Lost voice

So I don’t know what the hell is up with my body, but it certainly seems to be able to tell the difference between weekdays and weekends. Of course it doesn’t seem to use this ability to my advantage - like making me less tired on weekdays and letting me sleep in on weekends. No, instead my body choses to act as though the work week applies to its functions as well, the most notable participant in this scheme is my immune system.

Most of the mornings last week I would wake up with a telltale tickle in my throat, that little warning that I may be about to come down with some kind of cough and cold like infection. But day after day it seemed to be the same, not getting any worse and as the week went along I figured that it was probably not going to get out of that initial stage and I’d have nothing more to deal with.

Then came Saturday. I don’t really remember what symptoms I woke with because the whole day was a blur of discomfort. But the key point is, the weekend started and I no longer had any functional immunity. My throat was really sore, my head ached, I was stuffed up, coughing and feverish. Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve felt that cold, it’s kind of funny how your body can get so hot that you actually feel cold; while you may actually be able to set fire to your wife if you hug her.

Fortunately I was able to start feeling better by Sunday, and surprise surprise, come Monday I was nearly perfect again. Except for one slight hitch, a cough/sore throat. Now in the past that wouldn’t have been so bad, but being a teacher, that sucks. Because not only does the cough tear my vocal cords to shit, but I have to teach. And after an hour and half of teaching today, I can’t really speak to anyone. So here’s to hoping I can get a voice back enough to able to teach on Thursday, otherwise I may have to get a TA or student to read the lecture for me...you know that could be fun, maybe I should fake having lost my voice just to see how that works.

Round Two

So the new semester is finally about to begin. Classes start on Tuesday, I teach on Tuesdays, I'm not quite ready yet, so nothing is new this time around. The past couple of weeks I've been busting my ass to fix what may have been one of the worse constructed lab manuals I have ever read, sadly it was the one I gave my class last semester. Now I can't be blamed for that, I was only given it, and the rest of the course material a few days before the start of class. So without a choice I just gave it to the students, thinking that it had worked in semesters past it should be fine this time around. The only reason it was fine was because the TAs must really have known their stuff in that lab, because the manual told the students nothing of use!

In one lab I had to read the procedure three times to realize that it in fact did not mention the procedure for the analysis of the unknown sample at all, which incidentally is the whole purpose of the lab. So, I worked my butt off and managed to create an actual lab manual, one that address key points, like how to do the fucking lab. Sure I could have left the lab manual as is, but if I didn't get the same TAs to teach the lab again they would be just as lost as I was when they read the instructions.

I wonder at times how long that manual was being used to teach the lab. I suspect that it had been used for some time, which is unfortunate. The benefit from this whole process though is that it has shown me that I am up to doing this job. I know my stuff well enough to be able to prepare a superior product that will better educate the students. This is comforting, since I've felt somewhat daunted by the aspect of being in this position of power and responsibility. So here's to hoping that the lab manual that I wrote actually makes sense to other people...and that it's printed in time for the beginning to the labs.

Ants in the house

So being the big geek that I am it's no real surprise that I'm familiar with the web page ThinkGeek.com. And though I've looked at all kinds of their stuff and even wondered "Why shouldn't I get a remote controlled missile launcher for my desk?" I've never actually had anything from there, until now. See a while back I spotted one item that I thought could be kind of cool to have on my office desk. Near the time that I was finishing up my Ph.D. a couple of friends and I got a fish tank and many colourful fish for our office. It was a nice little distraction from time to time, but not something that I want to have to deal with again, it was far too much work to clean and feed the fish. Which is why an ant farm is so perfect for a desk pet!

Ok, it sounds kind of lame but check this ant farm out. If you don't bother to read the details there I don't know why you'll read them here, but let me just say that I think it's kind of cool that NASA developed a polymer for the ants to live in, eat and drink and that's transparent. So I let Deirdre know that I would like one for Christmas, and surprise, surprise, I got one (from one of her sisters, it was a secret santa thing). Of course it came with the caveat, I was not to fill it with ants while it was in the house.

Well, I ordered the ants, yes, you can do that on-line now too, and they arrived here, because I didn't want them lost in the receiving department at the university. But they arrived on a Friday, after several days in the mail. So clearly releasing them into their new home was the only humane thing to do. Incidentally, you ship ants in a small plastic test tube sandwiched between foam in an envelope.

Despite her reluctance Deirdre seems to have taken a bit of a liking to the ants, I think she's been watching them more than me. But they truly are fascinating to watch. It took them only a couple of days to tunnel what you see in the pictures below (and they barely did any work in the first day or so). I am concerned by the piles of "dirt" they are making at the walls though. I think they may be hatching a plan to escape. I'll keep you posted if anything develops. I have a few more pictures, including one with the internal lights turned on, but Blogger is being stupid and I can't load them up now.

Learning something new

So the other day I learned something that was rather revolutionary to me. And seeing as I'm not a complete idiot I'm pretty sure that there are a few of you out there who would have been surprised as well. It turns out that I really didn't know much about shaving. Now once again, I want to remind you all that I'm not a complete idiot, I know enough about shaving not to go against the grain and the other common sense rules. What I didn't know though was what kind of a difference a brush could make.

I started using a Body Shop shaving cream a while back. I thought it was ok, but nothing terribly great and I didn't find that I was getting as close a shave as I could with the ubiquitous Gillette can of cream. So I reserved the Body Shop stuff for shaving my legs, it lasted better when wet in the shower compared to the Gillette stuff. I've been happy with this but I always kind of wondered why it never performed as well on my face as I thought it could. Then the other day, since I was running out of the Body Shop shave cream, I went out to pick up some more. This time though I opted out for the larger tub of cream instead of the smaller tube. It was just more economical this way. But I also decided to pick up a brush as well, it was on sale so why not give it a try.

Of course when I got home I was excited to see if using the brush to lather up the shaving cream would prove to be some kind of miraculous improvement in my shaving experience...it wasn't. But then again, how the hell are you supposed to use a shaving brush? I think the only person I've ever seen use one was Bugs Bunny, and that was usually as part of an elaborate disguise, so somehow I don't think he counts as an authority. So I resorted to the trusty, all knowing, yet often wrong, internet for guidance. In doing so I came upon a rather detailed web page dedicated to exploring shaving, where I learned what would appear to be the proper way to use a shaving brush and shaving cream.

And as it turns out, the brush makes a HUGE difference! I've never had a shave this good before. So if you have to shave regularly I seriously suggest ditching the can of fluorescent green or blue shit that is way over priced for the quality (using a brush you need almost no shaving cream, the tub will last me over a year). And if you don't want to resort to buying stuff from the body shop (or want a proper badger hair brush) here's a web page with everything you could ever dream of.

My next step will be to ditch the Gillette cartridge razor for an old-school safety razor. It seems that shaving technology really isn't something that has improved with age, the new conveniences really don't make things better.

Magic in the air

So every now and then I get a bit of surprise living out here. I see something so unusual and seemingly out of place that I'm left wondering if it was there all along and I just never noticed it before. I had just such an incident this morning while driving to the post office. On the horizon in front of me was something new, a chain of mountains!

It's so odd to suddenly be reminded that I'm living in a basin surrounded by mountains, simply because we almost never see them. From where we are in Newport Beach it's only on rare clear days that we can see the chain of mountains to the north, and that's really shocking because it's not like they are all that far away (only about 40 km). I really wish I had pictures to show how utterly they disappear in the everyday smog. I figure that the only reason that I could see them today was because there is less traffic around the holidays, though it may also have something to do with the storms on the way.

Either way it's a stunning realization that the air is so polluted here that snow capped mountains can vanish. Yet, the EPA does not think that California should regulate the fuel efficiency standards of the vehicles in the state. It really is stunning that the state is going to sue the EPA to allow it to control what everyone knows to be toxic emissions. I just did a quick check of the EPA web page to make sure that the E stands for environment and not economic, because they really don't seem to be acting according to their mission.

And as a chemist I have to say that it's just a little scary to see how this kind of evidence of how much crap is in the air down here. So personally I'm all for ending this magic act of hiding mountains in thick air. I know I can't speak for the rest of the people out here, but I certainly would love to have the mountains actually in view all the time. It's certainly a lot better then an odd brownish skyline.