On the road again

I'm travelling again. Sitting in an airport right now... an airport that could stand to use a few more electrical outlets. Or more accurately, there are plenty of floor outlets, but most of them ahve been covered and screwed down. Not exactly conductive to travelling warriors.

I am thankful, however, that the initial leg of my flight was peaceful and quiet. It's always a relief when the people on the same flight are considerate and well-behaved. What a pleasure. I was able to get some sleep on my flight, but I could admittedly use a bit more shuteye.

I'm still struggling with the remains of my cold, though. Ugh. Still feeling slightly congested. I've stopped coughing up bodily organs, but my throat still isn't completely clear.

Been feeling down.

I've been feeling so very down lately. Maybe it's due to overwork and a lack of sleep. Overtraining might have something to do with it as well. And as I mentioned, I'm also recovering from a cold, which is yet another source of stress.

And frankly, I haven't had as much social contact with people as I would like. Yeargh. I wish things were different.

Lab automation

I photocopied an article on laboratory automation for me to read during an upcoming flight. I sure hope that I do indeed get to read this. I might get sucked into a game of Sudoku. It's mentally stimulating, but not a good use of my time. It'd take way too long to get better at this game, and I don't think that would be an efficient use of my limited time.

Besides, I'd rather be working out. Tried to make it through a grueling hour-long intensive cardio workout, but I had to quit halfway through. This darned cold that I'm recovering from has just sapped my energy levels. Darn it.

My eyes are burning

I hae allergies. My eyes were badly inflamed last night, and my eyes were burning. They're burning today as well.

Actually, the discomfort has subsided a bit, now that I'm in an airconditioned room. Still, this whole situation stinks.

It's a problem with allergies, which makes it an immunological problem. Basically, allergens trigger an undesirable immune system response. An allergen is a type of antigen that create a spurious immune response; that is, they aren't toxics or pathogens, but they make the immune system respond anyway. Argh.

Dancing weirdo

There was this strange fella at a swing dance event last night--an older-looking Asian gent. Actually, I've seen him at a lot of these events. He's a good dancer, but frankly, I think he's a bit of a weirdo.

Oh, he's got skills. The problem is that he keeps making all these goofy expressions when he dances with a woman. It's obvious that he really enjoys his dancing, but he looks like he's enjoying it a bit too much, if that makes sense. That is, he keeps putting on these over-the-top expressions on his face when he dances, and if I were a woman, I'd feel kinda weirded out by that.

It's not just that. He also keeps putting his face right up close to the woman's face. Now, I can't speak for anyone else, but personally, I think that's just stepping over the line -- especially when he keeps making those weirdo expressions on his face.

How would I describe those expressions? I guess they're kinda like over-the-top grins. Not just a pleasant smile, mind you, but wide, open-mouthed expressions of sheer ecstasy. I don't want to judge, but I feel like tapping him on the shoulder and saying, "Criminy, fella! Calm down and get a grip on reality."

Last night, he also took this newcomer -- a gal who had only gone swing dancing once before in her life -- and lifted her into the air. She squealed, and I don't think it was with delight. That was completely inappropriate on his part. He could stand to exercise some common sense, and maybe learn a bit about dance etiquette.

Yep, he's out of control. I wish that he'd stop and get ahold of himself.

Profanity in the gym

So I was working out a few days ago, and a bunch of guys in the gym were saying "F*ck" all over the place. That really got to be annoying.

Oh, sure. I'm sure that these guys were old friends. And the probably figured "Hey, you've only got men in this room. It should be okay." If so, then they didn't realize that not all men appreciate foul language. And what if a woman were to pass by? I realize that some women do tolerate such speech, and that some of them can even swear like a sailor. A lot of them don't, though.

It wasn't just that the language was foul. It was that they kept using the word over and over and over again. Not good conduct in public. They've got to learn some basic gym etiquette.

They have got to learn to behave.

Speaking of my old apartment

The electrical wiring in my old apartment building was kinda old. The result? Circuit breakers would trip if I tried to operate my air conditioner and my microwave oven at the same time. That got to be incredibly annoying, especially as I had to trek down to the first floor laundry room to reset my breakers.

I hated it. Hated it. Hated it.

I'm sick

I am so sick and tired of this cold. I can't work out and I can't think straight -- yet I still need to get work done. It's bloody annoying.

I'm trying to be as productive as I can under the circumstances. I'm focusing on tasks that don't require a lot of mental effort. Still, it is incredibly aggravating.

And I miss being able to devote a lot of effort to high-intensity cardio work. I'd like to get trimmer, and frankly, I enjoy that type of work.

Recanting

Earlier, I was complaining about Chase Visa's customer service. Now I realize what went wrong, and I feel chagrined.

After my initial PayPal charge failed, I changed my PayPal account's primary credit card to my Costco AmEx card instead. That explains why my charge went through the second time around. I'm willing to admit when I made an error.

Still, I'm annoyed. My Visa card had not yet expired, yet they already chose to decline its use. That's annoying and just plain wrong.

Now complaining about Chase Visa

Okay, I've bitched enough about AT&T DSL. I don't want to make a habit of complaining, but now I want to vent about Chase Visa.

I got a call from Chase Visa's fraud prevention department today, asking me to confirm a PayPal charge. I confirmed it, but the customer service rep then told me that one of my other charges (for $490.40) did not go through, and that I'd have to resubmit it. I said, "What?!?! I got a receipt for that amount. Are you sure that it was declined?"

She said, "Yes, it was. You have to resubmit it." I said, "Well, it was declined the first time around, but then I resubmitted the charge last night and it went through. As I said, I even got confirmation from PayPal. Can you make sure that it did go through?" She said, "No, it did not. You'll have to resubmit it."

At that point, I felt like cancelling this credit card; after all, they had given me a lot of similar problems in times past. And of course, I wasn't about to resubmit a charge of nearly $500 without making absolutely certain that it was necessary. This customer service rep wasn't communicating very well, so in a pique of frustration, I hung up.

I decided to call back though, just to confirm that my $490.40 charge did indeed go through. I spoke to another rep, who said, "Oh yes, it must have gone through. It'll just take 24 hours before this charge is reflected in our system."

Argh.

Glad I moved

I am so glad that I no longer live in my old apartment.

It wasn't a horrible apartment, mind you. In fact, it was fairly spacious. However, there was virtually no air flow around the building, thanks to the apartment buildings beside it. That made it oppressively hot during the summer months.

I got myself a portable air conditioner, but it didn't do a great job -- and it always drove my electric bill way up.

Even now, I have to spend quite a bit on my electric bill, thanks to the oppressive humidity. I'm trying to avoid that, but sometimes, I feel like I have little choice in the matter. I need to be able to function, and it's incredibly hard to do that during the summer.

AT&T DSL -- unbelievable!

I can't stand it.

Remember my complaints about AT&T DSL? Well this morning, I woke up to find an AT&T van parked in my driveway. I asked the driver what that was all about, and as it turns out, he had been sent here to 'fix' my DSL line.

What the heck...? AT&T had previously sent me an e-mail message and left me a voicemail message, stating that they had fixed my problem. Now they sent a technician over as well? What's more, they didn't even tell me that he'd be arriving... early on a Sunday morning, no less.

People, when will you get your act together???

Learning chemistry

I love this site. It provides a lot of helpful information on chemistry-related matters. Few people would take delight in reading such things, but I do. (Okay, so the content was taken from Wikipedia. Still, I'm glad that they provide it.)

And yes, I do like reading such things. Just last night, I was watching a DVD lesson on the periodic table of elements. What does that tell you?

AT&T DSL again

Good grief. My AT&T DSL connection died. Again. Talk about tiresome.

I spoke to an AT&T tech service rep on the telephone. To be fair, I really have to give this guy credit. Instead of making me jump through a whole bunch of useless hoops, he addressed my problem promptly and efficiently. He noted that there had been a group outage that caused my previous problem, but correctly figured out that there must be something wrong with my specific hardware -- that is, the card that connected to my modem. So he issued a service ticket, telling another technician to replace the card.

That seems to have fixed the problem. We'll see.

I like his approach. During a previous call, I complained about intermittent network outages. The rep who answered my call said, "Well, you have network connectivity right now. We can't do anything unless you call while the network is down." As it turns out though, that was not strictly true. As it turns out, they could have replaced the card in question to see if this prevented my intermittent outages from occurring.

Here's hoping that this latest fix does the trick.

What's the deal with serum-free media?

So what's the deal with using serum-free cell culture media in one's immunology experiments?

I think this article says it all. Serum-containing media is loaded with all sorts of undesirable substances. This results in a high background response and more confused results. Furthermore, each serum-containing batch behaves differently, and characterizing each batch is both costly and time-consuming. Then of course, there are the infectious risks involved.

In contrast, serum-free media is cleaner and produces more consistent results. Serum does contain cell growth factors and essential nutrients, which means that developing the right substitute is a challenge. Having the right batch of serum-free media can really work wonders, though.

Another cell phone gabber

I was driving down an interstate yesterday when I saw somebody merging from an on-ramp. This person was going horribly slow, not at all matching the flow of traffic. I was forced to shift into another lane to avoid hitting her. The roads were fairly clear, which was good for me. Still, it doesn't excuse her failing to match the speed of the traffic.

As I passed, I saw that she was gabbing away on her cell phone. That explained a lot.

Unlike some drivers, I don't get furious at drivers who talk on their cell phones. I do ask, however, that they avoid slowing down horribly as they do so. Keep pace with the traffic if you plan to gab away, folks.

At times like these, I wish I had an EMP device that I could use to blast these phones into pieces. I would use the same gizmo on people who insist on blasting their radios away at full volume. Ugh.

More AT&T DSL nonsense

So I got a call from AT&T, telling me that my DSL problem had been diagnosed and resolved. Sure enough, I found that my Internet access had been restored.

About two minutes later, I got another call, following up on my service ticket. The call said (and I'm paraphrasing here), "An AT&T technician needs to speak to you right away regarding your problem report. Please call us at..." I'm thinking, "What the hell...?"

I called, and the CSR on the other end of the line said, "But the problem report has been closed out! Has something else gone wrong?" I said, "I don't know. All I know is that I was asked to call this number."

What. The. Heck?

Thank you, Grinch

I'll never forget this one fella back in my grad school days. I sent a message out in December 1996, wishing all the recipients a Merry Christmas.

This fella writes back and says, "Please don't send me any messages that are not business related. I receive too much e-mail as it is."

Thank you, Mister Grinch.

He reminds me of another guy that I met more recently. At this second fella's company, the receptionist would occasionally send out e-mail messages saying "So-and-so will be out of the office tomorrow. Please be aware of this" or words to that effect. Well, fella #2 told the receptionist (indeed, the entire company) "Please do not include me in these types of messages. I already receive a lot of e-mail."

His motivations were good, but as you can probably see, honoring this request would create a lot of complications. So the company president wrote back, saying (in effect) "No, do not exclude him from these mailings. It only takes a few seconds to read them, and this is they kind of information that everyone should know. Besides, excluding any employee's name from these mailings creates unnecessary work for our receptionist."

That was exactly the right response.

Monk and Psych season premieres

The Monk and Psych season premieres are coming up on Friday. Yay! Two hilarious yet intellectually stimulating shows with engaging characters.

And Cybil Shephard is playing Shaun's mom on Psych. Great choice. She's a terrific comedic actress, and it's always a pleasure having her on the screen.

Review: Behind the Briefcase

I’ve been reading the book, “Behind the Briefcase” by April Scott, former briefcase model on “Deal or No Deal.” It’s actually surprisingly good. It’s admittedly a lightweight read, and it’s not a master of literature by any means; still, it’s not bad at all. It looks like Miss Scott has a real brain behind her model-like features and the 700cc of silicone that she admitted to having inserted into her body.

And heck, the book isn’t as lurid as I thought it might be. It’s a bit of a tell-all book, but it doesn’t contain any tawdry, tasteless details. What’s more, she spoke highly and tastefully of Howie Mandel, which was rather nice.

Would I recommend this book? As a lightweight bit of mind candy, certainly.

I am so sick of AT&T DSL

I am so sick of AT&T’s DSL service.

First, my home network connection keeps dropping out, often at odd hours of the night. I’ve called to report this problem, but it typically disappears by the time I get ahold of a tech support rep. Argh. They say that they can’t do anything when the problem isn’t manifesting itself, which is very frustrating indeed.

Second, whenever I do call to report a problem, they keep asking me for the model of my DSL modem. Um, hello? You folks should have that information on file, people; after all, you supplied the DSL modem. In fact, I pointed that out to one rep, and he said, “Well, I could look that information up, but it would take a couple of minutes.” This is preposterous. Obviously, whatever database they’re using is very poorly designed.

Third, when the problem would not resolve itself, they’d say that I need to let a technician into my house in order to fix the problem. This happened twice over the course of just a few months. On both occasions, I was forced to take time off from work, only to find out that there had been widespread complaints from other customers as well, indicating a problem outside my home. You’d think that they’d figure this out before telling me that I need to be home and let their technician in.

This time, I refused. I said, “Look, each time a problem like this occurs, I go through the same old rigmarole. I can’t afford to keep taking time off from work, and if past reports are any indication, it looks like the problem is something outside my home. Can’t you please check that first?” The customer service rep acquiesed – rightfully so, after all, this just makes sense.

I’m seriously thinking about looking for another ISP. This is very frustrating indeed.

Is it arrogant to claim to know the truth?

I had a very frustrating conversation with some dude recently. He kept saying that it's very arrogant for anyone to believe that they know the truth on some matter.

So I asked him, "Really? Do you believe that's true? If so, wouldn't that make you arrogant?"

And yet he kept insisting that he was right. Good grief.

That reminded me of another conversation I had with this other fella once. We were having a discussion on some religious matter, and he said, "Your problem is that you think you're right!"

Um, hello? Of course I think I'm right. Don't we all think that we're right? Only a fool argues for a position that he doesn't truly believe.

Heck, this fella thought he was right in saying that it's wrong to think you're right. Such words may sound profound, but they are profoundly misleading.

Citing articles

Okay, this guy doesn't know how to cite articles. It's not immediately obvious, but in at least some of his postings, he starts with a few sentences, and then appends an entire article that has been cut and pasted from another source. Nothing wrong with cutting and pasting an article, provided that permission is given and the proper attributations are included. Still, a good writer should make it clear that he is citing someone else's work, and should clearly delineate his own writings from the quoted section.

AAA

I'm so glad that I renewed my AAA membership. It was going to expire on June 30th, but I decided to renew. I don't regret it. It doesn't cost a whole lot, and it certainly makes life easier when dealing with annoyances such as flat tires and mechanical breakdowns. (I haven't encountered a mechanical breakdown yet, partly because I do take care of my tires. Still, it's nice to know that they'll be there.)

My only gripe is that it sometimes takes an awfully long time for somebody to respond. Darn it. Darn it. Darn it.

Education

I think that this article is worth heeding -- not just with respect to engineering, but in a great many other intellectual disciplines as well. If you want to develop mad skills in science, engineering, or computer programming, it helps to have a broad grasp of a great many other disciplines. It certainly helps when it comes to be inventive, as it allows for cross-pollination of ideas.

Ditto in the business world. Business ideas can be conceived through a grasp of sciencelliterature, or philosophy, and these skills can also help in the marketing field as well.

I'd say more about that, but I can't really spare the time right now. Hmmm.... Maybe one should write an article on this topic.

Flat tire

I'm upset. I'm upset because I have a flat tire, the second one this year. I also didn't notice the flat right away, so I drove on it and surely wound up shredding the tire.

I'm waiting for AAA to come change the tire for me. I could do it myself, but I have other things I'd rather do, and besides, it's hot out there. I'm paying for the AAA service after all, so I may as well use it.

I have to wait an your for the guy to come by. On the other hand though, he can change the tire more quickly that I would, and I can use this time to get stuff done.

But rats, rats, rats, rats, rats.

Frustrated with AT&T DSL

I am really frustrated with AT&T DSL.

First, whenever my DSL connection slows to a painful trickle, they try to diagnose hte problem remotely, then declare that they have to come into my house to complete the diagnosis. And each time, without even stepping through my door, they discover that the problem is something outside my home. Each time, the problem coincided with issues that other customers were having. Like they couldn't have figured that out beforehand?

Second, there are times when my network connection drops out for about 15 minutes or so. This gets to be truly aggravating. They can't figure out what's causing this problem though, probably because they don't have the right logging systems. They say that I need to call when the problem is actually occurring, BEFORE it gets resolved. Ugh.

And finally, late last night, when my network connection did drop out, I called them immediately and got no reply. They were out. DRAT!

Tipping annoyances

There's this one group of people that I used to have lunch with on almost a weekly basis. One of these guys was a bit of a social misfit and a control freak. For example, after eating, he would compute everybody's 15% tip down to the last penny and insist that we pay that amount.

The rest of us thought this was inconvenient and annoying. One of us said, "Look, do we have to do this every stinkin' time? The tip doesn't have to be exact. Besides, some of us will pay more, and some will pay less. We'll all pay whatever we think is right."

"But 15% is the standard. It's the correct tip to pay."

"No, it's not." we replied. "You might want to pay more for good service or less for lousy service. And maybe some of us are a bit strapped for cash and can't tip as much as we'd like to. Either way, it should be an individual decision."

"No," he said. "We have to do this the right way."


This same bozo would also complain if anybody left pennies as part of their tip. I remember the ruckus he raised one day. Another person replied, "So, what's wrong with that? It's legal tender. There's no rule that says you shouldn't use pennies to pay your tip. Besides, they can always get the pennies changed for larger coins if they need to."


This guy was a character, to say the least.

Comic book comments

Comments on some recently released comic books:

Avengers/Invaders #3: Boy, Ross and Krueger are really playing Bucky up as some sort of bad*ss, aren't they? I love it, but I do think that the way he managed to get a vital access code out of some highly trained SHIELD agents was a bit implausible. (And under 23 seconds? Puh-leez.)

JSA Classified #39: Does Mike W. Barr even know what "rope-a-dope" means? It's NOT a good strategy to use against multiple opponents! Sheesh.

Quadruple-cytokine ELISPOT assays?

So they've got quadruple-cytokine ELISPOT assays now? I never heard of such a thing. Double-cytokine assays are well known, though not exceedingly common. But a quadruple-color ELISPOT assay? Analyzing those things must be a real challenge, especially when it comes to disambiguating the mixed-color spots.

Things I'm enjoying

A few things that I've been enjoying:

• The Straight No Chaser 1998 concert DVD. I especially liked their showstopping comedic rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas."
  
• The Discovery Channel's "Boom De Yada" promo. Now that's a catchy tune.
  
• Disney's Enchanted. Great movie.
  
• Pixar movies.
  
• Heavy cardio workouts
  
• Weight training