carolina wolverine

I'M BAAAAAAACK!

2007-05-23T09:40:00.000-05:00

At least for now!

Yesterday was my second committee meeting, and they approved my thesis proposal, which means my two-month confinement to Microsoft Word and PubMed is OVER!!! I am now free to move about the analysis servers again!

It's not that I didn't have time to keep up with this blog over the last few months. I did have time...but I felt majorly guilty when I thought about how much time this blog would take away from my prelim/real grant/class grant/thesis proposal. Especially because I had wanted to do some layout stuff, which I knew would take a huge chunk of time.

NOW THAT I HAVE MORE FREE TIME, I hope to blog here more often.

That said, here is something funny I found on the internets - I think Osama bin Laden could put up a banner ad that said, "CAROLINAWOLVERINE, I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE AND I AM GOING TO KILL YOU. LOVE, OSAMA." and it would still not scare me as much:

A thought and a picture

2007-03-06T22:10:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't updated this in forever. I'm still trying to figure out what I want to do with this blog - maybe nothing. Maybe it can just exist on the internets as one person's grad school experience. But for now, I leave you with this, and ask: Doesn't every little boy like to play Superman?

Yeah, he put it on himself. And yeah, I took it off. And yeah, he put it back on again.

Regional favorites

2007-02-15T21:20:00.000-06:00

I was shocked - SHOCKED - when I went to the grocery store the other day. Next to all the disgusting-looking Mardi Gras cakes were three familiar red and white boxes. I hadn't seen them in about 2 years, and I stopped looking for them after I couldn't find them last year. They were just sitting there, looking very sad, in the middle of a crowded grocery store bakery section. On the sides of the box, it said..... "PACZKI"!

You can read all about paczkis on Wikipedia, but essentially they are huge donuts filled with some kind of confection, usually fruit-based. Oh, and in Detroit we pronounce it POONCH-key. They're made for Mardi Gras, aka Fat Tuesday, because the idea is that you take all the bad-for-you baking ingredients you have, throw them all together, and produce these massively caloric pastry-meals. And by you, I mean you if you are Polish, because that's where the tradition comes from.

There are so many paczkis in Detroit at this time of year. You can place your order with your grocery store in advance. You can specify your fillings: raspberry, lemon, custard, apple, prune, etc. It is virtually guaranteed that you can go to lab and someone will have brought them in (usually the person who brings the beer for lab picnics and such.)

There are NO PACZKIS in St. Louis this time of year. Or any time of year. I bought some last year, but I only found a place that sold them after emailing the damn Polish Association of St. Louis or some crazy thing like that. The place they directed me to was about 45 minutes from my house. But I went, and got a dozen. They were small! Like REGULAR FILLED DONUTS. It was very sad. They did NOT look like the pictures on Wikipedia.

So when I saw these red and white boxes, I called my friend in Kansas and asked her if they had them there, because I was thinking of buying one of these sad little boxes and bringing it when I go visit her this weekend. She asked her carpool friends if they had paczkis in Kansas. Nope. They do not even know what they are.

So that got me thinking today about what regional specialties I've been exposed to. So far, here's my list:

Michigan

Paczkis

The South

Really nice Christmas decorations on houses. I cannot tell you how much it bothers me when people decorate the OUTSIDES, i.e. the PUBLIC parts of their property with like one string of small white lights and one string of jumbo multicolored lights. I am vomiting a little in my mouth just thinking about it. Where we used to live, there was a Bow Lady. You had to call her to order your bows. She made beautiful wreaths and garlands with nicely matched, broad ribbons on them that you could hang along your porch, porch lights, front door, etc. It was very classy and coordinated.
Luminaries. This kind of falls under the Christmas decoration, but it was for our whole neighborhood. You had to buy white paper bags for every yard or so of your curb. Then you filled those with some sand to weight them down, and put in little tealights to light up the bag. The whole neighborhood, again, had to do this and it was really pretty. Presumably the 1 Jewish family in the 300-family neighborhood played along.

St. Louis

Umm.....yeah.

So that's all I can really think of right now, but I'm sure there's more. At least for Michigan and the South...

Connection

2007-02-12T20:29:00.000-06:00

Conversation between Boyfriend and me late this afternoon:

Boyfriend: (something about me being pregnant - which I am NOT)

Me: OH MY GOD, that is so weird that you just said that. Because all day I've been forgetting to tell you about this dream I had last night. I had a dream that I had our baby.

Boyfriend: REALLY? Because *I* was thinking this morning about you having a baby.

Me: Yeah! That is sooo weird. And you know what? I had the baby in my bed. You were delivering it.

Boyfriend: Oh! Because in *my* dream, the baby was all messy, all covered in blood and placenta and stuff.

Me: Oh my god! In *my* dream, you were freaking out! You were all like "There is blood ALL OVER THE PLACE!" And I was thinking to myself, "I hope it's not soaking through to the mattress. This mattress cost $1000." But then I looked down and saw you were totally exaggerating.

Boyfriend: Wow.

Me: Oh, and it was a boy. With black hair.

Boyfriend: Yeah, in my dream it was a boy too! Wait, did it have only one eye?

Me: Uhhh.....

Sometimes this happens to Boyfriend and me. We have dreams with a lot of common elements, on the same night. Makes me wonder if there's some kind of subconscious connection between us. Or maybe there's something we talked about during the day that implanted in our minds and showed up in our dreams.

Either way, it's kind of fun.

Ooooh, I got a good one!

2007-02-08T16:03:00.000-06:00

Boyfriend got a job offer last Friday after doing a phone interview! He'll be getting more papers on the details of the actual offer later this week, but an HR person called to tell him his future salary (should he accept). It is SO MUCH MONEY. Well, to me. I am, after all, a grad student, so if you told me the annual salary of a landscaper or maybe a crossing guard, I would probably be similarly impressed. But really. It is like twice the stipend my school offers.

A while ago, one of my friends changed my phone's welcome message to say "Digger" because that was a nickname she called me. Boyfriend thought it would be funny to change it to "Gold Digger." It was actually HILARIOUS, because he had no money. He's since taken my phone a few times and altered it to successively read "Gold Digger 2.0," "Gold Digger 3.0," and now we are at "Gold Digger v4 b."

I think it's time for me to come out of beta version, don't you?!

When I don't think playing with DNA is awesome...

2007-02-05T00:21:00.000-06:00

I know I haven't written in a few days, and the posts I wrote before that were pretty devoid of meaningful material. Luckily, our government found a way to get me all riled up and ready to rant!
I saw this article in the New York Times today. Apparently, our government has seen fit to institute (under the auspices of protecting women from violence or something) DNA testing for every person arrested by federal authorities.

Here are some fabulous numbers in the article:
Number of arrests eligible for this testing last year: 340,000
Percent of those arrests that were for illegal immigration investigations: 70% (238,000)

Current backlog of DNA samples from REAL CRIMINALS: 150,000
Number of samples received by the databank per year: 96,000

So. With these new rules, DNA from POSSIBLE illegal immigrants (that's the other great thing - you don't have to be convicted, only arrested, to get into the system - and once you're in, good luck getting out!) would be queued alongside the DNAs from convicted rapists and murderers.

Not to mention, if I were raped or murdered in, say, 2009, it would take something like 4-5 years to get the samples analyzed with the current backlog. Since the databank hasn't gotten any more resources since 1998, I'm not too optimistic about any shrinkage of that backlog any time soon.

On that happy note, I had an otherwise great weekend and hope you all did too!

Let the relaxation begin!

2007-02-01T11:09:00.000-06:00

...at 3:30 or so. I checked my iCal last night before I fell asleep, and was surprised to see that I was scheduled to give a presentation in lab today at 3:00! For a long time, we talked about doing it next Monday, but I forgot that it was changed a couple weeks ago to today. So, I can't fully enjoy my state of post-prelim bliss until afterwards, but I have been planning for this state for FOREVER. Ok, 3 weeks.

Amazingly, my first day as a true PhD Candidate is the exact same day I get paid! WHAT A COINCIDENCE! If I weren't so sleepy, restraints would be required to keep me at my desk and away from the mall. I need to replace my makeup and buy excessive amounts of clothes. Poor, poor makeup ladies. I am going to ask them to put makeup on me, and it's going to require a lot of effort to cover up my prelim-induced raccoon eyes and splotchy skin.

After depleting my checking account, the plan is to get in bed and not come out for 3 days. I need to catch up on Gilmore Girls and other quality television available for download. Since I just bought this, I'll never have to leave my bed again.

I passed!

2007-01-31T16:26:00.001-06:00

T minus 18.5 hours...

2007-01-30T18:58:00.000-06:00

...until my prelim.

It's probably the hardest exam I'll ever take, and I get absolutely no reward for passing it. The only benefit I'll get (if I pass) is that I WON'T get kicked out of school, lose my funding, and be forced to live out of my car. For a few months anyway, after which Chase Auto Financing will repo it and declare me officially homeless.

Can you see how this exam isn't going to be very fun?

Wishes of luck (and monetary bribes for my examiners) are appreciated.

I think they gave me crazy pills instead of birth control.

2007-01-28T01:42:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, I went looking for my makeup for the first time in about a month, because I am breaking out again. I've kept my makeup in a basket on my bookshelf in my room for quite some time now, and when I travel, I'll take out the "essential" pieces.

Yesterday, none of the "essentials" were in the basket. There was the crap I never use, like an eyelash curler and some random brushes, but the stuff I use the most wasn't in there. 48 hours later, I've searched the whole apartment, I've called my mom and sister and had them search their house, and Boyfriend has searched his car. My makeup is gone.

I don't think anyone stole it, because what are the odds they'd take only my "essentials"? I don't think I lost it somewhere on my trip to Michigan for the holidays, because (1) I don't think I wore makeup when I was home, and (2) I have a vague memory of unpacking them when I got back here.

I also have a vague memory in which I'm looking at the basket and thinking, "I want to put my makeup in a different place." For the last half hour or so, I've tried to figure out what place I might have meant. In a bag? If so, is it clear or colored? In a box? In a bowl? In a cupboard? Alas, none of the bags, boxes, bowls, or cupboards in my house have my makeup in them!!!

I can think of only one conclusion: I sleepwalk. Glamorously. This would also explain the inexplicable losses of both my favorite lip gloss (about 6 months or a year ago) and my expensive watch (September 2005).

Any other explanations/conspiracy theories are more than welcome. The crazier the better, because that's obviously what I need more of - the crazy.

I guess Macy's tubes are all full.

2007-01-25T23:29:00.000-06:00

I was looking online to buy a pair of slippers similar to a pair I gifted to someone for Christmas. I went to Macys.com and get this crap:

That picture probably isn't going to turn out very well, but the text says:

"Well be right with you.

It's a little crowded in here right now, and to make sure everyone enjoys shopping with us, we're asking new visitors to wait here a few moments while other shoppers finish up. We'll refresh your browser and welcome you in momentarily. Thanks for your patience!"

How ridiculous is that? In a REAL STORE you never have to wait because it's too full. OK, maybe sometimes. But I'm pretty sure Macy's isn't selling bargain-price Vera Wang wedding gowns. Or life-time supplies of brownie sundaes. Because I would totally wait in line for that.

Jinx!

2007-01-23T14:50:00.000-06:00

I was going to wait till after the prelim (next Wednesday) to update this, but I thought Nooooooo, I should just post a QUICK UPDATE.

So I went to log in, and Blogger FORCED ME to upgrade to the new Blogger. I was going to do this anyway - I just wasn't ready yet! Waaaaah! Watch me whine!

In other exciting pre-prelim news, I think I am going to watch a WHOLE HOUR of TV tonight, AND drink a beer at dinner afterwards. This is craziness.

When being an asshole is a good thing...

2007-01-13T16:22:00.000-06:00

I've been studying a lot for my prelim lately, and by studying, I mean making flashcards. Which really shouldn't count as studying, because I'm not so much learning as I am mindlessly copying. But I digress. It's difficult for me to summon the energy or drive to do so much studying - other than the 2 weeks before I took the GRE subject test (and the 3 days before I took the general GRE), this is probably the most I've ever studied. And it's hard. But I've had some help.

I've noticed that a certain little attitude has started to develop in my mind. You know your conscience is depicted as a little angel, and temptation is depicted as a little devil? I picture this attitude as a 50-year-old white guy with glasses, wearing a white coat. He says, "I am working on weekends and studying non-stop...because this is a sign that I am IMPORTANT and VERY SMART. Not everyone can have these kinds of opportunities, you know. Only VERY SMART people like myself can survive in a field that requires this much studying and mental capacity."

Hopefully my increased dependency on this attitude as I study in the coming weeks won't put me too far down the road to being a complete academic asshole.

Worst. Plan. Evah.

2007-01-10T20:15:00.000-06:00

First of all - I think I recall, from my days as a young schoolgirl, hearing something about "checks and balances"? About "three branches of government"? I'm pretty sure this shit is on the citizenship test. However, our current resident aliens probably can't tell that we actually have such systems, since the Decider in Chief can at any time convene a press conference and announce some crap like that which he pulled out of his ass tonight.

He's not even done with his speech, and I can already tell this is the worst plan ever, for 3 reasons.

It's all about securing Baghdad. If a fight erupts between two boys on the playground at school, does the principal deploy all the teachers to run out and SECURE THE BLACKTOP?
It's also all about American troops being "embedded" with Iraqi troops. Last time I checked, the American armed forces had about 4 guys who speak Arabic. How will this embedded tag-team peacekeeping work? Lots of motioning with guns, I assume, complete with mime. I imagine an exchange like this:

American guy: (Motions with gun, points to creepy-looking maybe-terrorist.)
Iraqi guy: (Nods)
American guy: (Shoots maybe-terrorist)
Iraqi guy: (Nods)

Alternatively, we have this ending:
Iraqi guy: (Falls to the ground weeping because the previously-mentioned nod was to signify that this guy's cool, he's my brother, yo.)

Did I mention he still says "Nuc-u-ler"? If he wants to show me he's learned from his mistakes, maybe he should start there...

Oh, and I finally updated the "Blogs I Read" on the right. I tend to only read a few at a time (as many as will fit in my Firefox Bookmarks Toolbar), so the list rotates.

White and nerdy...

2007-01-09T16:11:00.000-06:00

After delighting in the news about the iPhone, a product I have only been waiting for since BEFORE I WAS BORN*, fear set in. Fear that I can't possibly contain my excitement about such a product. Fear that I'm going to blab nonstop to everyone I know about how fabulous it is. And fear that they would obviously (correctly) conclude that I am a HUGE NERD as a result.

Then, while searching for a keyword related to my research, I found this blog post. Thank god I'm not the world's biggest nerd. I obviously get how fantastic it is to finish one's thesis, and I concede that the act of doing so probably clouds judgment and induces the kind of hyperbole contained in that post. But, "best things since sliced bread"? Come on - research is fun, but not THAT fun. It must have been written by a master's student - no one can spend 5 years on thesis research for a PhD and still feel that excited.

*Someday I'll map an "affinity for Apple products" gene, ok? And...here's proof of my Apple-from-an-early-age street cred. My dad scanned the photo in when he gave me my first laptop, which unfortunately was not an Apple.

MV - Martha's Vineyard, holla back!

2007-01-08T13:02:00.000-06:00

Ok, though I have been super productive this morning, I did take the time out to view this film-making masterpiece. I can't imagine how the product advertised would taste good AT ALL, but I might be willing to try it just because of the ad....

A few notes before I disappear into prelim-land...

2007-01-07T20:27:00.000-06:00

I now have a date for my prelim - January 31st. That knowledge, coupled with the fact that I wasn't able to study much at home due to unforeseen responsibilities with Sister, means that I am now in major crunch time mode. As a result, blogging frequency may decline. I'm hoping to redo my template and switch to the new Blogger once prelims are over. In that vein, here's another categorized post:

BOYFRIEND: has a temporary job. His professor from his design class last semester asked him to be a teaching assistant this semester for the class. He's taken the position, so he can start paying off loans (and supporting his gadget habit) now. Meanwhile, he heard that one of the jobs he interviewed for last month is still unfilled, and that he is a "strong candidate" or something like that. Yay!

SISTER: was in the hospital again before Christmas and then got outpatient treatment over the Christmas week and the week after that. She's better again, and they might switch to giving her "maintenance" treatment.

LAB: I have been having major lab separation anxiety over vacation. Well, not really. It's more the nagging feeling that I *should* be worried about missing lab. I'm going back tomorrow....sigh...

Feeling (maize and) Blue

2007-01-01T23:14:00.000-06:00

I'm one of those people who doesn't like to get emotionally invested in something unless I think there's a decent probability of success. I don't like to play sports. I'm not a fan of cooking. I stick to what I know - academics. But you know one other thing I do? I watch Michigan football.

My freshman year I couldn't afford season tickets, and my sophomore year none of my friends wanted them. After wandering around the ghost town that is Ann Arbor on 6 Football Saturdays that year, I decided to sign up with a few friends for tickets for the next year - the 2003-2004 season.

What a great season - the last home game was a win over the #4 Buckeyes, and my friends and I rushed the field. Elated, we booked tickets to LA for the Rose Bowl. Luckily, our flight arrived the 31st and left January 5th or so. If we'd scheduled the bowl game towards the end of the trip, we wouldn't have had time to get $12 manicure/pedicures to ease our depression. The worst thing about that game wasn't the USC fans, or my seat, or the fact that getting to and from the stadium using LA public transportation took the better part of a day. It was that during the whole game, not even once was Michigan ahead. Not even once could I get excited or hopeful. So all that hope that had been building, since the win over the Buckeyes? Dashed from the first quarter.

Today, when coverage started and they showed the aerials shots of the Rose Bowl, I said, "I was there!" When they showed halftime coverage of that arrogant fake Trojan soldier shoving a sword into the turf, I said, "I remember hating him!" When the game was over, I said, "I remember knowing how badly it hurts to watch a team you love lose for 60 minutes, and how it feels when you realize that your team has to wait 8 months to have a chance to play again."

The thing is, I'm not an unreasonable fan - I couldn't have expected you to win. But I hoped for it. And I did expect for you to try, 100%. Lloyd, I expected you to go all out. Mike, I expected you to show some creativity, some guts, something special you've made just for this game. By the way, is there a reason I didn't see any great trick plays this season? I would have liked that. It might have helped today. Ron, I expected you to make your players fierce. By the way, is there a reason Morgan Trent might as well have been wearing a USC jersey, and still played the whole game?

Enough with the snarkiness. That's not why I'm writing this. I just needed to explain something to the Wolverines. I needed to explain how I feel right now. The reason I watch Michigan football is that honestly, I always believe there's a good chance for success. I knew there was today. I placed all my hope and faith in you, Wolverines. I was disappointed today, and frustrated. The frustration will pass, as it always does, the the disappointment will stay. I'm disappointed now, I'll be disappointed tomorrow, and I'll be disappointed in April, June, and August. You broke my heart today, Wolverines. Please take better care of it next year?

Love,

Carolina Wolverine

Description of post content using a fixed ontology: A trial run

2006-12-25T22:26:00.000-06:00

I've been thinking of switching to the new version of Blogger, which used to be a beta version. In the new version, you can have categories for your posts, and part of the reason I haven't switched yet is because I'll have to develop categories. Here's my shot at defining a few categories with which I could define this post.

FAMILY: About that roller coaster ride I talked about in my last post...it has been a nice, smooth ride so far. A tiny bit scary, in the way that makes you think your heart has skipped a beat, and then makes that thought fly out of your mind seconds later. Sister's next ECT is tomorrow morning, and I expect things will only get better with these next few treatments.

FAMILY: This Christmas has been one of the most fun for me in recent memory. Not since I was a kid did I actually play with Christmas gifts all day. Today, that was partly due to Boyfriend's present to me of an extra Wii controller set, and partly due to the present I got for Sister, a Nancy Drew computer game. It was nice that we got to play the Nancy Drew game together. She was active, but not overactive, and we complemented each other well. I navigated with the mouse, she solved puzzles.

BOYFRIEND: One annoyance I keep forgetting about when I come home is that Mother is not, shall we say, enthused, about my relationship with Boyfriend. She absolutely flipped out when we started dating and getting serious. I don't think she is racist, but she might have some subconscious prejudices that she doesn't realize. Her main argument when we started dating was "the children." In other words, if we got married and procreated, our children would be of mixed ethnicity and therefore would be relegated to the outskirts of society much like lepers and other mutants. Anyway, even now she'll continually throw things into the conversation that remind me that she is not a huge fan of Boyfriend, even though she's very nice to him when he's around. Case in point: last night, sister says, "So, how is it that Boyfriend hasn't asked you to marry him yet?" I was about to explain that Boyfriend can't even think about that because he can't afford a ring yet, but Mother asks, "Do we even want her and Boyfriend to get married?" Sister, fabulously, jumps in and says, "Yes! I like Boyfriend! I want to be the sister-in-law!" Love that. I also think that Mother thinks that Boyfriend is too much like my father. Somehow I think she believes that if Boyfriend likes tools but doesn't like dancing, then he will also cheat on me after 19 years of marriage with some white trailer trash.

SCHOOL: I'm starting to feel anxious about spending so much time away from lab. I know regular staff people are going to work tomorrow - I should be working too. I was waiting till after Christmas to study for my prelim - maybe I'll start that tomorrow. But still - I should be at my desk. Major major guilt trip. Sigh. Oh. And I might also want to quit school and open a tea house with Boyfriend, but since that's not financially possible for us right now, it'll have to wait a few years.

I guess that's not too hard...new Blogger, here I come? I am predicting a spell of prelim procrastination in my future.....mwa ha ha ha!

tick-tick-tick-tick-tick....

2006-12-22T19:30:00.000-06:00

It's like I've boarded a roller coaster, blindfolded, and I can hear that my car is ascending a hill of some sort. I can't see the layout of the tracks ahead.

Sister came home from the hospital about an hour ago. She received 6 ECT treatments in the hospital, and then a judge allowed her to go home (she tried to sign herself out, so they had to allow her to go to court to get herself released.) She'll get three more next week on an outpatient basis, and Mother is picking up some prescriptions that might get us through the nights as well. Hopefully the ECT will work as well as it did last time, and we'll know by the end of next week if it did or not.

Until then, I'm just holding on and holding my breath...

D is for...

2006-12-19T22:30:00.000-06:00

A) Depressed
B) Discouraged
C) Disillusioned
D) All of the above

Answer (D) is also known as "the way I felt after my committee meeting." I went into the meeting naively expecting that my efforts would be applauded - after all, that's what happens when I confront an academic task, right? I give my take on something, and I'm told that I'm academically fabulous, right? Wrong. This was really the first time that I've felt truly mediocre.

The research I've been doing for the last 5 months or so was deemed "cute." I was asked, "So...what do you want to do with this research? Do you want to publish it?" No - I did it because it's my long-standing desire to do work that is unappreciated and unrecognized by the scientific community. Of course I want to publish it! At least somewhere! Even if it's in the Journal of Crappy Results!

I was also asked, as the very last question of the meeting, "Are you sure that you want to do this research? Because you know you can always change labs, right?" This is the question I was really whining to Boyfriend about for hours after the meeting. I suppose my committee doesn't know me as a person, but I am NOT one of those people who doesn't know what she wants. I always know what I want (unless it requires choosing a color for my stand mixer - that took me 8 months), and as long as it doesn't require an incredibly outrageous amount of inconvenience on my part, I try to get what I want. The weekend before I moved to St. Louis consisted of me getting my new car from the Upper Peninsula, driving it to Chicago so that I could get my new bedroom furniture from Ikea, and driving back to Ann Arbor. All in one day. The other reason that question bothered me is that it made me feel unwanted. Or unneeded. There was no qualification, no "You would be great at this work, but..." Quite harrowing.

In fact, the meeting was so harrowing that (for the first time in almost a year) my face completely broke out. Over the course of those two hours alone. I had one new zit before the meeting, which I attributed to being stressed out about the meeting. Two hours later, I had 10 more. Boyfriend walked into the room after all the professors left, and he goes, "What happened to your face?" This is what happened to my face:

It's now more than 24 hours after the meeting. Though my face still looks like deep fried shit, I've started to change my views on research, science, and life in general. It'll take me a little while, but I'm getting to an emotional place that I think will make me more productive. I think I've officially entered the realm of Somewhat Cynical Graduate Student, which is quite common. It will just take some getting used to...

T minus 2

2006-12-16T13:04:00.000-06:00

In the subject line for this pots, 2 represents "two days."

I suppose T could represent "Thesis committee meeting," but really it represents "Terror."

Yesterday I was really flipping out - there were so many times when I started to practice my presentation, got about 1/3 of the way through, and decided that there were too many things that needed changing for me to continue. I'd change the ones I could remember, and then start over, only to stop again 1/3 of the way through.

After taking a break to go grocery shopping and to eat a bag of popcorn and 2 pop-tarts, I bought a can of pop*, made 2 more pop-tarts, and set out to try again. This time I got a lot more distracted and ended up working on the actual program instead of working on the slides about the program. I guess this was a good thing because it led me to thinking of a way I could make that first 1/3 more cohesive. I changed some slides and ended up cutting about 1/6th of the slides that I originally had. It was too long anyway. Finally, I had one good run-through of the talk.

I'm worried about something though...when I give presentations to small groups, I like to be pretty informal in the way I speak. I feel like standing at the front of a room and lecturing will make people bored. At least, it makes people like me bored. I don't go around saying "dude" or "like" when I'm presenting to these small groups, but part of me is worried that someone will be judging me and my research based on my presentation style alone. Oh well.

Anyway, all the worrying is going to have to be put on hold until Monday morning. I'm leaving tonight to go to Michigan for Boyfriend's graduation! I'll come back Monday morning, and then the worrying will go into warp speed...

I knew I should have kept up my Chinese!!!

2006-12-14T09:23:00.000-06:00

Met with Main Local Adviser yesterday to talk about my project. I'm not sure if he had previously forgotten when I was working on, but he seemed quite excited to talk about it yesterday. In the middle of our meeting, he mentioned that others who work here would have data that it would be interesting to run though the program I've been working on. So, we went to talk to another faculty member, and then later I went to talk to someone who works for that faculty member, and I got some data. Cool, right?

THEN, I met with the adviser I normally see. After my meeting with MLA, MLA and a bunch of other people went off to have a meeting about some huge project they are all working on. Regular adviser came back and thought it would be a great idea for me to analyze some of their data as well. The good news - this research is apparently going to be submitted very soon to a high-profile journal. The bad news - there are already people here working on an approach very similar to mine for analyzing the same data, except it's not automated. Or something. When I asked Adviser, "Does Other Faculty Person know that I'll be doing this analysis?" He said, "No. But yours is slightly different from OFP's analysis in this very extremely splitting-hairs subtle sort of way, so it shouldn't be a problem."

Right. It's not so much a problem (yet), but it's a little unnerving that I happen to work RIGHT NEXT TO OFP's group. This morning, OFP came to talk to one of them, and this is what I heard of the conversation:

OFP: "I think she has some medical background."
Other: "Blah blah blah" (in Mandarin)
OFP: "Blah blah blah bioinformatics blah blah blah"
Other: "Blah blah blah association blah blah blah"
OFP: "Blah blah"
Other: "Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah"

I really should have continued my Chinese classes in grad school....

I know they say he's "exciting," but...

2006-12-13T23:20:00.000-06:00

Last night, I had an incredibly vivid dream that started out with my high school friends and I attending a high school reunion. For some reason, the reunion started out at my old church in Michigan, but then it moved to a club/bar of some sort.

My friends and I were all dressed up - I had on a really cute black cocktail dress, and if I had experienced one of those "Am I dreaming?" moments while dreaming last night, my dream-self would immediately have responded "Have you seen your closet lately? Of course you are, child."

For some reason my friends and I went out this side door, to the (grass? concrete?) patio outside. And who should exit the club with us but Barack Obama. I lean back in the side door and yell to my friend, "Ohmygod! J! GET OUT HERE, BARACK OBAMA IS OUT HERE!"

And, just as I stepped back outside, do you know what that charming young senator did? He reached over and pushed back a strand of my hair that had fallen into my face.

Apparently, when dreaming I do not upgrade my maturity in the same way that I upgrade my wardrobe. I'm not sure that I was drinking in my dream, but I probably was, because I reacted by screeching, "Ohmygod! Obama, that was SO NICE OF YOU! YOU PUSHED BACK MY HAIR! I AM TOTALLY VOTING FOR YOU! SORRY, HILLARY!!!!"

At that point, my real self died of embarrassment and ended the dream. But it was a really nice dream, and I can't say that it didn't influence my political preferences for 2008....

My MacHeist experience

2006-12-12T23:31:00.000-06:00

Warning: Sweeping stereotypes ahead.

Usually, I think of myself as moderately geeky. I mean...

I know my way around Unix
I had my own website when I was in high school
I like to get my hands dirty with a few programming languages
Oh, and I'm a girl.

So compared to my fellow females, I suppose I'm in about the 99.9th percentile of nerdiness right there. But the sense I get from the things I read in the tech-related communities online is that, compared to most hard-core geeks (which are generally guys), I'm really not that nerdy. I mean...

I've never attempted a Linux installation and couldn't tell you the differences between any of the distributions (although from what I've read, for some reason, Ubuntu is the new black...)
I no longer have my own website (this doesn't count)
I've never had any desire to build my own computer
I don't go around finding the hottest new apps for my computer, and I certainly don't create any either.

Well....the last bullet was true until recently. I read on digg.com that there was this super-secret event that was going to take place online, and you could sign up in advance at this website, macheist.com. No one knew what it was or why they should sign up. Obviously, this appealed to me. Mystery! Intrigue! Without me having to leave my chair!

When it was later revealed to those who had pre-registered that this MacHeist thing was going to be a treasure hunt of sorts, I was sooooo psyched. I love puzzles. Especially the kinds that don't require me to leave my chair. And when I solved the first puzzle, you know what I got? A prize! A free game for my Mac, a game I had never heard of (and will probably never play). But hey, I'm in grad school...to quote one of my favorite shows, "If it's free, it's me - I don't turn down nothin' but my collar!"

So I kept on, and I got more free software from solving these puzzles - 17 applications that would have cost me $251.50 - for free! I downloaded all of them, installed some of them, and gave some of them a try. Soulver is one that I liked - as soon as I can convince my math tutor friend to install OS X on her old Mac, I'll make her download it to use with her students. Alarm Clock Pro is another great one that I've tried...same with Cha-Ching.

I had never heard of any of these apps before. I would never have bought them. But these nice people were giving me them for free, and I loved them! So I anxiously awaited the software bundle that was released at 9:00am Monday. It was going to contain lots of apps, and the price would be a steal. The MacHeist people didn't disappoint.

The bundle is 10 programs that normally cost $288.75, selling for $49 ($39 if you completed the treasure hunts like I did). It was the same story as with the other 17 free apps. I had never heard of them before, and I would never have bought them. Buuuut.....it was only $39! A sale! 80% off! And, $10 of that goes to charity! How could I resist?!?!

There's been some controversy about whether this helps the software developers or not, which is part of why I'm writing this. If they ever read this...thanks, guys (and girls?). I like these programs, and I'm glad I bought them. Even if I bankrupt myself in upgrade charges in the years to come. :)