Chris Dwan

Author: cdwan

  • 23 and me

    So, 23 and me has still not completed my genome analysis. I verified with them that yes, they’ve received my tube of spit and, yes, I really do have to wait the 4 to 6 weeks for the results.

    I find myself wondering what I’ll do when I get the data. Here’s my preliminary list:

    1) Check that it looks like me. I know myself pretty well, and if the results come back indicating that I’m a Chinese woman … well … I might have to call customer service.

    2) Download my raw data.

    3) Chunk through it with promethease and snpedia. See what filters to the surface.

    4) Explore their interface a little bit.

    5) Look up my risk factors for what I think of as the Big Three – the three most popular ways for my ancestors to die. I’m pretty confident I already know the answers to these … but it would be reassuring to see it in cold hard numbers.

    6) Think some more about what to do next. Probably some kind PubMed script or something.

  • Chair

    I need a new office chair. My current one is old and busted. What do you people sit on while you work your long hours in front of a keyboard?

    * Does your back hurt?
    * Do your shoulders hurt?
    * Does your butt get all sweaty and/or go to sleep?

  • Politics

    Okay, what gives?

    Castro resigns, AND Musharraf accepts defeat?

    Something is out of whack.

  • Lungfish, and sick cows

    Well, I’ve had The Cough for long enough that it needs a name: Its name is now “lungfish.”

    In other news, the biggest meat recall in history is underway. 145 MILLION pounds of beef. That’s 1.45E8 for the geeks in the crowd. At between 500 and 800 pounds of meat (usable) per cow, that’s between 181,000 and 290,000 individual animals. If my high school had been in the business of graduating cows, instead of people, that’s between 300 and 400 graduating classes.

    The recall by the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company, based in Chino, Calif., comes after a widening animal-abuse scandal that started after the Humane Society of the United States distributed an undercover video on Jan. 30 that showed workers kicking sick cows and using forklifts to force them to walk.

    You’ll be happy to know that there is already a term of art for cows too sick to walk, unassisted, into the slaughter chamber. It’s “downer” cows. I would love to believe that this is a subtle play on the fact that it’s a real downer to read about this crap … but I suspect not.

    Cows too sick to walk, who had to be kicked and prodded to the slaughter. Yummy? You like that slightly char-broiled taste?

    Anyway, there’s nothing to worry about:

    “The great majority has probably been consumed,” said Dr. Richard Raymond, the Agriculture Department’s under secretary for food safety.

    Yup. You already ate it. Please return to your regularly scheduled activities.

    It was news almost exactly like this that pushed me into my first flirtation with vegetarianism.

  • Mouse party!

    This one is 100% for justkidding_nr: Mouse Party.

  • Television

    I may have mentioned the news crew that came by the dojo to film some self defense footage. Well, it aired.

    Yup. That’s me on TV. Yup.

  • In which I get owned on the mat.

    Tuesday and Wed are open sparring nights at my Judo school. Tuesday we start standing up, and Wed is for grappling. Jay, who runs the school, is very informal about a great many things – but he is quite firm on the fact that he teaches on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays … and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays we practice like we’re going to compete in matches.

    Generally, Jay sets up an interval timer. Four minutes on, 30 seconds off to find a new partner. People sit out as they need a break. We put rock and roll on the sound system. It’s a good time.

    This evening, I showed up and Jay and I were the only ones there.

    He looked at me and said something like: “Glad you’re here. You ready?”

    Ready? No timer, no nothing. Just 20 minutes of me learning a lot about what would happen to me in an open contest with a really good judo player. It involved a lot of getting thrown, and a lot of getting swept. I would like to think that towards the end of that period I was a little better at keeping my feet out of the way, and that he was having to use more combinations to set me up. In reality, I think that I just got owned.

    Somewhere in there a third guy showed up. This was Roger, who was still recovering from his flight back from Belgium. Where he had, oh yeah, been in some big international tournament. I was in need of sitting down, lest I fall down, so he and Jay fought for about 20 more minutes. That was amazing to watch.

    Jay is a small guy. I’ve got 30 pounds and 5 inches on him. Roger is my size. They’re of comparable skill, but I think that Jay’s size gives him an advantage of leverage. At one point I’m convinced that I saw Jay reverse a sweep in midair so that instead of landing on his back, he managed to pivot over and land in a perfect pin on top of Roger.

    Then it was my turn with Roger. More ownage. Harder, this time. They were both being nice to me, but you can only pitch someone over your shoulder so gently. At one point I caught him looking at something outside the mat area. I tried to seize what I perceived as an opportunity and he tossed me without even looking. It was … humbling.

    I like my new sport, but I’ve got a lot of learning to do.

  • Back to judo this evening. Class was *huge*, perhaps 20 of us. We worked from 7:30 to 9:30, and I think that I managed to get through the evening without re-injuring my back. True, true, any back “injury” that goes away after 2 weeks wasn’t a very big one but damn it was annoying while it lasted.

    Also went to the dentist today. Through BU, we get access to the dental school … so a dental student took my X-rays. Full mouth X-rays. 20 freaking shots. The student was nice and all, but after the third shot I asked “so, is this some kind of new machine where you don’t have to put the lead vest on me to protect me from radiation?”

    She was so apologetic.

    In related news, I have apparently begun to grind my teeth. Grrrrrrr. My first thought was “but I started MEDITATING this year, for heaven’s sake!”

    Tomorrow, I go to the doctor to get the oil changed and perhaps get a new air filter. Or something. Medicine confuses me. redmed made me do it. Anyway, I picked a doctor at random and it turns out that he went to med school in Pakistan. Woot.

  • Pictures from New Mexico

    redmed went ahead and made a nice photo album from our travels in New Mexico. It’s here.

  • Countries

    Shame.

    50