ClubJuggler

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Semi-snark, semi-advice about resumes, at least in my field:

1. You can probably skip the objective statement. There's almost no way to write it where it conveys any information. It usually just looks dumb.

2. Summary of skills should always, always be at the top. We're going to read that first and then check your job experience to see where you used the skills we care about. We are not going to be riveted by the story of your life and *then* check to see if have the skills we need.

3. Yes, I know that creativity, dynamic decision making, and teamwork are skills. They're very important. Putting them on your resume does not make us actually believe you have them. It's OK to acknowledge these soft skills, but do do not devote the first half page to them.

4. Longer is NOT better. No more than two pages, no matter how awesome you are.

4a. If you're a student/new grad, do NOT think we're impressed if you pad out to lots of pages by describing what you did in every class you took. We can guess at the content of a course from the title, and if it's not obvious, it's OK to describe briefly. In addition, don't think that the simplicity is going to lose you the job. If you can summarize your qualifications in one page, we LIKE you, and if it's an entry-level job, we don't expect pages of qualifications.

4b. If you're on the other end of your career, especially if you're looking to change fields, you MUST tailor your resume. If you brag about your 20 years of aviation design expertise in a job ap for a webservice developer, that will almost immediately get you tossed in the dustbin. The message that you are sending is that you really want a job in aviation design, but you're hoping to pay the bills with our job. That may very well be true, but making it clear you don't want the job is going to make sure you don't get it. Give us summary one-liners about your inapplicable experience, even if that means sweeping half your career under the rug, and dedicate the space to the stuff that applies. Don't make us dig in the fine print to figure out if you're qualified because we'll assume you're not.

5. Bullets and lists. VERY short paragraphs where unavoidable. If you treat us to a page of beautiful prose about your work experience and what it means to you, we're not going to read it. The fact that you thought we might -- and you didn't even try to learn proper formatting -- is going to piss us off.

6. Huge amounts of whitespace just makes us go WTF?

7. If you're longer than a page, put your name and a page number in a header or footer. We often still end up having to print these things out and write on them, and the odds are high that a stack of paper is going to fall on the floor or get shuffled.

Styles I have recently seen displayed in store windows, advertised, or worn by actual human beings:

1) leggings
2) ultra-tight jeans
3) acid-wash
4) slouchy oversized sweaters
5) MOON BOOTS

AGH.

I am consoling myself with the thought that next up is 90s fashion, so I can look forward to comfy flannel shirts & hiking boots.

(Things I have not seen... YET: big hair, shoulder pads, leg warmers)

At a difficult time for one of my very oldest friends, we still take a moment to mark his birthday today. And better words I do not have, than those I wrote on his birthday years ago.

The story again, for his birthday today.

In recent years, we've come to understand that there is far more to DNA than just the sequence.

Human diseases whose root lies in the control of cell operations by DNA -- like pediatric cancers -- have driven the need to understand exactly how a diseased cell's DNA differs from their normal counterparts. And we have come to better understand that those differences often go beyond differences in the actual sequence *of* that DNA. For example, it is becoming clear that one mechanism by which DNA activity is regulated by cells is through carefully controlled methylation -- the addition of a methyl group -- to sequences of DNA.

Thus, being able to map DNA -- not just it's sequence, but it's modifications like methylation and many other characteristics -- would be an extremely useful tool for being able to compare, for example, cancer cells to normal cells. Being able to map them across the entire genome would be especially useful, to give us clues on why cancer cells do what they do -- and what we can do about them. This, however, is a substantial challenge. There are approximately three billion base pairs in the human genome, after all. To have any reasonable shot at routinely doing this kind of mapping would require the development of machines that can process vast quantities of DNA in rapid succession.

As it happens, there already *are* machines that can process vast quantities of DNA. Our cells, after all, do it every single second of our lives. The nuclei of our cells contain a whole arsenal of tiny, complex protein machines which spindle, fold, assemble, disassemble, and label DNA with extreme speed and fidelity. So why re-invent the wheel -- or the polymerase, helicase, gyrase, methylase, etc? Why not just take these molecular DNA-handling machines from our cells and strap them onto microscopic assemblies of electrical sensors, micro-fluid chambers and pumps, building a half-biological, half-mechno-electrical machine that can scan DNA for the characteristics of interest with a cell's speed? After all, electrical engineers are very good at fabricating millions of complex machines at a molecular scale. Why couldn't them incorporate biological molecular machines into their computer-chip assemblies? It's just chemistry, after all. MacGyver the cell's own machinery into a computer matrix, like a bacteria-sized cyborg?

The first machines to do just that are just beginning to appear as prototypes in some of the most cutting edge research laboratories in the world. They've quietly, silently been spending the last few years working the kinks out of the process, and now they're ready to actually unleash the new technology on real discovery. It's like ship builders who have spent years learning how to build ships that can sail against the wind, and now they're ready to actually take their vessels out over the horizon to see what's there. Engines of discovery so radical they aren't even available for commercial sale yet. Technology so advanced only the working prototypes are in operation in a select few laboratories in all of the world, just waiting for scientists to use them to apply them to the study of cancers still resistant to everything we know.

And that's the sort of stuff I got a sneak peek at, over four days in October of meeting potential research mentors at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute @ NIH. A peek at the kinds of work I have the chance to join in a year's time.




The work that has already been published is groundbreaking. But the stuff that hasn't been published *yet* -- the stuff that is being written up, the stuff that is still secret, the stuff still underway -- is totally mind-blowing. To crack the unsolved, unconquered, uncurable problems in oncology is going to require radical new techniques, radical new advances, and radical new technology. And the investigators and engineers at the furthest forward edge of medicine are rising to the challenge, looking at cancers in ways totally beyond what we know now, and doing it with machines like something out of a cyberpunk novel.

Investigators identifying novel biochemical pathways cancer cells use to turbocharge their metabolisms, firing up energy-processing systems their normal neighbors can't touch. Investigators making cells dance between the normal mature state, their forever-young stem cell origins, and their Mr. Hyde cancer counterparts. Investigators diving into the vast sequences of our genome which don't directly code for genes, and exploring the constellations of regulatory mechanisms hiding out in what was once thought to be "junk" DNA. Across four days at Hopkins and NCI, I got the chance to meet with over a dozen faculty, each allowing me a chance to look at *all* the revolutionary projects and data they have, well beyond the stuff they've already published or shown, well beyond the stuff *anyone* in the world has yet done. Professor after professor, laboratory after laboratory, each taking a totally different approach, looking at wild new angles in oncology with prototype machines custom built for the purpose. And inviting me to come aboard for the journey.

We have made tremendous progress torwards the treatment of cancer. When my most senior pediatrics attendings began their careers, pediatric leukemia was a total death sentence. Now, forty years later, 90% of our kids diagnosed will walk away cured. That progress was made possible by generations of systematic, national clinical trials, decades of courageous patients and their families, the effort detailed in the story Legion of the Brave. But it depended upon generations of basic science advances making those cures even possible, generations of research which form the foundation for the ground-breaking, mind-blowing, "holy $%#%!!" work I was invited to take a sneak peek at. And as far as we've come, we still haven't gotten far enough.

Our best as a profession still isn't enough for too many of our patients and their families. A 90% survival rate for pediatric leukemia is just another way of saying one out of ten of our children will die. And for most other cancers, the survival rate varies from nowhere near as good to absolute zero. Not good enough. Until every child with cancer has the chance to grow up -- not good enough.

We've come a long way. We have much farther to go. Somewhere over the horizon lies the scientific keys to defeating not just cancer, but all the other devastating diseases which threaten those we love, bound together by the common science and biology that links them all. In hunting for what makes cancer cells go bad, we will learn too how to fix broken kidneys and broken nerves and broken brains and everything else. Knowledge is power, and to hunt for that knowledge -- to push forth after those cures -- bold engineers and scientists have built engines of discovery beyond anything anyone outside of the very greatest research centers in the world have ever seen or even dreamed of. They await the next generation of physician-scientists to grab hold of the wheel and set sail. And I am humbled to have the chance to earn a place as one of them.

Twenty years of work from eighth grade to the end of my pediatrics residency was just to get to this point. Now the real adventure begins.




The future stretches forth like the vast undiscovered country it is, a journey to places barely imagined and glimpsed. On a personal level, I hope that I might yet earn the privilege of a lady wife's love, of a child's hug. On a professional level, I hope that I might yet be able to make a difference in the fight and cause I am grateful to be given the chance to serve. I have no illusions about the challenges or my chances, but no road worth travelling was ever either easy or certain. And I excited about the new wonders we'll see along the way, voyaging on the furthest edge of the scientific unknown; and the company of the friends and family we'll share the journey with.




Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die...

Though much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are,
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find -- and not to yield.

DNA Lounge update, wherein the axe falls.

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

The heavily armed monkeys guarding the servers currently report no site-wide problems.

( An algorithm puzzler )

Catching up with blogging about happy events...






In 1969, armored fighters gathered for battle at a science fiction convention in Wisconsin. And when the tourney was over, Cariadoc of the Bow became the first SCAdian sovereign by right of arms of the newly established Kingdom of the Middle, the Midrealm.

Forty years later, admist the phoenix banners of the University of Chicago, SCAdians from across the four daughter Kingdoms of Cariadoc's original fiefdom gathered to celebrate four decades of history and story. And I rejoined old friends for a day of music and dance and pagentry. :-)






My first medieval event was the evening dance practice silmaril kindly brought me to in Atlantia. But my first true SCAdian home was in the Barony of Cynnabar. And while illness struck at last minute many who had planned to come, still many other old friends were able to make the journey, from near and far. And it was wonderful to see them all again.





And wonderful too was the chance to share an SCA event with resonance42, my old friend and comrade from medical activist days, a friendship which began almost thirteen years ago at the House of Delegates in Dallas, and continues yet. Long before he was a professor of pediatrics, long before he was a leader in national advocacy efforts, he was a proud LARPer and geek. And it was wonderful to share this event with him.

resonance42 also very kindly drove me to the far southern suburbs of Chicago during a lull in the day's action, where from Craigslist I managed to pick up a prize long sought -- a violin cheap enough that I would not fear the often less-than-perfect weather at SCAdian or Rennie events. A travel or "beater" violin. Even "inexpensive" violins -- with bow and case -- cost hundreds upon hundreds of dollars, enough to make one wary of rain or fog or mud. I had always planned on scouting Craigslist or used instrument shops for a decent violin cheap enough I could risk it on less-than-perfect conditions. By sheerest luck, that weekend I managed to find on Chicago Craigslist a completely, totally functional violin -- with bow and case -- for a ridiculously low price. A total cost less than I've spent just for *strings* for my good violin. And thanks to the generosity of resonance42 who kindly drove me out to get it, I now have my travel violin, bow, and case, just in time for the evening ball. :-)





There was all the majesty, pomp and circumstance as befit the crowning of the Midrealm's 80th Crowns, arch of swords and banners flying and all else, captured better by resonance42's expert camera and those of others. And then there was an evening of dance and music and celebration with old friends under the hammer-beam roofs of Ida Noyes Hall, flying feet and whirling dresses and joy.

A merry event, a happy day with many friends, another in a long series of such since that first night in College Park long ago. And with eager thoughts looking forward to this weekend, to the great Crystal Ball to come. :-)

Finally had a chance tonight to bottle the second batch of saison. I dumped a rehydrated packet of Safale US-05 yeast in earlier in the evening for good measure to ensure that it will carbonate since it's been so long in secondary and later primed with 4 oz (by weight) of corn sugar boiled in 2 C of water when transferring to the bottling bucket. The bottling went smoothly: I filled the bottles and ovrclokd capped 'em. The yield was 24 16 oz bottles and 21 12 oz bottles. Between what I pulled for the hydrometer sample and the little bit left in the bucket, we might have been able to get one more bottle out of it. Instead, we sampled what was left (and saved a little bit of it to use in a recipe we're scheming). The beer tasted good with a sour edge to it from the Brettanomyces. It's a bit cidery, but I think that will mellow out with time in th bottle. I like it. It'll be interesting to taste it next to the first batch.

Measured the F.G. (taken after adding priming sugar) at 1.006. With an O.G. of 1.072, the ABV on this one comes to 8.7%.

jake has a new stem

old stem:


new stem:




acquired Jake with a 110mm stem with a 6 degree angle* ...too big
changed to a 90mm stem with a 40 degree angle (picture 2)
now 90mm stem with an 8 degree angle (picture 1)
...some day maybe I'll end up flipping it and have a -8 degree angle ...or not

tomorrow I'll run out and play and see how it feels


*hard to see from this picture but here's one with the original stem ( pic )

The big news is that I registered for next semester's classes on Monday (last Monday, since this is a day late). They had every course I needed to take, including one I was hoping would be available. As a bonus, a professor I really like this semester is teaching it. There were also two courses which caught my eye: Science Fiction and a seminar on Tolkien. It turned out I couldn't take the former because one of my required courses is in the same time slot. I ended up signing up for five courses because I couldn't decide between two others (my two favorite professors were teaching them). If this semester kicks my <ahem> too badly I'll probably drop one.

• 01:00 @ncladymac Yep. Finally. #
• 01:24 New Blog Post: Stanley Hauerwas waxes analogical; once again proves brilliance: I have a particul.. bit.ly/Phly9 #
• 11:59 Disappointed in the 3 NC Dems who voted for the Stupak-Pitts amendment: Etheridge, McIntyre and Shuler. #

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I was walking by someone's desk at work and this cartoon was hung up:



I hate to say it but no matter how many times I see that it WILL make me laugh! There's absolutely nothing wrong with that joke, it's perfect. It will always be funny. It will never get old.

Which brings me on to other perfect jokes... my man claims that the best joke in the world is this one, which I told him, after I heard it from my uncle Jim:

Q: Why does a flamingo stand on one leg?
A: Because if he lifts it up he'd fall down

And my sister once told me this one, which we never get tired of retelling:

Q: What do gay horses eat?
A: Haaaay!

And finally there's my favorite 2009 joke:

Q: What did the earth say after the earthquake?
A: Sorry, my fault

And my favorite aviation joke!

Airspeed, altitude, or brains: you need at least two.

But NONE are as important and wonderful as the cartoon that says "find X" with the line saying "here it is". I just want everyone to know that.

Considering that we had three pitch-in food events in three days, this weekend was remarkably low-key.

Anime Friday featured the tear-jerking conclusion of Princess Tutu. We all pitched in ingredients and made pesto pasta with chicken at callicrates' place. It's a lot of fun to all gang up on a kitchen and cook.

Saturday featured chucklemagne's birthday party. We tried to make blood-colored swiss fondue to go with the Lovecraftian horror theme, but it turned out that even our studly food coloring was not enough to actually turn white cheese red. So we added blue, made it a creepy shade of purple, and claimed that it was a potion from beyond space and time. It was received very well. chucklemagne and thechick came up with some absolutely kickass Lovecraft-themed cocktails. I must get the recipes from them. I managed to get my longest-running, happiest drunk I have in a long time. The one I remember in enough detail to reproduce was draft cider with ginger liquor. Of course, now I have to actually find ginger liquor.

Sunday featured neko_geek's housewarming party at ljedi's place. (As in, she is renting a room from Ljedi. Combined with our other mutual friend who is renting a room there, that place is now the House of Anime Chicks.) We made acorn squash with cider glaze, a recipe we picked up from Enoch and Nav while we were visiting them. The party featured fabulous food, four-player Mariokart on the Wii, and a spontaneous jam session with Ljedi's wide assortment of musical instruments.

And while we weren't partying in the evening, we talked to an old friend on the phone while we cleaned the house. Woot. The living room has a clear floor. The kitchen table is decluttered. Most of the rest of the boxes are unpacked. The laundry is washed and folded. We reorganized the TV stand so that the whole corner of the living room is not filled with tangled cables. I scrubbed the tenant stains out of the sofas! Woot!

SB got a garden blowtorch from his mother and is attacking the scary weeds growing out of our patio. I'd really like to throw a grill party, but it's getting chill enough that we might have to wait until next year.

Oh, and I'm experimenting with green chili cheese bread in the bread machine. The last version was definitely both cheese and chili-flavored, though not structurally sound. I don't mind eating the experiments :).

Not only was it the big finish to the Steinhall D&D game (which I will eventually post), but I got in a fair amount of Dragonage, even though I was out of the house most of both Saturday & Sunday.

This game is so much more entertaining than anything on TV that I am barely watching any! I haven't seen the new V!!

Things & stuff:

1) Does anybody know what stat/skill/talent combo determines how good a character is at detecting & disarming traps? I'd have thought that the "trap" skill would be good for this, but Leliana is, like 10x better at trap-defense than my character, and she doesn't have any levels in the trap skill. So I am confused.

2) So, "normal" has been getting obnoxiously difficult! I mean, I do find the battles enjoyable, but getting TPK'ed 5 times in a row in a randomesque encounter is getting in the way of my game enjoyment! Currently, I am doing battles once on "normal," but if I get wiped out on the first try, I switch to easy. So far, easy is WAY easy, and not very intellectually stimulating, but it gets me on to the next story bit, which is really what I'm after.

3) Plotwise, I am really digging the lack of clear-cut moral choices. I think this is the first time I've felt like I was really role-playing in a video game RPG. There's more that goes into making decisions than just whether or not I'm generically good vs. evil, or diplomatic vs. asshole; I think about my character's background, what she thinks is or isn't important, how her followers will react to her decisions, etc. AND I can totally envision the way one event plays out influencing how I perceive and react to incidents I will run into in the future. (Like, "oh, I screwed that up last time, so let's try a different approach.")

These next ones are spoilery for the Redcliffe plot:
( Read more... )

Please no spoilers past Redcliffe, or for plot details of any origin stories which are not Wood Elf.

Things I would rather be doing right now: playing dragonage

I just heard of Jonathan Lee Riches. This man cracks me up. I heard about him from his lawsuit against the Gosselins and Octomom, but I also discovered a partial (?) listing of his lawsuits which include the following gems:

• Against Starbucks: "Plaintiff also alleges that Defendant Schultz is friends with Michael Vick, and that Defendants want to burn him with hot coffee."


• Against the IOC: "Plaintiff further alleges that he ran 26.2 miles in 1 hour 58 minutes , but the defendants won't allow him to join the Olympics because he is White. Plaintiff also alleges that defendants forbade him from racing at Churchill Downs and sent Tonya Harding to break his knee caps."


• Against Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber: "Plaintiff also alleges that defendant is rounding up all the Teds in the world to hurt him, including Ted Kennedy, Ted Bundy, Ted Turner, Bill and Ted, Ted Nugent, Teddy Bears, and Teddy Rumpskin."


• Against Barry Bonds: "Plaintiff also claims that Barry Bonds sold steroids to nuns and gave mustard gas to Saddam Hussein as part of the oil-for-food scandal."

That's just a sampling. The guy seems to really have it in for OJ Simpson, BTW.