Dear Rhinovirus-

I understand that you as a virus must inhabit something or someone to continue to survive.  Unfortunately, you're just not welcome here.  I also understand that we've been taught from a very young age that sharing is encouraged.  Unfortunately, sharing is why I feel like crap right now.  See - lots of people when they're sick continue to go out around the world - and I'm surprised of this because they are spreading you - Rhinovirus - to other (sometimes unsuspecting) innocent individuals.  Almost as convincing as the devil convincing the world that he didn't exist - Rhinovirus - you have succeeded in convincing people that they can "beat" the rhinovirus by merely running around public and trying to go about life as always.  Unfortunately, what they are really doing is just allowing you to hop from host to host.  

So here I am, nicely in a nearly comatose state thanks to NyQuil.  Hopefully another day of this and I'll be recovered.  We'll see.

One final to go...

Just one final to go until the end of the semester.  It's a take home, of course, and just 3 questions long.  So why is the maximum page limit 12 pages?  I was intimidated at first, but having since written the first question and ended up with 3.75 pages - perhaps the page limit isn't too far off.  Next semester was supposed to be the beginning of "no classes" and due to last minute additions of things that sounded interesting - I'm now taking 2 lecture courses.  Hopefully I'll also end up doing an okay job as the TA for the fMRI class.  Given that my knowledge of fMRI analysis is mostly modifying other people's scripts and pressing "go" -- I should learn quite a bit.  

Christmas shopping is over.  Everyone who is getting a gift, it's in my apartment.  At some point I'll wrap it all and then send them out.  

London?

I've been looking forward to going to London as part of an internship lasting a couple weeks/months.  Now I found an opening that would be for TWO years!  Sort of undecided on if that's too far for too long or the ultimate adventure.  So that's my thing to ponder.

Dissertation update:

Relevant Articles Read: 12

Abstracts written: 5

Clearly need to get to the point of reading an article a day AND writing an abstract for that day.  But it's awfully tempting to just play Halo instead.

Do us a favor - Keep it simple.

In the past few weeks I've had to read what can only be amounted to the worst writing of any kind.  I've read engineering books for fun, I've read reference books cover to cover.  The thing that frustrates me...  papers from social psychology.  Not due to the theme, I think it's fascinating stuff.  But how the people write is just obnoxious to no end.  So here's the basic lesson for those people who might later in life write for a living or for those old hats who may have over looked this simple rule of writing.  

If you find yourself typing the words - "In other words..." or "Specifically..." and sometimes, even "Thus..." stop for a second and think to yourself, do I need anything that was typed before those clarifiers?  You probably don't.  If you need to say something "In other words" then you probably didn't use the right ones the first time around.  Save your audience what could be the last few seconds of our conscious existence (at least for that day) the pain of having to read your attempts of writing the same thing four times and deciding to leave all four versions in the final paper.  If you type "Specifically" you should think - perhaps I should just have said it all to start with instead of "Ants are small.  Specifically they measure up to 2 cm in length in some areas".  Do you need the first part?  No, this isn't a bed time story, this also isn't a how many pointless words can you include contest, this is a journal article and you should be concise without giving people the impression that you just went through your thesaurus to try to make yourself look smart.  Don't do it.

Thesis Day!

Defending the thesis today.  Really looking forward to a new research project after!

It's hot in texas.  Classes started.  I'm tired a lot.  That's basically the gist of the first week of school!  Of course I still feel like I have more energy than I did when I worked a full 40 hours a week - but that's not really saying much.  It's like comparing a turtle crossing the road and a guy in a coma in terms of energy.  

My most recent discovery on the web is WebAlert a video quick summary of what's going on in the tech world.  Sure, you'd get more info from reading pages and pages from different sites - but every so often it's nice to get a quick update where you don't have to do anything.  The fact that the reporter is attractive and usually has amusing things to say are extra.  And the true geeks might actually like the commercials better than the news.  Until later -- or perhaps after I finish reading all I have to read.

Pizzas and iPhones

Food should never mix with electronics. This obvious rule is always violated - as an undergrad computer science major we often had all-night coding sessions where everyone would bring their computers and we'd have pizza in between each computer so everyone could stay energized. Add in the several 2-liter bottles of soda and it's an accident waiting to happen. Nevertheless, it didn't stop us from these rituals at least two times a semester. This rule is also violated in the Apple Store... You can walk in with a "mega gulp" of 24 ounces or more and browse the computers. Put the cup on the counters next to computers and you might attract a bit of attention, but I don't think I've ever seen someone stopped from having their drink with them in the store.

In other news, I cracked... I tried to resist the reality distortion field. I failed... I got an iPhone. And here are my initial observations so far:
1. It's smaller than I thought.
2. It's easier to use than a Palm Pilot... let that sink in for a second.
3. The voice quality if fantastic! I was on Sprint for nearly 4 years and the voice quality on this phone on AT&T is great. I, of course, can't test whether it's the phone or the network - but I'll say across all of my sprint phones, none of have provided this good of voice quality.
4. The screen gets smudgy pretty easily. Wipe it on your sleeve to clean it and make it good as new (just like you would your nose, but try to not wipe your nose and then your iPhone).
5. I'm not sure why people think the internet is slow. It's actually fairly decent.
6. I'm typing on the keyboard with either two thumbs or three fingers on one hand and having very few issues with words.
7. Intuitive... nuff said.
8. The best iPod... now if only it had a larger capacity - perhaps 20GB...

My wish list, which I would imagine will be solved with a software update:
1. iChat
2. Flight Status without going to the airline web page.
3. Voice activated dialing
4. Voice Memos
5. Skype

I admit, I was feeling a bit sentimental about Sprint right before I switched to AT&T, that's in part to having been on Sprint for a long time. But this last week they called me 3 times and offered me all kinds of "deals" that were really just available to anyone buying a new cell phone from Sprint. And call it a bit selfish if you will, but I expect if I've been with a company for 4 years that they'll offer me more than an introductory offer. The deal they pushed hardest was 2 lines, 550 minutes, and mobile to mobile for $59.99. That's considerably more than I was paying and more importantly what the heck would I do with a second line? So the slight frustration of so many calls and feeling bullied into a more expensive plan helped ease the pain of the transition.

Two weeks until I'm back in Houston... and miles to go before I sleep...

iPhone home?

Well, currently most of my family is on Sprint. But we're discussing this entire iPhone thing and how AT&T has a 5 year exclusive contract on the phone. So... I'm fairly sure I'll end up switching so I can get an iPhone at some point.

A fun day of processing

So here I am on Friday at 4:50 trying to push my poor computer to the edges of its abilities. Currently :
1. I'm compiling Gentoo Linux in 64-bit mode on one processor in VMWare
2. running Parallel's Desktop with Windows XP and SAS open to do some statistical analyses
3. I've got iTunes open playing some Howie Day
4. Net Station is processing ERP data for a paper
5. Microsoft Word 2004 is open with the beginnings of a paper being written up on my research
6. iChat is open where people are sending me the occasional message
7. my Email client is open receiving and occasionally responding to messages
8. and finally my web browser is open

All and all - my computers getting a decent workout. I'm a bit jealous though since I only have two processors and today I got to play with a computer that had 8. Oh well. Coming up on my last weekend in New Haven...

Politicians panter to the right...

Even though American TV is already greatly censored, more could be on the way!

So basically the point of view is that the government must protect everyone from indecent material on TV. I get the idea, it's kind of screwed up b/c the easiest way to protect your children from bad programming goes something like this:
a) don't get cable
b) if you do get cable, don't get channels with questionable content (Cinemax, HBO, or others that you explicitely pay more for)
c) If you do get cable and those channels that cost extra, try locking your TV set with a code that will lock your children out of watching those channels that might have questionable content
d) if locking your cable seems too difficult - call Best Buy - they will sell you a cable box that is pre-configured with questionable content locked out and even teach you in the store how to use it.

It's not the governments responsibility to protect children from everything. It's the parents responsibility. While there are some avenues that sure would be eaiser if the Government helped out (drugs and guns perhaps), programming that may not be suitable for younger audiences is one of those that is easily solved by parents just not buying multiple TVs or even just not getting cable! Similarly, if you're worried that your child might be in a crash on his or her 4-wheeler while mudding with friends, the easy solution is to not get your 6-year old a 4-wheeler. We don't need laws for everything - but I guess with a big election coming up people will do anything to win the votes of those people who fear their children watching something they're not supposed to.

WWDC and such

It's always encouraging when doing an experiment to get results roughly along the lines that you were expecting... More on those when I finish writing the paper!

Beyond having cool pictures from my data, Apple launched it's World Wide Developer Conference today and showed off the next version of MacOS X. Some cool stuff... if I weren't still in the midst of my Sprint contract I'd be camping outside of an Apple store to get an iPhone on June 29th.

Spent the weekend in Boston. Would have pictures to show... but it was raining and foggy for a good chunk of the weekend so that didn't really encourage me to take my camera out. Back to data analysis to make sure these pretty pictures are statistically significant. I have to present this data at 9:30 tomorrow morning, so hopefully it is!

Why always the good shows?

It seems like an unwritten rule that those TV shows that I find truly great get cancelled. Sure, there are plenty of shows that I watched that made it to the 7 year (West Wing) or even the 10 year mark (Friends). And yet it seems unfair that days are not getting longer (still just the 24 hours), and the proportion of "reality tv" shows is increasing. Does anyone remember when MTV used to play music? It amazes me that people would rather sit around and watch couples go to a fantasy island where they'll be tempted to cheat on their significant other. I mean come on now!

In any case, this year was a bad year (2006-2007) for my tv shows. Among the cancelled:
1. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip
2. The Loop
3. Veronica Mars
4. Love Monkey
5. Drive

There's more if you include shows cancelled last year like Alias and the West Wing. The odd thing is that Studio 60 was cancelled even though it brought in roughly 7.7 million viewers. And that doesn't count the people who TiVo it or download it or watch it online. It's apparently the most recorded TV show. It'll probably be replaced with a version of the apprentice focused on opening up BabyGaps around the world.

Northeast Rockin’

So I’m back at Yale for part of the summer. I’ve been here just over a week and I love it. This is by far the best working environment I’ve ever been in. It’s amazing what a difference the work environment makes on productivity, not to mention the entire sleeping through the night thing. All and all I have to say working here is a good reminder of the type of work environments that benefit productivity and morale versus the last one that made me miserable.

So I’ve been here a week. I’ve written two programs for analyzing ERP data, run two sets of data from start to finish through SAS, written routines for analyzing ERP data in SAS, written four experiments in E-PRIME, worked with electronics I’ve never seen before, watched four movies, and read nearly 200 pages of various books. By the end of the week I will have started running participants in two of those four experiments, and wired the electronics for one other experiment. Best of all, I don’t have anyone asking me to replace the toner cartridge in the printer or insulting me for not dropping everything I’m currently working on to do something that they could easily do by reading the manual.

All and all, life is pretty friggin’ sweet. For instance, in a couple of minutes I’m planning to go downstairs and peddle a bike for the better part of an hour while simultaneously reading and listening to music. That’s right, triple tasking.

That's all folks...

Today I turned in my last final and sent my final thesis to committee for discussion and later defense.

The man who lived by the river

From "The West Wing", Season 1, Epsisode "Take this Sabbath Day":

There was once a man who lived by the river. He heard a radio report that that the river was gonna flood the town and that the residents should evacuate their homes.

But the man said, "I'm religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me."

The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came along and he shouted, "Hey, you! The town is flooding! Let me take you to safety!"

But the man shouted back, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me, he'll save me."

A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted, "Hey, you! You down there! The town is flooding! Let me drop this ladder and I'll take you to safety."

The man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed and that God would take him to safety.

The man drowned.

Standing at the gates of Saint Peter, he demanded an audience with God.

"Lord," he said. "I'm a religious man. I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?"

God said, "I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?"

Rescuing the parakeet

On Friday afternoon, after our stats lab, Matt and I were walking back to the parking lot and came upon a white & blue parakeet. Now parakeets aren't birds that you typically see just chilling in nature. At least not in the greater-Houston area. Our first inclination was to watch it sit there for a few minutes, try to feed it, talk to it in hopes that we were on candid camera, and eventually walk away... only to return to it to try to rescue it. Now before you think that we snatched this creature from nature - realize that it was perfectly okay with us being within inches of it and a guy on a bike almost ran over the poor feller and the bird didn't even budge. So with a cardboard box, we captured it and I took to out to my friends house.

Within an hour my friends had a bird cage, food, and a setup for the parakeet and it was eating and quite at home. I'm confident that even though they have 3 cats, that the parakeet will survive. That and they're already talking about buying another one to keep it company! That's the kind of happy ending that really wraps up a week!

Video iPods

If you're having a rough day at the office - I highly recommend loading "Office Space" onto a video iPod. Even if you can't actually watch the screen - often listening to the dialogue alone can keep you going throughout the day. Those lines like "PC-load letter, what the fuck does that mean?" can turn around an afternoon of finding out that your elegantly designed queue of processes was wiped out by someone else for no reason.

In any case, it's official -- Greece, England, Yale, Houston, and Louisville. It should be quite a ride, although I was recently thinking that it would have been fun to work on a cruise ship for one cycle. The advantage to doing what I'm going to be doing is that it actually pertains to my future job goals and dreams. It's of course my hope that the summer travels and new job environments will both restore my interest in certain aspects of psychology as well as some of the self-esteem that's been slowly sapped away in recent months.

The hardest part of traveling is probably going to be how to get my SCUBA gear to Greece. There's absolutely no way that I'm going over there without doing some shipwreck and ruins diving. Particularly since I'm only about 20 hours away from my necessary Dive Master prerequisites. I'm pretty sure that the rules of diving are listed in a much earlier post - so I'll just share the story of going diving at Stingray city with my brother. See, stingrays really like calamari, and who can blame them - I like it too. The goal at stingray city is to feed the sting rays the calamari without accidently rubbing it on yourself. If you're unfortunate (like my brother) to touch the food and then touch your arm, you will quickly find a stingray showing it's affection for your arm - the result will be a huge hickey!

It's crunch time with lots of projects wrapping up, the thesis now in draft number nine, and finals about to come due. I feel behind even though I know I'm right where I should be in all of it. I've been debating what classes to take in the fall. I'm settled on Structural Equation Modeling and some readings with my mentor. I'm torn between a social psychology class and an I/O psych class - alternatively I could take a Human Factors class at Rice. Maybe some yummy psycho-pharmacology in the schedule too. Still no word on how I'm getting funding next fall. Hopefully info on that at some point!

Why I know...

It’s in those times of absolute torment and pain when the moments of true understanding seem to strike...

To be Continued.

Go-go-gadget immune system

Last Monday morning I woke up with the familiar yearly allergy feeling. The tingle in the back of my throat, the watery eyes, and the definite sensation that I didn't want to get out of bed. I then realized that I was dehydrated, had just slammed by knee into my bed (hence the watery eyes), and at 6a.m., does anyone really want to get out of bed? Well, Tuesday it turned out the dry throat was allergies -- although I suspected a cold since many people in the program have claimed "allergies" and recently developed into a cold nearly on par with a plague. It's now Saturday, I'm fairly sure if it was "the cold" that everyone else has, that I would have progressed in terms of symptoms instead of just feeling like I was nearly better. The lost voice of course makes my one-mode of communication with anyone not in Houston more difficult. But it's been a quiet day in my head - brace yourselves, this could be quiet a ride of a post.

A lot has happened in just a week. I've had great joys and great disappointments. Both amplified by the feeling of getting sick, and both inspiring me to run away - something that has been difficult with my car in the shop. So in the interim, I of course did my taxes. Pathetically easy when you make as much (or little) as I do. But I took joy in the number of deductions I got to make thanks to my aging body and health care bills; not to mention the "work-related" expenses that add up over time. Oh how I miss having a real job with an income. I, of course, don't miss the 40-50 hour work weeks, but that's an entire post in and of itself.

It's suddenly become a scary thing to not know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I've learned a lot of tools over the years, but really don't have a good question of my own to be asking. In short, that makes me a methods person, constantly borrowing other people's dreams and improving upon them, progressing them to the next step. I would like to be a theory person, someone with a dream, or to use Nikki's really bad joke - to be the guy in the pitch-black room, searching for the black cat. While I'm sure this "issue" will be resolved on its own like so many others have been - I can't help the nagging feeling.

I'm becoming more and more a believer in Déjà vu. There have been numerous times in the past two weeks where things from my dreams happen or I'll be somewhere new with new things happening and know that I've been in that place before. The other explanation is sleep depravation -- which is infinitely more likely than being able to see into the future. Alright - crazy talk away -- back to reading about ANCOVA.

SPD

Today is St. Patrick's Day. If you're not wearing green, it's your responsibility to hit yourself in the head with a semi-hard object. Once you wake up from your concussion, put something green on. Make sure it's something everyone can see or that you're at least willing to show off; that means that green underwear is fine but you should be willing to show it off. If someone else isn't wearing green you have a number of options: you can pinch them as if you're in 2nd grade, you can hit on them if they're attractive, or you can introduce them to one of the local stalkers if they're not.

Spring break is winding down, I've spent several hours working on my take home final for neuroanatomy. It's one of those crazy some questions take hours and others take just a few minutes. I sort of would like a take home question every week instead of the running quizes that we have over any material covered thus far in the course. My workshop in Louisville went by quickly and it was great to see old friends. I'm hoping to see many of them again for Thunder over Louisville, and hopefully lots of other people this summer. I'm fairly sure I'll be in the greater D.C. area for some of the summer as well as some time in the boston area (look out Meggers and Missy -- it's scorpion bowl time!)

It's been one of those opportunity knocks weeks. Lots of potential internships, a couple of sad moments, and a lot of great times with friends. It's pretty much always true that every time I think I know how things are going to work out, something else completely off the wall happens. I've got a number of purchases I need to make in the next few months. I really need to get myself a PS2 and a Nintendo Revolution. If I'm going to be traveling all over the world, I might as well have video games to disrupt some of the lonely nights ahead. Hopefully I'll get to go to Greece for a couple weeks and maybe stop through Italy on the way back and see the family hill.

Afterthoughts...

What's this? A real update! It's officially spring break. It seems like classes just started, but I'm really not going to complain having a week long break. So what are my big plans for this illustrious break? Well, I am actually skipping out of town for a few days and blowing off work for the week. I'm going to teach at a neuroimaging workshop, catching up with old friends, hopefully going to watch kamikaze karaoke, and racking up some frequent flier miles. Oh and of course working on my midterm exams for a couple of classes!

Classes are going well. Some of them are a lot more work than anticipated, but I'm learning more than I expected as well. The rest of the stats semester is focused on a "find your own data, analyze it, and write it up" type project. Which I of course see as the perfect way to put off other assignments. I spent most of yesterday putting my data in SAS, renaming variables, adding labels, and digging into the data.

I've been going swing dancing a lot more recently. Houston has a lot of dance options going on. There's even a Lindyfest next week with 4 days of solid dancing. Not sure how much of that I'll be able to attend since I still have a lot of things to get done -- but hopefully I'll get to go to a dance or two. Also have been cutting down on the running quite a bit due to knee issues - nothing severe but I've been resorting to the old ice bags taped to my legs (I use "cling wrap") so I can ice my knees while being somewhat mobile around the apartment.

At the moment I'm procrastinating my neuroanatomy midterm by formulating some summer plans. It's tricky because I have many great friends in the Houston area that I must admit are quite addictive to be around. And yet, there are many things I would like to do this summer that aren't in Houston. Today I got an offer to go to London for a couple of weeks on a research project. I'm also looking at the possibility of going to Vancouver to work at some learning centers for a short interval. But don't worry, I'll be back for everyone's birthday...

wow cell phones

Looking at my bill, I feel very connected to the world...

February-March cell phone minutes:
Daytime minutes used: 475
Night/Weekend minutes used: 1176
Spring-to-Sprint minutes used: 706
Text Messages: 51

Actual posts to follow at some point...

Learn something new all the time...

Starbucks President a DPU graduate

ET phone home

It's reassuring that I can call my parents at 1a.m. (their time) and have them not only answer, but also have them call me back 45 minutes later to see if what they said helped.

Relaxing with some books...

Today I got quite a surprise at the office... it was a UT holiday. I actually got up, went into work, sat there for about five minutes before it hit me that I was the only person there. Heading back to my car, I missed the shuttle - so I walked the mile back to my car in really nice weather. I'm definitely not complaining, this holiday could not have come at a better time... Actually I'm sort of kicking myself for not having lined up subjects to run in the MEG while everyone else is out of the office! Modified Wisconsin Card Sorting Task (WCST) anyone?

Trying to maximize my day off - I attempted to go for a run around Rice around noon. I ran about a mile, had a little fall that made something pop, and hobbled back to my car the best I could (now a mile away). Spent the afternoon so far working on a presentation and studying for neuroanatomy, all the while keeping ice on my leg. The old rule of 20 minutes of ice on and 20 minutes off just wasn't cutting it since as soon as feeling came back, so did the pain. Might be a couple days before I really get back into running.

The Houston Aero's vs Chicago Wolves hockey game was really fun. Houston ended up winning by a decent margin and the entire game was really fast paced! It looked like there would be no fights, but with about a minute to spare in the third period, a fight finally busted out. Other highlights included: the little kids playing hockey during one of the intermissions; the cameras that caught people dancing and put them on the big screen; one very strange "dance off". It was all very good times with old and new friends.

To Oregon, and Beyond!

I just got back (well I guess it was last Saturday) from a week long vacation... err conference in Portland, Oregon. There were lots of fun people from several places I've worked in the past, including Louisville, Yale, and SIUC. Additionally, Portland is a really fun city, and the conference was pretty enlightening at times. This conference, INS, is going to be in Hawaii next year, so that means I'll have to hurry up and do some research to present for that. Scheduling SCUBA diving around poster sessions -- it could be kind of rough...

The only bad thing about taking a week off of school is the rush to make up the things that were missed. This week has been a lot of catch up! I think I'm averaging 5 hours of sleep, and about 200 pages of reading a day. I think I'm ready for another vacation already! March (Spring break) seems so far away at the moment, even though I'll blink and it will be here... Anyway, I'm exhausted and pondering a nap so I'm going to wrap up this sad excuse for a blog entry and promise something more substantial after this weekend. Maybe something about the second hockey game I've ever gone to (this saturday).

Post hoc ergo propter hoc

"After this, therefore because of this"

It's been raining for days. Pretty much since the semester started, it has rained the majority of days of each week. So since the semester started, it has rained - therefore the semester starting caused the rain. Sounds like a fairly logical argument, right? Maybe not.

Here's a picture from Darius and Acacia's wedding reception. This is right before Darius removed the garter and then had to throw it, not once, but twice (they don't go very far). The bouquet toss was between 4 women, and the garter toss was between roughly 12 men. Fortunately for all involved - there were relatively few injuries and the couple that ended up with the garter and bouquet were dating -- so I think we can expect them to get married before most of the rest of us. It was also at this wedding that Paul and I realized that out of our cohort of musketeers so to speak, that he and I are the last two who are not married. I sadly didn't get to stick around too long, since the reception was Saturday and I had to be back Sunday in order to get my thesis together, learn neuroanatomy for a quiz, and do all of the normal things graduate students do. For the most part, there is no way to read everything that is assigned in graduate school (says the guy who's typing this blog instead of reading statistics), so there's a lot of picking and choosing - trying to figure out what will really matter 20 years from now - or more likely what the professor will ask in class as he's looking directly at you. I have a number of fun books to read (at the top is "The Tipping Point" by the author of blink), but I'll hold off starting them until I get at least a little bit ahead in my classes.

Anyway, lots of adventures coming up - so hopefully more interesting blog posts soon.

Time changes

Today I had one of those moments where I thought I might be losing my mind. Why -- you should ask? I got to school with roughly 10 minutes to spare before class... and then realized my class doesn't start until 10. This realization of course coming after sitting around wondering where everyone is for about 5 minutes... So here I am at just after 9, in a computer lab, postponing the stats reading that I still haven't managed to finish and wondering if I go down to the cave that is my office to take a nap - if I'll actually manage to wake up for class in an hour.

Later today I have to go take a final exam for a history & systems of psychology class. I've already taken the class in a graduate program, I even got an A. But in order for the class to "count" here, I must prove my knowledge of random facts regarding Galileo, Wundt, and other classic thinkers. Wish me luck and all that!

[UPDATE] I took the final in the form of a one question verbal exam and passed. Woohoo.

Got teeth?

The tooth brush was actually invented in Kentucky. Apparently anywhere else and it would have been correctly named the "teeth brush". At this point, the national trends show that West Virginia is #1 in the nation for tooth loss/decay and Kentucky is #2. Sort of strange from the state that invented it.
I saw this sign while walking around one day. It's moments like this that I'm glad my cell phone has a camera on it. Most other days when I think about the phone/camera mix, I think it's one of the most over-hyped inventions. I would much rather have a phone that was also a laser pointer or something out of a James Bond movie. Nevertheless, thanks to the phone - I have this great photo from a random store in some mall that specializes in Gold Teeth. If memory serves me correctly, it was also a tattoo parlor.

The semester just started, so it's not that I'm behind on reading that's been assigned (although I have about 250 more pages of reading to do), it's that in order to understand a lot of the assigned reading - I end up reading 20-40 pages of extra material to really get the foundation which the new reading builds on. At the moment I'm studying for neuroanatomy - which shouldn't be that tough of a class. But I keep getting sucked into the function of different brain structures as I read about them. The class itself doesn't have a book - and lectures give us a 2 minute description of brain function in a particular area - but not much beyond that. So tonight I spent a good 40 minutes reading (and getting distracted) by the role of the Pulvinar in moderating circadian rhythms and such.

This coming weekend is Darius' wedding reception. Should be good times - I'll try to take lots of pictures. I fly in the day of and leave mid-day the day after. So it'll be a short trip! Darius, for those of you who don't know the story had a MacDonald's ball pit in his room in college. That's right, complete with nets, the big plastic balls, and cushioning. The one thing I always hoped he'd add was a slide. But no dice -- maybe when he buys a house (after the wedding) he'll install either a slide or a fireman's poll.

it don't mean a thing... if it ain't got that swing

It's been a long time since I've gone dancing (swing in particular). I'm pretty sure that the last time was in July! But tonight, with the encouragement of some other people in the program, I went dancing at a place that's literally just a couple blocks away. It took a while for some of the moves to come back. And then, of course, I realized that I don't actually use a lot of moves anymore so I had to remember how to improvise! The biggest thing that struck me was how much I missed dancing. A quick survey of how much I used to go dancing turned up a pair of pinstripe pants, suspenders, a really crazy big tie, and Bleyer Wingtips. My hat is still missing in the move -- so I might have to go buy another one of those. I also found a VHS copy of an old swing tape of dancing at DePauw. Fortunately I don't have a VCR, so I won't have to be too tempted to watch the likely painful memories of me dancing in spring 2000.

So far one of my New Years resolutions - cooking more - has been going quite well. On Friday I made pizza dough, tomato sauce, and made a pizza. It turned out surprisingly well! I might try to mix it up with the dough next time and I've honestly always wanted to try strawberries on a pizza. Plus what other excuse does one have to buy a pineapple? Swordfish on Saturday turned out very well. The Citrus pesto was a bit different - I think I like it without all of the basil. Which really means just a lemon and orange "zested" and squeezed into the mix with some olive oil. I'll have to peruse my new cookbook for other things I really want to try in the near future.

This semester will likely be crazy - but I think I'll survive. I've got a lot of goals for the semester, and a great group of people here in Houston who keep me sane in light of the fact that it's been raining for nearly a week now. It amazes me the things I've already learned in the classes here. And this semester the classes are even further beyond the scope of courses I've already taken - so I should learn even more! Hmm - I also realize that means the classes might be even more tricky... minor detail.

Quick movie reviews:
1. Children of Men - was a little bit strange. Interesting concept - well made. But a bit bloody - so if you're not into that kind of movie - you might avoid this one. There's lots of graphic violence, etc.
2. The Illusionist - very excellent. I love movies where I can't figure out the ending until they explain it. The Prestige was another one of those great mind twister movies. As a comparison - I thought the prestige was a better movie.
3. Superman Returns - excellent. But makes much more sense if you've seen the original series of movies!

Deeper Thoughts...

Does anyone else remember those deep thought calendars? The two that I always remember are:
1. If you're ever falling off the top of the Empire State Building, fall real limp. Someone might think you're a mannequin and try to catch you. I mean, hey, free dummy!
2. If you ever drop your keys into hot lava, let em go. Cause man, they're gone.

It finally feels like winter here in Houston. A couple days ago, it actually dropped below 32 outside. Houstonians aren't used to seeing ice at all, unless it's in the ice maker - which has lead to some interesting traffic accidents and school closures. Today has continued the trend of rain, cold rain, and wind. The cold weather has of course convinced me to stay inside more than I normally would and work on various papers, readings, projects, etc. My only refuge from those has been the urge to clean or more often "tidy" things.

I've now had all of my lecture courses for the semester. My neuroanatomy class shouldn't be too bad -- some memorization and clapping to the beat. Last night, I sat mesmerized in my Child Assessment class as the professor recited (from memory) a history of the field of learning disabilities. Occasionally I would realize that I had stopped taking notes and attempted to catch up using what's left of my short term memory. When the short-term memory failed me I'd glance over at the notes of someone next to me, which oddly made me feel like I was cheating! By the end of the semester I might need to have both a tape recorder and a computer to keep up with the pace that the class goes at. It's like having information inserted through an IV!

The rest of today is going to be writing the discussion section of my thesis. And trying to hammer it into a cleaner paper than it is currently. My results have changed drastically - I either found a new paradigm or more likely - I have a mixture of two other ones. Either way, it should make for a really great discussion section and will probably require me to rewrite a decent amount of my intro to include things like language processing in the cerebellum. It would be nice if the sun came out at some point. I'm starting to forget what color the sky is.

Books and other things

"This, this is ice. This is what happens to water when it gets too cold." - Val Kilmer in "Real Genius"

That quote basically sums up the weather in Texas at the moment. Which is fine by me, as I sit curled up in warm clothes with no (compelling) reason to leave my condo all day. I spent most of the weekend attempting to write the "last" bits of my thesis. I've written the majority of it, now I'm in the midst of writing up the analyses and what exactly it all means. Imagine my delight when last night I discovered that I made a couple mistakes in the analyses. In any case, 9 hours after discovering the issue, all is fixed, and I have results...

I'd like to say that after this I'll get to relax a bit, but I just committed to a joint-project with a professor at school and helping out on a book chapter due in April, plus classes start up tomorrow. That's right, starting off a new semester, where every student has several questions on their mind, but perhaps the one shared by all students is: Will the professor be super cool and hand out the syllabus and then let everyone go after questions? Or will they keep us for some time to begin educating us while simultaneously proving the point that they're in charge?

More on that later.

Dangerous Driving

This morning I witnessed an accident as one driver was trying to turn left and another driver was going straight. I'm not entirely sure why neither driver yielded to the other, but the end result were to really beaten up cars that both ended up fairly close to me and my car (stopped at the light perpendicular to the other cars origins). Needless to say, that got my blood pumping in the morning.

Randomly, on my iPod (in shuffle mode - hence the randomly), the song "Today's the day, I'm glad I'm not dead" by Indigo Swing came on. It fit the mood of the day perfectly! And now that I realize I'm home, my fridge is completely empty, and my wireless router just died. I think it's time to fix that... well it'll wait until tomorrow.

Finally upgraded...

So I upgraded my blog to the "new" blogger. So far I can tell that the editing pages looks different, and it's now linked to my gmail account - woohoo. Other than that, I'm not really feeling any life-changing results from the upgrade. The one major bummer is that many of my comments lost their authors names when I made the switch -- so my apologies for that. Now on to some actual updates.

I'm almost done reading Blink , which has been far too addictive. I highly recommend it, it's all about snap judgments that people make. I also downloaded pictures from New Years and Christmas from my cameras. I'll have to track down some other people from New Years to try to get pictures that I'm actually in, since I've not mastered that taking pictures of myself thing yet. In the mail on Friday I received my big Christmas presents -- things to hang on the wall of my condo. My parents took this picture on of their recent road trips to the West.



This week has been a lot of reading and writing. At some point in September I was invited (read: told) that I was contributing to a book chapter on familial risk of dyslexia. That's now out of the way, thanks to most of Friday and several cups of I don't quite remember what at Starbucks. Selling legally addictive substances wasn't enough to get me to stay in Starbucks, but as soon as they added free wifi access I was there! And most of Saturday and Sunday have been spent running analyses on my thesis data. In a lot of ways, doing data analysis is my favorite part of a study. It's like spending months wrapping boxes with secret presents in them for the day when you finally start up SPSS, JMP, Stata, or even SAS. Then it's a free-for-all as you try to find all of the things you said you were looking for, kick yourself for all of the things you find that are unexpected, and wish that it was more ethical to trudge through your data for other effects that will make your methods section a bit longer.

So what did I do? I basically show (as many other people have also shown) that the brain responds distinctly to various forms of reinforcement. To give reinforcement, I used pictures on a computer monitor, mostly because it's what I had, but I would be interested to see what areas of the brain light up when you give participants a puppy, or an ice cream. Maybe next time!



Continuing with the opening presents metaphor from before, there are definitely results that are way more fun than other results. For instance, my analyses are able to account for 93.170% of the variance. Other exciting results are finding major group effects or hemisphere differences in the brain. Slightly less fun are electrode differences, because it basically means that two spots on the head had different activity - and requires a bit more work to figure out just where those differences are.

Well that's about all I've got to report. For the rest of the day I'll keep working on writing up these analyses so I'll have something for my advisor next week. What's everyone else up to?

So much to read - so little time!

For the past few days (and all of break really) I've been trying to read more - absorbing all of the "non-assigned" reading I can do before classes start back up on the 16th. Over break I read "Out of Their Minds," a book about several computer scientists and their discoveries. On Monday morning, I read the first 3 people of "the five people you meet in heaven". Monday evening I read the remainder of "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" by Feynman. And today, Tuesday, I read (more of) the beginning of "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. And I'm completely hooked - it's been giving me some serious ideas for my dissertation.

I've been working on finishing up a number of papers and chapters recently. A couple with people in Louisville, a couple with people at Yale, and then two here in Houston. Fortunately I didn't have much else to do over break besides work on those! First thing on the agenda for this week is switching my parking... Sure, I'll be parking further out because I have to accept that $175 a month is a bit too much for me. Which would have been a big deal last semester when I had classes that met in the middle of the day. But this coming semester my course schedule is much more friendly. Fortunately the kind people in parking seem to understand this and will let me park in the close garage in the evenings (past 6) and on weekends. The rest of the time I'll take the shuttle.

It's good to be back in Houston. Don't get me wrong, I missed people in Louisville and really liked being home. But it's nice to see my friends here again, go eat at those eclectic restaurants and be in weather that's a bit warmer! New Years was really good times, the celebration pics will show up at some point. And wow do I have a lot of Christmas cookies to eat! I'll have to enlist help.