Man, this week has been awesome, everyday filled to the brim, 5 minute lunch breaks, staying after everyday. Except for the staying after, it’s not that bad. i guess i should probably get used to odd hours if i want to work in biotech. Something invariably goes wrong to keep the timetable from being kept.

No biggie though, for it is Canada day. This kind of week could only be wrapped up with Canada day. Instead of drinking to get drunk, I’ll be drinking to get drunk in celebration of our northern brethren.

I’m glad this week is done. So glad. I’m going to escape this weekend by riding over a hundred miles tomorrow and Sunday. Stp next weekend, time to gear up.

So if you’re human and you enjoy having fun, do it this weekend.

i’m trying to be somewhat productive in the spare time that i have here at work, but the more senior people look at me like a spoiled young whipper-snapper when i’m just sitting reading a book. quite the double standard, since i can surf the web as much as i want. and do.

i’m trying to increase my skills here though, so i’m typing this without looking at my hands. i’ve always been a fast typer, but i only used four fingers total which forced me to look at the keyboard. so now i’m trying to force myself to stay on home row, and use all of my fingers, which is a bit difficult after over a decade of typing like ryan.

i will prevail though, and just like i came out of regal learning how to use a numpad efficiently, i will come out of here knowing how to type like the computer literate person i am. it fills the time between fark and email and toothpaste for dinner anyways.

man, this is more tiring than all the exercise i do.

NO PAIN, NO GAIN.

so my brother introduced me to the idea of taking the hip hop you listen to in your car and just freestyle to it. what a brilliant idea, i can’t believe i never tried it before, it’s fun and helps increase your prowess against sucka MCs. it takes me awhile to learn the lyrics to a hip hop song, so this is a fun way to cut loose sometimes, when you feel like singing along with your hip hop songs, but you don’t know all the lyrics. you spend alot of time mumbling either way.

the rain has moved in and it is glorious, yesterday was wierd cause it was raining, yetr 70 degrees out. i want my rain cold, not lukewarm and muggy, dammit.

i completed a near 80 mile bike ride on saturday, and felt pretty good about it, i’m ready to ride to portland in a couple of weeks.

i got my job here at xcyte for another month, so that makes me happy, this place is kinda like a summer job before i have to go into a real career.

need….day…off…too….much…social…

so i just finished this behemoth of a book called Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell , it was definatly a love-hate relationship. all these reviews i had read of the book said it was a great story of magic in 19th century london, sort-of harry potter for grown ups with dry senses of humor. but for the first half (the first half being 400 pages) i just couldn’t get into the characters and there was no main story, just many little stories involving said characters, and lots of tangents. but then something just clicked in the book and then i couldn’t put it down. it took me three months to read the first 400, and 3 days to read the rest.

I love the feeling of finishing a book. after spending the time to getting to know the characters and their plight, you get towards the end of a book with emotional attatchment to both (if the writer is a good one). no matter how the book ends, having the time to analyze the book is absolutely necesary. to look over how you felt when reading it, to think about the issues that may have been brought up by the book, and in general, just time for reflection. nothing is more annoying than having this interupted, fortunatly it didn’t happen for this one since i put so much time into it.

this book ended up being a great read though…and now on to another.

ok, so i finally got my archives working (it was a pretty stupid problem, i don’t know how it popped up) but i spent about the past hour and a half perusing them. it’s fun to do so, it reminds you of how you used to think, or in most cases how you still do.

i pretty much flushed my chances of a political career down the toilet though.

or credibility of any kind.

or dignity.

ahhh sweet workness, allows me to find crap like this:

entirley out of context, but hilarious nonetheless.

so Micahel Jackson has been aquitted of all charges.

let me be one of the first people to ask:

did anyone care in the first place?

see what you think:

http://www.news14charlotte.com/content/local_news/?ArID=95207&SecID=2

so one of my new vices at work is reading fark.com, and i just read this article about a cop showing up to a hit and run call and then hitting the victim when he got there. this is one of those funny/not funny situations. i mean when you think about it, the cop didn’t mean to hit him of course, it just worked out that way. it’s going to blemish his record as an officer of the law. not to mention the guy he ran over, he’s probably seen better days. hopefully he was dead before the cop showed up.

on the other hand though, it’s hilarious. the irony just gushes out of this one and my first reaction was uncontrollable fits of laughter. i’m laughing thinking about it right now. man, i have to continually stop typing to recompose myself. i just can’t help but think how funny that situation is.

why is there such an appeal for the stupid? i feel myself constantly drawn towards it. and i can’t tell if it consists of superiority or just plain fascination. i suppose it’s a mix of the two, but i’d like to think i’m past any type of outward superiority complex (it mostly dwells just below the surface). but there is just a fascination and appreciation that stems from it. i love stupid things, they keep me on my toes, and constantly bring my understanding of the universe to new dead ends.

but i mean, what is stupid? pretty much what i say it is, it’s a wholly subjective term. if you look it up, it puts it on intellectual terms, but it is so much deeper than that. i don’t even know how to go about breaking it down, let alone if i’m ready to. Isuppose it just appeals to my sense of humor, the way my thought processes work, my perchance for the absurd and rediculous, all keeps me coming back for more. people will probably be offended by my thinking that their idea is stupid, but that’s their folly. if they believed enough in their idea, it wouldn’t really matter if other people thought it was stupid. i mean, look at this web page. there is no defence for this. it just is. i know that almost all of my ideas are stupid, but they end up working out fine in the end. my stupidity is a character trait, it’s ingrained, it makes me who i am. i don’t know if it was integrated or was always there though. not really any way to find out i suppose. but to no matter, my stupid self will get back to work now, to continue escapdes of massive buffoonery and stupidty, living the life of the double standard.

so i was reading that UW research had found that coumadin (a drug i am currently taking, and probably will for the rest of my life) has been shown to be more effected by genes than all the other crap they tried to feed me when they were telling me i had to take it.

first a little background. coumdadin (or warfarin) is a drug that interferes with your blood’s clotting by deadctivating one of the steps in the middle (i think there’s 14 steps to platlette formation) and keeps blood from thickening up on itself. this is a problem for someone like me who has DVT (diverticulitus) where my blood flow in my left calf has been restricted due to clots formed after a repair on my ACL.

so basically, blood can get down fine, but it has problems making it back, resulting in a swollen calf. it’s not a danger anymore now that i’m on all these drugs, but if the clot had broken off and reached my lungs, it probably would have been curtains for me.

so warfarin keeps my blood thin, to keep more clots from forming. hence injuries are pretty bad if they occur. roll your ankle, and it’s going to take three times as long to heal due to all the excess blood that helps in the swelling, along with physical therapy to help push it all out. cut your self and it bleeds for about 3 times as long.

pretty much everything you do effects how thin your blood is. it must be taken at the exact same time once a day. no radical alterations in diet. no dark leafy veggies or peanut butter. no alcohol. no advil, aleve, tylenol. basically anything and everything can effect your ProTime (prothombrin time, amount of time it takes to form prothombrin, an intermediate in your blood’s clotting cycle) which if too high will mean death.

fun fact: did you know that warfarin is also used as a rat poison? feed enough of it to any organisim and it’s blood will get so thin as to hemorrhage throughout the body.

anyways, back to the discovery. UW researchers found that it is genetically linked by analyizing people’s DNA and comparing it to the Human Genome, availible to any one at NCBI’s website.

a statistical algorithim to search any genome that has been sequenced is availible there called BLAST. it can line up single base pairs of DNA, translated sequences, or straight protein sequences. this allows researchers to compare findings in their research to anyone elses’. the research could be similar or completly different, but the information provided by the genomic libraries is so broad that alot of interpretation is needed. the stuff we can do now with this technology is amazing though. these kind of DNA comparisons would not have been feasible as much as 5 years ago. the internet has helped science by leaps and bounds, but it’s kinda obvious as to why. with everyone able to quickly compare notes with other people who are doing similar things, the research can progress that much quicker.

hopefully in the next couple of years i’ll have a coumadin gene implanted in my body that makes the perfect amount of blood thinners for my needs. what seemed impossible 10 years ago is now almost a reality. pretty cool, i say

ahhh, the sweet sitting of work. the early morning when nothing has come in and no one really has anything to do. well, for me anyways, all those other people have to plan, i’m more of a reactionary worker. when something pops up, i react, but otherwise i lie dormant, waiting for a signal to work.

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Mo’ Bio Corner:

speaking of signals, i read this paper today about miRNAs (micro RNAs) that have been recently discovered across a couple model organisims, as well as other well studied kinds. RNA is facinating stuff, made of similar components as DNA, but with a base difference. RNA doesn’t have thymine, instead it has uracil, similar hydrogen bonds, but different arrangment of molecules, supposedly to keep DNA and RNA from getting mixed up. Recent forays into RNA has lead to startling discoveries, and that RNA may be used for a lot more than just a template for proteins.

For recent genetic studies, a new type of tinkering was discovered about 15 years ago called RNAi (RNA interference). In this process, double stranded RNA that is anti-sense to a specific DNA sequence will bind to these DNA sequences thus rendering them unable to expressed. These RNA strands are pretty short, from a dozen to a couple dozen base pairs in length. Although it was discovered 15 years ago, it has really started to take off in the past 4 years or so.

So now they have these miRNA which are activley transcribed by DNA to prevent other genes from being expressed. Because RNAi was something induced in an organisim by analysis of its genetic code, finding mechanisims for this in multiple organisims points to a much more complex role of RNA in development and in biological systems in general. A good portion of DNA and RNA that is floating around in cells was thought to be “junk” genetic material, floating around until it is reclaimed to be used in repair or transcription of genes.

Its amazing that no matter how complex the human body seems, there is some new layer waiting to be discovered. There is so much to be discovered in this day and age, and the tools we are developing are allowing for the elucidation of so much more than couldn’t have been done 5 years ago. RNAi holds much promise as a alternative, or somethign to support gene therapy. Instead of removing or altering a harmful gene, you can just silence it with a small piece of RNA, which can easily be broken down in the body, but can still be extremely effective genetic regulation.
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that really felt good. I’m going to try and start doing more stuff like this, mostly because i find this stuff fascinating, and it helps me refresh and understand this stuff better by writing it down. people reading this might actually get something out of their vist here as well, instead of reading about my problems. I’m calling it the Mo’ Bio Corner because MoBio is short for molecular biology, and the obvious slang connotation. I’m so very clever.