Tim S

The time of year has hit where I swear one of those little mages from Final Fantasy has cast as "Slow" spell on me, complete with the little clock appearing and ticking backwards. Hours feel like days. Brief conversations seem to linger on for an eternity. Short simple tasks seem to never be completed. The "slowness" seems to go along with December and early January.

And as though physics has gone haywire, it seems like the general state of disorder around (entropy)is increasing at an accelerated rate, while I struggle at a slowed rate to try and return things to order. My apartment and work-spaces are perpetually cluttered. Everything at work is due for repairs, maintenance, oil changes, replacements. Decorations need to be put up and gifts wrapped. Assignments need to be finished, and studying for my one final exam needs to be done.

The holidays can't come fast enough.

Edit: Can anyone out there cast a "Fast" spell on me to counteract the effect?

A great site for a laugh now and then, if you're a bookish sort, is Awful Library Books (http://awfullibrarybooks.wordpress.com/). They take submissions from US librarians detailing absurd, outdated, odd, offensive (or some combination of these) books that they find when going through their collections. Many of these are books that are about to be "weeded" and replaced with something more current.

This is the funniest entry so far. According to this book, it would appear typical Canadians are Eskimos, burly Prospectors, Santa Claus, French Speaking girls with their Catholic Priests, and boys staring into a hopeful future while holding a Canada Goose egg.

(Of course they forgot the walruses, but the book was published before we made them citizens back in 1998.)

I'm not making this up (except the walrus part). Check it out.

Luck: Arriving to the office yesterday morning, after having been away, I found out that I had won a jackpot of Halloween candy in this little raffle thing that I entered last week at work. The excess calories weren't really needed, so after nibbling on a few mini Kit-Kats and Coffee Crisps I put the rest in the lunch room for co-workers to take.

Exam: The frustrating mid-term from two weeks ago was finally returned. I scored a nintey-one percent. The professor commented that my reasoning was very thorough. The rest of the course will be less anxiety raising, for sure.

Sighting: When walking in this morning, a large Bald Eagle flew quite low over the bridge onto campus, in plain view of the large number of pedestrians crossing. A prelude to an invasion?

- I'm turned 36 today. Yay, I guess. ;)

- Unfortunately I'm rather preoccupied with academics right now. I have a big (40% of grade) mid-term tomorrow in this Mass Spectroscopy/NMR course I'm taking. I'll be cloistered in studying tonight, and delaying any celebration until Saturday.

- I'm at the point now where the mass of complex information, rules, spectra and calculations on the subject are starting to "crystallize" into a coherent system that makes sense, as opposed to just memorizing a bunch of stuff the professor said in lectures. If I can get to that point tonight or tomorrow, things will go fine.

- On the weekend I adopted a new finch, out of sympathy. She is missing one leg and looked very sad in her cage, so we took her home. Unfortunately she's turned out to be a little terror with my other birds, even with her disability, and I've had to separate her out into a different cage. We might name her "Pirate" or something like that.

Garden - the frost has hit and I'm in the process of cutting back the stems of the dead plants. I'm always relieved when the frost kills them for me, hate killing plants.

Work - everything has been a blur here. Constant work from morning to afternoon. Way too much.

Studies - apparently McCLaferty rearrangements are the most predominant fragmentation process for heteratom or pi-bonded groups, so long as there's a gamma hydrogen available; otherwise, alpha fragmentation if favored, but only if there's an electron drawing point in the radical. Or so my professor says. Who would have thought mass spectroscopy would be so complicated?

Travel - For any of you who are interested, we will be in NYC from October 30 - Nov 2 (in two weeks!). I would like to see at least a few of the locals while we're there....

New photos posted on my flickr account from our long weekend trip.

I hope I don't always look this stern...

More at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/druish/

Working at a University makes this a very energetic week. Though classes don't start until Thursday, the crowds are back and everything feels in full swing. A few observations and thoughts:

* It's suddenly crowded here again. Lineups at eateries, full parking lots, crowds in hallways and walkways, chaos at the bookstore.

* I'm taking two upper year courses this year, one this semester on Mass and IR Spectroscopy and one on Pharmaceutical Chemistry. Both tie into my work here. I know better, but for whatever reason I feel jittery about staring class again this week, almost exactly the same as I did when I was an undergraduate, except that I don't have to stand in line to pick up OSAP.

* My oldest nephew is starting highschool today. When we visited on the weekend, he claimed to be calm about it and looking forward to being back in school. I'm sure he must be nervous. I hope things go well for him.

* I saw an advertisement from the psychology department, looking for "adolescent study participants, age 18-25." Doesn't adolescence start at about 12 and end at 20?

An overall pattern I've noticed in myself, from memory and looking back at older entries.

January - slow, bored
February - bored, patient
March - impatient, bitchy
April - relieved, hopeful
May - cheerful, calm
June - cheerful, energetic
July - variable (grouchy with heat, energetic on cool days)
August - wistful
September - anxious, energetic
October - horny, very horny
November - content, contemplative
December - slow, content

I'd be curious to know if this is a pattern that applies for other people.

It's funny what things you come across on sites like flickr. I remember having one of these "School Tools" stencil books (more pictures at http://happymundane.blogspot.com/2009/03/school-tools.html) around grade 4. This type was kind of flimsy, and a bit of a gimmick, being made out of thin card material which tended to tear. Most kids had more durable letter stencils made of a sheet of acetate.

I remember using stencils to make the required "title pages" at the start of new topics in science, music, and social studies class, as well as to glam up project posters and dioramas.

Students now have probably never seen or used anything like a stencil. I'd imagine they'd pick out fonts and colors on a computer and print everything.

One of the more advanced tools we work with here in the labs is called a mass spectrometer. It works by separating out different type of molecules, shattering them into pieces with an electrical current, mapping out the fragments, and using them to identify the substance. Here is a screen shot from an actual analysis I was working on a few days ago:




This one shows a spectrum for tricholorethylene, a fairly common toxin found in contaminated water. The red lines on the lower right corner is the mass spectrum, and the other info is the software attempt to analyze the data and determine the substance.

But lately, after having changed our experimental designs, we've been getting a very odd reading popping up, which the software is unable to decipher. Myself, two post-docs, and one of the professors have been puzzling over this reading and wondering if we've discovered some new, unknown, molecule:



This is definitely some cutting edge science.

Edit: I wonder, what would we name this new substance?

Edit 2: Removed the LJ cut from 2nd picture...

A picture from the past weekend, at my little garden patch. This has been a very high-growth year for the plants (all the rain, likely), as is demonstrated by the height of my sunflowers. The tomatoes, carrots, lettuce and squash are too abundant and I've been giving the extras away.

On Sunday and Monday this week my parents and my nephew came down for a visit. As per previous visits, mom and dad were completely disorganized about when they were arriving, where they were staying, when I should expect them here, etc, increasing my stress levels considerably over the course of an already over-booked weekend.

My nephew has just turned 15 and is staring highschool in September. When the 4 of us were out for a walk after dinner, the topic of religion somehow came up. Robbie, who is my brothers son, asserted that he "half-catholic," and then added, in complete seriousness:

"What I mean is my mother is Catholic and my father is normal."

Dad and I both involuntarily laughed a bit, while my mother admonished him for his choice of words. He went on to explain that he intended say that his father was "non-religious" (like the rest of our family) but the wrong word popped in place. He wasn't trying to be disrespectful of religion.

During the rest of the visit, I noticed that, often, he kept making similar mistakes; he would know what he wanted to say but words would get mixed up or used wrongly. As a child, he was always quite articulate.

I developed much the same speaking problem at his age, outgrowing it at around 19 or 20. I wonder if it's some kind of glitch caused by the rapidly developing brain?

...I was on an Amtrack train, about 2 hours into a trip to a rather oddly named station called Croton-Harmon, to meet someone I had knew only from online chatting, excited to be on the first solo vacation of my life.

I read quite a bit, and have always been bookish.

So, as per the meme going around, here are 15 books, in the approximate order I read them, that have "stuck with me" over the years (from late 70's until 2008):

( Read more... )

And a few runners-up:
( 5 more... )

I wonder why why it took someone living all the way down in Denver to write this (relatively accurate)article?

Debunking Canadian Health Care Myths

• 16:07 I just saw a chipmunk peeking into my office, and then go scampering off down the hallway. #

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• 09:03 Picked up my passport last night. Interesting that it only took the government 10 days to process it. #

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For the past few days my right eye has been feeling irritated. Sort of like the feeling one gets when dust or something is in the eye, except there's no dust there and it's perpetual. This morning I woke up with the eye red and puffy, and very sore.

I was quite surprised when my doctor examined it and told told me I have a scratched cornea, which is an eye injury. She inquired if I wear contacts or had recently had anything lodged in the eye, but neither applies, so it's a bit of a mystery how it happened.

She's given me some antibiotic drops and has advised me to wear an eye-patch. I'm not going to wear a patch...unless, of course, this is a sign from the Flying Spaghetti Monster that he wants me to convert and begin dressing like a pirate. We'll see. :)

I've had the same pair of glasses for 5 years, and so after a recent eye exam, I decided to get a new pair. (As an aside, my prescription hasn't changed since 2002, which my optometrist said is somewhat unusual).

I went for a somewhat heavier frame and more angular this time, which I thought looked somewhat more intellectual.

So after picking up the new ones last night, I took a quick comparison shot with the web-cam:

( Click...better...click...worse..or about the same? )

Lots of other stuff I should update about but, I've felt little inclination to make entries lately.

• 10:45 I applied to renew my passport this morning and was amazed to be in and out of the passport office in under 30 minutes!! #

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