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[21 Nov 2009|07:50pm] |
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Alright so 4.5 hours in the lab today. Something screwed up and the agents didn't mix well enough. I may be able to use 1 of the 4 pieces I made, and I may have destroyed a mold in the process. Which makes this day almost a complete failure. FML. #firstworldcrises
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[21 Nov 2009|04:57pm] |
I did something with chlorotrimethylsilane that I probably shouldn't have done. It looks like it stained some wood which is now going into an oven at 80 C. Worst case scenario, it ignites and mixes with water, spraying hydrochloric acid all over the place and blasting the oven open, killing me slowly and painfully. What I'm hoping, and what I'm pretty sure will happen, is nothing. But I figure, either way, you guys would like to know. Because one day you might be improperly using chlorotrimethylsilane, and you'll want to know if it will kill you or not.
Update: Been baking for 20 minutes now and no explosions, so I think I'm safe!! Turns out wood is a crappy material to use, though, because it's hard to line up a sensor and a microchannel when you can't see the two together. Guess I'll get some clear plastic tomorrow! (but hopefully the chips will come out close enough anyway)
If you're curious, the total time to make 1 mold and 2 chips (4 layers for a 2-layer chip) is about 3.5 hours and change 4 hours. And then a couple days in the oven.
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[19 Nov 2009|04:02am] |
I went to check out the (cardio?) kickboxing group fitness class at the FAU gym today. I got there a bit late and the door was closed and locked. But I looked in the window and saw it was the dude instructing it and like 5 or 6 hotties. So I know where I'm gonna be next Wednesday, and I know I'm gonna be there early!
There's a thread on SA about ebaumsworld being liquidated. However, this is a year after it was sold to an idiot company for $15 million. So we just have to stew in our own rage I guess, that he did not get any comeuppance.
Now here's a video of a kitten getting in the way of a cop writing a ticket. :3 I don't know where that is that they have over a minute and a half of video. When I was pulled over I saw the officer for maybe 20 seconds and was able to barely squeeze out 2 sentences. Now I'm miffed and I have to watch that video again. I wish my cats were like that! Or maybe I don't.
It's 4 am now. I'm gonna try and get up at 9 am to get back on a decent schedule. Most likely I will turn off my alarm and roll back to bed, but damn, I have so much work to do.
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[18 Nov 2009|04:14pm] |
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omg looks like I'm getting a phone interview on Tuesday for the internship. That means this weekend I have to read up on the guy's work and publications. Excitement! My to-do list has like 25 things on it now.
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[18 Nov 2009|10:32am] |
I got a really nice $20 mouthguard last week for grappling and stuff, and last night I just got it fitted. And then I wondered why I spent $200 on a night guard. Maybe the stiffer plastic will last longer? I figure mouth guards aren't made to be worn like 8 hours a day. On the other hand, any time something is 'medical' it becomes ridiculously priced even if it's not as good.
If you trust someone who types with caps lock, then, yeah I guess you could save some money.
Since last Friday I've pretty much been sleeping either 6 hours or 9 hours. Time to man up and start setting my alarm clock. :/
Yay today's xkcd is pretty funny.
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[14 Nov 2009|12:33am] |
I have a confession to make. I liked The Spirit. In much the same way as I like Kung Pow! and Charlie's Angels 2. It had no pretensions (despite what the ads would have you think), it was straight-up wacky zany ADHD entertainment. Turn your brain off, crime noir to comedy to crime noir to Highlander to comedy sort of thing. I mean this wasn't even tongue in cheek, the dude flat-out breaks the fourth wall in some of his monologues.
I can't vouch but I assume some weed will make it more enjoyable. Anyway, if you want a fun wacky zany crime noir superhero superscience film, check out The Spirit.
I have not caught any of the new Venture Bros this season but I promise I will make it up ASAP.
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[12 Nov 2009|12:12am] |
I think I will try out the kickboxing on campus on Wednesdays. It's from like 5:30 to 6, so it won't interfere with raiding, and it should tire me out and help me sleep, and it should help my endurance a lot, which is super-important for sparring in JKD. Also maybe I will meet some people and make friends?!?! I had nearly given up hope. I think that's part of the reason I want to get out of Florida so hard.
My itinerary wasn't bumped really very much at all, to my chagrin. But I ranted a bit to customer service at priceline, and they said to keep an eye on it, and if it gets bumped substantially (I think more than an hour or two) they can refund my ticket. Which would be the best thing ever because then I could pay $20 more and fly with Not Delta (which is already worth $50) and it would be stable and they wouldn't rape my ill-assumed rights to change my plans. Priceline has been good so far; I got to talk to someone who spoke English and stuff so props to them.
I'll ask my profs tomorrow but I think I got the PhD applications narrowed down to U Washington (4th), U Penn (6th), UC Berkeley (12th), and U Pittsburgh (16th). I think that is a reasonable spread. Now I think I've said everything I need to say about applications and everything, so I'll try really hard not to bring anything else up on this matter until I hear back.
Still feeling super-restless from all the pressure of work and deadlines. Took a nice helping of NyQuil so hopefully I can crash now and sleep a lot and feel refreshed and be productive Thurs and Fri.
And not have any more zombie apocalypse dreams. Seriously, these zombies could run, and I'd bash their heads in with a rattan escrima stick and they wouldn't even care. Also at one point I think I fell in the ocean and there were barracudas. Not a pleasant way to wake up at all, but it got me out of bed!!
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[11 Nov 2009|09:30am] |
Zombie apocalypse dream. Except these zombies could run, talk (most were quite friendly aside from the hunting and mauling), and were unaffected when I bashed their heads in with a rattan stick. Didn't sleep well. I almost tweeted Peter Sagal about it because they interviewed Romero on Wait, Wait on Halloween. Then I didn't.
The new plan is to do work at Starbucks and maybe get some chicken soup or something at Toojay's if I have time. Just because they cater to old people, do they really have to take so long??
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[11 Nov 2009|03:45am] |
Blurgh, thought I could sleep without taking anything but it was a lie. Just popped some 'tonin so I'll probably sleep from like 4:30 to 11. Listening to The Tech Guy while I wait for it to kick in.
Recently I've been enjoying that Dannon Light & Fit yogurt? It uses skim milk so it's like fat free. Still pretty high in carbs, but that's because it's delicious??! Actually the only flavor I've tried that was meh was watermelon. Cantaloupe was surprisingly good.
I tried that lavender honey plum yogurt, Wendy, and I thought the lavender was too strong! Are we destined always to disagree? Also there was a lot of Smashing Pumpkins on the radio today so I listened to CDs!
Gotta call priceline tomorrow to see if I can do anything; Delta changed my itinerary today, so I get into Seattle even like 90 minutes later than before. Totally not enjoying this experience! Hopefully I will get some options, but most likely I'll just get raw double anal between priceline and Delta.
Here Matt, this made me think of you. And Battletech. And the Indiana Jones RPG which we never really did anything with.
On the latest Mega64 podcast, they're talking about the massive fires in California in like 2004. And they just cracked up about "remember back then, we actually had livejournals, and people read them!?!? ha ha ha ha ha"
Now, totally unrelated, enjoy the super-extremo Japanese intro to the 90's X-Men cartoon. It might be ridiculously loud, too.
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[08 Nov 2009|02:29am] |
I started listening to This Week in Startups (TWiST) and it's really pretty gripping and interesting. And, like, technical and maybe a little dark, I don't know. Long story short, the desire to start an internet company, which Tim Ferriss' book started in me, has only been exploded outward more by Jason Calacanis et al.
In an effort to tame this duality between grinding out a biotech research career and grinding out a regular tech sort of career, I think I have decided NOT to apply to any non-prestigious PhD programs. Note: this may be a cop-out so I don't have to do any more extensive university applications planning. This way, if I don't get accepted to any programs, then I put the biotech on hold temporarily and I try my hand at Real Business!
PS I am applying for an internship at Scripps. I'm not sure how this could affect either plan!
Also, at the gym today John had me doing sumo deadlifts to see if strengthening leg stabilizers there might help my knee. I don't know about that yet, but I did do like 12 reps at 135 lbs, which for me is something of a new record! Yay for sumo deadlifts (first time on this technique; usually it's Romanian or regular deadlifts)!
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[06 Nov 2009|12:58am] |
So I got a drop of hot solder on my finger, I dropped my laptop+case (hard rubber foot first) on the joint in my bare big toe, and I broke my chip right as I was testing it with the circuit and gadgetry I set up. Still better than the genetics exam.
I found out that Audacity can use both auto-tune and gsnap. However, VST GUIs I guess are copyrighted or something, so they just throw up a crude-ass menu. That's when I heard about Wavosaur. I haven't tried it yet but it's another free audio editor. I'm told it works great with Audacity, because it can do VST plugins and effects, and then you can spit it out and multi-track stuff with Audacity. I'll let you know how it goes.
UPDATE: Wavosaur gives memory allocation errors and generally isn't working for me. Turns out it's not good with large files; it loads entirely to memory, and even with my fat 8 gigs hanging out I guess it's too much to open up a 90 minute mp3.
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[05 Nov 2009|12:08am] |
What a crummy day. I need to find some lower-tier PhD bioengineering programs to apply to; my list currently consists of UW, MIT, Stanford, Brown, and Princeton (I think). Considering my expected grade in genetics (lowering my grad GPA probably to like 3.2?) and the pressure to re-take the GREs, crank out a publication, and apply to all the colleges, all within a month, my confidence is dwindling.
They say music helps you learn or remember or something? I don't know who says that, or the specifics, but I seem to be okay at learning song lyrics. I think I will try taking the lecture podcasts and auto-tuning them to something. Will it help me learn? Couldn't friggin' hurt. I guess I need some beats or music with no lyrics to match it with? Well, first I need to find the autotune software...
My to-do list for Thursday alone is 13 items long. Minimum I think is 10 things that I need to do. #FML #firstworldcrisis.
Oh I've been meaning to say for a while that now might be a good time to invest in AOL but it turns out they're privately owned now. Not sure if Time Warner stocks count as the same thing or not. Probably means you don't want to trust this information, but if Time Warner stocks shoot up over the next 12 or so months I'll be all "I told you so." And if they don't, you won't hear from me and I'll save face because you will forget. Hooray!
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[04 Nov 2009|04:16pm] |
That was such a difficult exam, holy shit. I ... I might go back and see if I can get any courses waived from my grad GPA. I was in there for 75 minutes working on the exam, some people left after fucking 25 minutes. I don't know what they are doing that I'm not. Maybe they're studying a ton more than I am? Maybe they learned some of the stuff in other science classes? I attended all the lectures (except one) and then listened to them all with the powerpoints again, and I was still like "wtf."
Nearly every multiple choice question had a bubble that was either all, none, or more than one. So you can't even just glance and be like "bam, that one," you have to read every single option and then keep everything straight. I almost cried like right in the middle of the exam.
Time to e-mail the person at UW again and ask them about grades for applicants.
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[04 Nov 2009|10:53am] |
Had a series of 3 weird-ass dreams last night. Also found out Barkley is a whore. My uncle was in town for a couple days to visit my aunt, and he stayed with my parents. Apparently once he got into bed Barkley jumped right up and spent the night with him. Strumpet!!!
I will restate my love of the TWiT network. If nothing else, listening to This Week In Tech on Sundays (or grab the podcast) is a fantastic update on technology and tech news. Biometric sensors will be a big thing, which makes me wonder (I took a class in it) if I can get on that bandwagon. Sort of a cheap OCD thing for people who want to keep track of their activity level, heart rate, calories, etc. This led to Jason Calacanis mentioning a book in William Gibson's Idoru series with cameras recording peoples' lives (voluntarily) so they can keep memories, diagnose diseases and injuries, etc etc. Really cool stuff.
Also, Calacanis has a weekly show about startups, and every time I listen to TWiT I think it would be sooo cool to be in charge of (but not programming, frownyface) some new media or social networking site or something. On the other hand, I'm busy and I don't know how that shit works.I also have a slight distaste for business because I am not a fan of seeing how much I can rip someone off, which is a bit of a demonization of what businesses do.
But maybe some day I will try it out.
PS: the guys who make Farmville and other casual games are making a fucking killing, I've heard. I would love to get into THAT market! Shards Lite facebook app, anyone? :D
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[03 Nov 2009|12:27am] |
I bought tickets for Seattle, and I kinda screwed up and I'm regretting the specifics a lot more than I should. I spent a while browsing like every single ticket buying site possible, and it put me in the wrong mindset for getting my tickets.
With a bid on priceline I ended up getting airfare round-trip (with travel protection) for like $240. I saved 8% which isn't a whole lot. The downsides are 1) it's Delta (fuck you Delta!), 2) it has a stopover in Atlanta (fuck you, Delta people in Atlanta!), and 3) I lose like a day of vacation. The plane arrives in Seattle at 11 pm on 1/7, and leaves at 6 am on 1/12.
I could have spent like $25 more and gotten a flight that wasn't Delta and had arrival/departure times of like 11 am and 4 pm (a savings of about 20 hours). $25 for all that is quite a deal, but I wasn't thinking that way. I was thinking that $25 is like 10% off and it's $25 more that I could spend enjoying the trip.
I was once a fool. *Ulyaoth, Xel'lotath, Chattur'gha*
Seriously, I wish I could change it, but I don't think there's anything I can do (aside from cancel the ticket which probably costs $50). I think the airline industry is the only place where you can pre-order something 2 months in advance and then be unable to back out.
Okay, airlines and video games.
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[01 Nov 2009|11:59pm] |
Not a very productive day. The plan was to take all the podcasts of the lectures for Wednesday's exam, and smoosh them to half-length so I can study in half the time!! Turns out just doing the compression of a 90 minute mp3 to a 60 minute one takes like 5 minutes each. And they are massive fucking files. Professor uses a m4b Mac format thing which I had to get a program to convert to mp3 and I guess it did not do much in compression.
My hard drive filled up so I had to clean out a lot of old garbage files and caches. And now I have to download an mp3 encoder for Audacity to export the files. What a production!!! (Note: it takes about 5 minutes to export each file as well)
At least I finished the fudicial point locating algorithm for my thesis. Took all damn week. But it means I can finally do the rotate/translate/scale linear algebra algorithm... when I'm not worrying about my exam. And I have to study and take the GREs now to try and get my english up. I already asked for suggestions studying like 18 months ago so I won't do that again. I will just use google.
PS Halloween in Miami Beach was pretty rockin' even though I wasn't "partying in Miami Beach" so much as I was "partying at some med students' place which is in Miami Beach, with a bunch of other med students." Swick keeps saying there's single ladies around but I never see any!
At least I was out all night and didn't feel like too much of a loser this year!
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[31 Oct 2009|11:31am] |
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When I showed the tickets to the traffic lawyer he had to take out his law book to look up the headphones thing. "I don't think I've ever seen this in my 15 years in my career," is what he said. I don't know, maybe the cop was trying to reach his quota or something. But the lawyer's costing me $90. On the other hand, now it's all behind me and I don't have to worry about doing anything 2 months from now, blah blah blah.
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[30 Oct 2009|12:04am] |
Wow, a girl programmer and she's really smart and hot and she did a funny interview with a misogynistic puppet (and nice shirt too). Yeah it's more Mega64.
There's like 4 of these misogynistic puppet interviews with women in the industry. It's great.
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