>_< Something to Type About (13)

As previously mentioned, for whatever reason my work PC had decided to not allow blogger to work, so I was left constipated with words and ideas. The up side is I probably wasn't going to say anything that I haven't already said, the down side being that we'll never find out now will we? This will actually be my last post for a little while, as long as what happens today goes smoothly. I'll talk more about that in my first little section. Just want to say thanks to anyone out there who reads this regularly for understanding ahead of time. And with that...

(7:44AM) Today is my las tday working for the thermal lab here at BASF. Come monday (or whenever they decide to finally draw up my paperwork) I will be working on some research for a joint project from Canada also at BASF. I'm a little bit sad becasue working up in the thermal lab has probably been the most lax workplace I've ever seen. I was allowed to do some things I wouldn't normally get to do at any other job. I had some really good experiences, and I'm going to miss it. For awhile I've been talking about all the responsibility I'm going to have in the near future. Some of that will come on Monday. I'm really nervous, but like I said, its been mentioned. That is why this may be the last post in a little while, becasue as all these resoponsibilities and tasks come up, I probably won't have the time to say what's on my mind. So I guess we'll see what happens.

(9:45AM) Just finished writing up my thank you cards. Kind of makes the whole thing much more realistic. The final steps throughout the day is to start backing up all my data that I need, and maybe some light packing for when I need to finally leave this desk and computer. But with that door closing, a new door with a new office and (hopefully laptop) is waiting for me. I just need to finalize some things becasue my new higher up is super busy closing billion dollar deals in Asia... or something. Either way I look forward to it, and I promise I'll stop with all this leaving my office jargon. There are some things in the news lately I wanna talk about, but we'll cross that street eventually.

(1:39PM) So Lonesome Gary passed away the other day, and officially the Galapagos Turtle is now extinct. Which is super sad. On the surface I don't really show too much emotion on the topic, but if I sit there and think for awhile it becomes pretty depressing. To be the last of your species and finally die out is probably something I don't want to go through, and lucky the 7 billion of us won't make possible. What's worse is that pretty soon other animals will suffer the same fate. I'm not gonna go all hippie and proclaim that we need to save all animals, but I think we should at least be mindful of what we're doing to the world and how it affects not only us, but all other life around us. So yea, the Panda will be extinct eventually, and so will most enangered species, but the best we can do is try and slow it down. We're not forcing Panda's to rape each other. That's just wrong.

EDIT (7/23/2012, 1:21PM)
So I didn't know that this entry was never published. My new computer and office have been set up, and yes it did take that long to do it. But as I publish this post, I'm really feeling a new beginning again to this blog. There's always lots of things to talk about, especialy nowadays nad since we've missed a lot of time together, hopefully we can do some catching up.

ta ta kids

>_< Goosebumps!

No, not the children's horror book, but the odd phenomena that happens to your skin and hairs when you feel cold or get a little scared. It's a weird thing, and I want to explain it to myself, and I guess the benefit will be that it will be explained to you. If you so choose to read. Actually, I have goosebumps now because my office is freezing. Also my nipples are hard. But TMI. I'll go over what I think I know, and we'll confirm by other sources. It's going to be a fun trip.
So from what I know, goosebumps are a reflex/reaction that we took from our ancestors, who were supposedly super hairy because we hadn't invented jackets and sweaters and socks... and underwear yet. When cavemen and cavewomen got cold, their body hair automatically stood up, creating a fluffy layer of warmth. Likewise when we’re cold, the muscles around the hair follicles contract. But since we don’t have much body hair, all we see are the goose bumps on our skin. That's pretty much what I know, and I think that's really all we need to know. But let's get down to the nitty gritty.

Goose bumps are messages from the brain to the skin to react to the animal oriented phenomena of fight or flight. Porcupine raising its quills on seeing a threat is a good example to understand goose bumps and their nature. Since human bodies cannot differentiate between real and imaginary conditions, goose bumps can be a reflex to a physical condition or a reaction to a psychological condition. Goosebumps are directly related to the adrenaline rush that flows through the body. Adrenaline rush can be triggered by fear or emotional reactions. Emotional reactions can be positive or negative, powered by intense ‘stress’ to induce the emotional welling up to trigger goose bumps.

Why do we call it goose bumps? Skins of  geese or chickens have bumps at the place where feather is attached to the skin. Each spot on the human skin has a bump similar to the goose bump, and this connection must have given this phenomenon its name.

Scientifically, goose bumps are called Piloerections. Piloerections are emotion based autonomic reflex reactions routed through the limbic system. Piloerections are similar to blushing or feeling butterflies in the stomach. Limbic system controls primitive drives of hunger, sex, fear, anger and aggression. Limbic system anatomically has thalamus, a major structure in control of the sensory inputs. Medial forebrain bundle and the hypothalamus play a major role in the invocation and mediation of the autonomic reflexes.
Goose bumps have been observed on head or scalp on scary occasions but goose bumps on a face requires well formed arrector pili muscles. Every arrector pili muscle does not have hair attached to them. Arrector pili with hair are found in areas with thick hair. Human facial hairs are extremely tiny and thin, so goose bumps on the face are rare.

That's all for now.

ta ta kids

PS
My PC at work has been acting up when it comes to blogspot as of late, but it seems it's been working well now.

>_< Something to Type About (12)

To be perfectly honest, this work week went by rather fast. Not the actual work DAYS, but the work week. I really feel like time slows down at work, but that's probably because the only I do at home is sleep. So as always, hopefully this whole thing will keep my work day moving a little bit faster, there are something I do want to talk about, some blog ideas that I wanted to start, but didn't have enough substance to make into one post, so maybe I'll touch base with those topics later in the day. So for now...

(7:40AM) Heard on the radio this morning that someone fell on their head one day and a few days later became a piano virtuoso. Previously he hadn't had any lessons and didn't even know how to play any instruments, and all of a sudden the guy becomes a pro. A few callers called in with some stories that were similar. Someone got struck by lightening and had her hearing improved drastically, and a small child got hit in the head with a baseball and now has 20/20 vision. Now even if you aren't a believer in luck, this is pretty darn lucky. For someone stupid enough to jump head first into a shallow-ish pool to obtain musical talent? He should've been paralyzed from the waist down. Without getting too bitter, I just don't think someone like that should be rewarded with a gift. It got me wondering though, I've hit my head countless times... I wonder what kinds of special things I can do. I mean all I really have to show for it is TMJ... and that's not even impressive. I'm not going to go throw my head on a wall or anything, but it might be worth trying if it means something awesome might happen. On the other hand, maybe these things were destined to happen, and we are chosen previously by a higher power to be blessed (or cursed) by who and what we are and what we'll come to be.

(8:31AM) Recently got a hair cut after the tail end of y current hair was passed its comfort level. Plus it made my neck look all thick, and who among us deserves a thick neck? The point is, I was going to type about the differences in long and short hair when it comes to interaction with people. I believe I'm somewhat of an expert on the topic. I've been studying how people treat me with long and short hair and let me tell you that there is a huge difference. For one, people are incredibly friendly towards people with short hair. I guess nowadays in society thats the norm. Longer haired people have a rep for being super devious or shady. I should also clear up that I'm talking specifically for males. I noticed it right right away, the days after I got my haircut people are always smiling and saying hi to me, even going as far as to start an actual conversation to get ot know me. When my hair was long, there wasn't a lot of people who did that. I used to always look down and let my hair cover my eyes when it was long, I guess that kind of sends a "don't talk to me" message. I just didn't think the differences would be so drastic. I guess while my hair is short, I should enjoy the comforts of friendly people.

edit: I wrote that 8:31AM thought in and out of conscienceness because I had just took a power nap. I haven't read that whole paragraph over, so I'm just going to wish for the best and put trust in my abilities to form coherent sentences.

(10:36AM) I am NOT feeling well. Which is terrible because now the day is going at a snails pace. I've got a bit of nausea and that in turn is making my stomach all... lava lamp-y. My vision is getting blurry, and I can barely keep my balance. I told one of my coworkers about it and she even asked if I wanted to go home, and I almost did go home. I think I can make it though, as long as there are things to do, the day will go buy like normal which is a good thing. It was around 9 when I felt the worst and I just sat on one of the chairs in the lab for what felt like HOURS, but it was really like 15 minutes. Pretty amazing stuff. If I could try to deduce why I'm feeling like this it would have to come down to a combination of the following: lack of sleep, lack of breakfast, and changes in temperature from office to lab. It is a little nippy in my office, but the lab is a bit warmer, and so I think my body is just confused... which explains the headache. Ah I just want this day to be done already. My plan until lunch is to relax here till about 11, then prep up some samples, get the next experiments going, and maybe start cleaning out the sample tubes. If I can hold off on that until after lunch, though I can probably get the afternoon on a faster start.

(1:46PM) There was a little mishap in the data that I had sent someone, so that kind of got me into a rush. It was good that I caught the mistake before they used the final data, I think the my higher up was a proud, but irritated that she didn't catch it herself. Also, I met with my soon-to-be higher up, and the job descriptions he's giving me is a little over whelming to say the least. Hopefully, again, I'll be able to pull something off and really earn my place around here because a lot of things are on the line if I don't succeed. He literally told me he threw out all the other resumes so this is going to be it. I just wish (and I'll ask him on Monday) I had some thing to go on to research so I don't go into this thing with a blank mind. Yes there's room to learn, but I would appreciate it if I didn't feel like I didn't know anything at all working on something new. AH, but we all can't be so lucky, yes?

(2:29PM) I'm going to assume this will be my final hoorah for this post. Funny that in the beginning I had stated that I had plenty to talk about, actually the girl behind me is starting to sing happy birthday really off key to her phone so now it's getting kind of interesting, and hopefully she will never see me typing this out. So ea the previous sentence was full of fragments, what I MEANT to say is that I had so many things to type out this morning but between naps and feeling REALLY terrible I only got to talk about long hair... which is TOTALLY lame. Yet, I feel rather complete so for the sake of this blog NOT being posted the Monday after I started it, I'm going to publish now.

ta ta kids

>_< Let's Go to Mars

Seriously. Just you and me and our big 'ol neighbor in the night sky that's not the moon or Venus. I hear it's a nice place. Average surface temperature is about 210 Kelvin (that's about -63°C or -81.4°F for you snooty Americans). Gives us a lot of opportunities to cuddle. Since its tilt mirrors the Earths a little bit, then we know that there are going to be some seasons. So we can look forward to warmer temperatures, like a scorching hot -5°C (23°F you snooty American). A year over there is about 2 years here on Earth. So we can definitely spend some quality time together. Vacation spots? Mars has the highest known mountain in our solar system. We can go see it every year! Mars seems like the next best thing to our earth. It's gonna take us 7 months to get there so we're gonna need to bring our best road trip music. We'll prove to the world that there are martians out there, and it's going to be us.

Pictured: Paradise.

I mean just look at all the color. The reds and browns. It's like earth without the greens and blues. And really those colors were just so overrated. Rocks are fun. We can use them to see how far we can throw them, we can do that for years, I guarantee it wouldn't get old. Oh there's one more thing: we'd probably have to live in a dome or something. So what you saw above is probably going to be our view. Scenic, I know. It'd get better at night, with the two moons and all. Also, The atmosphere there is mostly carbon dioxide, so it's best we stay indoors... the indoors we built for ourselves. We'll be the surface pimple on the face of Mars, and you can be damn sure we'll never get popped.

It was either me or you, and I know it wasn't you.

Now that I think about it, we're probably going to have to bring our closest friends, a few doctors and scientists. Actually, we should bring about 1000 upstanding citizens too. It's nice to have people. I get that we we're planning to have this trip just you and me, but let's be honest... we can't take care of ourselves, and we certainly aren't smart enough to sustain anything. Also you can get kind of boring and I could use a fresh face every now and then. If everything goes right, then our little hoard of people will grow to many hoards of people and before you know it, we'll have over populated our precious little people pimple and life will cease to exist on Mars again. People at home will hear about the tragedy and begin to tell tales of our existence to their offspring at which point after centuries of grieving, we'll have the technology in sustainability to try the task again that gives us the balls so we can start all over. Just you and me and our big 'ol neighbor in the night sky that's not the moon or Venus. Seriously.

>_< Something to Type About (11)

In an attempt to please the higher ups, I'll have to do these from my office computer from now on, which means less content, or more of a workout for me. My office is a floor below the lab I work in, so if I did have something on my mind, I'll have to march on down here to type it out. To be perfectly honest, this may not work well, but I'm willing to give it the 'ol college try just to see if anything interesting in my head comes up. So far nothing, and it's already almost hitting the 9 o'clock hour, so a small bit of the day has already come and gone.

(8:32AM) Scratch that. I was wondering about the whole idea of portraying professionalism in the workplace. Now that I'm moving on up on the corporate ladder, I', beginning to think about all the little changes I'll have to make in my life. First off, as a fullly fledged Chemist, I won't necessarily be needing the whole jeans and casual shirt get-up. Since other professionals will be seeking my mind, then I should start presenting myself in professional attire. I remember ranting about this sometime earlier, about how it shouldn't matter how you dress, as long as you did your job and did it well. I still believe in the idea, but it becomes different when you're looking to earn respect as fresh meat in the company. So that's what I'm pretty much setting out on doing: earning the respect of my colleagues. With time, I'll be able to slowly slump back into the attire I enjoy wearing to work. That also means less posts. Oh darn, but I know if a really good  topic comes up, I'll be sure to type it down.

(10:25AM) Responsibilities in the workplace. I have many, but not enough to take all the time out of my day. Once everything starts becoming second nature in this new professional environment of mine, then I'm sure I'll be begging for some time to just unwind. For now I feel like I do take a lot of this time for granted, but I know it's way better than staying in bed not doing anything at all. At least I'm getting paid, though not much, and certainly not enough. Hopefully soon I'll be able to get my own reactor and learn how to run it. I'll be able to sit in my office and actually DO something instead of pretending to look important like I'm trying to do now. These are the things I wish for, but of course not all at once. The last thing I need is to be stressed out by work. I already stress myself out from other things already.

(12:40PM) Do you see what I have to do? Sacrifice my own lunch hour just so I can get some substance in? Actually I can probably get a little more, and spend a little more time in the lab if they let me use the computer but one of the higher ups is a teeny weeny bit grumpy today so I'll just stay out of her way and we should be ok for the rest of the time. I'm not exaclty sure though what I'm going to do for the rest of the day, I know I have some cleaning, sample prep... but other then that I should be good. I was really looking forward to a mid afternoon snack but someone had eaten the last bagel that was brought a little bit before lunch. So that's a dissappointment. Actually there's some training I have to do, but I kind of want to save that for a better time. This is just pointless rambling, I promised substance and by golly I'm going to give it!... in a little bit becasue my break is pretty much over.

(7:44AM) I know what you'er thinking. I haven't gone home yet and I've worked overnight. No, but really, I just forgot to submitted when I was heading home, plus I didn't really have the time. So let's just end it here.

ta ta kids