Procrastinative blogging

I should be working on my paper. I came home early from Waco to do so. I will—in half an hour.

Sunday was uneventful. I seem to remember trying to get stuff done—finishing up reading some papers, mainly.

Monday I showed up to work. The boss seemed pleased with my progress on the paper. It was good to have him seem unconcerned, for once. I almost missed the bus, because MD Anderson moved the bus stop. Thankfully, one of the other bus riders was more astute than I. I picked up lettuce wraps from Pei Wei for dinner. They rocked.

Tuesday, we had lab meeting, which was pretty good. The boss talked about a conference he had been to, and future directions for the lab, and so forth. It was thought provoking and enjoyable; it gave me the kind of feeling I hope to get more often once I start doing some real science and get done jumping through hoops. Afterwards, I had ethics class, which continued to be completely irrelevant. This time, it was on the use of lab animals. The only time I ever see them is if I see a stray fruit fly, or someone wheeling caged mice through the halls. This is not a subject that affects my work in any significant way.

I tried to go by and see webmisstress (I think that title sounds wonderfully dirty—it evokes some girl clad in leather and thigh-highs with a riding crop writing HTML; but maybe that's just me) Amy, but she wasn't around, so I continued on my way home. I went by Graham's that evening to borrow his copy of Matlab to generate some preliminary data for the paper. I thought the point to this was that it was a hypothetical project, but I digress. Afterwards, I took a short side trip to Soundwaves to pick up the new U2 album, and went ahead and took the opportunity to finally pay for something I'd been listening to for a while, the Divine Comedy's new album.

I've mentioned the Divine Comedy album before. It's very orchestral, majestic, epic, clever. The new U2 is more U2. Either you enjoy Bono's soulful, sincere crooning and the Edge's trademark use of delay peddle and are glad to hear some new songs, or you've had your feel of it, or are tried of everying. I'm in the first category. This seems to be about on the level of All That You Can't Leave Behind—enjoyable, but maybe disposable. I'll write up reviews on these later.

Wednesday afternoon, I headed for Waco. Here's what I listened to:

The Beatles—Let It Be... Naked
U2—How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
William Shatner—Has Been
The Modest Mix

I had dinner with the family at Bangkok. My panang curry was, of course, excellent, as was the hot tea, and being there brought back both good and bittersweet memories. It was wonderful to see my sister, whom I hadn't seen since Labor Day. She and I tried to go to Cricket's, which was, I think, the most crowded I'd ever seen it, before we gave up and I went to Scruffy Murphy's to get my beer.

Thanksgiving was typically great. The menu:

Glazed turkey breast
Dressing
Green bean casserole
Sweet potato casserole
Broccoli rice casserole
Fruit Salad
Rolls
Sweet potato pecan pie with bourbon sauce
Apple pie

We paid a visit to family friends the Hoffmans, and then I went out with Rebecca and her crew. There was a hot tub, which I enjoyed enough to wonder if I could get one in my bedroom, and an epic beer run, trying desperately to find a convenience store that was open, before the midnight deadline.

Rebecca went to Austin Friday for the UT/A&M game, and after lunch (Fazoli's, something I greatly miss here) and some packing time, I got on the road to come back here. Here's the playlist for the return trip:

Death Cab For Cutie—Studio X Sessions
U2—How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Ben Folds—Rockin' The Suburbs
Built To Spill—There's Nothing Wrong With Love

I came back, unpacked, had a little dinner, made a grocery store run chiefly for milk, which, of course, requisite for the proper enjoyment of pie, and eventually went up to Woodrow's to hang out with Will for a bit. They had a pumpkin-flavored beer on specail, which was interesting—tasted like pumpkin pie, just without the sweet finish. It was worth being there just to see a girl try to get in the bar using an ID which was obviously not hers. Will asked her her address, then her birthdate, both of which she got wrong. She came back fifteen minutes later and tried to get in again, and Will of course recognized her. She mainly seemed to want to demonstrate that she now had memorized all of the information on the license, including name, address, and birth date. Then, five minutes later, she hopped the fence on the deck. Why bother going through the door man?

Pleasing some of the people some of the time; other events; and me, smitten

School's been a bit hard this week. I met with all four of my committee members about my exam, which was quite draining. It seems that, at least in terms of specifics, everyone was unhappy with some different aspect of my exam (but not bothered by others). It's a pain to have to please all of them, specifically the ones I respectfully disagree with.

There's sort of a basic conflict between experimental and computational biologists. On the experimental side, people trust things that they can observe and measure, and distrust things that don't happen in the "real world." On the other hand, on my side of thigns, I distrust their ability to reliably observe and measure things, and instead prefer to build computational experiments from clear, logical principles, and then be able to clearly observe the results. I ran into this conflict in my exam and am dealing with the results of it.

We had journal club on Tuesday. There were tacos from Chipotle. It was good.

Wednesday, I went out in search of a copy of Metroid Prime 2. The first Best Buy claimed to have a 76 in stock, but damned if they coudl find any of them. They called up the ghetto Best Buy down the road, and confirmed that there were copies there that existed in the physical sense of the word, so I went and picked one up. I've not played a whole lot; so far, it's much like the previous game. Some things about it seem a little quaint; I miss the voice acting and characterization found in, say, Halo 2, but perhaps those elements are at odds with the Metroid aesthetic.

I joined Graham (and Kennedy), Char (and his girlfriend, Jamie), and additional SCBMBer Matt Linnell at Woodrow's for some beer afterwards.

This was repeated on Thursday, as well, but with just Graham and Char.

Friday, Stephanie kidnapped me to go to Home Depot to buy some stuff for her new condo. We ate at Freebird's, which made me happy. Then, I picked up Jeff and we dropped by Woodrow's to visit Will. It was crowded and kind of lame, and three nights at Woodrow's is, really, about two too many.

Today, after laundry and dinner (S&J took me to Luby's; you can imagine how excited I was about that), I picked up Jeff to go to a show.

Remember the Ukulele Girl Rhonda Roberts from the Trachtenburg show? I e-mailed Rhonda to inquire about buying her demo, and she told me that she was playing with Clouseaux at Mary Jane's on Friday, and not only would she bring a CD for me, but she would put me on the guest list. Since I didn't bother to introduce myself at the Trachtenburg show, I thougt this was a great idea.

The first band tonight was some generic nü metal/punk outfit. I would have preferred to have missed them. Three Fantastic was up next, and I didn't quite figure them out. The music was nice enough, but the vocals were an odd combination of lounge posturing and Creed-esque posturing—way too affected and unnatural. There was potential, but some tightening up needs to occur.

Clouseaux was pretty nifty. There was some surf rock, some jazz, some lounge-ish tango, and a mish-mash of other styles. There was a guitarist playing some nice surf guitar, a bassist, a drummer, a conguero/trumpeter, another trumpeter, a male vocalist, a bass trombonist, and a keyboardist (well, more of a pianist), plus Rhonda. I very much liked what they were doing, but I'd make a few changes. I think that some more pop-oriented, less instrumental songs would be good. I think that a real piano would make a huge difference. The male vocalist probably could have done a bit more to earn his keep, though perhaps he does things that aren't readily apparent on stage (songwriting?). Finally, I think Rhonda was underused.

Rhonda did a couple of solo songs, and it was fun to see her again. She's got a really nice voice and does a great job of conveying style and mood. Plus, she's really, really cute. When she sings, it has the same effect on me as Nedelle of Nedelle & Thom, or Amy of Stars—it makes me just melt.

It made me think of the wonderful fantasy of dating a musician—not her, I suppose, since she seemed to be there with a boyfriend. There's something so romantic about it, though (see the appropriate scene in High Fidelity). I'm sure it's not as wonderful as it sounds, but it's a nice dream.

A few items

I was searching for an alternate PBS station on which to catch the episode of "Austin City Limits" with the Polyphonic Spree (which I forgot to record), when I discovered that Toon Disney shows reruns of the X-Men cartoon at 9:30 and 10:00 on Monday nights. Sweet.

As I walked from my bus to my mailbox today, I heard a French horn. I guess somebody was practicing in their apartment and had their window open. It made me happy. I miss playing. There's a Medical Center orchestra here, but the director never returned my e-mail. I suppose I should try again...

I've mentioned this to a few people, but, the minimum age of people you can date can be calculated as follows:

Minimum age = (your age / 2) + 7

which puts my minimum at 18.5. To find the max:

Maximum age = (your age - 7) * 2

which yields a maximum of 32 for me. So, my dateable age range is 18.5-32. Sounds about right. It doesn't work for particularly young people (say, 14 or younger), but it's a remarkably versatile formula. Graham didn't come up with it, but he introduced it, so I'm calling it Graham's formula.

Here's a visual:



I swear I'll put a picture of my award winning "The Dude" costume up sometime soon. I'll let you know when I do.

Finally, by way of Sabrina's blog:

“The problem with blogs is that we like to perceive ourselves as being so close, but then we realize that we don't really know much about each other. I'd like to rectify that. I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.Then post this in your blog and find out what people don't know about you.”

So I guess I'll spread this bit of viral blogging further. Any interesting questions will get written up in a future entry.

Caught up

Thursday, after the customary viewing of the O.C., I went to join Graham and co. (Char, David, Tiffany, Tiffany's visiting friend) to celebrate the seldom-acknowledged holiday of "Bones"; that is, 11:11:11 on 11/11. We were a Woodrow's, and there was beer to be drunk.

Friday, after the Keck seminar and Fellows meeting, once I ferried Jeff home, I went to pick up Stephanie, who had volunteered me to give two additional girls—her lab mates—rides home. The girl that I had not met before somehow got the idea that Stephanie and I were together, and made some comment about the verbal treatment of significant others after I used the fuck-word in some sentence directed at Stephanie. Stephanie corrected her, but I went ahead and put a hand on Stephanie's thigh, for effect. That went over well.

Graham and his U of H labmate whose name I haven't bothered to learn came and picked me up for another night of drinking in the glamorous (but very generic) Rice Village. After having a drink at Baker Street to get our parking validated, we moved to the Ginger Man, which is the one bar that I actually like in the village. They've got a beer selection to rival Cricket's, and the bar's in an old house, so it's got some nice atmosphere—I'm sure I've rambled on about it before, but it's really the only place in the village that has character. On weekends, though, it's overrun with the same type of people as every other bar in the village (though perhaps a bit older); the type of people that make for good eye candy, but are annoying when you have to fight them for service at the bar, or to get into the bathroom, etc.

I wanted a De Koninck, but they were still out (didn't have it Tuesday, either). So, I started with an Old Speckled Hen which is a beer that I've been much enjoying lately. Next up, I wanted something different, so I tried Real Ale's Coffee Porter. It was, of course, quite stout, but the coffee flavor was nice. Somebody that tried it commented that it needed cream and sugar.

Ordering a Real Ale product reminded me of Randa, and her love of that particular Brewery. I hope one day we'll be able to split a six pack. Get well, sweety.

The guys quickly tired of the "fancy beer" so we headed to... wait for it... Woodrow's. I had a lot of Shiner, since I wasn't driving, which was nice. It was a good evening. I talked to a few girls that came by to visit our table; we kept Will company as he kept the door; and we all hoped that the Miller rep in the impossibly short skirt and impossibly high heels was going to come by our table and bring us free beer (she didn't).

Saturday, mom was in town, so I saw her at Susan and Jerry's. She helped me get my Death Cab poster framed (damnable odd poster sizes), and we had dinner and all. It was good to see her. I got home late, and after watching a little TV, it seemed like my opportunity to go out for the night had passed, so I spent the rest of the evening watching TV, playing video games, listening to music, reading, etc.

Sunday, I had lunch with Mom and co., and then dropped by Jeff's with the intention of going to buy tickets to one or both of the Magnetic Fields shows coming in December. Instead, we played Halo 2 for two hours. That game has some really great moments, and some really boring, confusing, and frustrating ones. The cooperative play is, however, great fun. In the future, I do not need to spend two hours staring at a TV that intently, as all that time without blinking hurts my eyes.

I proceded on to Lisa's, and she accompanied me over to her roommate's boyfriend's place so that I could help him set up his wireless router. I had to give up and call tech support, and it was a good thing, because I never would have figured out what was really going on (hint: 10 MBps DSL modems don't like talking to 100 MBps routers). We then went to Shiva for dinner. Good stuff, but it was colder inside than it was outside. I would get cold, put my jacket on, and then get worried about getting my sleeves in my food and take it off again.

OK. That's most of it, I think. Expect to hear me bitch about school at some point in the near future.

Weirdest Concert Ever

Last Saturday, after returning from the retreat, I went to Susan and Jerry's in an attempt to return a sense of normalcy to my weekend, had mediocre Italian food with them (the pizza's really good there; I should have stuck with that), and then headed home before heading out with Jeff to catch a show.

This, ladies and gentlemen, was possibly the strangest show I've ever seen. Surpassing the Polyphonic Spree, Of Montreal, Tilly & the Wall, and others, it seemed to exist in some strange alternate dimension. It was held at Walter's on Washington, which I had never been to but kind of like. I swear it used to be some sort of Mexican resteraunt, based on the architecture.

The first act (that we caught; I think we missed one) was a girl with a ukelele, Rhonda Roberts (additional site—interestingly, in searching for the web sites, I came across a couple of other entries [1, 2] about the show—must be good blog fodder). When we came in, she was doing a nice, but not particularly distinctive cover of Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea". After catching my attention with her nice selection, nice voice, and nice appearance, she proceded to do a song about the magic that is the process of RNA transcription, entited "The Central Dogma of Me", at which point she won me over.

The next act apparently began his career performing in New York's subways. He was a freakishly large man with an acoustic guitar and a gleam of craziness in his eyes. His stage persona was something like a Jack White without the calming influence of a Meg White; this was further reinforced by the fact that he was from Detroit.

The headlining act was the legendary Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. First, take two geeky Seattle parents and their cool ten-year-old daughter. Send them around to estate sales to buy slide collections. Have them write random, non-sequitur-filled songs about the visuals. Send their Vaudeville-style show on tour, with Dad switching between keys and guitar, mom running the slideshow and designing sparkly costumes, and daughter playing drums. Make sure the Dad engages in awkward stage banter, and include some family arguments about which songs to play or what version of events to relate.

It's a novelty act, but a good one. You have to wonder what's going to happen to the girl, though. Is she going to have big problems when she grows up, or will she be all the better for it? Some psychologist needs to latch onto them now and they'll have a great paper in about fifteen years.

Now, to get some catching up out of the way:

Sunday, Stephanie and I went to see The Incredibles. I didn't enjoy it quite as much as some previous Pixar movies; I don't know if I had unrealistic expectations, or was in the wrong mood, or what. I'll still recommend it, though. The visuals are, of course, beautiful, and better than ever. The plot manages to draw equally from the Fantastic Four, sitcoms, and the Watchmen. My problems aside, Pixar's never made a bad movie.

Monday, I watched Donnie Darko for the first time. It only took visits to three different establishments and a helpful employee at the second one calling several others to track a copy down. I think I need to watch it again before I return it. It was a very interesting movie, but I expected a bigger payoff in the end; some explanation of purpose and philosophy. It wasn't as bad as, say, Magnolia in that regard, but I don't like my movies too subtle.

Tuesday, I went out for Kristin's birthday to Mi Luna, a wonderful little tapas resteraunt, and then to the Gingerman.

Wednesday was Jeff's birthday: Star Pizza and Halo 2.

I'll write again tomorrow and, maybe, get everything up to the present.

Retreat

One of these days, I'll get caught up.

I had high hopes for the retreat this year, given that last year's was great fun (drunken antics and getting a little action—in the loose sense of the word); especially given that it was one of the rewards I had planned for myself after the qual exam was over. Sadly, it was a disappointment.

The hotel we were at this year was much nicer than the country club we inhabited last year. It was the San Luis in Galveston, and we had nice rooms with ocean views, good food, nice conference facilities, etc.





However, in the end, the setting restricted our partying; at the country club we had cabins with large common rooms which were excellent places to hold the after party, whereas we only had hotel rooms this year. Consequently, the parties were small and fragmented, and that's just no fun. There wasn't really any day-time free time in which to enjoy the setting, either.

The actual retreat content was not particularly redeeming, either. We have our retreat with the CMB program. Third year students present posters; fourth year and higher students give short talks. The CMB talks were all about biological systems too specific for me to have any interest in, and, for the most party, the SCBMB talks were reruns of talks I had seen before.

The keynote speaker was good, though. His persona reminded me of Bill Murray. He spoke of his work with caloric restriction, which has been shown in many organisms (particularly mice) to be the only way to truly extend lifespan. The mice are fed the same amounts of nutrients as normal mice, with only their calorie consumption decreased. Other things (nutritional suplimates, medication, etc.) tend to increase the average lifespan of the organisms, but mostly it never exceeds a certain maximum. Not only is life extended, but the overall aging process is slowed as well.

It's not really known yet how this works; one theory is that the natural process of cellular metabolism produces toxic byproducts, and that by cutting the amount of metabolism that takes place, the buildup of these products is slowed.

There's apparently a group of people calling themselves CRonies who have adopted a lifestyle based on this research; though they claim to be happy, the people that know them say they're pretty much intolerable people.

Still, I think that, with the Atkins fad perhaps having peaked, it's the perfect time to introduce a new diet and make money off of it. Anyone interested?

Home theater expansion and a herculean task

I've found a good deal on a center channel speaker for The System, which, assuming the deal goes through, will bring me up to a grand total of 5.0 out of 5.1. Ironically, the .1 will, rather than being .1/5.1, or .0196, will actually end up representing about a third of the total cost of The System.

Anyway, thanks to a dealer I met over at the NHT forums, I picked up a speaker identical to my front pair which will work beautifully for a center, and because it was used, I got it for 50% off retail.

One of my errands a few weeks back was using some credit at Best Buy. I picked up a pack of these things to use to hook up my speakers:



They're called bannana plugs, and the idea is that rather than using temperamental bare wire, you put these on the end of your speaker cables and they make a nice, secure, and convenient connection between your speakers and your amp.

They are, however, a pain in the ass to get on. You have to remove the plastic insulation sheath (difficult), put the wire the plug and tighten a screw (easy), and then get the insulation sheath back on so that you can tell the difference between the positive and negative terminals, and also not shock yourself accidentally. This, folks, is a herculean task.

It took, quite literally, almost three hours. I had to try various combinations of leaving the insulation half on, slipping the screwdriver under the insulation and trying to tighten the screw that way, and contorting the sheaths in such a way as to force them into their proper position on the plug.

There was cursing. My thumbs hurt. But the end result is totally hot:





I've also been trying to find the best way to get it to blend with the left and right speakers. The fact that it's higher than the other two, and not on speaker stands makes it sound different. I think I've solved some of the problem by putting some blue sticky tack underneath the TV to angle the speaker forward a bit and isolate it from the TV. I'm not entirely convinced that I've fixed it, though. I wish I had someone here who knew what they were doing...

"Sometimes, there's a man... aww, heck. Lost my train of thought."

Here's another makeup post, for the halloween party.

The same group of people that threw a kick ass birthday party back in August hosted a Halloween party on the thirtieth. Costumes were more or less mandatory, and there was a prize for the best costume from The Big Lebowski, so I decided it would be easy to put together a Dude costume.

I bought some pajama pants at Target and turned them into shorts, bought a robe, wore a white v-neck undershirt, my aviator-style sunglasses, some cheap flip-flops, put a $0.67 check made out to Ralph's in my pocket, and rolled a joint from oregano. I would have had a white Russian if we didn't live in a police state where liquor stores close at 9:00. No pictures were taken, but I put the costume back on to take a picture just for my loyal Wardlog readers:

(picture coming)

I was worried nobody would get it, but I would walk by people and they would yell out "The Dude!". I would reply, "The Dude abides."

SCBMB secretary Wanda (fairy princess) was there, as were Genetics David (can't recall), some of the Genetics Girls (various dresses that they wouldn't have worn on other occasions), SCBMBer Tiffany (goth girl), lab-mates Sri (can't remember) and Michele (not costumed), some of the SCBMB first years (not costumed), Nathan (death)/Melissa (goth)/associated crew, and a shitload of people I didn't know.

There were a couple of girls wearing bunny ears/tails. In what may have been, unintentionally, my best pick-up line ever, I commented on how lazy and unoriginal their costumes were. I ended up talking to them a bit (one is an administrator for genetics, the other a web designer for BCM). They mentioned something about going to Taco Cabana, so I mentioned my love of TC, and they invited me along. I did obtain a phone number.

I have no idea how I managed all of this. Successfully introducing myself to, making conversation with, and subsequently endearing myself to two new, attractive girls? I'm pretty sure Tequila gives me special powers. I'd poured up about four shots into a fairly strong margarita. That must be it. I could never be that smooth intentionally.

Somewhere in there, I won the prize for "Best Lebowski", which may not mean much since I was the only one. Still, I'm pretty proud of my prize, and the four dollars bought tortillas and queso.

All in all, it was another kickass party from 1820 Binz street. Some of the best costumes were the swing states (state t-shirts and swings worn as sashes), the Mario/Luigi/Princess trio, the girl walking around in a bikini, they guy dressed as Zach Braff from Garden State, and probably some I forgot.

Pictoral Post

This was on the menu at Cricket's, when I was there homecoming weekend. I can relate. I loves me some tequila shots, and some tequila and tonic, and some margaritas.

Also, I think it may give me magical powers. More to come.

Death Cab for Wardie

This is a makeup entry for the show last Friday, 10/29.

Good news: Death Cab was excellent.

Bad news: Numbers is officially the shittiest venue in Houston.

The show was sold out and very crowded. The venue has large, commercial-size fans hung from the ceiling, but they were off. It was very, very hot. It took a girl fainting and the band stopping mid-song to check on her and demand that something be done before the fans got turned on. Once they were, everything was peachy.

Pretty Girls Make Graves opened. I wasn't as impressed with them as I was with some of their recordings I've heard.

Death Cab was wonderful. There was too much of the new album, of course (see my discussion of how Badly Drawn Boy handled that problem), but I still loved them. They closed with the 1-2 of "Tiny Vessels" and "Transatlantacism". They played "Title Track" and "Moviescript Ending". They did both halves of "Company Calls". They did the "acoustic" version (well, no acoustic guitars present, but sans bass/drums) of "405". Absolutely wonderful.

Next time, play a better venue.

I got a sweet hand silk-screened poster, which of course was an odd size. That's ok, though. An inch here, and inch there, and it'll fit the frame I bought. I was just not happy about the fact that I have to trim it myself; the frame store wouldn't take on the liability. Oh well. Sacrifices must be made.

Failing to meet undefined expectations

The exam did not go well.

The initial presentation went fairly smoothly, considering that was an area that I was concerned about. The problem came when they started asking questions.

My proposal was to do accomplish three aims. The major problem was that I misunderstood the way one of the techniques that I was going to use worked, which effectively screwed one of the three aims. That was exposed in some of the questions that were asked. That's OK—mistakes happen. I expected that they would want me to rewrite that. Completely understandable.

The next bit requires some explanation. Traditional biology is hypothesis-driven; you propose an answer to a question and then an experiment to confirm or reject that answer. The biologists tend to view computational biology (what I do) as being a way to come up with hypotheses, but believe that you can't really assess those without doing some experimental work.

Technically, that's not supposed to matter, but the two pure biologists on my committee seemed very concerned by the lack of experimental validation—despite my assertion (and the assertion of one of my committee members) that the experimental methods usually aren't terribly useful in this case, hence the use of computational methods.

The last issue was that they asked me some background questions about my subject which weren't really relevant to what I was trying to do. I think they were trying to get at my knowledge of experimental biology, which is not particularly good, since that's not what I do. If they expect me to know these things, they should be in the curriculum. They're not, and they weren't relevant to the proposal I was defending.

So I left the room for them to deliberate, and it took longer than I thought it should, and it was louder than I expected. When I came back in, they told me that they wanted me to rewrite the first part of my proposal, both to fix the problem that was present, and to add some experimental stuff. That's not horrible in and of itself, though the last part is a little dubious. The kicker, though, was that they wanted me to redefend that part, which is a pain in the ass. I can deal with that, though. I didn't fail; I just got an incomplete. The two people before me got incompletes (though they don't have to redefend, I think), and one other guy has gotten a pure pass. So I didn't do horribly.

Afterwards, as requested, I went up to talk to my mentor. He was not happy. He claimed that both my proposal and my defense were completely inadequate, and that was the way all the committee members felt. He told me that my proposal looked like it was completed in a week, and that my defense sounded like I hadn't read the literature on the subject. He basically said I failed to a) meet their expectations and b) discover what those expectations were, which was apparently my burden.

Now this was not at all the vibe I got from the committee. I can't help but wonder if the boss was upset that things didn't go flawlessly, and wanted to "motivate" me to do better next time. In fact, one of the committee members who works on the same subject my proposal was on said that my second and third aims were great ideas that he thought needed to be done immediately. So who knows? Maybe the committee just wanted to tell me what I had to do and not have to deliver the feedback to me. Maybe that was my bosses' job. If that's the case, I still did what I thought I was supposed to do, and, according to the students who had read my paper and seen my practice presentation, did them pretty well.

So, I have to deal with another month of this bullshit. I swear, it's hard to be optimistic and have self-confidence about things like this when they go completely to shit regardless of my attitude. It'll all be over in a month, though. I just wish that, having to put all this effort into something, it was something meaningful rather than just jumping through arbitrary and ill-defined hoops.

Q-day

The qualifying exam's tomorrow. I'm putting the finishing touches on my presentation, rereading some important papers, and trying not to panic. Actually, the practice talk went pretty well, so hopefully I'm in the clear. Still, the makes me very nervous, so if you're reading this, thoughts/vibes/prayers appreciated from 1:00 to 3:00 tomorrow.