Basefree

vordhosbn

I discovered that I may have committed an ethical no-no today. Around lunch time, the Bio-Rad salesman was doing a product show down the hall, and I (as well as just about everyone else in the building) attended in order to partake in the precious free doughnuts and candy that were being offered. The salesman had this silly RC car composed of an electrophoresis power supply on wheels. He was inviting people to drive the car around the hallway, and was timing us as a kind of contest. The person with the best time won a $300 electrophoresis power supply, and the runners up (including myself) got to select from some other fabulous prizes including a CD boom box and a Weber charcoal grill. When it was all said and done, I was full of doughnuts and the proud owner of a new grill.

However, tonight I got an email from some administrative person at the Institute of Molecular Biology explaining how it is illegal for us (Oregon state employees) to accept "gifts" from companies. At the product show, no one was concerned about being corrupted and becoming puppets of Bio-Rad, but in hindsight, I sort of see the point of not accepting prizes from the corporate "man". What do you folks think about this? Should I throw my grill at the Bio-Rad salesman's head in disgust the next time I see him, or should I cook burgers (mmmmm burger) and gorge myself on beefy goodness with the barbeque device? discuss.

Smith

Another weekend, another entry. Lisa and I cruised over to eastern Oregon and went camping/rock climbing on Friday and Saturday. It was quite an enlightening experience. I learned all of the following things this weekend:
1) camping is still a kick in the pants
2) it is fun to hang out with goofy non-scientist rock climbing punks every now and then for a change
3) eastern Oregon owns eastern Washington (and western Oregon in some ways) and I need to go camping there more often
4) I still have the upper body strength of a 6 year old girl and thus still suck at rock climbing
5) Lisa still climbs absurdly well.

In other news, I found out today that the tech in my lab that is working on the same stuff that I am doing my rotation project on grew up in none other than Centralia Washington (the "sister city" of Chehalis). The only other former resident of Lewis County that I have run into down here was working for U-haul. The odds of ending up working on the same project in the same lab as a person that grew up in the same backwards corner of the USA as myself truly boggle the mind.

Pre

This has been a good weekend. I didn't do anything spectacular, just yardwork basically. I never thought I would actually enjoy yardwork, but this homeownership thing has done odd things to me. I actually take pride in my rose bushes for christ's sake! I even worry about the BMX punks next door crashing into them. Can you picture me shaking my fist and shouting "stay out of my damn rose bushes you punks"? Strange stuff.

I have also taken up running again. I am up to 6 miles a day, and am starting to get into decent shape. It is pretty easy to keep up the routine in Eugene since 90% of the people that live here are runners. I don't know if you guys remember my philosophy regarding other runners, but it can basically be summed up with the phrase "There can be only one". The only way for me to eliminate them is to pass them when I am running, thereby humiliating them and making them jump to their icy deaths off the Ferry St. bridge into the Willamette river. No, I'm not a competetive person at all...

Belay Order

As much as I have enjoyed being an enigmatic "ghost blogger" I am starting to think that the time has come for me to actually do something with this site. Believe it or not, I have never actually had any kind of website before, so this is pretty intimidating. I feel a huge obligation to post stuff that is interesting and profound... content that could bring together a diverse group of troubled teens in suburban Arizona to stand behind my website as a source of meaning for their turbulent lives, even in the face of persecution from the FCC and local high school principal (damn that was a good movie). Look for more genuine content in days to come. Until then, "talk hard".