Who do you root for?

With college football starting up this weekend, college fanatics are running around the country proudly displaying their school colors. This morning, for example, I came to work with my UNC hat, coffee mug, and T-shirt, clearly leaving no question as to my affiliation with the program. For those of us that have done more schooling after our undergrad experience, affiliation with one sports program over another can be tough. In my case, even though I went to a big DI school, Arizona State, and I had a fairly good time there, I was not enveloped by the sports programs there.

For one, I never felt like the campus fully backed their sports teams, which doesn't help an undergrad that didn't grow up watching their sports teams become part of the fan base. Also, with the Arizona Cardinals playing in the same stadium as the Sun Devils, and me having strong feelings against that franchise, it created more of a distance between me and the team. I also lived off campus thus keeping me from some of the in-campus activities that foster team spirit. Lastly, ASU didn't really have an alternative sports program that was promoted enough for fans to attend to. The basketball team stunk something else and while the baseball team has been fantastic for quite some time, I never felt like it was promoted enough and I just missed out on it. In the end, I just made it through 4 years of undergrad basically having attended 1 sports event I can remember, a University of Arizona-ASU basketball game that ASU miraculosly won. Oddly enough, I have found myself following ASU athletics more since I left ASU.

This brings me to UNC. When it comes to college spirit and making you feel part of the family, UNC is completely opposite to ASU. I am sure having one of the classiest DI basketball programs helps, but when I started graduate school in 2002 the pride and joy of the town was the soccer program. Even so, from day one I was enveloped in what it is to be a Tar Heel. The wonderful college atmosphere of the Chapel Hill campus is at polar opposites of the metropolitan ASU campus, and even Vanderbilt campus where I work now. Living in Chapel Hill means being and breathing Tar Heel blue. It is ubiquitous, from the stadium seats, to the subsidized public transportation, to the wonderful Carolina Blue fire engines. That said, while a college campus helps foment crazed fans, it is not an absolute requirement. I had the pleasure of interviewing at the University of Texas-Austin when I was looking at graduate programs. While UT is in Austin, a decently sized metro area, it still breathes UT athletics.

While I think a very important factor in creating a good collegiate atmosphere is winning, there are plenty of programs out there with deranged fans that do not win on a frequent basis, especially in the big 3-football, basketball, baseball (think Ivy League, for example). Another factor is the close to religious experience that it can be to attend a sporting event.

My first year at UNC, coming off an 8-20 season, I attended a fall 2002 game between UNC and a low end DI program. Our seats were on the last row of the Dean Dome and for someone that didn't grow up watching UNC-basketball this should have been nothing more than attending a basketball game between a big DI program and a small one. Yet, I clearly remember getting goose bumps when I reached my seat and turned around to see the beautiful hardwood court of the Dean Dome. Then, I was baptized a Tar Heel when the team hit the hardwood minutes before the start of the game and the crowd started chanting:

I'm a Tar Heel born
I'm a Tar Heel bred
And when I die
I'm a Tar Heel dead.
So it's Rah, Rah, Car'lina-lina
Rah, Rah, Car'lina-lina
Rah, Rah, Car'lina-lina
Rah! Rah! Rah!

Where have you gone?

Well, if I haven't lost all you faithful readers by now it is a small miracle. I have been awful about posting just about anything on this site. I guess things have been just a little too hectic as of late and the blog has just dropped in the priority list. Also, work on the house, short of cleaning, has come to a grinding halt. Grinding halt until this weekend when Natalie and I decided, early Sunday morning, to extend our Phoebe-containment device (a.k.a. backyard fence).

Prior to Sunday afternoon, said containment device consisted of 4 foot tall vertical wooden slats around the perimeter of our backyard. After the incident where Phoebe had enough of the tiny barking dog next door and jumped the fence, the neighbors added 7 foot tall privacy fence between our yards, but the rest of the fence remained too jumpable. So, instead of spending money we don't have on a decent privacy fence, we did the next logical thing, bough a bunch of 4-by-8 wooden lattice at the Home Depot and nailed it to the top of the pre-existing fence. The result is a fairly awkward looking, yet useful and not incredibly ugly containment device that stands about 6 feet tall (to attach it you actually lose a foot, thus not ending up with a 8 foot tall fence.

Finally, I want to close with a few words of encouragement about my work. Due mainly to the rotund phase of the moon I am sure, I have started to feel more at ease at work. This is a welcoming feeling because life is a lot sweeter when life at work is comfortable.

No news is good news

Well, for a change I have not much to report, which is good news. The most exciting news out of the week was the landing of 3 of Natalie's friends to spend the weekend. It was great to see some familiar faces from home as well as putting the new house to the test. Having so many women running around the house reminded me of growing up with my mom and two sisters. Just an estrogen-palooza that yet again I survived!

A week of silence

After a week of silence to pay my respects to the death, and rebirth, of our site I have decided to post something new and to remove the stupid privacy setting to my blog. If someone wants to hop on this thing and digitally graffiti this sucker, be my guest. As an omen to the rebirth of the site- yes, that makes me a born again blogger, but then again this is popular nowadays. With the addition of a Wolf Pack member to our blog circle I guess things should get that much more interesting.

This past week featured the incredibly exciting and piss-offish fact that our deck has seen better days. In the last 10 days I managed to break a board on the deck by simply talking on the phone while standing on our deck. If that was not bad enough, part of the railing on the one side has come loose, so it is not able to support anyone leaning against it. While we new that the deck was not new and that certain things in the house were going to break, we were not expecting this to happen within a couple of months of us moving into the house. Furthermore, we are aghast as to how the inspector managed to certify that the deck was in "good condition," when it is painfully obvious that there are areas of the deck that need fixing. So, to update our Top 3 list of home improvements:

1. Privacy Fence
2. Deck
3. Kitchen Counters

Please notice that none of these are on the cheap side of life.

On the happier side of life, Natalie and I received a present from my mother this week. While we both love charcoal grilling, the ability to quickly grill something after a hectic day at work that propane provides was hard to pass. It is also nice being able to grill something outside in the summer and keep the heat out of the house. We are also looking forward to being able to use the side burner to cook smelly foods, like fish, that can stink up the joint.

Finally, we have joined our local YMCA. Nate has been incredibly kind to provide us with running programs that we had been trying to stick to, Natalie a lot more so than myself. Part of the problem, on my end, has been that I am no fan of going out for a run when it is in the 100s. To solve the problem, and to allow me to play racquetball with one of Natalie's coworkers, we joined the Y that is about 4 miles from here. I hit the treadmill yesterday, only my third soire into running since I got here, and I must say that I was hurting but I did get a decent 2.5 miles in. The worst part about it all is dealing with post-traumatic treadmill disorder (PTTD). Anyone that has used a treadmill knows that upon stopping, you get the feeling that everything around is still going. I equate it to having had some amount of alcohol, thus not a pleasant feeling. Even so, I rather deal with PTTD than sit on my ass until I hit 200 lbs.

TTFN.

From Tech Support

"The restore will be completed within 20 minutes. IF you had any kind of scripts that were made by another person (like a guestbook, CMS, form mail, etc.) that could have been how he got in (if there was a known bug int hem). Otherwise he could have cracked your password, but that would typically be done with a \"brute-force\" attack and those are hard to do on our systems. Once I am done restoring the account I suggest you change all your passwords."

I am thinking this dude/dudette got in through my blog simply because he has a Blogger handle that automatically redirects to another site. On this site he has a bunch of text in Bahasa Indonesia. I also read somewhere that this is the new way for bored cyber kids on the web to do graffiti.

fu** this sh**!

**Warning! This post may contain some foul language!**

Late last night or early this morning our site, friendsofbernardo.net was hacked. Yes, you read that right. Our site, which has about 5 visitors a month was hacked. It looks like the site is gone for good which may mean that we have to put up all the pictures and recipes up a new and I just don't know that I want to do this after this.

While the hacker did not seem to be malicious about his deed as it looks like he was just having some fun with it, I am interested in figuring out how the duck the motherucker (thanks Flight of the Conchords) got into our site. I am left with an ever growing list of possibilities amongst which are:

1. I picked up a virus that allowed him to get my passwords, at least the passwords stored in my browser.

2. He found the site by hitting our blog through the random button usage in blogger. If this is the case he found our link to our site through our blog entry talking about the house and somehow gained access to it.

Ok, this is all I have figured out for now. The result of this is that I may switch this blog to private view only. So, if you have been reading this and do not have a blogger account you better get one if you want to keep on reading this. If you know of anyone that is incredibly bored and likes to read this let me know so that I can add them to the list. Also, I will stop linking stuff off my blog. I should have known better.

Either way we start the new week with yet another fucked up story. I know it can always get worse, but I would take a no news is good news kind of week for a change.

Where is your heart?

The answer to that question is very simple right, your heart is to the left of your sternum. I think from a young age we figure out where the heart is in part because it holds such strong symbolism in our cultures. For example, while singing the national anthem to many countries people place their hands over the heart. I always took that to mean that your singing the national anthem is heart-felt and that you love your country with all your heart.

Where I am trying to go with this is that I am not sure where my heart is right now. I do know where the organ that helps circulate my blood is, but I am not sure where my heart is regarding my professional life. While I have only been in my current workplace for a month I have felt at times unsure about whether I made the right decision. The environment where I work is very good; the people I work with are great, my new boss is great, the university is pretty nice. The project I have started on is not all that bad. It is hard to predict where things will go, especially when I have barely moved ahead with the project in the month that I have been working in lab.

One larger worry, although I know I shouldn't delve too much in this as I have just started, is how people in my current lab are struggling to find jobs beyond their postdocs. Most of you that read this blog know about our good friend David and how he did not have the easiest of times finding a job. In my current workplace, there are 2 senior postdocs that have been looking for work, one of them more actively than the other, with no luck so far. It scares me to think that two very good scientists are struggling to find a job, especially as I start. It is hard not to think about whether part of their handicap in finding a job is the model system in which they are working.

One of my favorite movie/book quotes ever is from The Right Stuff and it goes like this: "No bucks, no Buck Rogers." In science, especially in the current financial climate, having funding, is absolutely necessary, and a key part, to get your Buck Rogers, or project, off the ground. Even more so, being able to secure some bucks before you hit the job market for a faculty position makes the job hunting a lot easier. In a way, it is easier to sell tickets to see the Buck Rogers show when you already have the money to hire Buck and all you need is a place for him to show his skills. The catch in securing the monies is that it is very competitive nowadays and I feel like you need something to distance yourself from the other people gunning for the money. One way to do so is to work in an area that is "hot" (e.g. bioterrorism, SARS, miRNA, etc.). Another way is to work on something that is of pressing interest or that will yield something to the taxpayer, the people that after all is said and done pay our salaries through their taxes (e.g. Alzheimer's, cancer, infectious diseases, etc.).

Unfortunately my current work strikes out on both counts and I have known this from the time I interviewed. My current work falls strictly under the umbrella of basic research. My bug of interest causes disease, but VERY rarely does it do anything to humans and is not a problem in the agricultural industry. As such, understanding the mechanisms of how our virus causes disease in its model organism, the mouse, will likely yield unforeseen perspectives in our field that are bound to be exiting and novel. On the other hand, in the face of a financial crunch where funding needs to be allotted as best as possible, it is understandable that monies are going towards those pathogens that are currently causing more morbidity and mortality to the world's populous.

The argument for basic research has always been that basic research is what fuels the key discoveries that drive the drugs and cures of tomorrow. This has held true for many systems, including the coronavirus researchers that for years had studied a bug that did not seem to be all that important until SARS hit. When this happened our response to this new pathogen was greatly improved by what had been accomplished before through basic research.

I just hope in my heart doesn't fail me and that I made the right decision for my professional life. I just hope that I can someday find enough bucks so that good ol' Buck has a place for his show.

Homemade not for home goods

I would like to add an addendum to my previous post dealing with the built in microwave that malfunctioned at home earlier in the week.

The repair guy, a nice guy that said he grew up in California, which I believe as he had no accent in his speech, showed up around 10:00 of the a.m. He promptly asked me what happened and did a quick inspection of the unit followed by looking on the overhead pantry where the microwave is plugged into an outlet. As soon as he reached in there I knew there was something off. First off, the outlet had been clearly installed after the house was built as the outlet and the outlet box were taped to the side of the cabinet. Secondly, as he reached in there with his electric reader we both noticed that there was no juice going into the box and almost immediately noticed a nickel-sized burn/plastic melt mark on the side of the box. Upon seeing this, he asked me to shut down the power to the house after which he removed the box and noticed that one of the screws on the side of the outlet was singed/burned to hell and sticking out a solid inch off the place where it should've been screwed on tightly.

The repair guy quickly pointed out that the problem had been that whomever installed the outlet did a poor job by leaving the screw so far out, thus leading to a short that caused all the burning and melting. Luckily the outlet box contained the problem and there was no fire as a result from this. Yes, we are very lucky that the thing didn't short out and burn the cook books that we have in the pantry and start a house fire. Lucky yet scary. The repair guy easily replaced the outlet for the correct outlet, non GPCI one, and bolted down the outlet box to the wall/cabinet so that it is actually installed properly. After I paid him the $100 fee, which is standard as we have a 1 year home warranty on many items in the house, the dude took off and I went off to work.

From all of this I concluded the following:

1. The person that installed the microwave is/was a moron. Not only was the outlet installed improperly, but the "built-in" microwave is about 6 inches too close to the stove according to the repair guy. This means that the underside of the microwave can get very hot if you use the stove, especially the back burners. Luckily the microwave is still high enough where it should be ok were it sits.

2. The inspector that looked at our house is also a moron. The repair guy immediately pointed out that the inspector should have noticed both the outlet and the proximity of the microwave to the stove. Unfortunately Tennessee has very weak and ever changing building codes and the inspectors don't even have to be licensed. This should be the equivalent of allowing anyone that has played with Legos to build highways and buildings.

3. We were very lucky that our house didn't burn down. I talked about this earlier, but this was a solid reminder that shitty work can lead to seriously bad results in the house, in particular to electric work.

4. While the jury is still out on the home warranty service, I have talked to another postdoc at work and he mentioned that they have renewed their and have been glad they did so as they have replaced the oven/stove, central air, water heater, refrigerator in the 1.5 years that they have been here. Although I am not sure if the $100 deductible was more than we would have paid someone to look at the microwave and fix it, I can't imagine it would have been that much cheaper. I would guess that if something like the water heater or something bigger goes it will be worth the money.

What happens when the very small wave machine breaks?

It was just a matter of time before something in our new house stopped working. Last night, as Nat was thawing some chicken in the built-in microwave the thing stopped working. By stopped working I mean that every sign of electric power going into the machine and yielding an output, be it a microwave, number on the LCD screen, or light were nowhere to be found.

Two things resulted from this, with the most immediate being that instead of chicken and broccoli stir fry we picked up a sun-dried tomato and spinach pizza. The second thing that happened is that I got to test out how are home warranty works. When we bought the house, we requested that the sellers buy a home warranty for a year. The warranty covers the breakage of several items in the house for up to a year from when we closed on the house. Luckily for us the built-in microwave is covered. The downside is that for every item that we want to have fixed there is an automatic $100 fee. The repair guy is due up tomorrow morning and I am just hoping that he can fix the thing without us having to shell out more than $100.

Stay tuned...