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I first heard about The Name of the Wind from a post on Penny Arcade, and I was quickly impressed. Perhaps more telling is that I excitedly shared it with Rachel and she was impressed, reading it at a pace at least double mine as is her fashion. A while back I finally finished reading The Wise Man’s Fear. Naturally, Rachel blasted through it in much less time and tapped her fingers for weeks, waiting for me to finish so we could talk about it. Not only are there possible spoilers in the discussion that follows, the book itself is also a sequel. If you’ve not yet read the books, I highly recommend that you stop reading at the end of the paragraph and set about rectifying that oversight immediately. Continue Reading »

In the past, Easter has been a rather quiet holiday for Rachel and me. Since we usually spend the “major” holidays with our parents and siblings, Easter became the holiday we spent having dinner by ourselves or with a friend or two. This year we had a bit more excitement over Easter weekend, beginning with Rachel’s fantastic Easter egg nails. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to not have a good time with nails like that. Continue Reading »

The lab I decided to stay in is just getting started at LLU, so right now it’s just me and the PI, Dr. Salvador Soriano. Since there wasn’t any ongoing research in the lab when I got there, the experiments we’re planning out are going to be my thesis. While the opportunity is tremendous, it’s also difficult – there has to be hypothesis-driven logic to everything I plan on doing. Continue Reading »

I’ve been allergic to peanuts my whole life. A food allergy is a major pain – it’s like a weakness, a Kryptonite that renders me helpless at even a small dose. Unlike Superman, I don’t have remarkable powers to fall back on when things are good. Peanuts contacting my mouth rapidly initiate a multistage anaphylactic reaction that culminates in difficulty breathing and full-body hives, among other unpleasantries, as do (through a connection I haven’t been able to conclusively determine) peas, lentils, chick peas and lima beans, in decreasing order of severity. Continue Reading »

Back before caring about the environment was a fad, my family was recycling. Perhaps because it’s one of the few words you can rhyme with “Michael,” taking care of cans, jars, and various other recyclable materials was one of my household jobs for a long time. In those dark ages, I had to fully rinse everything and peel of the labels before we could haul our amassed bags to a self-sort truck parked in one of the local shopping centers. Continue Reading »

Having lived here less than a year, I’m not entirely confident that I’m qualified to comment on the Southern California environments. However, I would imagine that it is in these first months that the differences between “here” and “there” – that is to say, Maryland – are the most salient, and are thus a fine source of raw material for this space. SoCal doesn’t quite understand the concept of seasons, at least not in the same context Maryland’s schizophrenic weather patterns has provided me over the years. First of all, there’s no snow, and without even the possibility of frozen crystals from the sky (and the chill required to sustain it) I refuse to acknowledge that we had a winter. Continue Reading »

I spent the first couple of evenings this week putting together a new home theater PC for our friend, classmate, and neighbor. I wanted to give her enough power to smoothly play 1080p content on her TV, while leaving some headroom for upgrades down the line (and space for extra internal HDDs). All the parts together came in a decent amount under $500, but shipping and tax (Newegg has a base in CA, so we have to pay our hefty 9% sales tax on purchases) pushed it over. Continue Reading »