Planet Olin

I don't even really know how to begin.

So many things. So little time. What do I really want to do? What is.. 'LIFE'?

and then.... I hate money. Or maybe just the societal reliance upon money. EVERYTHING needs money. People set as a goal, getting rich. What does that mean?

siighs.

Today as I was working in the admissions office,
Filing transcripts and SAT scores and such,
I was giggling and my mind
twittered and fluttered around like
Kirby--

pink,
bubbly,
bouncing
from one thought-cloud to the next

...真想無所世事,無憂無慮的躺著聽歌、想著雜七雜八的小事。何為逍遙?何為自在?也許在過幾十年才能懂吧~

so i've been reading a lot less than i'm happy about, but i finally finished 'the naked brain.' it's about how the neuroscience boom is changing and will change society a whole heckuva lot. i think the issues it addresses are extremely important, but overall i wasn't thrilled with the book. the writing style struck me as somewhat awkward, or just...corny. anyway, now i have to pick a new book, so here's where you come in. i have these 4 books on the stack of books to read (it's a literal stack, not a computer queue, so don't bother me that i'm cheating by skipping the one on top if i want to) and want input from anyone who has read any of them, or even if you haven't.

The Flanders Panel, by Arturo Perez-Reverte. the new york times book review says it's "a sleek, sophisticated, madly clever chamber mystery about chess, life, and art." if you're reading this blog you probably know i like chess.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn.  This one is super famous and important, but a) i already have a general idea of its content thanks to Allen 'Awesome' Downey and b) it's going to be denser reading than the fiction alternatives, which isn't necessarily bad but it could be postponed while i tear through some of the others.

Motherless Brooklyn, by Jonathan Lethem. nytbr again: (yeah, apparently we're on an acronym basis now) "immerses us in the mind's dense thicket, a place where words split and twine in an ever-deepening tangle." the main character has tourette's syndrome, so, that's something. it is otherwise award winning and highly praised.

One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez. for the trifecta, some yak from the nytbr says: "One Hundred Years of Solitude is the first piece of literature since the Book of Genesis that should be required reading for the entire human race. It takes up not long after Genesis left off and carries through to the air age, reporting on everything that happened in between with more lucidity, wit, wisdom, and poetry than is expected from 100 years of novelists, let alone one man... Mr. Garcia Marquez has done nothing less than to create in the reader a sense of all that is profound, meaningful, and meaningless in life."


probably all winners here. any thoughts?

so i'm not a full time student, which means i'm not covered by my parents health insurance plans. this means i need a job or funding.
i find it somewhat ironic that it was on the same day (within hours!) that i discovered a statistically significant association between a specific polymorphism and alzheimer's disease (i.e. got a useful positive result) that i found out i didn't get a grant i'd been hoping for which was going to fund me to keep doing this project over the summer. meanwhile my prof still doesn't know if he'll have any other funding or even if he'll have tenure. the whole lab including some very unlucky grad students might just go up in flame.

I think when your mom accuses your blog of being boring, it might be time to update...

So... wow. I guess it has been a while. I have a car now! It's a 2007 Mazda3 S Grand Touring, with sunroof, Bose speaker system, and spiffy auto-dimming rearview mirror, among other gadgets. It is "Pacific blue mica" color, which roughly translates to a dark teal -- looks more blue or green depending on the light. Her name is Kaylee (after the engineer in Firefly) and she is lovely :)

Work is very very busy. This summer I get to continue systems engineering on my current project and I get to be a part of a commerical R&D team, which is basically exactly what I want to do with my life, so I am immensely excited. Recent conversations and such with coworkers have introduced exciting new dynamics into my summer plans, so it will be interesting to see how it all goes. However, in general, work continues to go well, and I continue to enjoy it.

The Boston FIRST Regional is next week, and that's going to be INSANE. But hopefully it'll go well -- last year was apparently impressive for a rookie regional, so hopefully this year will be most awesome. Not particularly panic-inducing, but certainly stressful and exhausting. Woo boy. And I have to take two vacation days for it.

I really don't have anything else particularly entertaining to say right now. That's unfortunate, isn't it? You'll have to live with me being boring.

Things to be happy about:

- Confocal microscope: Argon gas! Safety switches! LASERS!

- It is partly cloudy and 68 degrees outside.

- I'm returning home on Saturday, where it is 80 degrees and sunny.

- Today is pi day. We went to time.gov during modcon and counted down the seconds until it was 3/14, 1:59:26. There was much rejoicing.

I have never been affected by the weather so much as I am now. This delightful weather after weeks of below freezing brought an involuntary smile to my face as I walked across the O.

Our MATLAB code isn't working right now, but I do not believe in fretting over such trivial matters as MATLAB code.

That's all.

So we switched plans, and got phone upgrades. So I have a new phone. The thing is that these phones are silly, and you cannot just transfer the SIM cards. And my mom was not aware of the fact that the phones she sent are associated with particular numbers. So, I have a phone, with a working number. It's just not my normal phone number. Everything will resume normal in a few days.. so in the mean time, send me emails. Or something.

I expected this past Wednesday to be a terrible day.

I do a research project on Wednesdays where I need to get up early and start working in the lab by 8:00 AM. It's not some sort of masochistic thing for me to do so, I just want to start early so we can finish things on time. Jenn had to get up at 7:00 to go on a field trip for her Machine Shop class so we decided that we would get up at 7:00 together. Unfortunately, Jenn got up and got in the shower while I went back to sleep. I didn't wake back up until 9:45.

>.<

I got up and immediately went to the lab, knowing that no one would be there until 10:00 but still expecting someone to be upset/angry with me for oversleeping, but nothing catastrophic resulted from me being two hours late.

I then went to lunch and talked with Roland about when we were going to rehearse for Dare to Diva, and finding no time in either of our schedules, we both got irritated and I decided to leave ModCon right after the lecture to go figure out what our dance was going to be.

Our Dare to Diva performance ended up being great. I collected the ModCon data later that day.

I thought the rehearsal started at 7:00, which would've given me zero free time to do anything.

It started at 9:00.

I came back at midnight to meet up with Derek and discuss what we were going to do for our ICB project. I was under the assumption that our system, an Electrostatic Precipitator, would be ridiculously hard to model and I would be up until 6 in the morning trying to get a MATLAB simulation running. I sat on the couch in one of the lounges in my PJs with a water bottle. I couldn't find Derek. My momentum was zero, my inertia was zero, I sat and sat there and just didn't feel like doing a whole lot of anything.

I went to sleep by 2:30. John liked our outline.

On Friday we had the fire alarm go off during ICB lecture which resulted in all of the freshmen (and several people in the AC) outside on the great lawn. It wasn't particularly warm, but it was sunny and I was awake. Bunches of freshmen huddled around in groups and chatted; frisbees materialized from the res halls, and everyone was just in a state of good cheer. The fire alarms stopped going off after about thirty minutes so we were able to get back to lecture. For the rest of lecture we discussed more things about partial derivatives and whatnot, but the unexpected recess made me ridiculously happy. I was in a lecture about electrostatics and I was grinning and humming a happy tune in my head and feeling a sensation of strong, unshakable joy.

My mind wandered back to my last checkup where the nurse practicioner told me that my blood pressure was 102/60.

102/60

I have fantastic blood pressure.