lizard!

So there's all sorts of critters that roam around the inside of my house.

Flies, yeah, they suck, doggy kills them though; it's entertaining to watch too.

We almost always have crickets inside the house. We see them so often that we just kick them out of the way to avoid stepping on them. It takes too much effort to move each one outside. My dog completely ignores them.

Then we have the rare case of the snake. One night I saw this thing slivering in my hallway. So we caught it, and put it across the street. Never saw it again. Mom freaked out for a month though.

Mom caught a flying beetle not too long ago. She trapped it under a styrofoam bowl, then taped the bowl down to an Entertainment magazine. When I came home a week later, that thing was still alive and kicking. Apparently the beetle was strong enough to fly around with the bowl on it, which is why it got taped down.

This time, we have the lizard. It's cute. I saw it running around doggy in the morning. When I came back it disappeared somewhere, and doggy found a new place to sleep. Then in the afternoon I saw it again and caught it. Apparently my sister caught a lizard a few days ago and threw it outside, guess it came back. I threw it back outside. Oh, and it's tiny... like the crickets we find in the house are bigger than it.

---

Now an update on my life. Summer school still sucks.

I don't do research work anymore, but I'm still asked to attend progress meetings and seminars.

The rest of my free time is spent watching Scrubs. Great show, lots of episodes to go through slowly. I watch one or two every day inbetween homework.

I think my homework load is getting smaller since summer session is coming to an end. Which makes me feel incredibly unproductive.

SB is pretty boring during the summer, so I head home pretty often. At home I just sleep, eat, and play Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. I like Fire Emblem games, they're challenging and frustrating. Finished the game yesterday. Now I need to find something to do at home.

I think I should exercise more. I hate being skinny and feeling fat, bad combination. I still need to go to the gym more... more night time running I guess.

Walnut is hot. Transitioning from nice 70 degrees SB to 95 degree Walnut sucks. So I spend it washing my car. Car gets clean, I get tanned, outside isn't as hot when there's water around.

I seriously need something better to do.

time.

It feels like it's been a long time since I last updated.
Then I looked at my last post, and it hasn't been that long.

My summer has been busy. Remember that research job I had? Yeah, I got more or less fired today.

What happened was I took a day off on Wednesday cause I had a paper due the next day. Wednesday happens to be when we have our staff meetings and progress meetings. Staff meeting with the department o get a wide view of the project direction (or something like that, I actually never attended one), and progress meetings with the professor so he knows what we're doing. Needless to say, he was pretty unhappy. Wednesday also happens to be the day 1/3 of my weekly hours lands on, cause I don't have any class during business hours on Wednesdays.

Half of my hours falls on Friday. Last Friday was 4th of July, so we had a holiday. The remainder of my hours is split between Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

Oh, it's probably important that I mention I'm taking 4 summer classes.

Well, since I missed Wednesday this week, and Friday last week, I had pretty nonexistent hours for the past two weeks. I had too little hours compared to the others I was working with--my average weekly hours came out to be around 11 hours a week, 17 absolute maximum; they easily had 25 hours a week. Another problem was that most of my hours landed on two days, instead of having a even distribution. So, he told me that he thinks I should take a break and focus on my studies, and when I have time for an evenly spread out 20+ hours, I should come back. That would be summer session B, ideally anyways.

So I'm guessing what happened after I got fired was that he had a meeting with the grad student in charge of our day to day activities to give him a evaluation of me. He reported that I was hard working and always managed to complete tasks on time well regardless of my light hours. Then I'm guessing my professor sent out emails, one to me saying he's pleased with the good performance report, and probably one to the grad student instructing him to not assign me anything that couldn't be completed by the end of the day cause I wouldn't be coming back anytime soon.

I'm guessing the grad student didn't like that email very much and responded with objections, in which our professor called the lab and asked to talk with him in person in his office. When he came back, we talked. He told me he reported good things to the professor about me, and despite light hours, I did get the task at hand done on time well. Professor would not like me to stick around if I had other far more important commitments and for lights hours, because I wouldn't have time to understand the entire project. Then there was nothing he could do cause it was an issue between me and the professor. But since the professor received good remarks about me, my last job was to train the person that would be taking over my job.

Course, I'm unhappy with how this all turned out. But, it could have turned out worse, like a bad report, no pay, and permanent leave.

I guess here's another thing I can add to my list of things that could have worked out, but didn't cause I didn't have the time. It seems like all my problems involve not enough time. I guess I'm just trying to fit too much into too little time.

All in all, I'm on unpaid vacation for at least 3 weeks. I'm not sure what to do with all this free time now. Ironically, now I actually have time...

I think I'll spend it in the gym.

short hair for the summer!

So I hacked off my hair. It's been a while since I had my hair this short.

Since I've had my hair long for such a long time, and lack of sleep from college, short hair revealed all the acne normally hidden under my hair.

My sister gave me "Maximum Strength Acne Control" medicine afterward. Seriously though, its not that bad, and it goes away by itself after a week or so. Shes using me as a test subject to see if this stuff works.

I guess I'll wait till around wintertime before I grow out my hair again.

(Updating through email cause I'm bored in writing class)

Ken

summer research

My research is in the area of brain cancer. My job is to…

i. Fully understand all the data presented in my specific research article
ii. Download and sort all the data
iii. Check the data for consistency and accuracy
iv. Determine if there are better ways to get more data/organize current data

Or, that’s what I understood during the meeting with my professor. Current task at hand is to understand the material.

Data is about the specific cell DNA structure extracted from a specific kind of brain tumor. There is a certain pattern of mutation that has been discovered in the tumor DNA. There are similarities in mutation patterns between this cancer and other common cancers (breast, colon, liver). By further understanding how the DNA is mutated, earlier detection of the cancer can be possible and cures may be discovered…

And that’s what I got from reading over the first 2 pages, of 8.

I’ll be working with a grad student that has been working in this area for a while, and under the assistance of my professor. I got my own desk in the lab (:D), and I guess most of my free daytime during the summer will be spent there.

I’ll update when this gets a bit more involved.

no internet summer

I think I’ll write a long entry on what I’ve been doing without the world of internet. Yeah, my house doesn’t have internet, so if you’re wondering if I fell off the side of the world, I didn’t, not yet anyways.

I suffer from extreme internet withdrawal. I need to be able to know when I do have email, and when I don’t. I actually get important email frequently. Constantly being in a IM conversation with someone is nice too. Oh, and facebook.

Move in. I swear I didn’t think I had that much stuff. Two full cars worth of stuff going up with me to SB, and all I really brought was just my clothes, an unassembled table and bed frame, a desk chair, mattress, and a box of random daily necessities. Turns out I have the most stuff. My half of my room is probably the only room in the house that looks like it hosts a permanent resident. I’m moving in to stay, everyone else, not so much. So they look like they’re on a camping trip.

Then I started unpacking and realized I forgot all sorts of stuff at home. My pillows, toothpaste, a trashcan, my large bamboo plant, chopsticks, etc. I have a list on my desk that just seems to get longer and longer.

I’ve become quite good at putting together IKEA furniture. Yeah, I’m a guy, and I believe all guys should be able to do handy work. I also think that guys should be able to take care of themselves, which brings me to the next point…

I think it’s ridiculous when someone moves in, more so guys than girls, and their parents do everything, from packing to unpacking to assembling and moving furniture. It’s sad. Everyone should be able to at least be able to decide what to bring with them when they move and be able to move it themselves, maybe with some help from other friends, but not from parents, they’re old fragile people that should just sit around and retire. Girls on the other hand, I think should be able to be able to feed themselves. They shouldn’t need to move in with a week’s worth of home-cooked food supply.

People are college students. Geez. They’re supposed to be adults. Just throw them there and they should be able to be just fine. I do get annoyed when my parents help out on tasks that I should be able to do myself. My mom believes that too. So she just sat in the car when I moved out of the dorms, sat in my room when I moved in, started lecturing other parents for being too productive, then ate dinner with me and went home. Dad kinda gets the idea, but he likes to help me assemble furniture, father-son bonding I guess, or just an architect at heart.

Even though we’re all moved in already, the house feels empty. Maybe cause the living room that takes up half the house is for the most part, empty. Or maybe it’s because no one else really has permanent furniture so there’s actually a lot of space in the rooms. There are so many small things that just need to get done here and there.

Cooking is annoying. I can cook, somewhat. I can grill, stir-fry (tossing things up with a wok is fun!), boil, bake, and cut with a knife (uneven slices though). So any dish that requires only those skills I can do pretty well just by looking at how it’s supposed to look like, or remembering how my mom/uncle/aunt/girls that cook for me would make it. Annoying part is I don’t have the fridge to myself, so I can’t really fill it up with ingredients. Then when I feel like cooking something, I would realize I would be missing a spice or sauce, or another skillet or pan, or just time. Too lazy to cook at home, not enough tools to cook well here. Oh well, at least it’s edible.

My summer schedule is a killer. Everyone says I should drop this class, or I should take fewer classes, or I shouldn’t take this and do that together. I never really listened to them; maybe that’s why my GPA sucks. But I’ve always been able to live through it, hopefully this time too!

Oh, and I’m doing research… new post! (this one’s probably long enough)

UCSB Parking ticket appeal

Yesterday I got woken up by a phone call asking about my mailing address. They wanted to know where they should send the refund money for my parking ticket.

:D

$45 more to throw onto stocks.

pre-finals post

When I post up a blog entry day before my first final, odds are, I'm probably not studying. It's true, I'm not.

Might as well post something helpful* if I'm not studying, right?

*maybe

Sleep. Something that most of us (or maybe just me) got very little of during dead week. Stumbled across some interesting sleep facts during my breaks from working during dead week.

-Sleeping more than necessary causes depression. Depression leads to more sleeping.
-Sleeping less than 6 hours leads to mental inefficiency, not exactly someone desired during finals.
-Alcohol has a rebound effect on sleep. Sure it helps you fall asleep faster, but your sleep will be disturbed later on in the night.
-Take naps if you don't get enough sleep at night, it helps.
-Lack of sleep weakens the immune system.
-Stress also weakens the immune system. Getting sick during finals bad bad.

So people, get lots of sleep during finals week.

Now on a happier note. I read a Time article on happiness. =) A few point kinda jumped out. So, since it is heavy stress week, and being happy lowers stress, why not?

Sex. Go figure.

Music makes the brain happy. Supposedly, listening to music you enjoy is the same as sex or food. I seem to be a in a better mood when I listen to music, so yeah, I guess it works.

Exercise. I love exercise cause I usually feel great afterward, sometimes tired, but usually pretty good. Metaphorically speaking, if your mind was the sky, exercise pushes everything out of sight making clear skies; similarly, alcohol is like a heavy fog that hides all your troubles.

Laughing lowers stress levels. Laughing is contagious, people are far more likely to laugh in groups. If you can't even do that, at least smile. A person feels the emotion that they're expressing. So if you try to simile, it'll make you happier, even if it's just a little bit.

Talk to people. Seriously. If you have a happy thought, tell others about it, it'll make you happier. If you have a unhappy thought, venting it out makes you feel better too.

Being kind supposedly makes you feel better, and at the same time, you're helping someone else feel better too. Article cites holding a door open for someone as an act of kindness. I usually hold doors open for people, they smile, which makes you smile back. :D

The glass is half full. Optimistic people are happier than pessimistic people. This one almost always comes up on happiness research, but it couldn't hurt to remind everyone.

and finally, just do it. If it needs to get done, get it done. Complaining is just a waste of time and energy. Pushing something farther and farther back isn't going to fix the problem.

If worse comes to worst, just get away form it, even if it's just for little bit, cause...


ignorance is bliss. =)

Good luck on finals everyone!