Maelstrom of Chaos

The title of this post basically describes my life at this point, and for the past 3 weeks. Yesterday was the shortest working day I've had in that time, at a mere 10 hours in lab. (Not counting the day my parents visited a week ago.) Most lab days have been 12 hours, with a few 14-hour days, and even one 15-hour day. I know you are jealous.

Yesterday Yilin and I spent a few hours putting together our menus and programs for the wedding. They came out looking nice. The biggest fiasco was getting the printer to bleed (print off of the edge, i.e., no border). But we did it.

And speaking of my lovely fiance, let me point out that exactly 2 years ago today we met, and exactly one year ago today I proposed. Unfortunately for me, she did not choose to get married on April 30th, so I'll have to remember two dates now instead of one.

Not much else to say, except that I am in the home stretch.

Bacon of the Month Club?

Last night Yilin and I watched the Food Network awards. It was interesting, and a bit better than we expected. They basically had different categories pertaining to different types of foods (chocolate, comfort food, ballpark food, etc) and then told a bit about the nominees (mostly restaurants or small companies), and then gave out the award.

It was interesting to note that there was a large emphasis on restaurants and companies who use locally grown food, organic food, and anything "green" (not Kermit green or Hulk green, but "green" in the "environmentally friendly" sense of the word). Many of the restaurants or companies were powered entirely by solar power or wind power.

But one category in particular stood out: food of the month clubs. The first nominee mentioned (although not the winner) was the Bacon of the Month Club. Trust me when I say that as soon as I move in with Yilin after the wedding, I am joining this club. For life, if they have a lifetime membership option. (I wanted to enroll last night, but decided to wait until I move in 2 months so that a single shipment cannot be lost in the mail.)

Just follow the above link and read what that page has to say: one paragraph of text and some bullet points. Honestly, if you need someone to sell you on the BOM, then you don't really like bacon anyway, and I have lost interest in talking with you. ;)

I can't wait!!!

What would you do?

Yilin and I had a conversation the other night, which revolved around a story someone told me about an event that they witnessed. I told Yilin how I would've reacted if I were in the situation of one of the people involved. She then told me that I was "ridiculous" and "silly" and she firmly believed that a rational person would be laughing at me incredulously if they heard me say what I said to her.

So let me put the situation and the question to you, dear reader, and get your honest response.

Two people were sitting on the grass facing each other and talking in a park. A man and a large unleashed dog walked into the park. The dog ran away from his master and was running and smelling all over the grass. The dog then proceeded to sniff one of the people sitting. They didn't pay the dog too much heed and continued their conversation. The dog then began to urinate on the back of one of the people sitting on the ground.

My question is: How would you react if you were the person being urinated on by the large dog?

"Want some ham?"

This past Saturday morning started like any other Saturday morning: I woke up early, went into lab to check if any of my mice got pregnant, then took the A train down to Claude's for croissants. Afterward I went to take the 1 train back up town so I could stop at Barnes & Noble. (That in itself is the subject of another post, which I will make later this week.)

When I went into the 1 train station I saw a sign saying that there was no weekend 1 train uptown service; instead I would have to take the 2/3 (that's "2 or 3", not two-thirds) train(s) up to 14th Street and transfer to the 1. No big deal. I hop on a 2 train, travel one stop, get off and walk towards the 1 train.

There was an announcement over the subway station intercom saying that the uptown 1 train is running on the downtown 2/3 track. Ohhh-kaaay... So I get onto the train that is waiting right there, ready to leave, and this young guy (early 20's) runs into the same car as me and says, "I don't care which direction this train is going, as long as it's going uptown." He is obviously chemically impaired.

He plops down on the bench seating a few feet to my left, turns toward me, holds out a fist-sized fleshy-pink lump of... something, and says, "Want some ham?" Indeed, a strong odor confirmed the mysterious lump's identity as that of ham. Imagine, if you will, somebody who was out all night drinking/drugging/whatever, then took an apple and gnawed off all of the skin, held it in their dirty hand, and offered you a bite. Now imagine that the apple was really a piece of ham. What would you do? I thought so.

So I said, "No thanks," and turned my attention to an advertisement on the wall. However, this young guy wasn't done trying to be my friend. As the train started pulling out of the station he turned toward me and asked, "Do you know what time it is?"

I said, "It's about 8:40" and quickly added "AM", not sure he knew that there was in fact sunlight outside. He gave me the most incredulous stare and said nothing. It was as if he had just witnessed Christ walk out of the cave, alive again. (I know it was only Saturday, and not yet Easter Sunday, but that's all I could think when I saw his face.) He continued to stare for a few seconds and then we pulled into a station where a lot of young people got on the train. Thankfully a few sat between me and the crazy guy.

A large group of the young people were speaking in German, so the crazy guy asked them where they were from. "Germany" one kid says. The crazy guy asks him, "Why are you here?" and the kid replies, "We're on a school trip."

Crazy Guy: "What kind of school?"
German Kid: "High school?"
Crazy Guy (laughing): "Oh, I'm done with that. No more school for me!"
German Kid: "What do you do now?"
Crazy Guy: "I play the guitar on the subway."
German Kid: "..."
(Note that Crazy Guy doesn't have a guitar.)
Crazy Guy: "Do you want some ham?"

Time elapses.

Crazy Guy: "Where in Germany are you from?"
German Kid: "Stuttgart."
Crazy Guy (making a shape with his hands that looks nothing like Germany): "If this is Germany, where is Stuttgart?"
German Kid (confused by a 'country' that doesn't look like Germany): "It's in the south."

(Some small talk, including the information that Crazy Guy lives at 168th Street just like me, and the large group of German kids leave.)

Crazy Guy (to me): "Do you have a cigarette? I really need a cigarette."
Me: "Sorry, I don't smoke."
(This invokes another incredulous stare; apparently I look like a smoker.)

Crazy Guy (standing up and speaking loudly to the entire train): "Does anyone here have a cigarette? Anyone, please? I have cigarettes at home, but I won't be home for twenty minutes and I really need a cigarette."
Everyone: "..."
Crazy Guy: "I promise I will smoke between the subway cars. ... Does anyone have a cigarette?"
Crazy Guy (to me): "Can you ask them for a cigarette? I think they'll give one to you."
Me: "I don't think they'll give me one. Sorry, but you'll have to try again."
(We pull into another station and more people get on.)
Crazy Guy (to everyone): "Does anyone have a cigarette? Look."
(Crazy Guy then starts hanging off of the bars and doing slow, awkward flips.)
Crazy Guy: "I can do anything. I'll do anything for a cigarette, watch."
(Crazy Guy does one pullup.)
Everyone: "..."
Crazy Guy: "Fine, I don't need your cigarettes. I'll get my own."

At this point we pull into 72nd Street. I had planned on going to 79th Street, but I had been trying so hard to suppress my laughter that I had to bite my lips. Several times. So I get off the train at 72nd Street. As I am standing up, an Indian guy sitting opposite me and Crazy Guy reaches over and hands him a cigarette. Crazy Guy gives his incredulous stare to the Indian guy and says, "Thank you so much!" Crazy guy raises his fists in triumph.

I guess there's no place like New York City.

Can anything else go wrong?

I've told you that I have been (secretly) writing my thesis. Well, I have and I haven't. I haven't written more than that 1 page of actual text, and writing in secret between experiments is slow-going. But I have been writing in the sense that I've written that 1 page (yeah!) of thesis text, and I have written several pages of protocols and methods that I've used to conduct my experiments. (The latter are shoved into a chapter in the back of the thesis, but they are integral to the body of work as a whole, and usually require a lot of time looking through notebooks, looking up solutions and recipes, finding catalog numbers of reagents ordered, etc.)

So my total time invested has been a fair number of (secret) hours. And all of it was nearly lost this weekend.

For the past month or so my computer has been making an interesting noise. It is best described as a whirring, thrumming, electrical-sounding, high-pitched drone. It isn't overly loud or bad sounding, but different. At first I thought it was my monitor, which was purchased in 1999. Then I suspected it was my master hard drive, which is sorta OK because I have been using that only to store my OS and programs. Any files I have go on my slave drive, which is only 3 years old. (My master drive is from 1999.) Worst case scenario: I get a new master drive, install an OS on it, and I've still got all of my files.

Well, the sound turned out to be my slave hard drive, where I store all of my files, including those pertaining to my thesis. On Saturday I couldn't access my slave drive all of a sudden. I got concerned. Really concerned. It had died.

After shutting down the computer, opening it up and messing around with the drive cables for a while, restarting it, shutting it down, letting it cool off for two hours and restarting it once again, I was able to access my slave drive. I quickly copied all of the files over to my master drive. By "quickly" I mean that it was a nail-biting 3 hours as the computer struggled to move files, with the slave drive making horrendous noises. Three hours to copy 1.5 gigabytes. (That is slow.)

I was able to copy every single file but one. "One file?", you say. "That's not so bad." Well, I haven't yet told you which file it was. It was a file so important... Ha ha, just kidding. It was unimportant and I already had a back-up copy. ;) But seriously, that was the only file I couldn't copy, luckily.

When it finally completed, I shut down the computer and went home. Yesterday morning I burnt a DVD of the files. I also copied the most important ones to our lab server.

With the entire universe conspiring against me graduating, the last thing I need is to lose my thesis due to computer failure. OK, I exaggerate: only my advisor and thesis committee are conspiring against me. It was a stressful day, let me tell you...

Fools?

This past weekend I went to the movies with Mike, Hyunmi, and Yilin to see "Blades of Glory". It was actually really darn funny. I remember hearing Will Ferrell in an interview stating that when they were making the movie they didn't have to really exaggerate anything at all in order to mock figure skating. Sad but true.

I did not play any tricks on anybody this year, so I have no good tales to tell. However, if anyone was a trickster (or the victim of a trickster), feel free to relate the embarrassment to all.