident with someone this morning. I was going down Grand (post grocery shopping), when a car shot out of one of the small side streets (Grand, Balboa, and Garnet are the three main streets in Pacific Beach, and while they're not quite El Camino they are still the main roads). I'm guessing he didn't see me, because by the time he saw me, he was right in front of me already and of course he stepped on the breaks, because that's sort of the instinctive response. Unfortunately, vector math indicates that means his car is therefore also spending more time directly in front of my car. At that point I was slamming down the breaks but the cars are so close that there was no way I could've stopped in time and so I ended up executing this wild swerve (successfully, thank God) and left some rubber, I think, on the road. (Just to point out that I was close enough to see his head turn and to use the pronoun "he" even though he drove off right after.)

I was very thankful that it was early enough, that the car density was low enough, that I could swerve without crashing into anyone else.

People would've been shocked if they'd heard the stuff that was coming out of my mouth. Even I was somewhat surprised, after I realized that I was, in fact, swearing under my breath. (In my defense my mind was doing that whole slow-motion-before-collision-thing and I was 95% certain I was going to crash.)

I do not like driving. At least, not in urban areas. Affirmative.

Because destruction is not part of the limbic system.

I have been assigned a committee member. Due to the two weeks delay in assignment, we were given a one week extension. The math seems a little sketchy there, but trying to complain means a long list of emails being shuttled back and forth between PIs inevitably resulting in a loss of information to the black holes of cyberspace where all lost emails go to die, so my classmates and I just sigh and carry on.

Second years traditionally host a welcome party for the first years, and this took place yesterday. I left lab early and provided peach pie and three types of cookies (including that weird modified mocha thing I made at Christmas that everyone seemed so fond of) in addition to copious amount of experience in untangling streamers and spreading out table cloth. ("You're good at this!" Exclaimed one of my classmates in astonishment, while she wrestled with tape -- the tape largely gaining the upper hand. I think she's under the expression that anyone who's as socially inept as me would naturally be equally inept in all aspects of social occasions. "Think again," I thought, and allowed my self thirty seconds of smugness while reminiscing back to the days when I built a castle out of cubed fruit and toothpicks. Those were the days, my friend.) Also, I taught my classmates how to cut watermelon, thereby confirming that there is some truth to the myth that the girls in grad school are there because they're horrible at normal girl-type things. (Myself being a key example of the different aspect of impairment in achieving normal girl-ness.) I left about an hour in, once the place (one of the conference cottages down by Scripps Institute of Oceanography) became packed full and no disaster seemed eminent, confident with the knowledge that at least there was enough alcohol supplied so that no one will notice if the decorations were hanging crooked.

(I've come to realization that I am infinitely more comfortable behind the counter, wielding a large knife, than socializing. I am better at the former than the latter, too.)

( I bask in the fulfillment of my annual obligation to the departmental social events. Now I can be anti-social for the rest of the year without feeling guilty.)

Orientation to working with rabbits was this morning. My mentor is a girl from Bulgaria (discovered when she was on the cell phone and answering things with "Da!". "Do you have Russian friends?" she asked later. I laughed). The rabbits are cute, though they are currently shedding enough to make their own twins in fur. I was told that unlike the cats and dogs, the adoption fee for rabbits here remains fairly consistent at 25$. There rabbits don't seem to particularly care for me, preferring their hay instead. I suppose it makes sense since the hay is quieter and less likely to scruff them if they refused to go where they are supposed to.

Well, should be fun anyways. Cheers.

Turn the spotlight on

Still haven't heard back from the committee people yet, but somehow, in between all the crazy grant panel things, my PI found the time to read over my draft and sit down with me to talk it over (right before he had to run off to another meeting, as a matter of fact). It gives me the warm fuzzies. There's nothing quite like a PI who will make time for you. They're always supposed to, but very few will tell you "Okay, I'm kinda busy the next two weeks so you might have to wait until right after that" and then still somehow got it done for you within a week.

I think it made my week.

Lab next to ours is sonicating things this evening, causing me to flee lab early. The sound made me feel like my brain is being sonicated. Perhaps all my brain cells are disassociating. Wendy and I ended up putting on our ear phones, taking them off every once in a while, hoping that the others'd be done, but they never were. I ended up aliquoting over 100 tubes of antibody on dry ice while wearing my XKCD shirt. Clearly aliquoting antibodies is a dangerous sort of business and requires other people to stand back. Well, maybe the dry ice, because if you inhale too much of it it can burn your nasal epithelium, so don't snort the dry ice, folks. (Not that you should snort anything in the lab. Even if it's a bio lab.)

Forgot what else I was going to say. Oh well.

7 photos posted from the retreat. Very scenic they are.

Now: off to lab, and then groceries! Second years traditionally host a welcoming party for the first years, so I'm going to be making tons of different cookies for next Friday. (Only problem so far is how well I transport them on the bus?)

[edit 12:36]
Finally printed out a year's worth of photos! And officially ran out of album space! (There were 100 new photos.)

Finally, an update

I was originally planning on sleeping. In fact, I had almost fallen asleep when an extremely loud car passed outside of the window. While half awake, I started thinking of the things I need to accomplish this weekend and so find myself now, at 11:19pm, blearily awake and with a tentative of list of 15 for tomorrow scribbled on the back of the page, pondering whether or not starting the list for things to do on Sunday would constitute a direct descend into madness. The alternative explanation is of course, that I'm already there and so should just give up and...twitch, or something.

Anyway, I'm updating this blog now, so that's one down from the list.

The department retreat was nice. We went to Warner Spring because moving our retreat to merge it with orientation meant that we can't go to Lake Arrowhead, since the biology department has theirs booked there in the fall. Warner Spring is a very (surprisingly) lush area in the middle of nowhere. By "nowhere" I mean surrounded by miles and miles of chaparral land, where the land isn't so much hilly as mildly ripply, aspiring to be hilly someday. September in Southern California is the wrong time to go hiking in the chaparral land, as everyone will see when I get around to uploading the photos (hopefully tomorrow...oops another thing to the list there). Our arrival coincided with the heatwave, which was much more unpleasant that far inland. However, being in the middle of nowhere had its advantages: the stars there were amazing. I saw the milky way in the first time in what felt like forever, and the nights there were dead quiet. I slept very well. My roommate (possibly due to the notable lack of a certain male classmate) was also quiet and most considerate.

Of the three branches of trails that I've explored, two converged & overlapped so I found myself standing back at where I've started, thinking "Huh." The third one deposited me, via a very squiggly detour, behind the horses. They were very nice. One came up to me and put its head on my shoulder, so I petted it. Then it tried to eat my shirt.

As for the retreat itself, there were a record number of faculty attending this time, possibly because it was coupled to the orientation and we had (or so I've been told by the chair of the department) something like 80 faculty who want grad students for their labs. (Good luck guys, we have less than 30 incoming students, so not all of you are gonna get one.) I was slightly disappointed in the awards event at the end though, since this retreat's award to the best student presenter did not, in fact give the best presentation. My classmates and I agree.

We had bonfire the first night there, pre-ZMGSTARS. The slightly less social ones of us sat around the fire and roasted marshmallows (with various hilarious attempts at backseat cooking and much ribbing) while the more social ones hung out around the tables in the back, where the food and alcohol were. I enjoyed myself very much and had the opportunity to meet a few of the new students during then (one of which went on to win one of the two awards for incoming students which were given out for best incoming grades and best CV--according to Genentech, anyway; but to us he will always be known as the Marshmallow Guy).

That took me until Wednesday, when I returned to SD and discovered that the heatwave was not so much an Inland Thing as a South Cal Thing, and spent first ten minutes of my trip to retrieve Zen considering the possibility of using steering wheels to cook things. They will have to be steering wheel-shaped things, of course. Or the cooked parts will be steering wheel shaped. Zen's return has already been mentioned. I've restored the old settings and files and will attempt, some time over the next few weekends, to see if the old sims data can be restored too or if I'll need to create new sims people. Zen's speed is still fairly snappy. At the current rate, it's the fastest laptop.

My PI is currently due for a grant review panel next week, which unfortunately, as I found out this morning, means that I will not get a review out of him for my qual until the second week of October. I still need to be appointed a committee member, whom I was supposed to have heard from 10 days ago but so it goes. Despite of his apparent flood of deadlines, however, PI did find the time to take the entire lab out for an end of the summer treat today. He took us all out for lunch. In downtown La Jolla. The apparent problem of lack of parking and spacing was taken care of with valet parking and reservations. I had no idea what half of the items on the menu were, but the place had a very pretty ocean view. Everyone in the lab, including the undergrads, save for the post-doc whose due date is in 3 days, made it. It was surprisingly fun.

The Walk-Out's effects on me was limited to the fact that the protesters were wandering on the street, which caused some delay which traffic, leading to a slightly later arrival to the lab for me.

Spent 11 hours in lab today. Have not had dinner yet. Update will be delayed until tomorrow.

Yay

Am home with Zen now. In fact, I am using Zen to update this blog right now. Zen's system board & thermopad (thermal pad?) got replaced (they included a nice list of what got replaced) and now everything seems to be running fine.

Will update more tomorrow. Am tired now, will unpack and collapse somewhere for a while first.

Say "more options" or press 3

I am currently plotting to get Zen back on Wednesday. Based on the schedule issued, we will not be back on campus until 2 to 3pm, which means I will have three-ish hours only to do experiments (let's face it, unless there's an overnight incubation, no one will start an experiment an hour before they usually leave). Since many people just go home for the rest of the day, anyway, I think I will take the initiative to go home and then drive over to the Fedex depot and pick up Zen, hopefully arriving back at home still in time to find some sort of parking spot.

Currently there is only one problem with that plan: I don't know where Zen is.

I know there is, in theory, a depot somewhere for Zen-type packages. I do not know where that depot is, just that it's in town (thank God, the employee originally thought it was at Oceanside). The Fedex tracking system is down and all the information that the website can helpfully provide me with is that Zen is in town, which is not at all helpful. This city is rather large. I'd prefer not to comb every depot in the city for my errant laptop.

This, of course, makes it a lot harder for me to debug and defragment Daemon, who had apparently caught something on Friday and is now sluggish and had given me the Blue Screen of Death last night. All in all, I'd rather not take apart the software components until I get a reliable backup computer back.

I love how my computers all chose to fizz out during Qual Season. Or perhaps that's why they fizz out. Perhaps there is something inherent about Qual (the Qual-ness that I referred to the other day, maybe) that causes things to fizz and go kaput. My brain can empathize. Unfortunately my sanity can't and my patient is suffering. In fact, if I still have not managed to retrieve Zen by next Wednesday, I think this case may be lethal.

In all likelihood I will not be updating from now to Wednesday on the account of retreat. The place boasts of Wi-Fi, but so did the last place and I utterly failed to connect to any sort of reliable network while I was there. Did finish a book the last time though, so maybe that's what I'll do. I've almost finished Imaginary Numbers from my Beijing trip (which reminds me to point towards the poem "Letter from Caroline Herschel", which I loved, and one of my favorite poet, Wislawa I-can't-spell-her-last-name's "A World on Statistics") so that will not last me through this trip. The local library happens to have a copy of Persuasion though, so maybe I'll read that instead. I think it is technically a romance novel, so it should be very non-qual related. (While I am still talking about stuff I've read: I've finally flipped through Write It Right! and I hated it. First of all, I have no trouble writing memos and business letters, so most of that part is useless. Second of all, I already know basic rules such as I vs. me. I even know what an active voice is vs. passive voice and how to change one to the other. It's the finer points that I'm sketchy on, not the basics, and certainly not how and when to use a period. Finally, the authors keep on emphasizing on writing based on speaking style, at the same time as the need to eliminate big words / cliche phrases and so forth. The problem with that is, in this blog, for instance, I already write how I speak (well, with somewhat better grammar because otherwise Kate's brain will hemorrhage). How I speak is, apparently, not considered acceptable. ...and that sums up all the main points of the book, which is, therefore, not of use to me. The style of the book is also dull and a little condescending, which is just...ugh.)(Why can't Gaiman write a book on writing? Or did he and I just missed it?)

I slept for 10 hours last night. Somehow I still want to sleep.

I make lists in my sleep

A couple labmates and I went out for lunch yesterday. It was surprisingly fun and even funnier when I wonder what the PI must be thinking when the group of us went trooping by him without so much as a by-your-leave. In our defense, it was lunch time and we are allowed to take time for lunch.

The place at Price Center does a very good tikka masala chicken. Wendy thought the bright color of the sauce (it was...red orange) was frightening. I thought it was funny that she didn't like peas.
(They are peas. Don't most people get pickier with things such as broccoli or brussel sprouts that have a strong, distinct taste?)

Even the entire cup of pearl tea that I drank wasn't enough to keep me awake, however, when I was updating my lab notebook. There were a lot of gel images and protocols to put in. Kate got me one of those fountain pens that have single-use tubes of ink I can just stick in, so I won't have to wrestle with a ink bottle and possibly get ink everywhere. I've gone through two tubes of ink already since May. That is, no matter how you look at it, a lot of writing. I hope my in situs work at some point, so at least I'll have something to show for all that scribbling besides the scribbling. (Mmm fluorescent images.)

There was a bonfire-bonding event for international students yesterday, so that the bus I usually took was overfull and a third of the students, along with me, had to wait for the next bus. Naturally they only left one guide with the entire group, and naturally the third left was left without a guide. The poor kids were without a clue where La Jolla Shores beach was. I couldn't tell them either because the beach was an entire stretch, and I have no idea which part of it they were aiming for (also the guide was horrible at giving directions, so this entire thing was like witnessing a train wreck). Naturally the group ended up getting off at the wrong stop, thanks to a combination of the bad directions from the guide, bad directions from an over-enthusiastic, well-meaning man on the bus who was trying to help, and the general chaos created when a group of students who just arrived in SD who do not speak English very well needed to navigate the public transit. There was nothing I could do to help because for the same reasons mentioned above, I couldn't figure out where they were going, either. It was only three stops after all the students got off, when I saw the sign for the bonfire stuck to the bushes next to the bus stop, did I realize that oh, okay, here was where the bonfire was supposed to be.

At least a slightly smarter girl had recorded the phone number of their guide, and they were, technically, still on La Jolla Shores beach (somewhat further north than they'd want to be, but technically the same beach). I want to help them so much, but given the entire mess, there was no hope for it.

It's an orientation process of sorts, I suppose. Welcome to the US, guys.

...

I've already considered the neighbors option for Zen. Unfortunately, unless I want to ask Deborah, for downstairs, to sit in my apartment all day, from 7am to 8pm, waiting for the package, it'll just involve more paperwork trying to explain that yes, I know the nice lady is from apartment 3, not 5, and that the address on the box says 5, not 3, but I gave her permission so stop leaving nice but useless little notes on my door already.
All my other options at this point involve contacting HP again (because changing the receiving address apparently needs to go back HP, not Fedex) and more paperwork. Given my general experience with paperwork and bureaucracy in general...I'll just figure something out on my own. It seems less painful for everyone involved.

...

Qual: am trying to fit everything in 6 pages. Am failing. Will probably end up cutting out a bunch of stuff at some point so my total page count will fall under 15. (Who the heck counts work cited page toward total page count, anyway?)
...

I have chocolate. I am prepared.

Aaagh

Dear Diary,

Fedex hates me. I can't get Zen back because I'm not home during the day (and I can't do a time request, either), and the only place I can pick up Zen is this office very far from where I live, which only operates M-F. (Apparently the office three blocks north of me can send away Zen-type packages, but not receive them.) I can't even find the drop off site on their web page! Also, retreat M-W next week so there is NO TIME to be off looking for Zen.

Oh God. Why me?

-S

In which I fail at blog-updating, but otherwise do well

A brief check on my blog (after an email from Anna inquiring whether or not my thesis ate me -- or something to that effect) revealed that I have, indeed, not updated this thing in a while. This is, as I've explained to Anna, mostly due to the fact that once I get home at whatever time it happened to be that night, I usually have no desire to turn on the computer again. Due to the fact that this is the Quarter of Qual, turning on the computer immediately triggers my sense of obligation to check on my school email, go over my notes, and work on my qual...and it's all downhill from there.

I'm updating my blog in lab instead today, in an act of open rebellion.

...or perhaps, just a direct result of the fact that a mini-prep is something I can do in my sleep at this point and it comes with many 15 and 10 minute incubation time, which isn't really enough time to get into anything else (it takes 10 minutes just to get into the groove of writing qual -- and before you laugh, yes there is such a thing -- it's like a state of Zen, except it's a state of Qual-ness) (more on that later).

Aside from that though, all things considered, I'm doing quite well.

Last week, after massive amounts of email and comments from the PI that I shouldn't panic, panic doesn't help, I did get part I of my qual in and approved. Right now I'm waiting for a committee chair to be assigned, who will be the last member to complete my qual committee. I've started contacting many other PIs for advise, reagents, and general offers of collaboration for what I'll be doing for my dissertation. Most of them have been very gracious so far. The ones who aren't just never reply to my emails so there are, in fact, no direct refusals. (I've learned also that PIs are masters at passive-aggressive behavior. But that's neither here nor there.)

To celebrate the ending of qual, part I, I drove up to LA on Saturday to see Lucy. We went to the Getty because there was a French-themed event that weekend. There were people wandering around in paper berets.There was French music. There may even have been people there who spoke French!

Oh wait.

We discovered a sketching gallery upstairs, which was awesome since it's a quiet little corner where they provide art supply for you to sketch sculptures and paintings displayed in that area. The upshot is now I have a very large sketch of a slightly angry-looking woman rolled up beside my nightstand. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it and am trying not to read too much into the fact that Lucy's version of the same woman looks much happier.

We also discovered Solanum pyracanthum and Lucy immediately dubbed it "the Mike plant" after I commented that it's softer than it looks but very prickly if you poke it the wrong way (because, ow). It had orange spikes. And purple flowers. Lucy claimed that the purple flowers are Nick's influence. I plead the fifth on the account of imaginary people currently residing in my head. A quick flip-through in the Getty-Garden book in the museum store revealed that everyone apparently likes this plant and comments on it a lot. I'm a little puzzled and a lot amused by that, since the plant itself isn't very large or very showy, compared to all the other things that are there (purple wings, for example, or angel's trumpets). It just...has blue-green leaves with orange spikes.

Lucy put it down to Mike's innate ability to capture people's attention. I was too busy laughing at the fact that the plant's common name is "porcupine tomato" because...well, porcupine tomato.

Lucy has already mentioned our spontaneous display of desire To Get A Night Life, also known as, "Susan dithers and Lucy finally decides" (yeah), in which we went out and caught a showing of Star Trek on IMAX at 10:15pm at night and it was totally worth it because, my God, the shininess. (Overall design of spaceship, based on my personal and lack-of-engineering-training, ranks below Fifth Elements and above Star Wars.)

(Also dragged Lucy makeup shopping with me, because am fed up with mother and the cosmetics section is too scary to consider venturing into alone.)

(Then the next day was the day when I probably should've updated the blog and instead I went and...let's just say grocery shopping takes a lot longer when there are more people, later in the day.)

I gave a lab presentation yesterday. It seemed to have gone fairly well, overall. Department retreat will be Monday through Wednesday next week (half day, full day, half day). It's been changed from being held in May every year to being held in September, so it can be coupled with the orientation week of the incoming freshmen. I'm somewhat dubious about the wisdom of this decision, because is it really a good idea to ship off students who are still disoriented from coming in from all over the place (a good portion will be from CA but we get a lot of people from all over the US and occasionally a few from outside of the US) in the middle of the orientation to somewhere else? I guess we'll see.

Am currently on part II, section 3 of qual, page 4 of 7. This is the last section unless you count the works cited page, which I don't. If I get it done this week the rounds of editing will start next week. Possibly.

Wow that is a long post. It took...about five incubations to type.

Zen tried to come home on Tuesday. Unfortunately I'm gone for most of the day so there's no way I can sign for Fedex'ed things. I've arranged for a pickup so hopefully I'll get Zen back tonight.

Panic rising

Okay, so drafts of the first three sections of my qual is due tomorrow and and I sent my stuff in last week and I STILL have not heard back from the PI yet (he needs to sign it before I can turn it in). I just sent him another email with the file attached. On one hand, I feel bad for bothering him on Labor Day. On the other hand, he is a known workaholic and I SENT IT TO HIM LAST WEEK, dammit.

TEA. This calls for tea.

[edit 13:58]
I GOT AN EMAIL BACK. (He's a workaholic. Yes.) THERE IS HOPE YET.

Well, I have food now

Parents came. Dad decided that it's absolutely necessary to change the oil & oil filter on my car, so that's what ended up happening. They've also hauled back my Pile of Stuff (including the heater) that has been sitting in the middle of my studio for the past month, so now there is room.

I think I may need to re-vacuum. Though I did vacuum up this massive spider the other time....

I've also came across this:

After another series of scrubs, the Space Shuttle Discovery is slated to launch the COLBERT treadmill (among other things), to the ISS tonight. The satirist Stephen Colbert crushed the competition when the name of the ISS’s new module was put up to a public vote, though NASA balked and went with “Tranquility” instead. The exercise equipment was named after him as a compromise.

From SEED (the science magazine). Poor Colbert. His name is apparently not cool enough for NASA.

Life. It goes on.

Dude

I think I just found a new incentive for why I'll want to aspire for a job that pays well. Besides the hope of affording a house with a backyard large enough for me to grow things in, I mean. (I suppose I could move to the middle of nowhere if that is my sole incentive, but it does seem to conflict, logistically speaking, with finding a job that pays well in my particular field of interest.)

Look at it. Gaiman's library. Although that is not the level that I'm aiming at (I am, after all, very pragmatic). I do want to be able to have at least one extra bedroom and install it with wall to wall and floor to ceiling bookshelves. It's getting a bit tragic how often I wander past bookstores now and force myself only to sigh and cast a longing glance before moving on. Quickly. (I'm convinced I'd be lured away by its siren calls if I pause in front of it for more than three seconds.) Perhaps this is what lovesick adolescent girls feel like. There is, however, considerably less stalking and crisis over self-image in my case, so I feel that I've got the better deal.

Dude. Books.

Geek circuit fail

NY Times did a dedication article to the guy who invented D&D. It came with a cool circuit diagram that was posted on a PI's door that caught my eye the other day, and I vowed that I would hunt it down. And print it out. And trace the parts applicable to me with highlighter of an eye-blinding shade.

All these I have done and I am forced to conclude that the diagram seems to be targeted primarily for a male audience .5 to 1 generation before mine. (My God, just when was Atari?) In any case, what I ended up tracing were bits and pieces all over the place that formed no progression of whatsoever. No loops. Nothing. I am slightly sad. I am also somewhat doubtful of the accuracy of the diagram, which currently allows me to trace two more items on the diagram: "blogging about diagram" and "doubting accuracy of this diagram".

Well, cheers. I am all caught up on the web, finally. (As much as I ever was, anyhow.) My parents have called and told me not to buy food, because they will be bringing a lot, apparently, and I have just vacuumed my place again because they sound like they were serious about camping out on my floor.

Will not be going into lab this weekend (well, except Monday, but that doesn't count). Experiment failed. Troubleshooting took me all the way to 3pm today without a break which made me cranky, because I was very hungry by then. For some reason I wanted a burger. I wonder if this means that I'm not getting enough protein in my diet.

Have signed up for classes. This year I get to search through course catalogues again. As usual, they make my eyes twitch.

(No it's not caffeine. I'm officially off caffeine and back on Pacific Time now, cheers.)

Those of you who are moving into new apartments for the upcoming school year -- I need your new addresses. Especially since I DO send things via snail mail.

I am planning to be back in the bay area for Thanksgiving, which means I need to order tickets within the next two weekends. Which reminds me that sometime near the end of September / beginning of October we should start Facebook messages again and try to figure out who'll be around at Thanksgiving. Also, are we still doing Secret Santa this year? Should I bring a hat?

Okay, dinner.

At Jerusalem next year

I am on schedule (as in the official schedule provided in the grad student handbook) now. I am slightly behind schedule in terms of where I'd like to be in my experiments, but catch up is in progress and I'm hoping that one of my experiments will yield a positive result soon. Meanwhile, my parents will probably attempt to come down here this weekend (where the heck they're staying, I have no idea, and I did warn them) and I will have to go in for at least 15 min on both Saturday and Sunday and work at least half day on Monday.

Well, cheers.

Jet-lag continues to recede. I just realized that while converting from Beijing Time to California time I must be at least on time somewhere each day of this slightly hazy week. Today, after some estimation of how energetic I feel verses how energetic I usually feel at noon, I concluded that I am currently somewhere between Brazil time and US east coast time. My aim is to be by west coast on Friday. I have switched down to green tea now, so victory is in sight.

My right eye twitches when I'm tired. It's getting annoying.

The HP box has arrived today, complete with forms, shipping labels, and three strips of 12" tape to reseal the box (yep, the box came sealed with those things in side, and two styrofoam things). Everyone say "bye" to Zen!

When my PI is mad at someone, he apparently, unlike other PIs, does not swear. He calls them names. Such as "dumbbell". It's all very PG. I am amused. He also commented on a sheet of data today that only God knew what it meant, then added that God might know, but He didn't choose to share with him.

A day per time zone

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.

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.

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

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.

Hair is long enough for donation. Have checked. Will cut this weekend. That is all.

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.

Perhaps it's a PI thing...

Today the PI dropped in on a conversation where my labmate was saying to a postdoc, "But apparently they're transparent!"

"But are they apparent?" Said the PI, and gave us the pleased smile of someone who had just told a really great joke.

We stared at him blankly for a moment.

"...what?" I finally said.

"Just thought it's an interesting turn of phrase," replied the PI, looking pleased with himself.

I thought about it for a moment and got that apparent and transparent sounded alike. Then I got transparent = trans-apparent. Then I realized that the PI was making a joke about how if something is apparent it's easily visible and if it's transparent, it's invisible. So saying something is apparently transparent is like saying something's visibly invisible. Or something.

It fitted with what I know of the PI's sense of humor.

"...but that's a terrible pun," I thought, but saying so seemed impolitic.

"He always comes up with these things that he thinks are funny and that no one else does," my labmate whispered to me as we left to go back to our experiments.


In other news, turned in transcript and stuff for my training grant application today. Am feeling twitchy.

Effective, yet utterly bizarre

My PI explained an experimental design to me by likening it to hunting for purple aliens (I think he said Martians) in the New York subway.

How does he come up with these things?

It happened

Have internet at new apartment now. No time to do anything with it, but it's there.

Aioli

Aioli (Provençal Occitan alhòli[1], Catalan all-i-oli) is a sauce made of garlic and olive oil. Normally egg is also added for ease of mixing.

There you go, as provided by Wikipedia.

Crazy bus this morning. It was late and (possibly that's why?) packed with high schoolers on their way to summer school. You know that general trend where it looks like the high school students / undergrads keep getting younger and younger? Fail. I couldn't tell if they were college or high school students. (It's overhearing part of the conversation that decided it. That, and the way they talk.)

Checked the Sims order. Amazon says:

Delivery estimate: July 8, 2009 - July 23, 2009

So I guess I shouldn't worry until next Thursday.

Need to grow some clones now.

July, July

Crazy week as always (well slightly better than last week, but this week I spend 2 hours on the road each day commuting and I'm getting used to my new daily schedule). It just hit me in the middle of my experiment today that there are really people coming this weekend! Excitement! Etc etc.

Cheers, guys -- and don't worry, we've got food, sleeping arrangement etc covered.

Note:

People have gone insane. There's no parking spot near my new place (guess what they say about it being near the fireworks place is true) at 10ish this morning. Moving will be delayed because I cannot carry my stuff five blocks and up the stairs. Will be heading over there now before I have to carry the stuff I need to spend the night TEN blocks away. There's no internet there. Call if anything comes up. I'll switch on the ringtone.

Grocery stores should still open today, right?

Someone's birthday today! (Now imagine me pointing not-so-discretely in the LA direction which, come to think of it, wouldn't be much help since being in SD means that everyone I know is living in latitudes north of where I am, but there you have it: typing it out helps. She's in LA! Sort of.)

Today's order:

Laundry
Shopping
Moving
Shopping
Moving
Cleaning

Have discovered mysterious yellow stain on jacket while squirting stain-remover detergent. Is it food? Is it chemicals?

In the spirit of determination

WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD.

The weeks have been getting a lot more insane lately, what with the moving and the lab work. There was a one-day retreat the other week for the genetics training grant, which my PI is strongly hinting (read: extremely unsubtle hinting) that I should apply for. I was there along with a few of my first year class mates. Here is a link to the photos from the retreat, where you can see me occasionally in the background and in one occasion standing next to my labmate, who has the dubious pleasure of showing me the ropes in our lab.

There was a meeting about our qual exam also, which I almost missed because for some reason I didn't get the email, despite of the fact that my correct email address was listed in the address bar (I checked with a classmate) (no it's not in my spam or deleted folders either, have checked). I was prevented from having an aneurysm later by the virtues of walking into a classmate while I was leaving to turn in my paperwork for something else (oh Gods the paperwork, it never ends), who wanted to know where I was going, and then, why I wasn't going to the meeting.

My response at the time, if I recall correctly, was to stare at her goggle-eyed and ask, "What meeting?"

So yeah, ladies and gents, my qual consists of a written portion and an oral portion, both of which are due at the upcoming Thanksgiving. The written portion is in the format of a grant proposal and the oral portion is in the format of a research seminar, followed by a question session in which we get quizzed on our knowledge regarding our presentation, the background research relevant to our proposal, and anything in our classes that could be related to our proposal. The rough of the abstract and the summary of the written portion is due by the first week of August. The final is due by Labor Day.

Meanwhile, my PI also hopes that I can churn out enough data for my current project that he can submit a grant application by the August deadline. He's not entirely sure whether or not my current project (a mutation that causes neurodegeneration, and we don't know why) would make a good dissertation project, because it's risky (as in we have no idea why the atrophy occurs, or even what the complete list of symptoms are), but the alternative is to pick up the project that the other people are doing for when the other people are going to leave next year, and those projects already have published work, their own grants, and established foundation to base further hypothesis on.

I asked the PI if I can work on my current project as my dissertation, despite of all the times (well, three discussions total) that we've had where he "hinted" that the other one may make a better thesis than this. I gave my reason as "I think it's really cool" and, much to my surprise, he agreed to let me work on it. Or at lease he'd agreed to help me with the written part of the qual (the part our PI is allowed to help us with) on it. I am having moments when I'm wondering whether or not it's better to have gone with the safer option. It's me after all. I tend to go with the safer option, all the time. Except for when I don't and then I end up in America, with something like 28 units per quarter and enrollment in grad school a year later, much to, I think, everyone's surprise. Therefore, for all that I wonder, I'm not going to change my choice because

1) What am I trying to prove now, really? Nothing, that's what. Do I NEED a doctorate? Not really, I'm not doing it for my career or hopes of improving my income. I'm doing it because I think it'll be fun and I'll regret it for the rest of my life if I don't at least give it a shot.

2) If I pick something I'm not as invested in, three years down the line I'll be dragging my feet to go to the lab each day. It happens to some of my upperclassman. With this current thing, I will never be bored. Exhausted, occasionally. Frustrated, no doubt about it. Occasionally beating my head against the wall. But never bored.

3) A large part of the spirit behind science is actually risk-taking. Or so I believe. If we only stick to the "safe" experiments we'll be forever fine-tuning the details of the existing models and never discover anything cool.

In conclusion these days I'm in lab from about 8 to 6:30 and I spent my weekend cleaning / packing / worrying about my random deadlines that I have drifting around. I did order Sims3, though at this rate I'm dubious as to when I'll have the time to play with it, to the point where I'm considering the logistic of declaring myself a two hour work-free time every weekend. We'll see.

Am moving over to new apartment this weekend. Was told that from the second floor balcony outside of my door I get a clear view of fireworks over Mission Bay (which is roughly three blocks away) come Independence Day. Will be awesome.

Have just squished a spider with post-it. Recent check with someone who knows an entomologist informs me that spiders do bleed green. My is currently more brown, though. Not sure why.

Shower, and packing!

(Yeah, full day at the lab tomorrow, before anyone asks.)

Huh

Dad contacted the Acer company (my laptop still has about six months left of the warranty) and they sent me a few files to update the BIOS and now Ivy works again. I have no idea what was wrong to begin with or why it works now, but it works!

Maybe it's dehydration?

Have a low level headache today and, what's more unusual, I have no idea what's causing it. V. annoying.

In other news, was planning to update this & get some stuff done last night but was too tired. Ended up sleeping for about eleven hours (which was not the source of the headache) and had multiple interesting dreams, including one where Annie and I were discussion bike helmets (and then we went grocery shopping). It was surprisingly mundane. Realized at around 5'am this morning (also not source of headache) that I forgot to check something before I ordered stuff for my next experiment, so had to email my labmate about that. Hopefully it'll still be okay. Woke up at around 8ish and realized that I've forgotten to send out the card I got for my dad three weeks ago and remembered, with some eye-twitching, that this is exactly why I usually don't plan out things more than a week ahead of time when I know I'll be busy.

Still drowning in kittens at the animal shelter. They're ridiculously hard to keep track of since they put multiple kitten per cage and when the door is opened to take one out, all of them try to escape.

Was informed I can start moving stuff into the new place next weekend, which will give me a head start and hopefully mitigate the insanity that is early July. (Even one year is enough to accumulate stuff. Especially since my parents keep bringing over things. At least now I have a convincing excuse to get to start carting some of the stuff back.)

On a note about the email, since I know most of the people who are coming do (somewhat) follow this blog: the reason why I requested for brightly colored clothing is that although yes, calling me on the phone will tell me when people get here, unless I can answer the phone I have no way of knowing which exist people are at. This way if there's no space for my car and I'll have to circle around I know what color I should be keeping an eye out for as I'm going by. It'll be possible to find people without it, since SD airport isn't that big, but this'll just make my life easier. And less hazardous in the sense that I'll be navigating around some of the crazier SD drivers.

I cannot shake off the feeling that I've forgotten something important.

[edit 14:15]
It is dehydration. (Was it something I ate?) Am better now and, for some reason, with the opening theme for Ouran High School Host Club stuck on replay in my head.

[edit 17:22]
Just got the notice: if I were to continue at the same apartment my rent will be going up starting September. Heh.

What IS it with me and Wednesdays?

WARNING: whining post.

Good question, Lucy. I'm not entirely sure. Everyone sometimes have one of those days, when plugging in a laptop can result in electrocution. For me, it just happens that about 90 to 95% of those days always happen to fall on a Wednesday. Not every Wednesday sucks, thank goodness, but even so I've learned that when a day has turned out to be awful, it's most likely Wednesday again. (Yeah my grasp of days of the week can be a little shaky at times, and grad school is not helping.)

Take today, for example:

The day began with me, oversleeping. Yes, me. I usually wake up at least once at 6:30am, 5:30 if it's bright outside and not cloudy like it usually is in the mornings here (it's because of the ocean). (This tend to make me wonder what'll happen to me when I'm seventy. Will I wake up at three in the morning when everyone else wakes up at five? Will I forgo sleep altogether?) For some reason I was out cold last night and didn't wake up once until I opened my eyes and saw it was 7:48am. Which was immediately followed by panic, since I have experiments and I need to go to the bank today, because my application for the studio apartment was approved and in order for them to hold the place for me I need to get the deposit (money order or cashier's check only) to the place within 48 hours or something, and I got the message at 7pm last night, after the bank (Chase) had already closed so it'll have to be today. Conclusion: short lab day just got shorter.

Then I left home, and had to come back less than five minutes later because I forgot the stuff. Which hasn't happened to me in...what? This level? Two years?

Then I missed the bus.

And then my laptop failed me. Ivy for some reason wouldn't output to its screen when I booted up. I tried directly plugging it into another monitor with the reasoning that a basic functioning computer must have a boot drive, power supply, hard drive, an input source, and an output source -- and so if it's something fundamentally wrong with the connections (such if something shorted out), then the output source'd be gone and if I plug it into a functioning output source while the original one was out, what's in Ivy should show up in the plug in monitor.

Nope. Got nothing. Which means when I get the time I'll need to take Ivy apart, manually disconnect the screen from the harddrive, and plug it into an alternate monitor to do further diagnosis etc. Current prognosis? Not good. Since I did have to drive down to Pacific Beach today after lab (by the time I set out it was past 7pm already, and the rush-hour traffic had cleared so at least I wasn't stuck in traffic) for the deposit and further paperwork, that took another hour out of my time. After dinner, shower and such, I've just now got a chance to connect to the internet and looking at the clock? I don't think I'll take a stab at it tonight. I plead mild exhaustion.

I did get my Hep B titer results back today though, and now I'm (finally) immunized. In addition, the PI got us each a nice USB drive for lab stuff and chocolates for the lab meeting, so the day wasn't a total loss.

Google map satellite is still kinda creepy

Good news was: the weather cleared up while I was at the animal shelter yesterday, so I DIDN'T have to drive through the rain in the afternoon.

I think I've mostly got my apartment picked out (unless the other person who emailed me in the morning yesterday and told me that I could come over in the morning yesterday via email after I've already left for my day manages to check his mail in time today AND tell me that I can visit today and his place is VERY good -- I mean it'll cut maybe ten to fifteen minutes off of my transit time and is cheaper, but I don't know how the place is, so I'm not going to make any commitments just yet) (that is possibly the longest in-parenthesis run-on that I've ever had to inflict on anyone).

That involves a lot of uncertainty in the many variables.

If most of them don't resolve I'll be moving to a place just off of Grand Ave in Pacific Beach. The rent is just over two hundred dollars cheaper per month (yea) and the utilities such as gas etc (the stove is gas) are included. It's, one small block away from the bus stop that'll take me to campus (which Google estimates will take me two minutes to walk to, so no more sulking in the dark parking lots in the winter, hopefully). The outside needs a new layer of paint, but the inside is clean enough, has a small kitchen and separate bathroom. What's more, the place that's available is second floor, and has a large, south-facing window (yes fiat lux!). It's just one building, and the other tenants are super nice. Two of them both went to call the landlord so she'd come over early, because I arrived early and they didn't think I should need to wait (and then I got involved in the downstrair's tenant's discussion on tomato plants, which another tenant gave her since he had some extra). It's also supposedly really QUIET there (enough to hear people snoring at night sometimes, but that remains to be seen), so no more jets passing by overhead while we watch things, Lucy. (lol It does make the trips to my place memorable, doesn't it?) It's next to a bunch of military housing and three of the six doors in the apartment facing the street was left open while I was there while the tenants were...somewhere, wandering around (sometimes with their shirt off, which was vaguely disconcerting at first, but this is Pacific Beach, so I guess that's expected?), which I thought was a very nice statement about the safety of that area (and one of the tenants has a very nice plasma screen).

The down side? It's still can take up to an hour to get to the campus (takes me thirty minutes right now). There's no on-site laundry place (I was told there's a laundry place two blocks north). The parking is on the street, so no parking spaces. I have to start paying rent by July 1st, since that's the longest they can hold the place off the market (but now that I got the other half of my salary at least I can afford to, for a brief while). And I would still like a bigger kitchen, but I've mostly given that up now since I still remember the apartments from last year's hunt and even the larger apartments have small kitchens. I should be glad I get a kitchen.

Oy.

My schedule today is animal shelter from 9:30 to 12, appointment at 13, 14, 15, and 16 (yeah one of the five managers annoyed me in the email so I didn't set up an appointment with him). I was cleaning out my papers from my school year this morning (4.5" stack left of just articles after I've thrown away everything else...that's still larger than a stack of unopened papers) and just now I was going to go out and throw away more papers...

...and then it started raining. It does not look like it'll stop soon. The weather forecast gave today as partially cloudy, so I've given up all hopes on it.

Well, driving around today should be fun.

Can you say dimethylpimelimidate?

It took us (meaning me and three different post-docs) the longest time to try to figure out how to say it without stuttering over the "imelimi" part.

Anyway!

School year's officially over, though lab isn't, of course. However, I do not have any extra readings outside of what I'm doing in lab and I have some time this weekend which means, of course, that by this point I've filled it up close to 80% already. However, I do believe that with careful time management I'll be able to clear up a lot of the items on my to-do list, possibly catch up on all the back-log work where I've said "I'll do this as soon as I...". It will be wonderful. Yes it will. Clear slates and crossed-out to-do lists give me a nice glow of accomplishment.

Hmm I need to get more somen. Looks like I'm out.

Now: onwards to dinner, house cleaning, harddrive cleaning, shower, and printing out directions to all the places I need to be tomorrow. I'm in the mood to leave the radio blasting the entire way.

Happy Friday everyone! And congrats to those of you who have/are graduating this week! (My there're a lot of you.)

[edit 18:37]
Dude, I went over to Pandora and first song that came on is Vitamin C's "Graduation".

No one quite believes it

Having talked with a few of my classmates it's safe to say, at this juncture, that none of us are processing "End of School Year" yet. Somehow it doesn't seem entirely possible that a year has passed and yet, somehow, here we are.

Last class tomorrow! I've already presented so it's mostly showing up and asking intelligent questions on my part. I also need to find some time to go and get my Hep B titer checked because I'm getting trained to work with lab animals (mice) and they need our health record.

... ...

My cell phone's call plan's going to end in about a month, I think, and I'm thinking of switching to using a phone card since I get calls once, twice, a week and they're generally short. (Have had the dubious pleasure of being reached via the lab phone now, and now that I have my access card, at least I'm fairly sure during school hours people are not going to be trying to reach me via cell phone.) On the other hand, I want to try text messaging, and possibly sending images to people via my phone. I've yet to check to see what the policies on that are, for a phone card. Anyone who does have text / image sending as part of their call plan know how it works and how much it costs, on average?
Hmm my phone's three years old this year, I think. It's working impressively well, still.

NSC NGF GDNF

Presentation at 9am!
(And then all the turning-stuff-in portion of this quarter would have concluded, thank heavens.)

Prospects ahead

I came up with a vague outline of my dissertation at around 7:15 this morning (those thoughts are immediately followed by "wow it ate my brain, clearly"). I'll need to check with my adviser to see how plausible it is.

Mostly I just feel like writing right now and can't afford to spend hours on it. I've slept lots last night (about ten hours -- great, isn't it?) and it (well, and the prospect of tea immediately after this) has put me in a chipper mode. (I think we can safely add "sleep" to the list of things that makes me happy.) I thought I should make a post with the images I've saved up this week while a) I still remember b) I still have the right laptop open and c) before incurable cases of brain disorder suck all the optimism out of me. (I could've chosen leprosy instead, and peripheral neuropathies, but it's hard to take something with armadillos seriously.)

Right. First of all, there was unexpected thunderstorm in SD on Wednesday. I was outside, eating lunch, when I noticed it getting darker and darker. Then it started sprinkling, and I thought, "Okay, well, odd SD weather, it'll probably pass because it's CA and it doesn't rain here in the summer." Shortly after that there was thunder and a downpour. I spent the rest of my break bemusedly trying to dry my glasses on my shirt in the bathroom.

I took two screencaps of my gmail, because I have the tree & sky background on and I've never seen a thunderstorm there before:



I do have my cell images on Ivy, too, but it's a) unpublished data, technically, and b) very large file so I'm not going to upload it.

Conferred with Lucy on who might be coming this summer (hi Victoria! I got the thing in gmail) and will be scrolling through more ads for housing this week to try to find a place and figure out the details for move-in when I do find the place. An option (if they're okay with partial rent and the rent is, in fact, cheaper than my current place) is for me to pay double rent for a month and a half, which will a) give people two places they can stay (hmm someone still need to bring an air mattress or sleeping bag or something; I have one spare cot mattress and a sleeping bag, that's all) at when they come down to SD and b) give me more time to move so that I can pack / move a little bit of stuff each day in the time after lab and c) still leave myself with enough time to clean up this place so I won't my deposit. (One of my classmate tried this last month and it seemed to work out okay with her.)
But yay, people! (Lucy, I think I have further proof that I should list each person as an individual item.)

Okay, tea and project.

I was going to put something else here, but I forgot

I'm currently talking to Lucy about the UCLA commencement speaker issue(s) and how they might get someone from Lincoln Park. I'm ashamed to admit that I completely forgot who those people are (maybe my subconscious was trying to protect itself by repressing the memory) until Lucy sent me the link to "Somewhere I Belong." I suddenly recalled very vividly the presentations they made us sit through in high school.

It's an unfortunate association. Even more so since if they do get that person, then Lucy's graduation from college will remind her of high school. When she wanted to know why they can't find something more original I got a sudden flashback of Kate singing "Cows In the Morning." Whatever else you might say about it, THAT certainly would be original. (Though perhaps it's more suited for UCD graduation, and not UCLA.)

... ...

A week in conclusion: the seminar class has ended. I've spent a great deal of time sitting behind the curtain imaging cells at 100x, which looks very cool but drives your eyes nuts since you are sitting in the dark, staring through a microscope at dimly florescent things for hours. The issue with my account turned out (after being sent from the program coordinator to the student business office and back again) to be a change in my funding source, which resulted in half of my stipend now being deposited via payroll and the other half being sent through my school account, which is not enrolled in direct deposit. At least I know both sums are mine, which makes me happy since the half of the salary that got deposited in my bank account is enough to cover my housing, but that's about it.
So yay food. I ought to go and eat chocolate, to celebrate.

Final project's due on Tuesday. I'm going to look at an apartment tomorrow. It's further and slightly cheaper, but mostly I'm after a safer area and a place that doesn't quite so resemble the North Pole. (Though I'm keeping the polar bear.) There have been no other promising postings of places for rent so far, but then again, I haven't been haunting the sites and probably won't do so until after Tuesday.

Cheers.

[edit 21:28]

Ahh almost forgot! I found the neutrophil-chasing-a-bacterium video that I mentioned a long time ago (the one where my classmates and I cheered for the neutrophil).

The round things floating around are red blood cells. The vibrating black speck is a bacterium.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your white blood cell at work.

Go neutrophil go!

And now I can sleep.

Palliate, always

Dear Diary,

Today I am grateful for not being attacked by birds.

Like the guy in front of me was.

Yours truly,

S

But have you ever shaved a zebra?

Sometimes the PIs ask the oddest questions. Then again, I suppose someone who's studying the melanin pathway probably would be very curious about a zebra's skin tone.

Am having some trouble with my accounts right now. My salary has been reduced by half in the recent payroll and strange checks have shown up, with amounts just over of what would be half of my salary. The graduate program coordinator promised to look into it. I am just confused, and a little concerned.

Speaking of concerned, I feel as if the area where my apartment is has gotten progressively less safe. Last fall it was the safety issue of walking home alone at night, beginning of this quarter were reports of people whose cars have been stolen. This week it's acts of vandalism by people who are, apparently, racist and anti-gay-rights. Most of this is about one block away from where I live (Lucy, you might know where Regent is? It's near the crossing of that and La Jolla Village Dr). I feel like I should be braver about it, but I still can't quite bring myself to answer the door after dark when I know I'm not expecting anyone and there's knocking.
(Which has just happened.)

Ate an entire mango by myself today. Was late to class again because of the way class fell in the middle of labwork. Final project due next Tuesday!

In which things are sparkly

Went to Lucy's place this weekend (lol her mother likes me because I drag Lucy up at 8 in the morning and we go walking). I am still occasionally confused by the door that leads into the courtyard of her apartment complex, but given a few seconds I can now figure it out on my own. Cheers.

We also went to the Griffith Observatory, where I sat through my first planetarium show. It was magical unicorn fairy dust. I lack words to adequately describe how awesome it is to have stars and galaxies whirl past you, overhead. Though the narrator ruined it a little. PLANET EARTH has nothing on the overly-dramatic. I wanted to laugh a little in the introduction portion, but felt that it wouldn't be polite.

It was very scenic up in the mountain, despite of the fact that it was cloudy. Lucy pointed out the giant advertisements that she photographed and then posted in her lj. Yes they were that big. You could literally seen them from the mountains.

We also played Sims and I learned that toddlers apparently make people insane. This may or may not bear actual semblance to real life.

Nick still sucks at looking somber.

We found Tamaki on Twitter. It is frighteningly in character, complete with the roses. I was surprised that the person didn't employ animated glittering fonts. You can still feel the glittery-ness though.

Right-o, onward to next week!

It's as easy as 1, 2, 3

Soup in a mug!

My day has improved.

Huh

WTH I just received credit in my student account of over 1k. Why is it there? Is it the "congrats you've joined a lab" bonus? I know you get a raise if you join the pharm track, which I'm not in, but, what?

And then, possibly, tea

I have finished a training course this week and foresee at least another three before summer's over. Presentation in the lab of my previous rotation tomorrow (due to scheduling issues). Meeting with my first year advisor next Tuesday to sign off on my progress report (after this year, I hear, you get to try to get a sign off from your thesis committee, what fun). I think I'm going to do my presentation on prion disease on the Tuesday after next week, which means a lot of background reading, I expect. Finally figured out how to get the authorization for the password that will, hopefully,get me a security badge to the basement of our lab building someday. Cell lines are fine. I need to get hand sanitizer, still.
Geez it's almost nine.
No tea then.

Mm cookies

Taken from Le Pichon et al., 2008, from Nature Neuroscience:

Here we uncovered a previously unknown phenotype of Prnp–/– mice in the olfactory system by using a combination of genetic, behavioral and physiological techniques in a systems approach. We employed the so-called 'cookie-finding task', a test of broad olfactory acuity, to analyze a battery of mice, including PrPC knockouts on multiple genetic backgrounds and transgenic mice in which Prnp expression was driven by cell type–specific promoters.

(Was reading this for a project presentation and wanted to share. That is all.)
(It is what it sounds like: you take a cookie, bury it in the bedding, and see how long it takes the mouse to find it.)

In which I should probably go to sleep and call it a day

A bunch of things in no particular order, because it's late on Friday and my brain is more than a little fried:

Workload in the upcoming week -- three readings for the ethics course, two for the presentation I have to give next Friday, the presentation that I have to give next Friday, one paper for the presentation due in June, the presentation due in June, and a written response for the ethics course that is thankfully short, so I won't start on it until late next week.

As for lab right now -- I've five plates of bacteria with eight different vectors (PI decided to do two per plate, not sure why since I made about 30 plates and they last only six months, anyway, before the antibiotics degrade), three different cell lines, and reagents for three different treatments. I've finished a first round this week, with two vectors and one cell line for all three treatments! (Whoo, productive week!) Unfortunately one of the treatment didn't turn out that well, so I'll need to play around with it to get better results (and also optimize another one, but at least that one sort of worked whereas this one didn't). I'll need to go in on Monday to get some things started. I also need to email a whole bunch of people about equipment and paperwork for training, which I have to do next week as well.

Oh and the oil-immersion lens' resolution sucks.

I also have to go to a safety training thing next week. Which should be fun. Not. (Do they make it boring on purpose? I've often wondered.)

... ...

Last night I had a dream in which I had to identify cones of gymnosperms. There were cones from pines, firs, sequoias. They were all in these plastic trays, similar to the ones during the labs in floristics. I remember wanting to ID this one thing as something from cedar of Lebanon, except from what I retain of the image from my dream, upon waking, it doesn't really look anything Cedrus lebani. I wonder if this is symbolic of anything.

... ...

I got this in one of the school-wide flyer-emails this week:

5/22 • 10:00 AM-3:00 PM
Fri, May 22 - EBU1 Rm B706
Ever wonder how a hologram works? Want to make one yourself? Come to our Spring Hologram Workshop and you can bring your own object to image. For more info, see listing at right (Entertainment & Fun).

It sounds awesome. Doesn't it sound awesome? Unfortunately I had both lab and class in that time (not surprising, since that's a huge chunk of time right there) and so couldn't make it. Now I'm tempted to look up hologram-building. And maybe try to make one the next time I have the time & leisure to do so (which is not in the foreseeable future, but well).

... ...

I should do laundry. Maybe tomorrow morning.

Gone phishing

Got an email sent by alerts@bankofamerica.com complete with logos and my name and everything. It said that a third party tampered with my account (or something like) and now they have to freeze it, and to reactivate it I need to follow the link in the email and fill out some information etc etc. Being naturally suspicious, I read over the email three times, switched over to my oldest laptop, and clicked on the link and noticed the secure website color code that usually came on in the url field didn't come on, which made me even more paranoid. Have just called (super fun to come home late and realize that you have to call the bank to ask about a possibly frozen account, no?) and was informed that it was, very likely, phishing. Have forwarded email to the reporting center at the bank. Have received email back within five minutes confirming that it is fake. Heaved a sigh of relief at being paranoid and not filling out any information for that email, because otherwise I'd be very sad right now.

Some of you will be getting the forwarded fake email from me. It's pretty well made, all things considered, no?

On a happier note, dad has recovered enough from jet lag to send me an email with a few photos he took when he went to the botanical garden at Beijing that he thought I might like. Here's one:

Almost as good as a dose of chocolate.

The European Journal of Pain

My lab life ate my life.

I usually depart for school around 7:45 each morning and I've already had the pleasure of leaving lab at a quarter to 7, which means that by the time I got home, almost a full 12 hours would have past. The oddest part of this (after eight-to-five shifts of the previous rotation) is that I don't mind. Much. (I do mind when I don't get to eat lunch until 4:30, because being hungry for that long makes me cranky.) There is always something to do. Further more, there is always something I find interesting to do. My current philosophy seems to be that, if the PIs expect us to work 60 hours a week, I might as well as spend 60 hours a week on something that I'm interesting.

I.e. week two is progressing nicely.

My parents are paying a visit this weekend. Dad just came back from China on Monday. I may have to go in lab on Monday though, but we'll see.

And yes, that journal does exist. We're having a discussion on it. Now.

In which there is karaoke

I feel much more human after ten hours of sleep. As predicted, the retreat made me somewhat sleep-deprived, though I am much better off than many of my classmates and faculty (for reasons that will be explained later). However, on the whole, it's great fun! We're far enough from SD that, despite of the fact that something like 80% of us brought work with us (100% of the faculty, but that's a given), none of us disappeared into labs halfway through (aside from certain PIs, but that's also a given). The talks are 15 minutes long each and strung into mandatory sessions, but we also get socializing hours (which I avoided mostly after my first one) and free time for half a day on Thursday, so combined with no classes and no labs, it's a bit like a vacation.

Riding on in a bus full of biogeeks is kind of fun. We watched PLANET EARTH on our way there and PLANET EARTH and RATATOUILLE (but mostly PLANET EARTH) on our way back (when I also had the dubious pleasure of having a PI sit next to me. He fell asleep half way through PLANET EARTH). I don't know about my classmates, but I for one started making little corrections in my head as I watched. We did get to see the part with the tundra and the caribou, which made me think of DUE SOUTH. Then were was the part about grasses and such where I kept thinking "Well, technically...". I'd forgotten how overly dramatic the narration and soundtrack for those sort of things and was Very Amused at the music accompanying caribou migration.

My roommate was kind of bad the first night, mostly because she kept forgetting that I existed before inviting her guy over (who happened to be my classmate, and I'm going to pretend that I went deaf / didn't speak Chinese for a few hours on Wednesday because otherwise things would be very awkward for the rest of my classes). But she remembered the next day though, which was good. The place was very ...homey, in a rustic kind of way. My room didn't get wireless, for various reasons that don't need to be explored at this juncture, but it is in a building named "Ponderosa". In fact, all the rooms are in plant-named buildings (at first I thought it was just trees, then I saw "Acorn"), which was cute.

The talks were fairly good, though there was a panel discussion about fellowships that made me realize I should perhaps considering applying for something over the summer (you could feel the pressure in the room build up as the discussion went on). We got fed a lot and my PI showed up the morning of the second day, only to disappear again as suddenly. I heard he left after lunch. Certainly he was standing in the lab with a gel tray in his hands when I returned yesterday. I was a little...nonplussed to see him the instant I stepped inside the lab.

On my free hours on Thursday I went for a hike by the lake (will post photos later to Facebook), which didn't take long, then went back, showered, and finished BELOVED. A lot of my classmates went to the pool or played volleyball (though there was a notable exception who wanted to swim across the lake -- I never found out whether she did it or not) and had tired themselves out enough that they were all sleepy during dinner. Which meant a bunch of them went to nap after dinner and came back later for the socializing hour / karaoke, which lasted until the wee hours of the morning. (I stayed for the department panel and went to sleep during socializing -- I managed to endure about fifty minutes of socializing my first day there and had to go and take a nap afterward because of a headache.) (I don't MEAN to be so antisocial, but the amount of small talk -- and you always get asked exactly the same thing every time someone comes up to you --gets tiresome really fast.) However, from what I've heard, karaoke is a lot more popular than dancing ever was. As in, there was more people dancing during karaoke than there ever was during dancing. More specifically, I heard that the faculty eventually got into it too and some of them even went up to sing while others randomly grabbed people -- students and faculty alike -- and fake swing-danced them around the room. My labmate claims she has filmed this. I am kind of boggled by the idea of some of the faculty who are there, swing-dancing.

I had the idea of a beer-pong explained to me. I had concluded that people are very, very strange. The next morning one of the faculty was so hung over that he had to switch his speaking time with someone else. On the whole though, most of the faculty were up freakishly early. By which I mean that when I went down for my tea in the morning there was a whole ensemble of faculty sitting right there by the tea with their laptops out. It was a little unnerving. I've heard more than one student wonder how they do it. PIs, we concluded, are very mysterious beings.

I met Tiffany, who was a labtech in my current lab before she became a grad student. She promised to teach me how to do brains slice cultures. I also learned a lot about the processes of grad school from my upperclassmen, a great deal of which is about getting papers submitted and how the reviewers have an uncanny ability to slowly destroy your will to live. (I take hope from the fact that all of them are still alive and I've so far only heard of one grad student who had a nervous breakdown.) All the sessions are announced with a gong, which was...strange. (Seriously, why a gong? Why not a bell? Or a buzzer? Every time I hear it I think of summer fairs when I was little.)

Upon returning I found my cell lines to be alive and well, which means I can go ahead with the rest of the experiments next week. All is well with my world.

And now, to the animal shelter!

Hihi

Back. It was fun. Too tired to post much now. Will go eat dinner and clean up stuff (have showered). May type a detailed post tomorrow.

BBL

Will be going to department retreat. Leaving SD at noon tomorrow and will not be returning until late Friday.

Cheers.

Smoke on

Dear Diary,

I went to the Air Show yesterday despite of stats and enjoyed myself very much! I stayed far longer than I expected and got sunburned for the first time in my life (at least the silly flush has mostly died down by now), but it was totally worth it.

-S

I've forgotten how much I disliked statistics.

I could've done without the reminder.

In which we talk of feral squirrel monkeys

I finally caved the other day and resolved to start paying more attention to facebook (and then thirty minutes later my enthusiasm was diminished by the fact that there are feeds and add-ons that I just can't turn off, darn it). I even uploaded photos and set up email notifications, then promptly got swamped in my inbox when Lucy commented on the photos with all the speediness of someone who had just spent twenty minutes walking me through how to turn things off in my account.

It was entertaining, to say the least. I'm glad I didn't use my school email account for that one, since I get enough list-serve spam as it is. (I almost missed the check-in email from my SPAC adviser, who already thinks I have a strange habit of disappearing off of the surface of earth.)

I have finished all 352 pages of the book, thank goodness. It was a mercifully fast read, which is also aided by the fact that I skimmed about half of it. I'm not getting the silly thing, because we're discussing it next Monday and after that I will probably never again need to know who Robin (blonde and met the beauty prerequisite, of course) and Cliff (dirty blond and described as movie star handsome, or maybe it was music star...some sort of star) are. Unfortunately that meant that I had to get the book from the reserve (library copy already checked out and none of my upperclassmen had theirs around), which means I have only 24 hours with it before the next person gets it (grad privilege of 24 hours, otherwise I'd only have three). It's more scientifically accurate than Dan Brown, but Brown does a better plot. I was entertained by DA VINCI CODE. I can't say the same for INTUITION.

That was, of course, on top of the two research articles I had to read for the 8:30 discussion this morning. One of which is about feral squirrel monkeys. (The professor brought up an interesting point: where DID they get the "feral" squirrel monkeys? The authors are based in Baltimore, Maryland. Mental images of feral squirrel monkeys wandering through Johns Hopkins are surreal, but entertaining.) More specifically, about giving amphetamine to feral squirrel monkeys (yes I like typing "feral squirrel monkeys" as much as I like saying it). I cannot take the paper seriously, not just because of their choice of animal species, but also because it's just a ...really bad series of experiments. It's feral squirrel monkeys plus shoddy science. I felt bad for the monkeys. (There were also baboons involved, but they're not as ridiculous.)

Now there's only the stats final which was supposed to be posted on Monday but wasn't posted until yesterday, for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, despite of the fact that the software we need to solve the problems expires this Saturday.

Oh well.

I still get to read extracurricular stuff. And drink lots of tea.

Life is still fairly good.

Further proof of sadism

The book is painful. It's...John Grisham (however you spell that) for law students. Indiana Jones for archeology students.

It was funny, until about the third chapter. Then it made me want to stab myself repeatedly with a spork.