Excellent dinner meeting with two people from Apple this evening. They continue to impress me as a company that has managed to get large with only a minimal amount of “suck” added into the mix (at least the ones I deal with. I say nothing about the service or consumer electronics end of things). We had one of those broad ranging conversations which somehow managed to cover all the business points which needed to get covered, and yet never got too stultified or organized. I love working with bright people. Plus, the creme brulee was excellent.
Now off to crash out in preparation for an early day dealing with MPI-BLAST. Gah. Why must we add every version of BLAST ever created before we add the apps that bench scientists actually want? I know, it’s because the higher-ups know about BLAST…but I loath BLAST. I’m so sick of its idiosyncrasies and dumb-ass optimizations. “Why are we wasting all our time in the alignment phase?” “Because you’re BLASTing chromosomes against each other, and the alignment phase first reads both sequences into memory, again. Don’t be dumb! Chop up your chromosomes first, or use BLAT, or MuMMer, or something meant for the task!”
Sleep. Clearly needed.
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