Random Conversation with a Friend

Setting: After drinking two beers and eating three slices of pizza for lunch, I bought a Snickers ice cream bar.

Friend: Can I have a bite of that?
Me: Yeah. You should have gotten one too.
Friend: Naw, then I'd get all fat and shit.
Me: Well, I just ate one.
Friend: I'm pretty sure it's impossible for you to gain weight, no matter what you eat.
Me: That's kind of true. The only thing that happens is I grow a bigger ass.
Friend: Let's go get you another one of those ice cream bars, then!

Fuck you, Ebay snipers!

I had a bid on a Sigma 24mm f1.8 wide-angle lens on Ebay. No one bid on it until I did, 1 hour before the auction was supposed to end. I was the highest bidder, until someone sniped me at. the. last. minute. Seriously. Auction closed at 9:17, and that's when their bid was posted.

Goddamn you, bidding robots.

At least the flash I bought for $150 ($280 new) off Ebay will be arriving on Friday. That mollifies things a bit.

Struggling with Incompetence

I'm still waiting to do things I should/could have been doing a week ago. The stupid UCSD Core Bio Services still hasn't delivered the DNA polymerase I ordered a freaking week ago.

The point of the core is that they're supposed to keep quantities of frequently used reagents and things on hand, so that we can order something and expect it to arrive the next day, or sometimes even the same day. The problem here is that they're super disorganized. The UCSD Storehouse (where we get things like paper towels, etc.) has their shit together. When you go to their site, they tell you how many of each item they have on hand, how many are spoken for, etc.

It would be extremely helpful if the Core Bio Services would do the same. I ordered this polymerase from them because I was expecting to get it the next day, and not to be sitting here a week later still waiting for it. If I had known they were out of it, I would have ordered it from EMD Biosciences myself, because it would have been here by now.

Sigh. I hate incompetence. I have my shit together, why can't everybody else?

Everyday example of the people I have to work with

Apparently over the weekend a post doc in my lab celebrated his birthday. The rotation student (read: first year graduate student who hasn't found a lab to permanently work in yet) who is working with him found this out, and this morning she came in with a mother-freaking balloon hat. Seriously, are we still like, 8? And the kicker is, he asked her where she learned to make them, and she said she took a class for it back in Hong Kong. Whoa.

This is the same person who referred to her cat as "my son." And she was drop-dead serious about it too.

But to top it off, being a scientist as she is, she put the damn balloon hat on the windowsill. You know, where it would sit in the light all day long and get hot until it burst. Which it just did, almost scaring the shit out of me. Genius. Or, as they say in the Guinness ads, "Brilliant!"

Dammit I'm grumpy today. I can't do half my work because the core facility doesn't have the enzyme I ordered last Wednesday and they neglected to tell us this until today, when we called and specifically asked. Awesome. I love it when people suck at doing their job.

Harrisburg Photo Blog

I didn't have enough time to wander around Harrisburg as I thought I would. Although, really, I don't know the city well enough to wander around it. I haven't spent more than three weeks at home since I left for undergrad at the age of 18. And even when I'm home, I rarely have the desire to go into the city. Maybe I've just turned into a city snob, but there's not much there for me. No music scene to speak of. A handful of interesting museums, but that's about it. I did spend a few summers during high school working at my parents' office downtown, so that's really the only corner of the city I know well. And, fittingly, that's the only area of the city that I took photos of on my trip home.


Display window of my parents' office downtown. This is why I have sweet musician's earplugs for shows.


Roxy's Cafe. I used to get food from here almost everyday that I worked for my parents back in high school.


The State Museum of Pennsylvania. It's actually a lot more interesting inside than it appears outside - I only wish I had had the time to go in and explore.


Marquee for a gay nightclub. See, we're not completely backwards!


Lame cities have lame graffiti.


I love alleyway details.


Where do you suppose these doors go?

Rest of my photos are here.

But as much as I hate on Harrisburg, there's something to be said for bars that have last call at 1:58AM and actually let you chill out for awhile after they've stopped serving alcohol. Also, Palumbo's pizza being open until god knows when (I think we left around 3AM). And I love the open space surrounding the city. It honestly makes me nauseous to fly back into San Diego. You come over the mountains, and all of a sudden, there are people and houses everywhere. I start getting a massive sense of claustrophobia (compounded by the fact that I've been sitting in a plane for hours) and anxiety. But then we fly over my house and Balboa Park and I start to feel a little bit better. Then it's over the Casbah and I remember why I put up with all the overcrowding.

Book review: The Orchid Thief - Susan Orlean

I don't know shit about orchids. I had a friend in undergrad who loved plants and knew things about them, but that's as close as I come. Plants just don't like me. They have a tendency to die on me, and to aggravate my allergies out of spite.

What I do know is that I saw the movie Adaptation several years ago and I liked it. So when I saw this book, in Costco of all places, I decided to pick it up. See, the book was the "inspiration" for the movie, even though the movie doesn't really follow the story in the book at all. What it does follow is the sense of passion that the author tries to portray in her book.

For this book is the story of obsession. It's the story of people (real people, not fictional) who will spend thousands of dollars on one plant, who will breed plants and then wait 7 years to find out if they were successful. People who go to all ends of the earth and risk unimaginable hardships just to find plants that no one has seen before. People who will risk alligator and snake attacks to get into the Everglades just to see these plants in rare bloom.

Orlean's writing is compelling - she managed to pull me in to a topic that I have never had any real interest in. She manages to create sympathy for characters when other people may just look at them as being crazy. But more than that, she is able to tie this passion for orchids to other passions, so that the average reader, while maybe not caring about orchids at all, is able to understand through the eyes of their own obsessions.

Definitely a good read, and very informative about the subject. Even if you walk away from the book still not caring about orchids, as I did, you will come away with an understanding, and maybe some empathy, for the people who do.

An argument from earlier this week, which I resoundingly won

A certain friend and I routinely get into an argument about beds. However, in this exchange that occured earlier this week, I think I may have settled the matter once and for all.

Friend: "I know you like your bed, but it's way too short. See, my bed is long enough for my feet to stay on it. It's an adult bed."

Me: "...Isn't that a futon?"

Friend: "... ... ... yes."