Evilsciencechick

Well, the radioactivity has been played with, the E. coli cells are soaking nicely in their little DNA bath - suck up my ligation little ones…or else you will DIE WHEN I PUT YOU ON LB+AMP PLATES!!!! BWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Ahem. Sorry about that. Evil Science mode kicking in there.

So I have nothing real to talk about, except how exciting it is that Dastard had been revealed. What a cutie! Except that he’s making a weird face in that picture. Huh.

Anyway, I’ll just ramble on for a bit…

So I mentioned before that when our kick-ass computer guy at work fixed my computer, he pimped it up with all sorts of goodies. One such goodie is Adobe Photoshop CS. (Ummmm…unless it was totally illegal for him to do that…in which case I have no idea what you’re talking about. Shut up.)

Photoshop is not the most user friendly of programs, and slogging through their beginners instructions is not fun. Much of it seems to be written in “geek,” which I am not proficient in. I’ve almost got the “Dooce effect” down, though. Hopefully I’ll have some warm and fuzzy photos of…well, Sadie to post tonight. I don’t have many pics of myself, so I can’t make myself warm and fuzzy yet!
So if anyone knows of a good photoshop tutorial site, or a book I can purchase, that will be helpful!

Also thinking about taking up crocheting. Did I spell that right? Talk about jumping on the bandwagon two years too late! but I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while now. I may know someone at church who can teach me, but I’m not sure she has the time. My evil ulterior motive for learning is that I’d like to be able to MAKE Christmas presents to save some cash. My foray into chocolate truffle production last year got mixed revues. They were tasty, but were weird and lumpy looking. So I need a new craft - quick!

Tomorrow instead of lab meeting, we’ve decided to have a morale-boosting, order-in lunch, general-discussion type meeting. And we’ll sit outside if it’s nice. Hooray! Thai food….mmmmm….panang beeeeeeef….

Everyone in the lab has been stressed and crabby lately. The strains I made two years ago have popped up with some real problems. Nothing that we would have caught, or even thought about back then. But still serious enough to affect a lot of projects going on. No one blames me, thank God! But I have to reconstruct the root strains using different methods, and that puts me back on my projects, too. I’m feeling better that at least now we KNOW for sure what the problem is, instead of just random negative speculation. THAT was stressing me out more than anything. But other people in the lab are stressed out for various reasons, and we all just need to CHILL OUT and eat Thai food. HOORAY!

This weekend I get to make my halloween costume! If it turns out nice, I’ll take a picture. If it looks like crap, I’ll deny everything. Time to dust off the sewing maching!

Happy hump day! Don’t forget to…umm….hump…something?

as we’re watching TV, a commercial for the new “farscape” miniseries comes on. Kevin makes the comment:

“that was a weird show.”

“yes, it was. I missed part of the very first season, so I was pretty confused about everything on the show.”

“like what?”

“like who were these peacekeepers, why were they evil, and why did they all have British accents.”

“…!”

“what?”

“…!”

“are you LAUGHING at me???”

“mmmmhehehehHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!!!!!!”

“why are you laughing at me?”

“what does it matter if they have British accents?”

“I don’t know, it just didn’t make any sense!”

“sweetie, you need to suspend your disbelief with these shows.”

“I think I suspend it enough with the whole ‘other universe’ and ‘blue aliens’ and ‘everybody speaks perfect english’ stuff. It just bothers me that the bad guys from another galaxy all together, would have of all things, a BRITISH ACCENT!”

“you don’t think a British accent could occur somewhere else?”

“no. and STOP LAUGHING AT ME, DAMMIT”

he continues to laugh, and much tickling and wrestling ensues. Then I pout a little, and get kisses to make me feel better.

It’s not that I can’t suspend reality for a movie or a book. I love sci-fi/fantasy books and movies. Terry Pratchett is one of my favorite authors, for God’s sake. But sometimes when I’m watching a show or movie of the genre, there’s just one little detail that pulls me right out. Aliens with tentacle heads? Yes. Unexplained British accent? NO!!!

It didn’t help that, during this conversation, we were watching some movie on Sci-fi network about vampires. Vampires I can deal with, but the movie seemed to be taking place in some futuristic, yet retro time. Like maybe the Nazi’s won, but not really. All the women had retro 40’s hairstyles, and all the cars looked old. But the main character was a black police detective who talked and acted very current day. So I kept asking Kevin “why are those security people wearing Russian cold-war type uniforms? ” and “why do only the vampires have that slight eastern european accent, but no one else does?” This is why we can’t watch movies together. But the movie just made no sense, even though it SEEMED like it should have made sense. I can watch a strange movie that purposely doesn’t make sense.

Is this all just me? Am I the weirdo here?

******UPDATE BELOW!!!******

I wore sandals today, defying the weather. Now my feet are cold. waaaah!

yeah yeah, cry me a river.

watched the debates last night. Same shit, new podiums. Did W answer a single question without talking about “no child left behind?” I don’t think so. How in God’s Holy Name are people voting for this guy?

I had a yogurt parfait (translation - layers of yogurt between layers of blueberry pie fillings, sprinkled with stale cake crumbs) and a C monster strawberry Odwalla from the nearby snack bar for lunch. Both had the effect of filling me up for about a half hour. I am STARVING, but I can’t go home for a while yet. So I am ruining whatever health benifits I got from lunch by drinking a cherry coke and eating doritos from the vending machines. Yeah, I have self-control.

Found this little site from BoingBoing today. It’s been added to the “amused by” links, but I thought it deserved a special mention. Also might be useful in explaining those “nocturnal emissions” to the dave.

If anyone out there knows specifically what caffeine does to DNA, I would be most interested. I’m using caffeine in a protocol to purify single stranded DNA from my preps, so I’m assuming it binds ssDNA, but can’t be sure, and can’t find a paper that will tell me. Bastards.

It’s getting to be crunch time for my halloween costume. The one I found online is sold out at EVERY SITE I LOOKED AT! again I say, bastards. So it looks like it’ll be another year of “what can I find at Goodwill?” Which is fun, too. Will try to do that this weekend
What’s everyone else going to be this year?

*****BoingBoing just posted links to the actual recordings! Click here*****