Opinion : Green Day song

I am just listening to that Green Day song Holiday, and I have got to say, the first part of it is awsome. Unfortuneately they marred it with that goofy political rant in the middle of it. I hate it when bands let their political views get in the way of making good music (see U2). Seriously, plug in a verse about your girlfriend leaving you and they would have a huge hit. And by the way, how can Green Day complain about evil corprate media, last time I checked, they work for AOL Time Warner...

Dateline 4/24

Only 10 more days in the semester! This semester has really flew by. I started studying for finals today by going through all my notes for thermodynamics. I decided I better get an early start studying because I have been doing pretty crappy on tests recently. I got a poor grade on the last control systems midterm that I got back last week, but almost all the credit in all my classes is from the finals so it is not that big a deal. I just need to do good the second week of May.
As for the rest of the weekend, I drank martinis on friday night, played poker last night, and did academic work for the rest of my waking hours. I did manage to finish the draft of my final paper or writing class, but I need to finish the research on it tommorow.
I reapplied to my summer job at camp anne, and it looks like I will be back there again this year. I did not have much luck getting an internship (for biomeds, there were like 4 positions for about 90 people) and I politely declined to do any summer research work at BU. The reseach stuff may be interesting, but it pays less than the camp and isn't nearly as much fun.
The other question remaining for this summe is what am I going to do with my big screen TV. I would like to keep it in Boston because I am afraid that it won't survive the ride home (and back). I just need to find someone with a large apt. in boston who is staying over the summer. easier said than done...

Dateline 4/20

This has been a great few days. On Monday, I watched the marathon and played Broomball. My team won its last game of the regular season, but unfortunately my roomate injured his leg. On tuesday I won the E-board election for vice president of the BU premedical society. That should look good on my medical school aplications, and I have a lot to offer in the way of new ideas. Today I did the experiment part of he last physiology Lab. This semester is winding down and I cannot be happier.

Dateline 4/17

Despite the fact that I didn't have that much to drink last night, I woke up with a hangover. I guess i was just really dehydrated... anyway, I then went over to the fitness center to play raquet ball, but none of the people I usually play with were there this week. This left me to play with the womens tennis coach, who really kicked my ass. Despite the fact that she has got to be near 50, she is in great shape and plays a kill shot every time. To make matters worse, she yells critiques at me as I am hitting the ball which makes it immpossible to concentrate and subsequently makes my game even worse.
When that had wrapped up, I went over to play tennis with my friend charlie to take advantage of the nice weather and the large number of foreign nationals in the area. I did a little better this time. Tennis is my favorite sport to play, but I had not played it since december.
I was going to do some problem sets but I ended up falling asleep and taking a 3hr nap before being woken up by and invited to dinner with my roommate. so that and acquiring matlab 7 has pretty much been my whole day, and I really need to get some work done tommorow...

Dateline 4/16

I have never done so much thinking in one day. But I am finally done with the MCAT and it is a big relief, although I won't be completely happy untill I get the scores back in june. Right now I am at the peak of basic science knowledge, as it will all start slipping away as I get back to doing engineering problem sets. As for the administartion of the test itself, I took it at the back bay Hilton hotel downtown. Now this was not the greatest idea, as this is Patriots day weekend in Bostonn and they were setting up the temporary facilities for the marathon today. The hotel was mobbed with people as was the whole area(especcially the T). But it all went alright, and I am glad its over.

dateline 4/12

this week is hell. so far I have been getting my work done howerver, and I skipped both my workstudy shift and a control systems review session to go to try to get elected to the pre-med society e-board. now I was running for vp and wpould have been a shoe-in except that at the last second some guy walks in with all his friends and declares that he will run. Now I really don't care if he wanted to through the vote, these things are popularity contests anyway, but apperently other people running for offices got pissed at eachother and there was quite the debate. Finally we had to decide to run the elections again next week and use a different system. I must say, throwing an e-board election for that kind of a group is a new low. (and I can take the moral high ground on this one)

anyway, I have a lab due tommorow, a controls midterm and an oral presentation on Thurs., and the MCAT on Saturday. lots of fun.

Technological advance

a big breakthrough in DNA sequencing. One of the problems that I have in bioinformatics is that there are very few sequenced human genomes(this article explains why). This advance could change all that and will accelerate research into inherited diseases.

Cool articles

this is really cool. I see no reason that this wouldn't work in humans either, except for those pesky ethical issues...

and I bet it this could be used with it too...

Dateline 4/9

Wow, this has been a busy week. In Fight Club (one of my favorite movies), Brad Pitt says, "self improvement is masturbation" which would make me a world-class wanker recently. I have gone on both studying and fitness binges in the past week, although I doubt either is sustainable. On the fitness side, I have been on a quest to try all the new facilities BU has just opened so in the last week I have swam and ran laps, played basketball and racket ball, and done a lot of strength exercises. On top of that, because there is no one using the fitness room I work at anymore, I have been running on the treadmill extensively while on the clock. I have been running 3 miles at least 4 times a week. On a side note, I found it a lot harder to run the same distance on the indoor track. I am not sure exactly why this is, but poorly measuring the track length (they claim it’s 1/7 of a mile but it looks longer to me) and the treadmill reducing restoring energy in a stride are my chief suspects. Maybe I will go test theory #1 at the actual track center sometime after next week.

On the academic side, I am seriously cramming for the MCAT exam, which I am taking a week from today. This is easily the biggest exam of my life. The dean for advising said that I would need at least a 35 to get into med school (my grades are not wonderful). I have always been good at standardized tests, and there is no reason I could not do it, but if I don't, that pretty much ends my hope of going to medical school. My strategy recently has been to take practice tests, lookup my mistakes, and write them into a notebook, to study. I am hoping to close in on and work on the things that I am still not good at. We will see how it goes next week.

On another school related note, I have to start working on my final paper for my writing class, which is going to be an introspective case study on my creativity. I could not find one single good creative thing I have done so I hope to weave a bunch of different things together. It sounded good in the prospectus, which I literally got up and wrote all of this morning.

On the engineering front, I have a midterm in Control systems next week and all of my classes are getting into very difficult math. (as in MATLAB is required to do the prob sets.) Naturally my copy of MATLAB seems to not work (for root locus plots at least) so I will be spending a lot of time Monday in the teaching lab. Speaking of labs, we have started doing the optics labs in physiology, which are taught my advisor. This means that 1, they will be difficult and 2, I need to do well on them. Moreover, speaking of advising, my course registration time is 8am tomorrow morning (yes, 8am Sunday morning. wtf) so I will be getting a nice early start. Anyway, I can't wait to this semester is over…

Dateline 4/2

It is getting into the crunch time of the semester, and I am getting so busy I barely have a chance to write. It has been a great couple of days however, and I will try to do them justice here.

After the class prank, I was in the mood for more so I tried to get someone to call up my parents and say they were the BPD and that I had been arrested. The problem was that no one would do it, I asked a bunch of people, including the guard from my building, but it wasn’t going to happen.

On a better note, April 1^st was also the grand opening of BU's new fitness and recreation center. The place is incredible. I went with a bunch of friends and we tried out the machines, ran on the suspended indoor track, and played basketball. I am going to be seeing a lot more of that facility in the near future… actually I signed up for Sunday afternoon racquetball leagues. I love racquet sports but haven’t got to play much tennis this semester. I haven’t played racquetball in over a year though so I am excited about BU finally building some courts.

I also went to my advising session to pick my classes for next semester. It wasn’t that bad because I caught Dr. Bigio in a good mood and we had a nice chat. Usually I dread a well-deserved lecture at these things, but I actually improved my grades last semester so all was well. I actually have some choices in my classes this time around so after the required classes I chose a 500 level biomed class on medical imaging, a biology class on human disease (hopefully an easy A), and logic circuit design. I also hope to register a bunch of gym classes when the university register site goes live next Sunday.

On the student groups front, I officially gave notice of my intention to run for the E-board of the BU pre-med society. I honestly haven't been able to attend very many of thee meetings this year because of my work schedule but I have been in the group since freshman year and I would like to take a more active role in it. Getting the position would also help my application for medical school (which received preliminary approval from the premedical advising office this week). I was on the RHA last year, and I used to run the marine science association, but I have been going lightly on the student programming this year because of time and workload. I should have more free time next year, however, and I will be able to accommodate my schedule more easily when Med. school applications are out of the way.

On other notes, I lost to a bunch of Asians in poker (just bad luck) for the second time in a row; I think my friends are staring to catch up to my skill level. We had an extensive conversation about geopolitics afterwards though… I got my first credit card issued, some student program through Bank of America. I don't really plan on using it very much, but I had always been rejected before and it sort of became like a quest. (Especially after my roommates kept getting pre-approved applications in the mail) Turns out the credit rating places couldn't distinguish between me and my father (they claimed I had accounts out since I was 6 years old). I am happy to get that cleared up but I still can't get the damn photo feature thing to work.

April fools

no joke, This actually happen...

Best Prank ever. Every year it is a tradition that the junior class gangs up on Prof. Collins and does something funny to disrupt his whole lecture. This year, It was decided to carry out a bunch of pranks including: having everyone's cell phone alarms go off at 10:30, having everyone start reading newspapers (his pet peeve), covering the front of the room with tinfoil, throwing playground balls and darts, riddles on the chalkboard, stealing the chalk, stealing and using the mobile class microphone, having a stuffed piccachuu come out of a toilet placed on stage(if you are wondering how a student managed to acquire a toilet, so am I), and finally making the class into a drinking game. The drinking game part was that every time someone asked a question Collins was supposed to drink from one of the foil covered mystery cans (some diet coke, some Coors light). The students who planned the drinking part also distributed the rest of the case throughout the class and we toasted him when he found the first one containing beer. Maybe that was a little overboard, but we had to beat last year's class, who among other things lashed him to a table and bombed him with water balloons. So how did it go? Well, it went great until the cops showed up… Apparently, someone in the photonics building became worried when students came through carrying a toilet and cases of beer (among other things) at 9 in the morning and called the police. The police arrived after an hour or so of class to find a professor sitting on a toilet, surrounded by tinfoil, with at least 6 open cans of beer on the table behind him and half the class knocking them back as well. For the record, Collins didn't help his case by offering the cops a doughnut when they came in (after the laughs the officer responded by saying that he wished they offered this class when he went here, and taking Collins outside) No one was sure if this was part of the joke or what was going on at this point but they left us all in the room for about 5 mins. before coming back to ask who brought the beer. (no one cracked) We were then told to clean up and leave, which we did in a hurry. I am still not sure exactly what will become of this but for the record; this definitely beats last year's class.