I am almost ready to print off some real business cards for myself at Kinkos, and it’ll look something like this, pending some comments.
(and my phone number is on the bottom left)
Archive for April, 2006
Hey,
Just wanted you to know that StudentUniverse has this contest where you can win $10,000 in travel!
To enter into the contest click the URL below (if it’s not a link, just cut and paste it into your browser)
http://calsms.com/157/175/1257/3518099/3519688
Thanks,
Lee
P.S. Hurry up! The contest is only running until June 5, 2006.
PPS: there is one newsletter that the fine print mentions, but you can unsubscribe by clicking a link.
A couple of days ago, James, John, and I were trying to think of where to eat dinner. We decided on going to Barnicles but then at the last second decided on Bahama Breeze (just to throw off anyone following us).
We had a 30 minute wait, and so while James and John waited on the restaurant patio, I went to piss. As I was finishing up at the pisser, a balled up paper towel hit me on my back! I couldn’t really turn around because, well, I was finishing up. When I turned around, I assessed the situation. The sinks were directly in front of me, the door to the restaurant had just closed to my right, and the door to the bathroom stall just opened to my left.
I had assumed that the guy had gone into the bathroom stall to hide after he had thrown the paper towel at me, and then he had exited the bathroom stall just to pretend that he had just finished up. So, as we were washing our hands, I gave him this look like, “what the hell, man?” He looked down at his hands to wash them, looked back up at me, looked down again, and then looked at me and apologized.
I told all this to James and John when I came back, asking “Who the hell throws a paper towel at someone in the bathroom?” They could not have been laughing more histerically when I told them this. I really should have known what was going on though.
Turns out the guy was apologizing for doing his business in the bathroom, and John had thrown the paper towel at me and gone back to the patio.
http://benjerry.com/features/fcd_2006/
Tuesday, April 25th is Free Cone Day at Ben & Jerry’s, and you know what that means… free ice cream for you!
As a way to thank our customers for their support and to celebrate 28 years of scooping the chunkiest, funkiest ice cream, frozen yogurt and sorbet, Ben & Jerry’s scoop shops are giving it away!
Around the world, scoop shops are opening their doors from noon to 8:00 pm, to serve up a free scoop of your favorite flavor (or better yet, a new one you’ve been wanting to try, like Turtle Soup™, Peanut Butter Swirl or Lemonade Sorbet).
So grab a pal and come on down to have some ‘scream on us!
Like we said… Oh Happy Day!
Pushing away from the intelligent matter on this blog, I was at the gym yesterday and saw something incredibly hilarious.
Around the gym there are water fountains in clusters of three. Two of them are always a lower and a higher water fountain where you push the lever or button or whatever you want to call it. The third is a curious fountain that has a powerful, wide spray aiming directly at the basin. It took me a short time to figure it out when I first saw it a couple of years ago, but that is the spitting fountain. You spit in it, and the water shoots directly at the basin to clean it up.
I almost peed my pants yesterday when I saw someone filling up his water bottle at the spitting fountain.
Many of you might wonder why in an electronic device, on a web site, or whatever there is an input field with a limited size. For example, on the news site, a person’s name cannot be longer than 20 characters. What is the deal?
Well I’ll tell you what the deal is. It’s databases. Here is a simplistic view of what is going on: The database that holds the name on the news site is indexed. In this way, requested information from the database can be found faster through the index. However, the index in most situations assumes that each name entry is exactly 20 characters long (If you have a name less than 20 characters, the rest of the characters in the database are filled with “nothing.”). Thus, the index knows that the fifth name entry starts exactly at character number 100 and ends at character number 119 (indexing starts at character number 0).
This is an abstract look at a database with names in it:
LeexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxJesus_H._Christxxxxxabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Notice that “Lee” takes up only 3 characters and the rest is junk, but the space is still filled. The alphabet is cut off and so there are actually two names: a through s and then t through z. The second name (t-z) still wastes space. Thus when a name is requested, the index only has to look at four places to find that information (character numbers 0, 20, 40, and 60) instead of all the characters from 0 to 79.
I hope I was able to explain that as well as the allergy thing. Any questions?
There we go. I updated again.
I think you guys are very curious as to why I keep telling you why my allergies will never get better.
Allergies are an immune response to the environment. The environment can be any small thing like pollen, dust, and so on. For simplicity in this sort entry, let’s just say that the environment is pollen.
Ok some background information: Your body’s immune system reacts to harmful things with a vengeance.
Q: What constitutes a harmful thing?
A: Anything that presents a danger signal.
Q: What constitutes a danger signal?
A: Immunologists have no definitive answer, but it could be anything interpreted as being something associated with something harmful (e.g., bacteria in a harmful wound).
After your body finds something harmful and attacks it, your body develops an immunological “memory.” This memory helps it attack harmful things a lot faster the second time around.
So like I was saying before, your body’s immune system fights off pollen. Why? I don’t know why really, but it presents a “danger” to your body. The second time your body has a chance to fight off a “pollen infection” is the following year. Thus, the second year that your body encounters pollen, the reaction is bigger and better. This makes the reaction much worse to you: more sneezing, coughing, and everything else that goes with it.
Ok if you have all that absorbed, get this: it’s possible to overcome an allergy. It turns out that there exists a “non-danger” signal. If your body sees this signal with any given thing (such as pollen), it will begin lowering its reaction against it during subsequent stimuli.
This discovery led to new ideas about allergy treatments and cures. This might also explain some rare instances where people have overcome their allergies. However, I think that immunology is quite limited on what the danger signals are at this point.
You know how you always share a link with friends? Or with like, five friends? Why not just share it with everyone at once?
Submit a hyperlink on lskatzdotcom news or view others’ links.
A U.S. Marine squad was marching north of Faluijiah when they came upon an Iraqi terrorist, badly injured and unconscious. On
the opposite side of the road was an American Marine in a similar but less serious state. The Marine was conscious and alert and as first aid was given to both men, the squad leader asked the injured Marine what had happened.
The Marine reported, “I was heavily armed and moving north along the highway here, and coming south was a heavily armed insurgent. We saw each other and both took cover in the ditches along the road.
“I yelled to him that Saddam Hussein is a miserable, lowlife scumbag, and he yelled back that Senator Ted Kennedy is a good-for-nothing, fat, left wing liberal drunk.
So I said that Osama Bin Ladin dresses and acts like a frigid, mean spirited lesbian!” He retaliated by yelling, “Oh yeah? Well, so does Mrs. Clinton!” “And, there we were, in the middle of the road, shaking hands, when a truck hit us”
I found a way to combine all of the blogs’ rss feeds into one feed and just read that one thing, using Google Reader. Totally Awesome!
How would you guys like to click kittens (or other picture) instead of numbers? I think it’s a much more fun idea, although it might slow down the comments page.
http://www.thepcspy.com/kittenauthtest
I found a few blocks downtown this past week that reminded me of NYC. It took my breath away and made me respect my city. There were small stores with lofts on top and fake purses all over. Police were on horses. It was so great.
So after three years of: spending thousands of dollars for applications and airfare, multitudes of hours on applications, and much time trying to network, I was rejected from all medical schools that I applied to. Not only that, but if I want to reapply, I need to retake the MCAT because the scores have expired.
But I won’t. In the last two years I have gotten a masters in a much better field, bioinformatics.
It has been a tough decision, but experience has shown me that bioinformatics and web programming is much more enjoyable than biology and medicine.
And also, it has been a tough decision, but I have given some thought to say a big screw you to medical school admissions, who have made my life much more stressful than it should be over the last few years.
*edit*
I just realized that people are probably going to pat my hand and tell me it’s ok. No, don’t do this. I am really sick of people saying this to me because I have already thought through my ambivalence over the last year or two. Trying to offer me comfort is like rehashing a problem. Just don’t do it. Thank you. If you really feel like you should do something for me, get me a job. I really want a permanent job or a second part-time job.
Does anyone know someone who might want to sublease to me for a few months over the summer?
I am thinking of moving on out soon but am not sure exactly when.