The beaver is a proud and noble animal

I'm looking for a roommate, as you all know. A friend of a friend came over last week to see it, and was really interested in renting it, until she found out it was only available in july (and she wanted it for april). We left it at that. That night, I talked to my roommates, and found out both would be willing to leave early. Yay, finally some good news.

So of course the universe conspires to drive me insane. I wasn't able to reach the girl for the last week, and in the meantime, she found something else.

I am now back to square one, and highly pissed off.

Accidental condom inhalation.

Arya CL, Gupta R, Arora VK.

Jaswant Rai Speciality Hospital, Meerut, India.

A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. Inspite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=14870871&dopt=Abstract

I just moved my website to a new provider. Could you have a look at it, at http://www.flubu.com and tell me if anything got broken in the move? Also, if you notice a broken link in my old blog entries, let me know.

Thanks!

The eye of a kitty said it well: “I have to stop living for people who don't want me”, Words to live by. A little bird also told me funny stories to cheer me up. It's good to have friends.

eniran came over for dinner and a movie tonight, and it was quite an enjoyable evening. I'd spent the best part of the afternoon cooking, a big batch of pasta sauce to replenish my stocks and I tried my hands making some chocolate fudge cookies based on a recipe that ruthebee sent a while back. Though it started as a cookie recipe, it ended up being a pan of damn good brownies. Not what I was expecting, but I'm not disappointed at all :)

We watched Lost in translation, and then ended up watching a muppet show episode where Julie Andrews sang about the lonely goatherd. Chatted a bit after that, mostly about the list of 5 women we'd have sex with without it being considered cheating.

• Alyson Hannigan
• Jeri Ryan
• Claudia Christian
• Charlize Theron
• TBD, but for now, I'd say Angelina Jolie

After that, we goofed off while playing a round of trivial pursuit. A notable quote:
her: I prefer pink.
me: I'm not touching that one…
her: No, you're not :)

All in all, a fun evening. Now, I'm off ot bed.

I'm speaking managerese!!!!

We're bidding on a governmental RFP (request for proposal), i.e. a contract, for the DOD. I was asked to do a nice little write-up for a contract I recently worked on… Dear lord, I'm ashamed of what came out of my brain. If buzzwords don't scare you, look under the cut.

One of the major hurdles currently impeding the rapid exchange and dissemination of data between research projects is the lack of a scientifically-curated, standardized biological exchange format. As the scientific community currently stands, the main repositories for scientific data – be it sequence data, genomic annotations, expression data, genetic variability data, or any number of other data types – each have their own storage and export formats. Imagine a research project that requires sequence data from one source to be cross-referenced with functional annotations from another source and finally be correlated to expression data from a third. The complexities of dealing with the lack of a common format often preclude the timely completion of research projects, as a significant amount of work must be done simply to get the data at the same place, before any meaningful question can even begin to be answered. Now imagine this process being repeated every time a new data source appears on the global scientific landscape.

The vision of [the project] was to provide a unified, integrated data model, where heterogeneous data sources would only need to be processed once at integration time and then be accessible for any correlation or query. Another cornerstone of [the project] was application integration. Another hindrance to the efficient use of bioinformatics analysis tools is the lack of common, clear and concise user interfaces. To correct this, the [the project] build a framework where various tools already established in the scientific community, as well as any custom-required tool, could be seamlessly integrated within the system and thus acquire a graphical user interface that would fulfill the aforementioned criteria. Data integration and application would act in synergy to create a scientifically-sound, technologically-efficient work environment where previously impossible questions could begin to be answered.

I feel so dirty.

Don't ask me how I got to this, cause really, I can't tell you, but this is SO wrong as to be hilarious.

Check out the possum_nation blog.

From their description: A Possum is someone who has passed the point of ugly and has no hope of return. This community is dedicated to sorting the Possums out of the crowd. This is a rating community judging on LOOKS. We don't care if you're a saint and breast feed the homeless, if you're ugly, we will tell you. Members can respond cruely- this activity is encouraged- so don't apply if you can't handle it!