Dumber for it...

I've decided that the absolute worst way to show off years of veritable knowledge and experience in grad school is requiring the writing of a dissertation. I stare day after day at my computer knowing I need to write more of my thesis stuff but have no motivation to do so. So what do I do instead? ANYTHING. Facebook? Sure, why not. Kotaku? Sure, why not. IGN? Sure, why not. HULU? Actually, I've been good about avoiding TV watching (as of yet)- which is super good as I would be in a world of hurt thanks to Netflix on demand. Blog? Sure, why not. I just feel dumber every time I sit down to try and explain in coherent sentences years of work. Yes, I do have journal papers to write and I am trying to finish those as they are the basis for my work, but still... It hurts my brain and my butt to try and sit at my desk and write non-stop. You would think that my being able to speak for hours on end and answer with ease any scientific questions that are fielded at me would be sufficient for granting a PhD, but NO. I've decided that the final months are the hardest, not because of the work, only because of the hoops. Oh well, back to the grind.

~Chris

Enough with the idiocy of Facebook

People are idiots!

The following is a response to a Facebook post of a friend of mine who claims that she got the H1N1 flu after getting the shot 2 days before:

I would be highly amazed that you could justify your sickness to the shot seeing as how nearly all current vaccines use recombinant partial-attenuated virus (AKA never had the full virus in it) due to costs and FDA requirements (Live and heat-inactivated are only used in the run-up period). Also keep in mind that you may not have the H1N1 and your local MD isn't equipped with the RT-PCR diagnostics required to validate H1N1 away from all the other virii out there.

So I know I may have just offended a bunch of people, but hey it goes on-

With regard to some friend of mine from high school (again on FB) talking about taking all these tests to determine the sex of the child

(Her Status update) : my voodoo pee test said girl. It was the weirdest test and I wouldn't do it over again. We will see if it is right though. Crossing fingers.

Yesterday at 11:36am · Comment · Like

Person 1- I have a funny test for you, ask me about it when you see me in person

Yesterday at 11:56am

Original Poster- You have peaked my curiosity...

Yesterday at 12:01pm

Random Girl- did you check the chinese birth calendar? it was right about caleb, and wrong about leah. so 50/50...but it's been accurate with a lot of my friends!

Yesterday at 12:06pm

Original Poster- I

did the chinese birth charts. It was correct with my first two, but wrong on the third. This time is says girl, but who knows :)

Yesterday at 12:20pm

Person 1- The Argentine's believed that your baby starts to manifest it self through you. And there are certain things girls and boys do different.

Yesterday at 12:26pm

Other Random girl- I can't wait to find out if the voodoo test is accurate. How come it was weird? Or is it too graphic to write about? :-)

Yesterday at 12:27pm

Original Poster- Interesting Darwin, I am curious.

Jamie, not too graphic so I will try to explain. First there are several things you can't have. You can't have polycystic ovarian disease, no progestrone therapy for ten days, or intercourse within two days. You wait until morning for your sample. You pee in a cup and draw up 20 cc's to put into the test cup. It looks like there was glitter in it as well as other chemicals. You swish the cup for ten seconds. It has to be on a flat surface after swishing and it has to have white under it. You then have to read the test at eye level after ten minutes. If it is green, it is boy. If it is yellow/orange, it is girl. So, if I looked at any angle other than eye level it was green, but eye level it was orange. So I called their help desk and they said it was definitely a girl. Their website also said, if you don't look at eye level it will always be green because that is what the chemicals do to your urine. Freakin weird if you ask me, but we will see. They said it is 90% accurate! Hope they are right, I would LOVE a girl!!

Yesterday at 12:38pm

Well Wisher 1-

GOOD LUCK!

Yesterday at 1:11pm

Well Wisher 2- That would be so fun for you guys!

Yesterday at 2:27pm

Random Girl 3- Wowza! I've never known anyone that has taken that test...til now! That's fun stuff! I'm still sending pink babydust your way!

Yesterday at 3:03pm

Well Wisher 3-

congrats

Yesterday at 3:24pm

Well Wisher 4- I bet it will be a girl! Are you going to find out? Or just be surprised when it's born!

Yesterday at 4:05pm

Longing Girl 1-

I have 3 boys too, I hope my next one, when that happens, will be a girl too.

Yesterday at 4:25pm

Expert Girl 1- Congratulations... The sex depends on when you ovulated. i'll email you about it..... Cindy

Yesterday at 4:29pm

Original Poster- According to ovulation Cindy, we are set for a girl as well. For the risk of TMI, I will email you about it and you can see what you think :

My response follows:

I'm sorry as a trained biomedical researcher I just have to point out the obvious fact from 10th grade health class - it's not yours to decide (your husband carries X and Y, not you), as for the others...ummm of course it's a 50/50 chance of being right - there are only 2 choices (for most of us)

Seriously!?!

I wish I could explain how infuriating the idiocy of the collective is. People are dumb sheep who believe anything that someone else "heard" somewhere!!! Think people, just stop believing blindly and THINK!!!

~Chris

Hate "Photos" and "Photogs"!?!

So before I delve in to the finer points of this I was just thinking again of how much I hate the proliferation of the sub-$1000 dSLR camera- that and how ridiculous everybody who owns a Canon Rebel neckstrap is. BTW- don't flaunt it it's not a freaking d series and even then I don't know that I would tout it as all that unless it at least holds a mark moniker (mk II or MkIII). Now before everybody gets in a fit and lynches me you should know where I'm coming from.

dSLR does not equal professional photographer.

B&W is a type of picture that you specifically compose to- NOT a FILTER on photoshop.

Holga is a type of camera with a very artistic value to it- NOT a BOX you click on photoshop.

Oh yeah, and photoshop is to help fix small imperfections and minor adjustments NOT a compensation because you suck at photos.

So why the ridiculous hate? Well see I've had a lot of people that I am connected to get married in the last year or two, as such everybody posts all these photos online - via FB or blog or flckr or you-name-it. Then I see other people gushing about how awesome they are and how they're the best wedding photographer in the world, etc. ad infinitum. This is fine and all, until I start seeing how crappy this stuff is and how much of it is 20 something girls that daddy bought them a camera and they have a macbook Pro so they can charge an arm and a leg and then take these senseless photos, add B&W effects or add a Holga Vignetting and say it's art. It's NOT!!!

I'm not a great photographer, and I don't really like/do well with wedding pictures, but that being said I'm not charging thousands of dollars either. I have shot a total of 3 (?) weddings and I have never done any of it as a pro. It was always as a favor or as an honor to be able to take some pictures for a friends wedding. That being said I am insulted as an enthusiast and friend of multiple professional photographers when I see the crap that is put on FB and flckr. Really you took the dumbest photo and then not only did you make it black and white but then you included the color one so that everyone knows that it's not really a B&W, or maybe you included both the B&W and the sepia tone wash - dear stupid do you even know what a sepia wash is? or how it's done??? (besides the obvious, "Well I click here and it does it- ta da!!")

To me black and white is the best looking form of art there is (now I know I am wrong, but this is my opinion). And to see it corrupted by idiots makes me sick. Think of it this way - most professionals spend years shooting Black and White heck some of them never leave it, but I guarantee you that all of them know how to shoot it. Furthermore, every person who takes a real photo class starts in B&W. This is where you learn the fundamentals, this is where you learn how a darkroom works, keys, tones, pushing, pulling, etc. you learn how to really take a good picture and yet somehow the lack of people knowing the basics seems to make them pros and leads to crap for photos.

If I offended you well I hope you can look past it, if you're really offended lemme know (not that I will do much about it, but maybe we can talk and I can show you what I mean). Otherwise always ask to see a professional's film cameras to know how they're digital stuff is.

Trust me a $500 dSLR is not a camera that you want as the main camera for your wedding- the sensor is too small and it may be 60 megapixels but that number means next to nothing- I know 6MP cameras that outshoot nearly everything else there is.

Chris

Back in the Saddle Again

Yup, finally found a few spare minutes in which I didn't want to just lie in front of the TV or on the bed. So a quick catch up on all that's been going on. Well, Lish is in full swing with her "new" work- for those who haven't talked physically with us you may not know that for the time being Alicia is serving as the interim Lead teach at work. That's the "good" part. The bad part is that they got to this point b/c things were so far down the tubes that the other lead lead them to fail their recent evaluation from some state honcho. So they have asked Alicia to please serve as a temporary lead in an effort to steer the ship that is their class from the rocks of absolute failure. So for the last few weeks Alicia has been serving as the lead for her class, far more stress than she had hoped, but that being said everyone who comes in says how much better the class is since she took over. So... in true Alicia fashion she is doing awesome and will lead the class forward towards a passing score.
Now for me, hmmm what to say? I've been working like a dog in an effort to get some serious data so that I can get another paper out. I'm getting mixed results some good, some bad, and quite a few - huh? Yup I don't even pretend to know the answers to some of what I'm seeing. I am however getting sick of all my radioactivity work. If it's not [Cu64] it's [C14]. Which by consolation will allow me to really screw with any isoradioanthropochronologist b/c he'll never be able to carbon date me. So anywho, yeah lots and lots of work. Which leads me to my rant (didn't think I'd post without one did you?). I'm really frustrated with the narrow-mindedness of people. I wish that people, random ones from Church and family members alike, would learn how real PhD programs work (real vs PhD lite (Lite= something like a PhD in PoliSci or English)). Why do I wish they'd learn? Cause I'm sick of having to explain the non-answer to the question: So, how much longer? I don't know. How much longer you gonna live? Don't know? Why not? Same reason for why I don't know how much longer I'm gonna be. Now that isn't saying I'm not gonna get it till I die. It's just that there are a LOT of factors. It's not like I just have to take some classes and write a paper or two (that would be a PhD lite) I have to do ground breaking research and LOTS of it. And in case you failed your science classes, research doesn't always work. So how than in the cosmos am I supposed to know what will and won't work? If I knew I wouldn't be doing research would I? So then the question is how much more research? Well exactly twice as much as it is half. I don't know- I'm hoping year or so more. Reality says whenever I have made my contribution to science.
Well I'm done.
Good to be posting again. Maybe, I'll try again tomorrow.

Win the War on Terrible

Terrible video games that is. Yup this is gonna be a postmortem thought on suckiness in video games, pop culture, and oh yeah how much I love Call of Duty 4. Why postmortem- well see besides being dead to the "hip" world, I am also finally done with my first play through of CoD4. So in the idea of after-the-fact reviews and thoughts I figured I'd offer advice to anyone with a gamer in their life (be it them or anyone they know, family or friend)- if they like any kind of action game that provides some brief moments of intensity, and has you actually feeling bad for the loss of life, lets you enjoy a diversity of types of game play (yeah I know it's FPS, but trust me there's more to it - AC-130's rock), and maybe wants to dip their toes in the ocean that is multiplayer gaming this is THE GAME to BUY! I loved it, yeah the single player campaign is ONLY 15 hours or so (if you like to play on the harder difficulties), and it is some of the best enjoyment I've had in a long time. Then there's the MP aspect, something I really like. Yeah I know it's not for everyone, but I like being able to get a friend or two together and go crash some other party, win or lose you'll still progress in the rankings. Then when you've played enough (about 4-5 hours or so total online) you'll have all sorts of crazy options opened up to you. You like customizing your guy? Yeah perks is where it's at: I love to run around with the bomb squad option, bullets that penetrate walls (yeah you can finally shoot through crates and sheetrock), and usually a nice steady aim. Others I know - ahem, Dave- like to do the whole "Last Stand;" you get shot, you're down, no big deal, you get one last clip with a pistol to make that dirtball pay for sneaking up on you. It's always funny to watch. What more can I say than I love the game- on a 1-10 scale we'll go 9.4- there's always room to improve- namely Co-op.
So now how bout that whole dead to pop culture: enough with celebrities AND enough with American Warble, I know you can't sing, I get it, you have no class, and no shame, yes I can see, great. Or maybe you're a washed up TV actor, yes you can't dance, I know, so please, please don't make me keep watching you struggle. I think I must be dead to the "hip" world. I hate hearing about stupid celebrities and their lives, they got lucky and can act for millions of dollars, so what why should I care? They lead awful lives, are bad influences to younger people, and have had more spouses and ill-gotten children than Sodom AND Gomorrah combined. So WHY, WHY, WHY should I spend time and money following the lives of these people? I just don't get it.
Last on the rant sheet: Suckiness in video games. Yup it exists big time- best example: CoD4- wait, what? you said you loved it?- yeah but they yanked the Co-op at the last minute, why? Another classic example the whole Rock Band-GH3 fiasco with PS systems- what? you want us to pay you to let the consumer use your controller? are you MAD? last but not least- bad games in general that cost a lot of money. Why isn't there a bottom standard to which all games have to meet- I'm not talking about liking a game or not I'm talking about playability- meaning is this glitch-free enough to finish? Ironically this ties in to a game I just finished playing- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. Loved the idea of Sands of Time (Read more here) played through it in a week. Then the inevitable TRILOGY effect set in (see previous rants for more on how I feel about this). The second game sucked. It even had glitches where you had to start the whole game over (we're talking 15-20 hours into it). C'mon! Really? Oh yeah and the whole of the game was just bad- they decided to take the fun out of the original and inject combat and brutal challenge instead, oh yeah and a whole lot of skin- just what I didn't want. I would have been ok with the changes except they're broken- there are parts that literally don't' work and crash the system, or you run into imaginary walls that don't exist? What? Yeah suckiness in video games hurts us all. Fortunately, I didn't have to waste money to find these flaws a good friend of mine was nice enough to let me suffer through his copy. But it's crap like this that hold games down to the main crowds. Alicia would NEVER, EVER have kept going with the game like I did, and millions of others would/did quit, leaving mad parents and angry consumers. So am I special, well yeah, I kept going, but does that make me special? No. It just means I remember how brutal NES games were- saves? yeah right! Continues? no way! redo the whole thing again? Yup!
So yeah- so say no to celebs, trash in pop culture, and of course sucky video games.

Chris