Samson's solo acoustic set. Despite 1000 people in the tent, it was just as quiet as the following video, and luckily I was much closer to the stage than this:
When my friend asks "are you getting teary-eyed?", I just put my arm around her shoulders and smiled.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Friday, July 29, 2011
job list
I don't think I've been chosen to teach the class. That's OK by me, I have enough to do. Working 50 hours over the weekend during a music festival, working 12 hour days in the lab, trying to keep myself from getting ill by popping ginseng extract and drinking/eating tons of healthy food, no matter the budget. Also treating myself: getting my hair done/waxing/ordering make-up online. Finally ordering that piece of biologically-related jewelry I've been coveting for YEARS. Spoiling myself.
Next weekend I leave for Minneapolis. The weekend after that will be packing for Germany. Four weeks from now I'll be camping in Bavaria.
Life is grand, and I'm very lucky.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
kickin ass
lovely actress as a waif-soldier version:
real-life MMA fighter in the lead role version:
One of these two films has Ewan McGregor in it, so you know which I prefer.
real-life MMA fighter in the lead role version:
One of these two films has Ewan McGregor in it, so you know which I prefer.
Friday, July 22, 2011
Update: How *would* I organize the course?
I am going to be "interviewed" by the hiring committee about Human Biology on Monday about 2 hours before I will be conducting interviews for the company position. How symmetrical.
Related, I wonder if this is worth it? I think it would be. Perhaps one of my requirements if I get hired as a lecturer is that the department cough up $400 for this unlimited science slide database.
Related, I wonder if this is worth it? I think it would be. Perhaps one of my requirements if I get hired as a lecturer is that the department cough up $400 for this unlimited science slide database.
Thursday, July 21, 2011
hearts never heal
If I were queen, I would ban oversized lettuce pieces in salads, terrible musak in elevators and the re-reading of old emails.
Dear Boss
PBS means what:
Protein Solubilization Buffer misspelled?
Phosphate Buffered Saline?
Porcine Ball Sack?
I can't tell, please help.
-My fried brain
Protein Solubilization Buffer misspelled?
Phosphate Buffered Saline?
Porcine Ball Sack?
I can't tell, please help.
-My fried brain
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
search terms
Your mission, if you decide to accept, is to find protein extract belonging to a close relative of Chlamydomonas. Since you work in a sea of cyanos, it will be no easy feat. Good luck.
(For the geeks only: http://www.uga.edu/protozoa/education/chlamydomonas.mp3)
(For the geeks only: http://www.uga.edu/protozoa/education/chlamydomonas.mp3)
Monday, July 18, 2011
Thunder and Lightning
This summer morning I woke up chilled: sixteen degrees celsius outside, but curiously still in the midst of a thunder storm. How does that work? It was so dark outside my dog had no interest in the day, she was clearly heading back to bed as we left for work. Still tons of shit to do but I've been kicking ass on the productivity front so here's to another week of great science, meticulous paperwork and house plans.
WWPJ are playing in Germany two weeks after I leave and in America one month after my American visit. Jeez.
Update: Failing miserably on the productivity front. Come back motivation!! Come back!
WWPJ are playing in Germany two weeks after I leave and in America one month after my American visit. Jeez.
Update: Failing miserably on the productivity front. Come back motivation!! Come back!
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Ramp Up
The first half of summer was lazy and lovely. The second half is going to kick my ass, and it started this week.
So here's a cool video instead of a real post.
So here's a cool video instead of a real post.
Saturday, July 9, 2011
strawberry season
Time to enjoy fresh local and totally delicious strawberries, then make jam for the freezer with the three flats (8 qrts each).
To live happily ever after on my (temporary) pantry shelf or my belly.
To live happily ever after on my (temporary) pantry shelf or my belly.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Lecturer?
My university is desperate for someone to teach the intro to human bio class (for non-science majors) this upcoming fall. They've opened the search to M.Sc. holders, qualifying yours truly. If I were to teach anything, a non-science-majors course would be it I guess, that way the students wouldn't realize how horrible of a teacher I am. If the department doesn't hire anyone, all these other classes need to be switched around too. So if I put my name in, it would be considered. Thing is, do I want to teach? My answer was always no, but having lecturer on my resume would be pretty cool, I admit. Hm.
Update: I think I'll apply. Might be the best/only chance I get to stick my foot in the teaching door. The money's shit, but that is never the point of my career moves anyway :)
Update: I think I'll apply. Might be the best/only chance I get to stick my foot in the teaching door. The money's shit, but that is never the point of my career moves anyway :)
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
on her good side
The New Faculty member just gave me a $25 gift certificate for all my hard work tracking his plasmid shipment from the States. Someone on his end screwed up the paperwork, and it was in customs limbo for ages, poor guy. I don't much care for the coffee, but the bagels make a nice snack in a pinch. Operations ingratiate = success.
Monday, July 4, 2011
We are such fragile things
I always remember to check PostSecret these days, and I'm always surprised. Mirror mirror.
At the Water's Edge
I think I might just buy a signed copy of his book because of the cool title :) Also, Zimmer's love for science tattoos.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Life lines and love lines
I have crazy ugly hands. Old lady hands that are wrinkled and vein-y. Whatever, I'm okay with that fact, but I just wanted to show you what eating healthy meals consistently does to my finger nails:
Mega-super-keratin! Despite many hours of manual labour over the past month, I have really long nails that are begging to be polished up. With suncoat, even, which is water based. But it's expensive and I'm a cheap hippie so I'll just have to let the dirt "polish" them up.
Mega-super-keratin! Despite many hours of manual labour over the past month, I have really long nails that are begging to be polished up. With suncoat, even, which is water based. But it's expensive and I'm a cheap hippie so I'll just have to let the dirt "polish" them up.
cutting close
Someone who has more readers should have a poll: Do you work in your science lab/let your students work in the lab alone? Do you actively enforce university safety requirements like "no open-toed shoes" or" no drinking" (tea/coffee) in the lab?
I just got my first lab visit from the new safety officer, and although in general our lab is exceedingly tidy/well organized/an awesome place to work, the shortcomings he identified were ones that I don't agree with personally so therefore I don't enforce. In particular, a student who's boss is my supervisor (and who works in an adjacent room), was in the process of pouring liquid nitrogen from a 5 L container to a 1 L container - in her flip flops- when the safety guy did his walk through. Now even I think this is stupid, and if I caught her doing it myself, I would have told her as much (I was in a meeting for this part of his walk-through). He told her to go home and change her shoes. Insisted.
This guy is conscientious and generally a very friendly guy. He is about my age and was a Masters student before taking up his new university position, filling a vacancy left when the same man who's done the job for the last few decades retired. NewGuy realizes that things were stagnant, and is looking to reinforce a "culture of safety" now that he is a position of responsibility. Obviously looking for allies, but...I couldn't help but retort his suggestions.
Basically it came down to this: Me No Babysitter.
I've trained the students (including said perpetrator), and have made it a point to tell them that handling liquid nitrogen while wearing inappropriate lab wear is dumb. They should get someone else to do it OR make an effort to keep appropriate footwear (at least) available in the lab. But I would never insist a student go home to change before completing their experiment. Never. But NewGuy would. And did.
And so I pressed him: Would you tell a post-doc who was wearing inappropriate shoes while doing an experiment to go home and change? A: yes. A faculty member? A: yes, the university is liable if anyone gets hurt, regardless of hierarchy and job position.
See for me, I say: You are a goddamn adult, start acting like it. If you want to risk your toes, as a 20-year-old, you can. But it's dumb, and I'll say that out loud to your face if given the chance. I'm not even in the same room as many of the students I'm supposed to be babysitting, which makes the idea of monitoring their practices closely kinda laughable. NewGuy says, "we need to create a culture here" and I say "I'll train them right, and then let them be". Which would you choose?
Figure 1: Don't be stupid. If you are, don't blame me.
Nominally related was NewGuy's question: Do you let students work after hours alone? This is a loaded question around here because as a primarily undergraduate school we have lots of young researchers doing lab experiments around a hectic class schedule. There are relatively few post-docs or other "round-the-clock" researchers in the building, so they often work alone. Yet because undergrads are who do most of our work, the expectation of output are pretty high. Last year one of the honours students in my lab cloned, overexpressed and purified a protein of interest from a rarely-studied picocyanbacterial species, then ran RTPCR on the transcipts in question over multiple time points and multiple environmental set-ups. This while she was studying for MCATS and excelling at class work, over a 12 month period. She'll probably get at least two papers out of her high-quality research, and everyone was fawning over her productivity.
NewGuy wants to implement a "buddy system", citing that no lab environment is safe enough to guarantee safety for students at all times. Basically rebuking my statements that unlike a chemistry lab, we handle relatively low-danger stuff. He wasn't having it. But the trade-off is: if we require our students to work in pairs, it will severely affect the amount of time they spend in the lab. The research quality will suffer, and so will the number of publications we put out every year. So the faculty have to be okay with that, and we need to change the culture there too. Anyway, I'm not opposed to restricting research hours for undergrads, but I can't do it unilaterally. Do other institutions have a "no lab work when you are alone" policy? Would this ever really work??
I just got my first lab visit from the new safety officer, and although in general our lab is exceedingly tidy/well organized/an awesome place to work, the shortcomings he identified were ones that I don't agree with personally so therefore I don't enforce. In particular, a student who's boss is my supervisor (and who works in an adjacent room), was in the process of pouring liquid nitrogen from a 5 L container to a 1 L container - in her flip flops- when the safety guy did his walk through. Now even I think this is stupid, and if I caught her doing it myself, I would have told her as much (I was in a meeting for this part of his walk-through). He told her to go home and change her shoes. Insisted.
This guy is conscientious and generally a very friendly guy. He is about my age and was a Masters student before taking up his new university position, filling a vacancy left when the same man who's done the job for the last few decades retired. NewGuy realizes that things were stagnant, and is looking to reinforce a "culture of safety" now that he is a position of responsibility. Obviously looking for allies, but...I couldn't help but retort his suggestions.
Basically it came down to this: Me No Babysitter.
I've trained the students (including said perpetrator), and have made it a point to tell them that handling liquid nitrogen while wearing inappropriate lab wear is dumb. They should get someone else to do it OR make an effort to keep appropriate footwear (at least) available in the lab. But I would never insist a student go home to change before completing their experiment. Never. But NewGuy would. And did.
And so I pressed him: Would you tell a post-doc who was wearing inappropriate shoes while doing an experiment to go home and change? A: yes. A faculty member? A: yes, the university is liable if anyone gets hurt, regardless of hierarchy and job position.
See for me, I say: You are a goddamn adult, start acting like it. If you want to risk your toes, as a 20-year-old, you can. But it's dumb, and I'll say that out loud to your face if given the chance. I'm not even in the same room as many of the students I'm supposed to be babysitting, which makes the idea of monitoring their practices closely kinda laughable. NewGuy says, "we need to create a culture here" and I say "I'll train them right, and then let them be". Which would you choose?
Figure 1: Don't be stupid. If you are, don't blame me.
Nominally related was NewGuy's question: Do you let students work after hours alone? This is a loaded question around here because as a primarily undergraduate school we have lots of young researchers doing lab experiments around a hectic class schedule. There are relatively few post-docs or other "round-the-clock" researchers in the building, so they often work alone. Yet because undergrads are who do most of our work, the expectation of output are pretty high. Last year one of the honours students in my lab cloned, overexpressed and purified a protein of interest from a rarely-studied picocyanbacterial species, then ran RTPCR on the transcipts in question over multiple time points and multiple environmental set-ups. This while she was studying for MCATS and excelling at class work, over a 12 month period. She'll probably get at least two papers out of her high-quality research, and everyone was fawning over her productivity.
NewGuy wants to implement a "buddy system", citing that no lab environment is safe enough to guarantee safety for students at all times. Basically rebuking my statements that unlike a chemistry lab, we handle relatively low-danger stuff. He wasn't having it. But the trade-off is: if we require our students to work in pairs, it will severely affect the amount of time they spend in the lab. The research quality will suffer, and so will the number of publications we put out every year. So the faculty have to be okay with that, and we need to change the culture there too. Anyway, I'm not opposed to restricting research hours for undergrads, but I can't do it unilaterally. Do other institutions have a "no lab work when you are alone" policy? Would this ever really work??
Dear Disgusting Me
You've taken several microbiology courses and can accurately predict the outcome of leaving a travel mug of coffee sitting around for too long. It's a bitch to have to bleach that fucker before ever taking another drink from it, so please smarten the fuck up.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
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