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Below are the most recent 25 friends' journal entries.
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| Friday, May 9th, 2008 |
zyzzyva23
|
9:08a |
(comments sought) |
spunkylizard
|
9:42a |
I have a PhD, but that does not make me a good parent. About two weeks ago, we were informed that the Dread Pirate's science fair project had been selected for the city/regional science fair. Unfortunately, they were supposed to set up the presentation on May 5th. Since I was defending my thesis that day, we were going to be a little busy. Luckily, another parent said they would set up the project for us.
Judging and presentations for the fair were Wednesday night, shortly after our family left town. Unfortunately, we had other things on our mind, and we completely forgot about the science fair project. However, Kx was lucky enough to volunteer at school yesterday for teacher appreciation day. She was present in the classroom when the science teacher for the school presented the Dread Pirate with his second place ribbon. Evidently, he was very excited. Until his teacher asked him how the presentation went. We know he has matured emotionally because he did not start crying. He had tears, but no sobbing. We felt terrible.
Last night, we had a little party to celebrate the success of our second grader who did an excellent job on his science fair. While we helped him organize and finalize things, we made sure that he did most of the work, including typing the segments of his presentation into the computer. He did a great job.
Congratulations Dread Pirate! (3 comments made |comments sought) |
befanini
|
10:47p |
(comments sought) |
spunkylizard
|
9:26a |
Someone thinks I'm smart. Or at least not dum. I meant to post yesterday, but it got delayed because of sheer laziness.
On Monday, I presented my oral defense for my dissertation. In short, I passed.
Now the longer story.
Over the last month, I have worked very hard in preparing to summarize the work I did over the last four years in a talk of one hour. This is very difficult, as this work includes what will end up being four scientific publications, two of which are primarily my work. At first, we limited the talk to the two that were primarily my work with a brief summary of a third. But we continually ran into time problems. The talk continued to be close to 90 minutes rather than sixty. We decided to remove an entire section. It is still included int he thesis; just not in the oral defense. We now had a set of data that could be presented in one hour.
The second problem was making the speech comprehensible to people without a background in both statistics and viral genetics. Aside from my wife, father, and sister, many of the scientist in the room were not entirely comfortable with the statistics we are using to describe differences in viral variability and evolution. I decided to use a pictoral representation of the diversity of our groups, highlighting the facets that were being compared. This seemed to work really well, and I got positive comments about it later.
The defense was scheduled to last about an hour, with a followup ten to fifteen minute question period for the audience. This would then be followed by a committee meeting including a second questioning period. What I did not expect was the thirty minute public questioning period. Most of the questions were insightful and probed specific aspects of the project to clarify related issues, including moving the work to a pre-therapy test for determining response to therapy based on viral genetic factors. After the extended public questioning, my committee decided that no further questioning was necessary, and they briefly met simply to sign the ballots.
That is how I got my PhD. What is not described is the long agonizing over the last month despite knowing that they were not likely to fail me. I stress about little things, but that is one way that I remain competitive. My family came out a couple of days early, so they helped me relax. They also stayed for a couple of extra days to help me wind down and celebrate. The big party was Monday night: our fourth annual Cinco de Mayo party. Seventy eight people attended, and everyone said they had a great time.
Now I am back in the lab trying to tie up loose ends before returning to medical school in a couple of weeks. (1 comment made |comments sought) |
befanini
|
10:25p |
(comments sought) |
candidgamera
|
10:14a |
Friday is the Best Day Ever
Just because it's the last day of the week with work. I am so very, very tired. I need some extra sleep.
Doesn't look like I can run my D&D game next weekend either - bummer. Maybe I can at least arrange to watch movies with some folks. My big new TV calls out for a marathon of DVDs. (comments sought) |
| Thursday, May 8th, 2008 |
rockstar
|
10:52p |
Writer's Block: Step into My Closet
2.. a pair of klogs, which are the only thing I wear anymore.. and a pair of jungle boots. I don't wear the boots because the bottoms are coming off and I haven't fixed them. I'll probably just buy another pair. (3 comments made |comments sought) |
schnee
|
11:37p |
Gym Gym yesterday: 353 + 344 + 557 = 1254 kcal; gym today: 359 + 341 + 592 = 1292 kcal. It's really amazing that I apparently can't wear t-shirts to the gym more than once, though - I made the mistake of wearing one I had already used yesterday today, and it really stank quite embarassingly. c.c I'm not happy with throwing t-shirts into the washing machine after every single use (collecting them and washing them en gros, of course); washing them all the time is bound to ruin the fabric sooner or later, I think. Oh well. Current Mood:  tiredCurrent Music: Dan Kehler - Rose (2 comments made |comments sought) |
candidgamera
|
10:08a |
Busy Week!
Not at work so much as after work - I've got so many little errands to run here and there that I'm forgetting one or two of them. Not good. After this evening, I think things will thin out - this weekend's just got a truck inspection (Sticker's about to expire), and some potential work on the bathroom project ( need to do some cleanup in preparation for putting on the primer).
Can't run my D&D game this weekend - maybe next weekend, though. (comments sought) |
archimedesuk
|
1:44p |
Essay
I've near enough completed my mainframe essay. It's 2500 words long, out of 2000 so I need to trim about 300 off to get within the +/- 10% guideline. I was planning on going down to Genesys and the Dept. of Information Studies to work on my Flash app, which is due in week's time, but getting this essay done for tomorrow sort of took over. I'll grab some food now and then continue with the editing. Mind you, if I have a quick lunch and hurry up finishing this I could be ready to leave about 3pm, head to genesys until it closes at 5pm which should allow me to get some of this week's objectives done and then home in time for train club. Worth a shot I suppose. ^^ (comments sought) |
| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 |
schnee
|
10:07p |
(14 comments made |comments sought) |
jlighton
|
3:02p |
Yay Well, after a lot of dead-chicken waving, they finally un-wedged my DSL line. I seem to be getting about the promised bandwidth. My ear hurts. Current Mood:  cranky (comments sought) |
bpr
|
11:00a |
Cycle to Work Month All about my bike this week. Due to other commitments, I will only make it in three times this week. This will bring my yearly total up to 6. I even cycled today in the cold and rain. I also verified that my eyes are still working well. If it wasn't for astigmatism, I really wouldn't need glasses. Whee. Current Mood:  cheerful (comments sought) |
jlighton
|
11:05a |
"We don't care. We don't have to." Well, now I know what Bell Labs are up to these days: They're hard at work coming up with ways for Verizon to suck. Current Mood: frustrated (5 comments made |comments sought) |
candidgamera
|
9:30a |
Working From Home..
I don't like to work from home. If I'm home, I want to be NOT working. Still, I no longer feel comfortable allowing the contractors to be in my house without me being here - so I'm stuck for it. They haven't showed up yet, but I did speak with the main guy on the phone - he says they'll be here. (2 comments made |comments sought) |
| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
neonelephant
|
6:43p |
Mu (first impressions) Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to play Mu, a trick-taking card game that I picked up a couple of months ago. It seems to take elements from a few different places, and I don't think we exactly plumbed the depths of either the strategy or the tactics, but it was an interesting game. ( Gameplay details ) (2 comments made |comments sought) |
| Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 |
schnee
|
12:01a |
Gym I went quite a bit slower at the gym today - 353 + 330 + 548 = 1231 kcal, exactly 100 kcal less than yesterday. It's not actually a big difference though, when you think about it - only about 8 minutes of biking at 170 W. Still, I felt quite a bit less exhausted; unlike the last few days, where I was (literally) gasping for air pretty much all the time (no worries, though, I got enough), I was able to breathe normally today, which is probably good. And the cold shower also felt much colder today. :) Current Mood: tiredCurrent Music: Barry White - When Will I See You Again (2 comments made |comments sought) |
| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
candidgamera
|
10:51a |
Shiny
The HDTV was delivered this morning. I'm pleased. Now if the contractor stuff tomorrow goes smoothly, it'll be a good week.
Oh, and today's the official birthday. Number 30 in a series, collect the whole set! (22 comments made |comments sought) |
urasni
|
12:50p |
Rock Band is awesome. Even if both ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jen_ren and I completely suck at drumming. There was much amusement as we got booed off stage. :-D Current Mood:  cheerfulCurrent Music: Fu Manchu - Eatin' Dust (2 comments made |comments sought) |
archimedesuk
|
11:08a |
Cat and Cthulhu - Episode 37 "Harry Potter and the Half Plate of Chips" Link: http://cncpodcast.blogspot.com/I recorded both episodes 37 and 38 yesterday, the latter is already uploaded and scheduled for podcasting this Thursday. These two I think are my favourite pair of consecutive episodes. When I read the story for number 38 I was laughing for about 3 minutes. I'm so going to make an LJ icon and track-art for that episode when I get the chance. ^^ (comments sought) |
internetotaku
|
4:06a |
New story New storybeginning - probably will never be finished like the others but whatever. Just thought I'd share. (comments sought) |
archimedesuk
|
8:23a |
Free Nine Inch Nails album: The Slip Hey guys, I found a link to this on the BBC news website. I've already downloaded the MP3 versions of the album (87MB) and I'm currently torrenting the FLAC version too - for burning to CD (259MB). There's also M4A (263MB) and WAVE 24/96 (1.2GB) format downloads available too. ^^ Link: http://theslip.nin.com/ Current Mood:  pleased (comments sought) |
| Monday, May 5th, 2008 |
internetotaku
|
11:53p |
Posted using LJ Talk... Work is blah, as usual. Turns out, the boss is not just being a jerk to me though. He's REFUSING to allow anyone to have more than 12 hours a week or some nonsense like that. Like I was telling a fellow co-worker, if people don't quit over their hours, they'll quit over his attitude. I was working with one guy tonight who only is working FOUR hours thissweek. O.O So yeah. Again this becomes "quit befor you get fired". I now have a different feeling about this job - but just the new store and all that nonsense. See, my last job I felt devalued as a person and such and so I quit. This time though. I don't know, it feels like this one isn;t my fault if I quit at all and that its the right thing to do, even. SO. Here's to job searching again, I guess. Gonna donate plasma thissweek to get some money -.- NOT GOING TO MAKE IT xD I have to have a new physical too :/ because its past that time now. In promotion of Speed Racer, there was a 10 for 10 sale on General Mills stuff, so I bought 8 boxes of cereal, a box of Gushers, and a bag of Bugles. xD Saved 30 BUCKS! Also, the cereal has a Speed Racer toy in it ^-^ I'll be seeing Speed Racer thissweekend ^-^That Southern Style Chicken at McDonald's is pretty good. Its a little...uhm, plain? But the chicken has a pretty good flavor. Mario Kart Wii arrived today and its pretty fucking awesome, by the way. Gameplay is fantastic, even the bikes and all, the wheel does actually help (though it may just be psychological xD), and the game contains old levels as well as new - but the old ones are over the ENTIRE series - which is just amazing to race on levels that were on the GBA or the DS xD Total win. Next up is Wii Fit, which I hope to get as well. (comments sought) |
toastifer
|
11:49p |
And last night I dreamt that I could see the stars in the daytime.
Awesome.
Current Music: Death Cab For Cutie - I Will Possess Your Heart (comments sought) |
| Tuesday, May 6th, 2008 |
schnee
|
12:30a |
Weight / gym Just as a quick update before I have to go to bed - I checked my weight again this morning, and I'm down to 134.3, which means I lost 3 kg in a mere ten days. Wow. ^.^ Gym-wise, I got 360 + 351 (hmm, new record) + 620 = 1331 kcal today (108 minutes again, as usual), but it was a bit too much really, and I'll work out less hard tomorrow. Current Mood: tired (4 comments made |comments sought) |
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