Right, so my first "official" talk as a grad student will be next Friday. The schedule for the day was sent out this week and seeing my name listed there gave me approximately 30 seconds worth of nausea. My lab mates assured me that I will be fine. My collaborators assured me I will be fine. I may even be able to believe that I will be fine provided that I somehow stop forgetting to cite random facts on slides two and eighteen. (Chromosome 11, it's on chromosome 11. There are 100-103 sequences in 92 species which are poorly annotated and required hand curation.)
Wendy continued on as before, post graduation. Now that the quarter is over she will be listed as a post-doc, until she leaves for either UCLA or UCSF almost a year from now. We went by the student offices building the other day for food, at which point she suddenly said something along the lines of "Look! A turtle!" Despite of the fact that we are surrounded by concrete and there is no logical reason of why there should be a turtle, I turned to look automatically anyway, and immediately suffered a pang of sympathy for Kowalski, who got pushed out of an airplane for doing the same thing. (Maybe it's just turtles. Or possibly unlikely animals. Or maybe just animals will do? This requires experimentation.) However, in my case, there was indeed a turtle picture posted, randomly, on the giant glass wall of the registrar's office, and no one was pushed off of any moving vehicle, so I counted it as a win.
For those who haven't heard yet: Annie and I will be going to Greece this summer! I got a guidebook and she'll get a different guidebook and we spent a lot of time researching (there was a lot of me typing "BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??" and her typing "IDK") and mutually agreeing that banging out the logistics is pretty darn painful (though I have discovered that there are apparently lots of Laundromats on Crete). Tentative plan is to fly out near the end of June for 10 day trip, after which she will get shipped off to field school on one of the islands and I'll fly back from Athens directly to the vivarium, grad school, where I will no doubt have mice waiting for me.
Comic con is sold out already. One of these next few years I will remember to order tickets in...December or something. See that, Lucy? ONE OF THESE YEARS. I WILL.
...I did find time this year to volunteer for the SD Science Festival again and my God, it just gets more and MORE elaborate each year. Orientation was last weekend and the festival's next weekend. We're expecting 30k+ people on Expo Day and I am stationed right by what they have projected will be the busiest gate. Drop by and say 'hi' if you come and I haven't gone crazy from the crowd yet -- will be in a yellow volunteer shirt under a red tent in a sea of white tents. There will be pools. With water. And a human sized hamster ball. The week long events start this weekend though and there is liquid nitrogen ice cream somewhere. Google if you want the schedule.
Wedding album have arrived and have given it to Ashley. She was here last Sunday for a "quick" visit which eventually turned into something where I am prepping food for the week in the kitchen and she's playing scrabble on her phone on the living room floor and we tried to figure out where we are going with our lives. It felt oddly domestic. Have tried to share my experimentation in food with her and got her to try tea (which she normally hated but she will accept the Caribbean Breeze one from Teavana), papaya (which she didn't like) and chayote (and the jury is still out on that one).
Speaking of food, my recent trials are with soup. I have been picking out a different type of canned soup every time to try. Tomato bisque is very good, corn chowder was kind of disgusting. Creme of mushroom was okay. Chicken tortilla should be less spicy and the "hearty" potato one was good. The chicken wild rice tastes just like chicken noodle, if you ignore the texture of the soup, which was frankly strange. Wendy's been attempting to explain artichoke to me, so I might try that next.
Oh and my parents want to come visit, so they'll probably be by some time early April. Have I mentioned that my cousin (five years older) got married? We don't keep in touch, really, but given she's been worrying about getting married since when I was just existing high school, I'm going to say good for her. (If what you want was to be married then marriage is more likely to suite you, right? Right?) My mom forwarded me the photos.
There are loads of other things that happened but this post is getting too long as it is. I'll mention that I tried the "text to donate" thing on my phone and for some reason it didn't work, so I'll have to do it online when I find the time tomorrow. For those who are wondering: no, the amount of supplementary iodine in salt will not protect you -- there is no point in hoarding salt.
20110318
20110311
Received tsunami warning at 6:55ish this morning. Wave supposed to have hit now. Everything's fine. Weather's lovely. But my God-- those poor people in Japan....
[edit 9:44]
Found out that the reason I got a warning is because I live in PB. La Jolla's safe. Apparently it's at a much higher elevation. Huh.
[edit 9:44]
Found out that the reason I got a warning is because I live in PB. La Jolla's safe. Apparently it's at a much higher elevation. Huh.
20110305
But why can't there be flying roombas?
Filling tax return when part of your income is from the the PI's university whatever-you-call-it and part of it is part of a NRSA training grant that's not included on W2s while your university also includes its tuition and the fee it has paid for those tuition also as a scholarship/grant (but it's not your actual income) is a nightmare from hell.
[edit 21:18]
Which means I'm done! Done!
[edit 21:18]
However, if you were a degree candidate, include on line 1 only the amounts you used for expenses other than tuition and course-related expenses. For example, amounts used for room, board, and travel must be
reported on line 1.
Which means I'm done! Done!
20110301
Dear Diary,
I think I may have accidentally traumatized an undergrad today, of the biology department. From the expression of horror you would've thought I told her that grad students are ritualistically tortured at the bi-quarterly PI meeting or something, and not that it takes, on average, 5.5 years to graduate. I didn't volunteer the information for how many others a week I work. She might swoon.
I also told her that it's worth it if you like it. She looked dubious but well, not everyone would be happy as grad students.
I am up to sea urchin now. One of the post-docs in my lab told me (jokingly) to let him know if I get to dinosaurs.
Sincerely,
-S
I think I may have accidentally traumatized an undergrad today, of the biology department. From the expression of horror you would've thought I told her that grad students are ritualistically tortured at the bi-quarterly PI meeting or something, and not that it takes, on average, 5.5 years to graduate. I didn't volunteer the information for how many others a week I work. She might swoon.
I also told her that it's worth it if you like it. She looked dubious but well, not everyone would be happy as grad students.
I am up to sea urchin now. One of the post-docs in my lab told me (jokingly) to let him know if I get to dinosaurs.
Sincerely,
-S
20110228
Is a solution that lasts only for five minutes a solution?
New neighbor has invited friends over, again. It never happens on Friday or Saturday nights but always inevitably end up on a day where normal people have to work the next day. They never show up until after 8:30 and currently this bunch is still here, they have gotten progressively louder, and show no signs of leaving. I have a headache. It's all very awkward. Should I go ask them again? For the third time since they moved in recently? I don't want to come across as nagging but our apartment is not sound proof at all. I have tried knocking on the wall as politely as I can (door knocking variety) to try to remind him that you have a neighbor, hi, remember we've talked about this before? It seemed to work at first, to my relief, because I've been tossing and turning for a while and don't feel like getting up and getting dressed enough so I can go knock on his door to tell them to keep it down. Then it started again. Refraction about five minutes.
I need to find something useful to do until they leave.
I need to find something useful to do until they leave.
20110227
20110224
Labmate's graduating!
She's just successfully defended her thesis to her committee (15 min grilling post presentation, it looked like) so now as soon as they approve of the formatting for her dissertation & get the paperwork process she'd have graduated. Before she left for the day (her family's in town) she turned to me and said "It's possible! You can do it!" and given that this is her 8th year (she has 3? 4? different strains of mice she had to establish herself) this is encouraging, as I only so far have 1 strain of mice that's already made.
But she's a friend and we share a bay and commiserate over the PI so this is a lot of excitement, as vicarious as it is. I feel a bit like jumping up and down because omg! She's DONE!
But she's a friend and we share a bay and commiserate over the PI so this is a lot of excitement, as vicarious as it is. I feel a bit like jumping up and down because omg! She's DONE!
20110221
20110220
lol brain
As I was falling asleep last night my brain was shuffling through the photos of some buildings I've seen recently and I find myself thinking about the onion-shaped cupolas. More specifically, my mind was idly wondering what they are for because it's not exactly the most practical shape for...most things that I can think of, actually and so I was wondering if they had a purpose besides ornamental. At which point my brain promptly supplied, I quote, "That's where they keep the bats!"
Being half asleep at the time, it took me a moment to track what thought had just crossed myself. And then I started to laugh because a) even half asleep, the idea of those places as some kind of bat hotel is patently ridiculous and b) I cannot think of Ivan Braginsky and "bats in the belfry" in the same sentence without wanting to snicker. So there I was, at some point near ten pm, lying in the dark and giggling. It was not one of my saner moments.
Grocery shopping today and lab later in the afternoon (which means no parking space when I get back). Too tired to bake this week (though I probably should) and currently have random craving for pudding. (Tried kamaboko last week. It tastes like very salty, very rubbery --worse than fishball rubbery-- artificial crab meat. I didn't like it very much.)
Being half asleep at the time, it took me a moment to track what thought had just crossed myself. And then I started to laugh because a) even half asleep, the idea of those places as some kind of bat hotel is patently ridiculous and b) I cannot think of Ivan Braginsky and "bats in the belfry" in the same sentence without wanting to snicker. So there I was, at some point near ten pm, lying in the dark and giggling. It was not one of my saner moments.
Grocery shopping today and lab later in the afternoon (which means no parking space when I get back). Too tired to bake this week (though I probably should) and currently have random craving for pudding. (Tried kamaboko last week. It tastes like very salty, very rubbery --worse than fishball rubbery-- artificial crab meat. I didn't like it very much.)
20110218
Still holding, still here
I have to go in and check my experiment in the morning tomorrow. Recruitment weekend is now and I have to present a poster, also tomorrow, at ten-ish, the session being two hours. I have to go and collect data from my mice at around five tomorrow afternoon. In addition, I will have to finish putting together my presentation for next Wednesday this weekend, which should require at least three hours of uninterrupted time, preferably five, which will give me enough time to memorize the information as I go through it and double check for typos.
Given this is the case, I've given up and decided just to spend most of tomorrow in lab instead, with my poster tube and the high speed internet. It will be peaceful. I will be productive. In my breaks I will explore our lab's old stash of candy and stare at a lot of photos and resolutely not go insane.
Sounds like a plan.
Given this is the case, I've given up and decided just to spend most of tomorrow in lab instead, with my poster tube and the high speed internet. It will be peaceful. I will be productive. In my breaks I will explore our lab's old stash of candy and stare at a lot of photos and resolutely not go insane.
Sounds like a plan.
20110213
This, is grad school
I had a dream last night where I'd forgotten the time for my candidacy exam until five minutes before and then had to run off to find the projector, which didn't work right. Then I realized there was a bit of extra material that I should have had, but someone didn't put it back where it was supposed to be and so I ended up spending way more time than I should tracking it down. At that point I was ten to fifteen minutes late, however, none of my committee members showed up and I realized that I had forgotten to send them a reminder email the day before (nevermind you sent an email the week before, in grad school you quickly learn to send a reminder the day before). At that point the gnawing anxiety cum nausea quickly became overwhelming and I realized, to my horror, that what I had thought was anxiety was in fact an acute bout of stomach flu and had to go home. The next day I was sitting around and contemplating what I should tell my committee, since I obviously need to tell them something. I was considering whether rescheduling was possible and recalled that I do have a deadline for this sort of thing that I need to finish everything by, and that yesterday was the only day in the next two months when everyone on the committee had time (also, true to experience). Somewhere around there the nausea swelled again and I woke up panicking, with a greater appreciation of the phrase "stomach in knots" than I had ever cared to learn, and it took me far too long to realize that the candidacy exam was four months ago.
It was a very, very realistic dream.
(I am out of practice for dream retention, but I can still pick up around 15%, out of residual training.)
(My God the things I picked up, back when summers meant time off.)
This was how my subconscious is coping with the four presentations that are still left: badly. But at least it's coping. It's deeply reassuring to know, upon waking, that there's no way this scenario can happen exactly as is in real life because I trust my ability to remember (or at least scribble things down in multiple places in brightly colored ink), and it will hold. The closest approximation in real life would be a case where there is a sudden health issue severe enough that I would need to reschedule, but in that case I'm more likely to react with resignation (c'est la vie) than panic.
And now for something completely different.
Okay, I lied, it sort of ties back. Well.
According to blogger I first started making attempts at dating back in June of last year (whoa I lasted six months?), by the way of online dating. After some trial-and-errors, I ended up sticking with OkCupid. I am ending this particular experiment, and on Valentine's Day seemed apropos. (Well, I'd do it tomorrow except I have a list of experiments and I'm pretty sure all I'll want to do at the end of tomorrow is sleep, I'll have a bit more time than just sleeping but certainly not enough time to write. Writing takes me a long time. Some day I'll figure out a way to diagram my thought processes and just post that instead.)
(Account has been deleted.)
This is what the stats looks like from my experience:
I also kept track of a bunch of other stuff, but even the data I presented may not be conclusive, given the sampling bias -- the type of people who visit OkCupid is possibly a less skewed representation of the singles population than, say, Geek 2 Geek, but the fact remains that the internet is more popular among the younger generations and dating sites are...well, you can draw more conclusions from that than what I have shown, because there's no one to compare my data against and you shouldn't trust an experiment, with N=1, that has no control. (Har.)
Other miscellaneous info: I have been on a "date" with three different people, though I'm not sure how much you'd count the meet-up from this sort of thing as a date. It seemed all very none standard but then, to be fair, two of the three people I met up with were very none standard as well. I am friends with three of the people still, though one of them is not the same person that I met up with. There is only one person that I went out with more than once but I called that off in the beginning of this month.
My conclusions from this is that I like going out, when I have the time to. Going out with people who are nice and who like me and whom I like is fun. I really don't give a flying fig about the actual relationship part, and the the guilt from that particular realization, in combination with the insanity that is this month were the main reasons why I called the last one off. The sad truth is that the desire for something is more beautiful than the real thing, and as much as I like the idea of romance the truth is that I can't really be bothered to deal with it myself (someone around, all the time, seems a bit co-dependent and invasive) (-- a matter of personal preference, I have nothing but respect for people who are capable of deriving some kind of soulful satisfaction from being around their special person) (and yes, I know it's voluntary but you still have to make time for that other person -- given how important person is supposed to be, you should always find time -- and the effort in juggling four different collaborator is complicated enough without the need to try to find free time during the week days to do whatever it is that couples do) (what do normal couples do? All the people I've talked to have one or both sides of the equation in grad school, so it seems to involve a lot of staggering around in exhaustion singularly or together). Here's something else I learned from SHERLOCK: the phrase "married to your work". It is very applicable in my case. I think I'll stick with that.
I also have to go to lab now. There needs to be more tea.
It was a very, very realistic dream.
(I am out of practice for dream retention, but I can still pick up around 15%, out of residual training.)
(My God the things I picked up, back when summers meant time off.)
This was how my subconscious is coping with the four presentations that are still left: badly. But at least it's coping. It's deeply reassuring to know, upon waking, that there's no way this scenario can happen exactly as is in real life because I trust my ability to remember (or at least scribble things down in multiple places in brightly colored ink), and it will hold. The closest approximation in real life would be a case where there is a sudden health issue severe enough that I would need to reschedule, but in that case I'm more likely to react with resignation (c'est la vie) than panic.
And now for something completely different.
Okay, I lied, it sort of ties back. Well.
According to blogger I first started making attempts at dating back in June of last year (whoa I lasted six months?), by the way of online dating. After some trial-and-errors, I ended up sticking with OkCupid. I am ending this particular experiment, and on Valentine's Day seemed apropos. (Well, I'd do it tomorrow except I have a list of experiments and I'm pretty sure all I'll want to do at the end of tomorrow is sleep, I'll have a bit more time than just sleeping but certainly not enough time to write. Writing takes me a long time. Some day I'll figure out a way to diagram my thought processes and just post that instead.)
(Account has been deleted.)
This is what the stats looks like from my experience:
N=15
avg age = 26, with stdev of 5 years
education level = most common: college
occupation = most common: computer
avg messages exchanged per person = 3, with stdev of 4
I also kept track of a bunch of other stuff, but even the data I presented may not be conclusive, given the sampling bias -- the type of people who visit OkCupid is possibly a less skewed representation of the singles population than, say, Geek 2 Geek, but the fact remains that the internet is more popular among the younger generations and dating sites are...well, you can draw more conclusions from that than what I have shown, because there's no one to compare my data against and you shouldn't trust an experiment, with N=1, that has no control. (Har.)
Other miscellaneous info: I have been on a "date" with three different people, though I'm not sure how much you'd count the meet-up from this sort of thing as a date. It seemed all very none standard but then, to be fair, two of the three people I met up with were very none standard as well. I am friends with three of the people still, though one of them is not the same person that I met up with. There is only one person that I went out with more than once but I called that off in the beginning of this month.
My conclusions from this is that I like going out, when I have the time to. Going out with people who are nice and who like me and whom I like is fun. I really don't give a flying fig about the actual relationship part, and the the guilt from that particular realization, in combination with the insanity that is this month were the main reasons why I called the last one off. The sad truth is that the desire for something is more beautiful than the real thing, and as much as I like the idea of romance the truth is that I can't really be bothered to deal with it myself (someone around, all the time, seems a bit co-dependent and invasive) (-- a matter of personal preference, I have nothing but respect for people who are capable of deriving some kind of soulful satisfaction from being around their special person) (and yes, I know it's voluntary but you still have to make time for that other person -- given how important person is supposed to be, you should always find time -- and the effort in juggling four different collaborator is complicated enough without the need to try to find free time during the week days to do whatever it is that couples do) (what do normal couples do? All the people I've talked to have one or both sides of the equation in grad school, so it seems to involve a lot of staggering around in exhaustion singularly or together). Here's something else I learned from SHERLOCK: the phrase "married to your work". It is very applicable in my case. I think I'll stick with that.
I also have to go to lab now. There needs to be more tea.
20110212
But when's time for tea?
I seemed to have hit a peak for insanity this month.
Have to go into lab again today. Ivy's vaguely glitchy. Had to choose new paper for presentation and so will be spending this weekend, most likely, working on that presentation. Got assigned to present at the local neurodevelopment meeting in March so as soon as the paper thing is done I expect I shall have to prepare for that. (Why can't the PI wait one more quarter? Then I can just use the committee meeting as the practice run for the general presentation.) I'm still not sure how this happened, but it looks like I got volunteered both recruitment weekends for a poster presentation. Still not sure if I have to host someone yet, but the first weekend is next weekend and so hopefully someone will mail me at some point to let me know.
Darn it, and it's almost tax-time again. I'm funded by two different sources, one of them doesn't show up on the W-2 and so there's more arithmetic for me.
Lab mate got a manuscript accepted yesterday. PI got the lab chocolate, cake, and a bottle of champagne (carried in an ice bucket -- sorry, no photos). Afterwards we all signed the bottle in gold paint-pen, because that's how the lab tradition goes, it seems (the person who published get a signed bottle to keep). Of all the random lab traditions around, I think this one is sweet. In more sense than one.
Have to go into lab again today. Ivy's vaguely glitchy. Had to choose new paper for presentation and so will be spending this weekend, most likely, working on that presentation. Got assigned to present at the local neurodevelopment meeting in March so as soon as the paper thing is done I expect I shall have to prepare for that. (Why can't the PI wait one more quarter? Then I can just use the committee meeting as the practice run for the general presentation.) I'm still not sure how this happened, but it looks like I got volunteered both recruitment weekends for a poster presentation. Still not sure if I have to host someone yet, but the first weekend is next weekend and so hopefully someone will mail me at some point to let me know.
Darn it, and it's almost tax-time again. I'm funded by two different sources, one of them doesn't show up on the W-2 and so there's more arithmetic for me.
Lab mate got a manuscript accepted yesterday. PI got the lab chocolate, cake, and a bottle of champagne (carried in an ice bucket -- sorry, no photos). Afterwards we all signed the bottle in gold paint-pen, because that's how the lab tradition goes, it seems (the person who published get a signed bottle to keep). Of all the random lab traditions around, I think this one is sweet. In more sense than one.
20110206
What I'll be googling tomorrow
I have made a cup of tea. The tea bag was defective and got ground tea leaves into the tea, as well as onto the counter and possibly the floor. Clearly this was going to be one of those days.
Putting together the presentation for lab meeting yesterday took me about five hours. This is taking into the account that I had spent around two hours during the past week analyzing the data that I never got around to sorting.
The plastic container for grape tomatoes was defective as well, and I ended up fishing for tomatoes in the back trunk, because there were turns and the apparently more oblong shape of this particular cultivar of tomatoes (what the heck, Firefox does not recognize the term "cultivar"?) was not enough to, like an egg, prevent the tomatoes from rolling too far.
Two of my labmates have harangued the rest of the lab into taking a bet on the Superbowl (I'm on the Pittsburgh side and had no idea what "Green Bay" was or was from until Friday afternoon).
I still need to find a paper to present.
[edit 9:42]
Need break. With find time to re-watch Sherlock at some point. Have realized have never seen tv-adaptions of Holmes before this. Would like to, as it's educational. Someone link me?
[edit 13:03]
Was absent-minded enough to use baking soda instead of baking powder while baking. Result tastes atrocious. Ivy (which contained my lab presentation) had the same same issue with the display again. Had to flash the BIOS twice. Still haven't found paper.
Putting together the presentation for lab meeting yesterday took me about five hours. This is taking into the account that I had spent around two hours during the past week analyzing the data that I never got around to sorting.
The plastic container for grape tomatoes was defective as well, and I ended up fishing for tomatoes in the back trunk, because there were turns and the apparently more oblong shape of this particular cultivar of tomatoes (what the heck, Firefox does not recognize the term "cultivar"?) was not enough to, like an egg, prevent the tomatoes from rolling too far.
Two of my labmates have harangued the rest of the lab into taking a bet on the Superbowl (I'm on the Pittsburgh side and had no idea what "Green Bay" was or was from until Friday afternoon).
I still need to find a paper to present.
[edit 9:42]
Need break. With find time to re-watch Sherlock at some point. Have realized have never seen tv-adaptions of Holmes before this. Would like to, as it's educational. Someone link me?
[edit 13:03]
Was absent-minded enough to use baking soda instead of baking powder while baking. Result tastes atrocious. Ivy (which contained my lab presentation) had the same same issue with the display again. Had to flash the BIOS twice. Still haven't found paper.
20110205
It's going around
Thesis writing, I have been able to observe, is a bit like a viral infection. It causes exhaustion, nausea (and therefore inability to eat), headaches, &c. More importantly, it does seem to cause immune-depression, as that Wendy has gotten sick twice in two weeks now and had to go home early yesterday because she was running a fever (but she did manage to send off her draft to all her committee members and, more importantly, all her committee members are still here and can still make it to her defense date). After watching her flail around trying to analyze data and write at the same time and lying face down on her desk after drafts and drafts of it is coming back from our adviser covered in illegible blue scribbles, I, in the midst of acute pangs of sympathy (after changing the format for the qual and the candidacy exam we have to work with adviser on both now, and so I did the pages of blue scribbles thing, except my document was faaar shorter), had a truly horrifying revelation:
This is what I have to look forward to in a few years.
Which reminds me of the point where Wendy was looking at me blearily and said, "So you're aiming for this in ...three years, right?" (Six year graduation apparently being the shortest anyone who works with mice has ever accomplished, or something. Speaking of which, the pinworm infestation's gone away, except now all the mice going in and out still need to go through preventative treatment, which does affect behavior, which means I can't run any behavioral tests until this is over, which means that my own thesis-writing-pains just got delayed by three months and there's nothing I can do about it.) (I am just a little upset by this.)
Righto.
Meantime, I don't have to go into lab this weekend, though I do have to put together a presentation for lab meeting next week as well as find a decent paper to present for class / journal-club, so that will probably take up all weekend. In the after math of being introduced to Kate's ipad and griping about the fact that it's hugely impractical to have a giant drawer full of references, like I do, but that I can't just take notes on the computer because if the notes aren't right next to the text I sometimes forget what I'm talking about and also-- highlighting is USEFUL, I have discovered Xournal. It's for linux only (though I think there's a hack for mac somewhere) and it's brilliant. I have fallen into a green-orange color theme now (orange notes & green highlighter) and my read articles looks down right citrusy. Now if only I can figure out how to change the default settings somewhere.... (Still playing around. Also, it's been compared to Windows Journal for PC, which I haven't tried yet. More on that ... at some point, when I get around to installing a copy on Zen.)
This is what I have to look forward to in a few years.
Which reminds me of the point where Wendy was looking at me blearily and said, "So you're aiming for this in ...three years, right?" (Six year graduation apparently being the shortest anyone who works with mice has ever accomplished, or something. Speaking of which, the pinworm infestation's gone away, except now all the mice going in and out still need to go through preventative treatment, which does affect behavior, which means I can't run any behavioral tests until this is over, which means that my own thesis-writing-pains just got delayed by three months and there's nothing I can do about it.) (I am just a little upset by this.)
Righto.
Meantime, I don't have to go into lab this weekend, though I do have to put together a presentation for lab meeting next week as well as find a decent paper to present for class / journal-club, so that will probably take up all weekend. In the after math of being introduced to Kate's ipad and griping about the fact that it's hugely impractical to have a giant drawer full of references, like I do, but that I can't just take notes on the computer because if the notes aren't right next to the text I sometimes forget what I'm talking about and also-- highlighting is USEFUL, I have discovered Xournal. It's for linux only (though I think there's a hack for mac somewhere) and it's brilliant. I have fallen into a green-orange color theme now (orange notes & green highlighter) and my read articles looks down right citrusy. Now if only I can figure out how to change the default settings somewhere.... (Still playing around. Also, it's been compared to Windows Journal for PC, which I haven't tried yet. More on that ... at some point, when I get around to installing a copy on Zen.)
20110129
There must be a logical solution to this
Currently the tragedy of my life is that I have shrimps, no tomato, and that I am in dire need of a paper shredder. And possibly that I have to go into lab both days this weekend again and will thus have to sacrifice any plans to try to make spring-rolls. (Chinese New Year on the 3rd, guys.)
Darn it. Why do I have so much stuff and I really need a paper shredder. Stupid pre-filled forms.
Darn it. Why do I have so much stuff and I really need a paper shredder. Stupid pre-filled forms.
20110128
I wonder where that spider went
Again, thanks to IRC, I managed to finish TESS D'URBERVILLES, which I started on New Year's morning this year, on the account of waking up far too early for everyone (with the exception of Christine, who never slept), and finding it on the bookshelf. I managed to finish the first part (literally, since the book is divided into parts) and a few more pages before others awoke.
If I started the book for the lack of something else better to do (didn't bring my laptop), then I mostly finished it out of perseverance and the knowledge that this is a work of classic so there must be something worthwhile in there. However, enough time and culture has passed since the days when this book was first published to have abolished any sense of empathy I may have had with the female protagonist. I skimmed most of the last parts, mostly with a pronounced feeling of "I don't understand this!" --I am acutely aware that I don't have enough knowledge of the historical and social-cultural background to place the work in a more illuminating context. I am also aware of how much a woman's standing in society has changed over the years, even if the details escape me. However, there's nothing quite so frustrating as seeing Tess showing signs of characteristics that I admire and then proceed to ruin them beyond redemption by caving in a crucial moment. (Naturally wishy-washy, is one thing, but seeing someone who could be so much more but isn't -- that sense of wasted potential -- always makes me want to flail in wild indignation.) The prose is very pretty, complete with many literary allusions, though the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed (think Nathaniel Hawthorn, with the sun coming out of the clouds type scenario). There's also the fact that Tess is more melodramatic than Mike in full throes of the Mood, and I spent a few entertaining moments imagining how they'd get on. (Answer: they wouldn't.)
It's possible that I'd like this book more if I had the right kind of life experience. Goodness knows that I didn't think much of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD the first time I read it, but now it's one of my favorite books. (Own a copy; bought a fairly new copy at a library sale -- best quarter I've ever spent.)
On the other front, I don't think I've talked about the BBC version of Sherlock yet. I'm glad there's going to be more, because in my very biased opinions it'd be a crying shame if there were ever only three episodes made, especially with the content of the third episode. It. Was. Brilliant. I didn't not expect that bit with the painting and the astronomy at all, and while I have liked a great many detective shows where I can predict things down to the murder's motive, any show that can genuinely surprise me will automatically get bumped up on my "favorites" list. So while Merlin suffered a gradual decline in interest that never recovered and Pushing Daisies went the full circle (bored, interested, bored) (but my God the set is pretty -- or at least has a distinct enough flair that I will never get tired of looking at it -- that much hasn't changed), Sherlock had me wanting to re-watch things. Although it is not currently at the same list as Avatar: the Last Airbender, Due South, and Doctor Who yet -- there has only been three episodes. What can I say? I'm looking forward to the next season.
I have a box of crackers (Milton's original multi-grain) that smells vaguely of mushrooms but are insanely addictive. Must be the sesame seeds.
I also have a fresh vial of fruit fly embryos, but I left that in lab.
Geez, is January over already?
If I started the book for the lack of something else better to do (didn't bring my laptop), then I mostly finished it out of perseverance and the knowledge that this is a work of classic so there must be something worthwhile in there. However, enough time and culture has passed since the days when this book was first published to have abolished any sense of empathy I may have had with the female protagonist. I skimmed most of the last parts, mostly with a pronounced feeling of "I don't understand this!" --I am acutely aware that I don't have enough knowledge of the historical and social-cultural background to place the work in a more illuminating context. I am also aware of how much a woman's standing in society has changed over the years, even if the details escape me. However, there's nothing quite so frustrating as seeing Tess showing signs of characteristics that I admire and then proceed to ruin them beyond redemption by caving in a crucial moment. (Naturally wishy-washy, is one thing, but seeing someone who could be so much more but isn't -- that sense of wasted potential -- always makes me want to flail in wild indignation.) The prose is very pretty, complete with many literary allusions, though the symbolism is a bit heavy-handed (think Nathaniel Hawthorn, with the sun coming out of the clouds type scenario). There's also the fact that Tess is more melodramatic than Mike in full throes of the Mood, and I spent a few entertaining moments imagining how they'd get on. (Answer: they wouldn't.)
It's possible that I'd like this book more if I had the right kind of life experience. Goodness knows that I didn't think much of THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD the first time I read it, but now it's one of my favorite books. (Own a copy; bought a fairly new copy at a library sale -- best quarter I've ever spent.)
On the other front, I don't think I've talked about the BBC version of Sherlock yet. I'm glad there's going to be more, because in my very biased opinions it'd be a crying shame if there were ever only three episodes made, especially with the content of the third episode. It. Was. Brilliant. I didn't not expect that bit with the painting and the astronomy at all, and while I have liked a great many detective shows where I can predict things down to the murder's motive, any show that can genuinely surprise me will automatically get bumped up on my "favorites" list. So while Merlin suffered a gradual decline in interest that never recovered and Pushing Daisies went the full circle (bored, interested, bored) (but my God the set is pretty -- or at least has a distinct enough flair that I will never get tired of looking at it -- that much hasn't changed), Sherlock had me wanting to re-watch things. Although it is not currently at the same list as Avatar: the Last Airbender, Due South, and Doctor Who yet -- there has only been three episodes. What can I say? I'm looking forward to the next season.
I have a box of crackers (Milton's original multi-grain) that smells vaguely of mushrooms but are insanely addictive. Must be the sesame seeds.
I also have a fresh vial of fruit fly embryos, but I left that in lab.
Geez, is January over already?
20110127
I may need to rinse out my nose
Just got to school via a bus that had broken air circulation and a homeless person among the passengers who smelled so rank that the driver told her that the next time she's not allowed to come on the bus if she smelled like that. ("That" being a bit like a combination of the worst kind of those plastic stalls of temporary restroom and a tray dirty cat litter that has not been changed for a week -- I'm kind of fascinated-- in a horrified way -- by how that kind of intensity of smell can even be achieved.) (Also -- her voice -- what is wrong with it? It's like a combination of bad cold plus the cracking you get after you've screamed yourself hoarse. It speaks of extensive vocal cord damage. What happened?)
Now that I got that out of my system (my fellow passengers all looked fairly traumatized -- the bus driver kept telling us to open all the windows until we told her that all the windows are already open, and then she looked traumatized as well) -- I was originally going to blog about the other insanities of the week. Such as, for instance, how in the past week, I've helped a post-doc connect her computer to the school network, given advise to one of our undergrads about how to get rid of fleas that his roommate's cat has acquired, and hacked into the old Mac of the Mystery Password (formerly PI's computer, got donated to lab, no one, including the PI knew the password needed to update or install anything -- yes that one), setting up a new admin account, and updated / cleaned up the entire system (with due permission -- or at least with no objections from the rest of the lab) (guys, the security updates are about two years out of date). I'm the most proud of the last bit, given I've managed to cut down the start up time from 2 min and 15 sec to around 1 min and 5 sec when you restart (it's running os x 10.4.11 and the computer is old, with less than 1G of ram) and quartered (or more) the start up time for all apps I've tried except Firefox. (For some reason the updated version of firefox is sluggish. I have not been able to figure out why, only that it's not a network issue since Safari will open in five sec or less.) Onyx is a very good program for Mac system clean up, by the way. The PI has installed a new harddrive on the computer years and years ago and various people added various programs so essentially it's a mess, and running the app database reset option in Onyx, alone, has been enough to see a noticeable improvement in performance.
Before I forget: Stellarium (Ubuntu install) does not run on Daemon, on the account of the ATI card, which is a known bug that no one seemed to have found a solution for. There is, however, a Fedora install of Stellarium that does run on Ivy, and it's the shiniest new toy ever, since I discovered Gweled.
Also remember my question a while back about music organizers? I have tried out a few and decided that I quite like Mufin (for MS, and the icon is of a muffin wearing headphones, which I found to be utterly adorable) and Rhythmbox (for Linux). I have now discovered that I apparently have duplicate files of ten different songs in different folders and three other songs misnamed. I have also created what felt like far too many playlists and everything is all very organized, which is wonderful. Except at some point I'll have to deal with the music in the external but! Not today.
At some point I'll download and try out the Ubuntu install of Chrome on Daemon. About time, don't you think?
(Should I name my external hard drive?)
Right.
Now that I got that out of my system (my fellow passengers all looked fairly traumatized -- the bus driver kept telling us to open all the windows until we told her that all the windows are already open, and then she looked traumatized as well) -- I was originally going to blog about the other insanities of the week. Such as, for instance, how in the past week, I've helped a post-doc connect her computer to the school network, given advise to one of our undergrads about how to get rid of fleas that his roommate's cat has acquired, and hacked into the old Mac of the Mystery Password (formerly PI's computer, got donated to lab, no one, including the PI knew the password needed to update or install anything -- yes that one), setting up a new admin account, and updated / cleaned up the entire system (with due permission -- or at least with no objections from the rest of the lab) (guys, the security updates are about two years out of date). I'm the most proud of the last bit, given I've managed to cut down the start up time from 2 min and 15 sec to around 1 min and 5 sec when you restart (it's running os x 10.4.11 and the computer is old, with less than 1G of ram) and quartered (or more) the start up time for all apps I've tried except Firefox. (For some reason the updated version of firefox is sluggish. I have not been able to figure out why, only that it's not a network issue since Safari will open in five sec or less.) Onyx is a very good program for Mac system clean up, by the way. The PI has installed a new harddrive on the computer years and years ago and various people added various programs so essentially it's a mess, and running the app database reset option in Onyx, alone, has been enough to see a noticeable improvement in performance.
Before I forget: Stellarium (Ubuntu install) does not run on Daemon, on the account of the ATI card, which is a known bug that no one seemed to have found a solution for. There is, however, a Fedora install of Stellarium that does run on Ivy, and it's the shiniest new toy ever, since I discovered Gweled.
Also remember my question a while back about music organizers? I have tried out a few and decided that I quite like Mufin (for MS, and the icon is of a muffin wearing headphones, which I found to be utterly adorable) and Rhythmbox (for Linux). I have now discovered that I apparently have duplicate files of ten different songs in different folders and three other songs misnamed. I have also created what felt like far too many playlists and everything is all very organized, which is wonderful. Except at some point I'll have to deal with the music in the external but! Not today.
At some point I'll download and try out the Ubuntu install of Chrome on Daemon. About time, don't you think?
(Should I name my external hard drive?)
Right.
20110123
Mm food
Experimenting with western food this weekend. Broccoli seems okay with parmesan in soup. Still don't particularly liked cooked carrots. Found Reynold's cupcake cup inherently hilarious because of immediate mental image of Mike in a commercial for cupcakes. Are there even commercials for cupcakes? Are there food commercials? Not as in commercial for butter substitutes but, you know, an actual item of food that has been cooked and is ready for consumption?
Polling the audience: where do you go to get things framed?
[edit 13:03]
Guys, guys, you know what I discovered? Masala-chai cupcakes with cream cheese & honey frosting! It's a recipe I adopted from something (also was originally going to try lavender-earl-grey combination but forgot to take some lavender with me when I was home for the holidays--FAIL) and the cupcakes are decent, nothing too special, and the frosting is ...kind of weird, actually, but acceptable, but the two together is like magic.
Now I just need to figure out why all the stuff came out flat-topped instead of dome-topped.
Polling the audience: where do you go to get things framed?
[edit 13:03]
Guys, guys, you know what I discovered? Masala-chai cupcakes with cream cheese & honey frosting! It's a recipe I adopted from something (also was originally going to try lavender-earl-grey combination but forgot to take some lavender with me when I was home for the holidays--FAIL) and the cupcakes are decent, nothing too special, and the frosting is ...kind of weird, actually, but acceptable, but the two together is like magic.
Now I just need to figure out why all the stuff came out flat-topped instead of dome-topped.
20110118
A is A
First off, regarding ATLAS SHRUGGED: I have finished it. It gets even MORE preachy at the end (pages and pages of nothing but philosophy -- the character who spoke it said it took three hours on radio, and I believe him). As a sci-fi it's got the dystopia grittiness that I'm so fond of, but there isn't enough interesting sciency bits to hold my attention and the parts regarding agriculture can only lead me to believe that the author knew very little about plants & environmental sciences and didn't think it was important enough to do further research. As a mystery it sets up the premises for solving both mysteries -- the person and the conspiracy, very well. However, a bit like how the BBC Sherlock mini-series, in their first episode, beats you to death with all the clues Holmes used to figure out who was the killer, there was so much clue given about the solution to both mysteries that I spent most of the following hundreds of pages (oh yes it was hundreds of pages) thinking, "Com'on, com'on, how SLOW can you get?" Then there's also the fact that the climax of the mystery-solving part does not achieve the level of climax and drama that any decent mystery stories should, and that, where usual mystery stories wrap up fairly quickly after the mystery is solved, this particular books limps doggedly on, resolutely carrying on until all the philosophical lectures are dotted, filed, marked "done". As a work of propaganda -- because that's what this reads like, at times -- like an ode to capitalism...well, I've read propaganda novels before, and this isn't that great at it either. It lacks a certain something in terms of subtlety and sympathetic characters (both characters that I found vaguely sympathetic died -- well presumably the other one died as well, the story was a bit vague, preferring to cut to a paragraph about piano music instead).
Okay, and then I went online to look up this book, and I'll admit to being impressed by the fact that Rand managed to create a new branch of philosophy with a novel. There are certain aspects, such as reason and logic being one of the virtues of man, that I agree with. There are other aspects, on how any government regulations in trade is Evil and that there's no such thing as a "great good" outside of the realms of Machiavellian manipulations, that I disagree with. I am not a philosopher, I am a scientist by training and by choice. I don't profess to be familiar with any of the Aristotle-inspired schools of thought, but I do feel a bit put out by the insistence that contradiction does not exist in nature (wave-particle duality, hello?).
The verdict: ATLAS SHRUGGED crosses the genre of mystery, sci-fi, and social commentary (I am going to pretend the romance component doesn't exist, because b the end of the novel it frankly makes me want to gag), but does not excel in any of those categories. However, it does offer a different system of thinking. It challenges the way I perceive the world and makes me want to take apart the novel, idea by idea, to try to understand why I will agree with some but abhor others. It makes me think. For that alone it was worth reading at least once.
And now back to our scheduled presentation:
Quest for the Meaning of Life continues. I want to share the bit yesterday when, having thought about academia vs industry some more, I decided to ask my PI about what it's like being a PI. Specifically, I said something along the lines of "There is either something else about being a PI that's really enjoyable that the rest of us (the grad students) have missed, or that all PIs are extremely masochistic."
His answer? "It's not an 'or' question." With a huge grin. (It makes him look manic. I should not be as fond of it as I am.)
That's not all of it, but the entire rest of the conversation would take too long to describe.
There's a pinworm infestation discovered in my collaborator's vivarium, where I ship my mice to be tested at a specific age. Currently the place's under lock down and all important and export of animals are halted. If it's not lifted soon my animals will be past the age when they can be tested, I would lose an entire cohort, and have to figure out some way to make up for it without pushing back my experimental schedule too much. Don't ask me what my schedule for spring break is like. I no longer know. I'm still waiting for some sort of pathology report.
Okay, and then I went online to look up this book, and I'll admit to being impressed by the fact that Rand managed to create a new branch of philosophy with a novel. There are certain aspects, such as reason and logic being one of the virtues of man, that I agree with. There are other aspects, on how any government regulations in trade is Evil and that there's no such thing as a "great good" outside of the realms of Machiavellian manipulations, that I disagree with. I am not a philosopher, I am a scientist by training and by choice. I don't profess to be familiar with any of the Aristotle-inspired schools of thought, but I do feel a bit put out by the insistence that contradiction does not exist in nature (wave-particle duality, hello?).
The verdict: ATLAS SHRUGGED crosses the genre of mystery, sci-fi, and social commentary (I am going to pretend the romance component doesn't exist, because b the end of the novel it frankly makes me want to gag), but does not excel in any of those categories. However, it does offer a different system of thinking. It challenges the way I perceive the world and makes me want to take apart the novel, idea by idea, to try to understand why I will agree with some but abhor others. It makes me think. For that alone it was worth reading at least once.
And now back to our scheduled presentation:
Quest for the Meaning of Life continues. I want to share the bit yesterday when, having thought about academia vs industry some more, I decided to ask my PI about what it's like being a PI. Specifically, I said something along the lines of "There is either something else about being a PI that's really enjoyable that the rest of us (the grad students) have missed, or that all PIs are extremely masochistic."
His answer? "It's not an 'or' question." With a huge grin. (It makes him look manic. I should not be as fond of it as I am.)
That's not all of it, but the entire rest of the conversation would take too long to describe.
There's a pinworm infestation discovered in my collaborator's vivarium, where I ship my mice to be tested at a specific age. Currently the place's under lock down and all important and export of animals are halted. If it's not lifted soon my animals will be past the age when they can be tested, I would lose an entire cohort, and have to figure out some way to make up for it without pushing back my experimental schedule too much. Don't ask me what my schedule for spring break is like. I no longer know. I'm still waiting for some sort of pathology report.
20110114
Dear Diary,
Today I managed to shatter a jar of citric acid all over myself (and the bench, and a large part of the floor). Apparently that's what happens to a plastic chemical jar when it's been sitting around for too long.
Sincerely,
-S
P.S. Regarding ATLAS SHRUGGED: Wwwhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy? It would've been so much better if it just ended right after the planes thing but instead it kept on going and now it just kept on getting more and more intolerable. Without the element of mystery (which even when I figure things out ahead of the time, I like to keep on reading / watching to prove that I am right -- yes, I do like being right, most of the time) to distract me from the preachiness and increasing viscosity of what is starting to feel like propaganda, it can get Very Intolerable. But I am committed at this point and so shall finish reading, though I cannot help but feel as if I've been personally betrayed. And ye Gods -- the romance element felt extraneous and wrong from the start (think original Sherlock Holmes randomly starting to wax lyrical about some woman's eyes kind of wrong) but you know, a little bit is okay -- adds a bit of flavor -- but now it's just...urgh. Dagny went from being my favorite to my least favorite character, and not just for being disappointingly slow on the uptake for the second half of the book. This is me, metaphorically weeping into my blog.
Today I managed to shatter a jar of citric acid all over myself (and the bench, and a large part of the floor). Apparently that's what happens to a plastic chemical jar when it's been sitting around for too long.
Sincerely,
-S
P.S. Regarding ATLAS SHRUGGED: Wwwhhhhhyyyyyyyyyy? It would've been so much better if it just ended right after the planes thing but instead it kept on going and now it just kept on getting more and more intolerable. Without the element of mystery (which even when I figure things out ahead of the time, I like to keep on reading / watching to prove that I am right -- yes, I do like being right, most of the time) to distract me from the preachiness and increasing viscosity of what is starting to feel like propaganda, it can get Very Intolerable. But I am committed at this point and so shall finish reading, though I cannot help but feel as if I've been personally betrayed. And ye Gods -- the romance element felt extraneous and wrong from the start (think original Sherlock Holmes randomly starting to wax lyrical about some woman's eyes kind of wrong) but you know, a little bit is okay -- adds a bit of flavor -- but now it's just...urgh. Dagny went from being my favorite to my least favorite character, and not just for being disappointingly slow on the uptake for the second half of the book. This is me, metaphorically weeping into my blog.
20110111
My day, summarized:
1) trying to get heat block to get to exactly the right temperature is excruciating. As in boring. As in checking it every 30 seconds for half an hour kind of painful when you can't do anything because the metal thing was not yet at 80C.
2) being confused by PI: today's event included a discussion on the definition and types of juggling. According to him people do juggle chainsaws. Out side of cartoon. I don't know whether this was more or less strange than random quotations of Russian literature or even more randoms to teenage card games, but do know that I no longer cared.
3) Street and building (but thankfully not the indoor outlets for unit lighting) lights have all gone out at my end of the block. It makes this end of the street appear even more ghetto than usual. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the keyhole in the dark. It was unexpectedly difficult.
4) I really, really despise the new e-bill layout from ATT, especially the pop-up windows. I wonder if it looks better for people using browsers other than Firefox.
5) ATLAS SHRUGGED is ...amazing. That courtroom scene made me realize that what a crowning moment of awesome really is, what with the 200+ pages of build up.
1) trying to get heat block to get to exactly the right temperature is excruciating. As in boring. As in checking it every 30 seconds for half an hour kind of painful when you can't do anything because the metal thing was not yet at 80C.
2) being confused by PI: today's event included a discussion on the definition and types of juggling. According to him people do juggle chainsaws. Out side of cartoon. I don't know whether this was more or less strange than random quotations of Russian literature or even more randoms to teenage card games, but do know that I no longer cared.
3) Street and building (but thankfully not the indoor outlets for unit lighting) lights have all gone out at my end of the block. It makes this end of the street appear even more ghetto than usual. I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the keyhole in the dark. It was unexpectedly difficult.
4) I really, really despise the new e-bill layout from ATT, especially the pop-up windows. I wonder if it looks better for people using browsers other than Firefox.
5) ATLAS SHRUGGED is ...amazing. That courtroom scene made me realize that what a crowning moment of awesome really is, what with the 200+ pages of build up.
20110110
Wendy and I giggled over an article in NATURE titled "Feeling the molecules" because it sounded indecent (yes, "indecent"; trying saying the title aloud was enough to set us off) and also? There are a LOT of molecules in us and by types alone there's enough geeky jokes to keep a science nerd hysterical for ages.
This is what my life is like, at the moment, apparently.
This is what my life is like, at the moment, apparently.
20110108
Ubuntu install
PI has been making noises about new laptop again. I think he's disappointed that Ivy got rescued (he really does not like netbooks). To rebel I've burned a live usb for the newest Ubuntu (10.10, and named after Meerkats, I think -- don't ask me why), and liked the live version enough to burn it onto Daemon (my poor experimental Daemon). Here's what the install screenshot looks like:
I think I may miss the design theme where everything is round and chocolate colored. It made my desktop look vaguely like a chocolatier, and I like chocolate. In the mean time, here are some of the things I noticed about this Ubuntu:
1) There were still more issues installing it than Fedora. First round gave me an ebios error because I didn't update the LiLi USB burner and so had to burn it with the 9.something parameter, which confused my computer. I had to double check between Daemon and Zen though, just to make sure it's not a computer issue.
2) Ubuntu share a lot of software with Fedora, such as GIMP (graphics), Firefox (internet), Rhythmbox (music), and OpenOffice (all office type software). This makes learning the OS a much flatter learning curve.
3) Despite of the lack of chocolate, the new design is really quite sleek and efficient. I like it.
4) Ubuntu installs with updates and ALL the third party software support you need, together. It's an option you can check during installation. So unlike Fedora, where I had to hunt down each plugin, Ubuntu comes with support for flash, mp3, chrome, etc. (so yeah I may install and try Chrome on Daemon). There's no command-line involved at all. On one hand, it's like switching to an 100 piece puzzle after playing with an 1000 piece one. On the other hand? Very very easy to transition from windows. Very...easy. This is an easy OS.
5) The graphics. Everything is so VERY GUI oriented and I suspect I may get away without ever needing the terminal, despite of this being a linux system. It gives you powerpoints during installation to teach you about the OS, for crying out loud.
6) It comes a notes system called "Tomboy" and the installation promised a 3D-planetarium thing called "Stellarium" that I'm dying to try out.
7) It also promises something called an "Ubuntu One" account which, from what I've read so far, sounds a bit like a Google account (as in cloud-based remove syncing of files, except also for bookmarks and such) -- could be very useful.
I'll let my computer finish installing it while I go run chores and give another feedback on the usability in a week!
P.S.
I am on Daemon right now, posting via live Ubuntu. The browser (Firefox) is insisting that I type "coloured" instead of "colored". What is this thing with Linux systems? (Then again, the spell-check also doesn't recognize "meerkats" or "chocolatier", so....)
I think I may miss the design theme where everything is round and chocolate colored. It made my desktop look vaguely like a chocolatier, and I like chocolate. In the mean time, here are some of the things I noticed about this Ubuntu:
1) There were still more issues installing it than Fedora. First round gave me an ebios error because I didn't update the LiLi USB burner and so had to burn it with the 9.something parameter, which confused my computer. I had to double check between Daemon and Zen though, just to make sure it's not a computer issue.
2) Ubuntu share a lot of software with Fedora, such as GIMP (graphics), Firefox (internet), Rhythmbox (music), and OpenOffice (all office type software). This makes learning the OS a much flatter learning curve.
3) Despite of the lack of chocolate, the new design is really quite sleek and efficient. I like it.
4) Ubuntu installs with updates and ALL the third party software support you need, together. It's an option you can check during installation. So unlike Fedora, where I had to hunt down each plugin, Ubuntu comes with support for flash, mp3, chrome, etc. (so yeah I may install and try Chrome on Daemon). There's no command-line involved at all. On one hand, it's like switching to an 100 piece puzzle after playing with an 1000 piece one. On the other hand? Very very easy to transition from windows. Very...easy. This is an easy OS.
5) The graphics. Everything is so VERY GUI oriented and I suspect I may get away without ever needing the terminal, despite of this being a linux system. It gives you powerpoints during installation to teach you about the OS, for crying out loud.
6) It comes a notes system called "Tomboy" and the installation promised a 3D-planetarium thing called "Stellarium" that I'm dying to try out.
7) It also promises something called an "Ubuntu One" account which, from what I've read so far, sounds a bit like a Google account (as in cloud-based remove syncing of files, except also for bookmarks and such) -- could be very useful.
I'll let my computer finish installing it while I go run chores and give another feedback on the usability in a week!
P.S.
I am on Daemon right now, posting via live Ubuntu. The browser (Firefox) is insisting that I type "coloured" instead of "colored". What is this thing with Linux systems? (Then again, the spell-check also doesn't recognize "meerkats" or "chocolatier", so....)
20110107
Fish thymus
I realized that I have a lot to do this weekend but couldn't quite figure out what I ought to get started on tonight. So I said, "Okay, I'll just go through and answer all the emails and PMs that I've been putting off" and now it's past eight already. Tempus fugit indeed.
These two weeks will involve dealing with three different collaborators in four different species. It is a bit insane at the moment. I have found out that somehow, despite of the distinct differences between the characteristics of the labs and PIs, messages from PIs seem to always require considerable efforts in deciphering, like it's an Oracle From God. Tamara's PI has informed her that he wasn't going to help her schedule her candidacy exam until she figured out what she was going to do with her life, which made me hugely grateful that my PI didn't choose to do the same. Sure, mine still does the mini-lecture about career choices every once in a while, but I was never thwacked with an ultimatum or refused help, ever. Also, this is extremely unfair since most post-docs still don't know what they're doing with their lives, so how are we, the students, who have less experience with both life and academia, supposed to know? (And then we had a mini existential crisis over lunch.)
Collaborations has also allowed me to find out that there was a pretty virulent strain of bug going around these past few weeks, that laid a lot of people on their backs who normally wouldn't even get sick. (Wendy's baby ended up in the hospital and had to get fluid sucked out of his lungs on Christmas Day. I don't know how she deals with this on top of writing her dissertation -- which she will be defending in February -- and the experiments that the PI is still hinting she should continue.) Today, at a collaborator's lab, a post-doc staggered in, accused his colleagues of getting him sick, and announced that his goal coming in was to infect someone else. At that point the person I'm working with suggested that the post-doc go infect someone next door because that particular neighbor "hates French people" (the post-doc was French) (yeah Lucy, I thought of Mike & Nick and lol'ed). The amount of people staggering about and staying at home made the labs seem very empty. It also meant that it took me that much longer to figure out that one of the post-docs from my own lab is absent because he found another job over the break, and will only be coming in later to clean up his stuff (this is the guy who rescued me from the person at the bus stop the other time, I shall miss him). And Wendy is leaving. Which meant that by summer our lab will be down to five people and we'll be a very small lab indeed.
These two weeks will involve dealing with three different collaborators in four different species. It is a bit insane at the moment. I have found out that somehow, despite of the distinct differences between the characteristics of the labs and PIs, messages from PIs seem to always require considerable efforts in deciphering, like it's an Oracle From God. Tamara's PI has informed her that he wasn't going to help her schedule her candidacy exam until she figured out what she was going to do with her life, which made me hugely grateful that my PI didn't choose to do the same. Sure, mine still does the mini-lecture about career choices every once in a while, but I was never thwacked with an ultimatum or refused help, ever. Also, this is extremely unfair since most post-docs still don't know what they're doing with their lives, so how are we, the students, who have less experience with both life and academia, supposed to know? (And then we had a mini existential crisis over lunch.)
Collaborations has also allowed me to find out that there was a pretty virulent strain of bug going around these past few weeks, that laid a lot of people on their backs who normally wouldn't even get sick. (Wendy's baby ended up in the hospital and had to get fluid sucked out of his lungs on Christmas Day. I don't know how she deals with this on top of writing her dissertation -- which she will be defending in February -- and the experiments that the PI is still hinting she should continue.) Today, at a collaborator's lab, a post-doc staggered in, accused his colleagues of getting him sick, and announced that his goal coming in was to infect someone else. At that point the person I'm working with suggested that the post-doc go infect someone next door because that particular neighbor "hates French people" (the post-doc was French) (yeah Lucy, I thought of Mike & Nick and lol'ed). The amount of people staggering about and staying at home made the labs seem very empty. It also meant that it took me that much longer to figure out that one of the post-docs from my own lab is absent because he found another job over the break, and will only be coming in later to clean up his stuff (this is the guy who rescued me from the person at the bus stop the other time, I shall miss him). And Wendy is leaving. Which meant that by summer our lab will be down to five people and we'll be a very small lab indeed.
20110105
Alas
For the few people who haven't heard yet, I made the drive from bay area to San Diego this past Sunday. I started the trip at 7:45am and arrived at the Grapevine about an hour after they closed it. Talk about frustrating. Since the highway was closed off by two patrol cars physically blocking the highway, all the traffic from the four-lanes had to be funneled to the nearest stop -- so, major traffic jam. After we managed to pull off the highway into the rest area, we braved very strong wind and stinging snow to find that all the gas stations and such in that area were closed due to weather. This meant that when the highway patrol told us that the highway was closed "indefinitely" and we should take an "alternative route", we had no one to ask for an alternative route, or place to fuel up for it.
Given that the road was closed indefinitely and that I was in no way prepared to spend an indefinite amount of time in a place with no food, restroom, or even spare blankets, I turned the car around and headed north again, tuning in, as the posted signs suggested, to the radio for road conditions. The highway patrol radio advised detour to Bakersfield, and then coming down south via 58, then 14 (i.e. detour through Tehapachi via Mojave, Palmdale, approaching LA through Santa Clarita). The rest stops closest to the last pre-Grapevine off ramp, where we were blocked off, were closed as well. At Bakersfield off ramp I pulled off to let Lucy and my parents know of the development (the Grapevine area's network was so busy that I couldn't call anyway at all) and then again before leaving downtown Bakersfield, where I called Lucy (early afternoon at that point) to double check directions and filled up on gas again, because I was paranoid.
It was a good thing I was paranoid.
58-14 was in no way equipped to handle the traffic flow from I5. This was before it started snowing. Unlike I5, there was no 90mph winds (around 40mph by my estimate at the worst places), so the road stayed open. However, many of the drivers, like myself, were planning to head to SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAS and so was not prepared to drive through snow. This meant no one had tire chains or snow tired. This meant far too many traffic accidents. This meant that from the 58-99 junction, all the way through Santa Clarita, the road was one long traffic jam with occasional areas where we can cautiously creep up to 40mph.
There were essentially no rest stops for me from that point forward. Which made sense, given that we were traveling at around 3mph in most places, and even if the stops were not closed because of the weather, highways don't usually have stops spaced every five miles. I was hoping to get through the area before dark, before the temperature dropped and the slush on the road froze -- no such luck. With the snow build up the only marker to distinguish between the lanes, we crawled on through the mountains, in the dark.
By the time I got through Santa Clarita, I was so close to Lucy's that there was really no point in taking a rest stop -- no to mention that navigating more highway ramps that I absolutely had to seemed awfully daunting. I ended up parking next to Lucy's building in an exhausted haze around...between ten to eleven pm, probably, called her and said something along the lines of, "Hi. I'm here. Can I come in and pass out now?" and she said something along the lines of "Ohmigod. Yes."
My memory of that point was a little sketchy. I did remember all of Lucy's family crowding around the door to watch me stagger in. I was fed and given hot tea and asleep, I think, within an hour of crossing her threshold. (I know, I'm such a great guest.) I emailed my PI something about being stuck in the snow and called my parents, who told me to go to sleep already, and I think Lucy made sure that all my friends can stop freaking out. I remember talking to Kate. I don't remember what I said, exactly, but I think I mentioned snow. I was traumatized by it that day.
The next morning I made my way down to LA, where, despite of Google's prediction that there's nothing worse than flooded lanes and a few local malfunctioning traffic lights, I hit traffic both as the usual spots and also in some not so usual spots. It was raining buckets in place and we had to drive at around 50mph, so the trip also took far longer than expected. Then I got to SD around noon (total trip took nearly twenty hours at this point) and saw blue skies. My mind, guys -- it boggled.
By the time I ate something, unpacked, and showered, it was close to three pm and I was so tired I was having trouble pouring water. Given that public transit to lab is two hours and I was in no shape to work late that day, I opted instead to stay home and work on the comp bio portion of my project, specifically the sequence annotation part. (Apparently you don't need to be 100% awake for pattern recognition.) Then I microwaved something for dinner, did dishes, fell into bed and slept for about twelve hours. The next day (yesterday) I was able to do my normal full day work hours, and at some point the PI came by and said, "Welcome back! How was the Tehapachi?" To which I was able to reply, deadpan, "Snowy." And then the cricket that had moved in behind the chromatography fridge during my absence began to chirp and I reflected how this was the more exhausting misadventure that I've ever had the misfortune of not being able to avoid having. Then the PI made some sort of comment about publishing manuscript and how things are published in high impact journals not so much for accuracy or rigor but for sexiness.
...I...yeah. There's not a whole lot a grad student can say to a comment like that from her PI.
Given that the road was closed indefinitely and that I was in no way prepared to spend an indefinite amount of time in a place with no food, restroom, or even spare blankets, I turned the car around and headed north again, tuning in, as the posted signs suggested, to the radio for road conditions. The highway patrol radio advised detour to Bakersfield, and then coming down south via 58, then 14 (i.e. detour through Tehapachi via Mojave, Palmdale, approaching LA through Santa Clarita). The rest stops closest to the last pre-Grapevine off ramp, where we were blocked off, were closed as well. At Bakersfield off ramp I pulled off to let Lucy and my parents know of the development (the Grapevine area's network was so busy that I couldn't call anyway at all) and then again before leaving downtown Bakersfield, where I called Lucy (early afternoon at that point) to double check directions and filled up on gas again, because I was paranoid.
It was a good thing I was paranoid.
58-14 was in no way equipped to handle the traffic flow from I5. This was before it started snowing. Unlike I5, there was no 90mph winds (around 40mph by my estimate at the worst places), so the road stayed open. However, many of the drivers, like myself, were planning to head to SOUTHERN CALIFORNIAS and so was not prepared to drive through snow. This meant no one had tire chains or snow tired. This meant far too many traffic accidents. This meant that from the 58-99 junction, all the way through Santa Clarita, the road was one long traffic jam with occasional areas where we can cautiously creep up to 40mph.
There were essentially no rest stops for me from that point forward. Which made sense, given that we were traveling at around 3mph in most places, and even if the stops were not closed because of the weather, highways don't usually have stops spaced every five miles. I was hoping to get through the area before dark, before the temperature dropped and the slush on the road froze -- no such luck. With the snow build up the only marker to distinguish between the lanes, we crawled on through the mountains, in the dark.
By the time I got through Santa Clarita, I was so close to Lucy's that there was really no point in taking a rest stop -- no to mention that navigating more highway ramps that I absolutely had to seemed awfully daunting. I ended up parking next to Lucy's building in an exhausted haze around...between ten to eleven pm, probably, called her and said something along the lines of, "Hi. I'm here. Can I come in and pass out now?" and she said something along the lines of "Ohmigod. Yes."
My memory of that point was a little sketchy. I did remember all of Lucy's family crowding around the door to watch me stagger in. I was fed and given hot tea and asleep, I think, within an hour of crossing her threshold. (I know, I'm such a great guest.) I emailed my PI something about being stuck in the snow and called my parents, who told me to go to sleep already, and I think Lucy made sure that all my friends can stop freaking out. I remember talking to Kate. I don't remember what I said, exactly, but I think I mentioned snow. I was traumatized by it that day.
The next morning I made my way down to LA, where, despite of Google's prediction that there's nothing worse than flooded lanes and a few local malfunctioning traffic lights, I hit traffic both as the usual spots and also in some not so usual spots. It was raining buckets in place and we had to drive at around 50mph, so the trip also took far longer than expected. Then I got to SD around noon (total trip took nearly twenty hours at this point) and saw blue skies. My mind, guys -- it boggled.
By the time I ate something, unpacked, and showered, it was close to three pm and I was so tired I was having trouble pouring water. Given that public transit to lab is two hours and I was in no shape to work late that day, I opted instead to stay home and work on the comp bio portion of my project, specifically the sequence annotation part. (Apparently you don't need to be 100% awake for pattern recognition.) Then I microwaved something for dinner, did dishes, fell into bed and slept for about twelve hours. The next day (yesterday) I was able to do my normal full day work hours, and at some point the PI came by and said, "Welcome back! How was the Tehapachi?" To which I was able to reply, deadpan, "Snowy." And then the cricket that had moved in behind the chromatography fridge during my absence began to chirp and I reflected how this was the more exhausting misadventure that I've ever had the misfortune of not being able to avoid having. Then the PI made some sort of comment about publishing manuscript and how things are published in high impact journals not so much for accuracy or rigor but for sexiness.
...I...yeah. There's not a whole lot a grad student can say to a comment like that from her PI.
20110101
In which nothing was set on fire, despite of many misgivings
Due to circumstances that don't need to be explored at this juncture, I picked up Anna and Victoria yesterday and we went over to Kate's place, arrived, and was "babysat" by Lusine, who was very blue and prone to freezing, leaving us with impressions of facial spasms and weird robotic intonations where half of every third word appeared to be missing, swallowed by the wasteland of non-space in the internets. Our theory was to blame the internet connection, which may or may not be related to the trouble Victoria had with cellphone reception and the fact that Foster City appears to be built on a marsh (where the two castles that sank prior to this one didn't put anyone off at all) (kidding, but all the oceanic names in the region is pretty funny). Then Kate fed us and introduced us to the wonder that is Xbox Kinect, which is very creepy because only not does it have avatars that mimic your every motion (so long as you stand in the right area), but the sensors capture random photos of you mid-play, as well. Kinect sports was pretty fun, but it's Kinect Adventures that (surprisingly) required the most amount of exercise -- one of them essentially had us doing sort-of jumping-jacks from squatting positions while flailing around wildly with our arms. It's astonishing that no one got injured when we did side-by-side playing with two-people teams, given the amount of flailing. The most important thing about this gaming system, however, is that it is hilarious to watch others play.
(Kate also introduced us -- by which I mean Christine, Anna and I, since Victoria already has this -- to the wonders of vacuum-sealed stuff animals. Seeing all that fuzziness deflated and squished together like a giant bag of vacuum-sealed grocery was a bit disturbing, but oddly enthralling.)
We watched the movie 2012, pausing around midnight for the Times Square thing (that bit was fun, there were party poppers and champagne and everything), and the movie was really awful. We were waxing sarcastic over the atrocious science, because the movie started with the premise that increase in neutrinos (yes, that neutrino, as in same root word as neutrons, as in very small thing with no charge that we get bombarded with every single day with no effect of whatsoever) (why did they not use positrons? They are charged, they'll explode--well, sort of--if you put them together with electrons and so make more sense for exciting apocalyptic scenarios, and positrons deserve more love in the realm of pop culture) from solar flares will cause the earth's core to melt from the inside out. And the science gets worse from there. The sub-plots -- emotional family bonding type thing -- complete with boyfriend, girfriend, ex's, jealousies, and vindication--made us groan. The protagonists all displayed a shocking lack of common sense and self-preservation. Any character that remotely caught my interest all died.
Christine, who arrived via her parents, suggested that we watch 2012 for our 2012 get-together. I'm still debating whether the ironic humor is worth putting myself through it again. It caused me pain. And it's long.
The wind-chime from Kate's neighbors, when heard through the walls, sounded like the alarm going off in the lab down the corridor. Despite of this I managed to sleep, woke up way too early (think 7:30am), went to bug Christine (who didn't sleep at all), and ended up finishing part I of a copy of TESS D'URBERVILLES that I found, over tea. (It was a much faster read then ATLAS SHRUGGED.) Then Kate fed us again (she did so love to order us about; it was funny) and everyone trooped out.
The weather seems to be getting steadily less promising since then. The weather here for tomorrow has changed from shower to rain but at least the weather in San Diego has changed from shower to partly cloudy, so there is hope yet.
I have returned the books to the library and am now packing.
My parents are periodically shoving food at me. Such is the nature of parental affections.
I will head out first thing tomorrow morning and endeavor to make the full length trip between bay area and San Diego in one day. Cheers.
(Kate also introduced us -- by which I mean Christine, Anna and I, since Victoria already has this -- to the wonders of vacuum-sealed stuff animals. Seeing all that fuzziness deflated and squished together like a giant bag of vacuum-sealed grocery was a bit disturbing, but oddly enthralling.)
We watched the movie 2012, pausing around midnight for the Times Square thing (that bit was fun, there were party poppers and champagne and everything), and the movie was really awful. We were waxing sarcastic over the atrocious science, because the movie started with the premise that increase in neutrinos (yes, that neutrino, as in same root word as neutrons, as in very small thing with no charge that we get bombarded with every single day with no effect of whatsoever) (why did they not use positrons? They are charged, they'll explode--well, sort of--if you put them together with electrons and so make more sense for exciting apocalyptic scenarios, and positrons deserve more love in the realm of pop culture) from solar flares will cause the earth's core to melt from the inside out. And the science gets worse from there. The sub-plots -- emotional family bonding type thing -- complete with boyfriend, girfriend, ex's, jealousies, and vindication--made us groan. The protagonists all displayed a shocking lack of common sense and self-preservation. Any character that remotely caught my interest all died.
Christine, who arrived via her parents, suggested that we watch 2012 for our 2012 get-together. I'm still debating whether the ironic humor is worth putting myself through it again. It caused me pain. And it's long.
The wind-chime from Kate's neighbors, when heard through the walls, sounded like the alarm going off in the lab down the corridor. Despite of this I managed to sleep, woke up way too early (think 7:30am), went to bug Christine (who didn't sleep at all), and ended up finishing part I of a copy of TESS D'URBERVILLES that I found, over tea. (It was a much faster read then ATLAS SHRUGGED.) Then Kate fed us again (she did so love to order us about; it was funny) and everyone trooped out.
The weather seems to be getting steadily less promising since then. The weather here for tomorrow has changed from shower to rain but at least the weather in San Diego has changed from shower to partly cloudy, so there is hope yet.
I have returned the books to the library and am now packing.
My parents are periodically shoving food at me. Such is the nature of parental affections.
I will head out first thing tomorrow morning and endeavor to make the full length trip between bay area and San Diego in one day. Cheers.
20101231
Weather at work
Apparently it will rain, again, on the drive back. As Annie likes to say, "This proves that there is a God and that He hates me." (Except the weather, so far, looks better than it did the Sunday that I drove up here so there may still be hope.)
On Wednesday I spent almost an entire day at the library. It was very restful to be indoors with books while the wind howled outside (the wind was almost Davis-worthy that day). I also got a panini from the cafe, which tasted mostly of boloney and extremely greasy cheese and was, frankly, awful. Then yesterday I went and picked up some decorations for New Year's and waded through a stack of free magazines / catalogues that my parents keep for me because I like the photos. Via has always been fun to flip through, and it's a bit more relevant now that I can go on roadtrips and need to worry about changing the oil on my car and checking the wheels regularly. Kraft also apparently still sends me its magazines (courtesy of a box of cereal from when I was in high school), which I mostly look through because I like staring at photos of food). Then there's Ikea. I still fail at drawing furniture, but I can confidently say it's not due to lack of source material for practice.
It was genuinely cold last night. What's with that?
Today was...well, I did a bit of packing. Christine's directed me to undernet for IRC for books and now I'm downloading Calibre to Ivy, which should ensure that I will always have something not science related to read for the ...rest of my life, probably, even if I don't have the time to set a foot in a library ever again. (X-chat interfrace in Fedora 14 is very good, by the way.) Heading over to Kate's in the evening for New Years (ohmyGodanotheryear'sgone). For some reason my grade still hasn't been posted -- though this is not the first time where the PIs took far too long to grade things. My PI has only sent me two emails in two weeks, which is pretty good. I think I shall go and poke around in the garden, in the mean time.
On Wednesday I spent almost an entire day at the library. It was very restful to be indoors with books while the wind howled outside (the wind was almost Davis-worthy that day). I also got a panini from the cafe, which tasted mostly of boloney and extremely greasy cheese and was, frankly, awful. Then yesterday I went and picked up some decorations for New Year's and waded through a stack of free magazines / catalogues that my parents keep for me because I like the photos. Via has always been fun to flip through, and it's a bit more relevant now that I can go on roadtrips and need to worry about changing the oil on my car and checking the wheels regularly. Kraft also apparently still sends me its magazines (courtesy of a box of cereal from when I was in high school), which I mostly look through because I like staring at photos of food). Then there's Ikea. I still fail at drawing furniture, but I can confidently say it's not due to lack of source material for practice.
It was genuinely cold last night. What's with that?
Today was...well, I did a bit of packing. Christine's directed me to undernet for IRC for books and now I'm downloading Calibre to Ivy, which should ensure that I will always have something not science related to read for the ...rest of my life, probably, even if I don't have the time to set a foot in a library ever again. (X-chat interfrace in Fedora 14 is very good, by the way.) Heading over to Kate's in the evening for New Years (ohmyGodanotheryear'sgone). For some reason my grade still hasn't been posted -- though this is not the first time where the PIs took far too long to grade things. My PI has only sent me two emails in two weeks, which is pretty good. I think I shall go and poke around in the garden, in the mean time.
20101228
Well, that was frustrating
I have just spent fifteen minutes trying to upload photos to Facebook. Between the slow internet and the apparent issue between Ivy's Linux and Facebook Flash I have uploaded a grand total of zero photos. Which means the rest of the photos will have to wait until I get my hands on Zen again. Mail me if you want photos before them. I have them from the 18th (Lucy's), 22nd (the get together), 24th (Anna's) and 27th (Valleyfair). Or if you have a specific photo request, like Annie does, I can do that too.
Hmm let's see.... Life has been rather good so far. I have been sleeping for ten hours each day, which feels wonderful and will be a luxury that I miss the rest of the year. Last post where I mentioned what I was doing appears to be the 21st. (In case if anyone's curious -- I'm 95% sure it's the battery circuit that's messed up on the Roomba now, but since it really isn't mine and my parents are the ones who need to deal with it, I didn't dare to try the...more scrappy methods of fixing it.) So, holiday thus far: 18th at Lucy's, 19th driving, 20th recovering & exchanging a lot of text with people about Anna (lol Anna yes there was a lot of texting those two days), 21st was library, 22nd was our get-together. My memory of it consists of Kate asking us to wait for her in a corner in Costco in a very parental way and the rest of us plotting while we waited (dear parents, never leave a group of children unattended for over ten minutes when they have access to the internet) and watching the BBC version of Sherlock (Sherlock looks like Merlin and Watson reminds me of Sam Tylor, it was all very strange) and, you know, gift exchange. We have tried the Brain Wash soda. It tastes vaguely of fruit punch (the soda flavor, which may or may not bear actual resemblance to real fruit punch), except with jalapeno. I have the bottle, which is my primary aim. I am never buying that soda again.
Speaking of which. I have spell-check. It is British. The installation is USA. ...I still have no explanations.
23rd was library again, to return books and get more books. I started on ATLAS SHRUGGED, which is so far very depressing. I picked up a romance novel to make my annual attempt (though I think I forgot to make an attempt last year...oh well). The book is picked by finding the first book that didn't have partially dressed people necking on the front cover but there is a rather vampyric looking lady there, in front of a suitably dramatic corridor. (I think I should perhaps stick to thrillers. They a lot of them have a strong romantic subplot as well, right? They should be easier to get through for me.) I'm not sure if I'll get to it before this weekend, or if I'm brave enough to actually read more than the back cover which, yes, did make me wince.
On the 24th Victoria and I went over to Anna's, where she plied us with tea and cookies and sandwiches and much fun was had with playdoh by all (the next time someone touches that pile will most likely be a year from now). We tried to introduce Victoria to Due South (didn't take, ah well), and was imperially ignored by Isis. At this point everyone's presents has been delivered before Christmas and I am feeling very pleased with myself. Went over to meet with the person who turned out to be my dad's cousin from his mother's side. We were not really sure what I should call him, or his son.
25th: opened the last of the presents -- Lucy managed to completely fool me by putting the book she got for me in a box, so I wouldn't guess what it was. We sorted out the Amazon cards so I got a bunch of giftcards from my parents, and soap. And I suppose the jeans mom got me from Costco should count too. Generally spent the did sitting around and reading stuff.
Went for a very long walk on the 26th, including a detour to the elementary school I attended in 6th grade. (Not 5th grade, De Vargas is too far for even me, on foot.) The weather was excellent. Dad remembered that I liked juice and got me Caprisun, which still brings back memories of junior high and high school. Between that and the walk I spent most of the day drowning slowly and exquisitely in nostalgia. Then I started plotting The Roadtrip that I will take at the end of grad school, since it's going to be going from coast to coast and I need to figure out the logistics in advance. I kept forgetting West Virginia is a state. It was vaguely embarrassing. Anyone has ideas for sights worth seeing? Right now it looks like the trip is mostly national park themed.
The weird Malaysian place that served food in hollowed out fruits was closed yesterday, so Anna, Victoria, and I went to Cicero's instead (it was greasy), before heading over to Valleyfair. The mall was still insanely full of people, and parking was more painful than I want to remember. Victoria was shopping for prom dresses, and Anna steered me around Macy's until we found a black turtle neck sweater that I was looking for. The Sanrio store looked like it got raided (it was disturbing, because I wasn't expecting that store to look so...wrung out), but Anna managed to find enough items to complete the prank she will be pulling on her labmate, to drive him insane. Anna got a fancy pen at the stationary store in Santana Row, and promptly got power-drunk on it. Victoria claimed it was "the most intense clicky pen" she'd ever seen. I don't pretend to understand, but you can ask Anna for a photo, I'm sure.
Today was hanging out with parents day, or something. We went shopping earlier this morning. Now I have random urges to clean things. (Yeah I don't know either.)
Hmm let's see.... Life has been rather good so far. I have been sleeping for ten hours each day, which feels wonderful and will be a luxury that I miss the rest of the year. Last post where I mentioned what I was doing appears to be the 21st. (In case if anyone's curious -- I'm 95% sure it's the battery circuit that's messed up on the Roomba now, but since it really isn't mine and my parents are the ones who need to deal with it, I didn't dare to try the...more scrappy methods of fixing it.) So, holiday thus far: 18th at Lucy's, 19th driving, 20th recovering & exchanging a lot of text with people about Anna (lol Anna yes there was a lot of texting those two days), 21st was library, 22nd was our get-together. My memory of it consists of Kate asking us to wait for her in a corner in Costco in a very parental way and the rest of us plotting while we waited (dear parents, never leave a group of children unattended for over ten minutes when they have access to the internet) and watching the BBC version of Sherlock (Sherlock looks like Merlin and Watson reminds me of Sam Tylor, it was all very strange) and, you know, gift exchange. We have tried the Brain Wash soda. It tastes vaguely of fruit punch (the soda flavor, which may or may not bear actual resemblance to real fruit punch), except with jalapeno. I have the bottle, which is my primary aim. I am never buying that soda again.
Speaking of which. I have spell-check. It is British. The installation is USA. ...I still have no explanations.
23rd was library again, to return books and get more books. I started on ATLAS SHRUGGED, which is so far very depressing. I picked up a romance novel to make my annual attempt (though I think I forgot to make an attempt last year...oh well). The book is picked by finding the first book that didn't have partially dressed people necking on the front cover but there is a rather vampyric looking lady there, in front of a suitably dramatic corridor. (I think I should perhaps stick to thrillers. They a lot of them have a strong romantic subplot as well, right? They should be easier to get through for me.) I'm not sure if I'll get to it before this weekend, or if I'm brave enough to actually read more than the back cover which, yes, did make me wince.
On the 24th Victoria and I went over to Anna's, where she plied us with tea and cookies and sandwiches and much fun was had with playdoh by all (the next time someone touches that pile will most likely be a year from now). We tried to introduce Victoria to Due South (didn't take, ah well), and was imperially ignored by Isis. At this point everyone's presents has been delivered before Christmas and I am feeling very pleased with myself. Went over to meet with the person who turned out to be my dad's cousin from his mother's side. We were not really sure what I should call him, or his son.
25th: opened the last of the presents -- Lucy managed to completely fool me by putting the book she got for me in a box, so I wouldn't guess what it was. We sorted out the Amazon cards so I got a bunch of giftcards from my parents, and soap. And I suppose the jeans mom got me from Costco should count too. Generally spent the did sitting around and reading stuff.
Went for a very long walk on the 26th, including a detour to the elementary school I attended in 6th grade. (Not 5th grade, De Vargas is too far for even me, on foot.) The weather was excellent. Dad remembered that I liked juice and got me Caprisun, which still brings back memories of junior high and high school. Between that and the walk I spent most of the day drowning slowly and exquisitely in nostalgia. Then I started plotting The Roadtrip that I will take at the end of grad school, since it's going to be going from coast to coast and I need to figure out the logistics in advance. I kept forgetting West Virginia is a state. It was vaguely embarrassing. Anyone has ideas for sights worth seeing? Right now it looks like the trip is mostly national park themed.
The weird Malaysian place that served food in hollowed out fruits was closed yesterday, so Anna, Victoria, and I went to Cicero's instead (it was greasy), before heading over to Valleyfair. The mall was still insanely full of people, and parking was more painful than I want to remember. Victoria was shopping for prom dresses, and Anna steered me around Macy's until we found a black turtle neck sweater that I was looking for. The Sanrio store looked like it got raided (it was disturbing, because I wasn't expecting that store to look so...wrung out), but Anna managed to find enough items to complete the prank she will be pulling on her labmate, to drive him insane. Anna got a fancy pen at the stationary store in Santana Row, and promptly got power-drunk on it. Victoria claimed it was "the most intense clicky pen" she'd ever seen. I don't pretend to understand, but you can ask Anna for a photo, I'm sure.
Today was hanging out with parents day, or something. We went shopping earlier this morning. Now I have random urges to clean things. (Yeah I don't know either.)
20101226
20101223
20101221
This is apparently my life
The mp3 music player system in Onyx is fairly good in terms of sound quality, and the navigation was simple enough that I've been able to figure out everything I wanted to do thus far without reading the manual (me not reading a manual = shocking, yes). However, what is a disadvantageous compared to the other mp3 players I've had so far is the delay. There is an inevitable three second delay between when I press a button and when the task starts and I have no idea why. It is annoying, though not debilitating, I suppose. Or at least not yet. It is possible that with more usage it will be the thing that will drive me insane.
I have also discovered a Roomba in a corner of the room. What appears to have happened is that dad inherited from one of his friends, and that it doesn't work, in the sense that it fails to charge. It's a Roomba Discovery and I'm currently recharging it, after a battery reset, to see if that works. Meanwhile I can't help but think of the Questionable Content comic. (OhmigodwherecanIfindmini-jet-engines?)
Have installed mp3 plugin support on Fedora 14. Apparently all I needed to do was to su to root and then type:
Flash plugin support was a bit longer and I did it while at Lucy's, before we watched THE MATRIX. I'm pretty sure this is what I did, as root:
Firefox theme and personnas are excellent in Linux, I still prefer QuickJava to NoScript. I got QuickProxy but haven't set it up yet because I haven't needed to access any sciency journals yet. The issue with gmail that I noticed while at Lucy's went away by itself. (??) But the lack of UK-based spell checker in Firefox right now is apparently because there's no working spellchecker, despite of the fact that that option is checked under preferences, so I'll have to sort that out because my spelling is rather atrocious and having something underlined in red at least narrows down the range of things I have to check over, even when I'm typing made-up works such as "sciency" and "phosphorylation".
(The Roomba makes such cute little noises.)
In an earlier discussion with my parents on my life in grad school, mother wanted to know whether or not my thesis advisor is still enthusiastic about my thesis. I was able to reply, with complete honesty, that he is more enthusiastic than I am. My parents were reassured by this. I was trying not to laugh.
Does Smurfs merchandise induce the feeling of nostalgia in anyone besides me?
I have also discovered a Roomba in a corner of the room. What appears to have happened is that dad inherited from one of his friends, and that it doesn't work, in the sense that it fails to charge. It's a Roomba Discovery and I'm currently recharging it, after a battery reset, to see if that works. Meanwhile I can't help but think of the Questionable Content comic. (OhmigodwherecanIfindmini-jet-engines?)
Have installed mp3 plugin support on Fedora 14. Apparently all I needed to do was to su to root and then type:
and viola.
rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum install gstreamer-plugins-bad gstreamer-ffmpeg gstreamer-plugins-ugly -y
Flash plugin support was a bit longer and I did it while at Lucy's, before we watched THE MATRIX. I'm pretty sure this is what I did, as root:
rpm -ivh http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm
rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-adobe-linux
yum check-update
yum install flash-plugin nspluginwrapper.x86_64 \
nspluginwrapper.i686 alsa-plugins-pulseaudio.i686 libcurl.i686
Firefox theme and personnas are excellent in Linux, I still prefer QuickJava to NoScript. I got QuickProxy but haven't set it up yet because I haven't needed to access any sciency journals yet. The issue with gmail that I noticed while at Lucy's went away by itself. (??) But the lack of UK-based spell checker in Firefox right now is apparently because there's no working spellchecker, despite of the fact that that option is checked under preferences, so I'll have to sort that out because my spelling is rather atrocious and having something underlined in red at least narrows down the range of things I have to check over, even when I'm typing made-up works such as "sciency" and "phosphorylation".
(The Roomba makes such cute little noises.)
In an earlier discussion with my parents on my life in grad school, mother wanted to know whether or not my thesis advisor is still enthusiastic about my thesis. I was able to reply, with complete honesty, that he is more enthusiastic than I am. My parents were reassured by this. I was trying not to laugh.
Does Smurfs merchandise induce the feeling of nostalgia in anyone besides me?
20101220
Jumbles of things
Over the past two dinners I've updated my parents on the newer Fedoras, the existence of Chromium (speaking of which, does anyone else want to try out Flow before I wipe my USB stick?) and the general gadgetry as I know it. In turn my parents re-introduced me to playdoh (don't ask me why mom got me playdoh, I have no idea) (yes they try, they really do, but...). Mom's also swapped my mp3 player (the one with the glitchy earphone port) with an Onyx that...I think my dad got for her, actually, that neither of them really knows how to use. It's kind of like how I got Zen, and the Onyx, I've discovered, have twice the memory of my current mp3 player (4G as opposed to 2), and an fm radio, which I missed when I upgraded to my current one since the one I had from 2006 had a radio built in. Have tried out radio (quality a little iffy, but tolerable) and will try out the mp3 player part tomorrow. I kind of like how it looks. It's tiny, black, and cute (and of course very shiny) --i.e. the design is a bit like a very petite ipod.
Went to library today. Got three books. Finished reading one of them this afternoon and wow, I have missed reading fiction. There's something about having that book in your hand.... Am currently pondering whether or not to spend the entire day at the library tomorrow. There're some stuff to work on and the library, under normal circumstances, would be more ideal for my focus. However, it's the holidays and my experience today told me that the library is...rather noisier than usual. Okay, it makes me want to lock myself in the basement of our research building (where I'm pretty sure there is still wi-fi), so I'm still dithering. Maybe staying at home will work if I just drank enough tea?
Completely unrelated to this is the cookie that my mom brought home the other day from work (apparently the management was handing out cookies to everyone or something). I have never cared much about St. Valentines or thought what an ideal valentine should be like. Now I have decided: my ideal Valentine is someone who will bring me a long-stemmed cookie because, seriously, long-stemmed chocolate chip cookie. The only way it can be more awesome is if it photosynthesized, in which case I probably will not eat it, but keep it as a pet and name it Alice.
Over and out.
Went to library today. Got three books. Finished reading one of them this afternoon and wow, I have missed reading fiction. There's something about having that book in your hand.... Am currently pondering whether or not to spend the entire day at the library tomorrow. There're some stuff to work on and the library, under normal circumstances, would be more ideal for my focus. However, it's the holidays and my experience today told me that the library is...rather noisier than usual. Okay, it makes me want to lock myself in the basement of our research building (where I'm pretty sure there is still wi-fi), so I'm still dithering. Maybe staying at home will work if I just drank enough tea?
Completely unrelated to this is the cookie that my mom brought home the other day from work (apparently the management was handing out cookies to everyone or something). I have never cared much about St. Valentines or thought what an ideal valentine should be like. Now I have decided: my ideal Valentine is someone who will bring me a long-stemmed cookie because, seriously, long-stemmed chocolate chip cookie. The only way it can be more awesome is if it photosynthesized, in which case I probably will not eat it, but keep it as a pet and name it Alice.
Over and out.
20101219
Gusty trees
Well, I'm back in the bay area now, after the past week's insanity composed of lab wrapup and packing. The weather was (and still is) horrible. The drive up from south Cal involved going through two hills of reasonable altitude (I hesitate to call them mountains, but I'm not entirely sure what I should be calling them when they're high enough to make my ears pop while driving up), and the drive, I can safely say, was the most terrifying driving experience I have ever had in my life. Both places had parts where it was raining so hard that it felt like someone was dumping giant buckets of water on the car, and parts were foggy as well. The Gilroy part was slightly better but it was windy, to the point where the car would be blown partway into the next lane over. Both regions of course, involved sharing roads with giant trucks which always terrified me whenever I drive long distance, even when the weather is good and I don't have to worry about traction and inertia relative to mass and speed. There were parts where I had visibility of around three feet and spent the entire time clenching my steering wheel until my fingers started to cramp (which doesn't actually reduce my chances of accident, but was done to have something to hold on to and make me feel a little better), and the really fun part was how, because of the low visibility, I can't even see the hills around me. It felt as if I was driving through a dream, with the heavy sheets of grey pouring down on all sides and nothing but the yellow lines on my left and two faint glowing spots of red in front of me to let me know I haven't, in fact, wandered off the surface of reality.
Well-- that and the feelings of caffeine and andrenaline burning through my veins, the music turned up so loud that I can feel the bass in my teeth.
(I caved in and bought a mocha. Yes it was really that terrifying -- there was a point where the weather worsened so suddenly in the middle of the turn that I'm pretty sure that I managed an "Oh fucking hell", when the road seemed to suddenly disappear from beneath me -- my classmates would be so proud. And there was a point where Bon Jovi was singing about how it felt like summer and I started laughing because it really, really, didn't.)
But you know what?
Somewhere between the expletives and trying to make sure I don't join the many, many cars parked / being towed on the side of the road, it was fun.
There was a region near Fresno where we crested a slight rise on the Five, and the weather was clear so you can see the acres of orchards in every direction, the yellow grass shot through with green from where life is reviving itself with the much needed water. There were hills in every direction, gold and green with splashes of indigo-violet, and there were layers upon layers of cloud, piled into another, more ethereal landscape on top. Maybe it was the "omg no rain" bias -- and I'll be lying if I said that the process of getting there had no affect on my perception, because the experience in reaching the ending will always influence my perception of the ending -- but that place -- that place / moment / feeling -- it was beautiful.
There was also how, after the initial shock of "Oh God, this is really bad", I got to the part where I was grinning madly (no doubt from the combination of andrenaline and caffeine) and felt really alive after weeks and weeks of fruitless trouble shooting experiments in lab have sent my mind into (what now felt like) a kind of robotic haze. It was how, I think, that the experimence really drove home the feeling of how my life is now in the hands of no one but myself, in the most literal, visceral sense possible. Possibly I could've had that epithany without braving the inclement weather, but I doubt it'd make me feel quite as intoxicated and gleeful.
My least favorite part was, actually, how the glass kept fogging up and I had to turn on the air to get rid of it and the air was really. I was already wishing for gloves about an hour out of LA.
It was ironic that the region with the highest density of accidents was the twenty minute stretch right after I left Lucy's. In fact the first accident I encountered was the one on the highway ramp right outside of her house, which was blocked enough that I ended up going to the next street over to enter the highway. That was also the only real spot of traffic jam that I had to deal with.
That being said, I will never take this kind of trip if there's someone else in the car with me. Or at least, I will break the trip into an additional day or something, and stick to the right most lane. I don't recommend driving six hours in downpour, nor do I feel particularly inclined to do it again, now that I've proven to myself that yes, I can indeed drive for six hours under less than optimal conditions.
Now I'm going to eat dinner, sleep a lot, and possibly regret sounding like an idiot come next morning.
Well-- that and the feelings of caffeine and andrenaline burning through my veins, the music turned up so loud that I can feel the bass in my teeth.
(I caved in and bought a mocha. Yes it was really that terrifying -- there was a point where the weather worsened so suddenly in the middle of the turn that I'm pretty sure that I managed an "Oh fucking hell", when the road seemed to suddenly disappear from beneath me -- my classmates would be so proud. And there was a point where Bon Jovi was singing about how it felt like summer and I started laughing because it really, really, didn't.)
But you know what?
Somewhere between the expletives and trying to make sure I don't join the many, many cars parked / being towed on the side of the road, it was fun.
There was a region near Fresno where we crested a slight rise on the Five, and the weather was clear so you can see the acres of orchards in every direction, the yellow grass shot through with green from where life is reviving itself with the much needed water. There were hills in every direction, gold and green with splashes of indigo-violet, and there were layers upon layers of cloud, piled into another, more ethereal landscape on top. Maybe it was the "omg no rain" bias -- and I'll be lying if I said that the process of getting there had no affect on my perception, because the experience in reaching the ending will always influence my perception of the ending -- but that place -- that place / moment / feeling -- it was beautiful.
There was also how, after the initial shock of "Oh God, this is really bad", I got to the part where I was grinning madly (no doubt from the combination of andrenaline and caffeine) and felt really alive after weeks and weeks of fruitless trouble shooting experiments in lab have sent my mind into (what now felt like) a kind of robotic haze. It was how, I think, that the experimence really drove home the feeling of how my life is now in the hands of no one but myself, in the most literal, visceral sense possible. Possibly I could've had that epithany without braving the inclement weather, but I doubt it'd make me feel quite as intoxicated and gleeful.
My least favorite part was, actually, how the glass kept fogging up and I had to turn on the air to get rid of it and the air was really. I was already wishing for gloves about an hour out of LA.
It was ironic that the region with the highest density of accidents was the twenty minute stretch right after I left Lucy's. In fact the first accident I encountered was the one on the highway ramp right outside of her house, which was blocked enough that I ended up going to the next street over to enter the highway. That was also the only real spot of traffic jam that I had to deal with.
That being said, I will never take this kind of trip if there's someone else in the car with me. Or at least, I will break the trip into an additional day or something, and stick to the right most lane. I don't recommend driving six hours in downpour, nor do I feel particularly inclined to do it again, now that I've proven to myself that yes, I can indeed drive for six hours under less than optimal conditions.
Now I'm going to eat dinner, sleep a lot, and possibly regret sounding like an idiot come next morning.
20101214
Conclusions
Flow continues to be super shiny, but I have now decided that, post winter quarter (when Lucy and anyone else who might be interested get a chance to play around with this OS) I'm probably not going to be keeping Chromium on Ivy. It isn't so much that Aviary applications tend to mysterious cause the Flash.so to crash or that for any google-linked pages, such as blogspot, there is a disturbing tendency for the browser to say "webpage not available" first, which is blatantly not true because after I click refresh one or two times the page always shows up. Those might be issues with my internet. After all, not everyone is signed on to Google as the ISP. That is not the problem.
Or rather, that is the problem.
The problem is that Flow / Chromium is a browser based OS and the performance is snappy like you wouldn't believe. The problem is that the reason for this snappy performance is due to the fact that the OS itself has essentially no apps. All the apps that it comes with you launch from the internet which (aside from the Aviary issue that I'm still confused about), is okay if your computer is a desktop and you're using it in the office all day or if you're constantly using it in areas with really good wifi. However -- and this is what broke the deal for me -- Ivy is an Acer netbook, built to be portable, and when I'm using it I carry it with me, everywhere. Most of the times there will be wi-fi I can set up. Sometimes there wouldn't. Sometimes I'm on the bus and I need to access my reading for tomorrow. When all the apps are launched from the internet, and there is no internet, there are no apps (and also no files, since the apps that you use save your files online, google-doc style for everything). I can't do anything without the internet, literally in this case with Ivy. It's more than a little frustrating. Perhaps there are other stuff I can buy from the OS store that will run internet-free, but for an OS that I'm just trying out? No thanks.
(Other minor irritations include:
sensitivity for mouse, despite of being on a sliding scale, only comes in three settings: 1, 5, or 10, and even at 10 for the image edit program there is still significant delay between motion and action.
Flow shutdown pathway always makes Chrome thinks that it was closed incorrectly and makes it offer to restore tabs.
Login has to be with your google account username (big brother monitoring feeling much?) and when there's no internet the set up has to be done through the hacker's password.
I have no idea where screenshots I took ended up.)
Think might try Fedora on this too (currently am on Ivy), since Ubuntu apparently didn't agree with it or something.
[edit 20:23]
Actually come to think of it, I might do Fedora before I leave so that way I can see how it runs on this PC and figure out whether to take Ivy or Daemon with me when I go. I'll bring the Live USB though, so people who are interested can run the OS (without installing) on their own computer and play around.
Or rather, that is the problem.
The problem is that Flow / Chromium is a browser based OS and the performance is snappy like you wouldn't believe. The problem is that the reason for this snappy performance is due to the fact that the OS itself has essentially no apps. All the apps that it comes with you launch from the internet which (aside from the Aviary issue that I'm still confused about), is okay if your computer is a desktop and you're using it in the office all day or if you're constantly using it in areas with really good wifi. However -- and this is what broke the deal for me -- Ivy is an Acer netbook, built to be portable, and when I'm using it I carry it with me, everywhere. Most of the times there will be wi-fi I can set up. Sometimes there wouldn't. Sometimes I'm on the bus and I need to access my reading for tomorrow. When all the apps are launched from the internet, and there is no internet, there are no apps (and also no files, since the apps that you use save your files online, google-doc style for everything). I can't do anything without the internet, literally in this case with Ivy. It's more than a little frustrating. Perhaps there are other stuff I can buy from the OS store that will run internet-free, but for an OS that I'm just trying out? No thanks.
(Other minor irritations include:
sensitivity for mouse, despite of being on a sliding scale, only comes in three settings: 1, 5, or 10, and even at 10 for the image edit program there is still significant delay between motion and action.
Flow shutdown pathway always makes Chrome thinks that it was closed incorrectly and makes it offer to restore tabs.
Login has to be with your google account username (big brother monitoring feeling much?) and when there's no internet the set up has to be done through the hacker's password.
I have no idea where screenshots I took ended up.)
Think might try Fedora on this too (currently am on Ivy), since Ubuntu apparently didn't agree with it or something.
[edit 20:23]
Actually come to think of it, I might do Fedora before I leave so that way I can see how it runs on this PC and figure out whether to take Ivy or Daemon with me when I go. I'll bring the Live USB though, so people who are interested can run the OS (without installing) on their own computer and play around.
20101212
Hihi
Am on Ivy right now typing from Flow. There was a bunch of issues which, I realized about five minutes ago, boil down to one thing: EVERYTHING DEPENDS ON HAVING A STABLE INTERNET CONNECTION. Which ATT mostly failed to provide over here. You log into the OS with your google account, and all the apps load from webpages as well. For a while all things related to google account failed to load, giving me messages along the lines of "this webpage is not currently available", which I think mostly have to do with the fact that for some reason these things are hypersensitive to connection stability. (This morning there was an hour long block where the connection is kind of shifty. Don't ask me why. It happens randomly.) Yahoo loaded fine though, but my point is, if your entire OS is based on the internet, for crying out loud, the launchers should tolerate the fluctuations a bit better. Or reconnect faster. Or something. (I have no idea exactly what's going on in the OS / server system when the google-based stuff failed to launch (well, all except Google.com, which will continue to run, I'm convinced, with minimal interrupted bandwidth until the moment of the apocalypse).
The flash.so files also keeps crashing. It's annoying (and sad -- I was looking forward to trying out the Aviary apps too, since I never tangled with them before -- not to mention I need the image editor to deal with the screenshots). I have no idea what's going on. I need to finish addressing the Christmas cards and try to plan out next week's groceries. Hopefully this will post on the first try. If you don't see my square brackets of edits after this, then it had.
The flash.so files also keeps crashing. It's annoying (and sad -- I was looking forward to trying out the Aviary apps too, since I never tangled with them before -- not to mention I need the image editor to deal with the screenshots). I have no idea what's going on. I need to finish addressing the Christmas cards and try to plan out next week's groceries. Hopefully this will post on the first try. If you don't see my square brackets of edits after this, then it had.
20101211
Proof that education cannot cure stupid
I just realized this morning, helped by an email from mom, that the information I've been keeping in the back of my head (i.e. mileage, checkup time) for my car was for my car, and not my dad's car, which I am currently driving and will be putting through the length of California on. This meant, of course, that following the immediate head-desk moment I realized that my schedule for this entire weekend will probably be thrown off because I have to dig out the car maintenance record from somewhere (made dad mail it to me when we switched cars) and figure exactly how much needs to be done and when the shops will be open, and I also should wrap presents and write cards and start packing, as I'm leaving early Sat. morning next weekend and weekdays of grad school are not particularly conductive to anything other than experiments and feelings of sleep deprivation (despite of the fact that I'm not actually sleep deprived).
BUT. Point of stupid number two: I grabbed the nearest jacket when I went out to check various things under the hood and only realized after getting grimy hands that I was wearing a white jacket.
And my cloning still didn't work. Final ligation step failed three separate times with three different preps.
My god, I feel like such an idiot today. I think I can be excused for my abuse of italics. Yes?
BUT. Point of stupid number two: I grabbed the nearest jacket when I went out to check various things under the hood and only realized after getting grimy hands that I was wearing a white jacket.
And my cloning still didn't work. Final ligation step failed three separate times with three different preps.
My god, I feel like such an idiot today. I think I can be excused for my abuse of italics. Yes?
20101210
Geek humor strikes again
Was lured away by the Chromium OS (which is open source) and made a live USB of the Flow build by Hexeeh. Installed it on Ivy on the off chance the network card is an incompatibility issue after all (hope springs eternal). The live trial is very shiny, the internet works (!?) and now at the end of the terminal for the os install I came across the message that:
Now rebooting...
Loaded fine. Very snappy. I'm impressed. Network setup is a snap. Having everything be browser based is definitely strange but the organization is surprisingly intuitive. Internet continues to work. I'm out of time to play around tonight (alas, the list of things to do never ends), but I'll keep you guys updated as I play around with it. Cr has its own applets and programs. I'll post screenshots as soon as I figure out which ones is the image editing prgram.
Thsi filesystem will be automatically checked every 23 mounts or 180 days, whichever comes first. Installation complete. Please shutdown, remove the USB device, cross your fingers, and reboot.
Now rebooting...
Loaded fine. Very snappy. I'm impressed. Network setup is a snap. Having everything be browser based is definitely strange but the organization is surprisingly intuitive. Internet continues to work. I'm out of time to play around tonight (alas, the list of things to do never ends), but I'll keep you guys updated as I play around with it. Cr has its own applets and programs. I'll post screenshots as soon as I figure out which ones is the image editing prgram.
Laaaaaab
In my dish there're only two
Bacteria colonies, that grew.
But unfortunately for me
(It's an x-gal system you see)
Both of them turned out blue.
Yes I know it's not a haiku and will probably make no sense to people who haven't done cloning but cloning ate my brain. I have dreamed about it week.
Bacteria colonies, that grew.
But unfortunately for me
(It's an x-gal system you see)
Both of them turned out blue.
Yes I know it's not a haiku and will probably make no sense to people who haven't done cloning but cloning ate my brain. I have dreamed about it week.
20101208
Distracted by the shiny
Upgraded my Fedora to version 14 yesterday, which has a new background of intriguing jagged blue thing that I immediately switched away from. Have also learned how to clean up old incompatible system components and now Daemon runs slightly faster, which pleases me immensely. New version of firefox is compatible with more things now (though I still need to manually install JRE plugin, which is annoying) and, for reasons still unresolved, my US English install still has a Firefox with UK English spell checker.
Then I saw the thing about the Chrome OS. I don't use Chrome, mostly because my experience with it so far indicates that it's a fusion (albeit a very shiny, nice fusion) of Firefox and Opera, both of which I have. However, the promise offered by the OS is attractive, even before I got to the bit with the shark shooting lasers out of its eyes (because how can you resist sharks with laser-eyes?). Well, we'll see how that goes.
In the meantime, cloning has officially invaded my subconscious, in the sense that I had a dream last night where all the colonies still expressed beta-gal and the gel dried overnight for some reason. (I guess it qualifies as a nightmare....) I am, also, finally done with classes, with both the requirements for graduation and the requirements for my training grant (well except I still have to go to journal club once a week, but it's journal club). Now the next goal is...publication.
Well.
[edit 8:00]
Have tried to put the new version of OS to hibernation for the first time and the shell script popped up with error, "device failed to thaw". Have no idea yet what that means exactly, yet (error #16, anyone?), but am finding the code uncommonly funny. In the " 'k making defrosting jokes now thx" way.
Then I saw the thing about the Chrome OS. I don't use Chrome, mostly because my experience with it so far indicates that it's a fusion (albeit a very shiny, nice fusion) of Firefox and Opera, both of which I have. However, the promise offered by the OS is attractive, even before I got to the bit with the shark shooting lasers out of its eyes (because how can you resist sharks with laser-eyes?). Well, we'll see how that goes.
In the meantime, cloning has officially invaded my subconscious, in the sense that I had a dream last night where all the colonies still expressed beta-gal and the gel dried overnight for some reason. (I guess it qualifies as a nightmare....) I am, also, finally done with classes, with both the requirements for graduation and the requirements for my training grant (well except I still have to go to journal club once a week, but it's journal club). Now the next goal is...publication.
Well.
[edit 8:00]
Have tried to put the new version of OS to hibernation for the first time and the shell script popped up with error, "device failed to thaw". Have no idea yet what that means exactly, yet (error #16, anyone?), but am finding the code uncommonly funny. In the " 'k making defrosting jokes now thx" way.
20101205
Day 2
Today involves: writing about Alzheimer's disease, spinal cord injury, and affects of androgen receptor during brain development. The jack for earphones in my mp3 player appears to be going as well since if I move it there will be odd positions where one or the other of the ear buds will not work, and I have checked with the really uncomfortable ear phone that DOES work and have received the same result. I need to do grocery shopping. And buy wrapping paper. It is entirely possible that I have already had too much caffeine already. Oh well. This too, shall pass.
20101204
Finals!
For the take home final I am currently trying to model neurogenesis (birth of neurons) in the human neocortex (developing brain) where there is asymmetric division of progenitors (number of cells we start with increases additively) and the total number of cells cycling (number of cells that will keep giving birth to neurons) changes over the course of days. I only have three time points to establish a trend for the cycling bit which means that the accuracy should be shot to hell, except I suspect since I'm dealing with billions in terms of orders of magnitude it may not be that bad. Assuming the length of cell cycle is constant in the neocortex.
This, unfortunately, will be the least painful part of the entire exam.
[edit 16:48]
Does anyone find it strange to read "animal with a window implanted in its skull"?
[edit 18:23]
Have just spent almost two hours reading & writing about brain tumors, central nervous system metastasis, and therapy resistance. Am feeling very depressed now but still must finish this problem....
This, unfortunately, will be the least painful part of the entire exam.
[edit 16:48]
Does anyone find it strange to read "animal with a window implanted in its skull"?
[edit 18:23]
Have just spent almost two hours reading & writing about brain tumors, central nervous system metastasis, and therapy resistance. Am feeling very depressed now but still must finish this problem....
20101203
20101130
20101126
lol oh dear
Dear Vivarium Staff,
Please check the mice before deciding to leave nesting material in their cages. Those male mice are not pregnant, they are just obese. Allowing them to make giant nests that stuff up half of the cage will not solve their case of dystocia, since they don't have dystocia. Baby mice do not come from nesting fluffs.
Sincerely,
S
Please check the mice before deciding to leave nesting material in their cages. Those male mice are not pregnant, they are just obese. Allowing them to make giant nests that stuff up half of the cage will not solve their case of dystocia, since they don't have dystocia. Baby mice do not come from nesting fluffs.
Sincerely,
S
20101124
Le whhhhhhhhyy
I was originally going to write a post about the new Opera browser that's coming out and how shiny it is, and possibly something about the scientists petitioning for more areas of the ocean being allocated as national parks / conserved areas (along the lines of the coral reef near Australia). Then I got on the bus (came home early to organize things and make lists) and saw one of my classmates that I haven't seen in a while. Turns out? Her lab moved to Germany. She didn't advertise the information and all, so most of us just assumed that she's banging her head against a manuscript or something (given that she's one year my senior academically, it's about the right time frame to start doing that), but that is very much not the case. She had the option of either staying on campus or moving to Germany and chose to move, which meant that she had to accept a terminal masters from our program and is now starting a PhD program in neuroscience at a university in Germany.
She was back for the SfN conference and is staying until just after Thanksgiving, since her family is here. Germany, I was told, is cold. It's already started snowing there. (Admittedly, after south Cal, weather anywhere else in the world is going to be worse in comparison.) I was also told that I should take advantage of the lovely whether here and do something, such as go to the beach. (This was said with no irony of whatsoever, despite of the downpour last weekend, so I am proven once again how utterly spoiled I am by the climate here.)
Mostly I'm still trying to process that she is now attending grad school in Germany. This is the sort of thing that, in our grad program, has the status of being the story that you heard from someone who's heard from someone. Encountering it so directly, as it happens to someone I occasionally hang out with during the program gatherings, is very disconcerting.
She was back for the SfN conference and is staying until just after Thanksgiving, since her family is here. Germany, I was told, is cold. It's already started snowing there. (Admittedly, after south Cal, weather anywhere else in the world is going to be worse in comparison.) I was also told that I should take advantage of the lovely whether here and do something, such as go to the beach. (This was said with no irony of whatsoever, despite of the downpour last weekend, so I am proven once again how utterly spoiled I am by the climate here.)
Mostly I'm still trying to process that she is now attending grad school in Germany. This is the sort of thing that, in our grad program, has the status of being the story that you heard from someone who's heard from someone. Encountering it so directly, as it happens to someone I occasionally hang out with during the program gatherings, is very disconcerting.
20101121
Come to think of it
Organizing music files. I wonder if there is such thing as a music tagging system that functions like Delicious or Blogspot, in the sense that you have one item, be it a web page or an entry, that has multiple tags so that you can pull up that one item multiple times depending on which tag you're interested in. That would make more sense than my attempt to organize things by artist or album, because rather than playing everything by an album or an artist, I'm much more prone to be in the mood for a specific type / theme of music. I'd like to be able to pull up, for instance, "The Promise of the World" on a day when I feel like listening to soundtracks from movies on shuffle AND on the day when I feel like listening to different types of waltz. And then Bon Jovi will probably get sorted under "loud" and "road trip" and possibly "Lunatics" while the Animaniac's "Ingredients" will get filed under "sound track", "nerd songs", and "ear worms" (the last along with the songs "Cows In the Morning" from BLACK BOOKS and the ...whatever that song is called that goes "Buono tomato buono tomato buono buono oh! Tomato!" -- because it eats your brain). That would be nice. Does that exist? Because right now my searches for tagging systems via the Magic of Google only gives me "tagging" as in via artist or album which is...still useful, but not what I have in mind.
Got caught in downpour earlier this morning. Everything's wet. Still coughing.
Got caught in downpour earlier this morning. Everything's wet. Still coughing.
20101113
20101112
Wait, I'm confused
Considering that I am doing dissertation on biomedical science, I consider myself to be, when compared to the general public, relatively well-informed on matters having to do with -- well -- biomedical science.
This appears to not help at all in instances where I flip through the catalogs in the mail and find ones advertising all organic food stuff of some Very Healthy Name or other, proclaiming to feature both probiotics and prebiotics as part of their ingredients.
My first thought was: "What the hell is pro/prebiotic?" Probiotic, by its roots, should mean "for life". I like life. That is something I can get behind. But what is "before life?" Hot magma and UV radiation? On a pizza? I think I'll pass.
Being the good little (obsessive-compulsive) grad student that I am, I immediately went to look it up on the magical all-knowing internet. Wikipedia informed me that probiotic is a term coined to refer to microorganisms that are thought to benefit their host, so...a kind of mutualism like our lovely gut bacteria that digests fiber for us to provide some vitamins. Okay. Prebiotic, on the other hand, seem to mean indigestible components of food that stimulate those probiotics and make THEM healthier (which theoretically will also make us, their hosts, healthier). Sounds good, but this brings me up to a very puzzling discovery:
There's a particular food ad that claims to blend grain and prebiotic fibers, for nutrition and taste, which is all very well. Then it goes on to describe its ingredients as consisting of cheese, veggies, meat, and probiotics.
...so um, are they actively blending in gut microbes and such with their food ingredients? How do they decide which microbes because let me tell you, incorrect sampling and administration of the microflora our bodies carry can cause a lot of problems. (For example, since we were talking about the gut: traveler's diarrhea is a fairly mild case of something going wrong.) Further more, given that this is food that needs to be cooked, and cooking (thoroughly) kills of most of the microbes, if people are going to eat this cooked, the dead probiotics aren't going to be doing us a whole lot of good on the account of them being dead. Unless they sprinkle on probiotics with your mustard and mayo at the end ("I'd like pickles, no onions, and a dash of probiotics with that, please."), which strikes me as, well, surreal. Wholly impractical. Also, going back to point number one above, somewhat dangerous.
Am I missing something here?
This appears to not help at all in instances where I flip through the catalogs in the mail and find ones advertising all organic food stuff of some Very Healthy Name or other, proclaiming to feature both probiotics and prebiotics as part of their ingredients.
My first thought was: "What the hell is pro/prebiotic?" Probiotic, by its roots, should mean "for life". I like life. That is something I can get behind. But what is "before life?" Hot magma and UV radiation? On a pizza? I think I'll pass.
Being the good little (obsessive-compulsive) grad student that I am, I immediately went to look it up on the magical all-knowing internet. Wikipedia informed me that probiotic is a term coined to refer to microorganisms that are thought to benefit their host, so...a kind of mutualism like our lovely gut bacteria that digests fiber for us to provide some vitamins. Okay. Prebiotic, on the other hand, seem to mean indigestible components of food that stimulate those probiotics and make THEM healthier (which theoretically will also make us, their hosts, healthier). Sounds good, but this brings me up to a very puzzling discovery:
There's a particular food ad that claims to blend grain and prebiotic fibers, for nutrition and taste, which is all very well. Then it goes on to describe its ingredients as consisting of cheese, veggies, meat, and probiotics.
...so um, are they actively blending in gut microbes and such with their food ingredients? How do they decide which microbes because let me tell you, incorrect sampling and administration of the microflora our bodies carry can cause a lot of problems. (For example, since we were talking about the gut: traveler's diarrhea is a fairly mild case of something going wrong.) Further more, given that this is food that needs to be cooked, and cooking (thoroughly) kills of most of the microbes, if people are going to eat this cooked, the dead probiotics aren't going to be doing us a whole lot of good on the account of them being dead. Unless they sprinkle on probiotics with your mustard and mayo at the end ("I'd like pickles, no onions, and a dash of probiotics with that, please."), which strikes me as, well, surreal. Wholly impractical. Also, going back to point number one above, somewhat dangerous.
Am I missing something here?
20101111
Dear diary
Dear Diary,
I have just noticed this by my Fedora 13 install Firefox spell-checker appears to think that it's British. It keeps insisting on the "u"s. I am pretty sure that I'm doing USA English with the OS, so I am, as of now, mostly confused. (Firefox here has a spell-check option but I don't know where the reference dictionary is, or how to change it.) My spelling is shaky to begin with, dear Firefox. Please stop confusing it.
Sincerely,
S
I have just noticed this by my Fedora 13 install Firefox spell-checker appears to think that it's British. It keeps insisting on the "u"s. I am pretty sure that I'm doing USA English with the OS, so I am, as of now, mostly confused. (Firefox here has a spell-check option but I don't know where the reference dictionary is, or how to change it.) My spelling is shaky to begin with, dear Firefox. Please stop confusing it.
Sincerely,
S
Carry on, gang
Today is a national holiday, which means that my class was canceled and that the labs will be locked for those without access cards. However, that does not mean that experiments have stopped or that people associated with experiments get the day off. Consequently I'm going to lab soon and there's a seminar that I'm attending at noon today but hey, free parking on campus!
...which is why I'm currently at home still. I meant to get a bit more sleep in, but when I first woke up this morning I wasn't able to pull out "Today's a Holiday" out of the foggy recesses of my mind and so automatically started blocking out my day in terms of what I must do, when. By the time I got to afternoon and class I realized that there's no class today, my memory caught up, but all gears are running already and my blood pressure is high enough (did I mention I missed the poster printing deadline by 15 minutes yesterday, partly due to an unexpectedly long lab meeting? And that today the printing services are closed?) that I ended up getting up early anyway.
The direct consequence of which is that now I have time to drink tea and... ponder about life. Or something.
(Erk erk I hope the incubation I started last night went okay and I'll have to leave the conference early Monday after all to go to lab to image something and possibly pick up my poster.)
For those of you that I'd initially contacted about FoldIt, today is three months after that round of email and the original deadline for everyone to go through the tutorials. I only know the usernames of two others and no one besides me seemed to have finished the tutorials. Given that I do (to varying degrees) know what everyone's going through right now and I am also aware (to varying degrees) that the years after this will, for most people, get even more insane, not less, I think the most reasonable thing will be to just drop this group project bit. If anyone ever finishes the tutorials within the next few years (at some point at least three months before I start writing my dissertation -- and trust me, you'll know when that time arrives because of the verbal flailing I will commit here) and still feel like giving this a shot...you all know how to reach me.
I have discovered that I definitely now own more than two gigs of music, as that my mp3 player declared itself to be full. I should probably go through and delete all the ones that it doesn't play but that requires more dedication and patience than I can spare at the moment. I have to deal with mice today. I wonder if any will try to bite me?
Off and away! (And maybe if I go to work a bit earlier than usual I can leave a bit earlier than usual? Not that it works that way, but a girl can hope.)
...which is why I'm currently at home still. I meant to get a bit more sleep in, but when I first woke up this morning I wasn't able to pull out "Today's a Holiday" out of the foggy recesses of my mind and so automatically started blocking out my day in terms of what I must do, when. By the time I got to afternoon and class I realized that there's no class today, my memory caught up, but all gears are running already and my blood pressure is high enough (did I mention I missed the poster printing deadline by 15 minutes yesterday, partly due to an unexpectedly long lab meeting? And that today the printing services are closed?) that I ended up getting up early anyway.
The direct consequence of which is that now I have time to drink tea and... ponder about life. Or something.
(Erk erk I hope the incubation I started last night went okay and I'll have to leave the conference early Monday after all to go to lab to image something and possibly pick up my poster.)
For those of you that I'd initially contacted about FoldIt, today is three months after that round of email and the original deadline for everyone to go through the tutorials. I only know the usernames of two others and no one besides me seemed to have finished the tutorials. Given that I do (to varying degrees) know what everyone's going through right now and I am also aware (to varying degrees) that the years after this will, for most people, get even more insane, not less, I think the most reasonable thing will be to just drop this group project bit. If anyone ever finishes the tutorials within the next few years (at some point at least three months before I start writing my dissertation -- and trust me, you'll know when that time arrives because of the verbal flailing I will commit here) and still feel like giving this a shot...you all know how to reach me.
I have discovered that I definitely now own more than two gigs of music, as that my mp3 player declared itself to be full. I should probably go through and delete all the ones that it doesn't play but that requires more dedication and patience than I can spare at the moment. I have to deal with mice today. I wonder if any will try to bite me?
Off and away! (And maybe if I go to work a bit earlier than usual I can leave a bit earlier than usual? Not that it works that way, but a girl can hope.)
20101109
Salsa; the answer is salsa
Today is the start of Radioactivity, Round II. In between all the stuff I went over my poster with my PI and he'd like me to move around and change about half of the figures. Given that the conference technically starts Saturday, I want to be able to pick up the finished poster on Friday. Given the on-campus queue right now, that means I will have to finish my poster by...tomorrow.
I wasn't very happy with this and, at one point where the PI was suggesting other ways for me to analyze the data I flat out told him that I was just going to toss out the other two figures because I don't have the time to deal with them on top of the experiments that I'm running this week. Astonishingly, he didn't lose his temper then, either. I have passed the "talk about data without releasing sensitive data" part, at least -- all the information that could theoretically lead to limelight-stealing has been censored.
Now I just have to shuffle stuff around and make sure all the fonts are the right fonts and size and everything lines up properly. Dammit. I have spent far too many hours doing formatting on powerpoint slides this quarter. I haven't spent this much time eyeballing alignments and making sure the hues of background match since when I did web-designing back in the days. And that was without juggling two classes and four different experiments in three different species. It makes me long for the days when our frustration can be relieved by hauling paper out to the barbecue place by the pool and setting them on fire. I can't set Daemon on fire -- there's too much useful stuff on here and not to mention I'm quite fond of Daemon, what with it being my first laptop. I can draw things burning in graphic detail -- but that requires time, which I'm a bit short on. Thus, as of today, I'm mostly reduced to glaring murder at my slides and sighing.
C'est la vie, right?
Speaking of which: R.I.P., Ivy. The IT (finally remembered to go in today, yes) diagnosis is "most likely hardware problem" and I was informed that it'd cost more to fix it than to just get another netbook. Dad will probably want it for the spare parts, if nothing else, because that's what he does. But he might want to play around with it, back where all his tools are, so we'll see -- there is yet hope for a functional Frankenivy.
Lara sent me the transcript of the closing speech of the Steward / Colbert Rally, which was pretty awesome and also allowed me to track down the collection of truly hilarious signs people were carrying for the event. My current favorite was the one that proclaimed "Guacamole", and then included the ingredients for guacamole. I was remarking to Wendy that perhaps world peace can be achieved through food, and doesn't avocado make everything better? Then after a brief sorting out we realized that neither of us actually eat avocado, thereby provoking outrage from the guys next bay over who heard us, who demanded to know what on earth do we eat our chips with...
...random food conversations are kind of fun, actually, and currently the highlight of the day.
...well that, and the fact that the postdoc's baby's due today! We are all sort of anticipatory today but alas, unlike the other two babies, this baby's parents don't utilize Facebook at all.... (This is the last baby expected in our lab, by the way.)
I wasn't very happy with this and, at one point where the PI was suggesting other ways for me to analyze the data I flat out told him that I was just going to toss out the other two figures because I don't have the time to deal with them on top of the experiments that I'm running this week. Astonishingly, he didn't lose his temper then, either. I have passed the "talk about data without releasing sensitive data" part, at least -- all the information that could theoretically lead to limelight-stealing has been censored.
Now I just have to shuffle stuff around and make sure all the fonts are the right fonts and size and everything lines up properly. Dammit. I have spent far too many hours doing formatting on powerpoint slides this quarter. I haven't spent this much time eyeballing alignments and making sure the hues of background match since when I did web-designing back in the days. And that was without juggling two classes and four different experiments in three different species. It makes me long for the days when our frustration can be relieved by hauling paper out to the barbecue place by the pool and setting them on fire. I can't set Daemon on fire -- there's too much useful stuff on here and not to mention I'm quite fond of Daemon, what with it being my first laptop. I can draw things burning in graphic detail -- but that requires time, which I'm a bit short on. Thus, as of today, I'm mostly reduced to glaring murder at my slides and sighing.
C'est la vie, right?
Speaking of which: R.I.P., Ivy. The IT (finally remembered to go in today, yes) diagnosis is "most likely hardware problem" and I was informed that it'd cost more to fix it than to just get another netbook. Dad will probably want it for the spare parts, if nothing else, because that's what he does. But he might want to play around with it, back where all his tools are, so we'll see -- there is yet hope for a functional Frankenivy.
Lara sent me the transcript of the closing speech of the Steward / Colbert Rally, which was pretty awesome and also allowed me to track down the collection of truly hilarious signs people were carrying for the event. My current favorite was the one that proclaimed "Guacamole", and then included the ingredients for guacamole. I was remarking to Wendy that perhaps world peace can be achieved through food, and doesn't avocado make everything better? Then after a brief sorting out we realized that neither of us actually eat avocado, thereby provoking outrage from the guys next bay over who heard us, who demanded to know what on earth do we eat our chips with...
...random food conversations are kind of fun, actually, and currently the highlight of the day.
...well that, and the fact that the postdoc's baby's due today! We are all sort of anticipatory today but alas, unlike the other two babies, this baby's parents don't utilize Facebook at all.... (This is the last baby expected in our lab, by the way.)
20101107
...okay
Catching up on the internet between cleaning and found that underwater rivers do exist.
Really. WTF nature?
Yesterday I discovered that I left Daemon's power cord at the Lab, so despite of my resolve to Not Be In Lab At All this weekend I had to pop in to grab the charger. Fail, yes. It is, coincidentally, really hard to present data when you can't present data. (This is apparently a valid worry when presenting at large conferences about unpublished research, as that, despite of being considered unethical, people have stolen information and used it to "scoop" other's research.) (For those not familiar with the academia: your standing and survival depend on publications. Your publications is ranked by impact. Your impact decreases exponentially with each paper someone else besides you publish on similar / identical research.)
(It's perfectly possible for someone to be scooped without any data-stealing to occur, I should mention. Especially if you are working on a really popular topic, such as application of stem cells in neurodegenerative disease. Or diabetes. Heck, anything that involves application of stem cells.)
Really. WTF nature?
Yesterday I discovered that I left Daemon's power cord at the Lab, so despite of my resolve to Not Be In Lab At All this weekend I had to pop in to grab the charger. Fail, yes. It is, coincidentally, really hard to present data when you can't present data. (This is apparently a valid worry when presenting at large conferences about unpublished research, as that, despite of being considered unethical, people have stolen information and used it to "scoop" other's research.) (For those not familiar with the academia: your standing and survival depend on publications. Your publications is ranked by impact. Your impact decreases exponentially with each paper someone else besides you publish on similar / identical research.)
(It's perfectly possible for someone to be scooped without any data-stealing to occur, I should mention. Especially if you are working on a really popular topic, such as application of stem cells in neurodegenerative disease. Or diabetes. Heck, anything that involves application of stem cells.)
20101105
I am twitchy and crazy and the insanity is surely spreading
Dear diary,
Today we (that is, my labmates and I) discovered that our lab may have an imaginary member. You know? Like an imaginary friend? Except in lab. Listed on our approved personnel form for radio-isotopes. We have checked and this "Joseph" person is someone that no one knows and has never, at any point during the existence of our lab, worked in our lab anyway. To top it all off his name is high lighted in the form that was sent to us by the radioactivity portion of the health & safety organization on campus. We pondered this. Perhaps there is an imaginary lab member lurking around which would serve as a better explanation for the missing pens, odd incubator noises, and migrating hole punchers than simply a lab poltergeist. Perhaps he's the Canada of Hetalia, doomed to invisibility while the rest of us wondered at our vague senses of unease.
We do not know the answer yet, though we have emailed to inquire after this mysterious Mr. Joseph. Friday afternoon paperwork can be a source of intrigue and mystery (not of the confused by bureaucratic language sort) apparently. Who knew?
Sincerely,
S
Today we (that is, my labmates and I) discovered that our lab may have an imaginary member. You know? Like an imaginary friend? Except in lab. Listed on our approved personnel form for radio-isotopes. We have checked and this "Joseph" person is someone that no one knows and has never, at any point during the existence of our lab, worked in our lab anyway. To top it all off his name is high lighted in the form that was sent to us by the radioactivity portion of the health & safety organization on campus. We pondered this. Perhaps there is an imaginary lab member lurking around which would serve as a better explanation for the missing pens, odd incubator noises, and migrating hole punchers than simply a lab poltergeist. Perhaps he's the Canada of Hetalia, doomed to invisibility while the rest of us wondered at our vague senses of unease.
We do not know the answer yet, though we have emailed to inquire after this mysterious Mr. Joseph. Friday afternoon paperwork can be a source of intrigue and mystery (not of the confused by bureaucratic language sort) apparently. Who knew?
Sincerely,
S
20101101
Oh the weepings you'll...weep
I spent a good portion of Sunday thinking about cytosol. It is the most bizarre thing that popped up in my mind while I was drinking tea and infected itself on my brain. It's not even really related to my project -- or at least no more related to my project than anything in the field of biology is, inherently, related to the innards of a cell. Instead I found the word scrolling through my brain like one of those neon marquees that you never see outside of downtown while I drove to lab, it flashed most appalling while I was trying to spot my 2mm long transparent fish embryos floating in their clear fixative (computer no longer being the only source of eye strain these days), and bouncing around like an echo while I drove to the groceries. At which point I was promptly distracted by the fact that the music playing through the speakers seem to contain rather more screaming than usual. It took me a few seconds too long to remember that, oh right, Halloween. And then I got pomegranates, thought about Hades -- and "Myth of Devotion" is a lovely poem, by the way -- and tried to finish putting together my figures.
(I failed. I finished that in lab today, though I still haven't quite figured out how to diagram my results from Tukey's test without overwhelming my graphs with lines. I despise statistics. I really do.)
I want cake. Radioactivity is this week. The paperwork has gone through and I am now officially a Candidate and have used up 7 of my 18 quarters required to graduate. (There was a form and everything.) Also, one of my new litters of mice died, which consequently means that I have no behavioral test to run during Christmas week, so that works out (though it also means another month tacked onto the project). I am presenting in lab meeting this Wednesday.
I just realized that my paragraphs got progressively less coherent. Time to move on then!
(I failed. I finished that in lab today, though I still haven't quite figured out how to diagram my results from Tukey's test without overwhelming my graphs with lines. I despise statistics. I really do.)
I want cake. Radioactivity is this week. The paperwork has gone through and I am now officially a Candidate and have used up 7 of my 18 quarters required to graduate. (There was a form and everything.) Also, one of my new litters of mice died, which consequently means that I have no behavioral test to run during Christmas week, so that works out (though it also means another month tacked onto the project). I am presenting in lab meeting this Wednesday.
I just realized that my paragraphs got progressively less coherent. Time to move on then!
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