Off Topic

So, Dave got an email from one of the students in the course he TAs for that starts like this: “Yo, wuzzup wigger?” Is it just me, or does that seem like an inappropriate way to address your TA?

Something to Report

Well, I’ve got something to report! Got feedback from my supervisor on my lit review chapter… and she wants revisions! Of course! The parts that I had gone into quite a bit of depth she felt I went into too much depth and the parts that I felt needed to be only mentioned, she wanted more detail. So it’s back to sitting on my butt for hours on end in front of the computer writing (as opposed to the sitting on my butt for hours on end in front of my computer surfing the net).

Also, got to give a shout out to my friend Sarah, who generously provided me some feedback on the lit review chapter as well. Sarsh, I had a look at your feedback and it is totally awesome — thanks! I’ll send you the next draft when it’s ready. =)

Nothing to Report

I’ve got nothing to report. Just been working on revising my chapter 3, which is very boring and so I’ve got nothing to report. Instead, I will entertain you with a joke:

Did you here about the dyslexic agnostic? He wonders if there really is a dog.

Discuss.

Feedback!!

Finally got some feedback from my supervisor that I’ve been waiting for! And she actually seems to like my paper [insert sigh of relief here!]… she gave me some suggested changes to work on over the weekend (which are soooo much better to work on than stupid formatting!) and we are meeting tomorrow morning to go over the Discussion, which needs to be tightened up a little (imagine that, *me*, of all people, talking too much!)

Also, I met with a friend of mine last week (who, coincidentally, is a post doc in the lab of Dr. Beth Simpson (no relation)) to ask advice on how to find a post doc position. She was very helpful and I’m actually going to send out some emails to people whose labs I’d like to work in… scary! Wish me luck!

Formatting Sux

I spent about 2 hours today re-formatting my paper to meet the stupid, nit-picky rules of thesis-dom. What was once “Figure 1” had to become “Figure 2.1”; margins needed to be tweaked; figures needed to be transported; references needed to be converted from numbers to names… well, they didn’t *have* to, but since I *hate* doing references as numbers, I decided it would be easier to switch my paper’s numbers to names than having to number my bazillion references in my lit review chapter… unfortunately, the whole thing has to be consistent =( And countless other formatting things had to be done. Two hours!! I should have just bought my thesis off the internet!

Funny Gene Names

When you discover a gene/protein/other cool biological thing, you get to name it. Some people choose really boring names, like interleukin-27. But others are more creative with their naming… I’m particularly fond of the following ‘cuz of their fun names:

• Indian hedgehog (and its friends, Desert & Sonic hedgehog)
• Tiggy-winkle hedgehog (obviously, I’m a fan of the hedgehogs… and I just recently learned this one existed!)
• Jagged 1
• Noggin
• Smo
• Smox
• Nox1 (interestingly, in Harry Potter “nox” is the spell used to turn off your wandlight after you’ve used “lumos” to turn your wandlight on. Coincidence? Probably).
• chicken forkhead
• (Sarah, this one is for you!) Diablo, a.k.a. Smac!

Sometimes, a lot of people “discover” the same protein and so it gets a lot of names, like Runt-related transcription factor 2 (Runx2), which is also known as: Cbfa1, Osf2, AML3, Til1, and Pebp2 αA or PPB2αA… talk about having an identity crisis!

After writing my list, I Googled “funny gene names” to see what other funny names are out their and discovered on this site that there are waaaaaaay better gene names that I’ve never heard of before (probably the best on this list are “cheap date”, “lunatic fringe”, “grim” and “reaper” (which work together to control cell death), and “INDY, which makes mutant fruit flies live twice as long… it’s an acronym for “I’m not dead yet”” (from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”).

Bad Grad Student Redux

Well, I haven’t posted in a while… mainly because I haven’t worked on my thesis in a while = (
(I now have a whopping 2 pages written for chapter 4). But it’s not completely my fault… I’m kinda waiting around to get comments from my supervisor on the discussion section of my paper (chapter 3) before I do too much work on it (… if she rips apart the discussion in the paper, I’ll have to redo the discussion in chapter 4 too, so I may as well wait, right?)… I’ve been trying to work on the “Future Directions” part of chapter 4, which is actually kind of fun ‘cuz you get to talk about all the crazy studies you think should be done but won’t actually have to do yourself.

On the plus side, I’ve set up our new office, and done a major teacher recruitment mailing for, the science outreach program I co-coordinate (the UBC Let’s Talk Science Partnership Program) and got my online course (FNH 250) ready to go for September, so at least my procrastination has been somewhat productive…