Dudley

06:41 pm: Whee
A couple weeks of no blogging here... in truth though, nothing terribly exciting is going on. I'm still sort of recovering from my surgery, I'm doing a lot of work at work (with some success, I hope), and so on. I've been keeping up my blogging at Saccharomyces just about every day, so that's something. Otherwise, yea, not too much going on. I went to work today, got some stuff done, so that's good... tomorrow, S is throwing me a belated birthday party, so hurray! That should be fun - and my first real "Socializing" since the operation. Hurray!

07:43 am: What a little weekend
Quite the little weekend this weekend. I walked to the grocery store Saturday, had brunch with A and jdreed Sunday, and watched Ghost World with the roommate. I did a few chores too, although I couldn't do my laundry due to all the lifting and bending involved with that. catswym was wonderful and did a load for me though, so now I've got lots of clean clothes. :) So... off to another week of work I go!

07:23 am: Mmm, birthday Indian
My birthday (observed) was last night. I had some delicious Indian food, courtesy of catswym, blew out a candle in my samosa, and watched some pretty good TV - the new Lost and the Grey's Anatomy from Sunday. It was a pretty good night, and I even forgot to take my Aleve with no ill effects.

Lab has been pretty good too. I've been putting in about 30 minutes more each day this week - I spent 8 hours away from the house yesterday, so pretty soon I'll be up to a full day of work. I'm looking forward to the weekend a lot, though - I really want to rest my foot. My ankle's been hurting a decent amount from all the incorrect walking I've been doing. From what I found online about drop foot, and how I've been slapping the ground:

This is sometimes referred to as steppage gait, because the patient tends to walk with an exaggerated flexion of the hip and knee to prevent the toes from catching on the ground during swing phase. During gait, the force of heel strike exceeds body weight, and the direction of the ground reaction vector passes behind the ankle and knee center. This causes the foot to plantar flex, and if uncontrolled, to slap the ground. Ordinarily, eccentric lengthening of the anterior tibialis, which controls plantar flexion, absorbs the shock of heel strike.

That said, my toes have strengthened up a lot. :)

Anyway, lab meeting today, then a bit (or more) of work, a bunch of time on the phone with various companies, and then the weekend begins!

01:48 pm: One day down, many to go
Yesterday went quite well; today is going well so far. Did my first PCR since coming back (hurray!) and went to a talk. I've only had one cup of coffee today too, so that's quite the feat. Yippee!

10:19 am: Pretty good weekend
It wasn't a perfect weekend by any means; no weekend that includes a viewing of A History of Violence could be a perfect weekend. But it certainly wasn't a bad weekend for me, and I'd probably go so far as to say that I could be pretty happy with more weekends like this one.

Friday I walked all the way to Davis for the first time, and I met my friend S for lunch at Anna's Taqueria. The rice isn't vegetarian, so I had a cheese quesadilla. Then we came back here, watched a movie, ate candy, and she helped out by dragging some of my new groceries (via Peapod) in and filling up the humidifier. It was a great time, and I was sorry that she had to go. We might meet up in Longwood on Wednesday, but it depends how her job interview goes.

Then Saturday and Sunday were good days too. I read a lot, and on Saturday I walked to the Gap in Porter Sq and bought a pair of jeans. My old jeans are all a bit too small now, especially since I still have a big wound on my back. I bought the largest pair they had for my leg length, which really isn't that big, but it just works. So I had better cut back on the calories a bit now, or I'll be back to walking around in sweatpants :) Saturday night was the above-mentioned movie, which wasn't bad, but was somewhat slow, and not really suspenseful.

Sunday I needed to walk, so catswym suggested I go to Tufts. I did, and I walked up and around Ball Sq. Pretty cool; I think I want to try The Broken Yolk for breakfast sometime. Then a calzone from Primo's for dinner; they forgot the spicy fries I had wanted to try, but the calzone was delicious. Oh, and the doctor finally called me back, so that was good too. Oh, and for breakfast I had eggo's and melon that I got in Porter yesterday. See what I mean, a pretty good weekend!

Today, coincidentally the first day of spring, is going to be my first day back at work. I'm going in late to avoid a TV crew; I probably won't accomplish much today, but it's a start, and a big day - I've been gone for five weeks. I had a scary dream last night about hurting my back at work, but hopefully there won't actually be a wheelbarrow to push around. :) Time to hit the road, though...

08:22 am: Long time, no entries
Yes, I'm back. It's been quite a long time - I went to stay with my parents on 3/1, had surgery the next day, and then spent the night in the hospital. Overall it was a much better experience than my last surgery - I recovered from the anesthesia faster, I was alert and eating right away, and I got a roommate that night who, while worse off than I, was pretty chatty. I went back to the hotel with my parents on 3/3, and came back to the apartment the following monday. My parents were very helpful in terms of feeding me and taking care of me, and overall it was a good bonding experience. They went home on Wednesday, but not before setting me up very well in terms of food.

I do feel pretty tired; I've been sleeping a lot, and I have intermittent headaches caused by congestion. I had a little fever the first few days after surgery too, but that went away. Probably the most serious issue is my left foot - it has some numbness, especially when I wake up, and my left foot is rather weak, with some foot drop. There's some hope that that will improve with time, but at least the pain seems to be gone.

Since I came home, things have generally been okay; I had great help from catswym, who has put up with quite a lot, and who has had to do all the chores; jdreed, who came and watched a movie with me, and my friend S, who came and chatted and also watched a movie with me, and helped me take my first walk outside. I can walk for about 20 minutes now, so I can just about get to Davis Sq and back. I also got an awesome gift box from work, with yummy candy and a yo-yo! The plan is to go back to work on Monday, so just a few more days of being a slacker.

08:28 am: A pretty good weekend for me. Peapod came and delivered supplies, I had delicious Indian food Friday and Saturday night, and I got to watch Rent. Sci-fi Friday also came through for me, and helped me deal with the weekend by supplying 3 hours of TV. I also watched some Futurama, and read "Beyond Infinity" by Gregory Benford. It was quite blah... it's a sequel to "Against the Fall of Night" (which is a short version of "The City and the Stars") by Clarke. I didn't even realize this until I started reading it, and after the first chapter I started say "Hey, this sounds... familiar". The most annoying part is that all of the names of the various characters have been changed.

There's also way too much science. Good sci-fi, in the manner of Star Trek, Firefly, Battlestar Galatica, and Stargate, uses only enough science-talk to set the action in the future. The point is to create a future society that serves as a stage, that allows us to explore aspects of ourselves and our own society. When the science becomes too much of the story, it loses that appeal.

Benford goes into all sorts of details about higher dimensional space, topology, and so on. This weeks Stargate also dealt with different dimensions. When Carter tries to explain the science, she says just enough to explain and sketch out the situation, and is then cut off so we don't have to suffer through a complete explanation. This book would have been much better if it had just skimmed the surface of advanced physics, instead of diving straight in.

Now just a few more days, and I can dive into the wonders of surgery.

08:34 am: An exciting day
Yesterday was really fun and exciting. My friend S, who is looking for a postdoc and thus has lots of free time, came over to spend a good part of the day with me. We watched curling, ordered calzones, and ate cookies that she baked for me. They were yummy. :) We also watched the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, and had tea. It was super. S rocks. :)

It was however the most activity that I've had in quite a while - it definitely tired both me and chaucer out. Today I'm going to spend more time lying down, watch the curling finals, and get some laundry done, which I'm sure will also be great for me - but I've put it off long enough! I'm sure I'll blog more later, but in the meantime, you can all enjoy this photo of a sleepy cat.

11:55 am: Mmm, a delicious breakfast from catswym, with pancakes and tempeh bacon. Yum!

Otherwise, today promises to be a quiet day - just watching some curling, some sci-fi (SG-1, SG-A, and some downloaded stuff), and some blogging over at my new blog. Whee.

01:34 pm: Well, going out for breakfast didn't happen this morning, so instead I "curled" up with some cereal, toast, and some curling! All in all, a pretty good morning/last night for the American men's team. And yes, I realize I'm watching curling. :)

Otherwise, it's shaping up to be a pretty quiet day. If it's quiet for you too, why not check out what I was doing last night?

09:25 am: I'm sorry, were you expecting something exciting? :)

Nothing really new... had some more indian food yesterday for lunch, but took a break and went with frozen Mac and Cheese for dinner. Peapod is coming today (at a ridiculous delivery fee), but that should pretty much set me for food for at least a week. No news on when the surgery is to be yet. Today I've actually got a list of things to do, but they are pretty boring/routine - shaving, dishes (already done), and paying bills.

Otherwise, I've made some more posts on Saccharomyces. Enjoy!

08:08 am: Farewell, cruel blog
That's only true in part. I'm going to be keeping this blog for random and fun things (like the square thing yesterday almost nobody took), in addition to whining about my personal life, my lab, my back, and any other health issues that come up.

However... I've been writing more of late about science and technology, politics, and so-forth, and I'd rather not have that be mixed up with my personal life. So, my science and tech stuff, some of my political commentary, and other randomly interesting happenings are moving to...

Saccharomyces. My loyal readers here will find that a few items from here moved over there, but they will also find additional commentary. Those of you who don't read blogger blogs on a regular basis - you sometimes have to hit reload/refresh sometimes to bring up new items, I don't know why it caches things too long. In the short term, I'll occasionally remind you all about things I post there, but I plan to post every day between now and whenever my back surgery is.

Also, catswym, sbyrne - you're welcome to post things on Saccharomyces with me, though sbyrne will need to get a blogger account. Others are welcome too. :)

01:58 pm: Since all the cool kids are doing it:
http://kevan.org/johari?name=dlamming

As a side note, I think it's interesting that none of the word choices are very negative - all the choices are fairly positive or neutral. I think that's interesting.

10:34 am: Politics as usual
Those who follow the political news probably saw that Paul Hackett dropped out of the race for Ohio Senate. There was apparently all sorts of backroom stuff going down as the democrats maneuvered to avoid a primary battle, and Hackett, as both the outsider and the weaker candidate, lost out. The Dems tried to have Hackett compete for the House instead, but he wasn't into that.

I haven't decided what I think of this yet. Markos and others are right that from a strategic standpoint, this was the right (short-term, anyway) move for the party to make - try to take your limited number of strong candidates and spread them out to win as many races as possible. It's also obvious (since Hackett didn't keep his mouth shut) that he wasn't a "team player" - and from a political standpoint, the dems need team players. Most of the republican current success comes from their discipline - when the dems ran things, back in the day, they were divided on many issues, and the republicans had some success even when in the minority. If that was true now, the republicans wouldn't be able to pass things so readily.

That said - this type of discipline (and discouraging primary races) is a poor way to run a country, let alone a nominal democracy. Representatives are on a tight leash, because they depend on the party (and donors) for funding, committee appointments, and so-forth. But they should be voting their conscious - or at least their constituents interests - not the party line, and if the democrats manage to take back power with such tactics, it will be good in the short term... but perhaps quite bad in the long term.

07:22 am: Happy Valentine's Day!
Well, I didn't actually make it into work yesterday... somewhere between putting on my super warm flannel-lined jeans and walking out the front door, my back caught up with me, and informed me that this was a very stupid idea. I thus spent the rest of the day at home, not hurting all that much, and feeling stupid for not going... except for the occasional twinge of pain that reminded me why I wasn't going. I still don't have a surgery date, but it will be no later than 3 weeks from today, and hopefully 2 weeks. I emailed the boss, who was of course not thrilled but supportive, and the lab, to get people to deal with a few things for me.

Tentatively, I'm going to try and go in tomorrow, and take one last time point on my experiment. Once I get there I imagine it won't be too bad, but getting there... we'll see. I may be trying to be overly ambitious here - maybe I should stay home, curl up, and watch more curling on TV. It's really not so bad... at least if one is a little bored! On the TV/DVD front, last night catswym and I tried to watch Pinero, but it was just too ridiculous.

Anyway, being at home and reading blogs has alerted me to the presence of excessively geeky (even for me) scientific valinetines, as explained here. I've never received one, but I will reproduce several here just because I can.

You've wounded me, dear;
And how can it be?
You've reached in and disabled
My p53.

Something is growing,
You've heard the rumour
Love grows in my heart
And it isn't a tumor.

--Josh Siepel

---

Lover, whenever you look at me
I feel like my heart is electrophoresed
The voltage of your lust moves my DNA
In a style even tris buffer cannot delay.

--Jen Dulin

---

Pardon me dear
If I may be so bold,
But I want to find out
What makes your proteins fold.

It's not that I wish
To disrupt bonds hydrophobic;
I just want to engage
In a bit of aerobics.

Your active site
Is so terribly appealing
And I might say your reagents
Are especially revealing

Of the intentions you have
For a chemical reaction
So let me bust out my zinc loop
And let's get with the action.

--Josh Siepel

---

So.... yea, those people at Texas A&M are a bit odd.

09:14 am: Wow it's cold
It currently feels between 2 and 4 degrees outside, according to weather.com... I'm pretty glad I'm not leaving home for another hour or so. Today is a day for taking a few data points, pouring some plates, and generally trying to put things in order, especially with regards to making new strains and plasmids.

In the meantime, though, I've been at home. Since I've generally been trying to heal, I haven't been blogging as much as I would like to over the last few months since sitting is "bad". That matters less now, and since I've been housebound, I finally made the terrible leap over to using RSS, via the firefox plugin Sage. It's ok. Potentially quite useful, in any event, for keeping track of my growing list of blogs that don't update everyday.

Speaking of cold, though, I'm not the only one feeling cold nowadays: so are the true conservatives, according to Glenn Greenwald. A quite new blogger, he's been on a tear of late about the hypocrisy of conservatives, and stirred up quite the hornet's nest yesterday:

Now, in order to be considered a "liberal," only one thing is required – a failure to pledge blind loyalty to George W. Bush. The minute one criticizes him is the minute that one becomes a "liberal," regardless of the ground on which the criticism is based. And the more one criticizes him, by definition, the more "liberal" one is. Whether one is a "liberal" -- or, for that matter, a "conservative" -- is now no longer a function of one’s actual political views, but is a function purely of one’s personal loyalty to George Bush.

Some might say this argument is obvious (which it is), but he phrases his arguments and rebuts his critics quite well.

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04:39 pm: Politics
Ok, this is pretty good: http://www.markfiore.com/animation/gops.html

11:32 am: Oh, the weather outside is frightful...
but I don't have to go out in it. Well, I would have to if I was healthy, but I'm not. Tomorrow I will be going in, though.

Anyway, slashdot this morning provides this fascinating article: Mind Control by Parasites. It turns out that it has been known for some time that rats can be controlled by Toxoplasma, a nasty found in cats. Toxoplasma makes rats slower, makes them attracted to cat urine, and slows their reflexes, making them much more likely to be prey. The real press release is here.

What's the takehome?

The researchers tested anti-psychotic and mood stabilising medications used for the treatment of schizophrenia on rats infected with T. gondii and found they were as, or more, effective at preventing behaviourial alterations as anti-T. gondii drugs. This led them to believe that T. gondii may have a role in the development of some cases of schizophrenia.

To quote a slashdot comment:

"Haldol and an antimicrobial have the same effect on Toxoplasm infected human tissue. Even the implcations in this are staggering -- regardless of whether this pans out or not. Million's of people worldwide could be saved a tortous life, higher suicide rates, due to a pathogenic cause (and cure) of a mental illness. Don't dismiss that mother's with this are more likely to have kids that develop schizophrenia. An australian recently won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for discovering that a bacteria was responsible for the majority of stomach ulcers. What used to be a life long and potential dangerous disease is now cured with weeklong course of antibiotics.

Not to mention of course that toxoplasma may be a silent killer: there is apparently a 2.6-fold Increased risk of traffic accidents in subjects with latent toxoplasmosis. A good week for medical science.

03:41 pm: Good news, bad news
Good news: finally talked to doc
Good/bad news: surgery

I'm not shocked - I've had sort of a major pain relapse lately, which is "not a good thing" several months in to my "recovery". I mainly blame the overly ambitious physical therapist, but it might have happened at some point anyway - I do need to be able to twist my waist, after all! No date set yet, though.

I'm allowed/encouraged to keep going to work until then(pain allowing). Anyway, I guess I'll wrap up what I can at work, stick the rest in a refrigerator, and hope for the best. I'm not looking forward to what's coming over the next month, but at least I'll be fixed.

10:39 am: Science Tuesday
Taking a brief break from my usual litany of gloom and doom, here are two pretty interesting things, both via slashdot:

-See Day After Tomorrow? Basically, the ocean currents weaken due to changes in salinity caused by melting polar ice. Well, its apparently a real theory, and it might be happening (albeit slowly)... and these guys have a plan to stop it and save Europe, involving 8,000 barges and 50 billion dollars. Now that's engineering!

-Did einstein get something wrong? Alex Mayer, a visiting scholar at Stanford, thinks so. Basically, light waves may be redshifted by gravity... which, he claims, would explain a number of small deviations from expected results. If he's right, it also has implications for cosmology, because the universe would not be expanding... it would only look that way due to this effect. Right or wrong, it is an interesting idea.

Pretty much it for today. I'm feeling a little bit better today after several days of being in a lot of pain, so here's hoping I'm once again on the mend. :)