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It took me about three hours of tearing my hair out about this e-mail situation before I actually took a look at the headers for one of my severely delayed e-mail messages. It turns out that google is the culprit, mail is getting from sunflower to dreamhost just fine and then when it hits google it sits undelivered for 12-18 hours. It looks like their servers are choking when they try to authenticate where the e-mail is actually coming from, which makes sense really.
This sucks, because I need to have reliable access to my e-mail from a large number of computers throughout the day. The gmail interface is really nice, but if they're going to hold my e-mail indefinitely I guess I'll need to find something else. In the interest of totally overreacting to this situation, I think I'm going to try using Pine for a while.
Posted at: 23:22
[path: /teiac] permanent link
What follows is a discussion of my totally out-of-control e-mail situation. It will almost certainly not be up to the caliber of my normal posts, which have been described as riveting.
So my e-mail situation is totally out-of-control. I currently have about six e-mail addresses that I use, all of which are forwarded to my gmail account because gmail has the best web interface of them all. I don't really know why I maintain so many different e-mail accounts, but since I have them all forwarded to the same place it hasn't been much of a chore to keep up with them for some time.
The most heavily used of my e-mail accounts is my @sunflower.com address. This is because the sunflower mail server supports plussed mailing. This means that you can append "+anything" between the account name and the @ symbol, and it still gets delivered properly. For example, if my e-mail account were [account]@sunflower.com, you could send a message to [account]+whatever@sunflower.com and it would still be delivered. This can be useful because you can tag the e-mail address you provide when you register for websites with a unique marker to help you filter out any spam that you receive as a result. Basically, it prevents you from having to set up dummy e-mail accounts.
Well, a further complication is that I no longer live in Lawrence, so I don't have active Sunflower cable service. Until very recently, my e-mail address was tied to my old roommate's account, since he still worked at Sunflower at the time. When he quit, however, the account passed to his new roommate's name. The result of this is that I lost administrative access to my e-mail account when that happened because I don't know what the cable account password changed to.
And that brings us to the true dilemma: I stopped receiving most of the e-mail that was sent to my Sunflower account. I sort of sat on this for a few days because I was hoping that it would just work itself out. I really didn't want to call Sunflower for support, because my name's not on the account.
However, I noticed tonight that e-mail sent to my @sunflower.com address wasn't being forwarded to my gmail account, but to a third address that is itself forwarded to my gmail account. So I've realized it's actually the third address that's causing the grief, but I have no way to change where the sunflower account gets forwarded to. In my attempts to figure out what's causing the issues with the problem account I accidentally deleted it, and now all of my mail is just bouncing. How am I supposed to know when I get myspace messages without my mail notifications?!?
After restoring the e-mail address at my domain, I don't know what to do next. Mail that is supposedly forwarded from my domain isn't arriving at my gmail account, but I do see mail arriving at my domain. Is it getting forwarded at all? I've tried adding postmaster and abuse addresses because I read that some domains refuse e-mail if you don't have them? It's never come up before, but I'm pretty much willing to try anything to duct tape my precarious situation back together so I can get some sleep.
Posted at: 22:02
[path: /teiac] permanent link
I finally got a new cell phone. Hooray for current technology! In lieu of studying, I've spent the last four hours making custom ringtones and generally figuring out how everything works. Boo...
Posted at: 22:17
[path: /yt] permanent link
The PBS website now has a fairly extensive hatemail page full of letters regarding the documentary I discussed in my last post. A common theme in the letters seems to be that the documentary was not "balanced" enough and had a "Darwinist" bias. I was actually really happy with this aspect of the documentary. I feel that they presented Intelligent Design to the extent of its substance. The fact that there is way more to talk about regarding the scientific point of view really should not be that surprising.
What I found most galling about the cdesign proponentsists was the "oh gosh" attitude they took as they described how they were just trying to point out that there is another "scientific" explanation for the origin of species. No, what you were trying to do was gain a foothold, some precedence for the presence of ID in public schools so that you could unleash a salvo of attacks across the nation. You're no more interested in the balance of science and ID in the classroom than, say, PZ Myers.
I will say that I was sort of disappointed with the tone of the presentation of the plaintiff's case. It certainly smacked of rhetorical trickery. But then, that's the problem with debating ID; your opponents will continually set back the goalposts and feel as though they only need to give you pause for a moment to unravel a century of research and publication.
This excerpt from the judge's opinion of the case sums things up rather nicely:
"To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions. The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the Intelligent Design Policy."
Posted at: 09:14
[path: /school] permanent link
This week PBS aired a NOVA episode about the trial in Dover, Pennsylvania regarding the teaching of Intelligent Design in a public school, by way of the book Of Pandas and People. I think that anyone who has a passing interest in science literacy or education would find it fairly interesting. It also gives a pretty good overview of the salient points regarding the science vs "cdesign" debate and serves as a good introduction to the intellectual dishonesty of the Discovery Institute.
You can watch the program on the PBS website.
Posted at: 09:31
[path: /school] permanent link
Apparently I'm not cut out for this
On my biology test this morning I mis-identified the anti-parallel ends of a DNA strand. Looks like I should be looking into something a bit more my speed, like Communication Studies...
Posted at: 07:30
[path: /school] permanent link
Look at me still talking when there's science to do...
I had a pretty strange realization on Halloween this year. I asked my mom whether there were many trick or treaters, and she said there hadn't been many for several years. I remember when I was younger there would be an unending flood until fairly late at night, so this was surprising. She pointed out that all of the children from our neighborhood have grown up and moved away. In a sense, our neighborhood has "out-grown" Halloween, which is really sad.
My grandparents lived in Leawood, and I always thought it was strange that there wasn't anyone for miles around that was under like 60 years old. I guess now I know how that happens. It's kind of strange, though, that when we moved here everyone had kids around the same age. I guess it must be that we moved shortly after development ended, so it was still a young neighborhood.
So, nothing really came out of me talking to my TA about my worthless lab group. She said she wanted to wait and see how things would play out this week. This tells me that nothing is going to happen, because there's only two more labs left. I guess I'll just have to deal with it.
Also, I just recently realized that Emacs has a spellcheck mode, which is completely awesome. I write these posts server-side with Emacs, and now I won't have to spend so much time being crazy about whether I'm spelling things correctly.
Posted at: 18:46
[path: /yt] permanent link
Curse you, somaFM, for getting me excited about xmas inappropriately early.
Posted at: 07:39
[path: /yt] permanent link
I had to spend so much time working on my lab report that I didn't have time to launder my clothes. So in addition to hearing my wrath, they will also get to smell my wrath.
I'm actually pretty keyed up for conflict tomorrow, which is kind of sad. Still, no one has given my such a golden opportunity to be a vengeful asshole since Chris Pumpelly.
Posted at: 21:04
[path: /school] permanent link
As an addendum to my last post, I thought I'd include the e-mail exchange I had with one of my group mates this evening.
We normally e-mail around our individual sections by Sunday night. I had not done this because after reading the quality of the work so far, I sort of quailed in the face of all the work I'd have to do. So while I was editing their crap tonight, I got the following e-mail.
hey,
so i still need your section of the lab report!! get it to me as soon as possibe(sic)! thanks
Ashley
And my response:
Ashley,
Yeah, I'm working on it. I am also editing the rest of the report because it is completely unacceptable. I am really very upset right now because I feel as though I've had to completely re-write at least one section in addition to writing my own each week so far, which is why I've put this off so long.
I wonder whether you all are counting on the fact that I will do your work for you, or if you really think this is A-quality work? You could not have spent more than ten minutes on this.
Brian
I thought about signing it "Love, Brian" but I was afraid that would be overly churlish.
Posted at: 20:53
[path: /school] permanent link
For my chemistry lab, I am required to write absurdly long, formal reports about the experiments done each week. Until recently I would write these reports by myself, which took me approximately three hours to do. The past few weeks, however, I have been required to work on these reports with the rest of my group, and we turn in one report for the four of us. I would estimate that I am now spending approximately five hours on these reports, which are of comparable length, because I have to spend considerable time editing the garbage that my group mates churn out.
I haven't quite decided whether they are just lazy and have come to expect that I will totally rewrite their inadequate bullshit, or if they are just stupid and think that this is acceptable work. It is not acceptable work.
The problem is that we all get the same grade for the work. Without my intervention, I'm positive that we would be getting F's on these reports. Since I choose to intervene, we get A's.
We are supposed to write our initials next to the section that we contributed to the report. This situation has actually been the main source of my desire to use the word "churlish." As in, "I really want to challenge my worthless group mates by initialling everything that I actually wrote/revised, highlighting how little they contributed, but I don't want to seem overly churlish." Basically, I'm stuck with these jerks for three more labs, and I don't want things to be really hostile. At least, that had been my concern until this evening. I've decided that I really don't give a shit what they think about me, because I couldn't possibly think any less of them. I've e-mailed my TA about the situation, and I have before and after copies of the past few reports to back up my claims.
Lab tomorrow should be interesting.
Posted at: 20:36
[path: /school] permanent link
Thoughts from a Saturday Afternoon
I've been overusing the word "churlish" recently. I'm not really sure what brought me to this, but since my most common use of the word is "I thought about doing X in response to Y, but it just seemed overly churlish," maybe it's not that I'm overusing the word but that I've been feeling overly churlish recently.
As I was leaving the lab on Thursday night, I heard music in the elevator shaft and when the elevator doors opened I saw a six person band in the elevator practicing church music. I just stood there for a moment, mouth a-gape, and one of them was like "Well, come on in, man!" I faced the wall of the elevator for the entirety of the ride down and beat a hasty retreat afterward. It was pretty fucking surreal.
Since I spend so much time driving between Lawrence and Olathe, I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks to pass the time. I recently finished the Takeshi Kovacs Trilogy by Richard Morgan. I enjoyed that it was sort of a post-cyberpunk/detective/war/revenge story mash-up. I did not enjoy the numerous, frighteningly graphic sex scenes. Most sci-fi writers are pervs, but Morgan really pushed the envelope. I think that it was especially disturbing because of the male narrator's dedication to emoting the text. I would estimate that the most frequently repeated line in the series was "I was hard almost instantly." Sheesh.
We've been without home phone service for nearly three months now. We were going to port our number to Comcast, but after reading some really negative shit about Comcast phone service on the consumerist we decided to cancel. A week after the cancelled installation appointment our phone line went dead, and has been ever since. Both Comcast and AT&T are totally impossible to deal with and are denying any responsibility or willingness to help.
When faced with a large amount of work, I tend to delay getting started in pretty retarded ways like organizing my mp3s, or driving around pointlessly for hours. I think that I may have hit a new low today as I spent several hours trying to teach myself to type in Dvorak.
Aaron is in town this weekend, and we're throwing Britt a birthday party tonight. Callie and Ryan should be there, which is exciting since I haven't seen either of them in years.
Posted at: 12:38
[path: /yt] permanent link
I'm basically in this place right now where if I don't focus really hard, I just lose myself in my work and I lose track of huge spans of time. I cannot believe that it is November.
Today I attended my first ever scientific "seminar." A visiting professor from North Carolina came to give a talk about Drosophila Sechellia (one of the species of fruit fly we use in the lab). I didn't really know what to expect, but the room was packed. There was a small number of faces I recognized from the other fly labs and a ton of faces I didn't recognize. He was discussing his research. Specifically, he is attempting to find a genetic basis for host selection and speciation for sechellia, as well as discussing a lot of background information about the species. It was really interesting, and I was pretty impressed that actually understood almost everything he said, despite my limited experience.
It was also interesting to see the dynamic of the seminar. In addition to people I recognized from other labs, there were a number of GTAs from my biology class. I am accustomed to seeing the GTAs looking harried, so seeing them in their element was kind of neat.
It is absolutely amazing what a difference having a rewarding, stimulating job has made in my life. Actually receiving positive feedback is pretty nice as well. I feel bad, but I've really started to lose the empathy I once had for my friends still stuck in call center and/or retail jobs. I guess I'm just too pampered or far removed, but I just don't even want to hear about the bullshit that goes on anymore. All I can really add to the conversation is "you need to find a new job," and that never seems to help much.
Chemistry test in an hour, and I should be studying.
Posted at: 17:13
[path: /yt] permanent link