Well here's a short update. First, a LINK. I feel like my mom might have threatened to sell/trade/give away my brother and I when we were younger and fighting. Maybe that would have come in handy!
Second, my disappointment for the day. I made some chicken soup with some stock that my parents brought when they visited over the weekend. It's pretty good and definitely good for more meals over the next couple of days. When I tried it after it was done, though, I realized something. I don't feel like soup today. I guess it's cereal for dinner, then!
Busy busy...
So... yeah. It's been a busy couple of days followed by a not-really-busy-at-all couple of days. Thursday and Friday were basically work from 8:30 or 9 to 5 with birthday stuff afterwards (happy birthday to me on the 26th... doesn't really feel different to be 23 instead of 22).
Thursday was dinner at Mongolian BBQ (woohoo for free dinner coupon, boo for not knowing it was unlimited until AFTERWARDS) and Transformers at the IMAX. That was very large and involved much headturning because of how fairly close to the screen we were. All in all, a very good afternoon/evening/night which went until about 1am.
Friday was Holland. Basically I got off work at 5 (about an hour after I wanted to) and drove to Holland (about an hour and a half), had dinner at CityVu, which is a pretty nice restaurant where we went for dinner LAST year as well, almost went to a musical, but didn't because of tickets (or rather, the lack thereof), saw awesome people at the theater before we left (if only for a few minutes), played Mario Kart Wii and a bit of Guitar Hero, had cake, played teledraw, and drove home. That was a very long sentence, but also a very good night (which ended at about 2am by the time I got home).
Yesterday was going out to lunch with my parents and showing them around campus (as my mom put it, "it's nice to see it at the beginning, rather than at the end," since I didn't show them around the Science building and the various labs I was in until graduation at Hope). Also a nice few hours (it's always good to see my parents), and they brought birthday presents!
The rest of yesterday and today have basically just been bouncing from game to game since I got new ones for my birthday. It makes it hard to focus on one because I want to play them ALL, all at the same time. Oh well, it'll settle down eventually. Now... maybe I should get some dinner.
Oh maybe I'll make THESE this week.
Thursday was dinner at Mongolian BBQ (woohoo for free dinner coupon, boo for not knowing it was unlimited until AFTERWARDS) and Transformers at the IMAX. That was very large and involved much headturning because of how fairly close to the screen we were. All in all, a very good afternoon/evening/night which went until about 1am.
Friday was Holland. Basically I got off work at 5 (about an hour after I wanted to) and drove to Holland (about an hour and a half), had dinner at CityVu, which is a pretty nice restaurant where we went for dinner LAST year as well, almost went to a musical, but didn't because of tickets (or rather, the lack thereof), saw awesome people at the theater before we left (if only for a few minutes), played Mario Kart Wii and a bit of Guitar Hero, had cake, played teledraw, and drove home. That was a very long sentence, but also a very good night (which ended at about 2am by the time I got home).
Yesterday was going out to lunch with my parents and showing them around campus (as my mom put it, "it's nice to see it at the beginning, rather than at the end," since I didn't show them around the Science building and the various labs I was in until graduation at Hope). Also a nice few hours (it's always good to see my parents), and they brought birthday presents!
The rest of yesterday and today have basically just been bouncing from game to game since I got new ones for my birthday. It makes it hard to focus on one because I want to play them ALL, all at the same time. Oh well, it'll settle down eventually. Now... maybe I should get some dinner.
Oh maybe I'll make THESE this week.
Would evolution run faster...
... if our planet was closer to the center of the galaxy?
(This post has a fair amount of stuff that probably isn't all that interesting if you don't have a bit of a science background)
That was a question posed on twitter last night that I missed until just now. I tweeted my responses, then looked into the responses that other people had sent. Mine were:
"... It's really hard to say. Depending on who you talk to, even the mutation rate/rate of error repair is tuned by evolution"
"so it's possible that even with more radiation the mutation rate would be the same or even lower."
"if life from Earth was moved closer to the center of the galaxy, then yes, probably faster evolution, but also a lot of death."
My responses assume that the cosmic radiation would actually be higher and that it's a significant enough amount to actually cause mutations. If not, the whole discussion's moot anyway. Some of the others were:
"Cosmic rays seldom reach the ground, which is where evolution usually occurs. I think fast food is a better accelerant."
"isn't that from starship troopers?" (I don't know... maybe it is? I need to see that movie)
"Perhaps, but not due to cosmic rays. It would be due to our player having played through the game three times already." (I kind of like the idea of us all being part of a big game for some reason... and that the player could be bored and boost mutation rate to just see what happens.)
and of course: "CROCODUCK!" (which... well... I have no idea what that's about, but just imagine a cross between a crocodile and a duck and it can be pretty funny).
Anyway, that's how twitter can be used, successfully or not, so start a discussion on something. There were a bunch of good responses from people who knew what they were talking about, but those tended to be multiple tweets long and... well... you can go do a twitter search for @dresdencodak if you want to read those. They're not really much fun unless you want to get a bit of a brain exercise. The general consensus is "no," in case you're wondering.
(This post has a fair amount of stuff that probably isn't all that interesting if you don't have a bit of a science background)
That was a question posed on twitter last night that I missed until just now. I tweeted my responses, then looked into the responses that other people had sent. Mine were:
"... It's really hard to say. Depending on who you talk to, even the mutation rate/rate of error repair is tuned by evolution"
"so it's possible that even with more radiation the mutation rate would be the same or even lower."
"if life from Earth was moved closer to the center of the galaxy, then yes, probably faster evolution, but also a lot of death."
My responses assume that the cosmic radiation would actually be higher and that it's a significant enough amount to actually cause mutations. If not, the whole discussion's moot anyway. Some of the others were:
"Cosmic rays seldom reach the ground, which is where evolution usually occurs. I think fast food is a better accelerant."
"isn't that from starship troopers?" (I don't know... maybe it is? I need to see that movie)
"Perhaps, but not due to cosmic rays. It would be due to our player having played through the game three times already." (I kind of like the idea of us all being part of a big game for some reason... and that the player could be bored and boost mutation rate to just see what happens.)
and of course: "CROCODUCK!" (which... well... I have no idea what that's about, but just imagine a cross between a crocodile and a duck and it can be pretty funny).
Anyway, that's how twitter can be used, successfully or not, so start a discussion on something. There were a bunch of good responses from people who knew what they were talking about, but those tended to be multiple tweets long and... well... you can go do a twitter search for @dresdencodak if you want to read those. They're not really much fun unless you want to get a bit of a brain exercise. The general consensus is "no," in case you're wondering.
I got an upgrade!
Apparently they're updating the Genetics website this week and I'm getting upgraded from rotation student to regular old "current student." This means I get put in a category (apparently the closest one is "Insect & Bacterial Model Systems" even though I'm very much NOT in a model system) and I get a Research Area under my name! ...that basically means I have to think of a way to sum up my thesis project (which still isn't well defined to ME) in 5 words or less. I picked "Directed Bacterial Evolution" but that's just so... vague. Oh well.
I have some pictures that I wanted to put on here at some point, but my desktop doesn't have a way to get them off of my phone and I'm going to bed half an hour ago so I don't really want to start up my laptop. I guess that's something for tomorrow! Hmm... maybe...
It's WoWshots time! Just a few quick ones. First is a friend looking awesome (in a way only elves really can) in his horribly mismatched gear and doing his Napoleon Dynamite dance (you'll just have to trust me on that since the screenshot doesn't really... move).
Second is my newest flying "mount," a Magnificent Flying Carpet. And, just so you can fully comprehend the awesomeness of it, here's the tooltip, complete with Aladdin reference!
I have some pictures that I wanted to put on here at some point, but my desktop doesn't have a way to get them off of my phone and I'm going to bed half an hour ago so I don't really want to start up my laptop. I guess that's something for tomorrow! Hmm... maybe...
It's WoWshots time! Just a few quick ones. First is a friend looking awesome (in a way only elves really can) in his horribly mismatched gear and doing his Napoleon Dynamite dance (you'll just have to trust me on that since the screenshot doesn't really... move).
Second is my newest flying "mount," a Magnificent Flying Carpet. And, just so you can fully comprehend the awesomeness of it, here's the tooltip, complete with Aladdin reference!
Huh
Looks like it's been over a week since any sort of update as to my actual life! Let's remedy that a bit. There honestly hasn't been a lot of new things happening. I think this is going to effectively be a bullet list of random stuff that comes to mind about what's been going on with me, so sorry for the lack of transitions between paragraphs =P.
Lab work's working pretty ok. I got my main project to proceed further, which is always nice. Things are growing on new sugars and they're starting to evolve how I want them to, so now it's just a matter of time. The only problem is that the side project I'm working on kind of stalled. I have a couple of other things to try before I'm really stuck, though, so I'm hoping one of them will work.
My roommate's cat's been a bit more annoying the past couple of days than she normally is. She has a tendency to decide she wants to get into my room at 4am and is fairly vocal about it. I don't know if she normally does this and I'm just waking up to it now or what the deal is, but oh well. Last night was better than the night before that so maybe I was just a lighter sleeper that night.
Apparently Jimmy Johns has $1 sandwiches for lunch today, so I think that's the plan. Geez... I just realized that there's an interesting trail to follow to find where I got that info though. I heard from a friend online last night who heard from her sister's husband on Facebook who heard about it on Jimmy John's Facebook page where they were telling people about the promotion (this was initially longer... but I found out it wasn't as convoluted as I thought). The internet can be a pretty neat thing. (which reminds me... on Twitter someone mentioned something about Web2.0 coming to a close and 3.0 being not far off. That article makes it sounds pretty cool, although howstuffworks.com is pretty cool overall.)
I guess our 1 year special deal period with comcast is up because our bill went up to a little over $100 for cable and internet this past month... I think my roommate said she was going to sort it out but I should probably see what the deal is with that and see if I can help, because that's waaay more than I want to pay.
Anyway, I think that's most of what's been going on with me. Also, I really thought the "Anonymous" comments were all from the same person, but not I'm not sure! It's kind of a puzzle and that's neat, but if you don't mind putting a name or some sort of identifier so I know who you are, that'd be awesome! I like knowing who's reading =).
Lab work's working pretty ok. I got my main project to proceed further, which is always nice. Things are growing on new sugars and they're starting to evolve how I want them to, so now it's just a matter of time. The only problem is that the side project I'm working on kind of stalled. I have a couple of other things to try before I'm really stuck, though, so I'm hoping one of them will work.
My roommate's cat's been a bit more annoying the past couple of days than she normally is. She has a tendency to decide she wants to get into my room at 4am and is fairly vocal about it. I don't know if she normally does this and I'm just waking up to it now or what the deal is, but oh well. Last night was better than the night before that so maybe I was just a lighter sleeper that night.
Apparently Jimmy Johns has $1 sandwiches for lunch today, so I think that's the plan. Geez... I just realized that there's an interesting trail to follow to find where I got that info though. I heard from a friend online last night who heard from her sister's husband on Facebook who heard about it on Jimmy John's Facebook page where they were telling people about the promotion (this was initially longer... but I found out it wasn't as convoluted as I thought). The internet can be a pretty neat thing. (which reminds me... on Twitter someone mentioned something about Web2.0 coming to a close and 3.0 being not far off. That article makes it sounds pretty cool, although howstuffworks.com is pretty cool overall.)
I guess our 1 year special deal period with comcast is up because our bill went up to a little over $100 for cable and internet this past month... I think my roommate said she was going to sort it out but I should probably see what the deal is with that and see if I can help, because that's waaay more than I want to pay.
I'm trying out a new set up to separate WoW stuff that's actually really easy now that I set it up. Hopefully it'll work and show you what to skip if you don't want to read about WoW!
I gave that Mtn Dew (anyone else think the name change is a little ridiculous?) game fuel WoW edition a try. I don't really know which flavor I like better, so I'm going to say Horde because the Horde's just better.
My newish paladin on WoW is... 65 I think now? Only 3 more levels before I can head to Northrend and do some of the new instances!
I gave that Mtn Dew (anyone else think the name change is a little ridiculous?) game fuel WoW edition a try. I don't really know which flavor I like better, so I'm going to say Horde because the Horde's just better.
My newish paladin on WoW is... 65 I think now? Only 3 more levels before I can head to Northrend and do some of the new instances!
Anyway, I think that's most of what's been going on with me. Also, I really thought the "Anonymous" comments were all from the same person, but not I'm not sure! It's kind of a puzzle and that's neat, but if you don't mind putting a name or some sort of identifier so I know who you are, that'd be awesome! I like knowing who's reading =).
Wow, poor guy
This is a fairly significant punctuation/teleprompter fail. At least it just looks like he kept going. I imagine if you were watching it live you'd think you had just misheard something.
Auto-tune the news
Twitter is pretty much awesome if only to help find things to post here! Today's link is to a relatively new thing popping up on Youtube: Auto-Tune the News. It's pretty awesome, minus the MSU bashing. There are four of them so far and I think the Katie Couric sections are probably my favorite, but the Hillary Clinton ones are pretty good too. I think their voices and speech patterns must just be phrased right and have a good pitch for editing. Or something.
Also, my lab stuff suddenly stopped working, but my professor said it was her fault, so I reordered some stuff and I'm going to try it again when that comes in.
Also, my lab stuff suddenly stopped working, but my professor said it was her fault, so I reordered some stuff and I'm going to try it again when that comes in.
On Owls and Porcupines
Apparently owls like getting their heads scratched as much as any other animal. Well, the ones that like getting their heads scratched anyway.
Also, baby porcupines appear to really like bananas. And they get hiccups sometimes too.
That website looks pretty awesome overall.
Also, baby porcupines appear to really like bananas. And they get hiccups sometimes too.
That website looks pretty awesome overall.
Bigger than Kologarn
I just found this awesome blog that, unfortunately, has very few posts. They're little short story things based on World of Warcraft, but this one's pretty funny regardless. It's about a quest you can do daily to raise your reputation with a group of walrus people (...and that sounds really ridiculous out of the context of WoW.)
Walrus: "Yeah. Don't worry. We're totally not going to eat the babies. But if you want to come back tomorrow and swipe us another sackful, that would be awesome."
Elder Walrus: "Hi. I'm a walrus. We're the good guys. I promise."
Player: "Okay."
Walrus: "There are some guys we don't like. Their village is up on that hill."
Player: "Okay."
Walrus: "So I've got this sack right here."
Player: "I see."
Walrus: "What you are going to do is take this sack over to their village and fill it with their babies. As many babies as you can steal, just go ahead and stuff them in this sack."
Player: "Uh, what?"
Walrus: "Sack full of babies. Bring me a sack full of babies. Like, a dozen."
Player: "Are you sure you don't want me to just bring back their poop?"
Walrus: "By the way, the guys we don't like are dog guys, so the babies you're stuffing in a sack are also puppies."
Player: "Seriously?"
Hammertime
Well, it's 5ish on Sunday already, somehow. Honestly I didn't do a heck of a lot this weekend. Yesterday there was a birthday party for a few of my friends that I went to for a few hours, which was a lot of fun. I got to see and kind of catch up with a bunch of people that I haven't really seen in a while, which is always good. Today I've mainly just been playing games and thinking about how I should do homework and now I'm starting the homework. There's a Genetics writing group for the first years that gets together now and then and we have little assignments to do before each one. This time we have to read an article and find a badly written paragraph. That's going to be kind of difficult.
And here's a link for today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxCnZ4Dp3c
And here's a link for today: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfxCnZ4Dp3c
Man decorates basement...
http://www.kentucky.com/147/story/532854.html
This story's kind of neat, but the pictures that go along with it are more impressive (to me anyway). Also, the link in the article to an artist's website has some kind of cool stuff if you want more Sharpie/paint pen pictures.
This story's kind of neat, but the pictures that go along with it are more impressive (to me anyway). Also, the link in the article to an artist's website has some kind of cool stuff if you want more Sharpie/paint pen pictures.
Tech breakdown
I've noticed my technology is beginning to break down... I think it might be getting to about the time where I should be replacing some of it. I just got a brand new desktop computer and that's running GREAT, but my laptop's having a couple of issues. It's getting slower, no matter how much I delete, scan, and defragment, and there's a line of dead pixels across the screen. Also, sometimes when I unplug it while it's on the screen goes black, even though the computer itself is still on. I thought that issue was fixed when I replaced the battery, but apparently not. My phone's also starting to get quirky. Overall it's actually holding up surprisingly well, considering the number of times I've dropped it or things like that, but every so often when it gets a bit of a shock (like being in a cargo pocket by my knee or something like that) the battery must get hit a little to hard and the phone shuts off. It doesn't happen often, since I tend to keep it fairly safe in a pocket, but every so often I go to use it and it's off with a mostly full battery. Eh, oh well. Oh, the last thing is my iPod headphones that are starting to get fairly typical wear and tear (the little rubber rings to keep them "comfortable" are wearing out and starting to fall off), but hopefully I'll have a replacement for them for my birthday!
Lab meeting time!
Lab meeting time!
Mini-rant
So I was writing a message to someone on Facebook to keep up to date and figured it'd make a pretty good post, so here's a chunk of that message! Enjoy some little revelations that I've had since I started grad school.
This is my first year at grad school and after (hopefully about) 4 more years I'll have a PhD. I realized after I started I probably should have join the MMG (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) program, but I got into a lab that's doing something cool, so that's alright. I'm really into the genetic engineering side of things and I'd like to apply it for some sort of bio-based solution (like bio-ethanol or bio-remediation) but I feel like the efforts being made now are kind of... fumbling and awkward. Maybe it's because they're directed by the government and kind of out of date, or maybe we're just not to the point where an efficient, concerted effort can be made.Yeah... so, that's that and I kind of want to just skip the next few years and develop technology today with next decade's scientific results. If only it were that easy...
Eventually I'll probably get into teaching and having a lab at a college, but every so often I read the news and think, "Hmm I should engineer a bacteria to help fix that," so I guess we'll see where I really end up. I feel like things change so fast that what I'm learning now may be obsolete in 5 or 10 years and newer, better methods might be the thing to do. I guess we'll see when we get there.
The Sims 3... comes tomorrow.
So I really thought I posted something today, but apparently I didn't, so I'll plug a website/podcast instead.
Howstuffworks.com is pretty awesome. They do a pretty good job of giving an overview of most things that you could be wondering about, and they're always writing more articles. They have a bunch of podcasts and blogs linked from the main site, but the one I really want to mention is the Stuff You Should Know podcast. The hosts (speakers?) are really fun to listen to and the podcasts are always interesting.
Anyway, that's that, now it's time for bed.
Howstuffworks.com is pretty awesome. They do a pretty good job of giving an overview of most things that you could be wondering about, and they're always writing more articles. They have a bunch of podcasts and blogs linked from the main site, but the one I really want to mention is the Stuff You Should Know podcast. The hosts (speakers?) are really fun to listen to and the podcasts are always interesting.
Anyway, that's that, now it's time for bed.
Literal Total Eclipse of the Heart
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGA
It's one of those music video remakes where they sing what's actually happening in the music video instead of the song's words. This one's pretty funny and the description on the side says there are 6 total (and I've only seen one of the others) so I've gotta track those down some time...
It's one of those music video remakes where they sing what's actually happening in the music video instead of the song's words. This one's pretty funny and the description on the side says there are 6 total (and I've only seen one of the others) so I've gotta track those down some time...
Hint: The Sims 3
Oooh guess what! Guess what! Guess what's coming out tomorrow!
And no, you don't get any more hints!
And no, you don't get any more hints!
It's like...
So it turns out that there are going to be more than one quote in this post!
"It’s like giving a man some explosives. No matter how restrained he normally is, he will find something to explode."
"It’s fun to wear a gamer shirt out in public and get knowing nods and smiles from the others that recognize what’s up. We’re a secret club. It just happens that our club is many millions strong."
"It’s like giving a man some explosives. No matter how restrained he normally is, he will find something to explode."
"It’s fun to wear a gamer shirt out in public and get knowing nods and smiles from the others that recognize what’s up. We’re a secret club. It just happens that our club is many millions strong."
*sigh*
There's an argument going on in the lab I'm in right now and one of the people just told the other one to go to Google and look it up. True, that's probably one of the fastest ways to find out who's right, but you'd think there'd be a more... scientific way to do it.
Either way, I'm glad there isn't this kind of tension in my lab.
Either way, I'm glad there isn't this kind of tension in my lab.