I love grad school

I was going to blog about how I was only stuck in lab for an average of maybe 6 hours per day this weekend, and how I was able to get outside and actually feel the sun on my face for more than 10 minutes. But something happened yesterday afternoon that changed everything.

Our -80C freezer lost power sometime on Friday or Saturday, and when I discovered this yesterday it was at +1C. That is above freezing. That is very very bad.

The freezer is in a room separate from our lab, and is in such a place that if you weren't going to use it, you would have no idea if it were off or on. Well, Ed (my advisor) is attending a meeting in Japan; Victor (a fellow grad student) is in Canada renewing his visa; Amy (our lab tech) doesn't work on weekends. So it was just me, and I don't need to put things in or take things out of the -80 everyday. So the power loss went undetected until yesterday. (Fortunately, another lab on the floor had some space in their freezer, so about 25% of our stuff could be moved to another freezer immediately.)

This freezer stores most of our lab's experiments before they can be properly analyzed, as well as certain lab reagents and stocks of tissue. All of this needs to be stored at extremely cold temperatures. If not, it quickly becomes worthless. Some things cannot be thawed and refrozen, while some can. Experiments cannot be thawed and refrozen.

I only had 6 or 7 experiments waiting to be analyzed (as opposed to years of stuff, which some people keep in the -80). My experiments were hovering at the freezing point (their location in the freezer prevented them from thawing, so their status is questionable). If lost, it will take about 1-2 months to repeat those experiments, maybe longer for some. That's 1-2 months longer it may take me to graduate. Of course, I won't know if they are lost until I analyze them. If certain aspects of the analysis don't look completely normal, then I will have to trash the whole experiment and assume it is unsalvageable.

I will lose/have lost much more than that, but most of the stuff isn't too crucial, but will probably still require time in order to replace.

So everything I was going to do this week will be on hold while I try to ascertain what was lost and what wasn't. I'm not particularly hopeful, but I am trying to stay unbiased until I can analyze everything.

It looks like I may be graduating some time in the spring rather than this winter. Aaah, such is the life of a graduate student.

No way...

This is the way the movie should've been done in the first place.

Google Video

I'm not sure if I mentioned this crazy website, but Google Video has a lot of very interesting clips. I mostly check out those pertaining to sports or general humor.

These are the most interesting ones I have seen in the past few days:

• Samurai sword vs bullet: Watch what happens when you fire a 9mm pistol at a real katana (not the $200 garbage you can easily buy, but the blades made by a true master). The implications for ninja everywhere are astounding.
• Hamster wheel gone wrong: This is just hilarious. Who doesn't love dumb pet tricks?
• Giant girl doll: This is just weird and creepy, but cool at the same time. (I suspect Katie is going to be creeped out, big time.)

Check 'em out, suggest more, and just waste time.

Edutainment

I am not certain of the origin of that word, although I suppose a quick Google or Wiki will yield info on its etymology. However, I can tell you all about my first exposure to edutainment. In order to see through my eyes, we will take a journey on a time machine, all the way back to the bygone year of 1989. In 7th grade, we had some sort of computer class. I forgot the name, but I won't forget the old Apple computers: black screens with green text. We might've even had one Apple IIe, which was color!

But we all know the reason those computers were even invented: The Oregon Trail. No computer game ever compared to that, or ever will. (OK, maybe some other games were equally innovative, like Civilization, Wolfenstein 3D, or Doom. But those are hardly edutainment. Well, maybe you could learn something from Civ, but how about Lemonade Stand?) I remember how hard it was to even survive the trip to Oregon, nevermind having all of your party live.

Two days ago, I stumbled across disk images and an Apple IIe emulator for Windows. Since then I've played a game or two, and had loads of fun. Honestly, how many people my age first heard of dysentary through this game? Probably everyone. That's why this tshirt is so funny.

Well, as an adult with some cognitive ability, let me tell you that it is not hard to finish the game as it was before. But attaining a real high score is. In three games my highest score is about 3900. The world record? >53000! I can't even fathom how. If you load the game and view the top ten scores, you can see how the scoring works. Anyone who figures out a reasonable method to break 20000 points is one smart person.

Well, download the game and reminisce. For those of you who've never played the game, give it a whirl. If you type in the names of people you know, it's pretty funny when they get cholera and die. Sort of. You know what I mean.

Photography

A few weeks ago I came across a call for entries to the 'World in Focus: Travel Photography Contest' sponsored by National Geographic Traveler. There are professional and amateur divisions, with multiple categories per division (although I think there are more 'professional' winners than 'amateur' for some reason).

I immediately considered entering, and then realized that I

1. Don't have any 'nature' photos shot since January 1, 2005 (one of the rules)


2. Don't have time to take any 'nature' photos before August 14, 2006 (the day before the deadline)

Alas, I will have to wait until next year's contest... if this is a yearly thing. (I hope it is.)

In the meantime, I will admire the few winners from previous contests that they have online, and I suggest you do so as well. They are darn good.

(I added a long wedding photography rant on that website; the link to which is now in the sidebar on the right.)

Where have you been?

Yes. I have been absent. I will continue to flit in and out of blogspace for a while as well. Too much to do, not enough time to do it. Here are highlights, in reverse chronological order.

Yesterday I woke up with a sore throat. I am coming down with a cold in the middle of the hottest (thus far) heat wave in NYC. How did I manage that, praytell, when nobody else is sick? Easy: not enough sleep/rest, and too much work. Continue to find out why.

This past weekend I worked some, but not too much; about 15 hours or so. Yilin and I saw "Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest". I liked it a lot.

Last week was mostly work. Yilin's birthday was Monday, but she had class until 10pm, so we didn't celebrate that night. Instead, I made her soft shell crabs on Tuesday night. She loved it.

The weekend of the 7-9th, my parents, Yilin and myself flew up to Montreal on a private jet so that our folks could meet for the first time. (My dad won the grand prize at his company's Christmas party, which was a trip on the company's private jet to any destination within 1000 miles; my parents happily offered to use that to meet Yilin's parents.) Everything went well. We ate a lot of great food and saw a TON of stuff in Montreal. Yilin had a surprise birthday party complete with trick candles (she had never heard of such things, so it was hilarious).

The Wednesday and Thursday of that week, the only days I was in work (we left Friday morning for Montreal), I put in a lot of hours in lab. No rest.

The Fourth of July was spent driving and taking the train, returning from Tim and Jaime's awesome wedding, which was the previous Monday in Narragansett, RI. They were kind enough to let Yilin and I stay at their spacious apartment the night of the wedding. Yilin and I had taken the train to my parents' place and then borrowed their car to drive to RI. We got back the same way, but in reverse.

Prior to that I worked a lot.

The previous weekend my cousin Rachel had her wedding in Pennsylvania, which was super fun. I had a blast, and I tore up the dance floor like it was a tissue. ;) Unfortunately, we had arrived in PA at like 1am or something crazy, so I was quite sleep-deprived. But I still had fun.

Prior to that I worked a lot. My memory is hazy, but early in June Yilin and her mom went to Paris, during which time I slaved in lab like I haven't done in years.

So how'd I get sick? Well, starting when Yilin went to Paris, I worked a lot, didn't get much rest, and never had the opportunity to rest. This is still ongoing, although I have gotten a few hours here and there to relax in the past week, and I have gotten a couple of nights of full sleep.

So, hopefully this weekend I will be able to take half a day off on either Saturday or Sunday and just sleep.

Wedding Website

Too much has been going on recently, and rather than provide piddly updates on big events, I will hold off on telling you what I have been upto.

In the meantime, I put up a wedding website. Feel free to leave feedback there.

(If you haven't noticed, I have refrained from talking about wedding stuff here. I know many of you won't be interested, and I wanted any such discussion to be consolidated. Believe me, I have a few things to rant about...)