Moods, Music, and Other Nonsequiturs

I've had a rash of people tellking me I need to switch to LiveJournal for my blog, but that's way too much work. ;) Their complaint is that it's easier to see if I've updated my blog, easier to comment on my posts, easier to see what mood I'm in and what music I'm listening to at the moment, etc.

Well, although I actually do have an account there, I never use it, and don't plan on going all LJ anytime soon. Maybe someday, when I have absolutely nothing else to do in life (what's that you say? in 2044? yeah...), but until then, you're stuck with me here.

However, to sate some of the rampant curiousity that seems to be flooding through the Internet this week:

Current Mood: Exhausted
Current Music: Bruce Springsteen's The River CD

Happy now?

Oh, and by the way, the music may change from time to time, but I'm pretty sure the Mood thing will be the same until at least 2006. :)

Web Site Statistics

It's been a while since I looked at the stats for brianunderhill.com, let alone posted any of the info here. Kind of surprising the amount of traffic flowing these days, considering I don't have any hot book projects in the works or any terribly recent (or imminent) convention appearances.

Highlights for May 2004 (as of this morning)

Number of hits: 17,942

Number of visitors: 5,444

Number of repeat visitors: 1,769

Bandwidth transfer: 335.97 MB

Visiting continents: North America (49%), Europe (35%), Asia (6%), South America (6%), Oceania (3%), Africa (1%)

Visiting countries: (This list is nowhere near complete. I had visitors from all over the world, but am just listing the top few, plus some interesting or obscure ones toward the bottom). USA (1,633 visitors), Germany (318), Canada (219), Netherlands (150), Uruguay (115), United Kingdom (94), Brazil (75), Australia (73), Austria (58), Italy (58), Hong Kong (54), China (29), Mexico (20), North Korea (12), Iran (2), Netherlands Antilles (1), Kuwait (1), Zimbabwe (1)

Top visiting states: Virginia (567 visitors - I'm guessing this is a fluke due to a regular visitor using non-cookies and a different IP address during visits; can't imagine I have that many visitors from Virginia), California (265), Washington (115), Massachusettes (103), New York (70), Texas (69), New Jersey (59), Minnesota (47)...

Interesting stuff. Traffic has steadily increased over the past year, which kind of surprises me. I would have assumed that with my shift from full-time writer to full-time student, I might have lost some regulars, but apparently my school life is as interesting as my writing. (I'm not really sure what to think about that). :)

Finally, did you look at the clock when you started reading? The average reader spends 2 minutes, 9 seconds on the blog page. How'd you compare?

Serratia marscescens - One Down, One to Go

The streak plate from Monday turned out just fine. The plate was covered in a reddish-orange culture (Serratia marscescens), which proved to be true for the entire lab. The point was, of course, to have a physically distinguishable characteristic to separate off one organism from the other. S. marscescens is easy to spot due to its color, hence its inclusion in our unknowns.

Also scattered across the plate was a second unknown. This one varied in color and consistency from one lab student to the next (though I only checked with my lab partner and a couple others around that area). Mine formed very small colonies (especially compared to the glut of S. marscescens) and was mostly white. It smelled very bad, as well. Deanna, my lab partner, had a more golden/tan culture and hers smelled a bit yeasty. From the color, I'd hazard she might have Staphylococcus aureus (the latter part of the name is based on the Latin word for gold), but it still could be anything.

When I pulled a culture off my plate to restreak it and get an isolated colony, it clumped together a little like Bacillus subtilis, but the smell makes me think it might be E. coli or maybe even Clostridium sporogenes, although the latter probably would have had a much stronger sulfur smell.

All this is just conjecture at this point. You really can't tell much about an organism just by looking and smelling (unless it's S. marscescens and you're expecting it). :) Next step is to let the isolated colony plate grow for a few days, make sure it's pure (i.e., that there's no red S. marscescens growing in it), make an agar slant to experiment with, then gram stain it within 18-24 hours to see if it's gram positive or gram negative (which will narrow down the field, due to chemical composition of the cell wall, which is indicated by how it takes to various stains). Staining will also make it easier to see it under the microscope to determine morphology (shape, size, etc).

No school on Monday (Memorial Day), so the next lab won't be until next Wednesday; gram staining will probably have to be done on Thursday to get the 18-24 hour window. Again, here's hoping I have a good streak plate; if I picked up even a minute piece of S. marscescens, I'll have to reculture and try a second time (and there was an abundance of S. marscescens on the plate!)

I might pop into the lab today and look at my plate and see if it's got any red, so I don't fall too far behind. More later.

A Microbial Sherlock Holmes

The term is winding toward the final weeks, so my lab final is underway. Each student in lab was given a broth with a mixture of two unknown microorganisms mixed in it. The lab final consists of separating and culturing them individually, then running tests to check characteristics and narrow down the field, examine them microscopically, etc. The end result is a final term paper explaining the process, and an accurate identification of both unknown organisms.

Today was pretty basic - heat up some agar deeps (nutrient agar to make petri dishes), then pour the petri plates with the agar and let it cool, then streak the mixture of organism into the plate so as to spread out the microbes in hopes of getting identifiably separate colonies. If it goes well, then Wednesday I'll have the two organisms separated and be able to run tests on each individually. If the streak plate doesn't pan out, I'll have to re-pour the agar and re-streak, putting me behind schedule. Here's hoping.

I'll try and keep y'all updated as to my little microbial mystery and how it progresses!

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam...

Had 199 email messages today when I got home from A&P. Here's the breakdown:

9 (in digest form) from gaming-related email lists I belong to
1 convention invitation to MisCon
1 nudge from SJ Games' managing editor Andrew Hackard about writing a new book
1 from another SJ Games about editing an adventure for the MIB program
177 pieces of crap that I had to wade through and delete

That's a typical breakdown for me these days; roughly 5% of my email is valid. The other 95% invites me to:
- invest money in an African country
- make my penis larger
- meet local girls
- buy cheap Viagra, Cialis, Xanax, or Hydrocodone
- consolidate my mortgage (even though my house is paid for)
- make a fortune on eBay
- enter all my personal information into a form because my bank account is on the verge of being closed
- view an attachment (that's got more viruses than a two dollar hooker)
- enlarge my breasts
- or (my personal favorite) "g n ojt fqb jqj ybls xhqifoldxzjzyv ..." (Whatever the heck that means).

I need a new email address.

Still Making the Grade

I feel kind of weird posting my test scores here, but after the big build-up from the last couple weeks, I keep getting email asking how I did. Here's the test scores thus far for Spring term, which is about half over:

Anatomy and Physiology Lab Assignments: 100%, 100%, 100%
Anatomy and Physiology Lecture Exam: 95%
Microbiology Lab Exam: 100%
Microbiology Lecture Exam: 98%
Algebra Exams: 99%, 99%, 100%, 100%

Next A&P exam is a week from today (and covers ossification, articulations, physiology of the muscle, and a lot of memorizing bones, muscles, and muscle insertion/origins).

Next Micro lecture exam is schedule for a week from Monday, but I think it'll get bumped since the last one did. There's a Micro lab exam that same day (covering helminthes, ascaris, and other parasitical worms); that one will probably be on schedule.

The term is half over, so finals week is something like the third week in June (about 5 weeks from now). Here's hoping I can continue this streak...

A Macro Micro Test

Just finished the Microbiology midterm exam (about 75 Scantron questions and a dozen short answer) and feel pretty good. Probably pulled an A or B out of it. I'm pretty pleased considering the last few days.

I had a root canal done years ago (1999, I think), but it seems the dentist didn't do it right and left a small bit of pulp in the tooth. Well, this weekend that pulp decided to get infected, so by Sunday I was in intense agony. I went to see my new dentist on Monday and he prescribed pain killers and an antibiotic called Clindamycin. I started on the drugs Monday evening, hoping I'd be better in time for the Micro test this morning.

Well, I woke up yesterday and felt miserable. By afternoon I had a headache that wouldn't quit, nausea, dizziness, and was alternately sweating and freezing. At first I attributed the malaise to being worn out from my schedule, but by afternoon I was sure I was having an allergic reaction to the Clindamycin. I called in, got a new prescription (good old Amoxicillin) and laid off the meds. Still felt miserable when I went to bed, but I'm better today. I'm just run down now, like I've been dragged through a knothole backwards.

Suffice to say, the day before a Microbiology midterm is not the ideal time to have a drug allergy reaction. Not that there's a good time, mind you.

Note to self: Do not take Clindamycin during finals week...

Summertime... and the Livin' is Easy

Contrary to what the Gershwin brothers may have claimed, I really doubt summer's going to be very easy.

Got up at the crack of dawn to register online for Summer term; managed to get into the Developmental Psychology class that I couldn't get Spring and signed up to re-take English 101 as well. I took it twenty years ago, but hated the class and couldn't have cared less about my grade, so I only pulled a C out of it. (Yes, then went on to make a living as a writer - life's full of irony, isn't it?)

Anyway, the English grade qualifies as part of the grade-point system used to get into the nursing program; its a highly competitive program and I need all the points I can get. Figured I'd grab English and see if I can't pull an A this time.

I'll be finishing up my Anatomy and Physiology during summer as well, for a total of 15 credits - full time, but the lightest load I've had since I went back to school.

It's almost like a vacation.

Almost.

Fun With Poop

Played with some fecal matter in microbiology lab this week. No, it's not nearly as gross as it sounds - nor as much fun. It was sterilized with formalin, and very soupy. A tiny drop of it on a slide, mixed with a drop of Gram's iodine to stain stuff yellow, and I went hunting for the cyst form of Giardia lamblia - the protozoan that causes (yeah, you guessed it), giardia (a/k/a "Beaver Fever" for you backpackers out there).

Anyway, I spotted both the cysts and even the hard-to-see trophozoite form (the actual organism). It was a kick. The best part was looking at all the other stuff in the "poop soup" - undigested cellulose plant matter, scattered blood cells, and gazillions of bacteria in various shapes and forms (strepto- chains, staphylo- clusters, cocci, bacilli, and more).

Interesting little side note: Bacteria make up a full 1/3 of your fecal matter by weight. And that's no crap.

Hell Week - Day Five (The Final Day)

Looks like the end of Hell Week has arrived at last. I'd thought it would be lasting longer, but turns out (as I mentioned yesterday) that the Microbiology exam isn't until next Friday or so. I studied my brains out all day yesterday for today's A&P exam instead. Studied, ate lunch, studied, blogged, studied, ate dinner, studied, fell asleep, dreamed of epithelial tissues and cell structure, then woke up and crammed over breakfast.

Turns out it worked; I scored 95% on today's exam. No more tests for another 6 days... yay!

Time to celebrate... or at least veg for a couple hours before I conk out. Which will probably be amazingly soon.