Today was a good day, and tonight was an even better night. Will write more about it later if I have the time.
Hope that anyone who reads this had an awesome day of being alive as well.
LL&P.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Thursday, September 1, 2011
If someone can explain to me how trigonometry is useful knowledge for a doctor/research scientist to have please do, because so far all my "teacher" has done is talk about triangles and ask what might as well be labeled as rhetorical questions since he doesn't stop talking long enough to realize that a third of the class has been lulled to sleep by his monotone voice, the other third are off somewhere else via their phone/ipad/laptop, and the last third are trying to pay attention but are struggling to keep their head above the flood of information that spews out of his mouth at about 10 liters per second. In other words... my motivation to learn trigonometry is waning faster than a third quarter moon. I'm going to plop myself down in the merc lab and do the first homework tomorrow though so maybe someone in there will help me get my math flame burning a bit brighter.
Today was a good day though despite my trig class putting me in zombie mode for an hour and fifteen minutes. Both Chem. 2061 and Bio. 3412 were solid lectures. Hopefully workstudy will be quiet enough that I'll be able to start picking away at the mastering chemistry practice and homework problems, as well as catch up on a lot of the reading. Not planning on doing anything this weekend but burying my nose in my books though so I know that this will be the last week that I'm not caught up with the reading Given that we've got monday off for Labor Day Weekend I'll probably even end ahead of the game, which is something that I need to plan better to accomplish even earlier at the start of each semester.
On a complete tangent... there was a short segment on ESPN2's E:60 show about Kaiju Big Battle. It's too out there for me to even explain, but if you are game for some silly nerd humor definitely check out this video...
LL&P.
Today was a good day though despite my trig class putting me in zombie mode for an hour and fifteen minutes. Both Chem. 2061 and Bio. 3412 were solid lectures. Hopefully workstudy will be quiet enough that I'll be able to start picking away at the mastering chemistry practice and homework problems, as well as catch up on a lot of the reading. Not planning on doing anything this weekend but burying my nose in my books though so I know that this will be the last week that I'm not caught up with the reading Given that we've got monday off for Labor Day Weekend I'll probably even end ahead of the game, which is something that I need to plan better to accomplish even earlier at the start of each semester.
On a complete tangent... there was a short segment on ESPN2's E:60 show about Kaiju Big Battle. It's too out there for me to even explain, but if you are game for some silly nerd humor definitely check out this video...
LL&P.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Very productive day that was hitting on all cylinders right out the gate.
Got to the downtown Littleton light rail station right in time to get one of the last remaining parking spots. Hit up the Chase bank nearby to drop off the change necessary to up my bank account to exactly $1000.00 for a nice round number to start off September with. Got back to the station right as the d-line was rolling in. Did have a bit of a hiccup with a young lady pulling up way past the stop sign and blocking the cross walk where the CCD parking lot lets out on to Speer Blvd. Funny though that once I veered around in front of here that she acted like she wasn't the one in the wrong by yelling something at me before driving off. I had the JRE pumping through my headphones though so I didn't hear any of her negativity. Got to the office on time regardless, and was pleasantly surprised by a pretty quiet couple of hours that actually allowed me to get some studying in. Banged out some two chapters worth of psych statistics reading and notes before taking off for some gen. chem. II supplemental instruction with Khan who really helped solidify the concepts of how the intermolecular forces of a molecule shape its characteristics in terms of viscosity, boiling point, vapor pressure, etc. Even got to talk a bit of Muay Thai shop with him, and how I hope to be able to get something going on campus as far as it goes.
After SI it was class time. Bio 3611 is still a bit of a question mark to me since I missed the first two lectures, but today was the first day that I was able to follow along fairly well. Hopefully catching up on all of the reading this weekend will further that along. Psych statistics lecture was a so so class. Aaron is a good dude and does a good job of making the class as lively as he can, but there isn't a whole lot you can do with today's subject matter. Got to tell it like it is that I'm not all that happy with his not letting us pick who we want to work with for the course's major research project, and instead leave it to sheer randomness. Who knows though. Maybe it will turn out for the better. Either way I got to do my best at this point to just go with the flow. Going to have to do a bit of that with making up my incomplete work in Dr. Bruehl's honors gen. chem. I lab as well. Hopefully with it being my unofficial 19th credit hour for this semester does prove to be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I feel good about it, but leery that if I don't stay on top of my game that the whole thing could nose dive.
With that being said... I've got to get to bed if I'm going to keep this ship on course tomorrow, and at least get 6 hours of sleep. Should have been there over an hour ago. I imagine this will prove to be quite the reoccurring theme throughout my blogging about this semester. Nonetheless...
LL&P.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
Friday, August 26, 2011
So I ended up crawling into bed last night with Exit Through the Gift Shop playing on my laptop thinking that it would help put me to sleep. It sucked me in deep instead, and kept me up till it's end. For a documentary I have to state that it was one of the more enjoyable ones that I've watched in a long, long time. To be fair though... the majority of the documentaries that I watch tend to be of the type that are designed to be more vitriolic in nature than they are enjoyable. Regardless... I dig that a documentary on street art can simultaneously bring some much deserved legitimacy to what many would try to pass off as simple "graffiti", all while pointing out the subtle flaws in the way that our society is structured. To me... that's one of the main points that I think that Banksy is trying to make with this film. Creating art is both a means and an end in and of itself to the person that makes it. It doesn't matter whether you are a street artist or some eccentric Frenchman that is obsessed with filming everything because his mother's looming death was hidden from him as a child. All of the nonsense that gets attached to art given that even something as non-commercial as street art eventually ends up being a product that people will one way or another try to make money off of is so ridiculous that it crosses the boundary separating the absurd from the humorous. Who knows exactly what Banksy was going for in making this film, but if that was one of the points he was trying to make he hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Regardless... it's a fun film that anyone who can appreciate a different perspective on our society and the different characters that exist and in some cases thrive within it should enjoy. If you are reading this and haven't seen it... I definitely recommend it if you have some free time to kill. I especially recommend it if you have any kind of anthropologist, artist, comedian or fight-the-man underground rebel dimension to your personality.
So yeah... I ended up staying awake later into the night that I had planned. Fortunately I didn't have any hard times early in the morning that I absolutely had to get out of bed for in the morning. A fact that my body took full advantage of given that it had me subconsciously playing the snooze button game until 1000 this morning. Once I got up and out of bed I had a pretty productive day. Got to talk to Dr. Stith over the phone, and got the answer that I was hoping to hear about his class being a natural progression from general biology I and II. So after a small road bump in there being a hold on my student account at UC Denver stemming from some pell grant that makes no sense to me to put a hold on someone's account over I was able to swap out Bio 3124 with Bio 3611. Kind of sucks that I've already missed two lecture periods because of the an illogical way of numbering classes, but I'm confident that I'll be able to catch up quickly with the rest of the class.
Didn't have much going on after that though as far as things that needed to get done at the Veterans' Office of Student Services was concerned given that we knocked out all of the student certifications yesterday so it ended up being a nice chill day in the office. Got to relax a bit and start to get to know the other students that I'll be working with for at least this semester, as well as the big boss man himself, Cameron Cook. Even got to make some rounds with him and Justin Mayhall, Veteran Student Organization President, as they met with people running the show over in the Tivoli as far as who gets to have offices over there. With there now being 700 or so veterans taking classes at UC Denver and allegedly around 7-8 million dollars being pumped into the school's coffers because of us Cameron wants to get out of the tiny 400 square feet office that we are working out of right now and into a space that is more deserving of us being the largest student organization on campus. As of right now it seems like we are going to probably going to end up in the tunnel-shaped spaces on the bottom floor of the brewery, which would be a fun area to design our office around if it ends up turning out that way.
After work I headed back home and crashed out on my bed for a bit while watching the UFC weigh ins for tomorrow's card in Rio de Janeiro. Can't wait to see what the crowd is going to be like come tomorrow evening given that the sons Brazil pretty much gave birth to modern day mixed martial arts. That and the baddest man on the planet, Anderson Silva, is going to be not only doing his thing in his homeland for the first time ever in the UFC, but he'll be doing so in a fight that will allow him to avenge one of the few blemishes on his professional record that came from his being disqualified because of silly rule. We'll see how it plays out, but his opponent, Yushin Okami, has a style that in theory should test Anderson in the same way that Chael Sonnen did by taking him down and grinding his way towards what would have likely been a decision victory.
Anyway... I've got a token 0800 chemistry lab to go to in the morning so it's time to unplug.
LL&P.
So yeah... I ended up staying awake later into the night that I had planned. Fortunately I didn't have any hard times early in the morning that I absolutely had to get out of bed for in the morning. A fact that my body took full advantage of given that it had me subconsciously playing the snooze button game until 1000 this morning. Once I got up and out of bed I had a pretty productive day. Got to talk to Dr. Stith over the phone, and got the answer that I was hoping to hear about his class being a natural progression from general biology I and II. So after a small road bump in there being a hold on my student account at UC Denver stemming from some pell grant that makes no sense to me to put a hold on someone's account over I was able to swap out Bio 3124 with Bio 3611. Kind of sucks that I've already missed two lecture periods because of the an illogical way of numbering classes, but I'm confident that I'll be able to catch up quickly with the rest of the class.
Didn't have much going on after that though as far as things that needed to get done at the Veterans' Office of Student Services was concerned given that we knocked out all of the student certifications yesterday so it ended up being a nice chill day in the office. Got to relax a bit and start to get to know the other students that I'll be working with for at least this semester, as well as the big boss man himself, Cameron Cook. Even got to make some rounds with him and Justin Mayhall, Veteran Student Organization President, as they met with people running the show over in the Tivoli as far as who gets to have offices over there. With there now being 700 or so veterans taking classes at UC Denver and allegedly around 7-8 million dollars being pumped into the school's coffers because of us Cameron wants to get out of the tiny 400 square feet office that we are working out of right now and into a space that is more deserving of us being the largest student organization on campus. As of right now it seems like we are going to probably going to end up in the tunnel-shaped spaces on the bottom floor of the brewery, which would be a fun area to design our office around if it ends up turning out that way.
After work I headed back home and crashed out on my bed for a bit while watching the UFC weigh ins for tomorrow's card in Rio de Janeiro. Can't wait to see what the crowd is going to be like come tomorrow evening given that the sons Brazil pretty much gave birth to modern day mixed martial arts. That and the baddest man on the planet, Anderson Silva, is going to be not only doing his thing in his homeland for the first time ever in the UFC, but he'll be doing so in a fight that will allow him to avenge one of the few blemishes on his professional record that came from his being disqualified because of silly rule. We'll see how it plays out, but his opponent, Yushin Okami, has a style that in theory should test Anderson in the same way that Chael Sonnen did by taking him down and grinding his way towards what would have likely been a decision victory.
Anyway... I've got a token 0800 chemistry lab to go to in the morning so it's time to unplug.
LL&P.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Starting to get a better grasp on how this semester is going to go. Looks like I'm probably going to be swapping out Bio 3124 with Bio 3611. Hopefully I'll get to meet with Dr. Stith tomorrow to find out for sure.
Would have liked to make this entry more in depth, but had some unexpected and unwanted drama pop up earlier that at up a lot of valuable time. Think I nipped it at the bud enough to keep it from happening again, but we shall see. At least I'm going to get to bed on time tonight. Here's looking forward to the first full night of sleep for this week.
LL&P.
Would have liked to make this entry more in depth, but had some unexpected and unwanted drama pop up earlier that at up a lot of valuable time. Think I nipped it at the bud enough to keep it from happening again, but we shall see. At least I'm going to get to bed on time tonight. Here's looking forward to the first full night of sleep for this week.
LL&P.
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
Super quick tonight as it is already later than I would like it to be.
1. Molecular Biology class is bothering me. The instructor even said today that it really shouldn't be a 3100 level class, but somewhere around the 4000 instead. Going to look into switching over to General Cell Biology instead. Oh the irony that will ensue if I feel like a 3600 level class can easily be taken by someone who's only taken General Biology I and II, yet a 3100 class cannot.
2. Need to continue to get better at cutting off distractions and managing my time. This going to bed at 2330ish and planning on getting up at 0600 is not the right way to be doing things.
3. LL&P.
1. Molecular Biology class is bothering me. The instructor even said today that it really shouldn't be a 3100 level class, but somewhere around the 4000 instead. Going to look into switching over to General Cell Biology instead. Oh the irony that will ensue if I feel like a 3600 level class can easily be taken by someone who's only taken General Biology I and II, yet a 3100 class cannot.
2. Need to continue to get better at cutting off distractions and managing my time. This going to bed at 2330ish and planning on getting up at 0600 is not the right way to be doing things.
3. LL&P.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
Today pretty much went as expected.
Class. Work. Exercise. Wrapping up the plan for tomorrow before pulling out the molecular biology textbook. Only data to real document is that my LJO:HR time was 15 m, 47 s, and 4 cs. Could tell right from the start that I wasn't as charged up for it as I was yesterday. I think doing it back to back days definitely played a part in it. Going to experiment with doing it every other day and see if that ups the consistency and hopefully sets the stage for me to actually start shaving off time from my personal best.
Oh... and having sat through all of my lecture classes this first week I have to say that I am really looking forward to Dr. Cronin's ecology class. Dude seems like a really unique person that will be interesting to learn from. With that being stated though, I think that I'll probably be learning more valuable information in regards to my research doctor goal from either my molecular biology class or Dr. Bruehl's chemistry class. We shall see though.
LL&P.
Class. Work. Exercise. Wrapping up the plan for tomorrow before pulling out the molecular biology textbook. Only data to real document is that my LJO:HR time was 15 m, 47 s, and 4 cs. Could tell right from the start that I wasn't as charged up for it as I was yesterday. I think doing it back to back days definitely played a part in it. Going to experiment with doing it every other day and see if that ups the consistency and hopefully sets the stage for me to actually start shaving off time from my personal best.
Oh... and having sat through all of my lecture classes this first week I have to say that I am really looking forward to Dr. Cronin's ecology class. Dude seems like a really unique person that will be interesting to learn from. With that being stated though, I think that I'll probably be learning more valuable information in regards to my research doctor goal from either my molecular biology class or Dr. Bruehl's chemistry class. We shall see though.
LL&P.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The inspiration for this project has origins in a lot of different areas, but the final push from being just an idea that has marinated within in my mind for almost a decade into the realm of reality was delivered by my ambition to one day become a medical scientist. To the best of my ability I am going to be documenting on a day to day basis the journey towards that goal. So despite all of the other muses that have lead to its birth, many of which I'm sure to acknowledge further on down the road, that annotation of my day to day events is ultimately the purpose of the Red Human Project. Here's to hoping that the internet isn't killed by the collapse of our society before the story that it will become can be completed.
I need to get to bed in order to have slept properly for a 0600 wakeup so I'm going to keep this relatively short.
Woke up later than I wanted to today, but still got onto campus in time to get some work done at the Veterans' Student Services Office before having to take off for class. Molecular biology seems like it will be interesting, but I felt a little bit rusty with my last bio class being about a year ago. Dr. Johansen did point out that it could be a bit too much too soon for anyone who has only taken general biology one and two. Will start hitting the books tomorrow though and see how I feel about being ready for it before I make the decision to drop it or not.
I was pleasantly surprised to have Aaron turn out to be the teacher of my psychology based statistics and research glass. We'll see how well he is at playing the roll of lecturer as opposed to running the recitations like he is used to, but I already appreciate the positive energy that he brings to the table as a teacher, and have a feeling that he'll probably one of the better teachers that I've head.
Once I got home from school I cooked up my usual chicken salad. Am glad to get back into that habit, but I need to keep improving by eating better for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. I think that the best way to do that is to keep dialing in my time management skills ie cutting out distractions, being more disciplined in planning out my day, and getting better at avoiding the low-priority black holes that suck up the time I've allocated towards more important tasks.
After eating dinner I plugged in the buddha to share some breaths with Shiva, and as usual the frequency that it tuned my mind into was perfect for my bike ride, or as I aptly named it earlier...
the inaugural Loki Jones Operation: Hell Ride.
I humorously named it that because the rides that I go for on my lonesome tend to be peddle mashers where I put my mountain bike in its biggest gear and race around the loop created by Grant Ranch, Bowles, and Wadsworth as fast as I can. Typically I'll keep it in my biggest gears, 3-8, for the entirety of the ride, which is enough of a quadriceps-killing workout to earn its nomenclature and then some. The applicable use of the word "hell" for today's ride however I would say was had more to do with my balancing between riding safely and pushing it a bit in order to try and shave seconds off wherever I thought that I could. With the latter being the case I did allow myself to shift down to slightly smaller gears (3-7 and 3-6) in order to keep up my speed on the uphills that slow me down a bit if I stay in 3-8.
I don't think I could have picked a better day, let alone a better time of the day, for the inaugural LJO:HR. I headed out right around 1930, and the sun had creeped far enough towards the front range mountains that there was still enough light to easily make out all of the discrepancies in the road's surface, but not so much that the remaining rays were doing anything other than painting the puffed up storm clouds blue and purple with the occasional splash of red and orange. The storm clouds themselves were ideal as well in more than just their aesthetics given that the only drop that I consciously took notice of was the one that landed on the face of my ipod sleeve right as I was cueing up Datsik. I'm pretty sure I did subconsciously register a couple more colliding with me over the course of the ride, but they did more for keeping me from overheating than they did from getting me soaked. The clouds also letting lose some heat lightning which definitely fit the mood of my charged ride. On a side note... I need to try and find someone on that can break down the chemistry and physics of clouds and lightning, because googling it doesn't bring up anything that goes deep enough to satisfy my curiosity. The rest of the ride was a bit of a blur given that I was intensely focused of the task at hand, but a detail of note would be that two of the rabbits in front of the shopping plaza on the north side of Bowles got spooked a bit when I rolled up on them, and one of them bolted down the sidewalk right in front of me for about thirty or forty feet. Having befriended Professor Azazel Bun Bun the Third it added a fun perspective to the ride as if I was riding with my rabbit friends. I also managed to set off the radar detector about 150 meters before the turn into the apartment complex, which was a bit of a surprise given that I didn't think a person on a bike would be enough to trigger it measuring their speed. According to it I was going 25 mph at that point. If I'm consistently able to set it off in the future that will be a fun way of testing my top end speed capabilities. My total time for today's ride was 15 minutes, 37 seconds, and 37 centiseconds. We'll see how that holds up in the future. I think I'll shoot for trying to get it down to 15 minutes flat by the time the season changes make me put my bike away for the winter.
Anyway... time to bury my nose in my textbooks until my eyes can no longer keep themselves open. Hooray for what will probably be another 6 hour night of sleep. Oh well. It was worth staying up this late in order to get this ball rolling.
LL&P.
I need to get to bed in order to have slept properly for a 0600 wakeup so I'm going to keep this relatively short.
Woke up later than I wanted to today, but still got onto campus in time to get some work done at the Veterans' Student Services Office before having to take off for class. Molecular biology seems like it will be interesting, but I felt a little bit rusty with my last bio class being about a year ago. Dr. Johansen did point out that it could be a bit too much too soon for anyone who has only taken general biology one and two. Will start hitting the books tomorrow though and see how I feel about being ready for it before I make the decision to drop it or not.
I was pleasantly surprised to have Aaron turn out to be the teacher of my psychology based statistics and research glass. We'll see how well he is at playing the roll of lecturer as opposed to running the recitations like he is used to, but I already appreciate the positive energy that he brings to the table as a teacher, and have a feeling that he'll probably one of the better teachers that I've head.
Once I got home from school I cooked up my usual chicken salad. Am glad to get back into that habit, but I need to keep improving by eating better for breakfast, lunch AND dinner. I think that the best way to do that is to keep dialing in my time management skills ie cutting out distractions, being more disciplined in planning out my day, and getting better at avoiding the low-priority black holes that suck up the time I've allocated towards more important tasks.
After eating dinner I plugged in the buddha to share some breaths with Shiva, and as usual the frequency that it tuned my mind into was perfect for my bike ride, or as I aptly named it earlier...
the inaugural Loki Jones Operation: Hell Ride.
I humorously named it that because the rides that I go for on my lonesome tend to be peddle mashers where I put my mountain bike in its biggest gear and race around the loop created by Grant Ranch, Bowles, and Wadsworth as fast as I can. Typically I'll keep it in my biggest gears, 3-8, for the entirety of the ride, which is enough of a quadriceps-killing workout to earn its nomenclature and then some. The applicable use of the word "hell" for today's ride however I would say was had more to do with my balancing between riding safely and pushing it a bit in order to try and shave seconds off wherever I thought that I could. With the latter being the case I did allow myself to shift down to slightly smaller gears (3-7 and 3-6) in order to keep up my speed on the uphills that slow me down a bit if I stay in 3-8.
I don't think I could have picked a better day, let alone a better time of the day, for the inaugural LJO:HR. I headed out right around 1930, and the sun had creeped far enough towards the front range mountains that there was still enough light to easily make out all of the discrepancies in the road's surface, but not so much that the remaining rays were doing anything other than painting the puffed up storm clouds blue and purple with the occasional splash of red and orange. The storm clouds themselves were ideal as well in more than just their aesthetics given that the only drop that I consciously took notice of was the one that landed on the face of my ipod sleeve right as I was cueing up Datsik. I'm pretty sure I did subconsciously register a couple more colliding with me over the course of the ride, but they did more for keeping me from overheating than they did from getting me soaked. The clouds also letting lose some heat lightning which definitely fit the mood of my charged ride. On a side note... I need to try and find someone on that can break down the chemistry and physics of clouds and lightning, because googling it doesn't bring up anything that goes deep enough to satisfy my curiosity. The rest of the ride was a bit of a blur given that I was intensely focused of the task at hand, but a detail of note would be that two of the rabbits in front of the shopping plaza on the north side of Bowles got spooked a bit when I rolled up on them, and one of them bolted down the sidewalk right in front of me for about thirty or forty feet. Having befriended Professor Azazel Bun Bun the Third it added a fun perspective to the ride as if I was riding with my rabbit friends. I also managed to set off the radar detector about 150 meters before the turn into the apartment complex, which was a bit of a surprise given that I didn't think a person on a bike would be enough to trigger it measuring their speed. According to it I was going 25 mph at that point. If I'm consistently able to set it off in the future that will be a fun way of testing my top end speed capabilities. My total time for today's ride was 15 minutes, 37 seconds, and 37 centiseconds. We'll see how that holds up in the future. I think I'll shoot for trying to get it down to 15 minutes flat by the time the season changes make me put my bike away for the winter.
Anyway... time to bury my nose in my textbooks until my eyes can no longer keep themselves open. Hooray for what will probably be another 6 hour night of sleep. Oh well. It was worth staying up this late in order to get this ball rolling.
LL&P.
Friday, July 1, 2011
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