Iceland Spar

I walked into lab yesterday morning and noticed the clocks were set back an hour.  Could it be true?  Did I just gain an extra hour to use productively in the day?  I’ve been out of the loop in terms of current events and never actually pay attention to when exactly “falling back” is.  Usually, there’s no great consequence to be an hour early to something rather than an hour late.  Generally, I trust the lab clocks since they’re all synchronized and my university is pretty responsible about these matters.  However, when I started up my computer, the times didn’t match.  My sleek and reliable Mac reported the old time. I was slightly disappointed, but didn’t care enough to research which was telling the truth.  Later on, my mother (the ultimate source on the subject) told me the clocks change next weekend.  Where am I going with this seemingly mundane tidbit?  (more…)

Got a chance to see Off-Leash Area’s new show on Friday. If you read this and think “Damn, that sounds amazing. Why was Laura so delayed with her insightful review?” never fear. Not only do they have shows this upcoming weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but they’ve added more shows! Friday and Saturday, November 9th and 10th.

Off-Leash area is very difficult to sell to your friends. Every time I want to go to a show, I find myself in the position of persuading people to come with me. Maybe it’s me, but the conversations tend to always go something like this: (more…)

Every week or so, when Mark and I get together to try drinks, I tell him I’m going to start posting about cocktails, or booze in general. I tell him he should get an account and join me, and then he waffles. Hopefully this will end soon.

Mark and I entered a cocktail crafting competition a few weeks ago, for pear cocktails. After mixing the cocktail I was working on dozens of times, in full and half batches, I felt a little burned out on booze.

Then Mark showed me his hot buttered rum recipe. Cue the Godfather quote. (more…)

Last week, the space shuttle Discovery passed its pre-flight overview. Concerns about the shuttle wings were widely reported in the news. After each somewhat violent re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere, there is a small loss of the coating on the leading edge of the wing. However, this loss has not amounted to any sort of overall degradation of the wing, so the shuttle will launch as scheduled on October 23. NASA engineers did recommend replacing three of the wing panels at some point, so Discovery might be sidelined for a while after its return.

And in other, more bizarre space news… (more…)

You might think small talk in lab revolves around the most recent scientific breakthrough (It’s Nobel week!! Eeeee!!!) or the latest micropipettor improvement (“you know, the ergonomic design of my last micropipettor really made those serial dilutions for the Bradford assay zip by”). Well, frequently it does. (I’ll save you the breath: “nerds.”) On Thursday mornings in my lab, however, the conversation centers on trashy TV. Wonderfully delicious, shamefully melodramatic, gasp-inducing pearls of guilty television pleasure. What shows? America’s Next Top Model and Gossip Girl, of course. The CW’s new Wednesday night line-up has quickly become our gush-worthy, ridiculously entertaining fountain of water cooler talk. (heh) Well, lab bench-side talk, I should say. (more…)

Two more Minneapolis shows that deserve your attention! The caveat here is that my endorsement comes entirely from the presence of people I know and like being in said shows, rather than an objective analysis of the theater companies in question. Nevertheless, both shows sound interesting, I’ll be there, and the people I know are redonkously talented (it’s a technical, theater term). (more…)

When I was trying to decide on a password for my WordPress account, I noticed the helpful “password meter” which gauges the strength of your password of choice, both with a little colored bar that fills up incrementally, and an assessment of your current password’s merits. My default password received a “Bad”.
Really? Sure, it’s only six characters, but nobody’s ever guessed it (Yes, my name is six letters, but I’ll bet you that’s usually pretty close to the top of the list). The phishers on myspace have yet to successfully convert me into an automated Webcam advertisement or Macy’s gift card dispenser.
But apparently my proposed password is as hard to guess as “12345”, which also earns a “Bad”.

So I decided, lead by WordPress Password Consultancy, to choose a password more suitable to their liking.

Let’s go back to the number example. What if my password was one thing over and over again, the theory being the same as rock/paper/scissors. (more…)

I finished reading Special Topics in Calamity Physics a few weeks ago, but wanted to let it simmer before I wrote anything about it. There are some books about which I rave while I read them. This overwhelming positive feeling will continue for a week or two after I have finished. The book then blends with the great mass of books, no longer special.

There are a few books that buck this trend, The Master and Margarita being an example. I wanted to see if Calamity Physics would loose a little of its luster when I had more time to think about it. Now, over a month later, I can only say, maybe. (more…)

This weekend, I drove about three and half hours upstate to the “Cry of the Loon” lodge, for the annual Creative Writing department September retreat (and, this is the second to last retreat EVAH, which is sad). The cabins were right on the lake: i.e., the lake was mere steps away, unlike my family’s cabin in Canada, where the lake is located down a perilous slope. Minnesota is, famously, the land of a thousand lakes (more…)