This blog is moving!

I've decided to move this blog to a website and host I'll be using to
experiment with web development, since I have a bit more freedom and
control over there. Here's the new address:

http://blog.danielsenhwong.com

The Inefficiencies of Airline Travel (unrelated to emissions)

I'm back at home in Seattle now -- my flight got in a couple hours ago,
but I slept for most of the flight and now I'm not /too/ terribly
tired. Not yet, at least. Anyway, I'm a little bored (no Xbox here),
so I thought I would write up a post for my blog, since it's been a
little neglected lately.

*On the plane*
My extended family is spread out across the country, concentrated along
the east and west coasts, so my experience in airline travel has been
almost exclusively trans-continental. Additionally, until only
recently, my family and I relied heavily on checking our bags, rather
than carry-ons. (De-rail: being an Asian family, our relatives usually
prepare or buy a lot of food or herbs for us to bring back home every
time we visit. It's not an availability issue; it's a price and quality
issue.)

That said, it always bothered me that on these trans-continental
flights, now always full, there would always be an issue with overhead
storage space for carry-on bags. It bothers me even more now that I
limit myself to a carry-on bag whenever possible.

I never understood why people found it so hard to understand the signs
posted inside the overhead compartment that had clear directions on how
to load your bag(s) into the space, particularly wheeled suitcases.
Every single time I've flown for at least the past six years, there has
been someone sitting near me who insists on putting their bag /sideways/
in the space instead of /wheels first/. Hell, it could be wheels last
for all I care, so long as it's /short side in/. The bin is deep enough
to hold your bag that way!

Anyway, my point is, I now understand why people do that -- on smaller
regional, rather than trans-continental, planes, the overhead bins are
not as deep. I still don't like people who put their bags in sideways
on larger airplanes, but now I understand why they do that.

*At the airport
*I'm pretty sure every airport has loading/unloading lanes right outside
of the terminal for picking up and dropping off passengers, with no
waiting allowed. That's what the cell phone lots are for; failing that,
just park your damn car.

At Seatac, there is a five-lane drive outside of baggage claim; two
lanes for loading/unloading, and three lanes for through traffic. When
I exited via baggage claim tonight, there were four lanes of cars
sitting there waiting, and one lane of traffic inching past. Only one
police officer was on hand to regulate traffic, this being rather late
on Christmas Eve. Even when asked to move, most drivers would move and
inch and continue to sit.

What did this cause? Even /more /people behind them to sit and wait,
most more than likely using the reasoning that they would lose a lot
more time circling the airport again than just simply waiting. /That's
the whole cause of this huge traffic jam/.

I can't wait until the light rail connection to the airport opens next
fall. No way I'm putting up with stupid drivers at the airport anymore.

Sound theory, piss poor in practice.

I stayed late at the hospital on Thursday to plate cells for experiments to be done before Christmas, and the most frustrating things happened:
- I was repeatedly bumped from my time slot on the hood -- a 2:30pm reservation turned into 6pm.
- When I finally got on the hood, there were close to zero pipets left in the cell culture room.
- When I went upstairs to get more supplies from the main lab, my ID wouldn't unlock the door onto floor with the cell culture room because someone in the Security office decided I would never need to be there after 6pm.

Three separate systems totally failed that night, all against my favor.

I did finally get back onto that floor and managed to plate cells for my experiments, though I ended up not using half of them.  >:(

On leaf blowers

I don't really understand the use of leaf blowers.  It does not seem like a terribly efficient use of time, energy, or fuel -- especially the way that I generally see groundskeeping staff using them.

The first time I ever saw a leaf blower in use was in the second grade, and the school custodian was using it when there were a ton of leaves on the ground, making a final pile at least five feet across and two feet high or so.

This year, in only the past few weeks, I've seen leafblowers being used at least once a week on my way to the lab in the morning, and being used to blow maybe a few handfuls of leaves around.  I'm talking about a final pile that's maybe two feet across and less than a foot high.

This morning, I saw two guys blowing a handful of leaves out from under the bushes in front of the Post Office Museum across the street from Union Station here in DC.

Unbelievable.

Thanksgiving!

Pam and I had nine other people over for Thanksgiving dinner: my sister,
her brother, a friend of mine I've known since the second grade, two
friends from college, and three of Pam's co-workers plus a friend of
theirs. I didn't think that eleven people would fit in our apartment
and around our tables, but they did!

The dinner itself was great and it was nice having people over -- at
least, those who were good house guests.

I think we also managed to piss off our downstairs neighbors, since we
just got Rock Band 2, and the foot pedal... yeah.

Back in touch with the world! Sort of.

My old phone, a Sprint Motorola RAZR V3m, had really been acting up over the past six months, but I suppose some problems could be traced back to when I actually first got it about two years ago.  Long story short, I haven't really been able to use my phone for the past month or so, and I haven't even been able to turn it on without plugging it into the wall for the past two weeks.  The RAZR was pretty much a flaming piece of crap.  So much so that I don't really want another flip phone for a while, and definitely not one from Motorola.

This increases the size of my blacklisted phone companies to two, which now consists of Sanyo and Motorola, which is sad, because Motorola used to make good phones.  Or maybe I just didn't used to know any better.

Anyway, I now have a Samsung M520, and with the caveat that I've really only had it for about 16 hours so far, I like it a whole lot.  It's nice to be able to use a phone for the first time in two years without it hanging or crashing because I tried to do things too quickly.

Organic Chemistry Lab: Increasing your cancer risk since the beginning of time

As part of my effort to decontaminate an incubator in the lab, I just put a phenol solution inside to sterilize the whole thing with toxic vapors overnight.  I had to look through all the flammable chemical stores in the lab to find it, and really, looking at the labels on all of these chemicals, there's no way it's a good idea to unleash hordes of premed undergrads into the orgo lab to play with carcinogenic materials.  I know most of the people in my orgo lab section either did not or could not follow directions a good portion of the time.  That, and the lab manager for the undergraduate labs was this old Chinese lady who didn't really teach her work-study students safety protocols very thoroughly (I should know, I was one of them).

Hooray cancer!