I'm sure my many faithful readers have been wondering why I haven't written any new posts in a while. Okay so maybe all both of them just thought I nothing to say. I did in fact have something to say however, but my wife swore me and my immediate family to secrecy until the end of the 1st trimester. And when your wife is pregnant with twins, it's the only thing on your mind for any length of time. But the gag order has been lifted and I can vent my deepest inner thought in a medium that is viewable to all the world.

1st When people ask are you joking
I would never joke about twins.
2nd Fertility drugs
No my wife just enjoys being difficult

The looming weight of fatherhood is preeminent in my thoughts, but there is a great deal of comedy surrounding me.
Examples
My wife can no longer tolerant mint, mint tooth paste, or mint gum. Luckily there are alternative flavors of toothpaste on the market.
People's odd reaction when I refer to the fetuses as thing 1 and thing 2, apparently there is little appreciation for the great works of Dr. Seuss.
I recently found out that my nearly 90 year old grandmother, whose sense of tack has been completely lost, is probably a better secret keeper than the rest of my family. We told my immediate family about a month ago, but held off telling everyone else because of the high risk nature of twins. I'm pretty sure almost everyone told at least one person. For those that managed to contain there excitement thank you; everyone else . . . eh it's no big deal.
My sister got pregnant 2-3 weeks earlier, but I still managed to one up her, and since there twins they'll probably be born sooner
We're not going to find out the gender, and it drives my mother in-law nuts because she can't plan for boys or girls

So if anyone has any advice on how not mix up identical twins, and a place that sells double strollers let me know

I'm a rebel . . . a sneaky one

So if you can't tell from My previous post, I really don't like the encryption software they put on my school owned laptop. It slowed down my computer (alot), was generally annoying, completely unwarranted and it fubared my machine.

They managed to bring my computer back from the dead, but as is common with such things, not without some issues cropping up. For example my documents folder had become hidden and it wouldn't let me unhide it, and windows picture viewer was really slow ( I could load photoshop faster).

So I backed up everything onto my other older computer just in case.

Couple of week later I got adventurous and turned the sleep function back on because hibernation was just to slow. In short the same thing happens again. It goes to sleep, freaks out when it wakes up, and won't boot. I get looking online and it turns out the software is incompatible with Vista's hybrid sleep. Turn out when my university's IT guys put this software on my machine, and should have disabled the "hybrid sleep" but didn't. In 2 min. on the companies web site I figured out a problem that they probably still don't know about. This time the file system was completely corrupted. With a lot of work and some special software they might have been able to recover my files, but I had backups so I really didn't care.

So I had a choice I could 1: take in my computer, explain their incompetence and need to research their supported products better, insult there parentage, accuse them of buying a degree from a shady internet site that has since been shut down, and present them with the long and labor intensive task of fixing my computer with the understanding that it will run flawlessly when it is returned, or 2: throw off this buggy cryptographic oppression by decrypting the hard drive myself, and begin a computational new life with a fresh install of Windows that I can put to sleep with out fear of corruption from my bane called PGP.

I'd have preferred an option #3 that took in the best parts of 1 and 2, namely the name calling and then not having the encryption software. I doubt after calling them names they'd let me ignore school policy.

So I have rebelled; by chosing option 2 I refuse to conform; I'll no longer be at the mercy of incompetent IT departments; I will be the master of electronic domain; I can mess up my computer all by my self and need no help from anyone else to do it; I'll stand up and let my voice be heard . . .strike that . . . I'll be very careful not to let them know I'm braking the rules.

Whole disk encryption for dumbies?

A case study in the pit falls of whole disk encryption and how it can be real pain.

After countless news stories of laptops lost while filled to the brim with juicy patient and employee data our UAB wise bureaucracy has leapt into action. Now mind you, the less informed might wonder why personal information was being stored in such a portable form as a laptop, and why such a tantalizing piece of electronic convenience was left unguarded. No, my university has in its wisdom declared that all university laptops be fully encrypted with university issued software.

Why should that involve a lowly grad student who's research will never involve any private data? Why should this affect the hundreds of researchers who would never have non anonymized data? Well aparently the univerity is also worried about some one stealing our scientific data too. Frankly as a scientist I can barely make a living with it; what would a common thug do with it? We're NHI funded anyways so any papers we write about the data is pubic access within 6 months.

So why the rant? Well, six month ago the people who have graciously offered to pay for my education under a federal training grant program asked me if I wanted a free laptop. Well duh, my faithful Toshiba is showing its age. Because my computer is university owned I have to go bring it in to have it encrypted. Mind you I don't keep any data on my machine for convience; instead I just remote desktop my machine at school. That machine has all the software I need and access to a shared network drive for the lab. But the university insists that all my mp3s, family vacation pictures and saved half-life2 games are safe should my computer be stolen.

I also happen to be ward clerk and keep some sensitive information on my computer too, but they didn't know about that. So in part to keep things safe and in part to play around with some freeware I had created a hidden encrypted partition with Truecrypt that I doubt the FBI could have cracked. So frankly I had things under control.

But, I aquiessed to their demands and bring my computer in to be encrypted. Three days later, after some confusion about my already encrypted partion, I get my computer back on a friday. Sunday morning at 7:20 am (yes it's early) my computer goes to sleep (not fair I wanted to sleep too). I turn it back on for the next meeting and enter my password and it crashed, the full enchalada, bluescreen, something about a memory dump, and it resets. Odd, but it reboots and the encryption software asks for my password. Then, windows declares my boot record is fubared and it needs the windows disk. Now such an catastrophe has been anticipated for. Windows can repair itself, as a Dell it has recovery partion that is bootable, once the boot record is repaired windows can use a restore point if more than just the boot record is fubared. BUTT, all of this is worthless to me becuase booting from the window disk won't allow it to read my fully encrypted hard drive and I can't get to the Dell recovery partition (als because of the encryption).

Good news I'm not fixing it, bad news it's going to take the university guys a few days to make an image of my hard drive (for safety), decrypt it (can take 24+ hrs), fix windows (this is the short part), and then reencrypt my hard drive.

Next time I ingnore the emails.

To honk or not to honk?

First, a little background. A large number of people in the state of Alabama are unable to merge properly. Instead of finding a gap and matching speed like any sane, intelligent, or generally not stupid person they pull up right next to you or directly in your blind spot and wonder why they can't move over. Or they try to merge going 10 mph slower or faster than traffic. To further complicate the mess there are a large number of last second mergers that not only slow down traffic but when the try it in peoples blind spot it makes for a very dangerous habit.

Today I was driving to school at around 10 (because I can, and to avoid rush hour). I move over to the right lane about a mile before my exit and as I drive by an on ramp I catch a glimpse of a car in my blind stop. I saw a little yellow and thought it was a cab. I was a little ahead and so give it a little bit of gas. Now mind you it's 10 and traffic is light. I was following a car and so ahead of me there wasn't a lot of space but there was no one behind me for 2/3 a mile. Instead the car next to speeds up just enough to pull up right next to me. Now he's running out of lane and right after that the intersate goes over a short bridge. This guys running out of space. He pull a little bit forward and starts moving over forcing me to slam on my brakes. I was about to honk my horn. Because if you don't tell them they're stupid they'll never learn. Turns out the yellow on the car was the sheriff's logo on the sqaud car of a policeman talking on his cell phone. I thought better of it. Instead I yell and wave my arms and rant and write a blog post about it. I would feel much better if I'd honked my horn.

So this brings me to my survey question. If you get cut off by a cop (no lights or sirens), in one of those hey you idiot learn to drive moments, not one of those please don't hit me moments, do you honk your horn?

Spike's awesome chocolate cream cheese cookies of awesomeness. . . Did I mention I think they're awesome?

First, let me explain how I came about the creation of my very own, one of a kind, cookie recipe. Oddly enough it all begins with cinnamon rolls. When ever I make homemade cinnamon rolls, I make homemade frosting for them. I take a glob of butter and mix in powdered sugar until it looks right, and then add some milk and vanilla. I generally avoid measuring while cooking. As a scientist most of what I due all day involves measuring. I digress. I like cream cheese frosting better. Same thing but you replace some of the butter with cream cheese. As I was mixing in the powdered sugar, I had a flash of inspiration. When I substitute cream cheese for butter it makes frosting better. mmmmm cheese cake. I put lots of butter in cookies. mmmmm cookies. Hey I could put cream cheese in cookies. So without further introduction I give you my masterpiece.

1 stick butter
1 8oz package of cream cheese
2 eggs
1 1/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tspn vanilla
Mix
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tspn salt
1/2 tspn baking soda
5 Tblspn Baking coco
mix again
add 3/4 bag of milk chocolate chips (it has been suggested, but not tried, for those who like dark chocolate that use of dark chocolate chip would work quite well)
mix some more
cook 350 for about 12 minutes (preferably on a baking stone)

May this recipe bring you peace, happiness, and . . . something else good.

Am I ever going to get out of here?

In science one little mistake can cost you a lot of work.

Case study. Wednesday I sac. 6 mice and take their lymph nodes and spleens. I mush it all up to get the cells out. I kill all the red blood cells, leaving the white blood cells. I then count the cells Not all of them, just enough to let me guess about how many I have. I had about 400 million of the little buggers. Next I stick Antibodies to all the cell I don't want. Stick another antibody to that antibody and then little magnets to that. In Short, I stick little tiny magnets to all the cells I don't want. I then stick the tube in a big magnet, wait a bit, and pour out the cells with no magnets on them. In theory I should a tube full of just the right kind of cells (80-90% CD4+ T cells). Now these cells have had it rough for the past few hour, so I let them rest overnight.

End Day one
After a sound nights sleep, I take the cells stimulate them for 15-45 min. Then I put them on Ice and lyse them (I kill them with soap to get all the innards out) spin out all the junk. Then I measure how much protein is in each of my 10 samples

Takes about half a day but we had lab meeting too
End Day 2

Next day I very carefully measure out each sample so they all have the right amount of protein in them. boil the samples for five min. put them into a gel and seperate the proteins by size. (takes 1.5 hours). I take the gel put on a special nitrocellulose membrane, and transfer the proteins on to the membrane. . . well that was the plan. I put the lid on backwards so the electric current was going the wrong way. Instead of the protein moving onto the membrane from the gel it went the other way, lost and never to be seen again. . .

End Day III
Needless to say I was a little mad.

Baby boomers

You hear a lot about generations these days. I think the media likes it as a PC way of categorizing people. Baby boomers, gen X, Y, next, blah blah. Generally it sounds like "kids these days".

Generally I don't like such labels, but I have a bone to pick with one of these groups. Yes I'm talking to you baby boomers. Okay I doubt anyone but my friends and sisters will read this.

As a whole the Baby boomer generation really chaps my hide. This was the group that decided to toss the values of the previous generations. So I get handed a world of drugs, sleaze and collapsed families. Sure some good music came out of it, but that's hardly justification. Let's jump back to when my grandparent grew up. Lower crime, little or no drug use, and lower divorce rate. With the exception of the civil rights movement and technological advances, did the world really move as far forward as they like to boast?

Maybe I'm just bitter? Since, after all these years the baby boomers couldn't even save their own retirement and Social security. And handing my generation their 12 trillion + and growing credit card bill. While creating a college system that puts us 20-30,000$ in debt before we can try to make a living.

Am I being unreasonable?

Enticement

There's a lot of talk going on about the legalization of marijuana. One of the argument is that the laws don't reduce use. By criminalizing it you create and dangerous black market and the lure of a forbiden fruit. I've heard the same dribble about prostitution, porn, and long list of other vices. The arguments are all the same "you can't make it go away and try to do so just makes it worse," So why not embrace it and get some tax revenue out of it.

Our drug problems have nothing to due with their legality. This country has drug problems because it's a nation of pot heads. The problems are social not legal. We can't seem to stop murder, maybe we should legalize it with a heavy tax. How about Child pornography. No one seems to be saying we should legalize heroine or Meth. Why shouldn't people have the choice to destroy their lives with the drugs on their choice?

Because that isn't the country we want to be.

There will be drugs in this county so long as people want to use them. If we stop the cocaine people will make meth. The rule of supply and demand suggests the only way to solve these problems is the remove the demand. Just because society is starting to accept things like recreational marijuana use, doesn't make it a good idea. Our society has problems, and giving up and embracing them will not help us, but realizing the source of the problem and staying with our moral anchor will.

Dinner

Some of the best thing I've ever cooked are the random "frying pan surprises"

I could thing what to eat so I just threw something together and this is what I can up with

Chicken, garlic, olive oil, rosemary, thyme, cooking sherry
cooked

added kidney beans, sliced almonds, ricotta cheese, tomato and over some macaroni noodles


mmmmmmm

Signs you've been going to school to long

You start calling faculty members by their first names
It takes you more than 10 sec to explain to the average person what you're studying
After telling people what you're doing everyone tries to console you by saying "you must be smart" or "you'll probably make lots of money."
You're not going bald but your skull is enlarging and you hair can't keep up.
When you type a paper with a longer works cited page than the actual paper.
People at the Library know you by name
They start to lure you to class (and seminars) with the promise of free food
You like the summer time, weekends, and Christmas break because you don't have to fight for parking with all the undergrads.
They give you keys. (mostly so you can work longer hours and on week ends)
You use the terms school and work interchangeably
You have you're own computer and desk
They feel so bad, they start paying you
You've been practicing your juggling and you know the average starting pay of a circus performer

So why isn't Grad school all fun and games?

For those who may wonder why I haven't posted in a while, let me explain. Since November I've been working on my "qualifying exam" which has been the scourge of my existence. It's less than ten pages long, but keep in mind this is a scientific research proposal. My first page cites 20+ papers, and the paper as a whole right now has 36 sources. I don't know if anyone has ever read a scientific journal, but I've read 50 or so really, really dry boring papers and had to learn more in less time than I ever have in my life. It takes me about an hour to type a paragraph, I spend a lot of time sitting in front of the computer thinking and looking up little tiny details in my 6 in tall stack of double sided printed journal articles. Hopefully this will all be over in 10 days, assuming I pass and they don't make me do any more revisions. Or I guess I could just fail get thrown out of grad school and do . . . well something, but my mind won't let me explore that possibility.