Dream Propulsion Engineer

I spent the last week in the Bay Area, presenting posters, hanging out with family, getting sunburned, seeing Billy Bragg, and learning learning learning. Oh, and I think we ate some seafood in there somewhere.

Once or twice.

But since I got back last Tuesday, I haven't been able to fall asleep before 5:30 AM. Last night it was 6:30 AM. This is not quite as bad as things were in college, but it's still pretty miserable. Even if I get don't get up for work until 11, I've still only had 5 hours of sleep. With it, I've got my old friends "unreasonable food cravings," "crushing depression," "heart beating like a fucked clock," and "upset stomach." And it isn't like those hours between midnight and 6 AM are productive, either. Like pants_of_doom so adroitly stated, "less sleep equals less anything, because less sleep takes more time while it shortens your life." I'm sick of it; I have too much stuff to do.

And with all the self-doubt, I wonder what the use is. Am I capable? Is it reasonable? Should I give up on the ideal of greatness in favor of what is comfortable? Or, to put it another way, should I accept what's reasonable over what is incredible?

But here we are again. I may have had this exact conversation before.

Once or twice.

Tomorrow is for lab meetings and extractions and attempts at manuscript scripting, but we have two brand-new summer students and all is chaos under the heavens. Or chaos under the bequests room, anyway. Tomorrow is also for purchasing yellow paint, which I hope I can do at the Coffman bookstore, but maybe not. Il Dolenzio is actually nearly done. And kind of horrifying, because now I have a GIANT PAINTING OF MICKY DOLENZ. It is Mya's, really, a long-ago-xmas-present, but she looks vaguely ill every time she sees it. It's ok, Mya, I can take a hint. You don't want to hang it over your bed. We'll just have to put it above the fireplace. Or maybe in the bathroom.

OK, GO! Things to do before Convergence:
- buy liquor
--> make up some sort of delicious layered drink extravaganza
- go to savers (scrubs, suit, bow tie)
--> buy bottle of single malt
--> maybe try to find fake bald head thingy. definitely find fake moustache.
- make jerky
--> get more soy sauce. stupid rainbow only has 10oz bottles of kikoman. srsly.
- um. finish some med school writing.
- submit reimbursement paperwork, because my credit card is nearly maxed out, 2/3 of which is on account of this work trip to SF.
- sew a sexy lab coat. who wants to go to the fabric store with me?
- get dry ice
- oh, you know, write a manuscript (based on everything my poster was on, plus introduction to the final experiment)
- find that birthday card i bought for my dad over a month ago!

As always, my favorite procrastination technique is to talk about all the crap I have to do instead of doing it. At least I'm predictable!

Wait. Is that good?

the hedge abides.

ETA: Look! PICTURES!

I'm going to forget how the hell I did this later, so I'll put it here for posterity.

I wanted a red setting so that my computer moniter would be both night-adaption safe (i.e. for astronomy) and DSPS-safe (I'm supposed to increase blue light in the mornings and decrease it in the evenings). It seems like there should be a handy "red only" mode somewhere in the display settings, but if there is, I can't find it.

So I made my own on my laptop, which has a Nvidia Geforce4 420 Go graphics card running the 2.8.4.6 driver.

In "Display Properties," go to the "settings" tab and open the "advanced" menu. Go to the nView tab and select "device settings > color correction." In the blue and green channels of the "color correction" tab, get rid of all their brightness/contrast; leave the red channel at default. Save these settings (as something like "red only").

For ease of use, go back to that "nView" tab and select "Geforce4 420 Go," then the "desktop utilities" tab. Turn on the Quick Tweak icon in the taskbar. Thenceforth, you can switch between your "red only" setting and your hardware default with the click of a button.

I maintain that there must be an easier way to do this, so if anyone can enlighten me, do. Also, the red setting works on everything but my mouse cursor, which remains a glaring white arrow. I tried the black, but I think that makes the while edges even more obvious. 3D bronze is a little better, but still not great.

ETA: the red setting also doesn't affect xvid played in WMP10.

Also, I didn't get to see House last night, so don't ruin it, folks.

the hedge abides.