here I sit..

..when I could be at home. I was getting nothing done, so I decided to go home early, have a nap, then try to read through some work with more alertness. But I'd left my lights on and now my battery is flat. I'd left my lights on because it was overcast and raining this morning. Its still overcast and raining but now I am waiting in my office for the RACQ guy to ring and say he's arriving, so I can take my umbrella down into the cold wet weather and shiver at the crossing till he turns up to jump start the car. I'd get my father to do it but he has a miserable cold and I don't want him getting wet

my new job

Yes, I too will have a new job soon. The paperwork has gone through to the point that Leigh told me yesterday to expect something to sign soon and Lorraine (HOD secretary) showed me my new office in the hernia (aka the pod, or the black hole of calcutta). I will be sharing a rather small office with another junior lecturer. It has one small window (about a meter wide) in the corner of the room, facing east. The rest of the room is brick walled. When the lights are off and the shade is down, you can't see a thing. Still, better than some of the offices with no windows at all, or windows facing onto a brick wall about a meter away.

How much will I be earning? Umm, not sure, I think I'll be on academic A ranking. How long is the contract? Umm, possibly three years, will know when I get the contract.
What is the job? Umm, I've been told that for the next six months (probably) I'll be supporting lecturer A on Mon and Tues, Training grad students on the use of expensive lab equipment and otherwise monitoring and repairing said equipment on Wed. and supporting lecturer B on Thurs and Fri. By supporting lecturer, I think it will mean taking over lecturing certain subjects/sessions, running practicals, marking students work, tracking down information for curriculum design (which is what the lecturers are going to be doing while I do their lectures). Of course, not all of these at once or even all of these at all if thats not what they want - they only get me for 2x 8hr days a week each.
The grad student stuff is the part I'm most cheerful about, since I've been doing it for free while I did my PhD and now I'll be damn well paid and appreciated for it. It also means that I might be involved in some of the projects to the point that my name will end up on papers (without me having to write the papers :)
After the end of this year, I'll more likely be helping lecturer A for more of my time in semester 1, but the equipment supervision will most likely continue for the whole contract. I may also take over lecturing some other subjects (I forsee epidemiology) at certain points as we are really, really short staffed at present. Anyone want a job? BTW qualified & suitable physiologists will almost certainly be offered positions if they poke their noses in and enquire (we need about 6).

stardust

I found Neil Gaiman's Stardust novel in Big W for $2.95 on saturday. Good timing to actually read it before I see the movie. I always like to read the book before I see the movie, that way my imagination isn't stifled by the movie makers interpretation of how things look. Which it always is if I read the book afterwards.

finally, a video camera

I finally bit the bullet and bought a mini DV tape sony video (entry level model but thats all I need). I did much study on the issue and decided that I am not a prosumer, will primarily be using it on holidays where I do not have easy access to a computer for downloading and would like to play with editting later. So DV tape it is. Adding a spare 6hr battery, case and DV tapes piled a bunch more onto the price, but its still less than what I paid for my first and only digital still camera (now available for about $150). Tonight, as well as playing big city, I will be playing with my new video - it has touch screen controls and all! (Disclaimer to other big city players: I may be somewhat distracted tonight)

seconds from death...

At good header which also has the advantage of being true. I was housesitting last week and my massage therapist suggested I have a good soak in a warm bath with epsom salts to encourage my muscles to relax. So I did. Big bathtub, could lie down completely in it if I wanted to, very nice. Then I got out, pulled the plug and turned on the shower next to the bath to rinse off. I estimate I'd been out of the bathtub about 30 seconds when there was an almighty crash. My first thought was that the drainage pipe had pulled away from the bathtub and fallen over downstairs(I have no idea why I thought this). When I looked round the corner of the shower, I realised that a section of tiles had fallen off the wall and into the tub (50cm wide by 1.5m high). My next thought was "Crap. I've broken their bathroom." I would say it took me about 5 minutes to realise that all the tiles had fallen where my head had been, in quite a deep bath. At least deep enough to drown in if I had lost conciousness (my best case scenario for a bucket worth of large tiles falling on my head).

not well

Everyone in the Vet and biomed science school seems to be ill. All of us (with a couple of exceptions) have different symptoms though, so we assume we are all just run down and getting whatever we are exposed to. The exception is everyone in the pod (new attachment to the building that I like to call "the hernia")is losing their voice. I'm feverish and tired and my nose is running. The tired may be due to a couple of nights of broken sleep - cat fights, waking up sweating and hot (in spite of the airconditioning) and heart pounding waking up after nightmares about being attacked by velociraptors.

good advertising

I've got to say, this site makes me curious to go check out the book

POTC3

I also went to see Pirates 3 with Dot on the weekend. There were two guys from work there (separately, with their kids). Odd how we all ended up at the same session at the same theatre. Long movie, I had to nip out 1/2 way through to use the loo. I have trained my bladder not to need to do that during normal length movies. I just about fell over the two people between me and the aisle. They were large and slouched down so that their knees touched the seat in front. No room to put my little footsies. I was expecting a slightly different end, though I could see exactly what was going to happen at a certain point and thought "What! that not how this is supposed to end!" But it was a good ending. Sit all the way through the very looonng credits to see the epilogue.

Call me Lucky Doctor Jenny

On Friday I recieved a tube in the mail. It contained my official PhD certificate. You may now all congratulate me again. Stay tuned for the last congratulations which will be when I wear my floppy hat and shake someones hand (possibly in December). I can now wear my Piled higher and deeper t-shirt. It is green and says "Doctor" on the front. The back has "of Philosophy" with a grinning graduate underneath. Everyone thinks it is funny (particularly the non-medicos in the medicine building). My most common comment has been "can you actually buy those?".

On the weekend I went scrapbooking all of Saturday and won the big lucky door prize. A cropping box filled with misc scraps, paper, card and cut outs and stickers. Probably a couple of hundred dollars worth if you add it all up. Then I won a pack of paper in the 2nd chance draw (we all had 10 tickets each :)). All in all a very good day and I got the fun of sorting through my box in the evening. I was scrap booking my Tasmania holiday (the first page has Andrea looking at the cobweb covered petrol bowser from when we ran out of gas as we rolled into the closed service station. Its funny in retrospect).

On less fun news, my planning for today has been thrown completely up in the air as I got a call this morning from my father to say he's taken my mother to emergency with severe pains in the abdomen. They are looking at her now. I'm hoping its colitis. There is some going around at the moment with exactly those symptoms. Its been 4 hours with no news as yet. I'm sure dad would call if there was a problem though.

I am a spambot

Does anyone else have trouble leaving comments on pages due to the page rejecting their interpretation of those coloured wavey letter codes? I appear not to be able to read them.

..since I'm having coffee at my computer instead of in the tea room...

I may as well get this thing up to date. I'm sitting here as the tearoom is quiet and boring at present and there are some cakes in there. I decided I needed to cut back and today I am officially dieting, so I'm staying away from temptation.
Yesterday Kris and I took our mums up to the Harveys Range heritage tea house for lunch and Kopi Luwak coffee. It was strong, smooth and very nice. It reminded me of some of the coffees I've tried up at the coffee place near Kuranda - who's name I can't recall. So now I've tried civet coffee and can strike it off my list of things to do. Onto the next
Speaking of things to do, I'm going to Britain from 24th June to 20th July. I'm spending a week in York (since everyone I know who goes there says they didn't spend enough time there)and the rest of the time my little brother has time off from work so he'll be showing me around. I'll be staying with his mother-in-law while I'm there - except for the York bit. I'm trying to get accomodation at a B&B called Bootham Guesthouse. We'll see if I left it too long to book it. If I did, it'll be back to the drawing board. I'm holidaying during the peak season.
What else have I done recently...Oh yes, I took my mother to see Hot Fuzz. I didn't realise how much swearing and violence would be in it. "Diehard meets Heartbeat" didn't give me enough clues as a description. When the church spire-y thing fell pointy end down through the head of one of the characters and his "head replaced by stone pyramid" body staggered a bit before falling, I sank in my seat a bit. She did think overall that it was funny though.

heavy

This is cool

crossover wars!

A few weeks ago I found a comic strip on the web...that led me to other comic strips in an all out crossover festival of online comic strips. There seems to be millions of them, all interlinked in the mother of all cross-overs. Sigh. I do NOT have time for this right now. It would have been nice to find while I was procrastinating through my PhD...or not...I'd still be going at it. Here's one..and another. You can find the rest yourself. Or just look at this webcomic crossover archive

sleepy, still

I've been sleepy and bleary eyed for a couple of weeks now. I know I'm fighting an almost subclinical sore throat and cough (it crops up just enough to bug me and not quite enough to remind me to gargle betadine - my sure fire kill a sore throat remedy).
Timing wise however, I think the fatigue is psychological. It really started just after my thesis went in for the final time. Approved and ready for rubber stamping my PhD. I think my brain decided I no longer needed to fire on all cylinders and be stressed out, so it shut down to 1/2 capacity - and took my body with it.
I've been told I need a holiday. Well, I'm getting one, but I'd like to be awake to make some plans about it.

20 questions

My mother now has two of those 20 questions electronic doovies. We took one each and used the same item (teapot) to see if they would behave the same....not. While they both got the answer right, the questions they asked were somewhat different and in a different order. Do these things have limited free will? We also did a run with the item "Virus" only my mother answered the questions truthfully, while I tried to get the answers as wrong as possible. Mum's machine got the answer "virus" while I got "lynx". There you go, the opposite of a virus is a lynx. Also, from a previous test, another word for "world peace" is apparently "Fart". At least it is according to a 20 question device.

done de done done

Its done.

...must...finish...thesis...

Why can nothing ever be easy. Just after I finish all the examiners requested changes , write the report on them, fix the page numbering and figures etc and print out a copy of my thesis to go to the head of school, I find the updated requirements for my thesis.

1. extra declarations in the front (causing an extra page to be necessary)
2. pdf version to go to the library

You might think the 2nd isn't hard, but my pdf converter is changing the font size a bit, resulting in the pages shifting so that the page numbering will be out again, table headers will start on one page with the table on the next page, some figures will end up over text etc etc.

It doesn't help that the pdf is required to be the same as the hard copy that I have already printed out with much time and trouble and the whole conversion thing is really slow/sometimes not even working since I have a 252 page document full of pictures. Arrgh...and Arrgh again

Argh! Friday the 13th

I just realised what day it is.

I'm also a little peeved. I you read lower down you will find the blog where I conscientiously got my fluvax. I paid full price, doctors appointment and fluvax cost etc. Now my workplace has sent around an email saying "Come over to building X between 11 & 1pm and get your complementary - free - no charge to you - provided by us - flu vaccination. Bummer.

Now what was I going to say again?

I logged on with the intent of writing something. I can't remember for the life of me what it is.....oh yes, hands start typing, brain kicks back out of neutral.

I bought a new DVD player yesterday. The old one started making screeching noises and the screen froze. It like to think it was because it was old and cheap and the plastic gears were failing. But it may have been encouraged to fail by the fact I sat it on the end of the sideboard in my room, under the video player, under the TV - no gaps here people, just one on top of the other, DVD at the bottom. Unfortunately I've had to do it with the new one too. There is just nowhere else for it to sit that I can get to it/have direct line of sight with the remote. Maybe I can get some dowel and make air gaps between each, but the DVD player is still going to have the whole weight of my tv and video on it.

Anyhoo - the new one is a Sony that I got on sale. It has the impressive function of the remote being able to control turning the TV off and on - like a multifunction remote. It can also change the visual angle of the scene it shows - assuming the DVD has this function. As I'd never heard of this before, and the DVD's I played last night didn't, I'm not expecting to be able to use this much.

Being a name brand it also has region 4/region encoding on stickers and in the manual. The old one didn't (the advantage of no-name el-cheapo DVD players). So I got online using my extremely slow dial-up and spent 30 minutes searching for something to make it region free as I have region 2 DVDs that weren't made in region 4 format. Eventually I found a forum where they said, and I paraphrase, "Ignore the region 4 encoded sticker, thats all it is. This model came out of the factory region free and they never locked it." Lo and behold, I put in the DVD and they were right.

On other news, I just took a specimen out of the soaking tank and managed to get formaldehyde solution over the top of the glove and onto my watch. I washed it but I can still smell formaldehyde in the cloth band. So it's now off my wrist and waiting for me to give it a good soapy scrub.

The Tsunami Warning

..has eased. Apparently we are not going to be hit by a tsunami caused by the earthquake in the Solomons. Apparentlyt some government employees were sent home from Pallarenda this morning before the confirmation from Willis Island came through. I came in to work this morning and someone said "have you heard anything more about the tsunami that is supposed to hit us?" My response "Tsunami...what tsunami...aren't we supposed to hear about these things?"

How do I?

I have to ask my microbial home brewing collegues how they make non-alcoholic ginger beer. My parents used to make it - till they got sick of clearing up the broken glass - so I could ask them too. I know someone who is making a recipe that will turn alcoholic if left long enough (so its all about temperatures and ingredients and time)and he wants to ensure it's alcohol free before he hands bottles over to minors. I suggested he could get one of those breast milk alcohol strip kits that were on TV the other night. They might work with ginger beer too. You'd need to test it with some positive and negative ginger beer controls first.
Maybe I could do a troll through the web and try a bunch of recipes myself. I've always wanted to make ginger beer (in plastic bottles) and its a very microbiologist thing to do. Any favourite recipes anyone?

milestones ticking over

My thesis came back.

Minor repairs only which do not require the examiners to see the thesis again.

I am somewhat chuffed. I will be more so when the repairs are done, it is signed off and I have a certificate declaring me to be a Doctor in my hot little hand.

Then I'm off to a new world of explaining "No, I'm not that sort of Doctor and I don't want to look at the boil on your butt." Of course, if they want to show me an infected pustule, that might be a different story.

Stay tuned.

Oh, and the renovations went well. I decided to leave the ceiling till Tuesday as I didn't want to work around dropcloths while working on fiddly window sills that require me to stand on benches. I did the ceiling cutting in though. Next job is to sand and repaint the bathroom ceiling, but I want to get a good high gloss ceiling paint for that. So much mould and moisture.

editted because for some reason I forgot I'd spent Saturday painting.

updating..

Yes, the HepA jab was worse than the fluvax. Several days of worse. I didn't mow on Monday because it was very sore by the time I got home. I had trouble sleeping on Monday night because I sleep on my side...either one. If both your arms hurt due to jabs, you sleep on neither one. By Tuesday the pain had gone down enough to mow. For some reason I was completely wired on Tuesday so instead of mowing 1/2 the lawn and wanting to find a reason to stop, I got the whole lot done and thought "Oh, I've run out of lawn to mow". Then I was wide awake Tuesday night. Ditto Wednesday, I should have gone for an evening walk because I was still pumped. This morning I've crashed. I'd blame the 2 days of adrenalin and lack of sleep, but this is how I felt last Thursday too. Maybe theres some deeper cause.

I haven't been overeating (read lots of junkfood) lately because my appetite has been low (anxiety is good for something)but I still haven't lost weight in spite of that and doing a lot of running around all day.

This weekend I too am doing renovations - sanding the window sills in the kitchen and repainting them, washing the ceiling and repainting it.

Yup...thats about it.

Ow!

One doctors appointment and 2 vaccinations later. I have had a jab in each arm. I'd just like to say that the after effects of the fluvax are so far less that that of the HepA booster. I'm planning on mowing the lawn this afternoon. I may not get much of it done. I may also be much sorer tomorrow.

sleep

I've had a lot of broken sleep lately, waking up early and all that. Last night I went to bed really tired at 10:30pm and woke up when I was woken up at 7:10am. I slept the night through. The reason? I forgot to open my window and I had my door shut. It was oxygen deprivation. I must try that more often, though I am still sleepy right now.

This is the painting I bought in PNG

as well as the computer it now sits above.

mmm...I want...but I won't

These leave my hand carved and polished D6 dice for dead

the lack of plan making

I'm going to Britain in July. I think for three weeks. I'll be visiting my brother. I keep thinking of things I'd like to do while I'm there, but it will be the height of the tourist season, so if I want to go places, I'll have to make sure I'm booked in advance. I've booked the flight over, but not back yet (Saturday 14th July, flying SwissAir out of Cairns).

The problem is; In a very un-Jenny like state, I don't want to make plans, I don't want to know exactly what I'm doing and make bookings for things. I want to be spontaneous and just turn up on whim. This is not like me at all. I feel torn between actually doing something about having accomodation/transport to go the places and do the things I want to (my usual preferred holiday plan of attack), and just cruising along (never done it before...except maybe in Tassie when we tended to go...where does this road go? But even then, we had back up plans and some clue).

Because I always wanted badges

For some reason many of the badges on this site made me think of Chris. ...and I think I'll leave it to you to find out what these all mean. I may not quite qualify for "I blog about science" but I put it there anyway.

time is an illusion

I was just thinking about time-zones and daylight savings & how to find out what time it is somewhere now you need to find an online map. Then my mind moved to how people used to determined the day from when dawn was. Then I thought, since we know the rotation of the earth round the sun, we can work out dawn for all longitudes and latitudes, so we should now be able to make clocks where we just type in our long and lat and then it could give us our day based on dawn and sunset D:0:00 would be dawn, D:1:00 would be one hour after dawn N:0:00 would be sunset, and so on...the number of hours etc for each would vary over the year, but you could always start work x hours after sunrise and work for y hours. No more need for daylight saving.
Since we have online maps telling us the what time it is everywhere else, we could still use these to tell us whether we could contact people easily. Or even better, instead of standard clocks, we'd have plasma display screens showing us our daylight time with a list down the side of other places we were interested in for quick reference.

This can't be an original idea, off to google.

regrets

I bought an oil painting...it needed framing...it was big

I regret the framing cost for matting the painting like a tryptich and putting it behind glass was $170 more than just framing it. As it is, its costing twice what I paid for it to frame it - not unusual.

I regret that doing this would also have increased the weight to in excess of 20kg, requiring hanging on a wall stud rather than just plaster...as well as increasing the size to something that wouldn't fit on any eligable wall in my home.

....beacause it looked so very, very cool.

Double matting; thin strip of chocolate brown covered by top wide strip of cream coffee colour, in a dark wood frame, three tall strips of faces with lots of primary colour over creams and browns....sigh

At least I got the names of the matting colours so when I am rich and buy a home of my own with plenty of sturdy presentation walls, I can spend the $500 to reframe it.

I'll put in a shot of the standard oil-painting framing when I get it back.

heh...

I'd play this too.

In other news, the people I have coffee with in the morning didn't turn up, so I had to use my own coffee machine..Its been so long I don't know if the beans I had in a moccona jar were decaf or not. I guess my level of alertness today will tell me. On an up side, my office now smells of coffee...grinders do that

The big Wetter

or should that be the bigger wet? The causeway to the vet school is now under by 6 inches.

The Big Wet

8 inches of rain last night.
My feet are damp.
I forgot to bring in my camera.

I'll have to borrow the department one. Theres a really cool cluster of bright yellow mushrooms with red centres over near the micro building. They look quite Fairylandish. I'd probably die in agonised convulsions if I tried to eat them. I've also taken photos of the rushing creek. Nice department 10megapixel camera.

There is a walk bridge across the normally (but not anymore) dry creek

And if you thought that was flooded...try the main causeway we drive over to get in. It was over this morning. But possibly the weirdest bit was the electrical cable access cover that was on quite high ground...bubbling water through the leverage holes

Edited because I got hold of the camera.

ooh...cool

http://neilgaiman.com/stardust/

BTW I've just finished reading The Pinhoe Egg (Diana Wynne Jones), that I only knew was out because it was mentioned on Neil Gaimans blog The Pinhoe egg was also cool. Part of the Chrestomanci series.

well, that was weird

Being at a university with large mailing list setups, you get used to the hackers who use the mass mailouts to send you pharmaceutical crap emails, usually with the name of someone from the list on top. Today I got one from me.

Outlook lets you look at the internet headers under options (something I see the NCIS guys going on TV...and any other cop show for that matter), so I did, feeling all investigative. And lo and behold, one of the lines says "recieved from localhost (local host [series of numbers] (may be forged))"...I sent an email from myself and this line said "recieved from my computer name, mycomputer .proper university address"...no may be forged thing. There's also another line where message ID clashes with recieved from ID.

Now, what I'd like to know is, if the header can identify possible forgeries, why can't the university system flag these, stop them getting through and require a manual check from a wetware technical person to see if it can legitimately be passed on?

I can see why a fake outside name might not be picked up, but with internal people, the email addresses are known. Maybe its because so many people have multiple addresses, with setups to get return addresses to their alternative address.

I'd do without all that flash if it meant I didn't get so many viagra commercials.

BTW if you got something from me entitled "And Jerusalem, And I will not perish at noon", with a pharmaceutical advertisement in it, I didn't send it. So far as I know, I've never sent or recieved an email with those words in it either, so its not a hack into my email, just the system storing my email address.

a little hygiene experiment

I was given an Enjo face washer for Christmas. This is a soap free face washing glove, where you just wet it and wipe over your face, then rinse off the washer and squeeze it out - no soap, no soap free soap, nada. I was dubious about the value of this so I tried a two week experiment where I used only the washer or straight water on my face...no soap for cleaning my face for two weeks. Theres been no obvious detrimental effect from this. Today I wiped over my face thoroughly with a clean and clear deep action cleansing wipe (on the basis that that would pick up all the gunge and I'd be able to see it on the wipe)

Results: Face - no dirtier than you'd expect after a days worth of work grime
Back of neck (that gets shampoo on it every night) -eeuuuw must clean that more...maybe with the enjo wipe

Now my face feels tight and stripped of the protective natural oils (which it didn't before, with the glove it just felt clean and scrubbed).

So waddaya know, the enjo glove actually works.

Not thrilled

The web page inside my blogging entry thing is still there. To add to my annoyance, the new blogger is supposed to recognise me for commenting on my own blog and not ask for confirmation that I am human(with the weird coloured letters). But unlike the old blog where I was automatically recognised as being me (choose ID: blog, anonymous, other) I have to log in each time I turn on the internet and go to my comments page...so it doesn't recognise me to start off, which means I have to do the weird coloured letters AND type in my name and password. At least before all I had to do was the weird coloured letters.

Yet I was able to set it that I don't have to type in my ID on this computer to actually write a blog. Just to comment on it. Go figure.

Its raining

This is weird. The post section of blogger has the whole website inside the blog entry section...so to blog I have to get to the blog entry section inside the blog entry section. I suppose I should be glad its not infinitely doing so.

All the buttons function. It really is a web page inside another webpage.

BTW its raining up here in sunny Brownsville, cloud creeping over the hills, creeks running enthusiastically with brown rapids, gutters indicating a lack of drainage. Ah, the wet season. Frogs outside my window waking me in the morning, bedraggled birds that have never been this wet before and look rather stunned about it, people not prepared and using their windshield screens as makeshift umbrellas (very entertaining to watch)....I'm all cheerful

Happy Brithday for yesterday Andrea

or happy birthday, if your fingers don't type in a funnny order

The Nature of Procrastination: A Meta-Analytic and Theoretical Review of Quintessential Self-Regulatory Failure

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-01/uoc-wst010907.php

heh

http://www.procrastinus.com/ link to "test your own procrastination level"

my score was 38/100. I am a moderate procrastinator...it did say I only answered 51 out of 100 possible shapes before exiting, but I didn't choose to exit...a glitch, or did my subconcious hit the exit button. Fastest reaction time 0.36 seconds. Slowest, 0.64 seconds.

and unlike most online quizzes, this is actually real research. I'm helping someones work (there is a disclaimer page you have to click on to allow them to use your results...but no ID info apart from age, gender, education level type stuff.

Finally, the PNG pics

I went to PNG in November to field test an updated kit I'd been working on. The kit is for testing for L. filariasis and the uni is involved in a monitoring program for this in PNG. So I helped with their sampling in return for using learning about field limitations. We went to Oro province. The people were lovely. These are people from Saiho. The first place we went. They fed us well and had a feast for us one night.




Here are some shots of me working...



While we were there, we went up to Kokoda. This is me on the Kokoda Trail. Now I can say I've walked (a bit of) it.


We also went to Oro bay to work....beautiful paradise, in which I unfortunately got food poisoning after finishing my work.


While this goodbye photo looks fine, I was actually feeling very queezy at the time

Once I'd recovered we went to Port Moresby and I shopped at the markets before coming home. The mesh bag is a real highland billum.

One of the authors I read

is writing an online book. For every $300 donated, they'll put a chapter online. They aren't starting for another fortnight and the first 12 chapters is paid for already. I shall keep an eye on it.

This is my new hair

It has faded a bit since the original tint...That was vibrant! ...and just to try it, I did the face recognition too. I think I liked the first one better.

lets kick off the year in the manner in which I intend to continue

A 70% match to Yasmin bleeth…bwah ha ha…bet it wouldn’t be if I had a whole body match done...btw I'll do this again tomorrow when I bring in the shot of me with new fancy hair...

don't worry, I haven't forgotten

I do remember I promised to put up piccies and a spiel about my PNG trip, but I've been busy, and disorganised, and sleepy...and the photos are at home. I will get to it...just sooo sleepy.

BTW my thesis is submitted.

one step closer

I have a second examiner...paperwork is grinding through

I'm back

I've been in Papua New Guinea for a week and a day. The last night we spent in Port Moresby at a swanky hotel near the airport (think rolls of razor wire around the inside of the walls, and poolside orange juice). We also caught a PMV (public motor vehicle, small bus) into town to the Baroka markets, then into the city centre. We took some locals with us so we were less likely to be hassled and went in the morning (ditto - don't go into town after 4pm). So, I've now done something very few westerners have done - caught a PMV. We were the only white people I saw outside the hotel and airport. I will write more (eg why I was in PNG) after I finish my official report...andf put up piccies

If I can't find it, how can you?

I got a comment from an old blog entry the other day...well, September some time. I had been talking about tapas at a restaurant I went to & how I had trouble figuring out the ordering/paying/seating system, but the food rocked (Rhino Bar : try it you'll like it). In spite of the entry now being archived, I got a comment from the Rhino staff explaining how to do said functions. Now, it being a whole month and a 1/2 ago, I couldn't remember what I'd actually written so I looked it up.

I assumed they'd googled it, but did not find anything. I had to do a search from inside my blog page to find the entry.

Obviously I suck at googling.

I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair

I also wish I didn't have the first line of this song going over and over in my head. Or at least that I knew more than the first line of the song to sing.

Whats your musical meme today?

for those who play guitar hero..

http://xkcd.com/c70.html

Man! not the D12

The only thing I like about D12's is they have pentagonal faces.
You are the rare, the overlooked, yet incredibly useful dodecahedron: the d12. You are a creative, romantic soul. You often act without thinking, but make up for your lack of plans with plenty of heart. You easily solve problems that stump others, but your answers tend to put you into even deeper trouble. You write long, detailed backgrounds for all your characters, and are most likely to dress up as one or get involved in cos-play. You can be silly at times and are easily distracted by your own day dreams, but are at the end of the day you're someone who can be depended on.

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

did I do a good thing?

First a disclaimer; I've never gotten round to reading Lovecraft, I've played the game, but I've never read his books.

I was showing Kathy an online t-shirt company and as one of the themes was Cthulu, I had to explain the concept (at least - of the game, as I haven't read the books) & she said they might be interesting to read. I did a quick online search of the JCU library and there's tonnes of stuff, including one with Call of Cthulu and other stories. So off she went to borrow out a couple. She's 1/2 way through the first book and enjoying it.

Why is this blog worthy you say? Little did I know when I looked up the book online, but Kathy has not read a novel without being forced to do so since primary school. So depending on your point of view, I've either introduced another person to the mind broadening subculture of readers or I've corrupted her and am dragging her away from productive work. (and I haven't even read this author).

more info

Apparently named after David William Elliman MBE (1902-1993)

I was actually looking for something else at the time...

sleepy

A week and a bit ago, as I was lying in bed at night, my whole right arm started going all pins and needles. "Hmm" I thought "Thats not good. But it could be worse. It could be my left arm." The next day my arm was still all pins and needles and I remembered what my massage therapist had said about me being at risk of RSI in my right arm. So I did a web search on pins and needles, forearm, symptoms....a whole page of carpal tunnel syndrome later I decided to call my doctor and make an appointment. Now heres a whole nuther story;

I have a doctors surgery I've been going to since I was a teenager. I've outlasted several doctors there. I'm generally very healthy so I don't go often. In the last few years, I've had a few times where I didn't want to/couldn't wait 1/2 a week or more to get in (eg I was travelling), so I've gone to the Unihealth doctor. So its not that I hadn't rung them to get in, they just couldn't get me in in the time required. Earlier this year during the possible whooping cough episode, I rang and wanted to get in and they said that since I hadn't been in over two years, I was no longer considered a "regular" and would not be able to get in for at least two weeks. So I, once again, went elsewhere. Which brings us back to the present possible carpal tunnel issue. I think, "Heres something rather chronic that isn't requiring an immediate fix. I'll ring up, get an appointment for 2-3 weeks away and get back on their regular list" So I ring, get an appointment and then they find I haven't been for over two years, and tell me "sorry our policy says if you haven't been for over two years, you must be considered a new patient and we can't get you in...at all."

"What!" says I, "Not at all!" All disbelieving that I have been dissed by my GP to whom I've been going for over 15 years. "Well then, I guess I'll be throwing away your card and looking for a new GP. Good day." I would take it further, but since the last Doctor I went to there has moved on, I'd be seeing someone new no matter where I went and this Surgery is actually out of my way.

So now I'm looking for a new GP so I can have my medical records transferred to someone who cares...or at least doesn't turf me for being too healthy for their bottom line.

Anyhoo, back to the possible carpal tunnel. The unihealth doctor I went to did some probing, asked some questions and thinks its more likely I did something to my neck. She put me on an anti-inflammatory for a week and said if that doesn't settle it down, come back and she'll get neck x-rays done. See! I can make money for the GP! I'm not getting any younger or healthier you know. But to get back to the title, I think the anti-inflammatories are making me..zzzzzz

World Peace

On Friday night I was playing with one of those little electronic 20 question gadgets. The annoying little thing got all my objects right, so I decided to stump it by having "World Peace" as my thing to guess. After about 25 questions, it guessed "Is it a fart?". We now have a new name for farts in our house. Example: "After a dinner of fried beans, there's a lot of world peace in the room"

On related note, my mother has a a pet St Andrews Cross spider. It lives outside the back door and my mum has named it Crossandra. A while back Crossandra had a man friend on a web right next door. Later, she ate him and proceeded to increase in size. We were eagerly awaiting the babies but this morning she was back to her normal size with no sign of babies or egg sack. I suggested that maybe it had just been world peace.

had a good weekend..now I must pay

I ran around all weekend getting stuff done, work, shopping (including sales!), excersize. Went out to dinner and had tapas for the first time ever....mmm tapas...lamb and tzatzicki, chips and garlic aoli, coconut crumbed king prawns, mediterranian spiced barramundi kebabs, calamari in a really interesting sauce. Yum. (apologies to those who know how to spell...or bother with the spell checker). The Rhino bar was very good value, but better signage on how they run the system would be nice (walk up and order at bar/ pay as you go or leave a drivers licence behind and run a tab). Then off to Odyssey on the strand for coffee and baklava under the stars - expensive but worth every cent.

I should set up a "Review of Townsville Restaurants" Blog. I eat at enough of them.

Of course now I have the beginnings of a sore throat. I will have to gargle and strepsil tonight. I really don't want to get sick right now. So much to do, so little time

The things I find reading other peoples blogs

Actually, when you think about it...very self referential: I find this on another blog...not anotherblog but "another" blog ( http://seeyounextwednesday.blogspot.com/ ) and then do it myself and put it on my blog and it's about blogs...and now you're reading it on my blog etc etc.

You Are 50% Addicted to Blogthings

You're a Blogthings fiend - addicted but not totally dependent. So what if you know your personality type by heart? And while you may feel like Blogthings is crack... There are people much worse off than you!

How Addicted To Blogthings Are You?

My "someone is siphoning blood from me" alarm still works

I have discovered, through trial and vomit (and multiple research projects that have dragged me into them), that I can give three vials of blood easily, start to feel nauseated on four and throw up should people be foolish enough to continue (say 6-7ml/vial=24-28ml max). This is why I don't give blood. There's no point if the blood bank people have to take the blood bag off, throw it away because its not full and then clean up my vomit. Waste of their time, waste of my time - and lunch.

I haven't given more than one vial of blood at a time for a few years but today I gave four vials of blood for a Q fever research project (as I have been vaccinated against Q fever and am a conveniently close research subject). I wouldn't have volunteered if they were going into dangerous five vial territory. Fine through vials 1-3, queezy about two seconds into vial 4. Afterwards I had to go have a sit down, a drink and some fruit and nut mix. I'm told I went pale. I'm still feeling vaguely off.

Strangely enough I don't have low blood pressure (dead normal really). Yet, should anyone (secretly and without my knowledge) start siphoning me, my body tells me pretty quick smart and at the same volume each time.

I'm so immature...or alternately 'maintaining my inner child"

You've Experienced 56% of Life

You have a good deal of life experience, about as much as someone in their late 20s. You've seen and done enough to be quite wise, but you still have a lot of life to look forward to.

How Much Life Experience Do You Have?

This was a little more fun

http://www.says-it.com/seal/index.php

Half the Jenny, All the taste

http://www.thesurrealist.co.uk/slogan.cgi/slogan.cgi?word=Jenny

I wish. But then it got creepy

All you need is a Jenny and a dream...
Jenny really satisfies...

Hmm might stop now

done done and done

Yesterday I finished up a good copy of my thesis (its approximately 40mm thick - or 247 pages). I put it on my supervisors desk and have washed my hands of it for the immediate future. Kathy said "So, now you can relax and have some free time." No, no no no no.
Now I can write four papers, finish the lab work I need to do so I can make one of the papers of much higher value, start writing the lectures for CS3006 for October, finish the pile of filing and small jobs that have been accumulating on my desk for the last three months, ring a bunch of people, oh, and at some point write a storyline and get props for my online Cruise of Cthulu game.

When I handed the thesis to my supervisor he said "Do you have anything planned now or would you like some more work?" Bwah ha ha ha. I pointed out the first three things on my list and was told "that seems like enough to do and is probably the most important thing you can do right now." So I don't even know what the work he had planned for me was.

In 20 minutes I pour a gel, set up the PCR samples to put in it, wait another 1/2 hour and run a gel for 2 hours, cut out any products and prep for another PCR and gel. In all the gaps, I'm writing a paper/doing a bunch of phone calling/small jobs. And thats Tuesday accounted for

In an aside, I had the biggest feeling of deja vu yesterday. I walked into a lab and Karen said "Hey jenny, did you hear Steve Irwin is dead?" The tone of voice was just the same as when I walked into the dining area of the B&B I was staying at with my little brother on the Isle of Skye and Doug said "Hey jenny, did you hear Princess Diana is dead?" My immediate response was the same - I waited for the punchline, followed by a real sense of disbelief: Young, famous people don't die. Of course they do, but you just don't expect it.

Grammar checking

I have recieved my thesis back from grammar checking. Much, much red pen later. My checker said he enjoyed doing it...to the point of finishing and thinking maybe he could start again with a different coloured pen. His girlfriend stopped him. It took me all day to go through 50 pages yesterday. Only 200 more to go. Then I have to reformat all the pages so paragraphs and tables go across the pages properly again and redo the TOC and tables and figures lists so that they reference the new pages that everything has shifted to....then I discuss handing in and printing the photographic/colour pages. At some point I should also discuss examiners.

bad, bad drivers

Has anyone noticed that drivers are getting worse? I seem to see more acts of stupidity, aggression and lack of road rule understanding every day. Just the other day, while waiting at a stops sign to turn left, the car opposite me waiting to turn right (ie onto the same bit of road I wanted to turn on) just drove on through behind the car I was waiting on. Pretty sure I had the right of way there.

What made me write was the bizarre set of circumstances that I was a witness to yesterday - and almost involved in.

Picture this, Dad is driving my car out to work to pick up his that he's left there. I'm in the passenger seat since I will need to drive my own car home. We are waiting at the ross river lights at Balls lane, planning to cross straight over Ross River road to cross street (which is a short two lane road, both lanes of which can turn right at the next set of lights onto Bowen road and hence out to the army base. Now, if you are on Ross river road and want to turn right onto Cross street, theres only so many cars that will fit if the Cross/Bowen road light is red. Big blue car doesn't care about that and moves across traffic on green arrow without ensuring space free to get out of oncoming lane. Small white car follows into intersection but not across traffic lane. There are no more cars behind this one. Green arrow goes off, oncoming traffic wants to move. Big blue car edges back - small white car refuses to back out of intersection...more forced edging until oncoming traffic can actually get through. Lights eventually go red and there's now enough space to drive into Cross street - both cars drive through.

If you are in an intersection when the light goes red, its not only legal to continue driving through, its illegal not to. This maybe why the white car didn't want to back back too far - she wanted to get to drive through on the red.

We now drive through and end up in right hand lane behind blue car. White car is in left lane. (Remember, both of these lanes turn right, though left lane can also turn left). Lights change, we all drive off. Big blue car does not remain in own lane, curving gently out into the left lane of Bowen road, forcing white car off the road. White car brakes and swerves back into left lane behind blue car...AND GET THIS !... continues swerving (not indicating) as though she is going to go into the right lane so she can get past the blue car. Due to relative speeds and the fact my dad styed in the right lane as he was supposed to, she almost ran straight into us...Much braking and honking. She then swerved back into the left lane, sped up and then, while indicating, cut us off by swerving back into the right lane in front of us (we'd slowed to avoid being hit the first time). My dad was rather peeved and spent the rest of the trip muttering about how if he'd been driving a Mack truck like he usually does, instead of a hyundai hatchback, the honking would have been much, much louder - and more aggressive.

The more i write the more recent idiot incidents come to mind. I'm a mild driver, accepting of mistakes and people acting cautious and not quite getting it right...they might be new after all. But lately it hasn't been mistakes of lack of experience, its been rank, arrogant, ignorance.

Fume fume fume.

Did I say I needed a day?

Having left my thesis alone for some time I started reading through it again. The science is fine. The grammar and sentance structure in general is horrific. I'm going through the chapters, printing out the pages where I think fixes are needed and writing notes on them. I want to see my supervisor about them before I go further, in case the fixes are just as bad as the originals...I'm printing out every second page at the moment.

shopping

The other day, for my diet, I bought a few bananas and a large piece of very nice steak. Guess which cost more.

recovery

wonders will never cease. Except for the occasional throat clearing and nose blowing, I appear to have gotten over the lurgy. Here endeth the comments about my health.

Now to my weight....I'm going on the week long diet to kick start my healthy living again. I will tell you how much I lose when I lose it (but not my actual weight. heh)

My thesis is sitting at the 2nd last draft stage and I need to read through and comment - but i need a full day. I'm also up to my gills in sequencing experiments to combine my genome for a paper I want to write. Soo busy right now.

Last weekend I shopped. Pavilion was closing down and I bought lots of stuff including a clock in the shape of a die to add to my 6 sided dice collection. I also bought these really nice green strappy high heel sandals from a little dress shop that I only went into to get a key to use the Urban Quarter shopping centres toilet. Expensive loo trip, but cheap shoes.

This weekend I may read my thesis after doing more shopping. I'd like to check out that clothing shop more thoroughly.

i'm thinking about quoting Dr who

A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but is by no means the most interesting - dr Who, from 'the time warrior"

This may end up being my quote in the front of my thesis...can I quote imaginary characters?

ill - my new normal state of health

I still have the cough. In fact, on Friday I had a relapse, spent the weekend in bed and I'm back to really bad cough. I don't however have a fever, so I had my fluvax today. The doc said that I should come back if I get any fever or productive cough. I'm suspicious my tonsils may be involved, but doctors are very hesitant about taking them out now, so even if they are, I bet I'd have to have this for 6 months before they'd consider it...must go and have a coughing fit now.

The Stargate season 9 DVD box set

will be on sale on the 17th of August. I have it in my diary. Seven has just started showing this season (late, on Thursday nights, with no advertising). By my calculations, even if seven shows an episode every week (not a good bet), they'll only be half way through before I can buy the whole season - which I will. Seven hates science fiction.

misc. et. al.

I'm still coughing. Will this disease ever end!

I didn't go to the show (no point in ensuring I stay sick for the rest of the year) and I'm sad. It was cheaper this year than it has been for some time and it looked good. I like the show.

I need to get a flu vax. I must remember to ring my doctor.

This long weekend (show day was monday) I did a lot of lying around coughing. In between bouts, I leveled the dish washer, planted a coffee bean, started to design a new online game, started to type up the names of my brothers books and determined that thyme is a really good companion plant for cabbage. I planted individual cabbage plants near each other some time ago, surrounded by different herbs. They all got chewed nigh unto death except the one nestled in the thyme.

I also managed to delete the sound driver on my computer by accident. I didn't realise it was the sound driver. I thought it was some insignificant extra program I'd installed. I then found that resetting to an earlier system setting, although it should work in XP, kept failing at the last section and freezing up. This is disconcerting. I was assuming I could rest if I screwed something up.

An online search determined that lots of other people have done what I have done and finding the driver requires that you know what your motherboard is. One opened computer later...I found the original disk for that motherboard in my files and happily reinstalled (only wasted about 2 hours and a bunch of my online time).

didn't I mention that?

One of my cousins was emailing me asking how things were. I thought "why isn't she reading my blog? Didn't I tell her about it?" Apparently - No, I didn't. She'd also never heard of them.
When I mentioned this to my mother she said "You never told me you had a blog." .....oops.

I have now passed on the address to my mother and am anticipating comments of a cringeworthy motherly type. Not because my mother is actually like that, but she has a warped sense of humour. Hi mum, Luv ya.

update on 'Lurgy

There's a general feeling I might have had whooping cough after all. Its going around and previously vaccinated people are getting it. As an adult, you don't always get the same symptoms as a child, the very long symptoms (still coughing all night and not doing a full days work) etc. etc though my coush does sound a lot like the one I have a link to.

The green stuff below is taken straight out of http://textbookofbacteriology.net/pertussis.html
The first stage, colonization, is an upper respiratory disease with fever, malaise and coughing, which increases in intensity over about a 10-day period. During this stage the organism can be recovered in large numbers from pharyngeal cultures, and the severity and duration of the disease can be reduced by antimicrobial treatment.

The second or toxemic stage of pertussis follows relatively nonspecific symptoms of the colonizaton stage. It begins gradually with prolonged and paroxysmal coughing that often ends in a characteristic inspiratory gasp (whoop). To hear the characteristic sound of whooping cough click whoop.wav (whoop.wav is copyright of Dr Doug Jenkinson, Nottingham, England. www.whoopingcough.net). During the second stage, B. pertussis can rarely be recovered, and antimicrobial agents have no effect on the progress of the disease.......................................Many young children are vaccinated against whooping cough with the pertussis vaccine. However, the vaccine is only approved for children under seven years of age. Antibody-mediated immunity wanes in approximately ten years, leaving older individuals more susceptible to the disease. Adults get infected, often to a lesser degree, but they are still able to spread the disease to unimmunized children.

Sounds very familiar. This means I may have spread it to Cairns, Kuranda, Mareeba, Innisfail (where I coughed in a very, very crowded Maccas at lunch time) and a few incidental places. I was hygienic with my coughing & did lots of hand washing, and my highly susceptible cousin hasn't come down with it, so maybe I haven't given it to anyone.

I knew I should have got someone to take a nasopharyngeal swab and streaked it out to check for Bordetella pertussis before I started antibiotics. Then I could have added the isolate to the clinical isolate collection in the -80C freezer.
I think the microbiologist in me is showing. We have a general attitude of; "wait, give me a sample/photo of the symptoms/biopsy of what the doctors take out so I can add it to the collection/use it for lectures/cut it up and look down a microscope at it"

Here endeth the microbiology lesson.

still sick but working

After two days off work and sleepless nights spent coughing, I went to the Doctor. She said "You aren't linked to the uni are you? There's whooping cough going around and if you haven't had a booster....." She gave me an antibiotic script just in case, though my cough wasn't whoopy and sent me home for another two days. Turns out the antibiotics were a good thing, as by the next morning I had an obvious and possibly secondary bacterial infection.

It took till Sunday night for the antibiotics to kick in and start cutting the symptoms back. I still haven't had more than three hours sleep a night, and I've wasted a week I could have been finishing my thesis, but I'm feeling better. I know this because I'm not hanging out checking the time, waiting till I can reload all the drugs into my system. BTW Ease-a-cold flue strength rocks!. Instead I'm thinking "hmm symptoms are getting worse again, oh yes, should have taken drugs 2 hours ago."

best bit about being sick for a week: getting to do some fiction reading that I hadn't had time for
most irritating bit: having no appetite for a week, eating very little and still not losing weight


Must get back to grading exams now. If I'm diligent I'll have them finished by tomorrow and can wallow in thesis editing for the rest of the week :)

sick as a dog

My father is a sharing man. He shared his cough with me. I have a chesty cough, a sore throat and a runny nose - and i'm sleepy without being able to sleep. I thought I was feeling better so i came into uni to hide in my office and do some work (so I wouldn't sicken others, I'm not a sharing person). I'm not feeling better. In fact, I've bundled up the exam papers i'm marking and copied my latest version of my thesis onto a dvd (its 128meg in size plus peripheral files) about a gig worth and I'm going home to pretend to work. Ironically, the question I'm up to marking is "name four airborn diseases and a risk factor for them - I'm willing to accept "common cold, Jenny's dad" as one answer right now. When I'm feeling better I will tell you all about my trip to Cairns.

I declare that this thesis is my own work and has not been submitted ...

So close I can smell the rejection letters from the examiners

Updated stats

My thesis, without an introduction, abstract and lists of tables, table of contents etc is now 223 pages long, made up of 63474 words. Just thought i'd let you know.

Bwah ha ha ha

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=145

Its funny if you're doing a PhD

my favourite way to play action adventure computer games

is to sit behind someone else playing and offer advice. This is because I have naff all fine motor control and always stuff up the moves. Yesterday I got my 8 1/2 year old nephew to get Lara Croft (version 2) from level 1 to level 2. I just couldn't get past the spiders. He used much better tactics than me and wiped the floor with them. I like to think I'm better than he is at sideways jumps though.

This is truly, truly awesome

Download it, play it, be blown away
Plasma pong

Have you tried tringo yet?

There is a tetris like game that has been developed called Tringo . It is very popular in Second Life, apparently all the avatars are playing it in the game - wheels within wheels. I have rearranged my computer so that I can play it in the five minute periods before I have to shoot off somewhere without getting asked why I'm not working (ie no-one from outside can see my computer screen anymore). Its not bad, yet another online thing I can waste time on...sort of like blogging really.

Actually, the reason I changed my computer round was that I kept hearing people walk past the door and had no idea who they were or if they were walking in. It was creepy.

Now that I have procrastinated, I'm going off to mark 82 bacterial conjugation pracs.

I blame answering no to do you wear thongs for the low wonderwoman score

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman 80% Supergirl 60% Robin 57% Catwoman 50% Hulk 50% Spider-Man 45% Green Lantern 45% The Flash 35% Batman 35% Iron Man 30% Wonder Woman 25%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero am I?" quiz...

some numerical data

My thesis, not including abstract, table of contents, figures or abreviations, or appendices currently is;

words: 56429
sentances: 4646
paragraphs: 2609
pages: 196

average words/sentence:12 words
longest sentence: 115 words

the things you do to avoid actual productive work :)

I should blog

Interesting things are happening. i'm having firsts for lecturing and prac teaching. Life is pretty cool, but i don't have time to blog...maybe later, if i remember it all.

My notebook

is a toshiba satelite A100 with the following specs;
Processor: Core Duo T2300, 1.86GHz
RAM: 512MB
Hard drive: 80GB
DVD: DVD DL super multidrive (+/-/RAM)
Video card: ATI Radeon X1300 64MB
Networking: 10/100 NIC, integrated 802.11 a/b/g
modem: internal 56kbps V.90
connections: 4xUSB 2.0, IEEE 1394, VGA out, S-video, PCMCIA, 5 in 1 card reader, iR, bluetooth, fingerprint reader
Speakers: Harmon Kardon
OS: Windows XP home
monitor: 15.4" TFT
software: 3mth norton antivirus, office student edition
3yr warranty


the fingerprint scanner is frivolous and fun. I still have to buy a good bag and a mouse - I may get a cordless optical one...or a blue tooth one. That way I can play with the bluetooth stuff.

lecture virgin no more

I have given my first lecture for microbiology. DNA replication in bacteria in review. It only lasted 30 minutes, but this is good as it was supposed to be the shortest lecture of the series. The students appeared to be paying attention and I got several down the front afterwards.

I'm about to go off and give the second lecture; Protein synthesis. I'll be using my own laptop this time. More about the new laptop later...when I have time to drool and don't need to be over at the maths physics building.

and the race is on

After a month of stuffing round getting no thesis work done. I bit the bullet and wrote my last chapter on Monday...in one day. I could be a month more advanced than I am if I'd written it in one day a month ago-sigh. Now to formatting

avoiding work...the purpose of this blog

Monkey, Ninja, Pirate, Robot?

Ninja!You are a sneaky Ninja.We don't even know you're there... before it's too late!
Take this quiz!








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I wanna MacBook Pro

Having read the specs and how (quite simply apparently) to run XP on it so I can actually use it at mac averse JCU...I really really like this laptop.
What I do not like is the price. ~$3200
Way beyond my price range. I was getting all whiny at the thought that what I wanted might mean I had to go over two grand. I'd really like to pay less than $1600. Perhaps I can buy 1/2 a MacBook Pro.

Specs I want;
duel core Intel M processor (2gHz)
677MHz, though I'd live with 577
min 512Mb Ram (pref 1G)
Wifi
DVD duel layer Burner
lots of USB ports

Theres more, but that'll do right now

what do you mean there's no computer in the lecture theatre!

I'm looking to buy a laptop this year.
The buy just got urgent as I have found out the lecture theatre I'm supposed to lecture in does not have a computer in it!!!!! Just the peripherals like the data projector (and overhead projector probably). So, if I want to give a lecture using powerpoint rather than old OHTs, I must provide my own computer.

So what should I be looking for?

I think I'd like it to be reasonably fast. Powerpoints can run really slow on the older desktops if you use images (I do)...so maybe I should avoid celeron processors. I'll also probably store scanned photos on it for my family history stuff. I'm unlikely to game on it though.

Any suggestions from the notebook literate?

Yup, a stick I tell you

Got another one this morning. I'm getting better at the " The report is a little enthusiastic. While future work may result in human therapy, my work was a foundation for further research & it doesn't really have a punchy tag for you to do an article about." I'm also getting better at explaining what bacteriophage are.

By the time this is over, I'll have a much better handle on what info to have available to the media prior to their talking to me.

beating them off with a stick....

...or at least two of them.
I had someone from the school newsletter interview me about my PhD (slow news day). She sent me the article - which was hugely misinterpretable and made it sound like I had just about cured cancer (or my disease) so my supervisor and I fixed the worst misscommunications and sent it back. This is the problem with trying to explain pure science in laymans terms and give them a reference point. I should have done more to squelch her enthusiasm as it then went to all the news outlets across Australia I think.

I just had to have a conversation with an associated press person (another slow news day) and explain that what I was doing was foundation science without any immediate practical application to human health. I did say that in the long term, should we get funding and students to do the work, the work I had done would be a foundation for possible human therapy. I should have made that clearer to the first interviewer, but practice makes perfect I guess.

I gave her some names of people with more interest in current human treatment etc., who also have experience with the press, so hopefully she will completely forget about me.

As a scientist, who may need public interest in my work to achieve funding, I should be more eager to talk to the Press - but I'm not. I'll happily write them something, but talking to them fills me with dread.

edited because I can't spell

Larry induced injuries

I have a 10cm cut on my arm with a blue smear around it the size of a 10 cent piece (internal bleeding) and a bad knee causing a limp. Both of these were due to injuries recieved while cleaning up the yard to avoid flying debris should the cyclone hit us. Apart from that I am well and since we were virtually unaffected by Larry, I find these injuries ironic.

On other ironic news, I officially started my short term lecturing contract yesterday and spent it at home doing odd jobs. Good start to the full time job. I'm a day behind in my schedule already.

Cyclone Larry

After spending yesterday afternoon lugging everything under the house and filling up those things that couldn't be lugged in with water and tying them up, taping windows, putting washing machines up on bricks, and generally preparing for the worst....we have light persistant rain, and mild winds (rain at about 45 degrees). I've put up the best windy picture I got - palm trees always look so effective in wind. This is one of the neighbours houses, I wasn't going to tramp out into the rain to take a photo of mine.

Dad and I both have the day off work - organised last night when they shut down the uni for 24 hours and told the contractors at the army not to come in. This cyclone was taken seriously. I guess the speed at which it approached and the rapid upgrading to huge cyclone (cat 5), was taken seriously by those in charge. I'm spending the day doing all those things I don't have time for usually.

My to do list will get shorter at least, but I don't think the people in Innisfail are appeciating that right now. I'd be very surprised if there are no fatalities. Its supposed to be the biggest to hit the east coast for 100 years. Dad says there was one that hit Mackay about 100 years ago that almost wiped out Mackay permanently. Leonta hit Townsville in 03-04 (1903 that is) I think, and it was very destructive too.

Hmm, getting more windy, rainy and grey, maybe I should get off line now.

Living dangerously

If when driving at 100km an hour down the highway, the car starts to vibrate and feels like you are going at high speed over corrugations whilst pushing a 2 stroke lawn mower, do you;

A) stop the car on the side of the road and check for obvious problems
B) slow down, annoying all the other cars and drive more slowly to limit any damage
C) assume its the engine problem you think you have getting worse and stay at 100 since its only another 50km till you get home and how much worse can it get.

Actually it was my rear right tyre separating and the vibrations were due to the egg on the top. After I got home and described the symptoms, my dad said it was exactly this and that my tyre was going to blow out...very soon, so I shouldn't drive on it at all. It was probably only prayer that was the reason it didn't blow while I was doing 100km/hr on a highway with traffic in both directions. My mother was the one who noticed the two, 10cm long wires sticking out of the tyre. I put the spare on this morning and will be spending $140 as soon as I finish here.

and in conclusion....

my exit seminar (now known as a pre-completion seminar) went well. At least it did after the ship anchor otherwise known as the lecture room laptop was replaced with Brendas working laptop. So I started about 7 minutes late.
My supervisor said I looked flushed and nervous to start with, but after the second slide I was away. My friends said they understood it up to the second slide. My mother said she understood most of it, though many of the grad students and academics said they understood very little. My mum is very smart, and has had the advantage of listening to me explain my work to her over the last...egad...seven years. My father fell asleep. This was not an uncommon occurance, several academics looked very sleepy too.
My student monitor (he who must be appeased and approve the PhD) was happy with it. He picked up that I had written MgOH, not Mg(OH)2 . I was suitably mortified after I'd said no, it shouldn't be MgOH2 (which is what I thought he was asking) and then thought the charges through and realised what he was saying. Me with a chemistry degree and all.

I had drinks afterwards and popped my Melbourne cup champagne (Killawarra brut). It was very nice and the cork suitabley hit the ceiling and ricocheted off tables whilst people ducked.

Doom doom de doom

Today is the day. Exit seminar to be given at 2pm. I'll let you know how it went.