Planet Olin

The city of Boston was shut down for several hours today due to the threat of LED displays attached to various structures in the city. LED displays that had been present for at least two weeks. LED displays that have survived other American cities for up to three weeks without the Terror Squad coming to the rescue. Other than my severe annoyance at the interruptions in subway service and causing of people I needed to talk to at work to leave early to beat the traffic jams, the real redeeming factor in it all is seeing the word "Mooninites" used liberally throughout the media. Glorious.

Work is busy. Sometimes frustrating. Though I have been clued in to the fact that over the summer I will get to do a mini contained version of pretty much exactly what I want to do with my life, so I am immensely pleased. I'm off to Florida next week for a meeting at my project's program office in Panama City. Being the only female going, I have my own 2br condo on the beach. As awesome as that is, there are vast amounts of preparation to be done before the meeting (and much PowerPoint to go anal on), so I like to think of my off f coutime on the beach there as being well-deserved vacation. Mmmm sun and warm and ocean. Unlike Boston, which is sun and cold and ocean. And Mooninites.

Ummm, what else. I have discovered the Xbox Live Arcade game Lumines! While it in no way takes advantage of the next-gen console on which it runs, it is supremely addictive and, much like Tetris back in the day, I hear the music in my head while I'm at work and I see dual-colored cubes when I close my eyes to go to sleep. However, I greatly anticipate the relase of Guitar Hero II for the 360, at which point I may need to call in sick to work for a month or two.

However, I do have to bitch about Microsoft (su-prise). To buy games, I have to buy points. 79 points cost US$0.99. The game I wanted was 1200 points, or something, and after some calculations on Drew's computer we determined how much that was in real money. So you go to buy the points you need to buy the game. Ha ha, you can only buy a minimum of 2000 points! So now you have these other points. Stupid points. And then you download the game you have just purchased for $15 or whatever (which is basically free online, of course), but wait, it isn't even the full version! Only the basic version! That's another 600 points. Download that, oh, that's just the single player challenge upgrade -- it's another 300 for the multiplayer and another 300 for the vs CPU advanced modes. And, every time you download the upgrades, it wants you to reboot the ENTIRE BOX. Why? It does this with updates too on some of the arcade games and real games like Gears of War -- downloads and install some 5 MB update and then insists on restarting the box. I am impressed with the 360's performance, but good lord, Microsoft's involvement in its software design and economic system is painfully clear.

And to review, exciting things that will be happening in the next six months: Florida for work (Feb), parents come to visit (Feb), a cute car is purchased (Feb/Mar), Boston FIRST regional is run (Mar), I attend (hopefully) the FIRST Championship (April), I go back to Columbus for my five-year high school reunion (April), I go to Hawaii (hopefully) (June/July). Fun things are going to be happening! I can only hope MOONINITES can be involved somehow.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/31/boston.bombscare/index.html

This either makes me laugh, cry, or stand in an awkward position of confusion.

"Electronic light boards featuring an adult-cartoon character triggered bomb scares around Boston on Wednesday, spurring authorities to close two bridges and a stretch of the Charles River before determining the devices were harmless.

The devices displayed one of the "Mooninites," outer-space delinquents who make frequent appearances on the cartoon, greeting passersby with a raised middle finger. Nine were reported around Boston on Wednesday, sending police bomb squads scrambling and snarling traffic and mass transit in one of the largest U.S. cities."

The pathetic thing is that it looked like this:



Good people of Boston, a Lite-Brite-esque object depicting a Mooninite is not a bomb.

Sincerely,
KE

my brother is awesome -- just ask his students: http://wisc.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2228741451

Remember those Stanford students I met at a housewarming party last Thursday? It turns out one of them is good friends (we're talking high school) with my UCSB buddy who came to visit this weekend. Oh yeah, the Stanford guys are also roommates with Stanford's Graduate Student Council (GSC) Co-Chair, who was at the GSC retreat with me for most of the weekend. All this became apparent at a party on Saturday night, where all the groups collided. Wow, small world. Still not convinced? Well, on my run this morning I ran (almost literally) into Lynn Andrea Stein. I guess she is giving a talk to the CS department here. So there, it's a small world after all.

EDIT:
Janet, this one's for you: I'm working with Tyler Johnston on a two-quarter project dealing with medical devices.

I went to a friend of a friend's housewarming party last night thinking that I would get to meet some non-Stanford students. Wrong. The first three guys I talked to all lived in my apartment complex. I guess it's a small world after all.

This weekend is the Graduate Student Council retreat. We'll see how that goes. I've been attending the weekly meetings, but haven't really done anything substantial. Hopefully, this thing will get me more involved.

I'm helping to plan the ME department's Visit Day, kind of like Olin's Candidates' Weekend. Sweet.

One of the students I met last year while visiting UCSB is coming up to visit this weekend. It'll be interesting to catch up and see how our first months in grad school compare.

Uh-oh, I have a problem session for PDEs in 10 minutes... why do I do this to myself?

I know, I know, I stink at this regular posting business, but at least occasional posts are better than no posts, yes? I'm back at Stanford and it's the start of the quarter, so things are still a bit slow, but I expect things to pick up next week. Clara hosted a party for all the Olin kids in the area on Saturday, and it was nice to see everyone again and hear the latest gossip/news that they don't send out to the alumnae. Nicole came up for the weekend from Irvine, so she, Michael Wu, and I went up to San Francisco yesterday and showed her all the touristy things. It's been unseasonably cold, but still, the trip was a lot of fun and it's good to get out of the apartment. My big goals for this quarter are to a.) exercise and b.) get out more, so I'm trying to start as I mean to go on. As a result, I have very sore legs since I went running and am woefully out of shape. But at least now I know enough biomechanics and anatomy to know exactly what is hurting and why... Occupational hazard, I guess.

In terms of classes, I'm taking advanced dynamics, fatigue design and analysis, and medical device design. Advanced dynamics looks to be a fun class, certainly better than classical dynamics was last quarter (more about that later.) It's taught from the ME department, not AA, so the prof is actually a good teacher and cares about the class' learning (what a concept!) Fatigue design and analysis is the class I wished I had taken concurrently with Jon's Failure class back at Olin - it's the theory of why stuff breaks and how to design stuff so that it breaks when you expect it to and not before. The prof who's teaching it isn't the most engaging I've ever taken a class from, but the topic is interesting enough that I don't mind. Medical device design is pretty much a SCOPE project except done in 20 weeks (two quarters) instead of 26. I'm working for Zimmer, the company that makes orthopedic implants, to develop and implement a protocol to determine the mechanical properties of cartilage to use in knee models. It sounds like a really fun project, and it's definitely applicable to my research. And this is the 8th year the class has been taught, so the bugs have been ironed out...

Since this quarter will hopefully be less crazy than Fall, I'm taking advantage to do a lot of work in the lab. I joined the ACL/OA project in the BioMotion lab, where we're looking at the relationship between ACL injuries and osteoarthritis, since people with injured ACL's have a much higher incidence of early OA. Hopefully, this'll help us figure out how OA starts and how to prevent it. So far I've just been doing cartilage segmentation from MRI images (outlining the tibial and femoral cartilage in each slice of an MRI scan of a patient's knee), which is then used to build a 3-D model of the cartilage. By comparing the injured ACL knee to the other normal one, we hope to see if there's a pattern to how the cartilage thins after injury. It's highly repetitive, essentially requiring no cognitive function, so I go segment cartilage as an antidote to problem sets. And I'm getting to know the other people in the lab more, so I feel less like an interloper who doesn't belong.

I am glad fall quarter is over, since especially the end got pretty bad. I essentially failed two of my midterms, so I had to do really well on all my finals to pull decent grades. As a result, I practically didn't leave my room for a week straight and went from bed to desk to bed. I've never studied as hard, but at least it paid off and I did well. Much better than I had any reason to expect. My last (and worst) final was on the last day before break, so that day one of my friends living off campus had a holiday party where we got suitably drunk to inaugurate winter break and forget classes for at least a little while.

My winter break was otherwise quiet, and it was nice to be able to loaf for three weeks. I realized how much I miss having a real summer vacation without needing to work or run madly from place to place. I've picked up knitting again, except now I actually learned how to purl as well as knit, so I can make real things instead of just scarves. My first project is a poncho made out of black/grey boucle yarn. It's essentially just two large rectangles sown together, but at least I get to practice stockinette stitch a lot. And the boucle is bulky enough that it doesn't show my mistakes too much :-)! Now I just have to stick to my goal of knitting every day...

Well, it looks like it's round two for me and this fluids concentration of mine. Hopefully, things will.. uhhh, flow... smoother this time around? Yeah, right. As things stand now, I plan to take a break from Stanford after two years and work for a couple more to figure out if I want to come back to get a PhD. We'll see how long that plan lasts.

Some interesting statistics: did you know that only about 20% of the US population has a bachelor's degree? Did you know that less than 2% of bachelor's degrees are awarded in engineering? Scary.

I went over to Clara's this weekend for her housewarming party, which means I got to hang out with people that have known me for  more than six month. Pretty cool. I wish I could do that sort of hanging out/talking to people more often.

I came to the realization this weekend that the only girls I hang out with at Stanford are my roommates (I guess it's a good thing they're really cool) - everyone else is a guy. I went out with a group of 15 or so people this Friday, and my roomies and I were the only girls. Today, I realized that my fluids study group shrank to all guys as well. I feel kind of bad for them because they're all great guys but totally deprived of female attention. I guess they're used to it though.

Oh yes, like Janet, I will be at Olin for graduation :)

I had my annual physical today, coincident with my first physical in which I had to find my own doctor. The doc was really nice, and during my checkup I asked if they had the cervical cancer vaccine yet, and if my insurance would cover it. Figured I'd be a good, healthy little feminist and get a vaccine that is a huge step forward in medicine, especially women's medicine.

He looked at me, blinked, and said, "I have no idea. You're the first person who's asked me about it." So he went out to talk to the nurse practitioner who does more of the gynacological stuff. Comes back in, says, "Well, your insurance probably won't cover it anyway, but... we don't have it, and the NP says if you're old enough to ask for it, it's probably too late." Meaning that by now I've probably been exposed to HPV already.

So, this was not at ALL the reaction I was expecting. First, I'm surprised I'm the only person so far to ask, given that (1) the vaccine has been in the news a lot and (2) this clinic is in Cambridge, and I have to imagine the many liberal college-aged women in Cambridge are interested in these sorts of things. Also, he never bothered to ask about my sexual history, so somewhere in the conversation with the NP came the assumption that I have risky enough behavior to have contracted HPV somehow (which I do not believe is the case). Plus my mom looked at the Mayo Clinic site, which says that the vaccine is recommended for women up to age 26, regardless of sexual histories, and that even if a woman has been exposed previously, it can still have some effect. And there's the fact that it's a nice contingency plan for that "what if I get raped?" scenario, which is really, I think, a good reason to get it. Sooooo... I'm a little confused. I have a gyno appointment with the NP in a couple of weeks, so I'll ask her about it again then, but... it was just really strange. Not at all what I thought they'd say. Anyone else asked about this? Anyone had any better reactions? I don't want to be one of those annoying patients who reads things on the internets and starts demanding the newest stuff just for the sake of it, but in this case I feel like it might be warranted...

i'm always impressed with these things
http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes3.asp
what's your type? i'm ENFP, a.k.a. the champion idealist. *raises eyebrows suggestively* eh? eh?