Merry New Years!

Attempted to recover from the previous evening, ate at Mary's pizza shack and watched Human Traffic before seccumbing to sleep.

Finished cleaning the house, drove with chris to SF, and dropped chris off at the lions club, and picked up a neat bag at [http://www.yakpak.com|Yak Pak] on haight near masonic.

Then more chilling at the lion's club, an awesome bit of food somewhere on divisidero, and hanging out with justin, doc, rachael, jen, and some other people at justin, doc and rachael's apartment. Got to play GTA3 and hear justin's new track. (GTA3 is such a great game... totally without any redeming social qualities.)

Dropped chris off at his place and I'm going to crash at seth's apartment for a bit before I drive back to Rside.

Drove home from SF on the 5 early in the morning. Got in at around 1P to riverside.

Angela D came out to riverside from LA (after being in FL and DC) and I got to see pictures of her trip to DC, and some of the friends she made while out there.

Randy also came with his girlfriend and we (along with paul, brian, and wendy) went to korean bbq for dinner (which was good, although I can't handle eating there all that often...)

Then I wandered back home, watched some TV, and continued reading Silmarillion.

School started today. Ooo. Exciting.

I wandered into my lab at around noon, and took care of some residual work that needed to be done. (Scd plots, amoungst other things.) After a while I started a sample in the NMR, and the biked home.

Angela and milan came over, and we wandered over to shawn's house (he lives off of central) and chilled there watching cspan. Got to hear Daschle's speech on the republican tax cut. Although he claims that the tax cut is responsible for the economic downturn, and the republicans are claiming that the tax cut is helping to alliviate the tax cut, it sounds to me more like the answer lies somewhere in the middle. Of course, as always, everyone in government is using static models to analyze the budget surplus/deficit. Even 12 months ago, those of us with eyes to see could tell that there was a recession comming, and the landmark surplus would not be there when congressional pundits claimed it would be.

What will become of the economy in the next 6-12 months is far to difficult to state. But we'll definetly here more partisan bickering before this is over.

We also wandered over to the KA house and hung out for a while. I guess a small get together was happening there, and it looked like people were having fun... at least, I think that's what was happening. Then back home, and sleep.

Did a bit more work on my reference system, and caught up on some of the house finances.

Early in the evening, Amy, Amy's Sister, and Angela dropped by for a bit... talked for a bit, and then they took off.

I spent most of the rest of the night doing random stuff on my computer.

There are some things that, in my quest to obtain knowledge, I have foolishly left unlearned, or unknown, because at the time I judged them to be less important, or knowledge that was beneath me. Odd, that for almost every single one of those things, it's knowledge that I now wish I had within me. Things that almost everyone else knows and can deal with automatically, sort of a requisite for being human fail me, and I'm only able to deal with them in the most artificial, shallow manner possible, because these things haven't been learned yet by experience... Too much stuff to know... Sometimes I trade my humanity for "knowing" more things that are in the end trivial. But such is my lot in life.

Hopefully I'll begin to learn and experience these things that up to this point I've been missing. But each and every moment is sacred... a moment never to be returned to again.

I wandered out to LA with angela to visit angela and go to deep. However, richard (who was spinning at deep) forgot to put angela on the guest list, so we were relegated to trying to get ahold of him whilst he was spinning, and failed. Eventually, we wandered back to angela's appartment, and watched part of human traffic before milan came over, and we wandered back to rside. Somewhere in the midst of our adventure, we ate at one of the thousands of Los Burritos spread throughout Los Angeles. (This one was near the corner of Hollywood and Wilcox...)

Wandered onto campus, and dealt with some random stuff that needed to be dealt with.

Went to drop of money at OCFCU in anaheim, and continued on home (HB) to make a new table that I have designed. I'll hopefully post pictures of it on my website soon.

Met with the undergrads who are going to be working in my lab again this quarter... looks like they had a good winter break.

I attended the first GNT 240A course at 1P, promises to be somewhat interesting, although the second quarter of instruction interests me more than the first quarter.

Figured out what I need to do in order to apply for a leave of absence, and came back home, to do more work before sleep.

Took care of some random stuff in the lab today.

Came home and did some more work on the reference system, and also did some more reading. Managed to screw up an NMR sample. (Well, not really, there just wasn't enough BBPC).

Then I drove with Angela out to Angela's to get ready and go to release with Sam. Release is now being held at Atlas. Nicely, angela, angela, and sam all got hooked up with free drinks and sam got us in before release started. Music was ok, there were about 5 tracks out of 50 or so that were good... the rest merely average, but danceable.

Then a loooong drive back out to riverside, and glorious sleep.

Took care of doing some of the gene array analysis today. In the middle of that, I went to GNT 240A, and listened to another lecture on an introduction to gene finding and sequence alignment. Still nothing deeply technical, mainly just overview, but still worth listening too.

Then more gene array analysis, starbucks, home, and work before going to sleep.

This morning I took care of mowing and edging the two front lawns. They haven't been edged in a while, so that took some time, but I think they turned out reasonably acceptably.

After that, I did some more reading and talking with people at the house, and wandered off to Chicago Pasta House for dinner.

After dinner, I went to the lab and continued working on the gene array experiments, and then came home and prepared to fall alseap.

Wandered to HB today, and spent the majority of the day working on my table.

The top is almost finished... it was cut out using a sabre saw, and the edges were rounded over using a 1/4" rounding over bit. It's out of particle board, and will need to be filled and sanded before I paint it, but for starters, it looks ok.

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm going to do for legs. I'm probably going to go simplistic, and maybe make some triangular necked legs for the table... but I'm not entirely sure what I want to do there. (It will come to me at some point in time, and there will then be no doubt as to the correct approach.)

After that, I wandered back to riverside, and spent the remainder of the day reading and cleaning up some stuff around the house before sleep came over me.

Finished reading the silmarillion by tolkien and radio albemuth by philip k. dick today. Also tried to fix the leaky tub facet in the shower/tub bathroom, and the leaky valves in the other shower.

Unfortunatly, my attempts at their replacement was a futile gesture, as it looks that they were improperly installed to begin with. (The bonnet is not accesible without a really oddly shaped wrench which I do not posess... if I had infinite resources, I imagine that I could modify a wrench to work, but I dont have said resources available.)

Angela wandered by also to pick up the rest of her stuff, now that she has found and moved into a place of her own.

I'm also trying to figure out exacly what to make of the new affymetrix algorithms that I have at my disposal. I gather that I'll wander through them some more sometime tomorrow, and hopefully come up with a semi-working analysis protocol.

Went to the lab to do some more work on the gene array analysis. Also, preparing to get stuff ready for the PKC experiment tomorrow. I've finished one of the possible methods of analysis, but I need to examine the process mroe carefully and see exactly what is going on and decide if I like it or not.

Tried to check out some more books from, and returned others to, the library today. Unforunatly, one of the books that I wanted was missing. (I've got about 5-7 books on hold that are missing that the shelf searchers are looking for. Hopefully the will be found.)

Gave Angela back the cd that I had copied from angela (and got stuck in my G4 when it didn't powerdown after copying the cd for some unknown reason. She'll give them to angela on friday I gather.

Going to take care of some more reading before I enter the dream realm for some glorious sleep.

Got stuff ready to run a PKC assay today. Unfortunatly, the hot atp wasn't ordered until today, so it wont arrive until thursday or so, so I'm not running tomorrow (well, today now).

Did some more work on the ADvsAD control, realized that the Z-test isn't going to work because the SEM is overcompensating for the sample size. (A intersample parwise compare does not directly indicate a sample size of m*n). So I'm either going to go back to the t-tests that I was running or do something else.

I wandered into starbucks and talked with Mitra Abbaspour (art 17C ta from last year) and patrick, who is a english (iirc) masters (or phd) student at UCR. Seem to run into them every now and then... probably would be fun to hang out with them, but I run around in such a different croud.

Randy showed up as well to starbucks, and I finaly gave back his gundam cd's and the infamous RCC picture that I had stolen from him (well, he actually let me borrow them... but not for 3 years).

Then more reading and glorious sleep.

Ran PKC assay today. Loads of work.

Wandered up to the cabin in big bear with my parents, and read and slept while I was there. Ate dinner at a carl's jr. (In general, I try to avoid fast food, but I'm also very lazy... oh well...)

Saw LotR again. (Third time now.)

Ate at a semi-ok mexican/american restaurant. Food was safe, but not authentic. Definetly missing the zing that real, authentic mexican food has.

Came back to the cabin, and read/slept some more.

Read. Slept. Ate. Watched TV. Read. Slept.

Ahh... Work+Relaxation.

Worked more on the gene array analysis, had a conference call with betza, joe, and raphael on it.

Collected and analized the pkc data... looks like a problem where the calcium is going to need to be remade. Quite exciting.

I also signed up for NMR time on tuesday from 3- wednesday at 1, and went to GNT 240A again. I'll need to sign up for that class tomorrow, along with 2 addtional units of research.

Spent some time playing with dancer-ircd... probably get that working at home in the next couple of days.

Angela's package still hasn't arrived... looks like amazon straight up isn't going to ship it for whatever reason. Seems kind of lameo to me.

Got enrolled in the classes that I needed to be enrolled in, and took care of getting keys to the scintilation room and the grad student mailroom, so I'll actually be able to receive mail that comes there. (ugh... just what I need, more junk mail...)

I also did some more work on understanding the statistics and mathematics of the baysian microarray approach. I'm going to need to do alot more work on it before I am totally happy with it, but I'm getting started.

Also remade the calcium chloride buffer and magnesium cloride buffer for the PKC assay. Not sure if that was causing the lackluster results that we were getting recently, but it might have been. (Posit that Ca2+ is sticking to the glass, lowering the Ca2+ concentration availble in an unmixed stock 0.01M CaCl2 solution.)

Made nmr sample today, and did a whole lot more work on getting reliable statistical analysis for gene arrays.

Tomorrow I am going to have to begin to write out the protocol for analyzing genetic arrays, and testing for genetic diversity among the control and disease populations.

I also did a whole lot more checking into endpoint analysis (where you have more than one comparison test) ala Bonferonni corrections. More work needs to be done on it, but I think i'll get there eventually.

Beyond that, I also went to GNT 240A, and we had a small discussion on the papers that were assigned to be read in class, and wandered over to the sproul computer lab to work on the computers there. I need to take care of my assignment for that class soon, before I run out of time to do it.

Now it's time for glorious sleep.

Dealt with some more of the statistics involved in running a proper evaluation of microarray experiments, still not totally settled, but getting there. (Statistics really isn't my field, but I'm picking it up faster and faster.)

Talked with Mandee for the first time in quite a long time. Hopefully I'll get to see her tomorrow in LB or HB.

Wandered out with Paul to getaway for some beer and onion rings... pretty decent... lost to him at air hockey for the first time in quite some time. (My skills must be slipping... ;-)) Patrick was also at getaway, so I got to chat with him for a bit.. ought to get more in touch with the rest of the graduate scene instead of spending most of my life off doing my own thing. (It's not that I don't enjoy the company of other people, I just don't always go out of my way to seek it... and in a lot of cases, I need the time alone to sort out my own thoughts and remember who I am and what I'm doing.)

Going to go to HB to work on the fibonacci table again tomorrow. Hopefully I'll get its legs finished and put paint on it... but we'll see.

Hrm. Well, didn't quite manage to do anything today.

Tried to work some more on the statistics for the microarrays, and didn't get to it.

About all I managed to do succesfully was wash my car, which hadn't been washed in quite some time. Luckily, it spends almost all of it's life in the garage, so it was relatively clean, but it still needed to be debugged from my trip to SF and some other jaunts around SC.

Was planning on spending some time hanging out with Mandee, but she didn't end up calling me after she got out from work. Anyway, onto some reading and then glorious sleep.

Once in a lifetime, a measure of time that's been spent. Toughts that have come to me, and dwelt within me give pause to me. To do with them naught, I have I.

Not quite sure exactly what I'm supposed to be doing in this life that I have to spend, but I'm trying to figure it out day by day.

I wandered with paul, wendy, and brian to In-N-Out today for a pseudo-breakfast at my lately time rising of 2 pm. Double double animal style and fries well done are a fitting start to just about any day. While we were there, and blabbing about LotR and some of the different invented languages of tolkien, we chance espised a group of teenagers, once could guess they were in High School, wandering, posse like, through the parking lot of In-N-Out.

They tried so hard to exude cool and self-assuredness in their teen-magazine approved fashion, as they hung out like little minurature grownups, well, minurature not in stature but shall we say, minurature in experience. It was kind of odd, harkening back to those experiences of high school that I never really had.

Too bad that we noticed it, and pointed it out. And discussed it. We, our odd group of people, four nerds discussing languages and a completely made up story, passing judgement on a group of teens who apprently didn't know any better. Too bad we couldn't hold up a mirror to ourselves, our posse, exuding the coolness and self-assuredness of our college experience in our starving student approved fashion, hangning out like little grownups, well, littile, not in stuature, but shall we say, little in experience. Quite odd that.

After that bit of introspection, I continued working on a method of analysing microarrays. Since statsitics is not my forte, I'm still doing battle with some of the terminology, but I'm getting there.

Wandered into ralph's later as well to pick up some food so I'll be able to eat throughout the week. (Yes... eating is kind of important to me... at least I guess it is.) At the checkstand, I was once again speaking far too quietly to be overheard... but that's nothing particularly new or exciting.

Anyway, it's late, and there is much work to be done tomorrow. (Well, today, since it's already well past midnight.)

Freeze thawed nmr samples, and worked out some more of the details of the microarray analysis routine.

Looks like the baysian t-test analysis is really the way to go, and incorporates all of the things that we need it to incorporate. Of course, I'm still not totally satisfied, but at lesat I've got something that I can start with and go from there.

Z has been working on the grant that is due Feb. 1st like mad. Hopefully he'll get it completed sometime soon.

In a fit of madness, I managed to complete all of Idoru in a single laying (split between an odd bout of trying to sleep, which didn't come until 6A in the morning). Quite an interesting story, which once again got me thinking heavily about the second of two things that I have a great interest in, mainly the development of systems that enable knowledge to be codified, searched, linked, and noded. [The first is the modelling of biological systems in silico]. Dreams are all I've got for it right now, but eventually I'll start to implement some things that are more and more advanced.

Today I supervised the making of samples for the same PKC assay that we've been running for a while. For some strange reason, DO has not been cooperating with us at all, but hopefully now it will. At least that's the general idea.

Attended GNT240 again, but unfortunatly, I lost a contact out of my good eye, and was for all intents and purposes, blind for the entire class. Luckily, Mark was nice enough to bring a set of contacts from home to me at school so I could see and continue my marathon day.

I spent most of the rest of the day analysing the corralation between ApoeE types and genes of Alzheimer samples. Some interesting results, all of which will need to be verified using functional assays, of course, but still interesting never the less.

The rest of the time I spent working on my reference system, which now correctly allows for the inclusion of latex math formulas (well, actually, just about any latex formating) straight in the middle of normal html in the note section, which is extreemly usefull. [I can't stand complex formulae that are not formatted and typeset correctly... it makes them much more ugly, and extreemly dificult to understand.]

Then home, and hopefully sleep will come to me again.

Well, I was supposed to make and run a PKC assay today, but the samples ended up getting loused up, and so we had to remake them. No big loss. I continued working on some other stuff, and then came home to deal the most superficial way possible with my room and the new monitor card I got.

Unfortunatly, the silly pci card won't softboot, even though it's neighbor farther up the chain will. I'm going to have to figure out what is going on with it eventually. (Hopefully someone will tell me what stuff I need to write to the pci card to get it to boot up, and then it will just magically work.)

Went to GNT240 in the morning, took care of some more work on a perl script to display the output from affymetrix datafiles and link them to ncbi's website, before angela called me and asked me to go with her to south coast plaza to pick up foundation.

Always eager to do just about anything, I wandered with her down to SCP, and we went looking through Saks 5th Avenue, and then macy's looking for her foundation. Lukily, she found it (and they actually had the right color). It still amazes me that virtually a whole floor of most department stores is completely devoted to displaying cosmetics. A whole section of a store devoted to a product that I know almost nothing about. Obviousy people spend an awfull lot of money on it though...

After that, ate dinner at wahoo's fish tacos (and I had a burrito), shopped for a bit at border's where I tried to find a copy in good condition of Tolkein's History of Middle Earth vol.1-13, but ended up getting Card's Shadow of the Hedgemon (which had finally come out in paperback). Card is one of the authors that I love to read, but his style isn't quite refined enough for me to justify spending $30 on a hardcover book when it first comes out.

Once I wandered home, I thougt I would go to sleep, but no... I spent the entire night reading SotH. It was decent, but not as good as I was hopeing. Some of the dialog between the characters left a bit to be desired, and the psychological aspects of the main characters, petra and bean, were not as well explored as I would have liked. Of course, I got hooked on the whole ender's series a long time ago, so I had no choice but to read every new book in the series. Maybe I'll write more about it later.