Not sure how to take this

Email to my boss:

I don’t know what state of mind I was in when I did my “screen edit” of the solid-phase chapter yesterday morning. What I gave you was crap. Clearly a part of my brain is turning to pate.

I’m doing third edit right now and hope to have a PDF to you in a few hours. I’m adding some numbering of reaction steps and editing some mistakes I’ve found in a few of the figures. What you will be getting will not be perfect, but will be much more intelligible.

Tyler

Reply:

I love pate/

Yes, my advisor does have a very good sense of humor

AGHGGAAAH!

I think that part of my brain that handles writing is dysfunctional. Yesterday I had my advisor a chapter, all proud of myself, 45 pages of neatly formatted text and figures. I’d given it a screen edit that morning just to be sure.

During choir practice I get a phone call on my cell. It’s my boss telling me that he could help me more if I would write in “English.” “Fix it up and THEN I’ll take a look at it.” I has upset, left practice early, and rushed home to edit a printout. There are so many stupid mistakes that I trashed the printout and started a screen edit. Did that until I collapsed last night and still have editing to do this morning.

My friend Mario directed me to a website of a guy who finished his PhD recently. I’m stealing his graphic because it’s close to how I feel right now:

I’m taking a break tonight to go to a wine tasting dinner with a friend. I just hope that I am reasonable company for her. She’s thinking about doing a PhD herself, I’ll try and avoid giving her any “advise” because it will give both of us indigestion.

The garlic press that kicks ass

Why get excited about a garlic press? Well for one I love garlic. I refuse to use the pre-ground stuff, maybe I would use the shelled cloves packed in olive oil. There’s just something about the aroma of fresh crushed garlic. I’ve gone through my share of presses, most of them just cheapo ones that you get at the super market. The ones in the bins at Williams and Sonoma or Crate and Barrel just didn’t seem any better or really worth the price. They all work fine, but are a pain to clean and you always have some left over garlic in the press.

No more. I was at TAGS hardware a few weeks ago to get can opener for my Mom (that’s another story) and made the mistake of looking around some more. If you haven’t been to TAGS you might put yourself in danger if you, like myself, have a weak spot for kitchen wear(especially gadgets). They have a very good hardware department in the basement (found a great hard drill there a few years ago, everybody else had the crappy ones). Looking around I say IT. The garlic press from Roesle, a thing of beauty. $35! Then I looked closer. It is extremely well constructed and machined all of stainless steel. But what sold me was that the grate part of the press was hinged and swung out for easy clean (no build in “punch” like the Oxo version). It’s heavy, enough that you could inflict damage.

When I first tried it out the garlic pieces just burst out of the press. Inside? Just husk, nothing you would want to use. I didn’t even bother to peal the clove. If you use garlic find see out this press, it is the best I have seen on the market. From the looks of it, it will last years.

The man of power

Just read that Disney is going to buy Pixar. This will make Steve Jobs (also the CEO of Apple Computer) the single largest share holder in Disney. Interesting. Apple has iTunes, the most successful legal clearing house for downloadable music (and video is gaining) on the Internet and not its CEO is diving head first into Disney, one of the largest entertainment companies in the world. I don’t know where it is, just it has to be 4th or 5th behind the big boys like Sony-Universal, Viacom, Cleanchannel, Time-Warner, and that large German conglomerate that I always forget the name of.

Interesting, very interesting. I wonder how much say Jobs will get in the running of the company.

Now is Disney is smart they not disneyize Pixar. They have a wonderful opportunity to resurrect themselves from the dank and din that they became under Eisner. If they just being Pixar into the fold and milk it (like they probably will) we the consumers are losing a true jewel. Pixar has the creative culture and spark that Disney had in the early years when Walt was still drawing Micky by himself. Disney in the 30s and 40s was one of the chief innovators in animation. The Disney productions that people still cherish the most were done before the 60s. Jobs is the manager at Pixar. He runs the ship, but with a very light hand (guess what Disney should do). Disney has a unique oppertunity here and I do hope that they see it as more than just a short-term boost for their bottom line. I also don’t want to see the wonderful staff at Pixar pack up and leave because they are under a giant thumb.

Impeachment of “W”

I’ve been reading more rumblings about the movement to impeach W. Parallels are being made to Nixon, as cited by a recent article in The Nation by former Congresswoman and member o the judiciary committee during the impeachment proceedings, Elizabeth Holtzman.

The strongest argument for impeachment is the recent alleged abuse of domestic wiretapping. The key here is the violation of the oreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) act, which as was passed after the whole debacle with Nixon. Congress realized that wiretaps were necessary and that in some cases secrecy needed to be maintained so the FISA had a provision were the taps were approved by secret court, further in the case of the emergency they could be approved 72 hours AFTER the tap had been started. Cringely had a nice write up about these and other types of wiretaps. It ends up that the vast majority of requests put to the FISA court are approved, mainly because the Department of Justice’s standard for submission was might than the court’s. Bush is claiming the ability to override the the law under his powers as the Commander In Chief (my reading of the Constitution is that that only applies to the military, but I’m just a lowly citizen of this country, what do I know). With the the kind of accept rate that has been seen from the court why do you not ask?

Holtzman beings up the issues of the Iraq war and torture as well. True that these have illegal leanings, but I don’t think they will hold up. This administration had ridden in the gray zone of the rule of law more than any I can remember. The NSDAP might have one-uped them though. You remember those guys. Germany, 1933 ring any bells?

The two questions though that nobody seems to be asking about the removal of the President from office are: “Do you really want Dick Cheney in the Oval Office?” and “Does it really matter?”

Sure you have to hang somebody an the guy up front is the easiest target. Really though if we want to get rid of the people causing all the real problems focusing on Bush is a waste of time. Yes, he’s the President and is responsible for all of this miss. But, look at the real state of the Presidency it’s way too complicated a job for one person to handle. You need to look at who has the power in the Republican party, why people are supporting them. Impeachment is a short-term fix, a bloody nose. Clinton’s impeachment was more of a waste of time and a dirty trick on the part of the conservatives. The progressives in Congress shouldn’t fall for the same ploy. Go to the grass roots, get the support that you need. Actually enact some change rather than just blowing hot air.

Cool Widget

If you are interested in structural biology and have a need to check 3D structures of biomacromolecules from the PDB then you should check out ProteinGlimpse. It’s a Dashboard Widget (Sorry MacOS X 10.4 and above only and maybe soon on Linux running KDE) using JMol as a rendering engine that lets you visualize an X-Ray or NMR structure of a molecule just by typing in it’s PDB code. The view options are preset and a bit limited, but it is great for a quick interrogation. The window is expandable and collapses down nicely when not in use. If you need anything more powerful you can just download the file and use one of many viewing programs: Garlic, VMD, iMol, PyMol, RasMol, MolMol, to name a few. See Macs get all the cool, useful apps. Isn’t it about time you switched?