I'm not really sure why I'm counting down until classes are over, but I am. Today was the last day of actual class and I have a final next week as well as a group project/paper thing. I started actually wrapping my head around the work I have to do in the lab as well and I feel like I'd rather take classes... Once I get started on it, hopefully it'll just turn into work instead of feeling like this big looming deadline. Oh well.
And now, the latest thing to grab my attention:
For those who like casual online games and a bit of distraction a few minutes a day: My Brute
It generates a fighter based on the name you give it and then you pit it against 3 opponents a day. As they fight they level up and gain new abilities and stuff, so it's pretty neat. The only thing is that they limit you to 3 fights a day (except for the first day... you get 6). I ended up making a bunch so I get 3 fights per fighter with 4 fighters. Also, you can make your fighters pupils of other fighters and the master gets benefits when the pupil levels up, so if you want to make yours my pupils, that'd be great =D. (If you want to, go here to make your brute instead of the link up above).
Monday! on... Tuesday
I started typing this up yesterday but then I forgot to actually post it.
I started in my lab on Monday, except I only ended up having about 1 and a half hours in the lab because of classes. Of those 1 and a half hours, most of it was just finding where I was going to be and getting set up a bit. I'm not actually in the main lab (there are 9 people in the lab now and that's way too many for everyone to have desk space in that lab) but I'm just down the hall in a lab that has some of our equipment in it. Should be good, especially once I get into the swing of things. Also, I realized earlier today that tomorrow is my last day of classes for the semester (!!!) which hadn't occurred to me because of finals next week. Also, the wall that I thought was a window with a shade (in my peripheral vision anyway) turn out to actually be a concrete block wall when I bothered to look at it. No wonder my brain was telling me it was dark/really cloudy outside. Although... it probably actually is cloudy and raining.
I started in my lab on Monday, except I only ended up having about 1 and a half hours in the lab because of classes. Of those 1 and a half hours, most of it was just finding where I was going to be and getting set up a bit. I'm not actually in the main lab (there are 9 people in the lab now and that's way too many for everyone to have desk space in that lab) but I'm just down the hall in a lab that has some of our equipment in it. Should be good, especially once I get into the swing of things. Also, I realized earlier today that tomorrow is my last day of classes for the semester (!!!) which hadn't occurred to me because of finals next week. Also, the wall that I thought was a window with a shade (in my peripheral vision anyway) turn out to actually be a concrete block wall when I bothered to look at it. No wonder my brain was telling me it was dark/really cloudy outside. Although... it probably actually is cloudy and raining.
The pancakes were so-so
They're kind of strange. The batter comes out of the can like whipped cream, but by the time the pancake's cooked, it's really thin. They're also pretty hard to flip because the batter was so full of air and they were strangely sweet. The combination of these makes me think they could work for dessert better than breakfast (kind of crepe-ish).
Slow cooker
I got a slow cooker a while ago from my parents and I just today opened it and tried it out. I ended up making a fairly good facsimile of Olive Garden's zuppa toscana on my first try, which was pretty neat. Basically I just used some bratwurst (cut into slices, like quarters), potatoes (cut in quarters lengthwise, then cut thin crosswise, so you end up with quarter-circle slices), thawed frozen spinach (I didn't realize until after it was made that they don't use spinach in their soup, but I don't know what they do use and the spinach was fairly close), some salt, a bunch of pepper, and a bunch of garlic. Then filled it up with water to cover them all and let it go on low for about 5 hours, added about a cup and a half of milk, and put it on high for 2 hours. I don't really have a good feel for how the slow cooker cooks yet, but one or two more attempts and I should get the hang of it. The soup's really good (it just leaked a bit as it was cooking because I put too much in...), so the first try was a success as far as first tries go.
Tomorrow I think I'll try my pancakes from an aerosol can for breakfast.
Tomorrow I think I'll try my pancakes from an aerosol can for breakfast.
It's finally actually Spring
In case you didn't notice, the weather's gotten really good recently and the leaves have started coming out! Also, it's my last day in my rotation tomorrow! Lots of change and none of it's really going to be motivating me tomorrow at work, but I have to finish up the last bit of my project and get all my crap cleaned up and documented so they can use it later if they need to. Shouldn't be too bad, it's just one day. Then I need to figure out some good ideas for meals over the weekend because I'm in the mood for some good food. I thought I had a slow cooker cook book but I can't find it for the life of me, so I might just look up some stuff online at some point. We'll see when I get time... maybe just tomorrow during lunch or after work.
Well...
I know which fridge I WON'T be storing my bombs in.
Also, the presentation went well. I managed to sound confident and competent and no one really asked questions. Whether that means that there weren't any to ask or that they were just taking pity on my I'm not sure, but either way I'm happy.
Last stressful day
Woohoo! This marks the (hopefully) last stressful night for me for about a week and a half. Tomorrow I'll make my presentation where I hopefully won't sound like a COMPLETE noob and then I think I'll go to lunch with my laptop and/or my iPod and just kind of sit there for a while before I go to class... or maybe I'll be mildly productive. I have to clean up my mess of files that I have spread over at least 3 different computers in that lab, so that'll probably take a good chunk of Thursday or Friday and it wouldn't hurt to start tomorrow. Plus I still have some actual work to wrap up, so I should probably do that too.
Tonight I've learned, once again, that making outlines helps me immensely when it comes to organizing myself and getting down all of what I need to put into the final product, but they give me an unfortunate sense of accomplishment which makes me procrastinate on the final product itself. Oh well, at least it's a well organized thrown together presentation! (I guess that means you can't tell it's thrown together, so that works...)
I need to persuade my brother to play World of Warcraft again... maybe paying to transfer his character to a different account so we could play together would help. Once he has time, of course. Now the question is, will he ever have free time again?
Tonight I've learned, once again, that making outlines helps me immensely when it comes to organizing myself and getting down all of what I need to put into the final product, but they give me an unfortunate sense of accomplishment which makes me procrastinate on the final product itself. Oh well, at least it's a well organized thrown together presentation! (I guess that means you can't tell it's thrown together, so that works...)
I need to persuade my brother to play World of Warcraft again... maybe paying to transfer his character to a different account so we could play together would help. Once he has time, of course. Now the question is, will he ever have free time again?
Late late late
Wooooo... so I suck at going to sleep on time AND updating on time! Basically today was a normal Monday: class, lunch, lab, class, seminar, and home. I probably won't have enough time to do everything I wanted to tomorrow in lab, but I'll be able to finish the presentation anyway, which is good enough.
And now, two World of Warcraft screenshots:
In this one I'm a frog.
And in this one, I'm a cat! I don't really remember what turned me into a cat, but I think the frog was a potion gone wrong. (EDIT: Oh I looked at the screenshots again and remembered they were trick-or-treat candies or something that transformed you into random things. These two were more trick than treat.) Anyway, have a good night if you're somehow reading this before Tuesday morning!
And now, two World of Warcraft screenshots:
In this one I'm a frog.And in this one, I'm a cat! I don't really remember what turned me into a cat, but I think the frog was a potion gone wrong. (EDIT: Oh I looked at the screenshots again and remembered they were trick-or-treat candies or something that transformed you into random things. These two were more trick than treat.) Anyway, have a good night if you're somehow reading this before Tuesday morning!
New layout
So I was planning on designing the whole thing from scratch, but that's hard. Instead I found one I liked and I've tweaked it a little bit. It's still going through some changes, but it's pretty close. The ground-up one is coming eventually... once I find the motivation to dig into it a bit more. I should be more motivated to do coding-type stuff for fun once I don't have to do it in lab and for class, so probably in about a month.
Anyway, this was a really laid-back weekend. I feel like I was slacking and should have been studying or working on something, but I don't think I had anything I needed to do. Hopefully that was actually the case. I basically just played some games, hung out with people, watched some tv and made some really good peanut sauce. I don't really have a recipe for it, I just looked at a couple online and tried something. It's basically peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, brown sugar, chili powder, and water to get it to the consistency you want... I think it was closest to this one from Food Network.
One more week in this lab, and I have to make a presentation of everything I've accomplished during the rotation on Wednesday. Hopefully I have enough time to do that and practice it a bit so I can know the answers to some of the questions that'll get asked. I think that's the main thing I dislike about this lab... I feel fairly competent on a day-to-day basis, but when I have to make a presentation or if there's any opportunity for questions to be asked, most of the time I don't know the answers, or if I do, I don't know the answers to the follow up questions. In a bio-based lab I know the basic answers by heart by now and I'm learning the answers to most of the harder questions in classes, so I know enough to fumble my way to the answer.
Anyway, this was a really laid-back weekend. I feel like I was slacking and should have been studying or working on something, but I don't think I had anything I needed to do. Hopefully that was actually the case. I basically just played some games, hung out with people, watched some tv and made some really good peanut sauce. I don't really have a recipe for it, I just looked at a couple online and tried something. It's basically peanut butter, soy sauce, lemon juice, garlic, brown sugar, chili powder, and water to get it to the consistency you want... I think it was closest to this one from Food Network.
One more week in this lab, and I have to make a presentation of everything I've accomplished during the rotation on Wednesday. Hopefully I have enough time to do that and practice it a bit so I can know the answers to some of the questions that'll get asked. I think that's the main thing I dislike about this lab... I feel fairly competent on a day-to-day basis, but when I have to make a presentation or if there's any opportunity for questions to be asked, most of the time I don't know the answers, or if I do, I don't know the answers to the follow up questions. In a bio-based lab I know the basic answers by heart by now and I'm learning the answers to most of the harder questions in classes, so I know enough to fumble my way to the answer.
TGIF a bit early
This week's gone by really slow for some reason. I'm not really sure why, because it hasn't really been an abnormal week. I feel like I'm pushing through until a vacation, but there isn't really a vacation in the near future (until I take a couple of days off in mid May to go to my brother's graduation and a little family vacation thing). Maybe it's just classes and my third rotation finishing up.
I talked to the professor from my second rotation and she's happy to have me join the lab. Apparently there are 9 people in the lab now (counting undergrads and maybe her) and there are... 4 desks and 5 benches. Ideally everyone would have their own desk and bench, but I guess we'll get to be buddy-buddy. Also, there's a bit more room that could be cleared up if stuff got better organized I think, so maybe that'll have happened during my third rotation. Or maybe they'll have bought more stuff and there'll be even less room. I guess I'll see when I get there. Next week's my last week on this rotation, so that'll actually be pretty soon. I think I'm starting to actually get headaches from staring at a computer screen all day. Too much bright light directly into my eyes. Oh well, maybe I just need more sleep.
I think it's time to try and get on that, so sleep, here I come.
I talked to the professor from my second rotation and she's happy to have me join the lab. Apparently there are 9 people in the lab now (counting undergrads and maybe her) and there are... 4 desks and 5 benches. Ideally everyone would have their own desk and bench, but I guess we'll get to be buddy-buddy. Also, there's a bit more room that could be cleared up if stuff got better organized I think, so maybe that'll have happened during my third rotation. Or maybe they'll have bought more stuff and there'll be even less room. I guess I'll see when I get there. Next week's my last week on this rotation, so that'll actually be pretty soon. I think I'm starting to actually get headaches from staring at a computer screen all day. Too much bright light directly into my eyes. Oh well, maybe I just need more sleep.
I think it's time to try and get on that, so sleep, here I come.
So, uh...
I WAS going to make a full post of some sort, but that apparently didn't happen. Instead... hm. I guess I'll try and figure out the code for the blog design and see if I can't make this a bit nicer this weekend.
Links for Tuesday
Well I missed posting yesterday. Here are some links to make up for it.
First: Google's Will It Lens? Basically they got a big lens and use it to melt/burn/cook things during their lunch breaks. Pretty neat. Apparently you can turn a penny to brass if you try hard enough.
Second: Soap in a microwave. Who knew?
First: Google's Will It Lens? Basically they got a big lens and use it to melt/burn/cook things during their lunch breaks. Pretty neat. Apparently you can turn a penny to brass if you try hard enough.
Second: Soap in a microwave. Who knew?
Whew
Today's been an interesting day so far. I got up early enough to get a bit of breakfast, which is always nice, then went off to class. I sent an email to the professor whose lab I want to join and got a really quick response about how she was happy to have me in the lab, which was really nice. After class was some work on a project, which was entirely too stressful and annoying... I think my eye messed a bit with the sleep I got last night and put me in a kind of off mood. My eye's mostly better, just a bit tired at this point. After the project work was a quick lunch (grilled cheese and tomato soup) and then a seminar, about half an hour of lab work, and now I'm in class again. After class (at 4) I have another seminar and then I'm done for the day. Way too much stuff. Oh and once I get home I'll probably be doing laundry and some cleaning. Oh well. At least laundry doesn't take much effort, just time.
Happy Easter
Back at school. My eye feels like there's something in it but I can't get it out and it's been bugging me since 1:30. I hope it goes away soon...
Game night
So tonight we had dinner and a board game night with a couple of friends. It was my parents, my brother, and a husband and wife that my parents met through a Buddhist philosophy group. They're pretty cool people, but my mindset going in was that it would be fun, but pretty calm. Dinner was good (a variety of Lebanese food) and then we ended up picking Beyond Balderdash to play afterwards. The basis for the game is that the person whose turn it is picks a card and chooses one of the 5 categories on the card. One of the categories is "movie" where the person reads a movie title and everyone else has to make up a synopsis for the movie, submit them anonymously, then the reader reads them all and you guess which one is the right one. You can probably see how they could have the potential to get pretty funny (especially with one called "Alice Goodbody" that actually ended up being about a sexy woman in Hollywood or something).
The two best ones of the night were "Bad Ronald" where one of the submitted answers was: The story of a young bully who terrorizes his classmates only to die when hit by a bus, and "The Dummy Speaks" where the actual answer was: When a ventriloquist is murdered backstage, a midget goes undercover as a dummy in an attempt to find the killer. We laughed pretty hard at both of them, which was kind of funny in itself because you'd think the people in the Buddhist respect, selflessness, empathy mindset would feel bad about laughing at a kid getting hit by a bus. Then when The Dummy Speaks came up, one of the friends went and said "Where would the hand go?" and that got us laughing again. All in all a good night. Except when the word oogonium came up and I forgot what it meant. So sad since I've had to know that for at least three major tests so far. (the female sex organs of fungi, for those who were interested. I couldn't remember what organism it was and said it was in mosses.)
The two best ones of the night were "Bad Ronald" where one of the submitted answers was: The story of a young bully who terrorizes his classmates only to die when hit by a bus, and "The Dummy Speaks" where the actual answer was: When a ventriloquist is murdered backstage, a midget goes undercover as a dummy in an attempt to find the killer. We laughed pretty hard at both of them, which was kind of funny in itself because you'd think the people in the Buddhist respect, selflessness, empathy mindset would feel bad about laughing at a kid getting hit by a bus. Then when The Dummy Speaks came up, one of the friends went and said "Where would the hand go?" and that got us laughing again. All in all a good night. Except when the word oogonium came up and I forgot what it meant. So sad since I've had to know that for at least three major tests so far. (the female sex organs of fungi, for those who were interested. I couldn't remember what organism it was and said it was in mosses.)
Weekend adventures
This lady's especially funny. Nothing like bringing in office gossip to a car deal... =/
Sleep? You need that?
Apparently I suck at going to bed, even when I don't have anything to do, so I'm updating my blog! I've been dead tired since about 8, but oh well.
As I was typing that I realized I did, in fact, have something to do. Now that it's done it's about half an hour later and I really need to go to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to pick my brother up at 11 and then head home for Easter weekend. Once we get home there'll be car shopping, food, some haircuts, church, and more. Should be fun. Hope everyone has a good Friday and a great weekend. I should still be updating, but if not, that's why.
As I was typing that I realized I did, in fact, have something to do. Now that it's done it's about half an hour later and I really need to go to bed. Tomorrow I'm going to pick my brother up at 11 and then head home for Easter weekend. Once we get home there'll be car shopping, food, some haircuts, church, and more. Should be fun. Hope everyone has a good Friday and a great weekend. I should still be updating, but if not, that's why.
PETA's trying to take over my life!
So apparently there are people from PETA on campus today giving a talk. Ok, that's cool. I probably won't go, but that's just me.
Then I saw they're holding an event in World of Warcraft this Saturday as well.
Wha...?
Yeah. Apparently they've come up with a scenario in WoW to fight against real life Canadian seal hunters where you can go kill some NPCs (non-player, computer controlled characters) who are hunting seals in game. I guess it's an event that's happening this Saturday, but I don't think I'll be able to go check it out because it's on a different server. Honestly it's pretty ridiculous because their scenario doesn't fit into the history of WoW at all (they're villainizing one of the main heroes of the game...) and the only other interaction you have with these seals in game is to STOP them from dying out. Also, the area of the game they're doing the event in makes fun of PETA pretty wholesale. There's a group called DEHTA (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals) in the area that gives you quests to go kill people who are slaughtering animals in the zone. The whole thing's pretty ridiculous.
In completely unrelated news, I went breakfast with people today at 6:30 and so far it's been an awesome day. Denny's has a buy one get one free deal going today, so I got breakfast and lunch for a little over $6. Maybe I should be getting up at 5:30 more often.
Then I saw they're holding an event in World of Warcraft this Saturday as well.
Wha...?
Yeah. Apparently they've come up with a scenario in WoW to fight against real life Canadian seal hunters where you can go kill some NPCs (non-player, computer controlled characters) who are hunting seals in game. I guess it's an event that's happening this Saturday, but I don't think I'll be able to go check it out because it's on a different server. Honestly it's pretty ridiculous because their scenario doesn't fit into the history of WoW at all (they're villainizing one of the main heroes of the game...) and the only other interaction you have with these seals in game is to STOP them from dying out. Also, the area of the game they're doing the event in makes fun of PETA pretty wholesale. There's a group called DEHTA (Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals) in the area that gives you quests to go kill people who are slaughtering animals in the zone. The whole thing's pretty ridiculous.
In completely unrelated news, I went breakfast with people today at 6:30 and so far it's been an awesome day. Denny's has a buy one get one free deal going today, so I got breakfast and lunch for a little over $6. Maybe I should be getting up at 5:30 more often.
EDIT: Apparently through that whole mini-rant I forgot to link the actual event. Here's a LINK to the PETA site for it.
Peanut butter pretzel sandwiches
First off, these peanut butter pretzel sandwich things are pretty much awesome. I'd heard other people say they liked them and I'm pretty hungry (underestimated how hungry I would be for lunch) so I figured I'd try them. Also, tea is pretty much always a good idea. I don't think I've tried the pretzel + peanut butter thing before, but apparently I'll be doing it more often.
Second, I'm getting pretty antsy in this rotation. I'm really ready to move back to the lab that I was in for my second rotation. It's almost to the point that I'm getting bored of being in front of a computer during my free time, which is REALLY hard to do. Just until the end of the month.
...and the beginning of another week.
Holy wow I suck at this whole going to bed at a reasonable time thing. I started watching Naruto on Hulu this weekend and I'm up to episode 42 now... I don't really want to know how much time I've sunk into it, but they're about 23 minutes each, less if you take away the beginning and end that I've been skipping for the last 15 or so. Apparently it's really addictive. Anyway, time for sleep now.
End of another weekend
So I guess it's Sunday night again. More classes and lab work in store for this week, but not too much that's out of the ordinary. I spent some time working on bioinformatics homework today with a group of people from class... we spend 3 and a half hours on it and didn't get it finished. I'm not really sure how long the professor thought it would take, but I'm pretty sure he meant for us to be able to finish it in less time than that. We're going to talk to him tomorrow during/after class to make sure we're on the right track before we dump more time into it. I'm taking Friday off of work for Easter though, so I might actually end up leaving here Thursday night and having Friday, Saturday, and part of Sunday at home next weekend. Should be good times.
Just got a tweet from someone in Ann Arbor talking about how hard it was snowing, looked out the window, and realized it's snowing fairly hard. If you look at the ground it looks like it's pouring rain, but it's snow coming down. Kind of strange. And apparently weather.com says it's going to be cold again tomorrow and Tuesday. I really wish this weather would just go to "warm spring" instead of "ehh, maybe spring, maybe still winter". I'd love for it to be about 60-65 and lows of 50 each night... probably won't happen, though, judging by how the seasons like to skip around in Michigan.
Just got a tweet from someone in Ann Arbor talking about how hard it was snowing, looked out the window, and realized it's snowing fairly hard. If you look at the ground it looks like it's pouring rain, but it's snow coming down. Kind of strange. And apparently weather.com says it's going to be cold again tomorrow and Tuesday. I really wish this weather would just go to "warm spring" instead of "ehh, maybe spring, maybe still winter". I'd love for it to be about 60-65 and lows of 50 each night... probably won't happen, though, judging by how the seasons like to skip around in Michigan.
Gamecube FTW
Just got back from video games with friend. Fun times. I met my brother's girlfriend today, which was pretty neat too. We went out for dinner (my brother, her, and me) at a really good Japanese restaurant in town and now I'm a bit sad that I don't have any food in the apartment. Time for grocery shopping tomorrow I guess. They were going to see the Lion King at the theater on campus, so hopefully it was a good show (apparently my brother had been hyping it). Anyway, time for bed now.
Whoops, missed post
Looks like I missed yesterday's update. Apparently one of the non-WoW people that reads this converted to a WoW person (at least temporarily, we'll see how quickly it consumes his life... er, free time). My mission has begun coming to fruition!
Ummm. Right.
April Fool's list
I figured that since I wanted to make a list of internet April Fool's jokes I may as well do it here. This post will expand as I find them or have people send them to me!
- First of all, the top 100 list from museumofhoaxes.com.
- Google's CADIE: A supposed artificial intelligence developed and recently released by Google. This one's pretty involved. If you go to her homepage there are other links to other Google April Fools stuff for today too. (Here's the full list of Google's hoaxes, one of which is upside-down Youtube)
- The obligatory WoW one. Blizzard typically does a good job with theirs. This one's a little small and it's really hidden, so I'm guessing there will be more later today.(EDIT: Here we go. Blizzard added three more joke posts to their homepage: the WoW Dance Battle, the Starcraft II Terra-tron, and the Diablo III Archivist class)
- Gamespot has five April Fool's articles up on their homepage. (1 2 3 4 5)
- "Milking whales not impossible"
- First of all, the top 100 list from museumofhoaxes.com.
- Google's CADIE: A supposed artificial intelligence developed and recently released by Google. This one's pretty involved. If you go to her homepage there are other links to other Google April Fools stuff for today too. (Here's the full list of Google's hoaxes, one of which is upside-down Youtube)
- The obligatory WoW one. Blizzard typically does a good job with theirs. This one's a little small and it's really hidden, so I'm guessing there will be more later today.(EDIT: Here we go. Blizzard added three more joke posts to their homepage: the WoW Dance Battle, the Starcraft II Terra-tron, and the Diablo III Archivist class)
- Gamespot has five April Fool's articles up on their homepage. (1 2 3 4 5)
- "Milking whales not impossible"
- The Guardian is converting to twitter and re-writing their news archives as tweets!
- Ben and Jerry's launched CyClone, a dairy company that sells only products from cloned cows! (You have to click the "See what the joke's about" link to get past the activism pop-up they've added. That part of it's not a joke, it's part of Ben and Jerry's Activism section of their website.)
- Ben and Jerry's launched CyClone, a dairy company that sells only products from cloned cows! (You have to click the "See what the joke's about" link to get past the activism pop-up they've added. That part of it's not a joke, it's part of Ben and Jerry's Activism section of their website.)