Straight Plurrin

I think out of all the semesters I have had so far, this has been by far the most fun and it seemed like time just flew buy.  I have had a lot of projects to work on and just meeting new people in my food science area made it much better than being in biochemistry.  I really can't believe this semester is almost over.  All my lab classes are done, but I still have studying for finals and a paper to wrap up.  Dead week is next week and I have two exams somehow, but at least this helps spread out the studying a little bit more.  Well now it is time to get some stuff done and grab my coffee.  Hope everyone has a nice productive or relaxing weekend.

Well, Lately I've been super busy with school, working on my new, well new to me MDD G4 PowerMac, and in all the other times been super reluctant to update this site.  Yes I know it has been forever, but I have been very content lately.  I am absolutely loving my PowerMac, I have it loaded with with about a half a terabyte of hard drives, DVD burner, and a reader/CD burner on the bottom, my ATI 9800 Pro (which overheated when installed but seems to be fine now), and I was able to hack Aperture to work on my mac because apparently it doesn't like G4s even though it exceeds minimum requirements.

I think it is wonderful having a computer that is around 5 years old as my main computer as my toshiba cries in the corner, not that the computer is bad but Vista has killed it for me.  Let me tell you a tale of this Monday.  I wake up in the morning and open itunes which takes about 2 minutes to get going.  Well I guess Vista didn't want to connect to my router and refreshing the IP address didn't work, so I restarted it.  It seriously took 15 minutes because it wanted to do updates without asking me. After I get it back up and running I refresh all my podcasts and updates for my iPhone which is another 10 minutes, then syncing for some reason took about a half an hour.  I cannot leave my house without podcasts so I ended up being 10 min late to classes that morning.  As soon as I left I tried to start my morning podcast and I realized that it wiped all my music.  Hmm, okay that really sucks because I just wasted all that time for nothing.  After that I tried to import the audio again and apparently Vista bricked the phone.  I just put the iPhone in DFU mode and restored it at that point.  I absolutely annoyed at Vista and dispise its existance.

I have lately been working on my group Food Science and Food Nutrition projects and doing research for those and my Anthropology of the ancient Andes class.  I have been decently busy and never really got the chance to crunch out a post and to make up for it I have some awesome halloween photos of my dogs!  I'll try to make these more regular.

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A few days ago I helped out a little baby bird, who could not fly, or even get out of a dugout for my neighbors basement window.  I decided to help it out and I picked it up and put it in the middle of my back yard.  The bird's family came by and talked to it then decided to fly backup to the tree, which the little one could not get back up into.  Well I decided to walk up to the baby bird who was just sitting there and then suddenly the little bird decided he would fly away from me, directly into the middle of a pond.  Luckily I had a paddle boat and was able to get to him in time.  He actually dipped his head under the water and sucked up water.  When I arrived he was not breathing, but I have raised ducks before and knew a swinging motion (while supporting the neck) which I used to get the fluid out of his lungs.  He started gasping for air and was shivering cold.  I brought him back to the house and dried him off with a hair dryer and fed him some yolk from an egg so he could have some protein for energy because he was not doing so well.  I kept the little bird over night in the garage with a heat lamp so that he would be safe from the raccoons and other animals which might have eaten him for a little snack.  The next morning I released him.  He flew a little further than he could before but he still needed work.  I never saw him again but it was experience for both of us.  He's one lucky bird to have his life saved twice in one day, and I felt pretty good giving him another chance at life.

Unboxing that media player for the first time

The hardest part is always that

Impenetrable plastic outer skin

Each item inside

Individually wrapped and padded

Cords twisty tied together

So perfectly

It takes so much work

To get to your new best friend

So many manuals

Spanish, French, Japanese

And oh yes, English!

As of now your friend is soulless

It’s time to fix that

Connect it into your computer

The screen illuminates for the first time

Driver successfully installed

Charging up for the first time

Loading all of your digital life onto it

This process seems like an eternity

Powering it up and playing with the interface

Amazed at the navigation

Screen looks amazing

But the second you push that play button

Smacked in the face with

Hissy treble

no bass

mids aren’t any better

After spending a few hundred dollars

Those bastards ended up skimped on your product

Damned white headphones

A Ferrari Enzo with a Honda Civic engine

It is simply amazing how some people live with it

And yet oh so sad, since they have no clue what they are missing

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This is a poem that I wrote for my creative writing class, I really liked it so just thought I would share it with all of you.  It was basically explaining how I feel about really expensive and nice players coming with poor quality headphones, seriously if you spend hundreds of dollars on a player, they could at least throw you some decent sounding headphones.  I've been spoiled, I use Sony MDR-EX90LP headphones with my 5.5gen ipod, and also my Sony NWZ-A816 (which actually came with decent headphones +1 for Sony).  I personally even think the Sony mp3 player has better sound quality, and has really good equalizers compared to the ipod, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who needs a little cheap mp3 player for running or whatever.  I also spend quite a bit of money on my speaker sets for my apartment, high end altec lancing, and bose, and then the car is outfitted with the infinity perfect series speakers all around.  The white little ipod headphones never fit my ear, always falling out and not producing good enough sound quality for me to even want to use them once.  I would almost say that ipods should not come with headphones.  High quality audio is a drug, and once you have had a taste of it, everything else isn't even worth listening to.  I guess I am a bad influence, but I thought you all should know the truth.

    Coming home from my physics exam, feeling pretty good, I decided to kick back and have a beer.  No I wasn't drunk, I had to finish my MA 162 (calc) homework.  I ended up finishing it around midnight when I was packing up my bag for tomorrow, I tried to get a book out a pile of papers/binders/books that totaled about a foot and a half high.  As you could imagine the skyscraper of my college career fell over onto the laptop which was sitting on the desk next to it. One of the books in the pile ended up hitting the right side of the keyboard, making the enter key fly off (broke a tab that held it on and now it doesn't sit correctly anymore).  This is just my luck of course it being the enter key, it couldn't be the shift key, which I have two of, or any other key....After the massacre of one of my most important keys, the rest of the avalanche shoved my poor laptop into my beer, dumping rest of my Samuel Adam's Boston Lager into the left side of my keyboard, going into the fan/processor area.  I absolutely freaked, and as the computer shut itself off, I feared the worst. 
   
    Immediate surgery was in order.  First was the detox, sitting the laptop on its side open to drain all the liquid out of the fan area.  Then the removal of all 14 screws on the bottom, one under the battery, and one for the cd drive.  The top fascia covering the speakers was then ripped off, leading to the 4 screws holding the monitor on, 2 screws to remove the now sticky/damaged keyboard.  Lifting off the top of the case, the fan was soaked, so I tried to dry it with paper towels. I then removed the HDD, and then moved on to disconnecting all the connectors for keyboard, wifi antenna, right and left speaker, fan, biometric reader, touch pad, and monitor.  I finally got the motherboard free and propped it up at an angle on the edge of the laptop frame.  A wipedown of all components was completed, and then air dry time.  I then plugged the fan back in and decided to boot without anything else connected.  The fan started up!  I let this dry for about 15 minutes like this and then connected the screen to see if it really still worked.  The monitor worked! Next step connect HDD, keyboard, touch pad, speakers, and hopefully seeing the windows startup screen.
    
    With my laptop in pieces, seeing the "Windows has recovered from a critical error" was one of the best experiences I have ever had with Windows errors, or maybe even the best Vista experience (huge error on Microsoft's part).  It is now fully assembled, and fully functional (except for the enter key and slight hint of beer smell)  Thank God they designed this laptop with the processor on the bottom. 

Patient: Toshiba Satellite A205-S4787

Symptoms: Concussion, broken enter key, alcohol poisoning

Owner's Symptoms: Mild heart attack

Treatment: Complete disassembly/drying and cleaning parts

Complications: Enter key still doesn't sit properly (maybe I can rig it up somehow)

Complete surgery time: 2 hours
(I have modded this laptop so I pretty much know it forwards and backwards)

Results: Up and running

Trying out Dashwire on my blackjack was a huge success, and this is definitely a great way to get your phone information on the web.  It downloads pictures, videos, contacts, callers, text messages, and more, in real time.  It also integrates Callwave into it which is another great program (voice to text voicemail management). Recommended for anyone who wants to manage their phone content online.  Make sure you have an unlimited data plan if you use this because it could go over your limit really fast.