Thursday, January 29, 2009

im wearing a lab coat

im wearing a lab coat and doing tasks that require i wear it, while being paid money for it! professional scientist!

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

New Time Lapse











It was very clear last night, so I tried time lapsing the night sky. That picture is a link to the movie. The top of the tree looks fake but it's not. I used iStopmotion 2 and my Nikon D50, taking a 15 second exposure every 30 seconds, out my bedroom window. Does the beauty of the cosmos make you feel insignificant ? There's a lot of light pollution from the 1,000,000 lights and porch lights in my apartment complex.

Monday, January 26, 2009

The Snuggie Works


I'm able to stay pretty warm and do my stupid homework!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Picasa for mac

 


I'm trying out the "blog this!" feature of Picasa for mac, which seems like a pretty solid program so far.
Posted by Picasa

Friday, January 16, 2009

A Few Things




1) Today in my organic chemistry class it was getting towards the end of the lecture, and I was dozing off and half paying attention, when my teacher begain talking about the origin of some substance. He said it showed up about 65 years ago, during WWII, as a biproduct of the Manhattan Project. I perked up immediately and was glued to his every word, because you see I always get the Manhattan Project, which is the development of the atomic bomb, mixed up with The Philidelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory about a top secret Naval invisibility project that involves teleportation and brainwashing. I thought either "Wow, it's real!" or "Wow, he's totally screwing with us!". This euphoria lasted about a minute until he said the words "atomic bomb" and I realized my mistake, and why every one else wasn't jumping out of their seats. I literally looked around after he said it to gauge the class's response, like "Are you hearing this?!"




2)I put together this ipod dock from an old metal box I had saved and the black foam that was inside of it. I like clocks a lot (in fact, from my bed this second, I can see 5 different clocks in my room, not including my cell phone) and there's a bunch of clock apps for the ipod/iphone, but how to display them without running down the battery? The answer is "a dock". Docks are expensive though. I had this idea to use the tin, and I looked up to see if any one had used an altoid box, which one guy had. He reminded me that the ipods come with dock adapters now, (that white thing on the bottom) which made the project easy and I think nicer looking. And it was no extra money. It'll be even better when its all glued into place. I am pleased as punch.



3) My waders came in the mail, and I get to try them out tomorrow for the first time at Alsea Falls and some other place, for my aquatic entomology class. Last week was a lot of fun. Should be cold. If they look too big, it's because they are. Waders are sized very strangely: as the foot size increases, so does height and waist size, as if you're feet get longer the fatter you get. So while I have big feet, I am not hyper obese. I have no choice though, and the ones I wore last week worked just fine. I guess I wont' be wearing them just around town like I had planned, though, as pants.



4) I put together this Obama desktop wallpaper today after I clicked on the link for the first official presidential portrait taken with a digital camera, and saw that the image was fairly high resolution. If you have a Mac and a dock on the bottom, his eyes are blocked. I made another one, but really, who cares? I made it while putting off doing homework.

Monday, January 12, 2009

What's New?

Here's some things that are new with me:

-New Job: I now assist Ms. Angela Gardino with some predatory mite research. My duties include: collecting spider mites from lima bean plants to feed to our predatory mite colonies, transferring adult females onto new colony trays, planting new plants to infest with spider mites, and lots of other things. I get to use a microscope a lot, which is fun. I also get more hours and am paid 9% more.

-New Classes: I am taking an aquatic entomology class this term, which is totally fun so far. We had a field trip on saturday to a couple of wet spots on OSU experimental forest land, and got a bunch of critters from ponds and rivers, including dragonfly, mayfly and stonefly larvae, as well as some diving water beetles and giant water bugs. One guy got a water scorpion, which we thought was a stick. This all involved wearing waders and sloshing about in the creek with nets and forceps. It was pretty cold out still, but I wore 2 layers of thermal underwear and was fine. I ordered my own set of waders that evening. They should be here thursday. My other two classes, Stats and Organic Chemistry, are totally boring and I have a very hard time paying attention in them. My stats class requires this ridiculous remote to answer questions live during the lecture. It costs $53 and I have no idea why we're using it, other than to keep us watching the lecture, since the questions are worth points.

-New Socks:
Yolanda got me a lot of thick warm socks for xmas and they've been great.

-New Worries:I feel like I am becoming increasingly forgetful and worrysome. I have left stoves burning on a few occasions over the last couple of months. And while I've been out, if i can't remember turning off the burners, all I can think of is the house burning down. I think that my diet has actually improved over the last couple of months, since I am eating a lot more at home (mostly curry and things that I can make at the beginning of the week and eat over the month, so its not that. Its not that I am forgetful, I just don't remember details about things I did. Did I lock the door? Did I put the dog away? Did I cover the microscopes? Did I lock the lab? It's a little troubling. I haven't really looked into it yet. I also seem to be really distracted while driving, and much wimpier at it.

-New Love for Tea: I've never really enjoyed tea all that much, but recently I decided I needed to cut back on coffee because I was going to class and feeling very, very anxious after I had a cup in the morning. Also, the coffee maker in the apartment here burns the coffee really quickly if you make a small amount, and I can't drink a pot so I was just wasting it. I got a bunch of tea from safeway and grocery outlet and its been very nice to have some variety in my hot beverages. I also found a Bodum Tea Press at goodwill for 2.99 (retail 24.99) that makes a 4 mugs worth from 2 teabags, and fits perfectly onto my electric mugwarmer, and stops steeping with a plunger, so I can make tea just how I like it, plunge it to stop steeping, and keep it hot for a while.

Some new reading: here's some new blogs that I've been reading and enjoying lately, some of them are probably well known already, I make no claims to being on the cutting edge of anything anymore as it takes too much effort and it's just not that important to me:

ikeahacker

BibliOddysey

Thinking For a Living

ColourLovers: Palletes

I hope you're well. It's been a long time since I've talked to a lot of my friends and family, but you are all still near and dear to my heart.