>_< Silver Spoons

Here's a fact: some people are blessed with a good upbringing. Others are not. Some have had the opportunities to be financially stable and therefore had an easier time growing up. Others have not. Some people could take full advantage of the educational system offered in the good 'ol USA. Some can not. Finally, some people despise those who are fortunate. Are those people right to? Maybe. Though they really should try to get the whole story first before being so quick to judge, because you'll just end up looking like the jolly green giant. Except you're jealous. Jealous green giant. Lettuce green giant. I don't know where this is going.

What a jerk.

The common phrase for those who are born a little more than just well off are said to be "born with a silver spoon (in his/her mouth)." Implying of course the spoon is primarily used in the mouth. Silver back then was apparently a sign of wealth, and if you could afford to eat with silver spoons (or be fed by them) you might as well be suckling the teat of the Gods. Drink up that delicious nectar. I don't know why everyone is beating around the bushes, let's just call this group of people spoiled. No spoons involved. We'll keep the silver though. We need those. For werewolves.

Die demon!

If you haven't guessed already, I've struck up a conversation with that same co-worker referred to a couple of posts ago. Another hot topic that's brought up between our different upbringings. I grew up in a well-off (NOT RICH) town in Jersey, while he spent most of his childhood in Southern Ohio. Yes, it was very different, but I'm not one to brag about how well I was brought up. He and I got to know each other on this basis, and I guess it didn't really seem to bother him until one day a co-worker and I were discussing some physical chemistry and he happened to listen upon it. (You should know that he only has an Associates Degree). He had mentioned how he was never taught, and somehow it spiraled into this whole rant about pride. A quick disclaimer: I reserve the right to my own opinions, but will never discourage you about the pride you carry.

Let's get one thing straight. Everyone is or has the opportunity to be better at something than you, and they have a right to. The way this rant went seemed to me like he was justifying his life for not growing up as well off as I or my other co-worker did. He would go on to say how he could win in a fight, how he's seen death, mocking society by belittling them - and consequently us - through his devout faith in Christianity (I may have used some words wrong in that), all in all he was defending his pride because I was walking around with a degree and he spent his life gaining experience in all the wrong places. By the tone of his voice, you could tell that he was starting to get a little irate just staring at us. Then I just had to say it.

"Listen, don't be mad because our parents worked hard to give us the life we fell into."

Yes, Shaniqua. I'm pretty sure I did.

I'm sure he was steaming mad, but it just got the job done. He stopped talking and we did our best to try and change the subject. It's become a bad environment for the workplace. That's when I got to thinking about writing this blog.

We all grow up in different ways. Like I said previously, I'm not one to discourage you about how you were brought up, good or bad. What matters is that you take pride in taking the best out of the situation you were given. Case in point: both my other co-worker and I had hard working parents in order to provide us with a stable life, environment, and education. How do we act? We finish college, and get a job. The Ohio native, had experienced terrible things, but worked up the power to give himself an associates, move out to NJ, get married and have the life his parents couldn't give him. Wonderful! Good endings for both parties. However...

If you think for one second you're better than me or the world because of what you went through, you're wrong. Dead wrong. What you've been through doesn't entitle you to be bitter towards me for "being born with a silver spoon." Sure my life may have been easier than yours, but I still worked hard to get where I am today. The steps you take to get to where you are should be something you take pride in, not something you can use to prove you're better. At the end, we're all in the same office, working for the same company. Salary? That's for another day.

>_< Office Tensions

So now that all the interns are done and gone back to whatever ivy league school they came from (those pretentious butt holes walk around like they're better then everyone else, and they don't even work here permanently), it was just about the best news ever when I found out I was going to have my office to myself. Generally, I feel the best work environment doesn't involve shared offices. Everyone needs their space, and with society already up your butt judging everything you do, I believe that being at work entitles you to some alone time.

Just me and this bad boy. All alone.

Those were the good days. Then my whole world started to crumble because I knew the day was approaching. A new office mate. Like I said, I DID know about it, I was just hoping that the day would come sooner rather than later. Now I have no problems with having an office mate, but I believe this one may give birth to loads of problems in the long run. First off, before we shared offices, she would be in the office right next to mine. When she came in as a new hire (as a contract employee... not permanent like I'm going to be), it was all well and good. As the days go, I guess we both start to notice the degree of work we both have. Recently, all I've been doing is preparing slides after slides in power point so we have something to show for a meeting that's actually going to happen in about a half an hour. Since her employment here, however, I've seen her running around, making catalysts, getting messy, etc etc... which to be perfectly honest, gets me a little jealous. Though now that I think about it, I've heard around here that making catalysts is just like cooking in a kitchen... heck I'm looking at one of those fancy stand-up mixers you find in a white-mans house. And it all makes sense now...


That better be something I can eat when you're done with it.

I'm getting off topic here. Basically she and I have both noticed that I guess maybe one of us works a little harder for their money. And I can tell you it doesn't seem like me right now. This is what I assume is going through her head because since our first introductions, she's been nothing but a real harcore B up in here. Why, just this morning I have the kindness in my heart to say "good morning" and she responds with a very zombie like "hi." Not even a good morning back. Well you know what? I take it back. Hope your morning is terrible. And you know what else? I don't appreciate your tone of voice.

Look. It's not my fault you got stuck with the job that I may or may not have applied for also. But clearly you were the better candidate for this type of work. It's not like I'm not working. Those power points (I'm counting upwards of 15 of them now) were really hard to do. They're really time consuming and they take up most of my day. My back starts to hurt so I stretch once in awhile, my eyes get tired so I try to get some zZz's every couple of hours. Heck, even my ears get tired so I HAVE to put on Pandora and listen to music while I work. Its a tough life. Don't be so selfish.


Pictured: Female me at work. (Also not in a kitchen)

 ___________________________________

As a side note, I was google searching images and I happen to come across a creepy one of who I believe is Marie Curie.



BRAIIIIIIIIINS. Also Radium.



>_< My Christianity vs. Evolution

STOP RIGHT THERE. If you all think for a second that this is going to be some controversial post explaining my beliefs and disbelief... then you might be right. But just a little. I really just want to talk out of my butt for a few paragraphs because a co-worker and I struck up a conversation about said topic. Here's some background information about my co-worker, without giving too much away. His social security number is 147-85-4251. That is all. Seriously though, he used to live in southern Ohio, and he came from a pretty terrible upbringing (at least that what I get out of it from the stories he told me). Regardless, my co-worker "found Jesus and God" and really turned his life around, and he's now in the handful of some of the hard workers I see in this company. When I say he found Jesus... he FOUND Jesus.


Pretty sure he's the one riding a horse.

What I'm getting at here is that he's a pretty devout Christian. We would always talk about hot topics and although he's got a pretty reserved opinion, you can tell all he wants to do is preach and preach. So we got to talking about evolution. So before I give his opinion, which you can probably figure out by now, let me give you my explanation.

I'm a Christian. When I was younger I went to Church frequently, and as I got older, less and less. Needless to say, I was what I'd like to call a "holiday christian." I only show up for the holidays. That's not to say that I don't believe in a higher power somewhere. I carry some Christian beliefs with me, and it's these things combined with my morals that allow me to do good, and flaw me to do that not so good. But I digress. You should also know that I was raised under the interest of science, more so than Christianity. So my beliefs are actually completely towards evolution and not creation. Though I do take into account everything the Bible says, to me they are just nice stories to listen to about the man upstairs doing great work. So that's me in a nutshell, and then some.

We actually got into this topic because I had brought up the Fibonacci sequence, and how it applies to fauna. We have this running joke about how he would always bring Him into this, and he did just that stating something along the lines of "and all this is just a coincidence right?" Pretty condescending if you ask me. Either way we shared a laugh about bringing Him into it again and then we got into this whole thing on evolution. This is where he really took the preachyness to a new level. Now I wish I had typed this up sooner, so I can regurgitate exactly what he was saying, but I'll just paraphrase. Everything from this point on that quotes what he says ISN'T word for word, but it gets the same point across.

He asked "if evolution is so great, then why did we crawl out of the water and lose our gills? we need gills." This of course implying that we (just we, and not every other species) crawled out of the water.
My answer: We found land, which became more desirable to live on because there are more things that are useful up there to us. We no longer needed gills. Or bodies cant handle the pressures or deep water nor can our skin handle constant exposure to water. Raisin fingers!

He stated "i don't see a dog evolving into a cat"
My answer: *facepalm

Though the results would be marvelous.

Then for some reason he started hinting that he actually did believe in some kind of evolution.

He said: "Yea I believe that when the ark came, two monkeys walked out and eventually evolved into humans."
My answer: HOW CAN YOU BEGIN TO BELIEVE IN EVOLUTION AND START REFERENCING NOAH'S ARK?

At this point I was already kind of steaming, and lucky for me another co-worker came over to ask a question. I'm not here to bash on anyones beliefs, even though I imply that my frustration to his answers really got me worked up. And it did. People are entitled to what they want to believe in. I'm not going to sit there and argue about whats wrong or right, when someone truly believes one thing is right. As long as it isn't fact of anything. Something like evolution starts to get blurry because science can only go so far back. That's where religion can take over and start making up stories (based on real life witness?) Sorry for being condescending but I'm a firm believer of fact rather than fiction. I take science very seriously and I use my religion to shape who I am as a person in terms of right and wrong. It's nice to believe that someone out there is always looking out for us, and promising good or bad times after we die. Also it's pretty sweet to think that one man can abracadabra universes, people, creatures, etc. Seems pretty douchey though to start us off so primitive.


"How else would you learn about boobies and stuff?"

Thanks, Bro Jesus.

>_< 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.