Of Molecular Turtles and Other Oddities

Pollyanna says Hello to Ab Lincoln

2009-02-24T16:50:00.000-08:00

I imagine everyone has forgotten about this blog which is well and good by me as I'm writing this for myself rather than anyone else. I find myself with a lot more time on my hands than typical and need to remind myself of a few things.

I tend to think that my life is somehow scripted and sometimes I find myself wondering how it all comes together so elegantly and with such poetry. Interestingly, I find that the rule of thumb for ethics, which I've heard is do nothing you would not be proud to see on the headline of of a newspaper is my way of life despite the challenges I face. Up until this point in my life I can say I have not done anything that I would hesitate to speak about. The value of the honesty with others and most importantly myself is a guiding principle. I intend to live by this standard as I do not have the capacity to be proud of the person I am if I did not. I could not say I am a good man if I did not. In short I would not be me, I would be lost.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

2007-10-08T16:40:00.001-07:00

Gez, the funny thing is when you really want to blog you never have the time. Right now I am working about 11.5 hours a day then on Monday and Tuesday class for three hours. The rest of my time is spent with a wonderful lady and doing assignments. Hopefully I will have time to blog about some things that have been on my mind lately. Hope all you out there are doing well. I look forward to reading blogs in December.

Ramblings of a Tired Mind

2007-08-13T18:47:00.000-07:00

The time of year I look most forward to has arrived once again. No I’m not talking about the return of Los Cariñositos (The Spanish version of carebears) although they do have a new person doing the voice much less interesting than in the old days but let me know what you think..

Aside: In university I often watched the intro to of Los Cariñositos before going to school. I must say there are few better ways of starting a day.

What I am referring to is back country camping. This is one of the few things besides seeing the lovely Nikki that I really look forward to with all my soul. This sounds ridiculously silly but let’s look into the background of how this came to be.

A few years ago I was going out with a girl, much less wonderful than Nikki in oh so many ways. We had gone out for about 3 years and we usually saw each other at least once a day and when we didn’t we spoke on the phone endless

Note: I dislike speaking on the phone for more than 37.23 minutes a day to a single person.

Now at this time of year several years ago I realized something important, mainly that I didn’t want to marry this girl … ever. In retrospect I don’t think she really did anything wrong just little things like not realize how great I was which was why it was so hard to break up with her. After this I needed to disappear and think about things and my good friend Ruben came up with back country camping. (He’s a good fellow, although rather confused these days)

I won’t bother boring you with the details or more likely boring me since I already know them and am probably the only person that will read a post this long at a later date.

The great thing that I love about it is that I get to push myself to my limits. It makes you really realize how few things you need to be happy and gives you a true appreciation for everything. Also it teaches you self reliance, it’s just you and your coterie and the wilderness so you better be confident in yourself and your abilities. Another great thing is it really gives you time to think and reflect about everything with no distractions.

Note: It was at this time that I decided to never ever be with someone who I was not totally and utterly happy with. Also to never be with someone who does not totally appreciate me and does not treat me nicely (too bad it took so long to realize this)

Note: I have now found such a lady.

One of my favourite things about this yearly trip is I get to do it with my two best friends, as far as I’m concerned that’s pretty much all I need in terms of friends these days. Don’t get me wrong I have many people who I could have fun with but things wouldn’t be the same without Ruben and Nikki.

Note: I miss Nikki so much these days. I’m really looking forward to seeing her for 6 consecutive days. This is the best part of this years trip.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that even though some things may not be perfect like it may rain, there may be bugs, it could be cold I look forward to it because it lets me do the things that matter. Spent time with people I care about, think, push myself and use my wits.

I Returned Rejoice Rejoice

2007-08-13T17:39:00.000-07:00

As you may or may not have noticed I disappeared from the world of blogging for a while. Thank you to CP and Nicole for the request for a return, that was super nice.

The short reason for me going AWOL was that it started to be more like a job than something fun. I felt like I had to do it on a specific day and had to have something interesting to say. While I am a wealth of information spewing it forth in a coherant manner can be difficult at times. Also there were points when I wanted to blog but thought I should save it for the end of the week.

After that break I now feel like I can once again dive in and have fun. I’ll update when I feel like it and not when I don’t. Hopefully you’ll find it interesting but I think I’ll be treating this mostly as a place to put my thoughts. Most people have a paper journal or something, as I did but most people also have a memory span of more than 3 seconds, as my poor gal pal Nikki can attest to. This means I have lost my journal yet again. Thank God for google and bookmarks or I would have forgotten this site.

The Great Cabury Cream Egg Experiment Poll

2007-05-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Greetings and Salutations one and all. This is going to be a rather brief post, mostly for the sake that I would hate to go two entire weeks without posting. Things have been rather hectic and rushed of late, however, I should have time for a more relaxed and perhaps fun post next week.

In honour of the one year anniversary of me and blogging I will pay homage to one of my original posts. Yes you may have guessed it, the great Cadbury cream egg experiment. Please leave a comment with your idea of what I should attempt to make with cream eggs. There are a few restrictions 1) Egg’s can not be the sole or main ingredient i.e scrambled eggs. 2) It shouldn’t cause any damage to cookware. Other than that it’s up to you folks. If you’d like to supply a recipe all the better.

Step Away From The Animals

2007-04-20T18:31:00.001-07:00

What a great response from all you folks in bloggy land. I have to thank you all for your support against the axis of stupidity. I promise you that we will win the war against idiocy and stupidity; as a matter of fact I’m doubling the amount of troops in this war at this very moment.

There were two things that I think I would like to talk about this week one is the goose terrorizing my company and the second is Shark Water. Since I don’t want to make this too long I’ll stick with shark water. Please avert your eyes and get a family member, neighborhood child, or trained pet with opposable thumbs to scroll down to the next section if you don’t want me to spoil the movie for you. Let me preface this by telling everyone that I love animals, particularly conserving them. I was in fact going to do my masters in salmon conservation or primate conservation but biotech pulled me away.

Now the brief story is this guy (Rob Stewart) has an unnatural some might say unholy obsession with sharks. In fact one of the opening scenes in the movie happens to be him underwater with a shark projecting out from his crotch and knee while he strokes it. Now I can understand the obsession and I understand why he presented things but it seemed to be filled with hype and not substance. At one point the movie shows he has a “brush with the ravages of “fleshing-eating disease”, I think he’s in Colombia. He keeps saying that there is this little red line creeping up his leg and such. I was hoping to see this little red line but it did not make an appearance, he also was having a jolly time in the hospital (I always thought flesh eating disease caused the limb to become swollen and red but help me out here S). Now let’s for a moment assume this was the case, the first thing I would do is get treated, probably hop on a plain for a developed country. But no our hero, decides he needs to stay because he loves sharks and if he leaves it might endanger his mission and he would rather lose his leg. Now how about we save the leg and come back to save sharks Rob! (His leg remains attached due to both him willing the disease away. I think it probably had more to do with the antibiotics myself)

My other point of irritation with this movie is the portrayal and information presented on sharks. He keeps saying sharks are perfect and that they have not changed at all in their existence. Both of these statements is wrong, different shark species have come and gone it’s their body structure that has remained unchanged. He also seems to have the assumption that sharks are his buddies and that they won’t hurt him because he’s lowered his heart rate showing he’s not scared. It’s really sad but this guy reminds me of “Grizzly Man”. This poor gentleman thought the bears were his frienda. He says they won’t hurt him and that if anyone else did this they would die in a documentary I recently watched. In the background of the shot is an arrow pointing to the spot that shows where a grizzly killed them. There are also factual inconsistencies that irritated me but I’ll stop to keep it brief.

Now for the interactive section of our show! If you’ve seen the movie tell me what you think and why. If you haven’t seen the movie are there any out there these days, fill me in. Lastly, what movies are you looking forward to? Myself there’s a documentary festival here in Toronto that I plan to attend and the movie I’m ashamed of looking forward to is Spiderman 3. Really who doesn’t think Spiderman is great!

Of Morons and Other Oddities

2007-04-15T11:57:00.001-07:00

It’s been a couple of long and hectic weeks hence the lack of a posts in the last week but I really would like to thank everyone for their birthday wishes. A few of you wanted to know how I essentially got by without a birth certificate and the short answer is that I filled out some forms, got other people to fill out forms, showed proof I was baptised in Canada and then got issued one.

Now I could (bore)regale you with stories of woe and peril from work but I thought I would (save you the boredom)hold you in suspense. Instead I will share an experience from my weekend. The most memorable part of the weekend had to be spending it with the Pie but not only because she’s fabulous, but because her roommate, Turdington, is a moron. You see, she had asked Pie if she could have a few people over for the evening since it was her birthday. Pie, being the gem that she is said okay and was even nice enough to say that a couple of people could stay over as long as they were not obnoxious. Pie, then went to work and I read and watched some T.V in her room. Her adorable little cat made it’s way out of the room and I decided to go get something to drink and waded through the crowd of about 15-20 people to find one of the them locking the cat in its cage and teasing/poking it. At this point I wanted to confront th individual but I thought it may make the Pie’s living situation worse than it would be upon her return. I then took the cat and spent the night holed up in her room.

The crowd decided to leave at some point to hit up a club which just so happened to be shortly before I went to pick up the Pie. Upon my emerging from the room the place was a total disaster, I cleaned up a little bit so that the Pie would not have to wade through peoples crap and went to pick her up. Upon our return the pie was upset due to the state of things but we still managed to spend some time together and catch up on the week’s events.

Fast forward to 3 a.m when Turdington stumbles in with her friend, boyfriend and 2 other (pricks)young males. They spend several minutes shouting and saying things like the Pie can go fuck herself and suck a dick. The reasons for this were and still remain unknown as we happened to be asleep and had not interacted with them. This was said by one of the (pricks) young males several times. My underestimate is approximately 50 times with Turdington doing little if anything to quite them down. When we think that perhaps they have quieted down the one prick young man starts pounding on the roommate’s door telling her b/f to “murder” her repeatedly. They later start pounding on the door asking about a cab that was supposed to come. The cab eventually comes and they leave at 4: 30 a.m, leaving the door open in the middle of the night in the process.

However, they returned at 6:45 a.m pounding at the door screaming why the f the door is locked. They continue this for a long period of time before the roommate decides to let them in. At one point the cat gets out of the room and the one (prick)young man yells kill it. This leads the pie to rush out and grab the cat and confine it again to the room. Later around 9 a.m the roommate runs into Pie and Pie tells Turdington that she’s not happy with the way things were and the one guy is an idiot. He the(prick)young man and they leave. I was forbidden from interacting with the intruders as it was thought that this might result in an escalation of matters (this was indeed a good idea).

So as you can imagine both myself and Pie are very tired. These events lead me to ask you folks some questions that might have interesting answers. Do you or your friends find yourself hurting or plotting the death of small animals when you get drunk? How do you act when your drunk, myself I tend to smile and laugh more but have never wanted to kill a cat. What can one do when their roommate brings home idiots? What is the worst thing you’ve done while drunk? Do you tend to spend time with people like this? At what age is one to old to have friends like that? When did murder become a synonym for sex? When they guy yelled out that he was going to kill the cat did that mean he was going to have sex with it or maybe just go to thirdbase? Why the heck do I say one so often?

On another note what the heck is with this stall in the bowling alley I went to yesterday? Could there possibly be a good reason to have both a stall and toilet beside one another? Perhaps it has something to do with male bonding.

Strange New World

2007-04-01T15:00:00.000-07:00

I would really like to thank everyone for their happy birthday wishes. This year’s birthday was better than most except it was distinctly lacking in the Pea factor. Also I would like to give a special thank you to Ruben who was kind enough to take me to the Keg for dinner on the day itself. Another interesting outing was the day afterwards when my class mates were also nice enough to take me out for drinks, although I think they were secretly hoping that after enough shots I would self destruct. For those of you that were waiting for an update as to whether I got a chocolate cake my family got me a cappuccino cake, which I consider a victory as it’s somewhere in between chocolate and vanilla. Luckily Nikki, came through in a big way with not only a chocolate cake but with one covered with Cadbury mini eggs. I had a great weekend with her and can’t wait for my next one!

Now due to popular demand I will briefly go over my shady origins. It is my belief to this day, that I was either adopted or stolen from an affluent Jewish family. The evidence for this has been prevalent throughout my life.

Exhibit 1:
Most people feel as though they are very different from others in their family and this is also the case with me. This ranges from things like height, where I am taller than the other members in my family, to my interests. Strangely, almost everyone I meet thinks that I have a Jewish heritage rather than an Italian one. In fact at one point I went out with a Jewish girl and she had assumed that I was Jewish.

Exhibit 2:

As with most Italian families we have a very large one. Upon meeting me at a gathering I was told by many people that although they knew my parents had a daughter they had never heard of them having a son!

Exhibit 3:

In Italian families when your born you usually get something like a knitted plaque with your birthday written on it. I have several of these plaques however my date of birth ranges from 1980-1983

Exhibit 4:

There is a strange gap in my photo evolution. You see I mysteriously appear with my family in photos at the age of about 3 or 4.

Exhibit 5:

I do not have a birth certificate. When I questioned my family about this disturbing fact I was told they were not given one at the hospital when I was born.

The afore mentioned exhibits lead me to believe I was stolen from an affluent Jewish family. If I were adopted I would at least have a birth certificate. With that I throw it to you my readers given the evidence and my picture what do you think!

Any Bet's On The Next Time I Get A Call From Guido?

2007-03-25T16:29:00.000-07:00

They say that instances of extreme trauma or stress that one seems to have their consciousness separated from their body. This was the case yesterday at the Guido’s wedding, however, it was definitely an interesting experience. I decided that I would at least try to have a good time. I finally found out why I was invited to be a part of this thing. Guido told me that it was because I’m the funniest guy he knows and that would lighten the mood and that I’m also the life of a party and that’s important. I still don’t like him but at least I don’t hate him as much. His bride is another matter thought. She yelled at me to hand out seeds at the church service. When I asked what kind of seeds they were she yelled at me further and said they Snapdragons and they represented the wedding and the planting of the seed of love. I then told her I hope not as after planting Snapdragons they grow, blossom and die within one year. I then went to the hall and had a sandwich.

The ceremony was also interesting as the priest could not getthe new Guidos name right and used a different one several times. In fact during the ceremony he asked if Guido would take Lesley, which is his sister’s name, as his wife. Another interesting happening was after the ceremony in the basement of the church were some food was available to make sandwiches for yourself. The new Ms. Guido demanded Guido make her a sandwich, when he returned with the sandwich she pushed it back at him and said “You know I won’t eat this go back and do it right this time”. It looks like they have years of happiness ahead of them.

I also learned that the people in the wedding party were not the brightest bulbs in the bunch. Here are a few quotes as well as conversation excerpts from the evening.

Bridesmaid: “I don’t know how you can eat meat and call yourself a scientist, you should know how bad it is on the environment”
MT: “Yes, I know however, I try to make up for it in other ways. Like not driving excessively”
BM: “I love driving I have a new hummer and an SUV”

BM: “I wish we were in the southern hemisphere, like in Florida or something”

The song Mad World comes on in the Limo. I sarcastically say this is definitely a wedding song. The wedding party listens closely to the lyrics for a few moments

“All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races
Going nowhere, going nowhere
And their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression, no expression
Hide my head I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying:
They're the best I've ever had”

They all agree it is very beautiful and should be played as a song for the bride and groom to dance to. It is later requested.

DJ to new Guido: “Can you describe how you feel right now?”
New Guido: in a cold robotic voice and dead eyes “I am filled with emotions . . . good ones”

Maid of Honour: “MT, I got up today at 4:30 this morning and I know I won’t go to bed until 4:30, that’s almost 12 hours!”
MT: “I think it’s a tad more than that”
Usher: “I told you he’s smart I bet he can do the math in his head right now”
MT: “It’s 24 hours”

That's just a sampling, I think I may share more as time goes on. Stay tooned next week as my birthday it’s Tuesday and next week’s blog instalment will cover the story of my supposed birth into an Italian family.

Steve Whatever You Do Keep You're Clothing On!

2007-03-18T17:15:00.000-07:00

Today marks the beginning of two weeks that I will be spending away from the lovely Ms. Pea. Yes that's right I'm being all politically correct and such because I'm so out of sorts. This is going to be a long trying two weeks. Some interesting things are happening in these two weeks, one of them being Guido's wedding. This is happening on the Saturday; he informed me today that we are having two practice rehearsals. I informed him it was very kind of him to give me four whole days of notice; however, I will be unable to attend one of them because of a prior engagement. This was of course an engagement I planned with the specific purpose of missing out on any last minute arrangements, but none the less it's still an engagement. Now all you folks out there in blog land are probably wondering what I could be doing on a Friday when I get out of work at 12:00 p.m and the rehearsal is at 7 p.m? We'll I'm glad you asked friends and neighbours, I will be participating in a fully voluntary floor hockey tournament on Friday. It’s been a while since I played but I must say I think I’m actually looking forward to it. It may even be able to put me into better spirits before the eschaton on Saturday. Please note that I fully intend on getting into the spirits before, after and during the ordeal.

Other than that I will have my birthday in two weeks. As most of my birthdays have been for the past 15 years it will most likely be a terrible one. My family tends to treat me poorly around this time. I think it’s because they may recall the unfortunate amount of effort it took for them to steal me from my affluent Jewish parents as a baby. The general course of events is that none of my friends remember, which does not usually bother me. I am away from the person I care most about, the wonderful Ms. Pie and my parents ask me what kind of cake I would like. I respond I would to have chocolate cake. Inevitably when the cake makes it’s first appearance it’s a vanilla cake. The reason for this I am informed every year is that no one likes chocolate cake. Unfortunately, this event tends to put me a sour mood as I dislike vanilla cake. I eat my slice of vanilla cake and sit down and wonder why I always get a vanilla cake.

Other than the above combination of events I will be missing my angel.

You're A Very Bad Man

2007-03-11T15:44:00.000-07:00

It’s time for my weekly blogging instalment. The weeks seem to fly by these days and before I know it, it’s Sunday night. The craziness at work is getting better and my workload is evening out but out of my 37.5 (which usually ends up being 45 hour) work week I have 27 hours of meetings (which means things will pile again). A lot of the reason for that is the fact that people are now working together as a team and we’re getting a lot done. Unfortunately, the upcoming week is going to somewhat more trying than the last because I am going to be forced to make some decisions that are going to be wholly unpopular. This is where I hope to get input from my blogging public. I realize being in a position where you manage projects you are going to have to upset people and make unpopular decisions. Thus, I am most definitely prepared to do; however, it would be great to get your input on how to best give the news to the people who had hoped for a different outcome. Unfortunately I have to be rather cryptic, but essential it’s telling people that despite the way they would like to have something dealt with it’s going to have to be dealt with in another way, essentially the complete opposite of what they would have wanted. The way I think I am going to proceed is to explain to them the reason for the decision, ask for input on if they see any viable alternatives and if not explain to them what is going to happen. It would be great to get all perspectives from you guys out there. I know that I’ll inevitably come out looking like the bad guy and would like it if people respect the decision even though I am both new and relatively young.

It would also be interesting to see if anyone out there could let me in on any fun and exciting things to do on the upcoming weekend. If the ideas have to be location specific we can go with either Toronto or the Niagara region. It seems like a lot of my blogging audience tends to come from Niagara so this might be an interesting exercise.

It other news my birthday is coming up in two weeks which also happens to coincide with my Guido’s upcoming wedding. Thus, I lose both a weekend and a birthday weekend with friends. This wedding is work than daylight savings time.

Shameful Pleasures

2007-03-04T15:51:00.000-08:00

I really have to say that the people who read my blog are really class acts. Thank you all for your support in this crazy and stressful time in my life. Strangely when I started blogging I never thought I’d see the day when a comment could make me smile or really make a day better. Recently things have gotten even busier due to the ineptness of my predecessor. One of the silver linings is that it is widely known now that these problems were not of my own creation so I’m not getting into any real problems. What it does mean is that I have an insane amount of work to do in a limited period of time. As everyone knows when you have more work than you can do in your nine hour day that means working overtime. I’m not getting paid hourly, unfortunately, but I am looking at this as a learning experience. If I can make it through this period of roughness at the beginning I don’t think anything will look as bad. Now since I feel as though I’ve bonded with you folks and you’ve all given me a case of the warm fuzzies I’m going to open up to you. Inspired by seeing high fidelity with the beautiful, the gorgeous, the spectacular Nikki Pea I am going to go through my top five little know embarrassing things about my self

5) I really enjoy reading New Scientist. In fact when I save enough for the school year I am going to purchase a subscription to the magazine. Know I know that does not seem very embarrassing to you but it’s like a journalist saying that they enjoy reading Cosmo for its literature. Most scientists see it as fluffy science but I find it’s really good to get long stories in good bite sized pieces. If I find I am interested in a particular topic I’ll go look it in a “real” peer review journal.

4) I have an unnatural affinity for shoe shopping. This is one that came as a big surprise even to me. One day I found myself shopping for a pair of brown shoes at the Eaton Center. It was then that the epiphany came, like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds. I found that I wasn’t grumpy and that I was enjoying the challenge of finding that perfect pair of brown shoes. Sadly, the shoes that became famous for their stylish nature have been retired to due salt damage. Fortunately, that means that my days of shopping for brown shoes shall return. Huzzah.

3) I once upon a time enjoyed playing dungeons and dragons. This is one that makes me shake my head even now. I’m not quite sure how it even happened. I think it was because I feel into a bad crowd one day. The peer pressure was just too much, I often refused. Then in one of my periods of weakness I accepted the offer, after all how could someone refuse elves. *Shudder* enough said.

2) I have a widdling set that I look forward to using when I have the time. This was a gift for me many moons ago when I had thoughts of becoming a dentist. My girlfriend at the time was thoughtful enough to get me the tools for my birthday one year (sarcasm). I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that she wanted me to do well on the DAT and get into dentistry school. After all what 20 year old wouldn’t want a widdling set for his birthday instead of say, anything else? That being said I did use the thing a few times and found much to my surprise that I enjoyed using it. I haven’t done it for a year or so but next time I go camping I’ll be sure to bring it along.

1) This one takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to talk about. I, molecular turtle, play magic the gathering. In fact I have played for the last 12 years. Not only do I play, I love playing. I find it relaxing and fun at the same time. I really enjoy strategy games and this is definitely my favourite. I also like playing because I highly rated in the online version. I like it for its strategic element and the amount of skill it often takes to win. I enjoying going from a situation that looks impossible to one in which my opponent is scratching his/her head asking what happened. This is quite the big secret. Fortunately, my lovely gal pal knows about this nasty, nerdy, habit of mine. She’s actually the first lady friend of mine that I have told right away about this habit. I often thought of telling girls that I play as the best form of birth control ever, fortunately the Pie doesn’t mind. Strangely, out of all the women I’ve dated I’ve only told one other, the one that gave me the widdling set (I wonder if the two are correlated in any way) and she wasn’t impressed at all. She did like the pictures on the cards though so I gave her a few. I broke up with her two weeks later. (Again correlation or causation!).

So now that I’ve shared my inner most twisted machinations, how about you share your shameful pleasures?

The Turtle Has Emerged From the Shell

2007-02-25T14:41:00.000-08:00

Greetings and salutations all six of my regular readers. I apologize for my lack of posts lately but school and work were both remarkably busy. Firstly, I would really like to thank everyone for their support and recommendations with the Guido situation. I did end up going to his Jack and Jill but someone else in the wedding party plied me with wine. It was pretty good, definitely wasn’t Frisky Zebras.

The next happening was that I got rear ended on Valentines day. My work place was nice enough to let me work from home so I didn’t get into an accident. Now I spent most of the day inside working away, however, I decided to step out of my house for the briefest of drives. While on the road someone trying to make a light slid through the intersection. My little Honda Civic decided not to be civil and slide into a huge pile of snow. Strangely after young Clifford (the gentleman who rear ended me, get you mind out of the gutter) went out to inspect the damage there was none. However, I needed four people to move my car out of the snow bank.

Another source of stress for me was the fact that I had to give a presentation worth 75% of my grade. We (my group) met with the three people who act as advisors to our programme and even though they were in the same room they each wanted totally different things for the presentation. Our group choose to totally revamp the presentation even though we had three days and ended up with something good. The end result is a presentation with a mark of A+.

Yet another source of stress is the fact that I have tons of work to do at work. This wouldn’t really stress me out so much normally but the problem is that everyone who could help and guide me through situations is gone. The two people who were tutoring me previously are gone due to contracts ending. On top of that my boss is on medical leave. Now the person who is replacing my boss is gone for a week for training. That leaves me feeling stressed.

So with all this on my plate what I would like to know is how all you people keep everything organized.

I promise next week there will be a much better blog enty.

I'm Ashamed To Share 1/8th of My Genes With You

2007-02-05T17:22:00.000-08:00

I generally hate complaining and have made a point not to whine on my blog, however, today I’m breaking that rule. From now on we’ll call it a guideline and adhere to it loosely. The reason for this deviation is because I need to get some unbiased opinions on if I’m being a huge complainer or if I’m justified in feeling the way I do. So below is my rant and due to me being super irritated I’m missing out on doing my BioSummary.

The background to this tale of woe and peril begins much like most other tales of woe, with the announcement of a wedding. For the sake of this story we will call my cousin, the future groom and super Italian Guido. Now I generally dislike Guido for a multitude of reasons including the fact that he used to beat me up regularly from the ages of 6 to 17 when my family visited his house. He called the random attacks wrestling and my parents laughed it off when I complained. He was 5 years older and about 50 pounds heavier and he won every time until I reached the age of 16. At this point in time two important events happened. I hadn’t seen Guido in about 3 years in this time I hit puberty which is the source of my strength, I also started lifting weights which may have helped. Now one fateful day while he was pushing my face into the concrete I got irritated and I drew upon my puberty strength and smushed his gel soaked head into the concrete. For the first time he ended up with a bump on his head and I ended up with a smile. Needless to say the random attacks while watching movies ended.

Now fast forward 8 years. I see Guido perhaps twice I year. We share about 13 words at family functions. That is if you include words such as uhmm, hmmm and ahhh. I get a call asking if I would like to “hang out”. While hanging he manages to ask me between dude and bud to be in his wedding party. Now I dislike him and don’t see him often yet I don’t want to hurt his feelings, in other words I’m a moron. I tell him that I’m quite busy and that I won’t have time to be in the wedding party. He tells me not to worry I just have to show up for the ceremony, the rehearsal and the Jack and Jill. I tell him I have no money on account of being a student. He tells me I don’t need money. I tell him I’m not sure I’ll even have a coop position in Canada he tells me not to worry I can skip out on the Jack and Jill. At this point he say’s that it’s very important to him that I’m a part of this. I feel like I’ve run out of options and I become a super weiner and say okay.

Fast forward one year later the second time we speak in the year Guido asks my lovely lady friend and I to go out for a dinner with the wedding party. Again my Turtle sense is going mad but I ignore it and I say okay. I try to convince myself that it might be nice, that I should make an effort. I’m sure that’s what they tell people before they get lobotomies. Then the trouble begins.

The meeting place for the wedding party is at a place that is about an hours drive from where I live. Strangely it also happens to be about an hour away from where his fiancé lives. Adding further to the mystery it’s also about 45 minutes away for where he lives and is in the middle of no where. I have no idea why we need to trek so far away for wings but what the heck do I know. The godfather music comes on and I start thinking that he’s going to off me for past insults. Again I brush it off and say alright we’ll be there at 7:30. So Nikki and I set off to this place on in the middle of no where on the treacherous icy roads and get there on time. We proceed to wait for about an hour and are about to leave when the Guido crew rolls in.

Upon seeing this slack jawed, prissy, decked out in high fashion clothing to eat friken chicken wings crew roll in and I’m really pissed off. I start thanking God that I don’t share the usual 1/8 of my genes with my supposed cousin because my parents stole me as a child from an affluent Jewish family. The future Guido comes over and kisses me on both cheeks and says “I’m sorry we’re a bit late. You know the boys they have to drink”. At this point a ton of things pop into my head. I think of looking at her directly and saying, Yes, I can see why the boys HAVE TO drink. I think of saying don’t worry I think I’ll show a bit late for the wedding because I HAVE TO drink. Alas, I say okay. This is the last exchange of words we have despite her sitting directly in front of me at the table. Guido comes in and smiles and pats me on the back without apologizing and says hello. We speak for about 3 minutes about how school and how he didn’t know the place was this far then share no other words for the rest of the night (Note: shortly after we over hear the future Guido saying don’t order so and so because the last time Guido and I came here it was bad).

The Italian stallions then sit together and let the women sit together. In fact they tell the woman sitting beside her boyfriend to move to the “girls’ corner” in a scene reminiscent of a grade 8 dance floor. Now I find it hard to imagine why one would want to be as far as possible from their significant other, but perhaps it’s because I don’t have to drink to tolerate being in the same room as her. They then take ages to order trying to decipher what on earth the iconography of flames could signify in conjunction with wings.

Now for the rest of the brief evening Nikki and I are essentially ignored by every at the table. Blocks of red signify people that ignored us. The light blue is a person that spoke to me for about 5 minutes. It gets to the point were Nikki and I start making fun of the people at the table and they don’t even notice. Our jokes become more and more obnoxious and risky as time goes on. The funny part of it all is that no one at all even blinks at us at this supposed function to discuss things about the wedding. After Nikki and I finish eating I ask for our bill and we leave.

Now is it just me or does it seem idiotic to have me as part of this wedding party? Why on earth would he beg me to be in this farce? How should I deal with situation? Any advice on how to get through the Jack and Jill next week? Am I being unreasonable or is he really the prick I think he is?

Whining about Wine

2007-01-28T15:01:00.000-08:00

It’s been a wonderful short and rather uneventful week. The highlight of the week had to be when one of my great readers, Nicole, told me she was a friend with someone who does l genetic work with cauliflower that I mentioned in my previous post. I also wanted to thank everyone for your wonderful tips on cube decoration. I can now proudly say that you’ve pimped my cube.

There are times I sometimes shake my head and think why the heck did I buy this or that. It was my latest wine purchase that had my noggin shaking. I went to the LCBO and was looking to try out a new and wonderful wine. With 10 bucks burning a hole in my pocket I scanned the isles for the next fruit of the vine that would be mine. I wanted to try something new, interesting and different. When I made my way to the South African section it caught my eye. Yes folks it was Frisky ZebraS. I’ve pictured it left so that all can avoid its siren call.

It was due to this purchase that I’ve vowed to avoid products that alude to animals with high libido’s or zebra coitus, which the wine was probably fermented from. I’ve also learned to pick up on subtle clues about quality. For example, random capitalized letters in the title (like the S) or pictures of animals sniffing each others bottoms. Another dead give away might have been that it was packaged much like the juice boxes from my youth. Also much like the juice boxes from my youth I tried to finish it in one sitting both hoping that it would get better in time and to prevent waste. Sadly I was wrong, very wrong and I will have to finish it off before I open my next bottle.

Now for the part of my blog where I ask for your help yet again. This week I’m asking for your views on wine love it? Hate it? Indifferent? If anyone out there has any suggestions please let me know. I’m not a wine connoisseur in the least, my only preference is that it doesn’t taste like fermented zebra coatis extract.

Biotech Beat

Healing in the womb: High levels of maternal stem cells have been found in new born children with type one diabetes. It has been know for quite some time that there was an exchange of stem cells better mother and child but why this occurs has been disputed. These cells seem to be able to avoid the child’s immune system and recently they have been found in the pancreas and were functioning as B cells. What this means is that they were secreting insulin which is needed to avoid diabetes. This finding raises hopes that perhaps maternal stem cells could be used to treat children and correct diseases such as diabetes. I’m still waiting for more information on this one. In my opinion I think that perhaps the reason why the mothers’ stem cells are capable of evading the child’s immune system is that it’s not developed and has little to do with a maternal bond. What this means is that anyone’s stem cells can serve.

Gene mutation and addiction: This week a mutation in a gene called abcb1 was discovered. Mutations in this gene seem to dictate success on methadone treatment for heroine addicts. Some individuals needs half the dose, while others need double in order to beat the effects of this gene mutation and overcome the addiction

The Toronto Twits Awaken

2007-01-21T17:38:00.000-08:00

This week marked the first real snowfall that we’re had here in Toronto. Consequently, it also marked the emergence from hibernation of the Toronto twit. I think perhaps I’m being overly judgemental but that’s why I have you folks as my panel. Think of it like American Idol but without the singing and cult like following.

Twit #1: The guy who decided that it is enough to clear off his front windshield and leave the back one with a couple of inches of snow on it. I’ve tried to reason why someone would do this and I have come up with a couple of reasons. The first is it was pretty cold so he may have been getting clever and was using the snow as an insulator. The second was he may have thought since he was going 130 km on the highway in his SUV on the snowy highway the only things he would have to watch out for was on coming objects.

Twit#2: This one’s sketchy and it’s probably just my rage that’s making me write about it. This twit’s a truck driver who I had the pleasure of driving behind. After a few days of snow fall a glacier began building on top of his truck. This glacier then proceeded to break free and smash into my windshield blinding me and almost killing me, two for the price of one. Luckily I didn’t crash into anything, but it did destroy my windshield wipers and gouged my windshield. After this I think there should be some sort of regulation to make sure truck drivers take off accumulated ice and snow from the roofs of their trailers.

Twit #3: This one is my favourite and happened at a movie theatre where my lovely gal pal and I were watching the movie The Pursuit of Happyness. This brilliant gentleman decided that he would walk into the theatre one hour and five minutes into the 1h 56 minute movie. Now he decided to sit beside Nikki and I in the seat that was occupied by our coats (which we placed there after the movie started). Now it gets even better, as Nikki is trying to arrange our coats she spills her water and saturates his would be seat. Now Nikki being the upstanding young lady that she is tells him that his seat is soaked. His response is “its okay don’t worry about it” and he sits down on the soaked seat.

Now it’s in your hands, cast your vote for who will be the ultimate twit!

BioSummary

Biotech Crops: On Thursday January 21 the number of biotech crops worldwide reached a record high. The countries with the most biotech crops planted per ache are the United States, Argentina and Brazil. Most of the biotech crops on the market are modified to confer resistance to pests but new crops geared toward the consumers are on the horizon. One that looks particularly promising has to do with using a gene from cauliflower to make other vegetables more nutritious.

U.S Med Schools Curb Free Lunches: A growing number of U.S med schools are cracking down on gifts from pharmaceutical companies. This crack down even includes nominal gifts like pens and pads of papers. I’d be interested to know what those of you in the field think of this.

Genetic Privacy Bill: Bush is urging Congress to pass a genetic privacy bill. The purpose of this bill is to ensure that insurance companies do not discriminate against individuals based on their genetic make up. From my perspective I think this is a great idea, it would lead to more genetically geared medicine.

They tell you to think outside the "box" when you're in a freakin' box all day long

2007-01-12T18:25:00.000-08:00

Greetings from cubeworld, yes that’s right apparently cubicle has been replaced with the term cube. In all probability it’s because in my new company it seems to be a protocol that nothing is longer than four letters. I have a 66 page list of acronyms that I have to remember. I’m hoping that I’m going to not get confused That being said I love my new job so far and I hope it keeps up.

The best thing about this place is that everyone seems to be genuinely happy and like their job. Some of the great perks that come with this new gig are a laptop, discounts on our consumer products, a couple hundred dollars toward anything to do with fitness and three weeks vacation.

I’ve spent most of my week doing training and such. I’ve also learned that the best way to get stuff for your cube is to scavenge around recently abandoned cubes. I’ve come to work early and sneak around under the pretense I’m lost to scavenge. This is the part of the entry where I ask you folks for your input. What are some cube essentials? In other words what should I be scavenging for or buying?

BioSummary For The Week

Amniotic stem cells have been found to have many of the same traits as embryonic stem cells. These cells are found free floating in amniotic fluid and don’t involve destroying an embryo. They can be retrieved from the fluid by the same procedure as amniocentesis with the same risk to the child. Some of the benefits of these cells are that they grow just as quickly embryonic stem cells, they’re a genetic match to the future child (so they can be used to treat the kid later) and they’re pluripotent (They can change into many different types of cells but not all, embryonic stem cells are totipotent meaning they can become any other type of cell). The draw back is they’re limited in what types of cells they can become.

Stem cells: In the United States the House voted on January 11 to broaden federal support for stem cell research 253 to 174. This bill will probably be vetoed by Bush

Erbitux: ImClone Systems Inc’s drug erbitux just received positive results from phase III clinical trials. The drug is for treatment for colon cancer and is to be used in patients who have already failed chemotherapy. The drug is licensed to Merk and may be a treat to Roche’s Avastin although it’s hard to tell.

I felt this entry lacked some of my usual comedic elements so I thought I’d give you a taste of what conversations with Nikki and are like.

Random Comment from Nikki Pea: “When you get married you know how you need something old, something new, and something blue? Does the something old have to be visible? Can it be something like old underwear or a corset?”

You Couldn't Be More Wrong!

2007-01-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

The funny thing about vacations is that they never seem long enough. I’ve had about three weeks off and I feel as though if I had just one more week, just one more week I’d be frolicking into work instead of trudging. After all, I could do so much with just one more week, alas, it’s not meant to be and I need to start work on the 8^th. I must say though that I’m pretty excited about entering the cooperate world. However, this is where I ask for the help of you friends and neighbors. I want you to share any tips or advice or pieces of wisdom on starting new jobs or office politics. You see most for most of my jobs I’ve had some authority and an office and now I’m a cubicle dweller.

Now for something completely different. My favorite quote of the week happened when I went to buy a book by Kurt Vonnegut, called The Sirens of Titan. I asked one of the good folks at Toronto Eaton Center’s Indigo where the Vonnegut books are and she informed that she had never heard of him. We go to the computer and I type it in and lo and behold it’s there. She then goes on to berate me about how it’s not Vonn-e-gut everyone knows it’s pronounced Kurt Von Gurt! In a perfect world everyone’s first and last name would rhyme but I think adding extra letters to make it so may be passing some sort of lexical line. But hey maybe she’s right and when he appears in the movie Back to School and says “Hello, I’m Kurt Vonnegut” he mispronounced his own name for comic effect.

Now below you’ll find a new addition to the blog for those science minded folk. It’ll have about three developments in bullet form from the world of biotech. These will be condensed to a few sentences from all the newspaper articles I read during the week. If anyone expresses interest in this aspect of the blog I’ll even give links so you can look further into it

Instead of using only soybean oil for biodiesel there’s a new additive. We can now thank our friends at Tyson chicken for more than a funny episode of Seinfield. They’re going to be a main supplier of yummy chicken fat that will be transformed into fuel. They’re also going to get into the fuel business.

Clinical trials for nanoparticles to treat breast cancer will begin in 2007. This is pretty revolutionary because instead of undergoing chemo people will get these nanoparticles injected into them and then through shining infrared light (which passes through your body) we can kill tumors non invasively. Think of chemo as an A-bomb killing all rapidly growing cells along with the cancer cell vs shining light as a targeted missile

Study finds that stem cell therapies may cause cancer. Good news is they can determine which ones through something called methylation patterns

Most Memorable Moments 2006

2007-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

The number one memory is meeting the lovely Nikki a.k.a angel, a.k.a pie (January)
The New Year’s bar fire
Sleeping on Ron’s floor and being woken up by him screaming cognitive science in his sleep
The Zoo 4x
A nice birthday
Getting into my current Master’s programme
Getting the job I wanted at the company I wanted
Walks downtown
Camping with the Ruben and Nikki
Seeing moose, deer and beavers
My introduction to the shawarma
The Royal Ontario Winter Fair and Fudge
The Calvacade of Lights
My first foray into blogging and getting a fantastic group of people that read my blog

To all you folks in blogland what is your most memorable moment of the year?

Happy Holidays

2006-12-28T15:49:00.000-08:00

I hope all you out there in blogland have had a happy holiday season. It’s been a truly fantastic time for me. My one qualm is with blogger since people can’t access my page for some bizarre reason. Hopefully this will be fixed soon. In other news I’ve made a discovery you see there is this thing called free time, I wasn’t aware of it until I started my vacation. It’s really interesting you can do things that you want to, even better if you choose to you can do nothing at all. I’d like to know how everyone’s holidays have gone, you guys are the best audience I could ever hope for and I genuinely care.

In other news my holidays have been full of fun and cheer. Christmas was interesting I got a few presents this year which is nice. The lovely Nikki gave me a wonderful argyle sweater which I adore. She also gave me another great sweater, a tie and a shirt. The shirt didn’t seem to fit properly so we tried every other size and it seems that the shirts were not designed for people with 2 upper body appendages. I also got the opportunity to go see the Toronto Maple Leafs play the Nashville predators. While my sports discussions are usually limited to me saying “Well how about that local sports team” I had fun. The first period seemed slightly slow but it picked up in the second period. This may or may not have to do with the beer I picked up.

This holiday season has been filled will disturbing realizations. One of them is that I seem to like dinosaurs way too much. While looking for gifts for my lovely girlfriend I came across a stuffed animal display. Instead of looking at the cute little animals I spent the next five minutes checking out a Tyrannosaurus. I passed on it although I must admit the I came pretty close. Another strange realization I came to was for some reason every calendar store in Toronto seems to but they’re animal calendars beside calendars of naked men. I was getting the “you perv” look from people that rounded the corner and saw me checking out calendars. Maybe you folks can enlighten me on what naked men and tigers have in common, and Siegfried and Roy is not the right answer. In my random thought of the day does anyone have any idea where I can pick up a nice briefcase?

Schools Out For Summer ... I Mean Winter

2006-12-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

It’s with a great sigh of relief that I tell you all that I’ve finished my fall semester and am out of school until January 8^th. What that means to you good folks is that I’ll be spending more time blogging and reading everyone else’s blog. All that’s left for me to do is write up a thirty page paper. I’d be interested in hearing what other people’s view’s on this project are and whether they’ve ever had to do a similar thing themselves.

In my business course I’ve been tasked with doing a self analysis/reflection paper. I have to admit my first initial thought was holy hippo what a crock. Having completed about 7 pages I have to say that there is a small possibility that I may be wrong. Key words in that sentence are small and possibility. I think sometimes we (and I’m not talking about the royal we) have a tendency to not really sit down and take a look at ourselves and what really makes us tick. I had to complete a few “self analysis instruments” (get your minds out of the gutter folks) and write things like what my three highest priorities in life are.

One of the test I took was the Myers Briggs test. I’m not sure if everyone knows what it is but here’s a free version you can take to figure out what category you fall in. Note: It would be fun if you shared your results but no pressure. The test categorised me as an ENTJ, which has been equivocated to a field marshal. It has told me that I’d make a good executive or business person, which I guess I’m satisfied by since I’m in a business science programme. In my case the test seemed to capture some of my dominant characteristics mainly that I’m extroverted, intuitive and thinking. It also captured my tendency to hate inefficiency and think of things in terms of the long haul.

So with that I’ll leave you to complete your surveys and early await with baited breath to see what my personality types my listening audience is and whether or not they agree with the profile.

On a side note google how to turn morphine into heroine and note the top website. I wondering if they allowing blogging in prison.

The Cavalcade of Lights

2006-12-04T14:59:00.000-08:00

I would like to start off this post with a great big thank you going out to S. She was nice enough to provide me with some much needed insight for a project having to do with doctor’s incentives. As you may have guessed, and I’m sure that you have as all my readers have an above average IQ, I’ve been extremely busy. I just finished giving another presentation today as well as writing up an executive summary of a Harvard business review case. All that’s left now is to do my economics exam and I’m free (that is unless you count the 30 page report due January 8^th).

While I was fairly busy working on things I did have a chance to go out to the Cavalcade of Lights at City Hall in downtown Toronto. There were a few bands playing and one of them was Joel Plaskett’s which was by far the best act. The other three acts were pretty much an assault on my ears but I had to endure them for fireworks. Interestingly enough one of the songs played happened to be what I called my sweater folding song as it always seemed to be playing at Sears when I had to fold things.

The most amazing part of the evening had to be the fireworks. The pictures I’ve posted don’t even begin to do it justice. It was by far the best fireworks show I’ve seen in my life and I attend the symphony of fire in Toronto every year. If you look very closely you can see the flying saucer from which aliens emerge each Christamas and to tell our politicians in Toronto what to think.

On a completely different train of thought I’m spending a lot more time at the gym which I’m happy about. I was wondering if any of you out there goes to the gym. And if you do what do you find you enjoy most. If you don’t why not? Also if we have any runner or elliptical people out there any suggestions for training?

Snap Shot from the Future

2006-11-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

This has been a grey, gloomy rainy week in Toronto. This week also marked the development of my hatred for banks. I now hate them with the fury of 1,000 pulsating suns. That’s right folks almost as much as CP hates teenagers on subways On Friday I was surprised to see that I had a whooping $9.52 in my account. Now I was surprised because I transferred money to the account two weeks ago and the transfer still had not occurred. When I called them to find out what happened they told me they froze my account because they were suspicious because I usually don’t transfer money. While it did initially fill me with the warm fuzzies, the feeling was rapidly dispelled when they told me that while I could transfer the money over now it would take about another week to happen. What does this mean to me? Well I have to survive on $9.52 for the rest of the week. For those of you that aren’t mathatheletes that’s $1.36 a day. In 1813 I would be a king among men, at Younge and Dundas I’ll survive for about 3 hours.

Now as a sit here contemplating what to spend my $9.52 on my mind drifts to the future and what my hopes and dreams are. I’ve decided to make a picture to show you what my new place will look like. It seems a long way off since I have under ten bucks to my name but hopefully one day this will be a reality.

Above you’ll see my helicopter, the mosquito, which is my preferred mode of transportation. With this fine vehicle I will avoid crowded parking lots at Christmas by parking on the roofs of malls. It’ll also get me to work where I’ll also park on the roof (I checked it’s flat). You’ll also see my horse, an appaloosa, which I’ve yet to name (suggestions are welcome). I really love horse back riding and I’ll do it every chance I get. My friendly equine has two Nubian goats as companion animals which I’ve also yet to name. Most importantly my companion is also present in the background sitting on a log. The house you see there is the Cambridge, a viceroy home which I really like. Note not picture are some treats I’ve picked up from Jin’s treat shop.

There are many more things I’ll have to later add to the picture but now I’m off to mix some drinks for a lovely lady. In the mean time what kinds of toys do you folks see in your future? What’s the thing you most look forward to having?

Lions and Tigers and Bears oh my!

2006-11-11T19:05:00.000-08:00

Well dear readers I have some distressing news for you so make sure that you’re sitting down, have the tissues near and each others numbers so you can form a support group. It seems much to my chagrin and dismay the fowl are either coming much later in the week or are totally absent from the Royal Ontario Winter Fair. This means that there is no picture of me with my beloved prize winning pigeon

Despite this saddening fact I did have a lot of fun doing things such as checking out a warehouse full of cows, another of pigs and goats. My personal favorite was the horses I hope one day to own one. As promised I ended up buying a ton of fudge which I hope will last me until January, Jin how can I make this happen? (Besides keeping it a secret from my Italian family). I also ended up watching some horse jumping which was quite a bit of fun.

The weekend continued with Saturday which was tons of fun. Nikki and I headed to the zoo and were surprised to 1) find animals and 2) find them actually doing things. Now you’re probably thinking that I’m being facetious but the Toronto zoo lures you by hinting there are animals but the last time I went literally 68% of the animals were mysteriously absent. I think this is a great business plan people come to the zoo thinking they’ll be animals but instead they see you’re sign saying the animals are off display. In reality you’re not wasting time on animals and food. The only variable cost you have is the cost of printing those signs.

The highlight of the trip had to be when we went to see the mandrills. During my undergraduate career I took a course in primate behavior and actually got to be quite close with the prof and he even wanted me to be his grad student (how different my life would be if I decided to study lemurs in Madagascar). He taught me a lot about communicating with primates and I actually studied the mandrills at the Toronto zoo. It was interesting to see a group of students doing the same project that I did a few years ago. I asked the students what they thought of the mandrills and was told they don't do anything but I thought I could change that. Now Nikki is used to me and my weirdness so when I told her I could communicate with them she believed me. So I squatted down and made some faces and the female mandrill came over from the other side of the pen and she pushed her face against the glass and held her hands to the glass. The juvenile male wasn’t too impressed and started attacking me through the glass. When we decided to go the lovely little lady kept following me around the enclosure which was pretty funny. Chalk up another broken heart for the turtle.

CJ, I saw the Borat movie today and thought you might like to know what I thought. If you like the Ali G show you’ll probably like this a lot but it does tend to cross all sorts of lines. A few people actually left at one point. I thought it was pretty good but it wasn’t worth all the hype but it was worth seeing. Has any one else seen any good movies worth my 13 bucks lately?

Working For The Weekend

2006-10-31T19:32:00.000-08:00

This has been quite the week I have a presentation, assignment, exam and another presentation to do. If you’re interested S. my project had to do with using a component from garlic extract, ajoene as a mouth wash for the treatment of oral pharyngeal candidiasis. Before I get any further I’d like to ask Lala and Chrissy to drop me their blog addresses, they don’t seem to be in your profiles anymore and I like reading your blogs.

Although I have an exam this Friday I’m already looking forward to the weekend. It’s going to be jam packed with fudge, animals and yes even jam. I always look forward to this time of year because it’s the time when the Royal Ontario Agricultural Winter Fair comes to Toronto. I discovered the fair about 4 years ago when I was dragged and it was pretty much literally to something I thought would be hoaky, boring and inane. However, I was wrong, very wrong. I ended up having a good time once I opened my mind to the thing and was coaxed with chococlate. Now I intend to fulfill the circle and take the lovely Nikki to The Royal and make her a true believer. Think of it as my little cult, if anyone wants to go during the week after I’m game!

Now you’re all probably scratching you’re noggins wondering what the heck has this suit wearing molecular biologist so enthralled? Is it the cow pies? Well I have to tell you it’s a bunch of things and I’ll try to run them down in no particular order. They have the best fudge that I’ve ever had in my life. It’s so great in fact that I spend a whopping 25 bucks on this royal fudge. Now for normal people with some sort of income and not spending $15,000 on school this would amount to approximately $1.5 million dollars. Don’t even bother challenging me I have the best business prof’s from Rotman teaching me economics, they’re the ones that tell me I need to pay them $15,000 for a degree (yes that’s a year).

The animals also happen to be a big draw for me. I don’t know how it happened but at some point I developed an affinity for barn year creatures. Seeing all the pigs, horses, chickens, goats, alpacas and lemurs is tons of fun. Yes I have no clue where lemurs became barnyard animals but I guess they have barns in Madagascar. Also at some point I developed an affinity for hoses and would want one at some point so this is kind of like car shopping for me (I also want a mosquito but I’ll get into that in another post).

There’s also the tradition of me getting my photo done with the prize winning pigeon. I’m sure you understand so I won’t even bother explaining. Another thing that is tons of fun is watching the horse show. They do tons of things like dressage and carriage racing but I’m there for the jumping. I know it’s not as cultured as watching a horse with ribbons prancing about to the lion king musical but it’s pretty cool to see something jump higher than six foot four. Now there are also the candy apples and other things which I intend to ply Nikki with.

Now this is getting long but I’m also going to go to the zoo as well as hopefully see the Borat movie. What are you good people doing this weekend?

Dress Up Your Favourite Turtle

2006-10-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Yes gals and ghouls Halloween is fast approaching meaning that you don’t have much time to pick out a costume. This was an interesting weekend for me filled with the rediscovery of Nintendo and pumpkin carving. Hopefully I’ll have a picture of the demonic botanical entity I summoned up in the next little while. I must say that I enjoyed the carving much more than I thought. There’s something about stabbing a fruit with a knife that just screams Halloween. On another note I came up with the brilliant idea to roast the seeds for a wonderful healthy snack. I encourage each and every one of you to do the same. There is a suggestion that I think you should follow though to get the most out of the experience. Although you’d think that putting them in at 560 F is a great idea it only works when you leave them in less than an hour. That suggestion doesn’t work if you prefer your snacks to be full of charcoali carcinogenic goodness. In other totally random news realizing that I have fun playing Super Mario three has made me understand that I am indeed getting old but that doesn’t mean that I can’t dress up on Halloween!

I’ve been invited to countless Halloween events and the thing they all have in common is they all want me to dress up. In fact one invitation put it well that address up is fun but it also gives the less fortunate a chance to finally get to wear a mask. This year I’m at a loss for costume ideas which is where I can use your help. I was thinking that being a pirate would be fun but I have no idea about the things I would need. If you can give me cheap costume ideas as well as what I would need if I pursue the pirate idea I’d really appreciate it. I’d also like to know if your dressing up and if you are what you’re going as.

Note: that you might even get to see me in make up for the first time. Also note that falling asleep in the middle of a conversation with your girlfriend is generally frowned upon and snoring heavily doesn’t seem to ameliorate the situation.

Evolution

2006-10-21T21:13:00.000-07:00

Unfortunately this week I don't have much cutting edge science to share because I've been doing more finance and investment work. I was actually really surprised that I liked it as much as I do. In fact two of our guest speakers encouraged me to seek a career path in the industry. Even though the starting salary is somewhere in the 150 k a year range I'm thinking not. If there's one thing that I've learned right now is that I want a life outside of work and something tells me that working 70 hours a week isn't conducive to that.

Initially the plan for today was to talk about genetically modified organisms or GMO’s but I’m not sure where you folks are coming from so I thought I’d start with a foundation and build. So what’s this evolution dealio? Well to put it simply evolution is a process of change that occurs in populations over a period of time due to heritable trait changes. Key words are it happens in populations not individuals. So what does that mean to you? Well no matter how much you try to lick your elbow your neck isn’t going to get longer, take that Lamark!

Second point is it’s pretty much all about sex. Now it doesn’t obviously have to do with sex but without traits that are heritable it doesn’t happen. Now you may ask what digestion has to do with sex but without being able to get energy from your food you don’t have energy to produce gametes (eggs and sperm).

Third point is that it’s called a theory but evolution is not disputed in the scientific community but it’s the mechanism is (natural selection is the prevailing thought). Evidence is all around us, just look at antibiotic resistant bacteria. Also keep in mind that even if it’s great for the individual if it doesn’t result in some sort of reproductive advantage it’s evolutionarily worthless.

What evolutions not: directional or purposeful. That means things aren’t going toward some sort of perfect incarnation. Another important thing to remember is what’s evolutionarily great in one environment isn’t necessarily best in other environments. Think of Shaq on the basketball court he’s pretty decent, now put him into a Smart Car and he might have some problems. Hopefully that little crash course lays some ground work but I’m curious as to what you people think of evolution?

Whatever Happened To Customer Service?

2006-10-15T18:21:00.000-07:00

This post has been inspired by a really disappointing customer service experience I had when ordering a Pizza Pizza. I know I’m getting old when I think what has happened to customer service but bear with me folks and let me vent. The story begins in the lovely abode of the lovely Nikki with a rumble in my tummy and a night of unwinding ahead of us. So I picked up the rotary and called our friendly neighbourhood pizza pizza store and ordered a family platter. Now you may be asking yourself why a family platter? If so you’re obviously not students, we hoard pizza like western grey squirrels hoard pine nuts or in Toronto little packets of coke. So I order and have to repeat everything about 4 times, especially the part about not wanting to have bbq sauce on my pizza because I detest the stuff. After completing my order I’m told it’ll get there as soon as possible. This is strange to me since there is generally a forty minute guarantee. Forty five minutes and some stomach rumbling later I call and ask what’s happened to our pizza and I was told “not to worry about it it’ll get there”

Despite this quite reassurance I was slightly perturbed about where my pizza was, who it was hanging out with and if it might be lying in a ditch somewhere with four cheese topping all over the road. However I sat by the t.v and waited quietly for my tardy pizza pizza to arrive. Fifty seven minutes later those pesky pizza’s showed up and I asked about this forty minute guarantee and was told this area did not have such a guarantee which I can understand but I wanted to see it written on my receipt. Unfortunately the pizza guy decided he couldn’t part with it, after all they’d bonded on their journey. I was prepared even to let this fly but the pizza itself was not hot, yes there’s a guarantee on that as well but maybe not in my area or when the outdoor clines go below 16 degree celcius.

So against my Canadian instincts I decided to call customer service. They were great, so great they put on my on hold for 10 minutes with out any explanation as to what was happening. Now I have things to do and a luke warm cheese steak pizza getting cold so I decide to let it go and enjoy my pizza. As I begin my pizza one thing becomes obvious, there appears to be a sticky red substance on my pizza pizza. Now willing to give the benefit of the doubt I went CSI on the pizza and made sure it was not blood or some sort or Red Blood Cell extract but it was indeed bbq sauce. Thus began my venture for truth and justice.

I decided to write them an e-mail since I had such a terrible time with them on the phone. On Wednesday I hadn’t heard back from them so I decided to call customer service again. It was there I was told that although I wrote an e-mail they couldn’t help me I had to deal with the e-mail people who apparently can take as long as they wish to reply due to the fact “they may get a million e-mails one day and zero the next” This seemed a little off so through some convincing I got my e-mail to get ahead of the other 999 999. I was told that they would give me a 5 dollar credit although they didn’t sound too happy about it. Now since the order was worth about 34 dollars and any pizza at the place (whose identity I have tried my best to conceal) would be more than 7 that seems slightly unfair.

What do you guy’s think about this? Also what’s the worst customer service experience you’ve ever had? Also isn't office space a fantastic movie?

Bioethanol The Way Of The Future?

2006-10-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

I decided today while I was working on a presentation that it might be nice if I let you folks know what’s going on in the world of biotechnology. So I’m going to endeavour to do two posts a week, one pertaining to biotech and the other pertaining to important matters such as why I wanted to be a turnip when I was younger. With each course in my master’s programme we’re tasked with developing a product from the bench (lab) to marketing and business organization. This time around I decided I wanted to learn more about biofuels. The reason for this is because there are several initiatives around the world that are seeking to raise the amount of ethanol in gas. What does that mean, well lots of money is going into it, it is a billion or even trillion dollar market. So I want in and so should you.

You might find this strange but Henry Ford's first car or quadracycle (wonder why that one didn't catch on?) was first designed to run on ethanol. As a preamble if I ever get too technical in my rants let me know and if you want things further explained I’m happy to babble even more. It would also be interesting to see what you folks thing about these topics. Alright lesson one what are biofuels? Quite simply they are fuels derived from a biological source, for example plant biomass. The area that I am interested (at least for the next 3 weeks) is extracting ethanol from plants, poplar trees to be specific. There are other sources of bioethanol like corn but these methods are environmentally harsh, and relatively inefficient. Currently most of the ethanol extraction facilities, or biorefineries, use huge machines, expensive enzymes, and lots of energy input. The area that I’m interested in is genetically modifying poplar trees. Now your probably asking yourself why poplars (and why the hell am I bothering to read this but I’ll get to that later) and the reason is they already have types that grow quickly (up to 20 feet in 5 years), have decreased lignin content (woody stuff that gets in the way of ethanol production) and sterility. Now the sterile tree thing is so that genes don’t go out into the environment and give us weeds that grow really fast or boxing tomatos etc. Now where I suggest we improve on the process is put in an inducible gene (you can turn it on or off by say spraying the plant with something like chocolate fudge, that ones for you Jin) that encodes for a cellulase and tagged so it would go to the cell wall, which is where the cellulose is.

This would allow for you to spray your tree with your chocolate fudge and get it to produce this enzyme. Now the enzyme goes to the cell wall and munches on cellulose and barfs out stuff we can use (mainly glucose). This glucose we give to yeast and it turns it into bioethanol. So it’s like prechewing food for grandma and like prechewing it saves time for the next person (begging the question why am I wasting my time chewing when there are important matters to attend to?). Why this idea is so interesting is that you can cut the tree down, ship and store it and these enzymes will still work. This means that there is never a wasted second, and as we know time is money. It's like having a plant that's a factory in and of itself.

In terms of investment in biofuels there are literally thousands of people willing to invest in it. Our friend George Bush proposed an Advanced Energy Initiative bill which is funding start up research. More importantly venture capitalists and other investors are seeking to get in on it.

Now why the heck does this matter to you? Well you’re going to be seeing bioethanol in the news as well as at the pumps in the next few years. In fact in the states by 2010 there will be about 5% bioethanol in your gas. What we should be pushing for is more. The reason it’s not happening may have something to do with oil companies loosing money. To close up our lesson for today there are people that say cars won’t work with more ethanol in them, what you can tell those folks is that they’ve been doing it in Brazil (85% ethanol to be exact) for quite a few years.

More Than You Ever Wanted To Know

2006-10-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

It seems that I've been tagged by CP and as promised here is my list:

1) Would you bungee jump?
No. There seems to be something that's unnatural about falling several feet only to be yanked back up at breakneck (literally) speeds only to fall back down again. The imagine of the grey matter swirling around in my noggen seems unappealing. To eachs own though.

2) If you could do anything in the world for a living what would it be?
Nothing, absolutely nothing. In other words I would be a Canadian politician

3) Your favorite fictional animal?
Any animal in a Douglas Adam's novel. Including but not limited too the mice, dolphins and whale before it impacted the ground. Just remembered perhaps my favourite, was the cow that could talk at the restaurant at the end of the universe.

4) One person who never fails to make you laugh?
Nikki out of funniness, ruben out of strangeness, and me when I see myself on video, I'm absurd!

5) When you were 12 years old what did you want to be when you grew up?
The age of twelve was an interesting time for me. I wanted to be a turnip for a span of about 3 weeks, then for some reason I wanted to be a singer. This was inspired by seeing myself as a child singing on t.v. Once I opened my mouth puberty seemed to hit and my voice was gone, much like a young homer. Following this I wanted to be a nature photographer and travel to Africa. Then I wanted to be a doctor, mostly because everyone told me I wanted to be one. I realized later that I don't have what it takes to make a great doctor, although I was able to get into med school it's not in my personality, which gives me much respect for our friend S.

6) What is the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?
Depends where I am. If it's the weekend I think that I'm a very lucky guy, roll over and go back to bed. If it's a weekday my mouth emits a low bassy grumble, I stretch out then jump out of bed.

7) Have you ever gone to therapy?
No although many of my ex girlfriends have suggested it, when they became ex's. Apparently normal people have these things called "feelings" and something that goes with them, I think called "emotions". Now thinking on it I think it would be great to go. It combines two of the things I enjoy most laying down and talking.

8) If you could have one super power what would it be?
Totally with CP on this one although I'd like to be a wizard a'la Richard Rahl. If it had to be one power it would be teleportation. That's probably due to the fact that the gas it takes to get to school is costing me a small fortune.

9) Your favorite cartoon character?
Either Bugs Bunny from loony toons or the really old school spiderman. You know the one where they were too lazy to draw in the web lines on the costume. They also tended not to use more than two differnt frames to make him walk.

10) Do you go to church?
Not often. When I do these day's it's to visit a friend of mine who is a priest. He also likes gothic everything and dungeons and dragons.

11) What is your best childhood memory?
My best childhood memory would probably have to do with the trip my dad took my family on before he had heart surgury. We went to universal studeo's and also saw dolphins. For some reason the captain also thought feeding sea gulls was something special. He should really go to University in Toronto

12) Do you think marriage is an outdated ritual?
Marriage is a special thing and totally not respected in our society as it should be.

13) Do you own a gun?
I own a caulking gun, which I use to seal up my fish tank, a staple gun which I use to lay down carpets and a glue gun which I use to make fashionable macaroni neclaces for my lady friends.

14) Have you ever hit someone of the opposite sex?
As anyone will tell you I maybe coordinated when it comes to most things but when it comes to gals I tend to be spastic. I've accidentally elbowed, headbutted, stepped on, ran into, fell ontop of, and kneed more girls then I can count.

15) Have you ever sung in front of a large number of people?
Yes as a child my parents used to dress me up and make me a part of their folk band. I was on T.V a couple of times. In more recent times if I've been in the drink I'll sing. Especially if they're drinking songs.

16) What is the first thing you notice about the opposite sex?
Appendages (4), hair (as james would say, we tend to associate hair with girls)

17) What is your biggest mistake?
My biggest mistake was neglecting people while I was working hard in my last year of university. This is not a mistake I'm ever going to make again.

18) Say something totally random about yourself.
I play a game that I'm ashamed to admit in front of anyone I know. In fact there are probably about 3 people that know I play it. Yes, I play magic the gathering strategy card game. I've played for the last 9 years and I can't see myself stopping. *hangs head in shame*

19) Has anyone ever said that you looked like a celebrity?

Well I'm told I look like Adrian Brody, who is apparently "as sexy as hell". Therefore by the transitive principle, I'm sexy as well. Thanks Jin ;) I've also been told that I look like Nicholas Cage when I'm wearing my contacts, although that one I don't see at all. You folks help me out, Who do I look like?

20) What is the most romantic thing someone of the opposite sex has done for you?
made me dinner and wrote me letters.

21) Do you actually read these when other people fill them out?
Yes I do. It takes me a while but I find it interesting.

The three people that I'm tagging are Lala, demara, and S.

If You're Happy and You Know it Clap Your Hands

2006-10-04T16:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings and saluations my good folks. How I've missed you guys, I apologize in advance if this post is a tad long and has spelling mistakes in it. I thought I’d give everyone a bit of an update as to what I’ve been up to. Well I’ve been working hard at a course that’s been dealing with Medicine and Biotechnology. Pretty interesting stuff but it required me to go to lunch with people and have questions prepared for them so that I sounded quazi intelligent. The conversations were good because I got to get some insight into the pharmaceutical world and got to converse with some important people with jobs I might one day like to have. The wraps were’nt to shabby either.

On top of this I had to complete a project. As I’ve mentioned earlier we do most of our work in groups and most of our courses involve us coming up with a biotechnology product that will function from a scientific perspective as well as from a business one. This time around we went with a product that would down regulate the levels of this thing called P glycoprotein. This is a protein that gets over expressed in cancer cells. Now you’re probably scratching your heads wondering what the heck does that mean? Well the function of this protein is to pump things such as drugs out of your cells. The end result is that you have lots of these pumps pumping out chemotherapy agents such as doxorubicin. This makes chemotherapy ineffective, in the case of liver cancer most people die in 5 years. So we designed something called an siRNA which gets a complex called RISC to chop up RNA which stops these pumps from being proteins and hence working (do you folks know about DNA, RNA and protein? Say yes if you don’t ever want to hear me describe what they are). We conjugated it to cholesterol to target it to the liver so you don’t get bad side effects and WHAM we have a product. Much more complicated than that, 29 pages more complicated in fact but I don’t want to bore my adoring public (yes I mean you nikki)

As I mentioned in my previous post I also had to apply to jobs and submit cover letters. I would like to thank everyone for your advice and I made sure to follow it. I did in fact get an interview for the position I had my heart set on and I’m proud to admit that I now have a job for my co-op placement and it’s with one of the worlds largest pharmaceutical companies. I couldn’t have asked for more and I can’t wait to start in January.

Now while this is going on the date my group was supposed to present our seminar on was moved up by two weeks. This meant that I had my exam on the same day as I had my seminar (given to about 150 people and those who cared to watch online). The exam went fairly well as did the seminar. The topic of conversation is one that I suggested, Lifestyle drugs. Now to give you some background lifestyle drugs are drugs that 1) either address an issue that is not directly health related, for example hair loss, or erectile dysfunction or 2) address issues that can be addressed by changing your lifestyle for example obesity. Now this is getting fairly long and I want to comment on all my favourite bloggers sites so I’ll end here and pick up on discussing obesity later but as always I have a question for you folks. Do you think that pharmaceutical companies should be investing money to solve problems such as erectile dysfunction, obesity, hair loss etc? Keep in mind the market is about 8 billion dollars.

Job Application Time. Any Advice?

2006-09-24T09:01:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd just make a quick post for all three of you wondering what's happened to the molecular turtle. It's become a rather busy time in my life for several reasons. The first is that the programme I'm in has a co-op portion that starts in January; however, we are applying to job postings at the moment. What that meant last week is that I had to revamp my resume and prepare 11 cover letters. Now that wouldn’t have been so bad but I have a massive project due and a presentation this Tuesday and Wednesday. I would even have been ok with that but it turns out that one of the speakers for our seminar series has dropped out. What that means for yours truly and his group is that our seminar has been moved up two weeks. Thus I have a 3 hour exam and have to give a seminar about lifestyle drugs to about 200 people and whoever decides to watch on the web. Coupled with the fact that my group consists of three people instead of the usual four, it’s been a busy time for me. Now in better news I have an interview coming up for a placement in a major pharmaceutical company so I’m pretty excited. I also have to thank all you folks for making my last post a comment extravaganza it’s really great to know people are reading. Lastly, seeing as my major focus is getting a job these days in a pharmaceutical company, does anyone have any tips for cover letters, resumes and job interviews? They’d be much appreciated.

Proud To Be A Nerd

2006-09-09T22:14:00.000-07:00

For those of you that hadn’t figured it out yet I’m a nerd. Not only am I a nerd, I’m a nerd of epic proportions. What does that mean? Well among other things it means that I love science. I love knowing how the world around me works and why it is when I flip a switch a light comes on or off. I like knowing the reasons behind common things like why homo milk goes bad earlier than skim milk. It also means that I’m really excited about a project proposal I’ll be giving to my professors on Wednesday on why I think we should begin producing measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine in Safflower (instead of cell cultures) and how I purpose to carry this out. Although I’ve known all the above for quite a long time and I’ve always enjoyed learning things I haven’t always known that I was a nerd. I was made well aware by others in grade school, perhaps it had something to do with the huge eighties glasses, lanky frame, and straight A’s (except in handwriting where I got C’s and D’s). When I entered high school I wanted to shake this term badly and even managed to pull it off by working out and being known as a soccer star. However I realized when I first started university that I was a nerd and became proud of it. So from that day forward I was loud and proud self proclaimed nerd. The funny thing is that recently I’ve noticed that nerds are cool and in some cases in proclaimed hot. It’s interesting that as you get older nerds seem to get more and more respect. I wonder what it has to do with. I ran into someone I went to high school with a little while ago he’d fall into the category of jock and found that he now works for Canadian Tire. Which is great for him but it makes me think that perhaps the new found nerd respect comes from getting higher paying jobs or perhaps it has to do with having more power. Those things still don’t explain the nerd hotness factor although perhaps Napoleon Dynamite has something to do with it. If that’s the case I’d like to say thank you Napoleon, and thank you Petro for your protect. So I leave it to you friends and neighbours, what explains these trends and observations? More importantly are you nerds? and if you are are you proud of it?

Steve Irwin Dies of a Stingray Attack

2006-09-04T14:50:00.000-07:00

As hard as it is to believe the crocodile hunter has died because of a freak sting ray accident. Although he was bit wonkey he had a certain charm to him and his love of animals was apparent. The guy hugged croc's and he dies to a sting ray, that's like me dying while making a volcano with baking soda and vinegar. Anyways what follows is the wikipedia entry for those people who are interest in what happened.

"Shortly after 11:00am local time on 4 September 2006, Irwin was fatally pierced in the chest by a short-tail stingray barb while diving in Queensland's Batt Reef, which is part of the Great Barrier Reef. The events were caught on camera and the footage is now in the possession of Queensland Police.[25] Irwin was in the area filming his own documentary, to be called The Ocean's Deadliest, but weather had stalled filming. Irwin decided to take the opportunity to film some shallow water shots for a segment in the television program his daughter Bindi was hosting,[26] when, according to his friend and colleague John Stainton, he swam too close to one of the animals. "He came on top of the stingray and the stingray's barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart," said Stainton, who was on board Irwin's boat at the time.
After reviewing the footage of the incident and speaking to the cameraman who recorded it, marine documentary filmmaker and fisherman Ben Cropp speculated that the stingray "felt threatened because Steve was alongside and there was the cameraman ahead..."[25] In such a case, the stingray responds by automatically flexing the serrated barb on its tail, which is up to 25 centimeters (roughly 10 inches) in length.
"He came over the top of a stingray that was buried in the sand, and the barb came up and hit him in the chest," Stainton said. Wildlife documentary maker Ben Cropp, citing a colleague who saw footage of the attack, told Time.com that Irwin had accidentally boxed the animal in. "It stopped and twisted and threw up its tail with the spike, and it caught him in the chest," said Ben Cropp. "It's a defensive thing. It's like being stabbed with a dirty dagger." The Bull Ray that stung Irwin was "a one-in-a-million thing," Cropp told Time magazine. "I have swum with many rays, and I have only had one do that to me."[27]In this case, the motion struck Irwin's chest and pierced his heart.[25] This was only the third known fatality in Australian history from a stingray attack, and only 17 worldwide fatalities have taken place since 1996.[28]
Crewmembers aboard his boat called emergency services in the nearest city of Cairns and administered CPR as they rushed the boat to nearby Low Isle to meet a rescue helicopter. Medical staff pronounced Irwin dead when they arrived a short time later. [29] The barb lodged in his chest and the toxins of the barb caused Irwin to die of cardiac arrest. [2]
The Queensland Police Service notified his family and released a statement for the media concerning his death.[30] News of his death prompted a public outpouring expressing shock and loss. Several Australian news websites went down because of high web traffic[31] and talk-back radio experienced a high volume of callers expressing their grief,[32] commemorating his passion and exuberance. Australian Prime Minister John Howard, among many other politicians, expressed his "shock and distress" at the death, saying that "Australia has lost a wonderful and colourful son."[33] Irwin's body was flown to a morgue in Cairns[34], where stunned family and friends were gathering on Monday night. His wife Terri was informed of her husband's death while on a walking tour in the Cradle Mountain-Lake St Clair National Park in Tasmania, and returned via private plane from Devonport to the Sunshine Coast with their two children.[25]" (wikipedia, 2006)

The Turtle Has Returned!

2006-09-01T09:45:00.000-07:00

From the pristine wilds of Killarney Provincial Park the turtle has emerged, tanned, relaxed and ready for a new semester of medicine and biotechnology. I had a great time but I actually missed blogging which is weird since I never expected to like it to start with. I realized it’s because I have a ton of great commenters, so thank you folks. I’ll start today’s entry by giving a run down of the interesting stuff (and not so interesting) that happened day to day. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures yet so where I write (photo) there will be, yes you guessed it a picture. Our first day of the expedition consisted of Nikki, Ruben and I getting up at 6:00 and packing the car full of stuff we’d need. Once packed we drove an hour and a half to the cottage strapped on the canoe and drove another 3 or 4 hours to get to the wilds of Killarney. On the way we passed through some major construction which involved blasting through huge sections of the Canadian Shield and moving tons and tons of rock. It’s really amazing to think that we have the capability to totally modify our landscape to such an extent. It’s pretty much like saying hey there’s a mountain here, lets get rid of it.

Once we made it to our site, 63 woodchuck avenue for those of you that are looking for an awesome site. We started out with car camping but I have to say that the site itself was pretty nifty. There was a cliff behind us that people seemed to enjoy jumping off of, it would probably be about 25 feet above the water . We had an uneventful night except for the fact that while eating smores the fattest raccoon ever snagged a garbage bag and ran off into the forest. I also came across the raccoon underground railway. This happened to be a sewer pipe that they used to sneak into a French Canadian couple’s site and terrorize them. Mon Dieu!!

I woke up fairly early and managed to snag a picture of the misty lake which I found to be quite nice while Ruben and Nikki slept. Nice enough to wake up before the other musketters, well that’s debatable. It also meant that I prepared the gruel for breakfast, also known as Quaker oatmeal maple and brown sugar. I also happened to be the cook for most the trip, Jin you’d be proud. I’ve hot mad skillz as they say here in the hood. Later in the day we went on the crannyberry bog trail in hopes of seeing some wildlife, but alas it was not meant to be. We did however see a tipped over tree with a massive root system (photo). The bog was also really nice and was the site of many a photo. Unfortunately the rocks were fairly slippery from the rain the night before so there was much slipping and sliding. After returning from the trail we packed up and loaded our canoe on George Lake. We had the illusion in our mind that we could make it in one trip so loaded the canoe to the brim with Nikki stuffed in the middle. Unfortunately the canoe had other ideas and slowly started to sink like the titanic. So we unloaded it and made two trips, amounting to a 35 minute canoe trip each way. Strangely Ruben and I were much faster and better canoes this year because a trip like that would have taken us an hour last year. I have a feeling it had to do with the inspiring words of little Nikki. She shouted out commands such as mush mush! And sang old Guess Who songs “No Sugar tonight in my coffee, No sugar to night in my tea BAH BAH BAH” (actual rendition). In between trips we went to the town of Killarney to pick up some worms and koolaid (7 dollar koolaid). On the way we saw two moose crossing the way. To me it was really neat because I’ve never seen a moose before and they were totally not what I was expecting. It was pretty funny because one was standing on the other side of the road. It looked both ways and then crossed the street. We stopped were it went in and contrary to my belief they were not quite or graceful at all. They made more noise than bulldozers going through the forest.

Once getting to our site which was a really beautiful peninsula we found out that it was home to literally hundreds of frogs of varying sizes and colours (photo). It was also home to nikki’s dismay to many different snakes. I’m not sure what these ones are but one had an orange belly while another that we found was spotted. I also think I encountered a Massassuga rattler which made me jump ten feet back since it almost stepped on it. We had a nice campfire and howled along with the wolves (nikki will deny it but I’m sure I heard her cute little howl as well).

The next day we slept in spent most of the day fishing and napping. I caught a big bass, the biggest one of the trip in fact (nikki may or may not dispute this but I have photo evidence (photo, photo). We also were lucky enough to see a big mother deer and her faun come for a drink across from us while we were fishing. One thing I learned from this trip is that Nikki is the bass master. She was able to catch tons of little fish with a big hook. Although I think it was my hooking of the worms that was the key touch. That evening we had a fire and a beautiful sun set (photo). We also saw the ghost of Christmas Ruben coming after us through the fire (photo). That evening we also had a beaver visitor who was pretty interesting. He was picking his teeth with a stick and eating for about an hour.

The next day was pretty uneventful, we woke up late canoed around for a while. We went to two and bought some fish and chips out of a converted school bus. The fish and chips were pretty good considering it was from the inside of a school bus. Ruben swam across the lake, nikki and I fished and we had smores which is always a treat. The next day we took off for home. Things of note include that I took a pair of Rubens pants instead of my own before we packed up the car and realized they were not mine when I realize the waste was like 3x mine. Since the car was packed up I had to hold them closed until we made it back to the cottage. The other interesting incident was when Ruben was able to scarf down some wendies meal then put away another three burgers after that. Way to go Ruben! This trip also made me realize that I’ll always be a big kid. I may be a science nerd and that means I have a good idea of how the things around me work but that doesn’t take away my wide eyed wonder. I look around and see these great rock formations and massive trees and it still takes my breath away and makes me think how lucky I am. I also estimate the iron content and count the tree rings don’t get me wrong but I still think the world is truly an amazing an wonderful place. There’s a lot more to write about and I have a couple more days off but I think that’s enough for one massive entry. Anyone else doing anything fun with their summer?

There was a moose, and he drank a lot of juice way oh way oh

2006-08-20T19:51:00.000-07:00

Yes boys and girls this week marks the final instalment of protein chemistry. This also marks the last lab based course I will ever have to take. Yes friends and neighbours this researcher and one time lab technician is hanging up his pipettes for good. I’m still going to be a science nerd so fear not; I just won’t be getting my hands dirty so to speak. I guess I shouldn’t be getting ahead of myself though since I still have to finish up my newly designed smog filter report and present it on Friday. If any of you folks out there are interested in what’s in your air and how it’s affecting you let me know and I’ll talk about it otherwise there’s no point in putting all 7 (yes my readership is growing whohoho) to sleep. Also have a couple of assignments to hand in but I’m floating on air because soon this boy will be out in the wild blue yonder.

Friday night the lovely Nikki is going to come down to Toronto and we’ll begin assembling everything we need for camping. Early Saturday morning Ruben is going to pass by and we’ll set out for Killarney Provincial Park for five days. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a lady friend to bring along to keep him company but there’s always next year. The pic I’ve posted up on the left hand side is at the top of this huge rock peak that they call, yes you’ve guess it “the crack”. I wonder how the rangers keep a straight face talking about the crack all day. They have one thing right though it’s probably one of the most beautiful cracks you’ll ever see (It'll be up by tomorrow night). The pic on the left is Georgian Bay off one of the trails. I think it’s going to be a ton of fun. Highlight’s of last trip include me asking Ruben “Where’s the gas lighter” only to find ten minutes later that he’d left in the actual oven which now had 4 foot high flames coming out of it. Thankfully it’s nothing throwing it into the lake couldn’t handle.

I really enjoyed the trails as well but this year I’m hoping to see a bit more than foxes, racoons, snakes and frogs we saw last year. If we’re lucky I think we’ll see a moose or perhaps a bear. If not I’m already super lucky to have Nikki willing to canoe out into the bathroom less wilderness and spend five days with me.

I’m trying to put together a list of the necessary stuff that I should bring. Among them are some of the books you folks have suggested (Thank you all so much, it’s much appreciated). What I’m asking of you great people this week is suggestions of things to bring along. You see I’m an absent minded molecular turtle and I’m making a list but there are tons of things I know I’m going to forget without your help. On top of that what are a couple of things you just couldn’t go without and I’ll give you toilet paper and food freebies. Oh and any suggestions for what makes up a good trail mix or perhaps some good snack for the trails, Jin this one is definitely your area. Another thing is what’s some great camping food?

Return Of The Bunny Suicides

2006-08-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

The weeks seem to fly by these days and the summer seems to have gone by in a blink of an eye. I guess that's what weekly presentations, tests and labs do to you. This week’s presentation was on opium and metabolic engineering of poppies to accumulate the good stuff at the cost of the bad. So if you want to know how to turn morphine into heroine in one easy step I’m your man. Who says you don’t learn anything useful in school these days? The task over the next few weeks is to come up with a design for a Smog filter either using enzymes of normal filter materials. On the off chance that any of my vast readership (That means all four of you!) knows anything about filters or materials or even enzymes that take care of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, or ozone drop me a note.

Although my summer has passed by I’ve had a great weekend. The wonderful Nikki came to visit me and she came bearing gifts! From out of her tickle trunk (or more accurately a stylish laptop tote), she brought out what has to be the greatest book of all time. Yes, you’ve guessed it, 'The Return of the Bunny Suicides'. Each page is filled with ingenious ways with which our furred friends come up with ways to put an end to their pellet filled existence. Expect the next few entries to have pictures from the book.

I also made it out to the zoo with Nikki, Steve, Konrad and his gal pal Stefani which was entertaining. We discovered that our tiger friend who we had seen rockin and rolling 103 days before (wow how’d you guys know that was tiger gestation time) had given birth to cute kitties. It’s amazing how much like us they are. For example the Tiger dad was passed out in the den while the mom was off in another room taking care of the babies. If you want to check out the tiger baby web cam click here. The zoo also brought out the fact that Nikki and I often have different perspectives on things. For instance while checking out the new mother orang-utan and her baby Nikki commented on how cute the baby was. My comment was “Check that out the mom keeps shoving her finger up her bum look how far that is!” I also got to check out some quality B movie material this weekend in the war of the gargantuas. Highly suggest it if you’re into bad voice overs, scared asian people, painted backgrounds, and Tonka trucks masquerading as real vehicles.

I’ve also started to plan my camping trip to Killarney and just now have come to the realization that I’m seriously lacking in reading material for the trip. It would be great if you let me know of any great books that I should pick up along the way. I’m a big fan of Thompson, Vonnegut, Adams, Stevenson and Goodkind (hangs head in shame) to give you some idea of my tastes. Keep in mind though that I’m by no means set in my ways so feel free to suggest anything that’s you think is good.

What Do You Do To Relax?

2006-08-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

After last week I realized I really need to put more time into relaxing and looking after myself. I’ve gotten back into my fitness regime and hope to continue with running at least 20 km a week and lifting weights for at least 4 days. Then I starting thinking that stress is something that people deal with everyday. Chances are that you folks reading this right now are stressed. Out of duty to you my readers I sought out a method for you to determine if you’re so stressed that you need a vacation. The stress test here meets my stringent criteria. On another note if anyone would like to share their personal tips on how to deal with stress and ways to de-stress after a long week let me know.

So you had a bad day, you ran 14 k, then you smoked a J

2006-08-06T13:27:00.001-07:00

I thought that the above title would give an accurate representation of the previous week. That is if we switched the bad day to bad week, kept the 14 k and switched smoked a J to ate 5 pepperettes. I hope the title meets Daniel Powter ‘s lyrical expectations. This entry is pretty much a way for me to document the week so don’t bother reading further to hear about my complaining about my week. Things of note that happened: Upon entering my car and turning the key my car started emitting a high pitched beeping sound, following this the turn signal died. Upon faced with paying a billion dollars for getting it toed to my house I decided to face the commute home. One hour of high pitched beeping and a million lane changes without signals later I arrived home to have it die. Thankfully it’s been resuscitated. I also encountered a cute never before seen feature of PowerPoint. After working on a presentation for about three hours I saved it, saw it on my desktop and went to get a glass of water. When I returned the icon was gone, so I went to recent documents tried to load it and was told it couldn’t be found. After searching my computer it was still gone having been taken my underpants gnomes seeking to expand out of their niche market. To relax I decided to watch my newly acquired fishy friends. Leopold had committed suicide, although funny in its manner it was not a needed addition to my day. He had somehow managed to bury himself head first into the gravel of the tank. That was just in one day. For the view of the week add in tests, assignments, and 17 hours sleep. I finished off my week my emptying my brain and running 14 km as I’m apt to do when I need to relax. Leopold you will be missed.

Don't Get Ripped Off Get Informed

2006-07-30T12:29:00.000-07:00

I’d like to thank everyone for their suggestions on how to present effectively. I’ve incorporated a lot of what you folks have talked about and it made for an interesting presentation on medical implants. I would also like to thank all of you who came up afterwards to tell me I’m charismatic; God knows I need a bigger ego. While sifting through some material I came across something that you ladies and metro sexual men might be interested in. Skin care companies are ripping you off, St. Ives I'm going to reveal your "Swiss Secret". Now I know you all had that nagging feeling but you didn’t know exactly how you were being screwed. Recently a number of skin crèmes have popped up on the market with things like collagen, elastin, fibronectin and vitronectin listed as their active ingredients. The claim is that these are natural products of your body that will result in rejuvenation of your skin keeping you looking like a hot tamale. These proteins help with cell proliferation and wound healing in your body, which is why they have significance for the medical implant market but do they do anything when you put them on your face? Well they are proteins, which means they really like to bind water so they may moisturize your face. However you’d pretty much get the same effect by drunkenly passing out in a nacho plate (my preferred method of protein application). What they don’t do is rejuvenate your face resulting in cell proliferation as claimed. It’s a good thing too because another name of uncontrolled cell proliferation is tumour. While resulting in some cool topography on your face they’re not so good for your health. These companies are taking advantage of people by marketing a product with an active ingredient that’s not all that active. So don’t get scammed by junk science and slick marketing. That $10 crème without collagen is probably just as good as the $85 dollar one with it. If anyone out there wants to know the science behind anything else drop a comment and I’ll do a post on it.

Say Hello To My Little Friends

2006-07-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

Featured above are my new aquatic friends, from left to right they are Reginald, Leopold and Willis. I’ve decided today that fish are the perfect pets for me for several reasons. 1) They can’t pee, poop or barf on you or any of your belongings. 2) It's unlikely they'll maul a two year old child 3) They don’t require any effort, no walking, no sifting through their droppings, and no changing shavings. Now I figure some of you might be thinking you still need to clean the water and change the filter and stuff but you’re wrong. If you sent up a mini eco-system with snails and only feed as much as they eat you don’t have to clean your tank often. As a matter of fact at one point I had some fish for 6 years without ever cleaning the tank but I did pop in a few filters. 4) They don’t make any noise unlike a certain hedgehog who tried to ensure I woke up at 4:30 a.m each day 5) They don’t cause me to go into sneezing fits 6) Convenient burials, can anyone say flush? On that note, any bets on how long the cold cut trio will last?

Sleep? I remember sleep, USE to be a good friend

2006-07-21T15:07:00.000-07:00

What a long week! I started a new protein chemistry module this week. What that means is instead of building a cadbury keish my time was spent building a glucose biosensor. While biosensors are cool they're definitely lacking in the tasty department. The name of the game this week was presentation, in fact it seems like I’m going to be doing many of them. I love presenting, probably owing to the fact that it combines my two loves, talking and being the centre of attention but I’m sure I can learn a lot from others. This leads me into the questions I’d like to ask you friends and neighbours. Do you have any presentation tips? What do you think the main difference is between a good presentation and a bad presentation? Keep in mind that the material unless you’re an uber nerd is way less interesting than my close encounter of the smelly kind in Yorkville.

What Do They Drink In Your Country?

2006-07-15T19:20:00.000-07:00

I've noticed I've been getting hits from all over the world lately. Seeing as it's Saturday night in Toronto and I'm just about to go rollerblading it's only natural to think about alcohol. It would also be great if some people posted drink recipes . Justin if you're around post the dirty smut recipe.

Cadbury Cream Egg Uses Part II

2006-07-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

In homage to my two new readers, the pastery chef and the detective I've decided to revisit cream eggs. I've seen some remnants lying around the local corner store that might be able to make use of. As it’s now several months after Easter and we’ve been experiencing a heat wave of epic proportions I can’t imagine they’d be too expensive. So if you have any recipes that you think could get better with cream eggs or any idea’s of what I should do next drop a comment and I’ll do my best to accommodate.

Ultimate showdown with a special appearance by our favourite biotecher

2006-07-12T09:56:00.000-07:00

After seeing this video I knew I had to share it. If you folks have any other's you think are great leave a comment and let me know.

So The Scientologist Says "What if I stab you in the eye with an ice cream cone and yell ice cream? WHAT THEN?"

2006-07-09T14:16:00.000-07:00

After an interesting encounter outside the scientologists
hive on Younge Street with Jan and Ali I decided to do some investigation. These fellows are so generous they supply a personality test that “would normally cost you $500.00 and up. It is offered to you here free of charge as a public service”. Gee golly what nice folks! I filled out my info as honestly as possible including my phone number which contains a special message for them (Nut-Jobs). Strangely they wish me to pick up my test results but alas there are no locations in Afghanistan for our hero alpaca farmer Old Mother Hubbard. But they’re nice enough to show me my results online huzzah! You have to go through a barrage of soul searching questions like Do you get occasional twitches of your muscles, when there is no logical reason for it? (Who doesn’t?) Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people? (Wow you’re in my head get out! get out! Get out!) Is your voice monotonous, rather than varied in pitch? (Of course I don’t want to scare the alpaca’s). Would the idea of inflicting pain on game, small animals or fish prevent you from hunting or fishing? (Can you say incentive?) Does an unexpected action cause your muscles to twitch?(Yes you’ve obviously never farmed the dangerous unpredictable alpaca). Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do? (Who the fuck do you think you are!) Is your life a constant struggle for survival? (I’m a friken alpaca farmer from Afghanistan what the hell do you think?) Do you sometimes give away articles which strictly speaking do not belong to you? (It’s the gift that keeps on giving) Are you sometimes considered forceful in your actions or opinions? (I get the job done what are a few broken bones. Nough said) Do you bite your fingernails or chew the end of your pencil? (mmm woody goodness) If we were invading another country, would you feel sympathetic towards conscientious objectors in this country? (All will be crushed by the iron fist of Old Mother Hubbard). Are you a slow eater? (I can see why this would be important. If you don’t eat quickly enough they have to increase the dosage of meds hidden in your food). Would you use corporal punishment on a child aged ten if it refused to obey you? (Get out the strap!) Do children irritate you? (sure do why do you think my cupboard was bear?) Are you ever ill at ease in the company of children? (They can stare into my soul! Little stinkers!).
To summarize our friend is 47 year old afghani alpaca farmer male named Old Mother Hubbard who is paranoid, hyper-aggressive towards animals and children, lies, cheats, steals, and has inexplicable twitches. What does this mean? Yes, Old Mother Hubbard is a perfect candidate for scientology. In fact if you look at the graph he’s achieved the desired level of aggressiveness. All the next step involves is buying dianetics then paying several thousand times for auditing.

Liquid smoke = Yummy goodness

2006-07-08T13:32:00.000-07:00

As everyone knows it’s world cup time which means it’s time for me to question my origins. How you ask are these two things connected? Well as everyone knows Italy is facing France and I don’t really care who wins. This supports the mounting case for the theory my parents stole me from some other family as a young child. If you think this is ridiculous here’s the case. I’m the only person I know of that doesn’t have a birth certificate, after asking my mom the reply was they forgot to give me one. There is a gap in the photo album (entitled the evolution of Andrew), I mysteriously appear at the age of about 3 or 4 in the family records. Strangely I also have several knitted items that say birthday baby, but they’re all from different years. The funniest thing though was that at a family wedding last week a relative told me he never knew my dad has a son but knew my sister was born in 1984. So this raises several important questions that I could use some help answering: What’s my nationality? Do I really look Italian? Am I really Jewish? Can I escape looking like Flanders (see below)? Am I bound to get fat and wear wife beater shirts?

The Great Cadbury Cream Cake Experiment

2006-05-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

While foraging around my not so local gelato dealer I discovered that the flavour Cadbury Cream Egg exists and not only does it exist it appears to be popular! With this in mind I started thinking what would happen if I combined the chocolaty goodness of cake with the creamy sweetness of cream eggs. Thus begins the great cream cake experiment.

Hypothesis

When one replaces the eggs in a normal cake mix with cream eggs the end result is a terrible chimera resembling neither cake nor cream egg.

Methods

I made two cakes, one being the control cake the other being one that replaces eggs with cream eggs. The purpose of the control cake was to see if there was any noticeable change to the taste or other qualitative or quantitative attributes between cakes. Since the only variable that had changed was the substitution of eggs the changes could be attributed to the cream eggs.

Step 1 Assemble Ingredients

Step 2 Crack the Eggs

As you may have guessed traditional methods of egg cracking were unsuccessful but as they say desperation is the father of innovation.

Step 3 add the eggs

The viscosity of the cream egg yoke caused some problems as the picture on the left was taken after several minutes of apparent yoke stasis. However I made an important discovery of my own. If this whole Biotechnology business doesn't pan out I can market cream egg yoke as an industrial adhesive or super glue. The best part is if you glue your hands together you just have to lick them and you're free and it also serves as a meal on the go. ( Note: you have to toss the shells after all no one adds shells to thier cakes)

Step 4 Add the Milk, Oil and Cake Mix

Add the other ingredients and beat the living day lights out of them and pour into a pan.

Step 5 Bake Both the Control and Cream Cake

Both cakes were baked in the same oven at the same time. The cake on the left is the cream cake the cake on the right is the control.

Results

My initial expected result was this was going to be a tremendous waste of time, money and cream eggs. I thought the cake either would be just a formless mass or taste terrible or both but boy was I surprised. In the second part of the experiment I let friends and family try both cakes and choose which one they preferred. Keep in mind they had no idea that I used cream eggs instead of normal eggs in one of the cakes. Shockingly everyone prefers the cream cake, in fact at the moment I have about 3 slices of it left and 3/4 of the other one. I really have to find a way to market this.

Greetings and Saluations

2006-04-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Chances are that if you're reading this you're part of an elite group of very important individuals or you're having some serious issues with google. Either way glad you could make it. Be warned this site will be boring, full of useless information about myself and will break every rule about blogs.
Now for the fun stuff, what you may not know is that I belong to a wonderful yet seriously disfunctional Italian family. Think Everybody Loves Raymond on crack. Now instead of the quite suburbs put them them into a Toronto getto complete with a quirky crew of drugs dealers, gang bangers and the occasional stabbing or shooting. Now friends and neighbours you may have heard me comment that my wonderful father bears some resemblance to some famous individuals so I ask your your opinion does my dad resemble A) Saddam Hussein B) Ned Flanders C) None of the above