mac and i go hiking

click here to go to the beginning of the story, then scroll up to follow the posts chronologically. remember, you can get a bigger image if you click on a picture.

i was wet to the thigh

it wasn't too cold out, so being wet wasn't a hardship.

these boots deserve an homage. years ago, GP convinced me to buy them from sierra trading post. amazingly, they fit perfectly and are fantastically comfortable. today alone, they probably prevented lots of damage to my ankles.

mac was wet all over. i'll be surprised if he isn't sore. his feet looked ok the whole way.

this was the pay-off. unfortunately, when i was at its feet, the spray was everywhere and i didn't want to risk the camera from there. so this picture misses a lot of what it looked like. also, it misses how amazingly loud it was. standing at the base, the wind and cold took away my breath.

we forded all kinds of stuff that looked like this. mac was a hero and a trooper. i learned a lot about hiking in a river. we crossed the river at least eight times. at first i tried to cross it on trees and stuff. at one point it was impossible, and we had to wade across. after that, i decided my camera faced better odds with me wading across the river than with me trying to cross more precariously but drier.

The hiking story begins here

this is the river in millard canyon. it normally is much more tame than this. it's swollen by our recent rain.

mac and i went for a hike a mile or so up the river to the falls. i have never been before. on our way there, we passed through the campsite where i stayed after i had accepted caltech's offer, when i came down to look for an apartment. it was the first time i'd gone camping by myself.

My gray hair!

Seriously, you have to click on this picture to see the larger version. My hair is finally ready for its closeup. I think it has a friend, but the friend isn't as photogenic. If I have a whole head of hair like that, it's going to fantastic. I'll shoot for my Andy Warhol look. The hair is not only white, it's very rough in texture and kinky. Having had smooth straight hair my whole life, I'm ready for something new. I wouldn't mind waiting until I have a tenure-track position before going gray though.

When setbacks don't overwhelm

This morning I planned to go by the lab and transfer some bacterial cells from a small container into a larger container with more growth medium. What would normally have taken 10 minutes took 45 and a series of alternative routes. The cells are usually grown in a shaker, something that looks like a chest-refrigerator with a window on the door, as above (with someone's idea of a scientist using it). It keeps the cells at a set temperature, often 37 degrees celsius, and rotates your flasks, usually at 250 rpms. I don't know why bacterial cells like to be grown at such vigorous rotation; it seems pretty violent to me.

The shaker that belongs to our lab was full of flasks from another lab. When I went to look at a shaker on the floor below us, it was broken, clearing up the mystery of why our shaker was full of another lab's stuff. Using other people's equipment is essential to smooth operations, and we have used theirs before in a similar situation just last week. I asked a bacteria maven in our lab for advice, and she loaded me up with adapters for the flasks and sent me to a shaker farther away that is known not to have adapters for the size flasks I was using (2 liter). Then we couldn't find a screwdriver to swap out the adapters. A screwdriver! After I had decided to try to use a too-big flat head screwdriver, I found the screwdriver hoarder and the appropriate screwdriver. Stuff like this makes me want to emulate HC and build up my own supplies of things. I carry a decent set of stuff from home in my purse, but I was just walking bad dog - I had keys and poop bags and that's it.

Next, I went to the shaker, which involved taking a cart with my two 2-liter flasks, adapters, screws, screwdrivers and my emergency brandy two floors down on the elevator. Just kidding about the brandy. Our adapters didn't fit in their shaker. I went to the lab whose shaker it is. They didn't know where the adapters were, but eventually we found them. Then, I installed the adapters and it worked. If this had happened yesterday, I would have folded at the first setback. I'm doing better.

the mood tailspin persists

ug. i had a helpful talk with HC today, but depression is on me like a fog. i got up and swam, and i've been productive in the lab, and i've eaten well, but still with the well of sorry behind my eyes. still with the worst possible interpretations of everything. still with the grim outlook. still with the difficulty reaching out to people.

rule #7034

don't wait until you know enough to feel comfortable doing something for the first time. when you do it for the first time, you shouldn't feel comfortable. prioritize learning the things you really must know, and then go experiment.

this is a very hard rule for me. i just spent a lot of time trying to figure out how i could copy files with long filenames to the file server. apparently no one else was having this problem. the documentation says that the program is supposed to support copying files with long filenames from windows. finally, i went into the configuration file for the server after making a copy of it to revert to if i broke things, and deleted the entire section on how it handles file names. viola!

me vs unix

a few times i've tried to install linux on spare computers. recently i bought a $200 computer from outpost.com with lindows installed. i'm finding it pretty simple; they try to replicate a windows interface. there were a couple of problems that i couldn't resolve without digging into text files. my plan is for it to be my file server; i'm leaving it in my office.

it has taken a while to get the file sharing going. the lindows box runs samba. i was unable to access it without giving it a fixed IP address. the next problem was that i couldn't restrict access. that's the first thing that took me into the configuration files. now i'm having issues with long file names; i can't copy a long file name from a windows computer to the lindows computer.

once i get the dvd drive installed in the lindows box, i should have a pretty great backup system. i'll probably have to experiment to get it running smoothly. my goal is to have backups immediately available, and also archived to dvd and offsite. i also want a copy of all current data on both of my windows computers, so that i can use it when i'm not online. i'm online almost all the time, and i plan to use the active files directly from the lindows computer. this should solve my problem of trying to share files from home and the lab, a problem which i mostly solve now by keeping all my files on my laptop and walking that back and forth to work.

McDonald's opens a new restaurant every four hours

today was dominated by an unfortunate mood tailspin, surely the result of a combination of missing my recently seen good friends and the (for me) general stress of socializing. hopefully tomorrow will be better.

spinster pointed out that mcdonald's has trademarked "i am asian" and has a website at http://www.i-am-asian.com/ with text like this:

Whether we're celebrating one of our cultural holidays or enjoying a Big Mac sandwich, we're helping make the magic mix called America become even richer. And McDonald's is right there with us, everyday! We are proud of our cultural heritage.

remember, don't forget to acknowledge mcdonald's trademark any time you use "i am asian." oh, did i forget? where's that TM symbol, anyway?

kj and mac

Hunter S. Thompson (1939-2005)

from boingboing:

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - HST

The guy was a addict and a genius. I love his resilience, his ability to maintain his criticism at full volume year after year. From my own experience with angry addicts, I fear that the addiction and the resilience are interrelated. It is uncomfortable to be so angry for so long. Surely booze and other substances mask the discomfort, as well as generating their own tendencies toward anger. It's something we've seen with other great artists: madness or addiction, or both, limiting the impact of social marginalization, and facilitating access to creativity, vision, and righteousness. The social marginalization can even facilitate the artists' drive, with madness or addiction transmuting disconnection into persecution. I believe that we as a culture benefit from having artists and firebrands around. The question of personal cost is tricky. Do we lose artists in rehab, through medication? Do artists have access to rehab and medication? I have a friend who doesn't want to be happy, who says that his discomfort with the world feels authentic. I know that when I am not depressed, I am more resilient to the slings and arrows. Surely that resilience, the absence of extended meditation on the sorrows, limits my ability to address them.

Here's another quote, from his 2003 book "Kingdom of Fear."

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the
whole world--a nation of bullies and bastards who
would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not
just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with
hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and
that is how history will judge us...No redeeming
social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or
we'll kill you.

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who
among us can be happy and proud of having this
innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine?
These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and
fooled by stupid rich kids like George Bush?

They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali
locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for
all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the
American character. They are the racists and hate
mongers among us--they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss
down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it
or not. Fuck them.

Well, Hunter, goodbye. You have my thanks and my sorrow for your pain.

A 24 hour trip to the Bay Area

The best place to start is here. Don't click on anything until the page is fully loaded and has moved the view away from the top of the page. Navigate up from there.

The rain was fierce from here on in.

The approach to Tejon pass, about 90 miles from LA.

The car doesn't have a name yet.

Later I stopped and took this picture. I was on top of a hill. It was identified by a "scenic overlook" sign on the highway. There was a semi-trailer and a pickup truck on the hill. Neither showed signs of life. I didn't feel unsafe, but It made me think of the luxury of traveling with a big dog.

Hey, whose car is that? It's mine! I wanted an Element with manual transmission, all wheel drive, side airbags, and silver paint with blue panels. Apparently people in LA don't want to drive stick shift cars. The the only Element in the state that matched my specs was in Berkeley. I flew up cheaply on Saturday afternoon, bought the car, socialized and drove back the next morning. Happily, I got to see Galen and Natalie, kj, and Mike, along with a little bit of International Bear Rendezvous weekend. Mike took me to Lone Star. I was the only woman at Lone Star, among probably 150 or so men. Being, as Mike says about himself, a hundred pounds lighter than everyone else in the room sure made me feel little and feminine.