No tricks. Daylight savings was a treat.

Isn't it wonderful on a Sunday morning to sleep till 11, only to realize that it's really just 10? I have a motion that our country instate a daylight-savings-esque law by which we roll our clocks back one hour on the last day of each month. Then, to "make up for lost time," we add an extra day to February every two years instead of every four years. Because that extra hour is just too good to be true.

Kristin and I definitely slept in, then made pancakes, hash browns, and scrambled eggs for breakfast. We proceeded to work most of the day with her "Classic Rockin' Road Songs" CDs playing in the background. The evening's highlights included a trip to the newly-opened Trader Joe's store--my poor mom will have no reason to send "care packages" anymore--and a dinner of homemade tacos--finally someone came out with "stand-up" hard taco shells. Nice ending to a great, chill weekend.

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Candyland

Last weekend I was talking with some friends about how kids don't play board games anymore. We lamented that we had grown up with all sorts of fun board games that are now all-but-forgotten, abandoned for video games and computer programs.

We learned our colors playing Candyland, learned how to count money playing Life and Monopoly, and practiced manual dexterity with Operation. Today's youth learns how to type and push buttons, how to sit in front of a screen all day.

I saw a TV commercial just now for Candyland, "...a magical place where children's imagination is free, where they play with new friends..." A young, perhaps five-year-old boy carries the game box over to his mom and sets it up on the lush carpet. Mother and son sit on the floor sharing the game. It's exactly the sort of experience I remember having as a child, the kind of experience I hope I can have with my children someday.

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Dreaming of current events

I had gone to bed later than I hoped last nite, and after a sizable snack to boot, so needless to say I was primed for a strange dream. And yes, it was strange indeed. And vivid enough for me to recall many of the details, which for me means a lot.

...continued

Well, I don't remember the beginning of the dream, but the "climax" was interesting. In it, a few friends and I were hanging around outside of Busch Stadium during the game, but it was actually during the daytime on a weekend. We were set on shagging a home run ball hit out of the park. After the game we killed some time downtown and then found the Metrolink station to head home. By this time the city was practically devoid of people and we were just putzing around and freestyle-walking. As we finally decided to go to the platform to wait for the train, I noticed President Bush there in plain streetclothes, leaning against a pole, no security or anything arou! nd. The funny thing is that my friends didn't even recognize him! But sure enough, there was the President, and we started talking quite casually. It turns out that both candidates were at the game but only Bush stuck around. So we talked and he was very friendly. And then as the train pulled up we exchanged email addresses.

I'm not a believer that dreams mean anything, but if someone readinc this knows how it would be interpreted I'd be interested to hear.

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An interesting proposition

The wonderful folks at Blogger Headquarters have been hyping National Novel Writing Month, trying to get people to blog an entire novel in the month of November. That sounds like quite a task: 50,000 words in 30 days! Given my state of not having enough time as it is, I'll pass the challenge this time. But I'd sure be interested to see if anyone I know (or e-know) wants to write a novel. If so, feel free to post a link to yours in the comments of this post, perhaps with a description of the storyline or at least the premise.

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Explanations

Bodhisattva.

Heard it on the radio (for real!) sometime last week and it just popped into my head while I was playing guitar when I was messing around with some chords that sounded like it. Glad someone, anonymous as he may be, recognized it.

Go Cards.

Well I've been in St. Louis for near 5 years now. This shouldn't require explanation.

Halo is great.

Our project got funded! ...continued We had applied before to the "Bear Cub Fund," a grant from the university for developing technology. Previously we had been declined, probably in favor of something related to computer defense, as that was what Chancellor Wrighton had spoken about all throughout commencement ceremonies back in May. But this time around, we got the award. So very excited! This will be enough for us to build a few prototypes in-house on the CNC--we've already done three versions with our own hands and are ready for something with a bit closer tolerances and sleeker look--to take care of the legal and advising fees associated with a patent and perhaps even with licensing, and to "send off" drawings to make a final prototype out of "real" materials, those that would be used on the market version of the halo system. We'll also have some cash for supplies to run experiments on the mechanics of the device.

I'm feeling corny.

Saturday I went with Laura and Tim and some of Tim's SLU friends to a corn maze near Alton. It was my madien voyage to a corn maze, and it was a good deal of fun. I got home, having skipped lunch but knowing that dinner was soon, and decided on a snack of a can of golden corn niblets.

Where's the beef?

In my tummy, that's where. Kristin roasted some beef in her crock pot and we had a romantic candlelight dinner at her place. Oh, this was soooo delicious. Melt-in-your-mouth meat with homemade mashed potatoes and country-style green beans, a bottle of white zinfandel, and her "Wallace family recipe" apple pie for dessert. She puts my cooking to shame.

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Bodhisattva

Won't you take me by the hand? Won't you show me the shine in your Japan, the sparkle in you China? Bodhisattva.

Go Cards.

Halo is great.

I'm feeling corny.

Where's the beef?

More to come. Perhaps. If you're lucky.

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I almost asked

Q: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A: I don't know. Why don't you ask the rooster?

Sitting in class this morning (Molecular Foundations of Medicine) I was tempted to ask this question. Well, not really this question, but the analog of it as it applies to the basis of life. We were learning about transcription and translation, basically how DNA codes for RNA codes for proteins. There are a helluva lot of "helper" proteins involved: transporters, initiation and regulation factors, etc.

So naturally, I wondered how, with all these helper proteins required for proper protein synthesis, anything ever got started? Think about it: RNA is the template for proteins, but proteins help construct amino acid chains based on the RNA sequence, that eventually fold into proteins.

Luckily, I didn't have to ask. The lecturer offhandedly mentioned a current theory that early forms of life used RNA as an enzyme, doing many of the duties that proteins do now. Evidence supporting this is that ribosomes still have enzymatic rRNA, a probably evolutionary "leftover" from these earlier mechanisms.

So I guess the egg came first.

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John Mayer

Two days ago I pulled out an old mix I had made of a bunch of live and demo stuff by John Mayer--shortly before he release Room For Squares, around the time that Napster was still up in its original form. Wow, I had forgotten how good he really was.

Ok, I'm guilty of ripping on him a bit for what I had at one time termed "selling out." But upon closer consideration, he never really "sold out." That would mean that he's making crappy pop music for the sole purpose of selling albums. No, indeed that is not the case. He's still writing great songs and still puts on a good live show. Granted, much of the audience at his concerts are teenage girls with home-made "I *heart* John" t-shirts, but Mayer can't be faulted for drawing a crowd. I mean, look at old episodes of the British "Ready, Steady, Go" when the Beatles were on! ...continued

So why my sudden re-interest in John Mayer? Well, a few things. I picked up my guitar a few weeks back to learn how to play "My Stupid Mouth." I had my reasons. That song was exactly what I had to say. And other songs speak my feelings verbatim in different situations. I had thought about writing this post since I put the disc in the spinner two days back, but was finally prompted to sit and type when "Come Back to Bed" came on the radio--another great match.

• My favorite song on Heavier Things: Daughters
• My favorite song on Room For Squares: 3 by 5
• My favorite "unreleased" song: Sucker
• Song most likely to make me cry: Comfortable (Tory is a close second)
• First John Mayer song I heard: Neon
• First song I heard on the radio: No Such Thing (I remember distinctly, I was on the way home from summer school, listening to WXRT's New Noise at Nine when it came on.)
• Number of times I've seen Mayer play: Four
  1. House of Blues, Chicago, summer of 2001. Matt Nathanson and Howie Day opened.
  2. Fox Theater, Saint Louis, winter of 2002. Martin Sexton and Guster opened.
  3. Fox Theater, Saint Louis, winter of 2003. Opened for Counting Crows.
  4. Tweeter Center, Chicago, summer of 2003. Counting Crows opened.

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Craig's list.

Very glad I got to see Pliskin while I was in the Philadelphia area. While we didn't do a whole lot, we had a great time. In fact, I would say the "activitimetric fun density" (defined, of course, as fun per unit of distint and/or interesting activity) was higher than many other things I've done recently.

Craig's mom is great. She's got that combination of Jewish-mother-conceredness (particularly for feeding people), sarcastic humor, young-thinking "coolness," and overall nicety that is hard to come by in parents. Craig's friends are very much how I expected them: sports fanatics who love to bust each other's balls at every opportunity.

We watched a helluva lot of football: college games most of Saturday afternoon, and the Eagles game on Sunday.

I got to eat a genuine cheese steak. It was huge. It was delicious.

I made some cash playing poker till 3 in the morning. My new style will be that I can't start playing until I've had at least 3 beers.

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Conference Debriefing

I need to recharge my batteries. My brain has been all-but-filled these past five days with information about the "State of the Society"--the Biomedical Engineering Society, that is, as well as Alpha Eta Mu Beta, the BME Honors Society--data from laboratory research--particularly in biomechanics--trends in education and research--design & innovation and multi-scale models, respectively--and pointers to improve membership and participation of student chapters. For the sake of brevity, I won't go into too much detail, but I will say that I feel like a sopping-wet sponge, ready to wring out my contents to anyone who cares enough to ask.

...continued

Among the memorable moments of my experience:

• Gary's presentation Wednesday of preliminary data from our intellectual property survey, work we had done this summer. Goodness, after the 3:00 lull, just when the energy level of the room dipped into a valley, he roused everyone with what wasn't meant to be an inflammatory initial report on our preliminary findings. His description of the two extremes sparked some heated discussion among faculty as to the intent of and best practices in undergraduate design courses, seguing nicely into the brainstorming session for next year's meeting.
• Speaking with Bill New over drinks after the Wednesday workshop. He was a truly amazing person with some great experiences to share and more degrees than I ever care to obtain.
• Going to a sports bar with Joe, Phil, and Jessica to watch the Cards beat the Astros. Gotta love having drinks with my former profs!
• Scrambling to take "good notes" during a few sessions, then promptly realizing that, for the most part, anything important would be on the abstract CD-ROM that we got at registration time.
• The banquet and meeting for AHMB. Hearing Whitaker Foundation Chairman Peter Katona share a few stories from his career and give us advice about ours.
• Sitting in on the keynote talk one morning about a multi-scale model using a modified cellular automata approach to describe several disparate phenomena, including vasculogenesis and blastocoel development, and realizing that I could create such a model, ready to plug in a set of rules, in just a few days' work.
• Talking to an industry speaker at the end of a session in which he presented about his company's work in venous valve replacement. I took his email address in exchange for my resume and card, so now I have another prospect for employment.
• Staying up late conversing with Jeremiah about many things, some BME and some not. Ah, male bonding.
• Going to the Constitution Center for a reception and viewing of some American History exhibits over dinner and drinks.

The conference was a lot of fun, and though it was tiring and needed some structured free time--I had to skip one afternoon session in order to go for a run, otherwise my legs would have fallen off and my lower back locked up--I am left with an overall "warm-fuzzy" feeling toward my field. I look forward to the future, and plan on attending upcoming annual conferences. I'm excited to bring back information and advice to my school, excited about the prospects for career development and project furtherment from contacts I've made, excited to serve as a student member of the ethics committee, and excited at the thought of increased industry involvement in the society.

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Halo and more

Lately much of my time has been consumed, rather, well-spent, working on the Low Profile Halo System. It started as an idea in the minds of two neurosurgeons at Barnes-Jewish, was brought to our biomedical engineering senior design course last December, and now continues as we attempt to make something "real" out of the project. ...continued

Three BME students worked with a mechanical engineering faculty and two neurosurgeons to redesign the archaic, cumbersome, mediocre cervical spine orthosis known as a halo. For our senior design class we went through the "typical" design process on paper, just like all the other groups. Additionally, our project and one other were part of a pilot program to develop marketable products out of such classes, so we worked with a graduate law student on intellectual property issues, with a pair of MBA students on the market potential aspect, and with a team of visual communications students on design of our poster presentation.

Over the summer we conducted some experiments on existing devices to characterize its stability under various loading regimes. These experiments will continue and it is likely that two of us will write our Masters Theses on this topic. We suspect that the current device is not nearly as stable as it should be and that our design will provide less "wiggle room" and better allow patients to heal.

Over the past weeks we have been building. As of now we have two versions of a mockup for the final design, with plans for a third to be build sometime next week. We've been using our mockups to "try on" the device and get a hands-on experience of what works and what doesn't with respect to adjustability, fixation points, proper fit, and comfort. It is absolutely wonderful finally seeing, holding, touching, and moving something that we've been staring at on paper for months. And our group has been spending so many hours together that we are building strong relationships, even moreso than those forged during last semester.

Beyond what we're doing for the engineering, I am delving further into the depths of the project, using the halo as my model for my entrepreneurship class. So I get to look into marketing and promotion by my own accord, using the collaborative work from last semester as a springboard.

Our long-term goals for the project: well, we haven't really articulated this in writing, nothing agreed upon. However, the way I see it, we have several items to accomplish:

1. Publish several papers characterizing forces and motions in the current device and in our device.
2. Secure one or more patents for the technologies we've developed and incorporated into the device.
3. Gain FDA approval for the use of our device.
4. Produce our low-profile halo system, either by manufacture on our own or by license to an established device company, so that patients can use it.

On another somewhat related note, I leave very soon (as in later this evevning) for Philadelphia to attend the Biomedical Engineering Society Annual Conference. It will be my first meeting of the sort ever, and I'm rather excited to be going. If I can get online at all while I'm there I'll post updates from the conference; if not I'll just try to get a summary up when I come home on Sunday.

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Debate fever

Campus has been tight this week, what with security and work to prepare for the debate that happened earlier this evening. Yesterday on campus I really felt the buzz, seeing CNN set up, media buses all over, students carrying signs and wearing t-shirts with absurd slogans, and police and military doing inspections.

A few weeks ago there was a lottery for students to get tickets to the debate. Some 5800+ students registered, and early this week I received an email that I was in the 101-150 range, but that Wash U did not yet have any tickets to give away. Late morning today I heard that they had 105 tickets and that my number was in the 106-150 range. So no luck. Yet.

...continued

I still went to the Women's Building, the holding area for before tickets were issued. Long story short, I ended up getting in to see the debate live, in person. There were just over 150 students to my knowledge, in addition to big donors and just-plain-lucky folks who got tix straight from the Committee. And while I had to crane my neck to see where Kerry was sitting, I was in great position to witness both candidates while they were speaking and to feel the excitement of the campaign.

The coolest part of the whole thing was probably at 5 minutes till 8:00, when Charles Gibson explained that the networks were going to start at "eight o'clock straight up" and talk for two minutes before the introductions. Sure enough, all the press booths did their 5-second countdown and all started their "We're here reporting live from Washington University..." schpeils at the same time. It was truly awesome.

To be honest, I was rather undecided going into the debate, and still undecided afterward. But, I'm now leaning slightly the other way. I'll still need to do some solid independent research before I'm set on my vote, and to pay close attention to the third debate. I thought Bush was a better debater this time around. He addressed the questions more directly and seemed more open and honest. Kerry, though he pointed to a lot of numbers and facts, seemed to skirt a few questions and jumped around topics too much for my liking. Both candidates, in my opinion, were great at filling their allotted time even if they had nothing substantial to say. Overall, it was a very exciting time, an event I am very glad to have been priviledged to witness.

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Discrimination: A self-fulfilling prophecy

I had an early lunch today, eating outside a Chinese restaurant on the Loop. When we were nearly finished eating, a pair of city workers walked up to the restaurant and were greeted by the hostess, who asked in a thick accent if they wanted lunch ''for here or to go." One worker instantly got mad, apparently not hearing the "for here or" part, and loudly proclaimed that they hadn't even gotten inside before they were asked to go! He just assumed they weren't welcome and decided to find somewhere else to eat.

The way I saw the situation, he went into the incident with a mental set that he would be the target of discrimination. Then, when there was an ambiguous interaction, he took it in a way that fit his expectation, and reacted in away that was certainly not warranted.

When people expect to be trodden upon, then they do get trodden upon or at least feel that they are. This vicious cycle breeds nothing but hatred, indignation, and misunderstanding. But how do we, as a society, break the cycle, especially when it seems that so many people choose to live and act by bitter misperception?

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Back in the saddle

A few items to which the title applies, literally and figuratively.

• Back in my bike saddle. After two long weeks without my favorite transportation vehicle, I picked it up yesterday. It had needed a bit more work than anticipated, but now everything is in good working order. The ride to class today felt superb, like it was a new bike again.
• We finished our first mockup of the low profile halo device late last week and are looking at making one more crude mockup before acquiring funding to make a better representation of the final form.
• This week and this coming weekend I'm going to (not "going to try," but really "going to") kick my ass into high gear with classes in preparation for the onslaught of midterms, projects, and outside commitments.
• Running will no longer drop on my priority list. As soon as I click "post" I'm changing and heading out feet-to-pavement-style to feel the cool autumn air thru a long-sleeved t-shirt.

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Hawn State Park

Back at the trailhead 

I gave Kristin her first backpacking-camping experience (she had been hiking and car camping, but never stayed out in the forest while backpacking) this weekend. Hawn State Park was the perfect place for it--not too far to drive, nice mix of mild to moderate terrain, and gorgeous scenery. We got a bit of a late start but made it nearly three miles in before we found a spot to stop. Set up camp at a leisurely pace and walked a bit more without packs before dark.

...continued

The trip was great for a number of reasons. First, I just love the outdoors and everything that goes with it. Kristin especially liked the creeks. Corny as it sounds, we bonded on this trip, having time away from everything else to talk about little things, things about our histories, things about our personalities, about our futures. Night was cold, sort of--it got down right around freezing and her bag wasn't necessarily rated for those temps to our knowledge. But we persevered, and when we woke up (we slept late for camping-time) the inside of the fly was wet with dew instead of frost, so it couldn't have been too bad.

In my mind, there were two highlights to the trip. Both happened at night. The first, Kristin had designated herself "fire-girl" (don't tell the ranger that we had a small campfire) but had let the flame get too low. She was absolutely thrilled that I was able to re-ignite it by blowing. Yeah, it's not a big deal, but her reaction was just great. The other, after dinner I washed dishes in the creek, then came back up to the site and told her to come down to the creek with me. We stood in the clearing, Kristin clutching my arm, and looked at the stars. Crisp, cloudless night with water nearby and woods all around, not a person within two miles, and we could just be there. What an amazing two minutes.

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