jakebluepaw

Looking back through my journal the past year a lot of major events happened in my life:

--Obtained my Masters Degree in Computer Science from Polytechnic University.
--Went on my first real date, that eventually went nowhere.
--Attended Anthrocon 2009 and had a great time.
--Obtained a new computer.
--Moved out on my own to a new apartment.
--Traveled for work to Michigan.
--Advanced in rank to Nidan at my dojo.

And so begins a new year. I have but one major goal this year. Will I succeed? Well, it's partly up to fate at this point.

just finished Unseen Academicals. Honestly not the best written Discworld book I've read. It kinda felt like two different stories crammed into eachother. And even the deus ex machina at the end wasn't up to his usual standards. To me the book felt more like many scenes that he wanted to have done that were pasted together as best as possible. Now, at least he has a reason for this, I imagine some of the diminished quality comes from him trying to get what he can done before the alzheimers sets in and he can no longer write the way he wishes to.

That being said, I liked the new characters, particularly Nutt and Glenda. I just get the feeling that their introduction and their connection with a football game was intended to be spaced out a bit more. I do reccomend it as a read if you're a fan of Discworld, but I didn't enjoy it as much as the Death, Witches and Guards books I read last year.

Now that I've sufficiently recovered from the New Year celebrations, let's see what did the humanity learn in the past month.

In chemistry, carbonic acid, H2CO3, was finally observed experimentally in solution. Speaking of simple targets, a teraherz study of water showed that dissolved ions neither weaken nor strengthen water's structure, and yet another study of caged water clusters showed how some can dry up and get rehydrated back. Another entertaining non-nano chemistry work, cyclooctatetraene was forcibly planarized and the resulting antiaromatic molecule studied experimentally. Closer to my interests, solid-state NMR can now be used to determine structures of nontrivial proteins and a new solution NMR sequence, HN(COCA)HAHB, was developed to study unfolded proteins. Finally someone seriously cares about coupling constants in protein structure analysis.

In non-nano physics, mass of top quark has been ascertained to about 1% error. And in a rather groundbreaking quantum physics news, the 40 year old hypothesis of the universality of Efimov trimers has been experimentally shown to be true last month by the Hulet atom cooling lab in Rice U (cute picture of a high-five from Efimov to Hulet there). The first Efimov trimer itself was only observed in 2006, but this group confirmed the universality property and even observed Efimov tetramers.

In biology, airflow inside dog's nose was studied: we now know that they smell with each nostril separately (like we hear sounds with each ear separately), and that they do not exhale scent when exhaling air. Microbiologists now know of a new giant virus from amoebae, although it doesn't surpass Mimivirus. Another group, while studying rock-breathing bacteria, figured out how they create biological "wires" that pass through the cell wall and conduct electricity between the cell and the rock.

Psychology had a couple if interesting findings: a group of Swedish psychologists noticed that the time it takes for a newborn mammal to walk can be exactly calculated based on adult brain mass and gestation time, and that humans are not at all exceptional in their motor development. In more practical news, NYU psychologists demonstrated on human subjects that it's possible to completely erase fear attached to a memory if it is modified at reconsolidation time, as was known to be possible in rats (if you didn't know, after we recall any memory, there's a moment a few minutes later when it is being reassembled to be put back in permanent storage, and it can be forever modified or even erased at that point). Speaking of memory, someone at Case Western studying short-term memory managed to store information in vitro, in pieces of mammalian brain tissue.

Astronomers finally found an unambiguous example of a pair-instability supernova, in another galaxy, naturally. In less distant news, Cassini was able to get a good look at the humongous planet-wide hexagonal cloud on Saturn, first spotted back in the 1980s by Voyager.

And finally, in geology, the old and somewhat disputed deep mantle plume hypothesis gained solid experimental support with a new study of Hawaiian hot spot.

Also, in case you feel guilty about drinking champagne at New Year's eve, it is just as good at preventing cardiovascular disease as red wine :)

Almost forgot, last month's animal behavior brought us the tool-using octopus and the explosive duck erections!

In overview, the first half was all right while the second half blew massive ass when my dad lost his job in  mid July (currently has a P/T as of September after dicking around for a month and a half).

Anyhow, I hope 2010 is better than this year..but the way I will spend my afternoon today is with other furries at Zack's place overnight.

See all of you next year!

So, apparently, I haven't paid my Verizon FIOS bill since I got it in September. ^..^;;

They blocked my service on Tuesday. I had to call up Wednesday morning to get all of this straightened out (and paid, in full; it was a lot).

On my side of things, I don't ever recall ONCE getting a bill in the mail. If I did (which I probably did) it was very well disguised with all the other junk I get. All I seem to find are advertisements from them on a weekly basis, even though I already have the service. I may have mistaken the bill for one of those. Oops. o..o;;

Well, it's done and over with now. I have it now that it will be on my credit card bill every month so I won't have to worry about not getting the bill. It's easier to pay off the credit card, anyway.

So, remember kids, pay your bills. That way, you can rejoice in gaming and porn!


-10 Days Until My 25th Birthday!
-6 Days Until Christmas
1 Day Until 2010!

Yes, another cat, namely Bubbles of mine passed away this month and it was today. Cause of death is unknown but for some reasons, he was losing weight at an alarming rate over the past two weeks which was strange because he was known as the fat cat in the house, nicknamed Fatfat/Fat-fat.

With him gone, the last two in this house is the 15 year old crippled Jenny and the socially retarded Callie.


By chrisdragon
Bubbles
1998-2009

I know it's only been nine years into the 21st century, not ten, but with everyone recapping the "decade", I figured I could, too!

Year 2000: hugged a lion, saw Cats on Broadway, met meetoolion in Connecticut, met jammet in Hanover


Year 2001: nuzzled a leopard, learned to drive, lived the opulent life of a dot-com programmer in San Jose, visited Disneyland for my 25th birthday.( pics cut )
Year 2002: lost the dot-com job, had a bad break-up, completed Ph.D., moved to Long Island as a biochemist.( pics cut )
Year 2003: met my future wife madamecrystal, worked a lot, met TiAMO, swam in a waterfall( pics cut )
Year 2004: had a good time and made too many friends to count( pics cut )
Year 2005: got good at DDR, changed jobs, moved to Queens, got black belt, visited Epcot in Orlando( pics cut )
Year 2006: had a good time, also helped bring li_furs together ( pics cut )
Year 2007: got married, came back to CA for a honeymoon, ended the year working in Rhode Island ( pics cut )
Year 2008: got the Jaguar, went to a nude beach for the first time, had even more good time. Yes, I am Krueger for every Halloween.( pics cut )
Year 2009: became a karate judge (under USANKF), attended an AC/DC concert, finally found Balto( pics cut )

Groggy Jews waking up from a drunk party at Capitale, a club that used to be a bank (how cliche can you get?)

It was a good time, lots of fun. First time I've really drank to blacking out, but even then it was more entering the dance floor, dancing, and then being aware of being elsewhere on the dance floor. I lost 20-40 dollars somewhere along the way, but nothing else is missing so I prolly pulled a wrong bill or something while at one of the bars. Oh well (my sister busted her camera and one of her friends lost her cellphone).

Pretty damn good time. Danced with some girls probably, though I remember some looking away at other people, so I guess there were probably a few going for the novelty of dancing with the short Jew dressed like James Bond. Fuck em. I had a good time, danced with a few girls, danced at a good number more, got pretty drunk and had fun.

Don't plan to drink that much for a while, may even take it easy at the New Years party I'm going to (but probably won't)

Not sure what movies I'll make it to today, so to the people I was talking about catching movies with, I'll keep you posted when I know what's going on.

Merry Christmas

Thank you wtf_nature for referencing this post in Discover Magazine blogs.

Eversions in barriers / from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

UPD: Yay, I beat P.Z.Myers by nearly two days in posting about this!

12/23 Never Forget