Amazing Sight

one thing i never would have guessed i would see... someone trying to stay awake while taking a test. i know my lectures aren't always riveting so when people can't stay awake i understand that. but i saw a student who was slapping his own cheeks to stay awake while taking the test. amazing. just get some sleep before a test! it is more important to a good grade than people think.

thought of the day prompted by quote of the day

the quote of the day on my google homepage

When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it.
- Bernard Bailey

this prompted my thought of the day: most Adventists think we are the center of the universe--theologically and tragically many still think geographically. what am i doing to fix this without hurting the people who think this?

Thanksgiving Table

we are having t-day dinner one day late because david was coming in on t-day. so here's my table this year. i had wanted some large mums, but ended up with small... use what you can get.

Crazy Me

so once again i am silly enough to participate in nanowrimo (national novel writing month). since i don't have much else right now besides work to keep me busy i should enjoy it just to have something to distract me from work. i really liked my general plot from last year so i am going to rescue a couple of things from that and write one this year. it'll be good, i promise. hahahah okay it will be slightly amusing. read it at velnano06.happyhumans.com

Fun Reading

i really enjoy reading snopes.com for misc. things that are likely to come into my inbox or just for fun. there's even a randomizer if you have enough time on your hands to read random things. the part that makes it particularly good is the writing. top notch. funny, thoughtful, and clear you always get a well written article there. today i looked at some of the newest articles and found one on aspartame as an ant poison (false). part of what made it so fun to read is that they actually bought some ant farms and grew their ants on aspartame. another article was about using your pin number in reverse at an atm to summon the police. well worth the read too--thoughtful and informative. and i really enjoyed the author's sign off

Barbara "neither Smith nor Wesson is known to prompt mental acuity in those they are pointed at" Mikkelson.

Ego?

so i've noticed a few of the students who have come by my office so far (mostly people that are either clueless or brown-nosing) have called me mrs. helbley (and i think one quiet one even said miss).
now i don't know if i am being egotistical or if i really should do something about this. i would prefer that students choose from the following three options: dr. helbley, professor helbley, or jennifer. i feel that if a student wants to be informal with a teacher and is comfortable calling me by my first name that is fine. but if they want to use a title it should be dr. or professor. i wonder if some of the guys get called mister. or if it is just women that they assume don't have a ph.d. i'm contemplating asking one of the younger men faculty in the dept. if they get called mister. i'm pretty sure that if i talked to the other woman in the dept. that she would say she's been called miss or mrs. we were talking on sunday before school started and she said just the other day someone doing some freshman orientation stuff walked into her office while on the cell phone and asked her to open a door for them. when she couldn't the cell phone talker requested that she go find someone that could. she's pretty sure that cell phone talker thought she was the secretary. and that if she had been a man that assumption would never have been made.

i could be over reacting. it may not matter at all in the long run. it is too bad that i still think that there is the possibility of gender bias by people because i think in general that isn't true. so what do you think? should i ignore the mrs. or should i try to fix it?

Cooking Essentials

well i finally found the cutting boards at my current place of residence. but this past couple of weeks i have made two purchases which i have determined are essential for a kitchen of mine.
-non-stick fry pan
i purchased an exceptionally cheap one at wal-mart for $5. i didn't find a fry pan at the place i am staying. there was a large cast iron skillet but i am not prepared to try my cooking skills with such a monster. it would take forever to heat and probably require a lot of fat to keep my fried egg from sticking.
-rice cooker
i've made rice twice since getting here. both times i burnt my rice to the bottom of the pot and had to scrub it for a while to get it clean. so i broke down and got a rice maker at target for $15. now hopefully i won't have to scrub for extended periods after cooking rice and i can cook it unattended. i hate having to wait for rice to cook on the stove: i'm not supposed to lift the lid to see what it is up to but i shouldn't leave because the water might boil over since the stove is less than precise in its flaming.

word-lag

merriam-webster online has a blurb about some of the "new" words in their latest edition of their college dictionary. some of the words are definately a bit late in their addition such as ollie, but there were a couple i'd not heard. i love to be reminded of words i forget about and learn new ones. so for those who are interested you can go to see the definitions of such words (or groups of words) as mouse potato, ollie, aquascape, unibrow, biodiesel, and manga.

Can't Help It

i remember when my dad was buying this one house on norwood ave that had 4 bed and 2 3/4 bath and an office with a nice lot. it was a pricey house which since i was in i think about 7th grade i don't remember what pricey was in those days and probably didn't actually know what the cost was. but my dad at some point said that he couldn't help looking at the house and wanting to buy it . it was so much nicer than the other houses and it was new.

i now know what it is like to be a bit greedy for a nice house. i have gotten attached to the niceness of our new house and so looking around at what is available here makes me realize i can't help but look at the nice new houses. there are probably some real deals on the market, but i also look at them and see tile kitchen counters when i really wish for tiled granite or granite. i see worn out carpet or aqua carpet on the flyers. or old appliances. or dark houses. or ugly walpaper. all of these things are fixable, but the new ones are so nice....

People (not) Ready

there is a microsoft commercial that has a guy going to his new job and people are very helpful in telling him how things work. everything from getting a cup of coffee to finding orientation.

my new job is people not ready. i got my id card the other day when i checked in with human resources (actually they filled out a slip of paper and then sent me down the hall for the card from student services). i asked the guy at student services so this will work as my library card, right? and he said yes and it also functioned for copies and the cafeteria and some other stuff i can't remember. so this morning i went to the library to check out books. card doesn't work. the girl says go next door to "mike-holl" to activate it and she disappeared. like i know what "mike-holl" is. and did she mean next door like the offices that were next to reference or the next building? so i thought i'd try to figure it out by reading a faq on the library web site. nothing useful. so then i asked the reference desk person. didn't know anything about it. so i went to the next building, wandered around for a minute and found a door with a guy in it and a small sign next to the doorway that said "micol". asked him about it. he said i had to go to information services to get it activated. (at least he was nice and didn't pretend i should already know all this stuff. when i asked where IS was he actually gave good directions.) so i went to IS and asked about activating my card. oh the guy who does that just went to his other job so you'll have to come back in the afternoon. and i asked for a sheet on how to set up my voicemail for my office phone. oh well once we get you in it should be self-explanitory. but i still left empty handed. they are going to get crap from me this afternoon. i want my card activated and they better have written instructions from me.

anyways. the chemistry dept. is very very helpful and nice, but the rest of the campus.... definately people not ready.

oh ya, did i mention that they lost the I-9 i sent down and somehow missed sending me other paperwork or lost what i sent. at least i am getting paid.

oh baby

there are two cats in house i am staying in. one is ellusive and stripped, tommy. but the other is dumb and friendly, baby. it is a conformation that i don't particularly like, short legs and kinda droopy stomach, and the butt high in the air. like the left cat but with more stomach. i think it is some sort of bombay cat gone wrong in breeding somewhere. the interesting part about this cat is it likes to chase shaddows. not the wiggling hand, the shaddow that it casts. your hand can be 3 inches above the carpet and this cat will pounce on the shaddow. like i said high intelligence.

Turning

well i made it down to the city of riverside and hung up my hat (okay actually hung up my lab coat). keith came down with me to give me some company on the way and to help me get settled and then he flew back last night. i will be living with a lady that teaches at the academy down the street. it is only about a mile away. so that will be nice. the traffic is not so nice. people don't use turn signals... they just cut over when they want. well i am going to try to use my turn signal (i'll still probably have to cut in pretty quickly or else the other drivers will cut me off) but my goal is to not let these drivers make me a bad driver (although keith might say i am one already so there's nothing to ruin).

AK Trip Itinerary

here's our preliminary trip itinerary. we'll certainly deviate, but it is a starting point.

Bagging It

so keith has been working on baggage for his motorcycle. on sunday we went on a marathon shopping trip to get some bags to go on the rack that he has built. one of the things we found was saddle bags at the army surplus store. keith didn't want them vibrant army green.

so we got some dye from wal-mart and plunked the bags in the dye in a bucket in the backyard. we used a handle from a plunger to poke the bag and keep it aggitated in the dye bath for 30 min. and turned the bag around in the bath using our hands with some nitrile gloves on. we were hoping for a charcoal gray. it came out darker.... still definately green, but darker, muted. so that came out alright.
UPDATE:
here's some pictures of bag modifications. for additional support we added some straps that go from the back of the bag, around the bottom and then will hook into the existing D-rings. also added was a microsuede backing to the bag which covers the straps on the back side of the bag so things don't rub as much on the seat of the bike.

Done .... (almost)

so my defense went well... exceptionally short. 1 hr including their deliberation time of a couple minutes and signing my papers. so now i just have to do my corrections and then turn in my crapola of papers. should be all done by friday.

yay!

Pray and Cross your Fingers

from a comment prompt....
my defense of my ph.d. is this tuesday 25 july at 9 am. so hopefully i'll pass and everyone will sign my papers and i'll be done (except for the grammar edits which are sure to be turned in by the committee).
so hopefully by the end of july i'll have all my paperwork turned in and i'll officially be graduated in august.

Quote

from a simpsons we watched last night:
Bart Simpson: Hey look at me! I'm a grad student. I'm 30 and I made $600 last year.
Marge Simpson: Bart! Don't make fun of grad students - they just made a terrible life choice.


classic!

A Glass of Iced Tea

yesterday i made some iced tea from celestial seasonings bengal spice tea (adding some sugar while brewing the hot tea). the curious thing is that i drink it from a glass glass. i prefer to drink most of the time at home from a plastic cup. water, pop, juice. but iced tea i have some great need to drink from a glass made from glass.

Excel as a Scientific Calculator

there are many things excel can do and it does a pretty good job at even though it is designed around being a financial piece of software. for instance it has some decent column picking capabilities and does regression (can even get it to spit out some sheet calculations on many types of functions by modifing the x column(s) you choose for it). so people use it for scientific data analysis. myself included.

but it has some definate shortfalls that a good piece of scientific software would fix. for instance the ability to pick peaks out of a spectrum would be nice. also nice would be if you could enter data in min.sec and have it convert to seconds for analysis purposes. you can get excel to do these things but it takes some fanangling.

there is probably a better program out there to do scientific analysis but tradition, familiarity, and the fact that many people already have excel because they buy ms office means that excel will probably stay in the scientific toolbox for a long time to come.

Speeding

i dislike that people don't understand how to judiciously speed. there are times when traffic conditions warrent going over the speed limit by 10 mph. but then there are those crazies that weave in and out of traffic so they can go by at 20 mph faster than the middle speed people. there are of course the dilusional people that believe they should be able to go at any speed they want on a road and that they are perfectly capable of determining an appropriate speed for a road they may not have ever driven before. what really gets to me is when police run red lights and it isn't clear that there is an emergency anywhere. in southern nevada a highway patrol officer wanted to get home for dinner so he zoomed along in his patrol car at 110 mph. unfortunately speed is dangerous and he killed 4 people. fortunately he is no longer a highway patrol officer and has the potential of serving jail time.

we must always remember when driving in a car that driving at high speed is dangerous and what is more dangerous is driving at a speed that is relatively higher than those around us. the speed limit isn't always convenient, but most of the time people do try to put some thought into how fast they think we should travel under normal conditions on the road. and after all a cold dinner or a late meeting is just fine relative to the lives of four people.

Lo-Fi Faith Meme

sarah tagged me with this.
for those who, like me, didn't know what a meme is
meme n (mëm): A unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. From the Greek mimëma, something imitated, from mimeisthai, to imitate.

1: List three (3) words that describe your faith.

foundation, flexible, inquiring

2: Describe a belief you are certain about and one with which you struggle.

certain: those that believe in God, by whatever name, and his power to transform will be saved.

struggle: how much sin we can discard in this life. people are asked to live Godly lives but there are some things we excuse as something out of our control, i.e. someone with a birth defect is clearly not how God intended them to be but there's nothing we can do about that. where do we draw the line at things that God will fix later in heaven (everyone's body is not perfect) and things that we should work with God to fix while on earth?

3: What is your mission in life?

benefit others. earth isn't perfect but we contribute to making it livable and enjoyable through helping others in a variety of ways--emotional support, friendship, conversations of faith, improvement of products, laughter, comfortable living, humanitarian aid...

4: Describe one thing that interferes with authentically living out your faith.

being an introvert. i do not make friends easily or have casual conversations with people and so my ability to help others directly is limited. Jesus was in constant contact with others and although i believe that we don't have to be exactly like Jesus to be who Jesus intends us to be, i do believe that we are designed to be socially dependant on each other and should offer social support.

5: What is your favorite story from the Hebrew Scriptures? Why?

Ruth. loyalty pays off, that makes me feel good about myself.

6: What is your favorite New Testament story? Why?

peter and the sheet of unclean animals. it reveals the complexity of issues that believers are faced with. God could have written down a new leviticus but he didn't. instead He gave peter an metaphor for how we are to behave toward others. why not just say something? because stories communicate more than rules.

7: Describe a meaningful action you took because of your faith.

meaningful action. that could be anything. i suppose the vagueness allows for better personal expression of the responder. i helped someone i didn't know pack up and move in the snow because God wants us to help others. i took my soon-to-be job because i think God opened doors for it rather than a more lucritive job in a place i love living.

8: Does your faith differ from that of your parents? If so, how?

It is difficult to distinguish, for me, the differnce between faith and how personality affects faith. I am definately more libral than my dad and more conservative than my mom in terms of behavior. But if the interpretation of behavioral expressions of faith is due to true differences in faith or personality interpreting faith (proper interpretation does take into account the personality and circumsatances of the reader) i do not know. fundamentally we all believe in righteousness by faith in Jesus balanced by faith without works is dead and a strong belief in the truth of the Bible.

9: Who or what was most important in the development of your faith?

books, the Bible, religious books, non-fiction, fiction, all of them. without question the ability to read other people's opinions, thoughts, and lives without having to talk to them is an amazing impact on my life.

10: Pass it on! Tag at least two other religious/faith bloggers.

because the job i am going to take is from my church i choose two people employed by my church: my mom and alodia.

Less Cheese Lasagna

a loose recipe for lasagna that i adapted from a friend. she makes her own veggie filled tomato sauce, but i am lazy so i just use two premade jars.

1 box no boil noodles
2 jars spaghetti sauce
1-2 packages frozen spinach, thawed
2 packages tofu
16 oz cream cheese
parmesan cheese for top

put cream cheese in microwave for 30 seconds or until easily stirred into drained tofu. use tofu mixture instead of ricotta mixture usually called for in lasagna. layer lasagna, spinach, and tofu mix in layers until pan is full. sprinkle with parmesan if desired. bake 50-60 foil covered at 375, then 5 min uncovered. let sit for 15 min out of oven before serving.

Short Stories

upon my my motorcycle I peered into the small red, 80's car that drove beside me. clinging to the furry black seat cover as it transitioned to the head rest on the passenger side was a striped kitten. It openeded its mouth and i saw the teeth and tongue arch into a plaintive meow. off i zoomed to visit my own cat at home; i'm sure she also was crying right now as she wanted her wet food.

our bank of mailboxes is backward. first off it is on the left side of the street when i am coming home. it should be on the right so i can stop to get the mail. sometimes i go home and walk back to get the mail. other times i pull to the wrong side of the street and get out to get the mail. rarely i'll park on the proper side of the street and walk across. the walking path doesn't actually go to the mailboxes, it just runs behind them so that when they decide to actually put in landscaping there it will be trampled by the few of us that walk to get our mail and use the walking path instead of the street. the key hole is very close to the left side of the door of our box and the key turns to the left, toward the short side of the door.

two trucks that owners projected identies onto using the liscence plates cruised in front of me in the morning cool. one claimed 'oldgold' the other 'bkbeuty'. i wondered what the english black beauty would think of a western truck being named after him. old gold could be ginger from the book as the two pulled away as a team and i remembered something about a movie of black beauty coming out soon, or something. could a movie convey that book? i don't think so.

lumps of paper stack my desk. i should clean them. but they lend some air of importance to what i do. someone with a clean desk either is efficient or has nothing to do. i can't be either of those. their bulk reminds me of how much i should be doing instead of typing here.

When it Rains....

today has been an affirming day. on the plus side.
on the minus side, i can't believe that things happen all on one day.

a month or more back i submitted a cold resume to a company near reno that produces biofuel. which i think is a way cool product and where i think our petroleum industry will move eventually. today i just got an e-mail asking for me to submit an application for a research chemist position there. when i submitted my resume there wasn't a chemist on staff (that i knew about, there were only a handful of people employed there but it is part of a bigger family of companies). the owner of the company is highly intelligent in research in business and highly ethical. it would have been great to work under this old dude.

earlier in the morning i talked with the chair of the department of chemistry & biochemistry where i have an offer to teach next year. we finished discussing the offer they sent me and tidied up some loose ends on that and so i anticipate signing that offer next week.

i really felt like God was holding off on all possible job opportunities for me up here so that i would be available to teach at this college. i didn't recieve a single interview before that one. in fact when i went to the job fair i talked with a couple of companies that sounded interested. one of them pretty much said they would bring me out for an interview the next day. the next day he called up and said when he pitched me to the president of the company the president was totally not interested. the other company didn't follow up until last week and then it was only asking for an electronic copy of my resume.

i must say it is tempting, but i really feel like God is asking me to teach. i know that it won't be as easy a job as the one with the biofuel place. i won't get compensated as highly and my hours during the school year won't be always that great. today the chair of the aforementioned department wanted to make sure we were sure about moving and me taking the job. i said we knew what we were leaving and what we were going to and felt it was what God was asking. God sure likes to keep opportunities open to make sure i know what i am doing.

now if God will just make the way super clear by getting keith a good job. i feel like i am being quite selfish right now by persuing this without keith having a job yet.

Taxes

i hope everyone reading this already filed taxes and even better recieved their refund. i dislike doing the taxes, mostly because i know it shouldn't be as hard as it is sometimes. to be truthful the irs does do its best to make things workable, they have some very nice faqs and worksheets that help out. i was trying to determine if we'd have to pay capital gains next year if we sold our house this year and found a worksheet and publication to help me determine what would be excluded. it was pretty good.

what is broken and annoying is the tax system. we have continually added and subtracted things from the fed income tax and deductions so that now it is unclear what really the base is. i hope someday congress starts over. we can't realistically go on forever with something based in an age where silicon was still found only in sand and glass.

Dangerous Territory

we had a really good time visiting my potential employer (even though it has been previously mentioned elsewhere, i won't mention the name again because blogging about jobs has turned into a danger, and just maybe a small amount of anonymity may be a good thing). east la isn't as bad as downtown. they still have trees and mountains. the traffic wasn't so much fun, but there are ways around it that may work out.

we had a really good time talking with the faculty and the department is definately on the move up, not just trying to maintain being a feeder school for doctors, dentists, etc. those students are the bulk and therefore the money makers, but they still want to graduate some people that want to stay in the field. the administration was nice and seemed to be in decent touch with how things really are (the assistant provost is the aunt of someone i went to high school with). there's always politics, but the head of the department seems to do a very good job protecting his people and fighting for them when needed. we got along well with all the people we met and i think i can really contribute to the students there.

at the end of the trip the dept. head said they would be making an offer on paper, but that he wanted us to know they were interested. so now we are looking for a job for keith and trying to figure out exactly how much we need to get out of his salary, where we can afford to live, and what to do with our houses up here.

MOM! =)

last week my mom took the train out to reno and visited for the week. i had a super good time and love having my mom around. we did some shopping, hung out, and made curtains for the dining room.

they came out really well and make the room look way cool. my is an awesome sewer and i'm glad that i learned a little bit of her knowledge this trip.
yay for my mom!

Linux to the rescue

there is a computer at work that interfaces with the flourimeter. i collect data but how, oh how, can i get it off? the computer runs windows 98 (not se and probably never patched). for some highly curious reason it recognizes one memory stick that a person in the group has, but not others (and when i try to load drivers for my memory stick using the other memory stick and transportation, i get a big fat nothing). so back to good old floppy you say. good idea. it worked once. and then the floppy drive didn't eject my disk and after retrieving my floppy disk with a pair of nice tweezers, the floppy doesn't read disks anymore. oh ya. no network card. not that it matters since there isn't a network drop in the room anyways. sooo how to get my data.
keith came up with the brilliant idea: boot to linux on cd and then copy to usb memory stick.
so yesterday i found and burnt my copy of knoppix and then called up my linux brilliant brother to help me out. the computer didn't have enough memory to load the gui (kde) so i used the terminal. so he stepped me through mounting the hard drive and my memory stick and then copying and unmounting. it was kinda fun.

moral of the story, get yourself a good bootable copy of linux (preferably include tools to reset windows stuff) and keep it at work. you never know when you'll need it.

Misc References

i love it when i recognize a misc. reference as part of a film or tv show. last night i was watching star trek: DS9 and the crew on one of the ships started quoting poetry and another filled in a couple of lines. i remembered the lines and realized i haven't read "Charge of the Light Brigade" in quite a while, which is what they were reciting. sad, but good.
read it here.

Right to Bear Arms

i read an article from an occupational safety website about how the courts are backing up employees rights to bear arms. at issue is if an employee is permitted to have a firearm in his or her car in the company parking lot. the basic arguement of employers is that it is safer to not have firearms at the company. employees argue it is thier right to have the ability to defend themselves in their car... and i would say to go hunting after work or whatever.

i sympathize with the idea of keeping a workplace safe, but i agree with the court in this case. which is a bit abnormal for me since i am not really a big gun rights person. however i think that the companies should be allowed to have people check-in firearms if the proper security is in place on the company premises (i.e. limited acess and regular patrols). it will be interesting to see if this type of thing becomes an issue for reducing the shootings at places of employment.

Hangings

in my closet, cloaked in white plastic
hangs my wedding dress
i enjoyed wearing it
i like the style
but
i wish i had worn my mother's dress
when i got married i didn't know how
my parents felt about their marriage
they are now divoriced
my mom wanted me to wear it
i should have listened to her
but she didn't push it, at all
because she loves me
i was worried that my dad might
not like to see me wear it
at thanksgiving i was at my dad's
new house and saw a picture
that i have always liked of his
it is a green and gray drawing of a lake
and a cabin
i remember it from when i was young
and have always felt part of the scene
somehow
we talked of where he was going
to hang the picture
i commented how much
i have always liked that picture
he said he likes it too
it reminds him of when times were good
with my mom
she gave it to him
and then i understood
too late
that i should have worn
my mom's wedding dress.

Real Estate

a new website was launched by the same guy that did expedia. i think this one, so far, is a bit better. but it still has some things that make you go "huh?". anyways, you can look at home value information and other stuff like taxes on at zillow.com.

well everyone but those who live in 83642 because they don't have data for that area yet and for us since they don't even acknowledge our street's existance yet.

House bottom level

my mom wanted to see some pictures of progress on us unpacking the house... below is most of the bottom level. lets just say that progress is relavite (at least the stuff is out of the box even if it has kinda regurgitated everywhere.).

why my family is great

they know stuff and look stuff up for me.

moving always mean misplacing things--at least it does for me.

earlier when we moved we didn't have internet and we don't have a tv. and i wanted to know what the weather was going to be the next day. so i called my brother and he was my remote web browser. what makes my brother even more cool is that he looked it up for me while he was on a trip. yup, that is how cool my brother is. he was staying in a hotel in tennesee (i think) and he had brought a laptop along and had internet access. so even though i am sure he had way better things to do, he took the time to boot the lap top and play my internet. that's my awesome brother.

this morning i wanted to make waffles for breakfast. i haven't found my "joy of cooking" yet. yesterday i anticipated i'd want to make waffles so i looked on the internet for the recipe and while i found many that had "good reviews" they weren't what i wanted. the joy of cooking has never let me down for waffles--they are really good--and i wasn't up for messing with something that works so well. so i called up my mom this morning and she dropped what she was doing just so she could find the recipe and read it off to me. and she knew exactly that i couln't do without that recipe. i love that she knows me, and the recipe, that well.

Cat Recognition

i was browsing around looking at different cat doors. (we are putting one in the sash window in the living room for our cat, the one from the old house was for a different window size, shape so i was looking to see what else was out there.) ran across this very, very cool project where the cat door recognizes that the cat wants in and lets it in. like in these pictures.

but then if the cat, flo, has some critter. say a mouse. the door locks and doesn't let the cat in. way cool. or if something else comes along, like a skunk, it is rejected too.


i highly reccomend the website quantum picture, specifically the flow control project.