Gah... my computers hate me!
I have a desktop and a laptop, both PCs. My desktop's been acting up a bit lately (crashed/blue screened three times the last time I tried to use it) and I've been telling myself, "Hey at least I still have my laptop!" Then the battery for my laptop decided today would be a GREAT day to fully die. Now my laptop is completely reliant on its power cord instead of just mostly reliant like it used to be. Oh well at least I have a source of income now if I need to get a new computer. The highlight of the issue was the realization that the battery for my laptop has a 1.3/5 rating on the Dell website. You'd think they'd do something about it, but I guess as long as it takes the computer through the warranty period that's all they need.
Lab work
I've been working on getting a gene out of one plant and into another so we can see what it does and to get it in the other plant I have to change it a bit first. This is apparently a problem since the regular old methods don't want to work. As of now I'm just hammering at it and hoping it'll work eventually while testing along the way to make sure each step is doing what it's supposed to be doing. The controls are more or less working and the other gene that I pulled out to try at the same time is working, but the one that I actually have to get to work for my project isn't. grr.
Anyway, now that I've gotten to know the lab a bit better I realized that everyone that I thought was German actually isn't. Most of the lab is German, but (as I've been told recently) there's apparently Danish, Polish and Macedonian representation as well (1 lab member each).
Who knew?
Anyway, now that I've gotten to know the lab a bit better I realized that everyone that I thought was German actually isn't. Most of the lab is German, but (as I've been told recently) there's apparently Danish, Polish and Macedonian representation as well (1 lab member each).
Who knew?
What a week...
This week has been bizarre so far. Monday went pretty well, but I when I got to Tuesday I forgot what day it was and somehow it felt like it was Monday again. Also, I felt like crap on Monday, so maybe that's why. Then Tuesday and Wednesday happened, both of which were pretty normal, except that I felt like I was missing a day (I kept thinking Tuesday was Monday and Wednesday was Tuesday). And now it's Thursday. I woke up with a ridiculous headache behind my eyes and it hurt to have them closed (weird and backwards of normal). Then after I showered I felt nauseous. Fun times. I had a fairly big breakfast and felt pretty normal by the end of it, but I'm still a bit out of it. Hopefully I'll be good after lunch.
Update: After lunch I am mostly better. Good deal.
Update: After lunch I am mostly better. Good deal.
Free time? What free time?
Post-posting Note: I haven't updated in a long time, so I did two long (really long... whoops) posts to hopefully be up to date.
Actually working an 8 hour a day job/class schedule makes me realize why people complain so much about not having enough time! It really, truly sucks when you can't even get to places to do errands when you work past when the close. Fortunately that's only happened once or twice so far, but I keep hearing stories of it happening to other people in my classes, so I guess it's pretty common. One thing I've decided for sure is that my ideal is an 8 to 4 schedule instead of a 9 to 5. You get to work before the parking lots are full and you get home before the lots there are full. You also avoid a LOT of traffic, even if I got home late. Now this definitely hasn't been happening, but that's how I've managed to come to this conclusion. Once I get home I just want to sit and do nothing, but if I do that I'll fall asleep and lose the time I have, so I've been keeping busy, sort of.
Made some soup on Friday and just finished the last bowl of it today, so that's pretty amazing and it tasted really good, so that's a plus. I've been jumping from game to game and reading Harry Potter books and that's pretty much consumed my time. I should be reading class stuff but it's hard to motivate myself when I'm getting so much of the same information from three sources AND it's all covering stuff I've heard at least three or four times before, albeit in different levels of detail and with different emphases. Dwarf Fortress now and then, Metroid Prime 2 (not new, but I've played 1 and 3 and somehow missed 2 so I got it cheap and brand new online), and FINALLY Spore. It came out Sunday, but there's a little story to go along with that.
They were allowing you to 'predownload' it if you bought an electronic copy, so I did and I had the predownload on Friday or Saturday. Then I couldn't find when the predownload would unlock and let me install it. For some reason I had 12, 12:30, 1, and 1:30 in my head, so I just kept checking the file starting at 12 and at 1 it let me unlock it and install. Then I played until about midnight. It's definitely a really good game and it'll be known as a good game. It's also definitely not as good as the hype made it out to be, but with 2+ years of hype on a game made by the guy that made all of the "Sim-" games (including the 'Simcity's and the Sims 1 and 2) there's no way any game could actually live up to it. It's got an immense amount of replayability and pretty much anyone's playstyle's compatible with it. Also, I think it'd be a pretty good game for non-gamers, which is always cool. There was something else I wanted to say but I completely forgot, so it must not have been important.
On a different note, I was talking about the weather with Jacob last week and said that it would probably be another week or two before fall really started settling in (and the weather forcasts supported me at that point) but fall has apparently decided to spite me. Instead of going back up to the 80s like it said it was going to, it stayed in the low 70s and 60s. Luckily that's my favorite type of weather. So hah! Take that fall.
And now that I've rambled enough to hopefully be fairly up to date, I'm going to get to bed I think. I'm really tired and I have a 9am class tomorrow morning and PCR products waiting to be run on gels when I get to the lab. Oh and a book to buy.
AND Governor Granholm is apparently coming to MSU on Friday and is making a visit to some labs in our building because we're part of a Department of Energy biofuels initiative. Joy. I still don't know if I have to dress up a bit or if I just have to not look like a geek while obeying every safety rule. Oh well.
Actually working an 8 hour a day job/class schedule makes me realize why people complain so much about not having enough time! It really, truly sucks when you can't even get to places to do errands when you work past when the close. Fortunately that's only happened once or twice so far, but I keep hearing stories of it happening to other people in my classes, so I guess it's pretty common. One thing I've decided for sure is that my ideal is an 8 to 4 schedule instead of a 9 to 5. You get to work before the parking lots are full and you get home before the lots there are full. You also avoid a LOT of traffic, even if I got home late. Now this definitely hasn't been happening, but that's how I've managed to come to this conclusion. Once I get home I just want to sit and do nothing, but if I do that I'll fall asleep and lose the time I have, so I've been keeping busy, sort of.
Made some soup on Friday and just finished the last bowl of it today, so that's pretty amazing and it tasted really good, so that's a plus. I've been jumping from game to game and reading Harry Potter books and that's pretty much consumed my time. I should be reading class stuff but it's hard to motivate myself when I'm getting so much of the same information from three sources AND it's all covering stuff I've heard at least three or four times before, albeit in different levels of detail and with different emphases. Dwarf Fortress now and then, Metroid Prime 2 (not new, but I've played 1 and 3 and somehow missed 2 so I got it cheap and brand new online), and FINALLY Spore. It came out Sunday, but there's a little story to go along with that.
They were allowing you to 'predownload' it if you bought an electronic copy, so I did and I had the predownload on Friday or Saturday. Then I couldn't find when the predownload would unlock and let me install it. For some reason I had 12, 12:30, 1, and 1:30 in my head, so I just kept checking the file starting at 12 and at 1 it let me unlock it and install. Then I played until about midnight. It's definitely a really good game and it'll be known as a good game. It's also definitely not as good as the hype made it out to be, but with 2+ years of hype on a game made by the guy that made all of the "Sim-" games (including the 'Simcity's and the Sims 1 and 2) there's no way any game could actually live up to it. It's got an immense amount of replayability and pretty much anyone's playstyle's compatible with it. Also, I think it'd be a pretty good game for non-gamers, which is always cool. There was something else I wanted to say but I completely forgot, so it must not have been important.
On a different note, I was talking about the weather with Jacob last week and said that it would probably be another week or two before fall really started settling in (and the weather forcasts supported me at that point) but fall has apparently decided to spite me. Instead of going back up to the 80s like it said it was going to, it stayed in the low 70s and 60s. Luckily that's my favorite type of weather. So hah! Take that fall.
And now that I've rambled enough to hopefully be fairly up to date, I'm going to get to bed I think. I'm really tired and I have a 9am class tomorrow morning and PCR products waiting to be run on gels when I get to the lab. Oh and a book to buy.
AND Governor Granholm is apparently coming to MSU on Friday and is making a visit to some labs in our building because we're part of a Department of Energy biofuels initiative. Joy. I still don't know if I have to dress up a bit or if I just have to not look like a geek while obeying every safety rule. Oh well.
Rotation lab
So. Now that I've finally managed to get in front of a computer that I'm allowed to use for my own personal stuff and I have more than a few minutes, I'm going to update! I'm really not THAT busy, but I HAVE been in the lab until at least 5 or 6 every weekday for the past week or so if that counts. I'm working on a project that has gotten exponentially more interesting as I work on it which is really nice. I've also gotten a lot more interested in science in general (I'm actually interested in seminar topics that aren't related to what I want to do. weird.) and I'm not sure if that's because of classes, lab, or both. I've also noticed a complete and utter inability to remember where I learned something. I'm doing the same thing in both classes I'm taking (they both start with DNA, RNA, and protein basics) as well as doing the practical side of the EXACT SAME THING in lab, so I'm learning bits and pieces in each and quite a bit of overlap. All in all it's a good time and the only thing I have to worry about is finding a textbook for one of my classes tomorrow. I hope I can find the bookstore and they have what I need!
The lab I'm working in is kind of funny, because I think everyone there is German or Danish. Well, the main people in the lab anyway. I've been working with the Danish guy, Jacob. He's pretty nice and laid back but really knows his stuff and wants me to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. We've had some good conversations about lab stuff and non-lab stuff, so it makes me feel pretty welcome in the lab. I think the other people in the lab are getting used to me being there too, since they're acting like I exist now. That's kind of a mean way of saying it and I don't mean it like that, but it's the best way to describe it. I don't really have to interact with them and I'm trying to understand my own stuff and Jacob's so I haven't put much interest in theirs yet. Everyone's handling different parts of one big problem, like labs tend to do, but it's pretty cool to see how everyone goes at it from a different angle.
And now, pictures.
First of all, I have my own pipets and a spinning rack to put them on! I'm sure I'll take the labels off and leave them in the lab when I'm done with my rotation, but it's kind of cool to have something sciency to call my own.
Next are some pictures of my lab space. They gave me a laptop to work on while I'm at the lab and Jacob had an extra monitor that he got that doesn't work with his computer, so he gave it to me. so far it's just sitting there and looking pretty, but I might end up using it when I have a bunch of stuff to keep track of. The main bench is off to the right of this.
And it looks like this. I don't know if you can really tell, but it's probably about 8 feet of counter space and a bunch of shelves. Pretty nice and the only problem is that there's no place to put my legs if I'm sitting, but I don't sit often, so that's really not too much of a problem. Also, when I was working at Hope I didn't have leg room in one of the lab areas and I'm pretty used to it by now.
Finally, just a view from the other side.
And here's what the view from my window looks like. It was pretty gray when I took this, but it's a pretty nice view of the biochemistry building =D. (Please forgive the picture quality, they're taken with my phone which is, first and foremost, a phone.) All in all, it's a pretty nice place. All right, time for a second post on other stuff.
The lab I'm working in is kind of funny, because I think everyone there is German or Danish. Well, the main people in the lab anyway. I've been working with the Danish guy, Jacob. He's pretty nice and laid back but really knows his stuff and wants me to understand what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. We've had some good conversations about lab stuff and non-lab stuff, so it makes me feel pretty welcome in the lab. I think the other people in the lab are getting used to me being there too, since they're acting like I exist now. That's kind of a mean way of saying it and I don't mean it like that, but it's the best way to describe it. I don't really have to interact with them and I'm trying to understand my own stuff and Jacob's so I haven't put much interest in theirs yet. Everyone's handling different parts of one big problem, like labs tend to do, but it's pretty cool to see how everyone goes at it from a different angle.
And now, pictures.
First of all, I have my own pipets and a spinning rack to put them on! I'm sure I'll take the labels off and leave them in the lab when I'm done with my rotation, but it's kind of cool to have something sciency to call my own.
Next are some pictures of my lab space. They gave me a laptop to work on while I'm at the lab and Jacob had an extra monitor that he got that doesn't work with his computer, so he gave it to me. so far it's just sitting there and looking pretty, but I might end up using it when I have a bunch of stuff to keep track of. The main bench is off to the right of this.
And it looks like this. I don't know if you can really tell, but it's probably about 8 feet of counter space and a bunch of shelves. Pretty nice and the only problem is that there's no place to put my legs if I'm sitting, but I don't sit often, so that's really not too much of a problem. Also, when I was working at Hope I didn't have leg room in one of the lab areas and I'm pretty used to it by now.
Finally, just a view from the other side.
And here's what the view from my window looks like. It was pretty gray when I took this, but it's a pretty nice view of the biochemistry building =D. (Please forgive the picture quality, they're taken with my phone which is, first and foremost, a phone.) All in all, it's a pretty nice place. All right, time for a second post on other stuff.
Update today
So... I haven't updated this in over a week I think. That needs to change. Unfortunately, for that to happen I need to not be at work. That should happen around 4 today (hoping), so big updates will follow after 4.
Rotation... Spore... and Chrome?
Started my rotation today. Went in at about 9am, saw some research talks, got oriented in the lab and actually started my project for about 15 minutes before I had to go to class. I guess we'll see if I know what I'm doing starting tomorrow after class. The lab I'm in offered me a laptop to use while I was there (they game me a choice of a Mac or a PC) and when I said I'd like the use the PC one because I was more familiar with it, the professor said something like, "Aww man, that's the only computer I can play Spore on!" I have to say that pretty much made my day.
Finally, I'm using a new browser! Google is coming out with a browser called Chrome that seems to be really cool. It's simple but quick and it's basically everything that Google's been doing right in its other stuff, so it looks like it should turn out well. There's a comic explaining how it works that's linked to on the download page. It's a bit long, but it tells about all of the cool little things as well as a lot of the "how it works" stuff that can be interesting to the right people.