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| Well I haven't written in almost a year, but I have decided that I want to start again. I think I am just going to write whatever comes to mind. Hopefully there should be a little something for everyone.
Work:
Work has been pretty good lately, in fact, I am at work right now, waiting for the EAM to finish mixing. So yeah, things are going pretty well, work is interesting and I am getting paid, which is nice. I still end up with a fair amount of sitting around time because the chip that I use for the mass spectrometer takes a long time to prepare.
Sports:
I know the Jets are probably not going to win the Super Bowl this year, but I think they drafted fairly well and will hopefully continue to improve over the next few years. They need to get a full time replacement for the aging Curtis Martin. Hopefully Kellen Clemens will work out as our Quarterback of the Future, and we will be able to get back to a winning form. As for the Quarterback situation for this year. I think that Pennington will probably win the starting job, but his arm strength will have diminished even more from what was already considered questionable. The offensive line should continue to improve and hopefully will again become one of the strengths of the team. I think that Eric Mangini should be a good coach and Tannenbaum a good GM, so things should be getting better. I am a little skeptical of the switch to the 3-4 defense, while it does open up more options on defense, I do not think the Jets have the players at the moment to be that successful in it. The Jets have 2 pretty good linebackers in Hobson and Barton, and Vilma has been one of the Jets' few bright spots over the past two years. If Bryan Thomas is capable of making a smooth transition to linebacker, then maybe that will work out okay. The defensive line, however, is definitely a question mark. With the loss of John Abraham, their most explosive pass rusher, there is definitely a huge hole to fill. Shaun Ellis has shown promise in the past, but he will see more double teams this season since Abraham is not there to draw them. Also, who else will play on the line? Robertson has been a disappointment and then we only have unproven or aging players besides him. The secondary will hopefully be decent this year with the addition of Dyson, and I think that Justin Miller has some potential. In terms of pass catchers, Chris Baker showed some promise before getting injured early last season, and Doug Jolley was touted as a good player, so hopefully he will show why that was. Coles had an off-season with no one to throw him the ball, and I have always thought McCareins could develop into an above average 2nd option. As you can see, I have used the word hopefully many times in this review of the team, so there are clearly a lot of questions that need to be answered about the future of the Jets.
Politics:
I do not follow the political situation too much, except for the occasional Daily Show or Colbert Report, hehe, however, a few things have clearly caught my eye. The situation in the Middle East is obviously very bad, and I find myself somewhere in the middle ground between completely supporting Israel and not supporting them, a fair amount of that has to do with the lack of facts about the current situation that I have. Another issue that has come up in the past few weeks was the stem cell research bill that would increase federal funding for this important scientific development. Disappointingly, but not surprisingly, Bush vetoed the bill, as he was expected to. I hope that at some point in the near future scientists' hands will not be bound by the lack of federal funding for new stem cell lines.
Stories:
I have also decided to write out some random stories, although I have not really started. But I will post them up here once I am finished.
Anyway, that's all that I can think of at the moment.
Dan
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| Well, I am sorry for the lack of posting, but I have been quite busy here at le college. First I think I should post about some events that happened before I came to college, and then I will fill you all in on what's been goin on recently. So it kind of sucks that I lapsed on posting because I have forgotten some things that I wanted to say about stuff before college, but alas, I will do my best. So I did all the things that the Doc wanted me to do for work. I did all of the runs and analyzed all of the data. It was very exciting and it was a nice way to close the whole summer work experience...thing. So, I may try to work there again next summer. I definitely want to do more science stuff next summer, but I will have to see what my options are then.
Anyway, the other big thing that happened at the end of the summer was the whole attempting to get a driver's license thing. So a few funny things happened leading up to my road test. First of all, the driving instructor I had been taking lessons from was sick, so a few nights before I was told (actually my mother) that I would be going with someone else to the driving test. Then the night before the road test we get a phone call. My mother answers the phone. I can tell she is talking to the driving instructor who will be taking me to the road test. This conversation goes on for about 15 minutes, and I am basically sitting there, just eating dinner, trying to relax about the road test and everything else, when I hear my mother say, "Oh wait, this is the wrong driving school, my son is going with Grand Prix driving school not Autonotics." Now, this wasn't funny to me because the wrong driving school called, but it was funny to me because it took my mother 15 minutes to figure out she was talking to the wrong guy. Little back story, in case I hadn't already mentioned this before: I had originally signed up with this other driving school, but because they would never call me back and were really poorly coordinated, we signed up with another one and bought the road test time from the first school and canceled the lessons. After finding out that she was talking to the wrong guy, my mother took another 15 minutes to get off the phone. Which isn't too surprising to me because she is so polite, and needed to explain why we decided to switch driving schools.
Anyway, so it is the day of the test. I needed to wake up at like 6:15 to get to the driving school by 7:00. Needless to say, I was pretty tired. So we get there, and the driving school looks closed, and no one is there. So we kind of just stand outside. Slowly, a man makes his way from the corner to in front of the driving school. He would kind of look around, then slide a few steps closer to the school, then stop, then take a few more steps, and so on. So, when he has gotten right up to the driving school, we ask him if he is "the guy" and he acquiesces. Then, we walk over to the car, and I am supposed to have a lesson before my road test actually starts, and apparently his idea of a lesson is driving to Staten island. (Not as random as it seems, as my road test is indeed on Staten island.) Anyway, so I am a little freaked out at the idea of driving for over an hour on highways and over bridges and the like. So I start driving, and everything seems fine, until we hit the highway. I didn't notice it before, but my window was open, so when we hit the highway and started going fast, I am basically trying to drive in this vortex of air and incredible noise. Anyway, I manage to tolerate this for almost an hour until we pull over, because he needs to drive the car. Now I know what you all are thinking, that he needs to drive because I suck, although this is possibly true, it is not the reason he needed to drive. It turns out that you cant drive on the Verazano bridge without a full license. So I finally got a reprieve from the vortex of air and noise, abbreviated, VortANo, however I am told it prefers to be called, "vortie". Yeah, we get over the bridge, and switch places, and I drive the rest of the way with no major incidences. So we get close to the driving site, and I practice some 3 point turns and parallel parking and the like, and I am feeling moderately confident about my skills. Since it is illegal for a student driver to drive in a testing zone, Burt, the instructor, drove the rest of the way. We get there at about 8:25, and there is already a big line of cars, even though the place doesn't open till 8:30. My scheduled appointment was for 9:00. Anyway, we pull in to line, Burt stops the car, turns off the engine, and goes over a few last minute things with me, such as, don't piss off the road tester. The line starts to move, so Burt turns on the car, or should I say, tries to turn on the car. The car obviously is not starting. He tries to start the car for about five minutes, all the while flagrantly cursing. I am freaking out a bit, because he criticized me for turning the key for too long, because that might damage the starter. So I thought I might be responsible. However, after a while, I just laughing to myself because I knew that there was no way Dan Marks' road test was going off without a hitch. After about five minutes, Burt gets out of the car and raises up the hood, and looks around. He clearly has no idea what the hell he is doin. So this other guy walks by, and sees that we are having some problems. He strides over, takes one look under the hood, says the power cables are loose, fixes them, tells Burt to start the car, and voila, the car starts. Within an hour, we get to the front of the line. I am, by this time, freaking out. So the test starts out pretty well, I don't make any huge mistakes. Then she tells me to parallel park, I do a good enough job. Then she says make a 3 point turn. Now, I am used to having driving instructors telling me to do various maneuvers and then I just do them, I assume that they have already checked the surroundings. At this point in the test, I am still so nervous, that I forget that I am taking the road test, and just do a quick check of the surroundings and make my turn. There is, however, a car about a block down the street that has to slow down and wait for me to finish my turn. We then drive around a little more, until she asks me to pull over. When we pulled over, I didn't even notice that we were back at the starting point, and I thought she pulled me over to tell me that I had failed. So about 5 minutes into her schtick about driving safely, and not making 3 point turns like that, I realize that we are indeed back at the starting point, and I begin to relax, with the knowledge that at least, it is over. She prints out a ticket thing, and tells me to sign it. It says, temporary license for 90 days. Awww yeah, Dan, Dan, the driving man. So finally I can relax. Burt drove back to the driving school, and I fell asleep promptly after entering the car. So yay, I got my license.
The rest of the week before I left was pretty simple, I went to work one last time to discuss my results, had a few more meetings of the merry three, and packed. So now I am here, at college, and so far, things are very good. I will go in to more detail some other time, but for now, I am off!
Adieu,
Barnabus | | |
|  | Currently Watching
The Great Escape
By Steve McQueen, James Garner, Richard Attenborough, Charles Bronson, Donald Pleasence, James Coburn
see related |
I really need to post again... I don't want to be like malcolm who says he will post often, but ends up going on 37 different 4 month hiatuses. So I might as well post now. So work is actually better now. I am done doing work on the computer, and now I am only working on the mass spectrometer. The Doc is on vacation, so now I am working primarily with one of the other guys in the lab, who will from now on be referred to as Victor. There is another guy in the lab, who will from now on be referred to as Cho. I admit, I will miss listening to the Doc having arguments with the other guys in the lab. It was hilarious, because in these arguments, both parties are yelling at each other, and neither party speaks english as a first language. They both go at it with a heavily accented, sort of stilted english. I also will miss the Doc yelling at me. For instance, the day before the Doc left to go on vacation, I come in to work, sit down at my desk, and busy myself with some work. About five minutes later, I here the Doc yell my name. As I get up to go see what he wants, I here him yell, "I'm going to castrate you!" It is somewhere around this point that I realize that I am probably in some sort of trouble. I go over to his office, and he is holding the log book. Earlier, he had commissioned me to print up more blank pages for the log book, with the rows a little bit taller. Apparently there are some columns missing from the new sheets that I had printed out. When I reformatted the log book pages, Cho had sent me the file with what was supposed to be the original log book format. It turns out the wrong file was sent to me. But that's what I love about my work, over such a small thing, and something that isn't even my fault, I can be threatened with castration.
So, before the Doc went on his 2 week vacation, he assigned me some work to do that is supposed to keep me busy for the next two weeks. He gave me some computer stuff to do. He also said that I should do 48 runs on the mass spectrometer, and analyze the data collected. I am also supposed to analyze Victor's data from his runs. The first day of his vacation I finished all of the computer work before 2:00. Victor didn't come in that day, so I just left cause I can't do the runs without his "supervision".
Yesterday, I prepared the samples to be run. That was about it. Not a very exciting day, for the reader, but an exciting day for me, because it was a lot of work preparing those 24 samples let me tell ya! What was perhaps more exciting was what happened after work. I got home, and caught the tail end of a MacGyver episode, my favorite show when I was younger. I had been humming the theme music the entire day, so I was very happy to actually see the show, and hear the music for the 3 seconds when they were rolling the credits at the end of the show. After that, I had a driving lesson. I have already taken driver's ed, and I think I can pass the test, but I just wanted to refresh my driving capabilities before I take my road test next friday. It was my second driving lesson with this guy. He is, for all intensive purposes, insane. If you have seen the adam sandler film extroadinaire, Happy Gilmore, then it might be helpful to think of my driving instructor as the Kevin Nealon character in that film. When I first met my instructor, I wasn't sure if he was a Zen master, a poet, or just one crazy dude. Turns out he was just out of his mind. He talks in a continuous flow of words, it's almost like a stream of consciousness. But what he says makes no sense, and almost never pertains to driving. He also loves to tell stories. For instance, one time we were driving by a market sort of area, and he saw a woman selling various things, including a skateboard. He then proceeded to say, O skateboard lady, I am going to buy a skateboard from skateboard lady and give it to grandmother. This is but a taste of the terror. He also loves to tell stories that include this character Reggie from time to time. He says Reggie this and Reggie that. Well it turns out he is Reggie, and just refers to himself in the third person. The driving, however, has been very fun. The first lesson we went uptown to about 160th street and drove around there, and then back down. This time, we went downtown, to chinatown. It is kind of tough driving down there. There are a lot of weird turns, and it is pretty darn crowded. The lesson was supposed to be from 6:30 to 8:00 pm, however he thought that it was until 8:30. At about 7:45 we were still down in chinatown, and I told him that I needed to be home by 8 cause I had an 8:30 dinner reservation. So he said that we would just take the FDR drive up to the west side highway. For those who are not familiar with the driving on those two roads, let me tell ya, it is pretty ridiculous. People weave back and force between crowded lanes so much at pretty fast speeds. So basically I was scared out of my mind. However, after a few minutes, I got more comfortable and enjoyed my first real highway driving experience. After I got home, I raced over to the restaurant with my mother. We had a great dinner where I got into a heated discussion over the space program and the importance of space exploration.
Today was a pretty similar day to yesterday at work. I came in a little late and prepared the chips (and accompanying cheese dip) for the mass spectrometer. Very exciting stuff.
Now I am relaxing and watching The Great Escape, one of my favorite films. All I can say is, wow, the lankiness. James Coburn is almost but not quite as lanky as he is in the Magnificent Seven...but it is still pretty freakish. Anyway chaps, I think this post is of sufficient length and breadth, so, as always, I will leave you with one last thing... You know Mac...all this...the organization, tunneling, Tom and Harry...kept me alive. And even though we...I've never been happier. You know Mac...
Fin.
-Barnabus Marks | | |
| I just watched willy wonka again. I felt like watching it after seeing the remake. The remake was good, awesome visuals and the like, but I think somehow it lacked the magic and charm of the first one. Burton likes to darken and creepify lots of things, but his new movie, corpse bride looks pretty good. Anyway, so I watched willy wonka again, and I have never cried during a movie...and I still havent, but i came damn near close at the end of it. Well, more work updates on the way (most likely to be written at work).
-Barnabus "Barney" Marks | | |
| Well, I started work last monday as a volunteer research assistant sort of thing at a hospital. I was told that I would spend about 50% of my time working on stuff in the lab, ya know...workin on my skills. The other 50% of my time would be spent working on the computer, updating reference databases, printing out research papers, and just being the general tech guy.
Well, the first week I spent basically all of my time on the computer. He (the boss) told me that I would learn these two programs (ref. manager and microsoft access) over the course of my approximately 1 month volunteership. To impress the boss, I just went through a basic tutorial of the microsoft access program online the weekend before I started working. So I got a good jump on that program. Then it turned out I would be dealing mainly with the ref. manager program. So it only took me about 2 days to learn the program well enough for my purposes. This worried me a bit, because it didnt take a genius to learn this program, and if he thought it would take me the entire time to learn it, then I thought my job would quickly disintegrate into mind numbing nothingness as has happened to some of my friends (hang in there Scooter).
He essentially wanted me to help him update this book he had written about cancer research. It turns out that there was a lot of updating that needed to be done, so most of my time the first week was spent in the name of this cause. Surprisingly, I managed to accomplish a lot in the first week. I almost finished all of the updating for his book. All I'm saying is, I better get a credit in the new edition...that's all I want. Some of the stuff I came across seemed interesting, but I moved pretty quickly, so I only got a few seconds to glance over the titles of various papers. However, most of it was pretty mundane work. I managed to get through the first week by listening to my iPod¢â for the entire time.
Anywho, yesterday was a pretty good day of work, my boss, who I will henceforce refer to as "the Doc" or just "Doc", complemented me on my speed, and called me a speed queen, I'm not sure if that is a complement from his native country, but I took it as one, however speed king, or speed demon might have been more kick ass, and not to mention masculine. At this point I would like to enter in a quote from Seinfeld. If you have ever had the privilege to speak to me in person, you will know I always throw quotes in from various sources at random intervals, usually in the area of 5-7 mRems/s. Anyway, here's the quote, "Charlie over here, he's a man...I'm a man." Well, you had to be there. Anyway, so yeah, being called a speed queen didnt make me feel very manly, but i guess doing research on the computer isnt really manly labor. "His hands are not toughened with manly labor" (or something to that effect) -Bio Class.
Yea, but today has been a bit of a different story. It started off pretty normally with a stack of articles that I to search for and enter into the database. However, after I accomplished this, I started the "real" lab work. To get started on this, one of the post docs working in the lab, gave me a sheet with various buffer solutions written on it. There were tons of abbreviations that might has well been written in english, cause I wasnt gonna understand them. I called over the Doc for a little bit of help. He sat me down. And told me that I shouldnt know how to do these things because the American school system is so screwed up. Back in the old country, he says, they didnt have a choice of what classes to take, and either they learned everything that was required of them, or they had to take the entire year again. So this little chat went on for about 30 minutes culminating in his slamming a rather thick chemistry book down on the table and a stirring rendition of everyone's favorite hip-hop be-bop doo-dop tune, READ THIS! So I open up the hulk of all chemistry books, it looks like it has been through about 3 wars, and was apparently at the russian front for every single one of them. Anyway, it is very basic chemistry, the stuff I really should know, but my brain has degenerated over the past few weeks since I got out of school and I was having a little trouble. So I figure, this is a perfect time to whip out my iPod¢â and do a little light reading while listening to some tunes. This is the time of all times that the Doc decides to tell me that he doesnt want me to listen to music at work. At this point the gun is firmly pressed against my temple, one foot is already hanging in the thin air next to the roof, the bus is coming right at me, when I manage to stifle the urge and start to read. It's pretty boring, and after a few minutes of pretending to read, I look over at the sheet of buffer solutions and try to figure it out. I manage to get some idea of what I am supposed to do. So I go over to the Doc, ask him what a few of the abbreviations mean, he tells me what they are, and things start to make some sense. I start looking through this manual for molecular masses of various chemical compounds when the Doc wants to look something up. I reluctantly relinquish the manual and go about writing this post. As you can tell by the length of this post, it has been a long time since I gave him the manual. He got a phone call, I snuck in and took it back for a second, then he came and took it back again. A woman walked in the door and sat down in his office, and they got to talking. As I already had a full week's experience with the brevity of the Doc's little convos, I knew that it might take a while before the manual came back to me. It has been about 30 minutes since she got here. In that 30 minutes, as I have told you all, I have been writing this post, however, I have also almost managed to acquire the power to "use the force", so by one way or another the manual will be MINE.
I'm 75. Has it really been that long? It seems like only a few minutes ago that lady walked into his office. He has got to be over 140 years old now, and she is what, 110, 120 at the most. My whole using the force venture failed. I think that idea was brought on by my little stint of delerium which was in turn brought on by the various and sundry fumes in the lab. Anyway, these ramblings have gone on for way too long. So I'll leave you with this, if you ever see a long winded elderly chap, never under any circumstances give him your manual of chemical compounds.
Fin.
-Barnabus | | |
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