zomg

someone needs to tell people to stop making webcomics. i do need to get things done besides read webcomics...

1100

this is my eleven hundredth post to this blog.

nothing more for right now; just that. i'm working on a science post, but it'll take awhile.* so right now, just an 1100 celebration.

*edit: i guess not so much.

noo shoos

and new socks. hooray for target.

asdf

don't talk to me about grades, man.

jesus and mo is the awesome.

also the awesome: i am now taking a class about nothing but calcium. we are going to learn about chromatin and transcription in biochemistry now. i have found a marker that is extremely close to my gene. i need to run more samples and confirm, but it looks solid. yay!

i'm a noid today

maybe it's the lack of sunshine, or maybe it's just random fluctuations, but i have to say that today was a high for me on the annoy-o-meter. it may have started in my biochem section, which is a complete waste of 50 minutes because my ta doesn't know what the hell he's talking about and doesn't really care, and because there's one Annoying Question Girl in my section (you know the type). it doesn't help that she speaks in this super-breathy, high-pitched voice that is Just. So. Subservient. it makes my skin crawl. AND! she raises her hand! who does that??? in a section of less than 10 people, don't you think you could just... say it? waaaaaagh.

it may have been the biochem section, or it could also have started earlier, when i was loading a gel and it just ripped in half. straight down the bottom row of wells. fortunately i noticed before i filled it with my DNA samples; but i wasn't able to load the bottom row of the gel, so i only got half the data i should have, and have to run another gel tomorrow to get the other half.

it also could have been earlier when i was setting up the PCR that i later loaded into a gel. i was going through the freezer finding all the DNA samples i needed, when a rack of tubes that had been just stuck onto a shelf came crashing down, spilling tubes everywhere. tubes go in boxes before they go in the freezer, or at least they should in order to prevent accidents like that one. the culprit was politely informed of the situation, but - of course, because this is seattle and we all do this - i was super-nice about it, though 30 minutes later i had been cursing and fuming. picking up 80 1.5-ml tubes that have scattered across the floor? not fun.

on the other hand, i did get data today, and the marker i got data from is very close to my mutation.... closer than any other i've tried so far. which is good. i need to run more samples to determine if it's on the other side of the mutation from my current closest marker, which would be good, or if it's on the same side but that much closer, which is actually also not bad. data is always good, especially when it doesn't make you go "WTF??"

what it boils down to is that i'm exhausted, mentally and emotionally. i have the urge go bury myself under the covers and let it all go away. but i have errands that aren't going to run themselves... sigh.

question...

...for anyone who maintains their own blog-like site and uses a client other than blogger:

if i wanted to maintain two blogs, one similar to this one, and one where i only publish items tagged with "science", would that be easy to do? it seems like it should be easy to do, but blogger won't let me. it also won't let me hide posts "below the fold", or at least without a cheap hack which i was unable to figure out... the hosting and the software is free which i do love, but i would like to have better functionality, as well as having two blogs, one of which simply displayed posts from the other site with specific tags.

any suggestions on what i can do? what clients are best, what web hosting companies don't suck? i *suck* at HTML... or at least i don't have 5 hours to spend plodding through CSS and XML.

the light season

until about 20 seconds ago, when it went behind a cloud, the evening sun was reflected off the office building into my apartment, for the first time since august.

there should be a word for this half of the year... it's not technically summer, but it's getting there.

i love seattle in the summer.

i am a perl goddess.

first programming assignment for genome informatics: done, with almost 2 days to spare.

total time to run program, which has order of O(m*n), on large test file: 58 minutes.

number of biochem midterms to study for: 1.
days until said midterm: 1.5.

days until graduation: 54.

order from chaos

i wonder what that is.

that thing. check it out!

i mean, wtf is that thing? it looks like some sort of alien molecule monster...

vaguely fulleresque, but is it designed or natural?

dude. its chlorine antennae are kind of cute, if improbable. and i KNOW nitrogen wouldn't bond like that... but it's still kinda nifty.



C14N4O2H12Cl4Br2

theobromide saturation

last night i wrote a nice lengthy, thoughtful post, and just as i went to publish it safari crashed. i'm only using safari because firefox 2 doesn't work on my machine - it just randomly hangs and refuses to force quit, and crashes the finder, so i have to hard reset - not cool. what's the deal, is my g4 architecture really that outdated? i know i could just roll back to firefox 1.5.8 or whatever, but i'm lazy, and safari works okay... but it's just little things. sigh. hopefully firefox 2.0.0.4 will work.....

so it's easter, which means i'm stuffed full of food and family and chocolate. halfway through my last cadbury creme egg... but not even halfway through the chocolate. hell, even the bunny has everything but the ears. i am really going to have to get into the habit of running. and i am seriously thinking of buying a bike, and have actually tried a couple of times on craigslist, but craigslist users are flakes. i'll probably pop in to recycled cycles next time it's sunny, if i don't hear back about the 54cm vintage sekai in "good condition" in the u-district in the next day or two.

my productive streak has slowed this weekend... i've gotten nearly nothing done. i found a paper that i perceived to be scooping my research, from 2000, online on saturday and have been trying to absorb the results and conclusions they draw. upon further reflection, it's not what my data is showing, so my story is still new, but it's got some solid precedence in the literature. which is good... i guess.

i'm starting to get a small sense of dread for graduation. it's dawned on me that after i graduate, both the university and my parents are going to stop giving me free money. so i need to find someone else to give me money... ideally to do my own research (under someone's mentorship, of course)...

tgimffa

success! i have no sinus headache today. :)

it's also a gorgeous day, all warm and sunny-like. i'm coming to the conclusion that it's high time i bought a bike. but then i wonder, will i actually ride it, or will it end up like all the other things with wheels that i buy and then use for a period of time and then grow tired of? maybe i should just bust out my old longboard and hit the streets with that. but the problem with a skateboard is that it's only more efficient than walking if you're going downhill. bikes can be used either direction.

i also need to get my scooter up and running, now that it's scooting weather.

looking back over that last post, i'm reminded of something my mom said once about a picture of me she found on the internet: "don't let anyone who doesn't know how pretty you are see that." so, just in case you weren't aware of the hotness that is me, i present my latest wall-art homage to narcissism:

in the background, that's a map of titan. fracking sweet.
in other, unrelated gripes: i hate that my cat drinks out of my water glasses which i leave sitting around. i just finished off a glass of water that had been sitting on my desk overnight, and now my tongue and esophagus are tingling (mild cat allergy). damn you and your antigens which cause my body to mount a histamine response!
in potty-training updates, we're moving along slowly but surely. she doesn't like the fact that there's now a big gaping hole in her litter box, especially since it's so dark in there. but she's getting used to it. my gripe is that now she can fling litter into the toilet, and i end up flushing quite a bit of litter. i guess it's some consolation that when we finish this i'll never have to buy litter again...

in which i refer to my cat's bathroom habits

So the Great Kitty Potty Training experiment is fully underway. I've had the citikitty doodad on my toilet for about a week and a half now, and I just took away her regular litter box on Wednesday, leaving her no option but to use the new litter box on the toilet. She's adapting pretty well... no accidents thus far (knock on wood). The only downside is that having litter at the height of the toilet means that she can throw it that much farther when she paws around in it. I think I've swept my bathroom every single day since Wednesday. But, she's using it consistently for both #1 and #2, so hurdle number 1 has been cleared. The next step, which I'm supposed to undertake on Wednesday, is to remove the innermost ring from the doodad so she has a hole to use. The hole gets gradually enlarged until there's just a ring of litter around the edge, and in the process, the cat is supposed to learn to stand on the seat, instead of in the litter, to use the potty. So, in about a month, we should be litter-free and fully toilet trained. I'll keep you posted on how it goes, because I know the internet is just dying to know what my cat's bathroom habits are.

so it's sunday before finals week, which means it's apartment-cleaning weekend. (isn't it funny how it always works that way?) it's also laundry weekend... though at this point it's just all rounded up into the hamper and waiting by the door with the detergent; i'm considering putting it off until tomorrow in favor of... uh... studying.

the fun part of laundry day is always what you get away with wearing. i spent most of the morning in yoga pants (after doing hardly any yoga at all this morning), and when it was finally time to get myself to the grocery store, i rounded up the nearest pair of semi-clean jeans - ones i haven't worn in months. it wasn't until i had them on that i remembered just how flared these pants are. i've pretty much sworn off boot-cut/flare jeans, seeing as that's the word from On High, and in the last 8 months i've acquired about 4 new pairs of pants, all in the straight/skinny leg tradition. so it was weird to me to see my tennis shoes swallowed by gaping 14" maws when i'm finally getting used to seeing the skinny cuff all scrunched around the tops.

it must be finals week; i'm waxing prosaic on my wardrobe. god save me.

one more thing: go tell Starbucks that you don't like their decision to put Discovery Institute crap on their cups. for details, see pharyngula - he's got a good rundown of the situation.

1,001!

i didn't even notice that my last post was the 1,000th to this blog.

new pictures

new pictures up on my flickr site - i know, it's been forever. i've been taking mad pics, but not having internet at home* cripples my ability to upload them.


me and my little bear-kitty. :)

oh, also: just wanted to send out a teeny bit of condolence towards jared and tessa for the loss of their kitties. not TOO much condolence, mind you, since i still Officially Dislike both of them**, but maxwell and edward used to be my kitties too, so i'm sorry they're gone.

*do i mention this in every post? i think i do. i should shut up and order the intarweb, shouldn't i?

**though this might expire in a few weeks - i find it hard to hold a grudge for more than a year, especially when i am So Over it all. whatev.

suddenly it's 2007.

so it's been awhile... and it's a new year, and i completely missed a whole month of blog-posting. ah well. today marks the start of winter quarter, and i'm taking a full(er) load (than last quarter) - 3 real classes (2 lectures, 1 lab) plus research. whee.

maybe i'll start posting more once i break down and buy the internet. i think i might be able to squeeze a clearwire subscription into my monthly budget... but i'm delaying so i can think about it some more. especially since i want to upgrade to a more expensive phone plan (and give cingular the big fuck-you).

blergh.