sciencegeek

HOw does Spike beat up the doctors in the Initiative base at the beginning of the episode: The Initiative (Season 4, Episode 7), but...not be able to bite Willow? I mean, I thought it kicked in when he tried to hurt people...at least it did in later episodes (because isn't that how he proved that Tara wasn't a demon to her family?). Blergh. This is a total turn-off.

ETA: and how wrong is "Pangs". Honestly.

Pumpkin for '09


And I actually got compliments on it, unlike Jack (from Nightmare before Christmas) and Boo (from Mario, I guess?) the last couple of years.

WTF, man, WTF


Interracial Couple Denied Marriage License By Louisiana Justice Of The Peace

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way, I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell


Uh, newsflash. Yes, you are racist. And having (token) black friends doesn't change that fact.

Does anyone want to do my packing for me? I kind of suck at it, apparently.

So...you guys are smart and stuff. What questions do you think are absolutely necessary to ask when looking for an apartment? Or, what questions do you wish you asked when you were renting?
And is there a kind of tactful way to ask about smoking? I don't smoke, and the smell sort of bugs me. It's not, like, a deal breaker, but one of those 'given the choice, I would prefer not to be near it' sort of things.

Some of you may already know, but after my emo spat on the weekend...I have a job!

It's the MS research position I applied to. It's a contract for a year right now (which is when their funding is up, if it isn't renewed, although it looks likely that they will have their funding extended, but who knows), and after that we'll see. But yay for employment! It's not super exciting, but it's a start, and I'm excited about it. Mostly it will be running agarose gels, some PCR and a little analysis. Nothing too crazy. I'll have to figure out Christmas, and make sure I save enough for medical appointments and stuff, but I'll live, lol.

I have a job interview tomorrow morning (at 9 am), and I'm starting to get nervous. If it keeps up, I'm going to be a wreck by tomorrow morning. I think I'm nervous because it's for my first 'real' job (as in not a student or summer job). Plus, I go through all these scenarios in my brain, mostly of how I'll fail the interview/not be prepared. I don't remember being this nervous for previous interviews, or rather quite this nervous, since I'm always nervous for them.

In other news I'm working at the stupid restaurant on Sunday. You know, the place that I wanted to leave because it was chronically understaffed and a constant stress in my life? Yeah. That one.

Some things are going ok, some things not so much.

The term is almost over, so barring me completely bombing a course (which with the percentage of my grade already completed, is really unlikely - unless I got like...10% on a final, there's no way I failed anything), I'm done school as soon as I'm done my exam tomorrow. So that's exciting. The term had its ups and downs - the group project with the useless partner was a definite down but one of my lab courses was really fun, and I did really well in at least 2 (probably at least 3) courses. Immunology was a struggle mostly because my instructor was kind of crappy. One of my professors took us out for drinks for our final class (we had nothing scheduled for it - it was a presentation course, and we had finished the week before), which was kind of cool. He paid for everything, which we didn't expect at all! It was really nice of him - we were all like "HOLY CRAP" after we found out. There's only 10 of us in the class, but still, it was really nice. Although I don't think we would have had quite so much if we knew he was paying for it. Anyway, I'm almost done school, which is rather exciting.

I have a couple of interviews coming up, which is sort of exciting. One is way on the other side of the city (it's for a company that purifies surfactant for premature babies), which is a bit of a pain, and it's early-ish (9:00 am), so hopefully it goes well. The other one is at LHSC in a lab. It would be for 4 months, with the possibility of an extension, if the other person (who has been away on sick leave for almost a year) isn't back, or can't be back full time. Hopefully those go well. I have this dillemma of not knowing which one to hope for - the first job is sort of out of the way for me, at least right now, and isn't 100% what I want to do (but who's first job is?), but it's pretty much guaranteed to be a longer contract, if I don't screw up. The one at the LHSC is more what I love to do (which is lab work), but will likely be shorter contract, and the length of it is sort of up in the air. So...yeah. I'm trying not to worry about it though, since I haven't even interviewed yet.

Not dead. Shocker, I'm sure.

So. I have this ridiculous project for school, in which I am to put together a business plan for a pretend product, and take it from a lab scale to a pilot size project. It doesn't sound bad on the surface, but right now we are putting together a budget for our equipment, and I can't find what I'm looking for on the internet, which means I will probably have to call all these places and say "ok, I have this stupid school project and I need to you tell me the cost of your bioreactor/feed system/whatever" My partner has done jack all for part of her section, and I'm tempted just to email my professor and say "look. This is my section. This is her section. I am not doing her work, because I do not have time, and quite frankly, do not care" Right now I'm pissed off, and I'm tired, we aren't doing my idea for this stupid project (it's my partner's idea) so I don't care much about the subject. I'm just so frustrated, and our professor isn't much help.

If anyone knows how much it would cost for a 500 L bioreactor for mammalian cells (fed batch, suspension culture, quite frankly I don't even care just get me a quote), and a pilot size ultrafiltration unit I would be grateful if you told me. Right now I am sort of looking at this and this one. I have no idea when I'm going to have time to call, unless they have someone available on weekends.

This is so stupid.

This fucking project is a fucking pain in the ass because my fucking partner is currently MIA. I sort of understand - she has a major presentation due tomorrow in another one of our classes, but on the other ERGH, I feel like I'm doing all the work here. I'm tired, my brain is tired, I want to work on my major presentation due next week, but instead I'm stuck working on this stupid thing that's not even worth marks. AND SINCE IN THIS COURSE FOR THIS STUPID PROJECT WE DO HAVE A PRESENTATION FOR MARKS NEXT WEEK, I'M FUCKED BECAUSE OH, THAT'S WHEN I HAVE MY MAJOR PRESENTATION AND MY FUCKING PARTNER NEEDS SOMEONE TO HOLD HER HAND AND TELL HER WHAT TO DO.