Damn Sexy

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!

2008-05-25T21:14:00.001-07:00

It's time for a change!

This blog as moved to: HTTP://SINGLEH.WORDPRESS.COM

Update your links accordingly! =)

Save the Date!

2008-03-11T21:02:00.000-07:00

The countdown has begun. For a variety of reasons it's time to wrap up 30 years of schooling with a doctorate in April...Monday April 14th to be exact. That's the day I will be defending my Ph.D. thesis. My talk, which will be open to the public, will be 9-10am and then there will be the closed "exam" from 10am-Noon. Afterwards there will be food and rejoicing. For those planning to attend, you now have the date. :)

Off to San Francisco

2008-02-26T16:43:00.001-08:00

It's been a few months, but once again I'm off to another conference to showcase my work. This time I head to San Francisco, a city I've never been to before. I'm leaving early to spend some time with my friend Blake and see the sights. When I get back next week that will mark the last trip for me as a grad student. From then on I finish writing my thesis and defend!

Strange Disease

2008-01-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

After some prodding from a medical student in my lab I decided to get a physical to start off 2008 on the right foot. As it turns out I hadn't been to my doctor in about 5 years, which was when I had pneumonia. I'm a very active guy, so I didn't expect any real problems. I got my bloodwork back today and the results were good. Everything was in order including my cholesterol. However, I was informed that I had higher than normal levels of bilirubin (seen right). The diagnosis? I have a disorder known as Gilbert's Syndrome. Eeeeeek!

It's actually a lot less exciting than I initially thought. To begin, it's not pronounced "gill-bert." It's pronounced with a French accent after the doctor who discovered it (I knew I shouldn't have taken French class in high school). Basically the condition is a deficiency in glucuronyltransferase, the enzyme that helps break down bilirubin so that it can be excreted from your body. Individuals who have severe deficiencies will become jaundiced (yellow) because of the bilirubin buildup. For most people with Gilbert's (up to 5% of the population) there are no symptoms beyond the bloodwork and there are no health risks. So, the good news is I will be fine. Oh, and before I forget, it is hereditary which means that my parents are gonna have to answer for their bad genes. Unacceptable!

New Job

2007-12-28T05:33:00.001-08:00

Now that we're coming up to a new year I figured I would update everyone on my career status. There is actually some great news on this front. My supervisory committee met a few weeks ago and we went over the work I have done thus far. They were very pleased and said I can finish analysis on my current project, write, and defend my Ph.D. in March/April.

With this approval in hand, the next step of my career fell into place. I had my eye on a postdoctoral position in the department of Endocrinology here at Mount Sinai and since I can graduate in the spring I was able to commit to the position and the investigator was able to commit it to me as well. I formally accepted the position yesterday and will be filling out paperwork in the next few weeks. The position enables me to continue studies in bone and to use many of the skills that I have developed during college, my masters and Ph.D. training. In addition, I will be able to brush up on some old techniques and learn new ones. This should set me up nicely for the next step in my career (whatever that may be). So, the end is near! Or, if you like, the beginning is near. Regardless, I will be in NYC for at least another 2-3 years and there ain't nothin' wrong with that!

Merry Christmas

2007-12-21T08:06:00.001-08:00

CLICK TO PLAY MOVIE

Judging Sabbatical

2007-12-13T05:53:00.000-08:00

This past weekend my local community was lucky to have the Magic World Championships in our very own NYC. Congrats to Uri from Israel (left) for winning. I volunteered to judge the event which spanned four days, each of which were very long. This was the longest consecutive multi-day event I've ever judged and it was fairly debilitating; we completed 5 days of tournaments in only 4 days.

As detailed in my prior post, things have been very rough for me personally and professionally these past few weeks and I guess it showed when I was at Worlds. Judges who haven't seen me since Honolulu were happy to get reacquainted, but apparently I was noticeably different. I wasn't the same Hayden. I was mellow, distant, and worn out. On the last day Andy came over to me for a chat. Andy is the worldwide head of the judges. He asked me what was up. I told him about the difficulties I've had on all fronts and that I think I need to retire from judging because I'm not able to handle everything. I will be graduating in several months and there is a lot of work to be done. Plus, family and friends haven't been seeing me enough and I'm just not having enough fun in my life.

Andy was very honest with me and said that if WotC lost me as a judge it would be a great loss, but that judging is just a hobby and I need to get my Ph.D. He also said that if I'm not enjoying it as much as I used to, then I'm clearly burnt out and need to take a break and have some fun. He suggested that I take a sabbatical and once I graduate and settle into a job, I can then re-evaluate where I am and transition back into the community. It was great advice, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. I will miss my judging community, but I really do need this time to take the next step in my life. Then, once I have, I will be able to rejoin my community re-energized, with a new perspective, and most of all, with terms that better accomodate my needs.

False Images

2007-11-27T20:41:00.000-08:00

Fresh off of my high from Austin, TX was two of the most emotionally straining weeks in my life. Aside from a stressful (and beyond anyone's control) Thanksgiving where I waited at a train station for nearly 2 hours thinking my dad was in a car wreck and then suffered through a loss of power shortly after dinner, two people I was "very close" to wound up hurting me tremendously. I think the quotes are very appropriate here because up until now I think I was throwing the term, as well as the term "friend," around like they grew on trees (are we all really friends with all the people on our MySpace pages?...this one's for you Mike).

Now I'm not going to pretend that you can go through life not hurting other people. I love my parents dearly and I know I've hurt both of them over the years and they've given their share of hurt back at me. However, beyond all of that lurked something tremendous to which I was totally unaware, or maybe I just took it for granted. If you genuinely care for someone, consider and accept who they are and what they need, and are honest with them (and by necessity yourself) you have laid the foundation for a true relationship.

I think perhaps that over the years I have been naive. I've always had a select group of close friends, but I don't think I ever gave them the credit they were due; I never realized what they had or, more importantly, what they gave of themselves. So during these past two weeks when I was destroyed by what ultimately were false images I had of others, the silver lining was that among the shattered glass stood my true friends, as if I was seeing them for the first time. They were there all the time offering me advice (though I didn't always see to take it), supporting me as I went down the road (though they knew it would mean suffering), and standing up for me when the time was right. Thanks guys and gals. I hope I can be such a positive force in someone's life if I haven't been already.

ICCBMT Austin

2007-11-09T22:10:00.000-08:00

I'm back from the ICCBMT which was held in Austin, TX. This was hands down the best conference I have attended in my research career. The science was great, the topics were relevant, and the attendance was small - which was intentional. It promoted interaction among attendees (breakfast, lunch, and dinner were included) and I made some great contacts. I was also lucky enough to win a New Investigator Award, which meant I gave a talk and got a nice check to offset the cost of the trip. The one downside was that the conference was at a resort about 30 minutes outside of Austin proper, so I didn't get to see the city's nightlife, but well, the resort had a hot tub outside overlooking the lake. Good times.

Off to Austin, TX. Yee-Haw!

2007-11-04T18:27:00.001-08:00

The Brilliance of Saw

2007-10-29T11:00:00.000-07:00

I see a lot of movies, so it's somewhat surprising I guess that I'm not giving reviews of movies when I see them. Props to Dr. Heimlich for always reviewing movies and books he reads, and doing it so brilliantly. Following in his lead I wanted to post a bit about the Saw franchise.

The Saw franchise is a horror movie series created by Leigh Wahnnell (who also starred as Adam in the first installment). I've heard a lot of people dismiss this series in a haphazard way. Now, let me begin by saying that the movies are full of gore and that the gore is not a draw for me at all. If these movies cut away from the scenes of blood I would love them just as much and that gets at the heart of why I think these movies are good. What's great about the Saw movies is 1) the Traps 2) that each movie has its own twist/mystery to figure out and I never really was able to see those twists coming and 3) that with each new installment the story turns out to be bigger and more complicated than the previous movies had you to believe. If you like puzzles and being forced to think, you should give the Saw series a shot.

I saw the latest installment, Saw IV, this weekend and I can honestly say that it was the only Saw movie that left be feeling unsatisfied. The lack of satisfaction was because I didn't understand the bigger picture. I felt it wasn't explained properly. Things didn't seem to "come together" in the end. But at the same time lines and scenes from the movie kept nagging at me. I did some fishing on the web and a key scene was explained by a fan and then everything fell into place. All the clues were there in the movie - from the very beginning in fact. However, the director brilliantly constructed the movie so as to mis-direct the audience away from the truth (or in this case how everything fits together). Stage magicians use the same principle. It's two days after I've seen Saw IV and the significance of random scenes and lines are still coming together. I'm going to have to see Saw IV again.

In Honor of the Golden Compass

2007-10-13T17:29:00.001-07:00

Truth

2007-10-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

122 W 26th St. No More

2007-10-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

No, I haven't been in Hawaii all this time. I got back on the 22nd, but just as I got readjusted I had to prepare for the Lorwyn prerelease. And then, when that ended at 6pm on Sunday, began the closing down of Neutral Ground - for good. Well, that's only partly true. We closed down the store at the 122 W 26th St location. The store had been there since, well, before I first visited in the 90s.

The good news is that the store will be reopening in a few weeks in a much better location on the corner of 5th ave and 37th. The new store will be much bigger and better. Tonight several of us had a special dinner celebrating the move and toasting the future of Neutral Ground - the future of gaming in NY. I'm glad I've been a part of the Neutral Ground family these past 5 years and eagerly look forward to what's yet to come.

Blogger Holiday

2007-09-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to say that blogging, and other normal activities will be on hold for a week as I head out of town. I'm going to the annual ASBMR conference and this year it's in lovely Waikiki. That's right folks, I'm going to Hawaii! I've been there twice before, once as a kid with the parents and then again for the Magic Pro Tour. I'm looking forward to visiting again and relaxing on the beach. This couldn't come at a better time for me as work has been intense and the drama within the soccer club has nearly pushed me to my limit. See ya next week!

The 50 Worst Cars of All Time

2007-09-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across an article on the frontpage of CNN.com that chronicles the 50 worst cars of all time. This article should be fascinating for all you car enthusiasts. Even if you're not a car enthusiast, you should check it out as some of the cards are fascinating and, moreover, the mini-reviews written for each car are hilarious. Note that you can skip decades by scrolling to the bottom of the article page.

Oh My...

2007-08-27T06:23:00.000-07:00

Thanks to TMac for sending this my way.

My First Concert

2007-08-22T17:30:00.001-07:00

One of the things I've never done in my life is attend a concert. I've attended performances of operas and orchestras, but never a concert proper as given by a famous singer. That all changed last Thursday when I went to see Justin Timberlake perform at Madison Square Garden.

I must say that I had a great time. It was neat to be in the Garden again. The last time I was there I had certified for L1 as a DCI judge and that was back in the year of the last NY Pro Tour. As luck would have it the Pro Tour is returning to New York this year.

It was interesting to see how a lot of people showed up late for the concert, apparently with no interest in the opening act - Good Charlotte. I'm actually a fan of these guys, so it was good to see them. However, I soon realized that unless the people you are going to see are good performers, there's no point in seeing them live - you might as well just listen to your iPod. Sadly, Good Charlotte...not good performers.

Justin, on the other hand, is a great performer. He's really engaging with the audience, was surprisingly genuine in his appreciation of the fans, and of course he's a wicked dancer. I must say, though, that my favorite part of the show was in the middle when Timbaland got his own mini-show. He basically did a review of his work. It started out with a mix to the theme song from the Saw movies. I was in heaven. I love the movies and the theme song and I love Timbaland. Good times. For those of you that feel left out, all is not lost! You can see it all too, because the concernt I went to is the one they taped for HBO. It premieres Labor Day Monday, so check it out. Maybe you'll catch a glimpse of me in the audience!

Knock on Wood

2007-08-02T21:05:00.000-07:00

To hell with science. I want to become a dancer so I can wear a leisure suit and do a ridiculous back flip like Neil!

Dick Clark

2007-07-19T16:59:00.000-07:00

For those that may be trying to view the video in my prior post, looks like you're too late. Dick Clark Productions had words with YouTube and there's nary a video to be found anymore. Such is life. I must say I was surprised to see that Dick Clark was behind SYTYCD. He's gotten quite big and it makes me think back to the stories of my mom's younger days when she worked in the music business. She knew Dick Clark and when he headed out west to Hollywood to take his career to the next level, he asked my mom to come with him and be a part of it. Ultimately she declined. That decision enabled her to meet my Dad here in NYC and for them to have me. Hayden 1, Dick Clark 1. Until next time old man! ;)

The Funk Soul Brother

2007-07-12T16:36:00.000-07:00

Currently, my favorite dance routine and with my two favorite dancers. Check it out now!

Facebook

2007-07-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

There are several sites out there to show off who you are and connect you to your friends (Friendster.com, MySpace.com, etc.). I've got pages on those and they're pretty neat, though the coding on Friendster isn't optimized and it can't handle certain html codes that users place in their profiles.

Anyway, my point is not to bitch about the poor coding of Friendster, but to make everyone aware that Facebook is by far the best site out there. It has tremendous functionality and permits user-end applications to be uploaded and shared by everyone. One of the coolest functions is how you can upload infinite photos and tag people in the photos. Facebook keeps track of the tags and will show you when someone else uploads a picture that has you in it. That picture will then be viewable by you and appear in the overall selection of pictures of you. Very cool. If you're not on Facebook, I urge you to join.

Marriage Equality

2007-06-28T08:07:00.000-07:00

I'll admit that I've never really understood the intense drive that LGBT couples have for marriage equality. I guess the drive is partly because they want to feel that they are being seen and/or treated the same way as others. In theory I can understand this, but in the microcosom of society everyone treats everyone differently. As long as people judge one another (even if it's on the clothes they wear), there will never be equality. Thus, I've always said that if same-sex couples were extended all the benefits of opposite-sex couples, that would be enough.

However, I just read the report by the NYC Comptroller and in it is estimated that "the economic impact of marriage equality would add $142 million, on a net basis, to NYC's economy during the three years that follow legislative approval. It would add about $184 million, on a net basis, in spending to the State's economy." This would arise, in part, from spending on weddings from those who live here and those who would come here to get married. In addition, it is estimated that "the State will collect about $8 million more in taxes and save more than $100 million in outlays on health care, while the City would collect about $7 million in taxes in fees and experience no impact on outlays."

So, does the average New Yorker just not know this information? Or is keeping marriage between a man and a woman more important than our bottom line? It's hard to imagine the latter is true given the fiercely capitalistic mentality of New York, but maybe I don't have my finger on the pulse of New York after all.

Off to Toronto

2007-06-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

It's been over 6 years since I've been in Canada. I've been promising to go back for years, but for one reason or another it just never panned out. For those that don't know I lived in Canada for two years while I got my M.Sc. So, it will be very nice to go back. This time, though, I'm going to Toronto. This will be a very different Canadian experience as Toronto is much different than the maritime cities I lived in (Charlottetown, Antigonish). I probably won't see any of my Canadian friends since I'm not going to the maritimes, but a great many of my soccer buddies are going, so there are sure to be good times, both on and off the field. :)

24 TCG Content Launches

2007-06-05T08:23:00.000-07:00

For those that are unawares, the 24 TCG launch is fast approaching. Content for the game has begun to roll out. You can get information at Essential 24 and also Trevor has created a 24 TCG Blog. The current entry is a playtesting article by yours truly, so check it out!

Fall Lineup

2007-05-24T07:51:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine is in advertising and thus gets all of the pilot episodes for each non-cable TV station. I've begun the process of watching them and wanted to give everyone a heads up on several of the shows. I know we have months until they air, but keep this in the back of your mind.

First up is hands down the best pilot I've seen so far. It's called Pushing Daisies and excels on nearly every level: casting, cinematography, directing, writing. This is a quirky dark comedy centered around a pie maker who can bring the dead back to life - but there are tradeoffs. You can see the trailer for the pilot on the ABC website now. Definitely catch this show when it airs in the fall. If they maintain the rest of the season like the pilot, it will be a great watch.

Also, quite good is Sam I Am starring Christina Applegate. I love Christina and she really carries this show. The show is an interesting twist on the standard "in a coma for a while and wake up with amnesia" plotline. I worry about their being able to maintain novelty for an entire season (or more), but the pilot is good enough to warrant watching to see where it goes.

In the category of not so good we have Reaper about a kid who becomes Satan's lackey. The pilot had some hilarious scenes, but overall it was quite boring and I have no idea what the target audience is for this. In the category of incredibly bad we have Cavemen. This is a show starring the GEICO Cavemen (from the commercials). The pilot episode was one of the most painful 40 minutes of TV I have ever seen. Why in the name of all that is good would you decide to make a show based on commercial characters that are cavemen? So, I'm giving you all the warning now - stay away from this one!

Sick Again

2007-05-16T17:44:00.000-07:00

After Vegas I began a serious exercise regimen. This one is a bit different than the one I did last summer as my goal is now to gain strength and mass. In only two weeks I managed to gain back the 10 lbs that I lost over the course of my two hospital visits this year. So, I was pretty excited about that. However, just as I was about to increase the weight I'm lifting, I got sick. It hit me right after mother's day. I got a really bad headache and awful muscle aches. Monday was the worst, so I took Tuesday off to rest. I also slept late today. Nights have been rough as it's fairly warm out now, but still dry as if it were winter. Ultimately the consensus is that I have the flu. Yes, it's odd to have it in the spring, but it happens. Fortunately, I only have some flu-like symptoms and am getting better with each day. If only my taste buds would get back on track...

Charlotte

2007-05-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back from Vegas. What a blast! It was great to see my friends. Trevor, Scott Goodrich, Justin, Kim, Mark, Bojo and Scott from UDE - they were all at GTS. It was great to not have to work for a change. The weather was gorgeous and I got a nice amount of time in the sun and time in the pool. I also sampled quite a few buffets. I didn't gamble so much since I really didn't have the money to spare, which is a shame, but someday when I have a real job I'll be sure to go back and take people's money at the 1-2 Poker tables (from this trip I know that Paigow poker is *not* for me).

So, now that I'm all settled back into NYC life, what is there to do? Well, take another trip of course! I'm going down to a city and state I've never visited before, Charlotte, NC to visit my friend Trevor. I look forward to seeing where he works and meeting his wife. I'll be traveling with Triple G for this one and it will be good too finally see him after months of declining his free movie Tuesday offers (blasphemy, I know). So, I'll post after I get back from NC, provided I survive the south...I survived Nashville...is NC more red than Nashville?

Vegas Baby!

2007-04-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

After a two-year hiatus, I'm finally going back to Vegas. This time I'm going to GAMA on behalf of, and thanks to, Neutral Ground, the local NYC gaming store where I have devoted countless hours over the past five years, judging, eBaying, running tournaments, and performing a myriad of other tasks. I'm excited about being able to spend more than three days in Vegas this time and not having to work ridiculous hours while I am there. So, although I'll be trying to find the coolest merchandise for Neutral Ground to carry in the coming months, this ultimately will be a vacation. And best of all, I should be able to meet up with many of my old friends from the gaming industry. So, if you're in Vegas this week, hit me up!

Abstracts Away!

2007-04-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

These last few weeks have been crazy busy. I had to get a bunch of data in order so that I could write two abstracts for conferences later this year. One conference (ICCBMT) will be in Austin, TX in Novemeber and the other (ASBMR) in Waikiki at the end of September. The good news is that the abstracts are done and submitted. I also booked my room for Waikiki at the same hotel I stayed in when I judged the Pro Tour (Sheratin Princess Kaiulani). Can't wait!

Indoor Classic 2007 & Article of the Year

2007-03-30T08:09:00.000-07:00

Last weekend my soccer club hosted their annual indoor soccer tournament (Indoor Classic). This year, given that we were making many changes to the format and I am President of the club, I decided the best thing to do was run the event (see me to the left looking all spiffy). This year's tournament was a major event. We had 18 teams from all over the country playing 10-12 minute soccer games from 11am to 11pm. While the teams had some breaks, myself and my VP, as organizers, didn't get a break. In the end, we got a great deal of positive feedback from the teams. Many said it was hands down the most well-organized event they had attended. One of the players from the west coast actually thought the organization was very familiar. He didn't realize until after the fact that it was familiar because he was a gamer that knew me when I ran tournaments for The Company years ago. Small world!

In other news I'm happy to report that a judge article I wrote for WotC on Building a Judge Community won article of the year for the Leadership category. You can see the announcement here. Currently voting is underway to select the overal best article of the year. I'm up against some tough competition here, but regardless of what happens it's great to have won in the Leadership category. Thanks to Paul and the many others that helped make this article so informative!

F&%# This Question!

2007-03-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

These excerpts from school exam questions and answers made their way around Sinai recently and some of them are so funny that I just had to share. Come on, you know you've been here:

NY ComicCon 2007

2007-03-02T17:43:00.000-08:00

As we all know, last year's NY ComicCon was a logistical nightmare. There were far too many people in attendance to accomodate the three halls of the Javits Center they had rented. This year, the folks at ComicCon rented much more of the Javits center, but it still didn't seem like enough on Saturday. The lines were so long that people who arrived at 8:30 am still couldn't get into the gaming area for a Dreamblade tournament that started at noon. Next year they *really* have to do something to get those gamers inside in time for their tournaments.

Logistics as they were, once again, they didn't affect me since I worked for WotC on Saturday. It was great to wander around the Con without standing in any lines. However, nowadays I'm less into all the comics and toys as I once was. I think it's a combination of overstimulation and having to move ALL of my stuff from my youth into my NYC apartment. Anyway, the event was still lots of fun. There was lots to take in and I got to see Kim and Kyle. Both are doing well at Bandai and SOE (respectively). I wish more of my gaming friends could have been in attendance, but maybe if they keep making NY ComicCon bigger and better each year, I'll start seeing more and more of them as time goes on. Fingers crossed.

Back to the Freeze

2007-02-15T11:19:00.000-08:00

So San Diego wasn't as warm as I thought it would be (at best 60F) and it wasn't as sunny as I thought (mostly cloudy) and it didn't quite hit my idealized fun factor (I had a cold for most of the trip). Still, it was nice to return to the city. When last I was there it was ComiCon some years ago and marked by beautiful weather, cramped living arrangements, a tin man, and numerous waits for freight trains to clear the downtown area. This trip was definitely an upgrade with my hotel (Embassy Suites) much closer to the convention center (I could avoid the freight trains) and offering a FREE full breakfast buffett and a FREE happy hour. That's right folks, free food and alcohol. How can you beat that? Apparently all Embassy Suites offer this, so if you're traveling check them out. Also, this particular one didn't check for room keys, so in reality anyone off the street could walk on in and go to town.

Despite it not being all that I hoped for, the trip was good. It was nice to get away from the frigid weather and see some of the people in my field (yes I went for a conference, not as a spontaneous trip). I presented my research on CSS mice in the form of a poster. I am now retiring the CSS work from conference presentation. Future presentations will be on mineral analyses of our normal model inbred mice. Although the conference was good for seeing what's going on in the bone world, after hours San Diego was very laid back and quiet. I guess this just wasn't a major travel period (noting the weather I can see why). So, I definitely missed the excitement of NYC and my crazy soccer friends. It's good to be back.

Westward!

2007-02-09T10:18:00.000-08:00

It's pretty darn cold here in NYC, especially when the wind picks up. I know it was much colder last year, but somehow it's harder to handle this year. Probably this is because it was like 70 in December and my body decided to register that as "winter is over" even though it really never began at all. At any rate, the cold is annoying me. I was thinking how I want some nice weather. So, I thought, hmm, how about I hop on a plane and head somewhere nice? Sounded like a good plan to me. I've booked my flight and am heading to San Diego tomorrow morning. Fun in the sun, here I come!

I just can't get enough

2007-01-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

The State of the Union address consistently aggravates me. It's not because it pits two mortal enemies against each other (the president and words). It's also because the address never really tells you what it's supposed to. I hear "State of the Union" and I'd like to know where we are at with poverty, unemployment, healthcare, etc. In my mind, if you're not going to do that then you should at least tell me what has changed since last time. You should tell me what bills were signed into law, what programs/initiatives were successful, etc. Sadly, we never get this. Instead we get a list of what this country needs. We need better health care. We need to rely less on oil. We need to balance the budget. That's all the State of the Union is - a big laundry list. Frankly, I find this insulting. We all know what this country needs. If you're going to go down that road then at least tell us how you're going to do it in the coming months/years. Is this too much to ask? As long as I can remember the State of the Union has been a waste of my time. And yet I still keep watching...I just can't get enough.

We're not even a month into the new year and I went to the ER to get my lacerated thumb stitched up. Then on Sunday, in the middle of judging the Planar Chaos Prerelease I started to feel incredibly sick. It was about 30 minutes after I started to drink a bottle of juice. I then proceeded to vomit every 20 minutes for the rest of the day. I took water periodically, but I think that was what caused me to vomit so frequently. All I had had that day was the juice, which is mostly water, so I think my stomach got confused. At any rate, after 5 hours of vomiting I was too weak from dehydration to move from the mattress in the store's office. I had to have an ambulance pick me up and take me to the hospital ER. Once there they put me on an IV and gave me fluids and medication. I was there all night and then they finally discharged me. I'm feeling much better now, but two trips to the ER in less than one month...I just can't get enough.

In Memorium: Dr. Pavlica

2007-01-17T08:16:00.000-08:00

I was interested in science for as long as I can remember. Much of this has to do with the influence of my first and most important mentor, my mother. When I reached high school, though, I met the second most important mentor for my scientific career, Dr. Robert Pavlica. Sadly, Dr. Pavlica passed away on Tuesday and in honor of his contribution to myself and countless other students I wanted to say a few words.

While many students have outstanding teachers over the course of their lives, it is a rare situation to find one like Dr. Pavlica. Rather than pursue a career in industry or high-level research he taught at the High School level and created a program to teach high school students how to do independent research. The program is now nationally recognized and named Authentic Science Research (ASR). At the time, the concept was unheard of. I was lucky enough to gain acceptance into this very small program during my sophomore year of high school. The result was a mammoth jump-start to my scientific career. I was doing independent, original research in my teens. I was making posters and giving oral presentations at conferences. I was applying for grant monies (which I actually got). All of this without even a high school diploma.

I was very proud of the program that Dr. Pavlica created and even assisted him in its design; the current student handbook is an updated version of the "binder" I created when I was in the program. Towards the end of my high school career, Dr Pavlica and I had some disagreements over the philosphy of scientific conferences and "competitions," but such is to be expected when strong-willed individuals are juxtaposed.

Irrespective of our differences I owe a great deal to Dr. Pavlica. At each step of the way, college research, masters research, and now Ph.D. research, the journey has been very smooth and all of my mentors were amazed at how much I already had under my belt when coming to them at those stages. For all this I owe a debt to Dr. Pavlica. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to repay the debt to him. However, when last we spoke he mentioned how happy he was that I was getting my Ph.D. Ultimately, to him, that was the real endpoint of the program - getting the highest scientific degree possible. Very few graduates of his program complete that full journey. I will.

Star Wars Pants

2007-01-15T11:45:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Huggy Bear for passing this on to me. In the spirt of mom jokes, the Keepers of Lists have recorded the "Top 258 Star Wars Lines Improved By Replacing a Word with Pants." I've listed the Top 20 below, but you can view the full list here.

I find your lack of pants disturbing.
You are unwise to lower your pants.
The Force is strong in my pants.
Chewie and me got into a lot of pants more heavily guarded than this.
I cannot teach him. The boy has no pants.
Your pants, you will not need them.
You came in those pants? You're braver than I thought.
In his pants you will find a new definition of pain and suffering
I think you just can't bear to let a gorgeous guy like me out of your pants.
Governer Tarkin. I should have expected to find you holding Vader's pants.
I've just made a deal that will keep the Empire out of our pants forever
Pull up! All pants pull up!
I sense the conflict within you. Let go of your pants!
These aren't the pants you're looking for.
Alderan is peaceful, we have no pants!
A disturbance in the pants. I have not felt this since near my old master...
He has no time for smugglers who drop their pants first sign of Imperials
Looks like someone's beginning to take an interest in your pants.
The pants will be down in moments, sir, you can begin your landing
Lock the door. And hope they don't have pants.

Stitches

2007-01-04T09:58:00.000-08:00

As my own little messuped-up way to ring in the New Year I spent four hours in the ER yesterday. I was cutting the last few plastic blocks for a study I'm conducting and since they are big blocks I opted to use the electric band saw in our department. It's pretty dangerous as you need to use a sharp-toothed blade to cut blocks as hard as the ones I had, but I've cut many blocks this way in the past with nary a problem. However, this time, with only four more blocks to cut, the block got jammed and my left thumbed slipped forward into the blade. The result was a fairly deep laceration of my thumb.

Of course I cursed, then ran around the hall way to room 23 where the Mount Sinai Hand Fellows just happened to be doing research with one of our medical students (I love working in orthopaedics). I told them I was cut very bad and they gave assistance immediately. They spent some time cleaning the wound and restricting blood flow so it would clot. During all of this, though, I forgot that I have a bad vaso-vagal resonse to pricks/cuts on the palms of my hands. Well, I didn't forget. I figured I just had to put my head down and bear it out. Apparently, that's not the best plan. The sweating and faint feeling that comes is from a lack of blood to your head. If the response is very strong you can pass out entirely, which is eactly what happened. Fortunately I was in a department with doctors all around me (not common for other research departments which don't have immediate clinical revelvance in the work they do). When I regained consciousness I was on the floor in the neighboring office and they had my legs elevated, which helped the blood get back to my head.

I headed down to the ER and spent a grueling four hours in pain before the cleaning, tetanus shot and stitching was all done. Fortunately the cut didn't go below the dermis, so I only needed two stitches, but the cut was over the tip of my finger and apparently the numbing of the thumb nerves doesn't really make it up that far. So, basically, I felt everything as they stiched me up. Thank the lord I only had to have two stitches. The other good news is that the cut missed both nerves, so I should have near perfect sensation in my thumb when I recover (which means I still feel the pain of soccer balls I deflect in goal - joy). The stitches come out next week. Looks like I'll be playing soccer in the field for awhile lest I rip my stitches open as a goalie. So, yeah, moral of the story...don't use the electric band saw to cut objects just because it's the quicker method. Safety first!

Happy New Year!

2006-12-31T09:39:00.000-08:00

Joyeux Noel

2006-12-24T06:49:00.000-08:00

How Well Do You Know Me?

2006-12-21T09:49:00.000-08:00

Thanks to The Girard for making me aware of this. Following his lead I created my own quiz. Do you think you know me? Take the test below and find out, but be warned - this aint no walk in the park! :)

Create your own friendquiz here

Update!

2006-12-09T04:40:00.000-08:00

I figured it was about time I gave an update on my life in general, but since I have to judge a PTQ in a few, we're gonna do it bullet style:

Gaming: Still doing LOTs of judging for Magic and Versus. Coming up in January the World of Warcraft TCG starts having events, so I'll be judging that too. Rumor has it that 2007 will see Magic Worlds come to NYC, so it looks like I will finally have to step up and test for L3. Oh, and before I forget I was finally interviewed on a Top8Magic podcast! It's a post GP-NJ wrap up. My interview is at the very end and you can listen to it here.
Research: I finally have a date! I will be done with my Ph.D. by July of 2008, if not sooner. I'm taking care of the last bit of technical issues this month and probably next month, then it will be all data collection and analysis. Several publications are on the way, so you can expect posts about those in 2007.
Soccer: Our club elected a 2007 Board of Directors and I am now President. This was a very weird year for elections as we were all running unopposed and nobody stepped up to run for Treasurer or Secretary/Officer for Membership. Unfortunately this means the rest of us have to double duty, but I've got a stellar Board this year, so I'm happy.
Parents: They finally found their dream house and moved. They are now living happily in Southbury, CT. It takes a bit longer for me to visit them now, but the new place is great and I'm a sucker for the heating lamps they have in their bathrooms (I hate being cold why drying off from a shower).

Bond is Back

2006-11-26T14:33:00.000-08:00

My readers demanded it, so here it is - my review of the new 007 flick, Casino Royale (no spoilers). As all of my friends know, I'm a huge 007 fan. Thus, there will always be an inherent bias to any review I would give for a 007 film. However, this film is so very well done, that it trumps any bias I could possibly have for the franchise.

The first thing to note about this movie is that it is a relaunch of the franchise. Relaunches have worked surprising well for MGM (the Brosnan relaunch actually saved the MGM company from bankruptcy). Still, the casting of a new Bond is always frightening and risque. Many people were skeptical of blond Daniel Craig as the new Bond, but Bond in this movie is one that is more realistic and truer to the Fleming novels. This Bond isn't a pretty boy, he's a rough and tumble secret agent, and for that Craig is perfect. Now, don't get me wrong, Craig is pretty darn good-looking and has plenty of charm. It's just that when he goes to take someone out, you believe it...and are thankful you're not crossing his path. Contrast this with Roger Moore - I watched Octopussy over the Thanksgiving Weekend Bond-a-thon and cringed everytime Moore was about to hit someone or take a punch; he looked frail enough to snap in two.

The other important thing to note about this movie is that some things you will expect from the original fanchise are different and/or absent. The cheesy jokes are gone, which is welcomed in my book (they were never in the novels, but added by director Broccoli). In addition, gadgets aren't overused in this film. There are a few, but instead of saturating the movie with them, they are carefully placed. Also, the predictable 007 plot is gone. This movie is very true to the book and there are several twists, so watch closely!

Finally, some of the 007 "flair" is missing from the movie, but by the end of the movie you realize it was intentional as this movie is about how James becomes Bond. He's not a 00 Agent when the movie starts and he only finds himself at the very end which is when you see him as the truly iconic secret agent. The movie is a little bit long, but it is well worth it - great characters, plot, action and wit. I'm very happy to say, James Bond is back!

The 2nd Largest North American Grand Prix

2006-11-14T19:54:00.000-08:00

Well, it has been quite a while since my last post and I do apologize, but I was working like a dog and just didn't have the time. In the end, though, it was all worth it. It's no joke folks...this past weekend's Grand Prix NJ had a whopping 914 players making it the 2nd largest North American GP ever! The record is also held by Gray Matter Conventions and New Jersey (2004).

I'm particularly proud of this event as I was heavily involved with its organization. I helped promote the event by creating advertising and the nifty playmat that was given to attendees and judges but, more importantly, I staffed the event with judges. We had an outstanding group of judges for this event. Many were staple Gray Matter judges, while others came from such places as Canada, Texas, Indiana and Mexico. Previous GPs we ran had some logistical issues and the way certain staff issues were handled weren't well received by some of the staff/judges. I made note of these issues and jumped into the organization of GP-NJ 2006 with every intent to make them better. I really wanted to make this the best GP for our judges thus far. This event saw an improvement in food, judge compensation, housing, and social interaction. After the event I spoke to many of the judges and they all said the event was great and that they look forward to working other Gray Matter events in the future. To each of them, I offer many thanks for a job very well done and a promise to make the next Gray Matter event even better!

Workaholic

2006-10-18T10:21:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has known me for any extended length of time knows that I work...a lot. Since I was a little kid, work always found me. There was always extra credit to be done and lawyers who needed their dog walked for more money than I had any right to earn at my age. The trend really didn't change as I got older. In Canada I was a TO and judge for Magic tournaments (which didn't exist at my location until I moved there and started them). When I cam back to the USA I volunteered for The Company and did an enormous amount of work while still judging Magic tournaments, studying Aikido, and pursuing my Ph.D. I eventually burned out and left The Company and Aikido, but then I became a Board member of my soccer club and started Vs judging on a regular basis (while continuing to judge Magic and also build a judging community).

I was doing fairly well until Chicago. That trip totally killed me financially as I footed the bill entirely by myself and didn't budget properly (hey, I'm not used to paying my own way). So, upon my return I found myself taking on additional odd jobs to earn more money. It worked well, but some of the projects are ongoing (staffing and promoting GP-NJ for next month). In addition, my parents are moving (the final move date is October 24th) and all my stuff is here with me in the city. Getting the time to sell my years of accumulation has been really hard (if I get a free weekend and consider doing something fun, I quickly remember that I've got tons of stuff to eBay. Drat.).

I fear I simply do too much. There are plenty of people that work crazy hours, but it's usually just their one job. For me, it feels like I'm working 3-4 full-time jobs. The other night I wondered what would happen if I just stopped doing my non-Ph.D. work. I would have all this free time. What would I do? Sadly, I would probably just seek out more work.

Near Miss

2006-10-11T14:05:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably don't know exactly where I work (Mount Sinai is between 99th and 100th on Madison) and I'm sure none of you know that I do a fair bit of work at the Hospital for Special Surgery on 71st and York. The arrow in the picture points to this second home for me, only a block away from where a pilot lost control of his place and crashed into the side of a building today. I normally walk by that building on my way back home and could have had some wreckage come crashing down on me if the timing were a bit different. Hayden 1, Crazy World 0.

You know it!

2006-09-30T20:49:00.000-07:00

Two For The Illusionist Please...

2006-09-27T10:53:00.000-07:00

Triple G had some discount movie passes that were soon to expire so we decided to go see The Illusionist last night. He was running a little late, so I went into the theater and got the popcorn and soda. By the time he arrived the scheduled start time had passed, but we were well within previews time. Triple G turns in his passes, asks for two tickets to The Illusionist, hurries upstairs, hands off the tickets and the ticket taker directs us to Theater 2. We run inside and take our seats. The previews seem to go on forever. We start to get nervous. The movie's company logo comes on screen and it's Paramount - we get more nervous. The affiliate company logo comes on screen and it's MTV. We had just sat through the previews for Jackass: The Movie 2. We curse, get up and exit the theater in a dash. I walk over to the guy and tell him he was wrong and that The Illusionist isn't in Theater 2. He checks his crumpled little paper and tells us that we are correct and that it is in Theater 11. Apparently he was reading Roman numerals notes Triple G. The man instructs us to take the elevator up one flight. We wait...and wait. It doesn't come and the man instructs us to go downstairs and take it form there. So we have to go down to go up? We go downstairs and wait for the elevator...and wait. At this point I wander towards the ticket counter and the manager passes. He asks if we need assistance. I tell him we were directed to the wrong theater and need to get to Theater 11 on the third floor. He looks at me blankly and says there is no third floor nor a Theater 11. Perfect. By now we've missed too much of The Illusionist (assuming it actually was playing there somewhere) and ask for a credit. The manager is more than happy to comply. We hand him our tickets and he glances at them. They say Jackass: the Movie 2. He asks us who sold his these tickets and Triple G responds with a flat "you did." The manager apologizes and gives us free vouchers good until 2008. We start to head off and he stops us. Are you going to take that with you he asks, refering to the popcorn and soda? I look at him in disbelief. Well, we paid for them didn't we? And so we head out to the street, popcorn and soda in hand. I note that the irony is pretty thick, to which Triple G responds, Jackass: the movie indeed.

Ode to Stuffy Doll

2006-09-25T12:00:00.000-07:00

The Time Spiral Prerelease was a huge success for our region. It wasn't the #1 Prerelease (Champions), but it was certainly in our Top 5. At the Long Island show on Saturday it was just me, a scorekeeper and one judge...and we had 4 main flights running at once! So, yeah, we were understaffed and it was rough, but I made it work (to quote Runway). I won't say much more about the Prerelease itself, but I do want to note that WotC finally did what I always hoped they'd do - pull back old mechanics and characters from Dominaria! This set is like a dream come true for me. I love Dominaria and the Brothers' storyline and I can't wait to read the Time Spiral book and update all my themed decks (Knights, Saprolings, Druids, Wizards, etc.), which had been on hold for blocks upon blocks. By far my favorite card in the set is Stuffy Doll. If Eric Cartman were a Magic card, he would be Stuffy Doll and I love Cartman. Stuffy Doll is an uber blocker and self-sustaining bitch-slap machine. How can you not love that? I will be collecting Stuffy Dolls from this point onward, so if you have any, please send them my way.

Philly a la Carte

2006-09-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

It seems all I've been doing lately is work and with the Time Spiral Prerelease this weekend, that trend isn't going to change anytime soon. I'll save the deatils of my endless work for another post. Right now, as always, I must continue the tradition of posting about my exotic trips. This time around I went to a place not so exotic - the city of brotherly love. Interestngly, the last time I was in Philly it was for Pro Tour Philadelphia which was held in the same place as my conference. I've always liked Philadelphia, but this time around I just wasn't feeling it.

I went to Philly for the annual ASBMR conference which is normally quite good and much more enjoyable than the ORS meeting (which tends to have too much clinical material for my taste). As usual, the exhibit hall was fun. I managed to get all the cool freebies including a 120 MB flash drive, a blank writing book, and of course forzen yogurt at the Lilly booth. The talks and posters at the conference weren't nearly as entertaining. I found myself rapidly losing interest and on the last day of the conference I couldn't bring myself to even enter the convention center. This apathy became coupled with frustration as I wound up having to pay for nearly everything "individually" during this trip. It's totally unacceptable to pay $200 a night at a hotel and have to also pay an additional charge for using the fitness center and internet access. So, yeah, if you're thinking of staying in a Loews Hotel - don't.

Fortunately, the social aspect of the trip was good. My friend Vijay from High School who lives in NYC had been in Philly that weekend visiting his girlfriend, so I managed to meet up with them for some Tapas at Bar Ferdinand (highly recommended). I also got to spend time with the folks from my lab. The ASBMR Social Event was enjoyable as always, despite being inside the Frankling Institute (the huge statue of Ben watching us as we danced was sort of odd) and despite being straddled with the worst party band ever.

By far the highlight of the trip (and this pretty much canceled out the disappointment thus far) was a visit to the Mutter Museum. This is hands down the coolest museum I have ever visited. Basically it's a medical museum filled with specimens and information highlighting the pathologies and abnormalities that you seldom see. Sadly I couldn't take pictures in the museum, but it's probably just as well, for if I did, you would be seeing pictures of two-headed babies in jars, a petrified body, a 40 pound colon, a gangrene hand, and much much more. I felt like one of those teenagers that accidentally walks into the house of a serial killer in a B horror flick. Good times!

New York $10K Championship Debt

2006-09-13T09:15:00.000-07:00

The past weekend a Versus $10K Championship tournament came to my hood and never having been a part of one of these, I felt compelled to get involved. This was a first, though, because it meant working under another head judge who was the same level as me and another TO (yes, NYC has two UDE Premiere Tournament Organizers). Now, I know this particular TO personally, but I've never actually worked under him, so this was entirely unfamiliar territory.

The turnout was lower than expected, only around 180 players showed up. Unfortunately, I can't really discuss my observations of how the event was run in this post because I don't like to portray people negatively in pubic forums. What I can say is that the event and those working it seemed far less professional than Pro Circuits, Pro Tours, PTQs and Regionals I've worked. The behavior of some of the judges was, I felt, unacceptable. This included how they interacted with players and how they handled their duties. Now, don't get me wrong - the event was not a catastrophy. It went smoothly and the players seemed pretty happy, but to an outside observer I think eyebrows would have been raised. There were also problems on the the side of UDE as various foils and deck boxes were not shipped for prize distribution. Hopefully this sort of thing can be remedied and will not happen again in the future.

At the event I got some experience team leading and dealing with some unique situations that only arise when multiple events are being run simultaneously with different head judges. At first it was very interesting/weird to work under a HJ who was the same level as me, but then it became less weird as he basically turned the $10K over to me on Day 2. I took the Top 24 through thier drafts and into their playoff games as well as table judged the finals. It was a long weekend as I knew it would be (a good 12+ hours each day), but I'm used to this. When I finished on Sunday I was looking forward to the relief. Unfortunately, the compensation for my effort was pretty poor. Yes, I got the $10K foils (one of each...I hope that's what we were supposed to get; PCs give multiples of certain foils), but a certain number of packs are supposed to be given to judges dependent on the number of players in the event. I'm pretty sure we got less than the minimum recommended (this was a two-day event after all). Now, I was somewhat expecting this going into the event, but seeing several judges leave early or disappear for extended periods of time and still get paid the same amount, well, that just sucks in my opinion.

At the end of the day the TO thanked me a lot for my help and said I'm welcome to judge anytime for him. As much as I love the guy, and even though I did learn some interesting things about judging and myself, I'm not a newbie at this. I head judge my own events on a regular basis and I do a stellar job. I wouldn't normally recognize this, let alone say it out load, but at this event one of the younger judges came over to me and said, "Hey! Do you remember me? When I was 13 you were running the JSS I was in. I remember I made a bad mistake and you came over and were so nice about it. I remember that to this day and now I'm a judge." I think a lot of the players and my TOs recognize this too which is why they compensate me so well. So, while this weekend put me no closer to paying off my current debt from playing soccer, it helped me see myself a little better and I feel very lucky to be respected so much by the players and by my current Magic and UDE TOs.

My New Addiction

2006-08-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's because I don't have any nearby friends who play TCGs anymore or maybe it's because I like too many TCGs, but I haven't really played cards in months. I guess I haven't really been excited about them in a while. Granted, I still enjoy playing cards and will continue to do so in the future, but the passion isn't quite there anymore. Fortunately (or unfortunately) this doesn't see to be a issue anymore.

I recently opened a pack of Perplex City. The game is a series of puzzle cards of different rarities and difficulties. The more you solve, the more points you get and the closer you come to solving the ultimate mystery (the location of the Receda Cube worth $200,000). All I can say is I am absolutely crazy about this game! I love how there are different rarites of cards and how you can trade them to others if you get duplicates. I love how you accumulate points and see where you stand next to people from around the world. I love how it makes you think in a variety of different ways. The one thing that is a bit awkward is that the game is made in Britain and so it's not so easy to come by here in the US, but several stores carry here in NYC and of course you can order packs and boxes online, so in short I've decided to pick this game up. If any of you out there like puzzles and/or have a trivia background, I'd highly recommend giving Perplex City a try. If you're already playing, be sure to let me know so I can add you to my list of tracked players. Game on!

Goodbye Wayne Manor

2006-08-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

It took a while, but my parents have finally found a new place to live and that means it's crisis time for me - my parents can only store a small portion of my things and I have a LOT of things. This means that the bulk of my belongings will have go with me here in NYC. It also means that I have to sell a lot of my stuff because I'm pretty well maxed out here in the city as it is. Things have been tentatively assigned to different fates, but this is still a work in progress. A lot of these things are collectible and many have sentimental value from when I was a kid. Still, I can't keep it all, so something's gotta give. Am I making the right choices?

Long-term Storage

Transformers collection
Carded Star Wars collection (not vintage, but from the beginning of the new release)
Carded Marvel/DC figures currently worth $10 and over

Stays In NYC Apartment

X-Men and Batman comic collection
Magic the Gathering, LotR, L5R Collections & Versus rares/foils (commons and uncommons from Magic and Versus will be donated to Neutral Ground)

To eBay

All other comics (Spider-man, Image, Dark Horse, etc.)
Spellfire TCG cards not in decks or part of my sets
Loose Star Wars collection with vehicles and playsets (not vintage)
Loose Marvel and DC action figure collection with vehicles and playsets

Gaming in Queensborough Park

2006-08-15T09:17:00.000-07:00

On Sunday I passed on soccer practice (which was just as well since coach was there) to attend my friends' BBQ birthday part in Queens. I think this was the first time that I actually did something in Queens other than drive through or transfer at a subway stop. Once again though, my attempt to travel to and from a borough other than Manhattan was met with difficulty as the F train was not running both ways (last time I went to Brooklyn and the J wasn't running at all). At least I didn't have to take a shuttle bus for this event.

The BBQ was very nice. As usual Rob did a fantastic job grilling and I ate way too much food. It was nice to get some park volleyball in as well, though when I first stepped up I was still in a tournament mindset, so my service went way out of bounds. What was also great about the day was that I was actually able to get some gaming in. Of late I haven't gamed at all. I've' just been so busy with soccer and work that I haven't gotten around to it. Plus, none of my friends are regular social gamers anymore, so there isn't any impetus there. The games we played at the BBQ were traditional games, but some of the most popular ones out there now. Here is my take on each of these games:

Guillotine: This game is really simple to learn and its amusement factor is pretty high by virtue of the fact that you're trying to accumulate French society members to send to the guillotine. The more desireable they are to kill, the more points they're worth. The fact that you can manipulate all the cards on the table (Even your opponents' catches) makes this pretty fun. The one downside to the game is that you can't do anything when it's not your turn. Still, lots of fun with this one.

Fluxx: This is a game of ever changing rules and the rules don't necessarily negate each other. Many times they replace parts of existing rules. This "replacement effect" is very odd, though it's present in the Magic TCG (not sure that similarlity is a plus for Fluxx). As in Guillotine you can manipulate almost all the cards in the game, but the medium is pretty stale (black and white symbols to match for the win). Once again you can't do anything when it's not your turn. I found myself losing interest in the game pretty quickly...especially when the draw 6, then play all cards in your hand rule combo appeared (and yes, the rule affected everyone playing).

Apples to Apples: So many people rave about this game. Everyone takes turns being the judge and placing a green apple which has some adjective like "intense." Then everyone else takes a card from their hand that they think best matches the adjective and plays it. The judge for that round decides who is closest and that person gets the green apple (you need four apples to win). Initially, I was like, "how is this game fun?" I was bothered by the fact that the judging would be heavily subjective and at times blatantly corrupt. Nobody else seemed to care and I soon realized the "fun" was when people play cards that make no sense for the adjective (Darth Vader played to match fuzzy). I admit that playing was fun, but I still hold that this is the worst of the three games because winning is far too arbitrary.

The BBQ was the first time I had ever played the above three games and I won all three of the games I played. The day reminded me that I do still enjoy gaming, but that a huge part of the enjoyment factor is in playing with people whose company I enjoy. The crowd at the party was great, but I did miss my gamer friends terribly and thought of them wandering around Indianapolis this weekend. Hope you all had a blast!

Great Adventure

2006-08-03T17:06:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday my lab took a day off and went down to Great Adventure. Props go to Kelly for organizing this event and not giving in when half the people tried to back out because of the 103+ degree weather. Weak I say! The cool people went and it was in many ways a blast from the past. As Steve mentioned, parts of Great Adventure are frozen back in the 90s (Macarena anyone?) and that's exactly when I was there last. When I went over a decade ago, I was scared of the rides and spent all my time in the arcade amassing more tokens than I could spend. I actually saved them all these years and brought them down on Tuesday. Alas, they had changed the tokens over in these past ten years and so I didn't get to play Dance Dance Revolution Extreme for three hours. So, there was nothing left to do but bite the bullet and go on the rides.

Basically, I just didn't think about the rides I was going on. I simply got on line and went. I did the SCREAM Machine first which was rough as hell and nearly threw my neck out. Medusa was next and a much smoother, loopier ride - I really liked this one. During the day rides were being shut-down and randomly started up again almost continuously, so we were a little afraid that we might not get on many rides at all. Fortunately we spied when Kingda Ka started up again and got on. All I can say is that it was AWESOME! The ride launches you over 450 feet at 128 mph. You go straight and then vertical in the air and then you just fly right down again. What a rush! I love how ten years ago I was petrified of Batman: the Ride and now I jump on Kingda Ka like it's a merry-go-round. Go me!

Off to Chicago

2006-07-15T05:20:00.000-07:00

Well, it's time. The World Cup has ended and now it's our turn. I'm off to Chicago today to join up with the rest of my teamates for a week of drunken carousing and hard core soccer playing (not necessarily in that order). Our club is fielding two teams, one in each division, but our rosters aren't full due to some last-minute drop-outs, so it's going to be rough depending on how many substitutions we need to make based on fatigue, injury, and so forth. I've been training for months as a goalkeeper, but they may need my legs in the midfield, so who knows where I'll end up. Anyway, I'm off to the windy city again - wish me luck!

10 Things...

2006-07-06T10:57:00.000-07:00

Ten things you may not know about me:

1. Aside from the two years spent in Canada getting my M.Sc., I have never been outside the country. I enjoy traveling a lot, but just haven't have the means/ability to travel outside the US given all the domestic traveling I do during the year. Top of my list for international travel are Iceland, Australia, and the British Isles.

2. I have not met, nor had any contact with members of my family on my father's side. The only extended family in my life is/was from my mother's side.

3. Towards the end of my junior year in college I had cancer. This was hands-down the worst experience of my life and how I managed to pull myself together and carry on at that stage of my life is still somewhat of a mystery. I do know I had wonderful friends, teachers, and parents that assisted.

4. I love Broadway musicals and still have the Playbill from every show I have seen tucked away in my room in my parents' house.

5. I can't stand when events are scheduled to start at a specific time and they don't start at said time. It annoys me even more when the people running the show have no intention of starting at the announced time becuase they "know" people are always late. Laziness and apathy should not be encouraged. If the start time is 8 pm, then you start at 8 pm and those who are late should suffer the consequences.

6. When I was younger I hated sports and anything athletic. In camp, when softball would come around I would wander around the field looking for butterflies. When soccer would happen I would do the same because I was afraid to get hit by the ball.

7. I love going out with friends to bars and clubs to drink and dance. If I could afford it monetarily and physically, I'd do it every week and even multiple times a week.

8. I've never been in a long-term relationship, nor have I every really dated anyone. It's not because I haven't wanted to; the want just hasn't ever been mutual.

9. When I was younger and I would get scared either from a movie or from being alone, I would close my eyes and imagine myself on a sunny beach in Hawaii and it would calm me down (when I was younger I actually went to Hawaii with my parents and we met Jerry Lewis and I played with his daughter on the beach).

10. My profile as a Magic judge has become more mainstream of late thanks to the launch of top8magic.com. I was recently referenced in yet another one of their podcasts, which you can download here. Granted the reference isn't Magic-related, but the issue raised is an important one. What do you think...was The Shadow movie equally as bad as Fantastic Four?

Marriage Equality

2006-06-27T06:09:00.000-07:00

I came across a short movie which cleverly deals with the topic of marriage equality and reminded me that I had actually just been talking about this issue with TMac the other day. He was saying how he didn't understand the rationale for preventing same-sex marriages. I, of all people, decided to play devil's advocate and cite all the reasons people have given to prevent the marriages, but it was pretty weird. The arguments are just plain weak and unsupported by any real data (which I as a scientist require). My best friend Mike said that preventing same-sex marriage is beyond reason - laws are created to keep people from hurting others and the proposed amendment doesn't fit the bill. The short film takes a different approach, but it is nonetheless true. It can be viewed here.

Defeat

2006-06-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

I guess it was naive to think that we would win against Ghana given our inconsistent playing and erratic mental state, but still I had hopes. The early goal we let in scared me. Actually, it pissed me off. That was some of the worst defending I've ever seen and the fact that Reyna tried to make it look like he was hurt was just embarassing childishness (aka excessive womaning). We got our own goal afterwards, but then were subjected to a pathetic call for a foul in the penalty box. That was no foul - apparently any bum off the street can be a World Cup referee. I'm not saying that this call was the reason/excuse for our losing the match. Sure it ruined the morale of our team, but if you really want something, you go for it. There were numerous situations where we could have taken a shot on goal, but didn't. Instead, we passed the ball to another team member, which of course was ugly since defenders were always in the box. You can't expect to win if you always pass the ball. In the words of Gene Hackman from a fantastic movie called The Replacements, "Winners always want the ball."

Redemption!

2006-06-19T04:06:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday was the big day - USA had to play Italy in order to remain in the World Cup and to redeem themselves after their horrific showing against the Czech Republic. A bunch of guys in my soccer club gathered at a local bar to cheer them on. At first we were all very quiet because we didn't know if they would play like we knew they could, but they did. USA really wanted to win this one and they played hard. Ultimately this game proved to be the most enjoyable one thus far in the World Cup because shots were flying and so were the penalties. Italy became a man down, then USA did as well and then USA lost another man. So, we played most of the game with 9 men on the field and still managed to prevent Italy from getting a second goal. I've never been so proud of a tie score. Well done USA!

Play It Forward?

2006-06-13T07:44:00.000-07:00

There was no drunken carousing this past weekend as I had to get up early on Saturday and head judge a limited format Kobe PTQ. We really expected a large turnout for this, but only 117 showed. I thought this would make things easier, but with my judge staff being two L0s and somewhere around 20 decklist errors/illegibilities, things were pretty rough in the first few rounds. Beyond that, things went smoothly and that's what I like to see. Sunday was even better than Saturday because it was the first weekend day where it was reasonably warm, very sunny, and I was free to hang out in the park. I went to a new location this time (Sheep Meadow) and got some sun for a few hours. Sooo nice! Then I forced myself through the waves of Puerto Ricans in order to get dinner and head back to my place to see all the World Cup matches that were taped on my DVR.

Yesterday I made exception to my rule of taping all World Cup matches and watching them later by watching the USA play Czech live during my lunch hour (or two). I honestly can't remember when I last had such a bad time (maybe when I had surgery on my finger?). Similarly, I can't remember when I last saw a professional team play as poorly as USA did in that opener game. Yes, USA is outclassed by Czech, but that doesn't mean you give up. By looking at interviews after the fact it's pretty obvious that USA wasn't in the game mentally - at all. I have no idea why that is, but putting that aside I can't imagine why they made the tactical decisions they did. What pissed me off more than anything is how any time a USA player would have the ball and dribble it forward, if a Czech player challenged they would stop, turn around and pass the ball back. They did this nearly every time! At one point in the game I started counting the number of times they didn't pass back and decided to cut the ball, make a turn and play the ball forward (which is what they should have done a lot more of)...I think I only counted two of these aggressive plays. It's really embrassing when your national team plays for 90 minutes doing things that MY local club gets yelled at by our coach for doing. There were times when I was thinking that my club could have done a better job than USA did...and that's just wrong.

Towards the Dark Side

2006-06-04T10:11:00.000-07:00

For a month or so now I had been planning to go to Great Adventure with Mike, Erich and Matt. The chosen date was June 3rd, but the weather leading up to it was just awful. The day before said the forecast would be rain and thunderstorms, so I told the guys that I wasn't going to attend. I still bought discount tickets for them, but was ribbed by them for wussing out. Well, as it turned out it did rain and thunder that day and there were even worse things about the trip which I won't go into. The point is that because I didn't go it meant I could sleep in late on Saturday morning. This normally wouldn't be something I would need to do (I normally get up at 6 am to exercise), but our Friday league soccer game was cancelled due to rain and since Gus and I knew several of us would be free because of this, we decided to go out on the town.

Gus and I met up at a sports bar for a quick drink before seeing X3 (second time for me). Brian met up with us to see the movie and afterwards Gerald met up with us and we headed out to some bars. At this point is was very early Saturday morning and Gus' birthday. In honor of this we bought him some drinks and shots. The buying got somewhat out of hand and I, one who pretty much only drinks vodka, found myself drinking all sorts of stuff. Brian ordered a round of shots of something which still remains unknown to me. Then there was a round of tequilla and also I believe a jager/red bull combination which was surprisingly good. By the time we were at our last bar stop I realized that I had drank more than ever before in my life. It was much harder to walk and paying attention to anyone except people right in front of me was nearly impossible.

After our last bar stop we went to a dance club in the east village. They were playing 80s music which was perfect for all of us. I forgot how much I enjoy dancing and it was even more fun with friends. The four of us had a fantastic time - joking, getting to know each other better, gossiping about other people on our soccer team, prank calling our club's Fundraising Officer at 4 am (he was awake and online doing God knows what). Sticking to my guns and not going to Great Adventure plus going out on the town for drinking and dancing is something I would simply never have done 5 years ago, but I loved every minute of it. I can't wait to do it again. Cue the Imperial Death March...

DC Wedding

2006-05-30T18:56:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I last posted, but I've been busy. My friend Austin from college decided it was time to tie the knot and that meant a trip to the land of taxation without representation. As usual, the full photo experience can be found at my Shutterfly Page. Since Mike was also attending the wedding I decided to leave a few days early and stay with him in Baltimore. It was great to hang out with Mike in his obscenely large apartment, play Winning Eleven 9, practice chipping with foam golf balls, eat Quiznos, and learn that Fox Soccer Channel is part of my basic cable package.

On Friday Mike and I headed down to DC for the wedding festivities. Friday morning was a full round of golf starting at 8 am sharp. The event was completely paid for by the father of the bride. In my group was Mike, Austin and his father Larry. A good time was had by all despite the intermittant drizzle and eventual fatigue. I'm so out of practice that there was no point in keeping score, but I must note that I had a fantastic shot where the hole was on an island completely surrounded by water. My first attempt landed in the water, but my second was a gorgeous 7 iron shot that landed right on the island. Yeeah baby!

Saturday was the big day and since Mike and I were ushers in Austin's wedding, that meant we got to pay $130 for a tuxedo. Hurray! Oddly, it was totally worth it as I haven't worn a tuxedo since I was 6 and that doesn't really count since the cumber bun was aquamarine. This time around it was a classic look and the closest I've ever gotten to looking like my favorite secret agent.

The wedding ceremony itself was very nice. Unlike the previous wedding I attended it actually started on time and I attribute this to the pimptastic ushering of myself and Mike. The little old ladies loved being escorted to their seats by yours truly and honestly, how can you blame them? Austin and Nicole (his bride) looked great. Still, it was pretty weird watching the ceremony. They just seemed so young to me. I guess I'll never get past people marrying in their 20s, but it sure is the norm nowadays.

By far the most fun was had at the reception after the wedding. Unlike all other weddings I've been to, this reception was more enjoyable than not. It really helped that I knew more than 2 people at the wedding, was in the wedding party, and that the families were really friendly and sociable. People really got around and mingled with each other. As usual, I was a hit with the ladies and spent a lot of time chatting and dancing with them. The music was largely R&B/HipHop, so that meant it was pretty much bump n' grind for the dancing, but what can you do. YMCA did get some air time which was nice. Unfortunately Mike was passed out in our hotel room when I was dancing, so I have no pictures of that. Maybe someone else took one of me, but I have yet to see it. Sorry guys!

After the reception I recovered Mike and we went to a local bar with Austin's sister Hilary, her boyfriend, one of the other bridesmaids and some other attendees. Mike and I had a great time talking with Hilary who didn't pull any punches when talking about life. It must be said that she noted quite emphatically that "Hayden" is her absolute favorite name of all time and that if she has a son, he will be named Hayden. Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

On sunday things wound down and I decided to make use of the fancy fitness center at the hotel Mike and I were staying at. I did some Core and then took the opportunity to jump in the steam room. I cranked it up to 9 so as to get a good cleansing. Unfortunately, I dozed off a bit and it was pretty early in the morning that I was in there and a cleaning lady decided to come into the locker room and then open the door to the steam room. She gave a loud apologetic yelp at seeing me naked which scared the living daylights out of me. I guess she was expecting a towel. Whatever. Anyway, unlike most newlyweds, Austin and Nicole did not jet off to their honeymoon destination (Maui). Instead, they stayed and hosted a Sunday morning brunch where I told my steam room story and where I was questioned about my lack of towelage. Look people, if you wear a towel to a steam room which is steaming at max and you're steaming yourself for an hour (I don't play around with this), your towel will become drenched and it's just disgusting.

But the brunch was nice and it was a great way to wind down and see the bride and groom one last time. As it turns out they needed a ride back to their apartment after the brunch, so Mike and I drove them home and helped them unload their stuff. There's nothing like manual labor after a wedding.

After that it was off to Dupont Circle to see the sights, of which there really aren't any. It was also crazy hot all of a sudden and I was sweltering in my black outfit. However, as Mike and I crossed south across the circle, I heard somebody yell my name and I turned to see Alix (my friend from High School) in a car. She got out of the car and ran over to us. What are the odds that she would cross the circle at the same time we would? It was great to see her again and we made plans to meet up after Mike and I saw X3. After the movie Mike and I had dinner with Alix and her hubby at a nearby Chinese Diner. The food was good and the company even better. Mike had never met Alix before and really had a good time. Once again, hearing Alix talk about her job at the Justice Department with great affection made me want inquire about a government job. Who knows, maybe after my post doc I'll decide that's the route I want to go. It sure has some nice benefits and it could bring me one step closer to being a secret aaaaaaaagent man.

The New 007 Push Begins...Sort of

2006-05-12T10:22:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge 007 fan, but with the drawn out process of trying to decide who will be the next Bond, I guess I sort of lost track of things. Ultimately they announced that Daniel Craig would be the new 007, blond hair and all. I wasn't furious at this as I knew they were trying to make a film that portrayed a more gritty and critical secret agent - more like the 007 described in the novels. Still, I thought it was odd that they chose someone who really doesn't *look* like James Bond. He's not a pretty boy, so that's something, but his blond hair is still really wigging me out. At any rate, the point of this post is not to meander on about Craig, but to note that the teaser trailer for the movie (which opens in Novemeber) can now be viewed. There was virtually no press or announcement about this trailer. That I found the trailer accidentally is quite surprising and more than a little bit disturbing. At any rate, for those that are interested, you can see the trailer here.

New York Wedding & Core Phase I Ends

2006-05-09T05:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend my friend from work, Danielle, had her wedding. I still feel very honored that I was invited to her wedding since I haven't known her that long. Other members of my lab were also invited, including my advisor. It's no secret that I'm not a fan of weddings, but this one was the most enjoyable one I've attended so far. I actually knew less people at this wedding and my parents weren't there (which was a big negative), but the food was incredible and the atmosphere gorgeous. Being in NYC is also a plus in my book. Sadly, I forgot my camera for this event, but I was pretty tame at this one and later this month my friend Austin will be getting married so I'll be sure to have my camera with me then. In addition, I'll be in a tuxedo, so all the pictures of me will be mega Damn Sexy!

This week marks the end of 3 weeks of Core for me. The 3 week mark also means I've completed Phase I of the program (foundation). So, what's the difference? Well, I'm definitely more flexible and haven't pulled anything at practice since starting Core. I'm also only getting 6-7 hours of sleep a night and it's totally fine for me. Finally, I'm a bit more muscular. The difference isn't much (there wasn't a lot of strength training in this phase), but it's there. I'll be curious to see how I look at the end of week 12. Anyway, the foundation phase is over and I'm now into more extensive units. Of course there are new exercises in this phase, but interestingly some of the old ones reappear and they are exactly the ones I felt I would like to work a bit more on (dumbell pullover extension and split dumbell curl to press). One of the great things about this program is how it varies the exercises from day to day and then week to week. It does keep things interesting and...dare I say, fun!

Infinite Crisis, Finite Playmats

2006-05-02T06:05:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was the Sneak Preview for the latest DC Versus expansion, Infinite Crisis. I was very excited about this set because I've been following the Infinite Crisis storyline in the comics and it's a good one. I figured that many others would feel the same way and that attendance would be up, but it wasn't. DC expansions draw fewer players than Marvel expansions and this set was no exception. Thus, it appears that the popularity of the characters is what holds a lot of the players' interest. I can understand this, though how can you not love Shazam (aka Captain Marvel when my Dad was a boy). His card even requires you to say Shazam! if you want to turn him into the beastly superhero. Ah well. Ant any rate, this time around (and possbly for X-Men too) playmats, tins, and shirts were better spread out so more players were getting stuff. Unfortunately, the number of tins and playmats (the latter with the above Shazam art) were not given out to judges in the same quantities as they had been in the past. I was somewhat bothered by this because it meant judges couldn't get complete sets, but ultimately I did get a Shazam playmat, so I was happy. I emailed UDE about this and they said they didn't want to overproduce items and flood the secondary market. Also, judges at 10k events get full sets. So, they've got their reasons I guess. They did say there are some big things for judges on the way, so I'm looking forward to that!

This weekend also markes the end of Core week 2. This week was very similar to week 1 but with a bit more reps in weights and longer running times. I'm definitely getting more flexible which is nice. The hand walk and sumo squat-to-stand which were kicking my ass (my hamstrings are very inflexible) are now a tiny bit easier for me - I'm getting a better distance in my stretch, so that's very exciting, especially since soccer players pull their hamstrings all the time. Unfortunately, Core is doing nothing to help me not get turf burns when I dive for saves. Last Monday I scraped my right elbow and knee on an impressive dive (yes, I saved the ball). Granted I wasn't properly dressed for goaltending that night, but still, I shouldn't have gotten that cut up. So, yeah, I need to work on my side-diving technique.

Nicknames

2006-04-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

I remember when I was a youngling and attending summer camp (before I joined the Jedi training academy) that a lot of the "cool" kids had nicknames. I always thought nicknames were cool because they were unusual and said more about the person than most normal names. I always thought it was exceptionally cool when these nicknames were also used by adults in the camp (counselors, group leaders, etc.). My attempts to get a nickname failed tremendously back then. In retrospect it was probably because I was trying to come up with a nickname myself and that's simply not how it's done; others that know you have to come up with it. Why they never did is still somewhat beyond me. Maybe it was because my first name was anything but ordinary. Or maybe it was because they just didn't know me well enough. At any rate, as it turns out I have aquired a few nicknames since day camp and they are as follows:

Gangsta: This was given to me in college by my friend Mike. It's not a stand alone nickname, but is inserted into my full name as "Hayden-William Clinton 'Gangsta' Courtland." I honestly don't know what caused Mike to come up with this, but it may have been because I spent a lot of time in college talking about how I wanted to bust a cap in this person and that professor and so on. Currently, only Mike uses this nickname for me.

Sunshine: This was given to me in my bookstore days. For those that know me, it's pretty clear that I can be rather somber and brooding. It's sort of my default state unless I work against it. I applied to be a bookseller at Borders and when I got shuffled downstairs and became what is now termed a barista, well, people started calling me sunshine to reflect the 'bizzarro world' of my personality during that year. I'm a lot more outgoing nowadays, so people generally don't call me this, unless maybe if I'm having a bad day.

Single H: This came about when Greg (aka Triple G) brought the nicknaming convention to the forefront at the end of our Decipher days. Basically your nickname is the number of times the first letter of your first name appears in your combined first and last names. For me, H only appears once, so I'm single H. For the most part, only people tied to my past Decipher gaming life call me by this name, but there are a lot of them out there, so this nickname is still active.

Superman: As the imagery for this entry suggests, Superman is a nickname that I have been given, but only in the past year. What's interesting about this nickname is that it came independently from people at my gaming store and people on my soccer team. The guys see different sides of me and yet they've converged on this same nickname. At the store I think it has to do with my efficiency at multi-tasking and having a commanding presence when judging tournaments. At soccer I mostly play in goal and apparently I've had some flying saves that have warranted my being named after the Man of Steel.

So, I've finally gotten my wish and I even have nicknames that differ depending on the circle of people that know me. Pretty cool I say. So, does anyone have a nickname I'm not aware of?

Core Performance Week 1 & Dissention

2006-04-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

For quite some time now I've been going to soccer practice and watching people get hurt. They generally don't get seriously hurt, but they pull something and can't continue playing. It's really not that surprising since we're all at desks for 12 hours and then start running around on a soccer field. I would often feel on the verge of such injuries myself and so I realized that I can't go on this way. I mean, I'm planning on playing in a major soccer tournament in July and I'm pulling muscles in an hour long practice? There were other issues too, like my not getting enough time to exercise regularly and my getting tired every day around 3-4 pm. I finally decided I can do better...and did something about it.

This week wraps up week #1 of a 12+ week exercise/nutrition regimen known as the Core Performance Program (or Core for short). I bought the book by Mark Verstegen and was immediately impressed with his approach. It was very much in line with the philosophy of Aikido (of which I'm a former student) in emphasizing the improvement of your body as a whole. The program has a lot of movement and stretch routines, but also incorporates aerobic exercise, strength training, and nutrition suggestions. The major changes as a result of this program is that I now get up every morning at 6 am and exercise for at least an hour. I also eat every three hours, which also means I don't eat monstrous breakfast, lunches, and dinners. In only a week I am feeling more flexible and do not get tired during the day. Wow. I can't wait to see how I look/feel after week 12.

On a totally unrelated note, this weekend was the Dissention PreRelease. The set is the last in a great (especially by comparison to the last) block. Dissention is also better than Guildpact (according to what I've seen and heard) and yet after all of this, the attendance numbers around the northeast and in MD were low. So, this was overall a pretty mediocre PreRelease. Nobody's really sure why this is, but we're all hoping it doesn't carry over to Cold Snap, though it probably will since Cold Snap is an orphan set.

Top 8 Magic Podcasts Me!

2006-04-19T05:56:00.000-07:00

I wanted to take some time to let all you gamers know about a relatively new company started by a friend of mine, Brian David-Marshall. The company site is Top8Magic.com and is aimed at being a source for cutting edge strategy information for Magic: the Gathering. The first print publication from this company is Deckade by Michael Flores. Flores is a regular at my local gaming store (Neutral Ground) and I attended his book signing event this past weekend. The book is amazing. It chronicles 10 years worth of Magic commentary and strategy. In most cases, the entries are as they actually appeared as posts on the web. Although this book is extremely long, if you are a Magic player (or were at some poing in your life) you'll find sections of this book hard to pass up, if even only for nostalgic reasons. I highly recommend this book and you can purchase a copy through the website as linked above.

I should note also that Top8Magic.com has regular podcasts that you can download from iTunes for free. There's lots of good Magic discussion in these downloads and also a fair bit of local flavor. For example, in a recent podcast, the discussion turned to local judges in the northeast and my name came up. I'm not going to spoil the context of the discussion and will let you listen for yourself. For those that know me, and know me as a judge, this will be well worth the listen! If you don't want to listen to the whole session, skip to around the 17 minute and 15 second mark for the Hayden goodness. Click here to download the podcast mp3. Enjoy!

Candidacy!

2006-03-29T21:00:00.000-08:00

In the Natural Sciences there are (typically) three milestones along the road to a Ph.D. The first is a Qualifying Exam which tests you on general knowledge and, to a lesser extent, experimental design. The second milestone, the Thesis Proposal Exam (or Prelim.) is the most important milestone because it is an evaluation of your competency to do Ph.D. work; the actual defense of the Ph.D. is more of a formality (read: party) than an exam.

Today I took my Thesis Proposal exam. I performed the requisite preparatory activities including getting muffins, donuts, and coffee for my exam committee members (bribery is good) as well as putting on one of my nice suits (increases "Damn Sexy" factor). Things started a little late, but I jumped right into my presentation once all the examiners arrived. I'll be honest, I didn't actually practice my talk, nor did I study a written talk. I just created the slides and went through them in my mind. The timing was perfect - just over 23 minutes. After the presentation there were about one and a half hours of questioning and discussing. I had answers to most of the questions and was convincing in the justificaiton of my first two Aims. Aim 3 I was fairly shaky with, but I admitted that an alternative may be more appropriate and the committee was glad to see that I had come to this realization.

When all was said and done I got a great deal of constructive feedback from my examiners, but I also got tremendous approval. I was told that my presentation was excellent and flowed wonderfully. In addition, all the examiners said that my written proposal was superb and the best Thesis Proposal they had ever read in all their years as faculty. Daaaaaamn! So, the major hurdle was passed and with flying colors - I am now a Ph.D. Candidate!

10th Annual Indoor Classic

2006-03-28T06:42:00.000-08:00

This weeked was the 10th Annual Indoor Classic soccer tournament organized by my soccer club. This was my first time as a co-organizer of such a large event and it was a ton of work. Although I helped out a great deal there were others that really deserve tremendous credit. None of us were overlooked - we all got beautiful flowers for our hard work. The organization of the tournament was highly successful. We had a total of 14 teams compete and they came from all over the USA as well as Toronto. One of my club's teams placed 3rd in the tournament and although my team didn't place, I had some great games with great saves. There were some truly awesome moments when everyone I knew was cheering for me and the best part was that my parents were sitting behind the goal watching it all happen!

Chicago

2006-03-23T21:24:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of Hawaii was my trip to Chicago. The occasion was to attend the annual meeting of the Orthopaedics Research Society and thankfully it's a trip that I get completely reimbursed for (hopefully soon). I flew in early so that I could see my friend Dan whom I haven't seen in nearly two years. It was great to see him and find out what he's been up to. For the record Chicago is a city I do like, though it's no NYC or Vegas.

The conference was about what I expected - underwhelming. ORS is never as interesting as ASBMR because there just isn't a lot of bone and mineral stuff, which is what my lab does. The logistics of this conference weren't great either; it was supposed to be in New Orleans, but got relocated to Chicago because of Katrina. The hotels were scattered all over Chicago and the convention center was south of downtown on the lake which made transportation a pain. They did have free internet cafe computers for us and there were a couple of talks that got me more excited about the work I do, so that was nice.

I was happy to get some time to actually walk around Chicago, but unhappy to see several items that I felt compelled to buy. I bought Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire on DVD as well as the new tricked out Sin City. I also bought a Dance CD which I listened to in the store and loved, but am not so wild about now (what was I thinking?). I also broke down and bought one of the new Nike hoodies commemorating the original soccer clubs around the world. This was pricey, but I know what I was thinking there (I'm a soccer whore). My romp around the city was made complete when a several thousand person protest against the Iraq War marched down Michigan Ave and in front of my advisor's hotel. Why are we still in Iraq anyway?

Let me mention that Chicago is a great city and, by definition, has great food. Let me also mention that Ginos East is not where you want to go if you want good food. Yes, they're famous for their deep-dish pizza and for letting you write on the wall of their establishment ($$ to anyone who can find where I signed my name), but the fact is, the crust of the deep-dish is like fried corn mean and tastes awful. Also, don't order their antipasta as it's more like a salad with a few pieces of lunchmeat. That being said, Potbelly is the best sandwich store/chain I've ever been in and Portilla's has great hot dogs.

During my last day in Chicago I got to visit the infamous Field Museum which is trying to be the NYC Museum of Natural of History, but isn't quite making it. They have lots of nice exhibits, though and plenty of bones which is a plus in my book, especially when the bone in question rivals me in size. That's one large femur!
I also have to give the Field Museum props for the hilarious on-screen cartoon tutorials they have. The cell to the right was my favorite, but there are some other good ones (check out singleh.shutterfly.com to see the full collection of pictures from my trip).

How Much Am I Worth?

2006-03-12T21:42:00.000-08:00

A lot of us have taken those quizzes that calculate your worth based on numerous questions, but few of us know what we're really worth and have seen that money firsthand. Not true for me! Last night was perhaps the wildest night of my life (this one's for you Steve W). In order to raise money, my soccer club held a fundraising event at a local bar in the west village. In addition to selling raffle tickets for various prizes there was also a date auction and I got roped into being one of the guys auctioned. Getting up on a stage and being auctioned off like a piece of meat is very intimidating for those of you who haven't been through this (I can't imagine any of you reading this have) and it was even scarier hearing potential bidders talking and not quite understanding that they were bidding on just a dinner with us and nothing more. Eek!

We realized fast that you can increase your bids substantially by taking off more and more of your clothes. After this trend got started it was pretty hard to deny the bidders. I kept reminding myself that it was for a good cause, my soccer club. The above picture shows our coach Amanda taking a picture of one of us revealing ourselves (for all I know it is me). I can't really show other pictures of this event because it was pretty much rated R+ the whole night through. In addition, I have not yet seen all the pictures people took, though I'm told there are some great ones of me. I'll get them eventually (I hope!).

So, how much did I fetch? Well, there were 8 of us being auctioned and I left an AIM away message up asking everyone to vote on how much I'd fetch. Everybody underguessed (woefully so), except Dan M. who came the closest and clearly recognizes my awesomeness. The bidding started at $1 (eBay style), but it didn't stay there for long. After a large number of introductory bids and the loss of numerous articles of clothing by yours truly, I was bought for a whopping $550!! This was the most money bid on ANY of the guys being auctioned and 25.2% of the total money raised the whole night! That's right folks, $550 for dinner with Damn Sexy. For those of you who've had dinner with me at no cost - remember this post - anything less than $550 is a bargain!

Pro Tour Honolulu

2006-03-07T16:31:00.000-08:00

I'm finally back from gorgeous Waikiki in the city of Honolulu (on the southern coast of Oahu). As this is a full-fledged trip, you can (and should) view all my pictures at singleh.shutterfly.com.

I arrived on Tuesday night and was somewhat disappointed to see that it was cloudy and raining. However, it was such a peacful rain and it was just so calm outside that I couldn't help but feel at peace - and the 73 degree weather wasn't bad either. The trip to the hotel was horrendous as Honolulu has the worst city highway structure in the world. The main issue is that there aren't enough roads to handle the volume of cars traveling about. All the cars tend to cluster in specific areas, like Waikiki (where I stayed), because those are the touristy places. For those that don't know, Waikiki is Hawaii's version of New York City with a shot of Vegas. The main strip has such stores as Niketown, A/X, Tffany's, etc.). Still, it didn't take me long to find the Quiznos around the corner. Mmmm...toasty.

By arriving on Tuesday evening, I gave myself all of Wednesday and Thursday to, ideally, explore Waikiki, get a nice tan, and swim in the ocean. As of Thursday WotC was picking up the bill for my room (yay partial sponsorship!), so I negotiated to move into that same room on Tuesday night. After sweet talking the hotel clerk I managed to get my way (I was getting a better room - the WotC room - for those two days). The room was nice, though it didn't have a view of the ocean. It did have a very odd tag around the bathroom showerhead instructing guests to not shower outside the tub. Interesting. It's hard to imagine people unlatching the extendable showerhead and showering in the bathroom, but what do I know.

When I awoke on Wednesday I was disappointed to see that it was mostly cloudy. I wandered around a bit and got my picture taken, but was worried that it might be worse on Thursday, so I decided to go to the beach anyway. As it turns out there were lots of people on the beach and quite a few people surfing and swimming. Hawaii is just that nice - any day is a good day to go to the beach. In addition, as I found out by accident, any day is a good day to get a tan (or burn) since the UV index is so darn high. So, despite the mostly cloudy, I got a nice burn on my back for not using suntan lotion. D'oh! Fortunately it wasn't too bad.

When I awoke Thursday there was even more disappointment as the news talked about flooding that closed schools. I looked outside and it was clearly raining, but no real flooding. The funny thing is that Waikiki normally gets less than 20 inches a year. It appears they got all of that while I was staying there. However, during my early morning walk (never did get off of NYC time really) it cleared up completely and I was like hot damn I gots to get my beach stuff! So I ran back to my room, collected my stuff and headed to the beach. I got some good sun, though I had to lather up so as to protect my wounds from the previous day. While chilling on the beach (Queen's Beach) I met some really nice guys and we met up later that day at a nearby bar for drinks. Good times.

Friday meant that the hardcore vacation was over and it was time for Day 1 of the Pro Tour. There were so many great things about this event that it's hard to know where to begin, but the first thing that happened was us all being told to take off our pinstripe judge shirts and put on these kickass Hawaiian judge shirts made exclusively for this event. To the left you can see the different shirts. There was a head judge shirt, player shirt, staff shirt, and judge shirt (modeled by none other than Damn Sexy). Anyway, on Friday I was Team Lead for the Feature Match team and had two L3 judges with me. I learned a lot from this and really started to see myself grow as a judge. I'm happy to say there were no problems with this aspect of the tournament and that was a relief for my first day at a Pro Tour.

Saturday was Day 2 of the Pro Tour and that had me judging on Side Events because the local side events people didn't have enough staff to handle things (and there are a lot less Pro Tour players on Day 2). However, in the end, they got a lot more staff than they needed and mid-way through the day I was struggling to find things to do. Fortunately, I got to talking with Lee and he offered to have me sit in on a L1 certification inteview. This was a great experience - to see the interview from the other side of the table. I spent a lot of time on Saturday talking to various judges about my work over the years, my Magic community, and what I need to do to prepare for my L3 test.

Sunday was the slowest of the days for me (and many other judges) as only a few judges are needed for the Top 8 and sides. Still, there was lots of learning as I got to attend two judge seminars, one on building a community and one of how to deal with problem players. Paul Morris led the first and Scott Marshall led the second. Both were immensely useful to me and I took a ton of notes. On Sunday I also had a pre-L3 interview with two L3 judges. The purpose of this was to get a better idea of where I am on the road to L3 and to make sure I know what I need to do to get there. To my surprise, both L3s were impressed with my thinking, interest, and philosophy. They said that based on the way I answered questions, I was much closer to a L3 than L2 and that once I got my rules knowledge up to par, I should have no concerns about testing. Wow. Never thought I'd get such a positive response. So, it looks like I'll be seeing more of the world as I pursue my L3. I'm not going to be able to make Prague, but probably will hit Charleston...and may even test there.

When Good Conventions Go Bad

2006-02-27T15:25:00.000-08:00

My most recent trip was to the first ever New York Comic Con in my very own backyard. Well, it's not exactly my back yard, but it was in the Javits Center on the Hudson River and that's close enough. Originally I was just going to go and hang with TMac and Triple G as they run their FMAtasticness. However, my WotC tournament organizer said we'd be running Wizards stuff and asked if I wanted to work Saturday, get paid, and get a free weekend badge. How could I refuse?

I spent most of Friday afternoon wandering around the exhibit hall wearing my nifty WotC Exhibitor Badge (I love all access). Oddly, the hall was the same hall where I promoted my soccer club during last year's Expo. The notable feature of this hall is that it is only a fraction of the total number of halls in the Javits Center, a very small fraction. I didn't think too much of it and wandered around. The hall was packed with booths, most of which were anime and comic related. Sadly, I was unable to find the one comic I really wanted (X4 #2). Yeah, it's a year old and part of a 5 issue series, but still - it's Comic Con! So, that was a disappointment, but a small one compared to what would happen later in the convention.

Any sadness I felt from not finding X4 #2 was soon forgotten as I met up with TMac, Triple G, and Mike G. after the convention and we headed off to Carmines for dinner. Carmines is a fantastic family-style restaurant which is so popular that you have to book your reservations about a month in advance, which I did. Some of Trevor's FMA players/volunteers joined us as well, which made for some interesting dinner conversation - a standard fare of gaming talk with a smattering of mockery and insultation was served. Hydro Alchemist loves insultation!!

When I arrived at the convention on Saturday morning I noted that there were still an 1.5 hours until it opened and the line for people to get inside ran the entire length of the Javits center (3-4 blocks). I went up to the gaming area and proceeded to get things in order. Events were supposed to start at 12, but we waited a bit longer because attendance was poor (13 for the JSS and 34 for the DuelMasters Qualifier, the latter of which I ran). These turned out to be the final numbers and we learned from several severely late would-be-players that there were so many people trying to get into the convention that the lines were moving at a crawl. Shortly thereafter, security began blocking off the stairway to the gaming area (which was deserted in comparison to the exhibit hall). Ultimately, this was part of a much larger problem. Apparently the convention organizers anticipated and booked for 10,000 attendees and 10,000 people bought badges in advance. What this meant is that they couldn't handle the actual number of people who showed up (some number larger than 10,000). By early afternoon on Saturday the sheer number of attendees created a serious fire hazard and a bizarre sort of lockdown occured where they weren't letting people into the building at all until a certain number of attendees had left. Sadly, they did this as a blanket policy which meant that people like Jim Lee, Kevin Smith and Joe Quesada couldn't get into the building. Yikes! Things really never got back to normal after this - they had to stop issuing badges completely. So, if you didn't get there early (regardless of whether or not you had a badge), you were screwed. As evening set in, those of us in the gaming area discovered a new problem and that was that the lighting had a fractured design and only a handful were on. So, it got real dark real fast. Apparently they couldn't just turn on the other lights. Instead, they had to set up portable floodlights so my players could see their cards during the single elimination portion of the event. Fan-tastic.

Sunday wasn't quite as bad as Saturday, but that's largely because so many people were turned away and pissed off on Saturday, that they just didn't bother coming back. Still, the number that showed up was too large and they kept everyone outside in a monstrous line and only let them in a handfull at a time so that they could keep track of the number of people entering the hall. This policy resulted in large numbers of people standing in frigid, wind-chilling weather for hours. To help ease the pain, the convention provided coffee/tea stands for people outside, but that was little comfort I'm sure.

With fewer people on Sunday and more restrictions on entrance, there were virtually no people in the gaming section of the convention. So, the people that were on call to work there pretty much just sat around and played games themselves. I was off that day, so I went back and forth visiting my friends working for Wizards and those doing FMA stuff. I did manage to play in a FMA sealed deck tournament, but by the end of the day it was so boring that Triple G and I degenerated into playing baseball with a Poland Spring bottle for a bat and a glove as the ball. Good times!

Well, this has been a long enough entry for sure. The next stop for me is Pro Tour Hawaii on the beautiful island of Oahu. Until then, aloha means goodbye!

Baltimore

2006-02-19T20:50:00.000-08:00

This weekend marked the first of my 2006 trips. This time I went south to visit my good friend Mike in Baltimore. I've been to Baltimore before (I saw the Orioles lose), but this is the first time I visited while Mike was living there (he is doing a post-doc at the Space Telescope Science Institute). Since I have several trips looming on the horizon, I had to visit cheaply, so I took the Chinatown bus. Although it was a bit late in arrival, you can't beat a $35 round trip!

Mike and I spent most of Frday catching up, which was great. Later in the evening we ate dinner and went to see Date Movie, which I enjoyed, but which really isn't a good movie. On Saturday we went to one of the Johns Hopkins fields and played in a pickup a game of soccer. Despite having around 20 people we never evolved past two lacrosse goals. Things were made worse by having players who didn't understand the concept of marking the man. Also it was like 20 degrees with windchill making it feel even colder. Still, soccer is soccer and a good time was had. After soccer Austin and his fiance Nicole stopped by to chat a bit and then Mike and I left to get his friend Kevin from the Airport. After that was dinner at a nearby restuarant and then lots of chatting back at Mike's place. Oh, and I must not forget the viewing of an old VHS tape with Mike and Kevin acting in high school plays. I highly recommend Mike's impersonation of John Wayne. Quality.

On Sunday morning Mike, Kevin and I went to a Trap and Skeet range where I used a firearm with real ammo for the first time in my life (see picture above of Hayden with shotgun...he he). The range itself was pretty scary as there were all these people there that appeared to be displaced southerners. I was sort of feeling like I did in Nashville (not happy) and at one point it was particularly scary when I passed a group of guys having an anti-gays discussion. Definitely don't see that in NYC. At any rate, on my way out to the range I noticed the "No Aiming" sign which still cracks me up. Pretty much the last instruction you'd expect to see on the wall of a shooting range is "Don't Aim!", but that's the way it works when you're trying to shoot skeet (the disk moves so fast that aiming is too slow; you have to track and fire). However, we just did Trap which is shooting the orange disks that fly out at random directions. Here you can aim a bit, but not always. At any rate, I was quite good for my first time of shooting and even hit all the disks at one of the 5 shooting stations. I look forward to shooting again at the end of May when I'll be visiting for Austin's wedding and when the ambient temperature won't cause my trigger finger to go numb.

Snow Job

2006-02-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

For a while now I didn't think it would happen, but winter finally hit. We had what I guess constitutes a blizzard here in NYC. The snow started late Saturday evening as I was on my way home from judging a Magic PTQ. It wasn't really sticking, but the wind was vicious and the forecast called for much worse after midnight. When I woke in the morning it was snowing strong and it didn't really stop until 4 pm on Sunday. We definitely got over a foot of accumulation and this caused Neutral Ground to close which meant no day 2 of the Vs. X-Men Sneak Preview, which meant no judging for Hayden. :( Another downside to the snow was that it meant people couldn't fly into NYC. In particular Mark wasn't able to fly in for Toy Fair which is a real bummer because I probably won't get to see him until next year (with all my Magic judging and a major soccer tournament in July I'm not going to be able to make any of the conventions this year).

The positive to all of this precipitation is that it meant I got a good solid day of home time, which I desperately needed. I was able to get a lot done today including some labwork, food shopping, laundry, organizing my bookcases, preparing my receipts and W-2s for taxes, putting away random cards, throwing out junk, writing up my Level 3 interview form, watching all saved shows on my DVR and watching two Netflix movies. Of course there's still tons more to be done, but I've made a solid dent and hopefully this will keep me out from under in the long run.

Bra Studies

2006-02-06T09:45:00.000-08:00

After attending soccer practice last night and barely having enough players to play soccer I was hot to post on how the American male's tendency to *follow* sports as an integral part of his life ultimately ruins mine. However, all this will do is create a rift between me and my friends (nearly all of whom follow sports they don't actually play). So, I will continue to seeth quietly about it all and post about something altogether different. The story comes from a recent issue of C&EN:

"The Chinese have become significant competitors in a number of industries. Now they are serious about building a better bra, according to the Associated Press. Hong Kong's Polytechnic University is offering a degree in bra studies. Top Form, a Chinese firm that makes 60 million bras a year for labels including Victoria's Secret, Playtex, and Maidenform, has a bra lab at its factory. The firm has experimented with ways to boost busts. Air-filled bras tend to get flat like tires. Oil-filled bras tend to be heavy and expensive. The firm is now trying fiberfill."

The sad truth is that it's too late for me to get my degree in bra building, but surely someone out there is between jobs and undecided about their future career? Whoever you are, look no further.

Al Gough Can Kiss My...

2006-02-01T09:31:00.000-08:00

For quite some time now Smallville has been "my show." It's the show I've seen since day one, never having missed an episode. It's the show that I always looked forward to seeing every week and that always had really cool touches (like cameos by Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder). It's the show that has a great cast. I love Clark, Chloe, Lois, Lex. It's not just the younger cast members that are great, though. Lionel is great and so are Clark's parents, in particular Jonathan Kent played by the original Duke of Hazzard, John Schneider. Well, last week's episode (I'm going to spoil it, so stop reading if you care) was a tremendous disappointment for me. True the show had been leading up to the "someone close to you will die Clark," but when the show ends and it's Mr. Kent they're lowering into the grave, I couldn't help but feel cheated and betrayed.

Smallville's writer Al Gough said that "...The show needed to take a risk. It was a hard decision and it took months before making the final move. But the show must go on and it's a necessity for where the show is heading." Well, I say that's a load of crap. Taking risks is fine, but you don't get rid of the characters that people love - the characters that keep people tuning in week after week. The other thing that bothers me is the show now has made a significant enough departure from the comic book storyline, that there is no way to see it as being the real Superman story (up till this point it worked...not perfectly, but well enough to turn a blind eye to the inconsistencies). The crystal part of this episode really stretched the storyline continuity, but now there is no turning back because anyone who follows Superman knows that the Kents live well into Clark's post-Smallville life. My parents have told me they are finished with Smallville and I can understand that completely. For me, though, I've invested so much into Smallville, that I will have to keep watching. It just royally sucks that every time I watch an episode from now on I'm going to say, "It should have you Lana. It should have been you ya ho!!"

Your Mom's A Blog

2006-01-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Some time ago a friend of mine who worked for The Company propagated hs wife's tendency to make mom jokes. This tradition carried to a variety of conventions and I couldn't help but bring it back to the lab where I work. Ever since, I kept a record of all the jokes that were made. I've been meaning to post them to a blog and have finally gotten around to doing it. A lot of people contributed to this list and I thank everyone for their participation. I encourage everyone to take a look. The link to the blog can be found in the sidebar of my blog. Enjoy!

Inside the Actors Studio

2006-01-24T10:13:00.000-08:00

The truth is that I watched a few episodes of Inside the Actors Studio last year and basically have been watching it ever since. I still haven't seen all the episodes of past seasons, but I've seen enough to know that James Lipton askes the stars 10 questions at the end of every show. These 10 questions originally came from a French series, "Bouillon de Culture" hosted by Bernard Pivot. Since I'm a long way off from being invited to the Studio, I figured I would answer the questionaire right here, right now:

1. What is your favorite word?

Yes.

2. What is your least favorite word?

No.

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Discovering and/or understanding a part of myself that was previously unknown.

4. What turns you off?

Laziness and Disaffectedness.

5. What is your favorite curse word?

Goddamnit. If that's not a real curse anymore, then "mother f@#&er."

6. What sound or noise do you love?

In soccer, the loud compression sound made when a hard shot is taken on goal and it is deflected off the goalkeeper's body (not hands).

7. What sound or noise do you hate?

Loud, melodramatic, fast, and repeated wet kisses between people trying to get attention in public.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Acting.

9. What profession would you not like to do?

Mining.

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Yes Hayden, you understood.

Unexpected Events

2006-01-23T10:24:00.000-08:00

I successfully managed to survive Guildpact PreRelease this weekend, though I'm sore and tired as hell (playing soccer last night didn't help, but it sure was fun). As usual, I drove Friday night to Long Island, stayed in a nearby hotel for the night and then got up obscenely early to drive to the location and start the show. I think we had about 130ish unique players on Saturday. Everything went well, save for a fire alarm which required us to evacuate the tournament room with 3 flights in process. This was a new experience for me, but the arrangement I decided on worked well. We had everyone evacuate with the judges leaving last. When it was safe to go back inside, we let the judges in first and had them watch the tables. Then we let players in flight by flight, but only if they had their cards on the table frozen "mid-game." Finally, we let everyone else in. Worked like a charm. Beyond this, there were no drawbacks except that it was a very long day and I was beat. I drove back Saturday night and got some sleep (not much) before heading down to Neutral Ground for day 2 of the PreRelease. Again, there were no major problems, though by the end of the day I was so exhausted that I was barely able to think straight - let alone understand the questions players were asking (now imagine me going to soccer and playing in goal -cause that's what I did). I think Northeast attendences for Guilpact were pretty much as expected. Not sure how this set compated to Ravnica, because I had to leave before our boss got to Neutral Ground (soccer freak that I am), but I suspect it was close enough. The real shocker of the weekend was finding out that my mentor was re-hired by the company he worked for (though in a different department), so he will in fact not be leaving and will in fact remain head judge for NYC. The plus side to this is that I won't have the pressure of head judging everything, but the downside is that I don't get that nice pay increase that comes with being a head judge. Well, that's life for ya and it doesn't really impact my plans - I'm still going to pursue my Level 3 status because one never knows what the future may hold.

In homage to The Girard, the above-left image is the card he was referring to in the comments section of my previous post...sort of. Problem is, so is the guy to the right, who happens to have the specific text of interest. They are both good, but will the real Girard please stand up?

Guilpact on the Horizon

2006-01-19T09:38:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been over two weeks since I've posted an entry. I guess part of the reason is because nothing special has happend. I haven't really went anywhere or done anything out of the ordinary. I wish I could be more like Steve and talk about what I do during the day (I love reading all the minute details of what happens), but I feel like that would be a waste for most of the people that read this blog. Why? Well, because my day would go something like this: "The mouse bone samples I embedded in plastic solidified much quicker than the last batch and I think this is because I was using an old (and contaminated) N,N-dimethyl-p-toluidine stock last time. I did some thin (2 micron) sectioning of bone samples myself for the first time today and I did a good job at it. However, there are folds in the sections and this needs to be remedied before I actually analyze the sections via FTIRI spectroscopy." See, nobody wants to hear that crap do they? I know I don't.

Prehaps of more interest is that soccer has been going very well. I've settled into my position of keeper quite nicely and am improving each week. I'm one of 4 keepers in my club as of now and that's barely enough for the number of teams we will be feeding into our large indoor tournament at the end of March. I'm slowly buying keeper gear in order to make my efforts a bit less painful, but my current credit card bill is, for the first time ever, greater than the amount of money in my checking account, so I'm trying to stretch the purchases out. Nobody's complaining, though. In fact, I get a fair amount of praise. Last Monday, for example, I made a truly impressive, professional save where I dove and had near full body extension. Simply infuego. I've got to start doing more administrative stuff for my club, though, as I'm the officer in charge of Membership. So, tonight after a lecture downtown I'm going to make a run from one bar to the next and drop off flyers promoting our club. My goal is to do this and not shell out a single dollar for covers, drinks, or one-night stands.

I guess there's no better way to end this post than to note that it's nearing the end of January and that means a new Magic expansion is on the horizon. Guildpact PreRelease events are this weekend which means I'll be crazy busy the whole weekend, and may even be late to soccer on Sunday night (ugh). This PreRelease will likely be the most memorable and bitter sweet of all because it will be the last event that my Level 3 mentor will be at. I actually won't get to see him on Saturday, because he'll be in NYC and I'll be on Long Island running the one day PreRelease we have over there at Hofstra. Still, I'll see him on Sunday when I help him in NYC, but I will be both happy and sad.

Netflix for the New Year?

2006-01-02T10:04:00.000-08:00

One of my New Year's Resolutions is to watch a lot of movies. In a way I'm cheating with this because I tend to watch a lot of movies as it is (very often 3 a week). When I signed up for Netflix a few years ago, things really took off and I can honestly say that the membership is worth every penny. One of the great things about Netflix is how you can link your account to the accounts of your friends. You can then see what they have at home, what's in their cue, how they've rated movies, and so on.

If any of you out there have Netflix accounts, send me a friend request (hayden-william.courtland@mssm.edu)!

For those of you that already have access to my account or will soon have access, here are some important facts about how I rate movies (note that Netflix only permits ratings from 1 star to 5 stars):

I have rated over 1,300 movies on Netflix (you can rate movies you see in the theater, not just rented movies)
If I rate a movie 5 stars, chances are good that I own it
If I rate a movie 4 stars, it means I had a really good time watching it
Since I can't give 0.5 star ratings I round borderline ratings up
Certain movies get rated high because they are exempt from normal movie requirements (e.g., 007 movies, Transporter movies are supposed to be fantastical and over the top)
If a movie takes itself seriously in a dramatic way and there is no character growth by the end of the movie, I will not like the movie

Courtland Christmas

2005-12-27T19:48:00.000-08:00

Another year, another Christmas. The Courtland Christmas activities are as follows: On Christmas Eve we see a matinee at the local theater. This year we saw the Chronicles of Narnia, which was awesome and quite appropriate to see at Christmastime. We then head home to do some last minute gift wrapping and my father and I trim the Christmas tree while my mom gets our Christmas Eve buffet underway. We tend to have sandwiches, dips, and little frankfuters. This year we also had Swedish meatballs. Once we all fill our plates we put on National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation which is a great movie - one that still holds up after all these years. Finally, we gather around the tree and give each other one gift. The remaining gifts wait until Christmas morning.

On Christmas morning we open all of our remaining gifts. This is my dog's favorite part of the holiday as he loves opening gifts. He's not content to open just his gifts and will jump at any gift that we start to open. He's really not interested in what's inside, he just loves ripping the wrapping paper to shreds. Bless his heart.

Since I know most of you are more interested in what I got for Christmas, here's my collected list of gifts received from various individuals:

Sweater, shirt, GAP gift certificate (Damn Sexy)
Assorted 2006 calendars (keeping track of pay days)
Holiday popcorn tin (just because)
Cash (wouldn't you like to know how much!)
Two scarves (Damn Sexy)
Steamer (for my veggies)
20 piece kitchen utensil set (my roomate stole all my forks)
The Art of Dramatic Writing (I'm writing a novel)
Harrington on Hold'Em, Vol. 2 (I like Hold'Em)
Spider-Man 2 (Spidey is the Man)
Star Wars Episode III (the 2nd half is much better)
Star Wars Battlefront II (seems slightly better than the first)

What did you get?

The Name's Bond...

2005-12-22T19:17:00.000-08:00

You scored as James Bond, Agent 007. James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and is somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner.

James Bond, Agent 007

71%

Maximus

54%

William Wallace

46%

Neo, the "One"

46%

Lara Croft

42%

Indiana Jones

42%

The Terminator

38%

Captain Jack Sparrow

33%

El Zorro

33%

Batman, the Dark Knight

29%

The Amazing Spider-Man

29%

Which Action Hero Would You Be? v. 2.0
created with QuizFarm.com

PTQ and MVP

2005-12-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Saturday was my big day. It was the first day that I head judged a Magic PTQ and also the first day where I was the highest level Magic judge working an event (the buck stopped with me baby). It was an extended format PTQ, just like last month's, so there wasn't anything new in that respect. However, after the last PTQ everybody realized that a lot of decks stand a chance to win and so we had a whopping 146 players. That's 8 rounds of Swiss and a ton of work for just me and one Level 1 judge to handle. Fortunatley, I had help from the non-judging part of my staff (mega thanks to Mark, Don, Mike, and Ray). In summary, the event went exceedingly well. There were no disasters, no misrulings made (as far as I could tell) and most importantly of all, I didn't have to disqualify anyone.

Sunday was another big day for me as I got some serious time back in goal for my soccer club. Unfortunately we started out with a fitness test which had us sprinting back and forth between cones with the speed picking up after each round of three sprints. After I broke my finger in August, my regular running regiment went to hell, so when this test was announced I was less than thrilled. After two of the run levels had passed I realized that I had been on my feet for 14 hours the day before (the abovementioned PTQ) and it normally takes me several days to recover from that sort of thing. Well, not suprisingly I did a few more laps of running and I literally couldn't feel my calves anymore. No lactic acid buildup, no siezing, I just couldn't feel them at all and had to sit down. So that got me a bit depressed, especially since I was the first to drop from my group. Later on I was just plain pissed as the coach tried to maintain that the running exercise was 70% mental. That is pure nonsense. Sprinting is no joke. My friend Chris form lab is a runner and he and anyone else will tell you that you have to work at improving your lactic acid threshold. There's nothing you can do when you reach the threshold - your legs will sieze up and that's the end of that.

Still, it was great to be in goal again and the coach was there this time, so I got lots of tips throughout the night. My team was struggling in the beginning, but by the end of the night we were on fire and I had a ton of great saves (so I'm told). At the end of the evening, the coach came over to me and said I was clearly the MVP of the night's practice. Not bad for someone with no formal training in goalkeeping, huh? Or maybe she just made me MVP to make me feel better about my abysmal fitness performace. Either way, I guess it's time for this fat ass to head to the gym and get to work on "mentally" dropping some pounds.

New Toy

2005-12-08T20:09:00.000-08:00

I tend to not buy expensive things for myself unless I really really need them. A case in point is my tendency to hold onto laptops for almost a decade. And let's not forget that I still have my 14" TV/VCR unit that I got for Christmas 9 years ago. Not too long ago I decided to splurge and bought a digital camera. I must say I am loving it and it reminded me that I really like toys. Well, I've gone and bought a new toy. It's a Dell Axim X51v Handheld PDA. The main reason I got it was because I wished I had one when I was judging Grand Prix Philly. The format was Legacy and all the cards had been given errata which forced me to run to the front of the hall and look up card texts all weekend. But those days are now gone! I'm also looking forward to using the calendar function - I've reached the point where I have so many activities going on each month that I can't keep track of them by memory. I'm still amazed that I've reached this point in my life. Am I old now? At any rate, the Axim is super cool. It allows synching with files on my laptop and it has built-in Bluetooth so I can tap into wireless networks and surf the web and check email. Sweeeeet.

The Goblet of Darkness

2005-11-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

I saw Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire with my parents on Thanksgiving day. This was the second time I saw it, the first time being a midnight showing. Although I liked the movie a lot (it's much better than the book which drags on interminably), seeing it a second time made me realize two things which I talk about below. I can't imagine anyone who could be worried about spoilers at this point, but if there is such a person, don't worry - I don't spoil anything about any of the books in this post.

Disturbing Realization #1: The films are now a lot darker. I'm not talking about the storyline, mind you. That is darker, but in a good way. What I'm talking about is the lighting in the film. In this movie and Prisoner, there is effectively no sun at all. The days are gray and blue and green and so are the nights. For those that would say it's because they filmed in Scotland, well, this is not true as I saw behind the scenes footage and there was plenty of sun during the shooting of key outdoor scenes. A choice was made to cover it up. Case in point - the above picutre of Harry jumping is much brigther than it appears in ANY theatrical showing of the film). The problem with this is two-fold (three-fold if you count the fact that it just plain pisses me off). First, without any color correction, the colors for outdoors scenes are much more drab and murky than they would be with sunlight. Second, theaters have a tendency nowadays to turn down the intensity of bulbs on their projectors (assuming they're using projectors which a lot of smaller ones still do). The result is that the movie becomes even darker. For me and my parents, this resulted in my not being able to see the graveyard scene at all when I saw it the second time. My plea to directors is to not give movies blanket treatments with respect to lighting and color. The Lord of the Rings story was plenty dark at times, but that didn't mean you couldn't see the light of day.

Disturbing Realization #2: The past few books/movies haven't advanced the storyline in a significant way. Watching the ending of Goblet on the big screen really hit this one home. I found myself saying, "Hey! We already know all of this!" The fact is, after Philosopher's Stone, the books do not add any more pieces to the Voldemort/Harry conflict. The next piece we get is in Order (the upcoming movie) where we find out why Voldemort is so bent on killing the boy who lived. Then in Half-Blood we find out how Voldemort managed to not die from his killing curse backfiring. But that's really it for those two books as well. True, Half-Blood solidifes who is on who's side, but I think everybody can see this coming. So, it really raises the question, "Is Rowling just good at creating an entertaining backdrop and not so good at storytelling, or perhaps she originally wanted just 3-4 books and the publishers forced here to spread them out?" I hope it is the latter, and yet, it's arguably just as saddening. We seen this all before, though - The Lord of the Rings was supposed to be one novel. So much for creative freedom in literature.

Top Five Ways to Draw a Crowd

2005-11-21T19:48:00.000-08:00

I spent this entire past weekend behind a booth at an Expo in order to recruit new members to my soccer club (I'm the newly elected Officer for Membership/Secretary). Expos are pretty much like any gaming convention's dealer room or an exhibit hall for a research convention (as mentioned in my Nashville post). Basically, you've got rows upon rows of tables with people behind them trying to get you to buy into something or another. Hopefully when you're at one of these, you're not directly next to a competitor, but even if you aren't, it ain't no walk in the park. There are a lot of people floating around and, all things being equal, the majority of them won't stop by your booth at all. Let's face it, there are a lot of booths jam-packed together and at times they all seem to run together. This combined with the fact that the average person is well, average, means you may not get noticed by someone walking right by you.

I've heard people go on and on about how you need to have a good speech to tell the people that visit your booth or a good demo routine to reel them in or a great selling point for your product. Well, that's a lot of hooey. After careful consideration of this weekend's events and events I attended in the past, I've determined what the four most important things to have at any booth are:

5. Cute Furry Animals: Let's face it, we're all suckers for cute and cuddly creatures. The women will be suckered in immediately. The guys may resist at first, but on the second day, they'll cave in. They always do.
4. Entourage: Nobody likes a loser or a perceived loser. So, if you're alone at a booth people are going to think there is something wrong with you or be painfully reminded of their own lonely inadequecies and will stay away. To avoid this make sure you've got a posse with you and make sure it's full of colorful, humorous and outgoing individuals.
3. Eye-Catching Displays: If you're a white on white banality, nobody's going to give a damn. Make sure you have a colorful display and secondary props that catch people's attention. Things that move, even if it's a TV program showing are great eye-catchers. So are colorfully dressed members of your posse (as exemplified by the Pirate hat worn by Mark a few years ago).
2. Free Food: This should never be underestimated, especially at Cons/Expos where food is obscenely expensive to purchase. The sexier the food you're offering, the bigger the line you'll get (one booth this weekend was serving up free Lobster Bisque soup). If you can't be sexy (I realize not all of you can be), then be decadent - the average person has a weakness for candy.
1. Hot Guys and/or Girls: Hopefully you all saw this one coming. Having hot people at your booth is a great draw because it makes attendees forget about everything else that's going on around them and since you've been so good and read this far in my entry, I'll tell you one of my personal secret techniques that has worked exceedingly well. After the attendee gets over to your booth you can ask them to leave their email for more information. The key to getting them to sign is to say, "If you write your email address, I'll *personally* send you an email back with more information." (note: results may vary depending on your individual hotness level)

A Lesson In Humility

2005-11-14T20:12:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I had the opportunity to do something I've never done before - judge at a 40k Magic Event. I was a judge at Grand Prix Philly which is the first (and possibly the last) Legacy format Premiere Magic Event. Based on the absurd turnout of last years' GP New Jersey (near 1,000), the tournament hall for Philly had similar capactiy, but unfortunately we only had about 490 people.

Still, I learned a great deal from this experience. Being able to work with judges of a variety of skill levels and being able to work with judges that have not worked with you before is a great way to get feedback and learn things you might not realize you were missing. I learned more during one day of this event than I did at both 3-day Pro Circuits I worked this year. Of course, I was afraid that I would make a major mistake somewhere during this weekend and all hell would break loose, but that never came to pass. I did have one notable mistake where my training had me doing something differently than DCI policy, so that was a bit embarassing, but the head judge was totally cool about it and I'm glad that I now know the official policy.

In case any of you are wondering whether Level 3 and Level 4 judges are effectively perfect, well they're not. The legacy format had some thick card interactions and the card Humility offered a good number of headaches. This card used to be a disorganized monstrocity and now it's a highly organized monstrocity with two abilities that apply in different layers for continuous modifiers. Over the course of the weekend, even the head judge (a Level 4) mis-ruled on Humilty. Yikes! I was privy to an interesting scenario seen above and left. We have a Swords to Plowshares targeting a Creature Land, a Teferi's Response targeting the Swords and then a Wingshards is played to destroy the Creature Land. The Wingshards resolves destroying the land. Next up is Teferi's Response. Does it resolve as normal giving a card draw or is it countered upon resolution? I wasn't the acting judge on this one. The judge who answered ruled and his ruling was appealed. When the head judge came over I figured he would overturn the ruling, but he upheld it. I was surprised, because I disageed with them both. A few minutes and a phone call later, the head judge came back and said that the ruling he made was incorrect. Fortunately it didn't influence who won the match. So, yeah, I felt pretty good that I knew the right ruling all along. Ten points if you can come up with the right ruling.

On the last day I was asked to observe the quarter-final and semi-final single elimination rounds (you can see me in the picture to the left of Sonne who went on to win the event). I'm not sure why I keep getting asked to table judge the top 8s (I did so for both Pro Circuits I attended), because I'm definitely not the best at it. Maybe it's my dashing good looks? At any rate, observing (what I'm doing in the picture) isn't the same as table judging, but I did table judge the Grand Prix and it was nothing less than the final match of the whole gosh darn event. Sheesh. I *must* be damn sexy. Fortunately there were no mishaps and all went smoothly. The weekend convinced me that I defintetly need to pursue my Level 3 status and that is my aim for 2006.

Got Smarts?

2005-11-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has played soccer knows how frustrating it can be to determine if the ball has fully crossed the goal line. The combination of a 3D sphere, a 2D line and perspective variation (with possible obstruction) is just plain hard to handle. Still, players and refs have handled it for decades. Recently it was announced that Adidas, working with Germany's Cairos AG and Fraunhofer Institute, is testing and developing an "intelligent" soccer ball designed to end goal-line controversies. The ball contains a microchip that senses when the ball crosses the goal line. Referees outfitted with earpieces hear a transmitted beep once a ball makes a goal. FIFA, the international football association, tried out the ball in the Under-17 World Championship this year in Peru, and the ball may be used in next year’s World Cup in Germany.

I'm sure there are those cringing at the thought and saying "Why are we doing this?" I had similar thoughts myself, but then I went home this past weekend to celebrate my father's birthday. On the morning of this special day I went downstairs and greeted him with a hearty "Happy Father's Day!" He stood there looking perplexed and awaiting my admission that it was a silly joke on my part. Sadly it was no joke. I didn't realize what was wrong and my father had to remind me that we've already done the Father's Day thing this year. As if this weren't bad enough, when he opened his gifts and cards, the card from my mother read "Happy Anniversary!"

Today's world isn't the one my parents and grandparents grew up in. Apparently senility sets in before retirement age. Young, healthy men and women are losing basic mental processing and storage capabilities. The microchip in the soccer ball is only the beginning. It's a subtle way of pushing that technology to where it is really needed - inside my brain.

Webber's Wench

2005-11-04T09:58:00.000-08:00

I'm a huge fan of musicals. I started seeing them on Broadway with my parents when I was little (my first was Me and My Girl at the Marriott) and have been seeing them ever since. I'm such a fan of musicals that I can't remember ever seeing one that I didn't like (aside from those god awful Rodgers and Hammerstein bombs Oklahoma and Carosel; it's hard to say which one of these I hate most). In fact, 9 times out of 10, after I would see a musical, I'd go and buy the soundtrack on CD. Andrew Lloyd Webber is one of those artists who has never let me down - until last night.

I went to see his latest musical, The Woman in White on Broadway. In short, it was astonishingly bad. I guess I can't expect all his works to be as big as Phantom, Jesus Christ Superstar, etc., but putting that aside, the musical was still downright awful. The fundamental problem with the play was that it was boring. The music is largely uninteresting. There was one good song, but it tries to build itself up to something powerful and then just loses steam in a heartbeat. The casting is also annoying as two of the three female leads look a lot alike. I dealt with this initially until every character kept mentioning how the two looked alike. They did it so many times that they gave away the story's plot twist. Of course, all the old ladies sitting next to me were aghast at the twist nonetheless. The thing that annoyed me the most was how pathetic the characters were. I didn't care about any of them except Count Fosco who was at least funny and played with real mice and rats on the stage (see, I'm not the only one who plays with rodents for a living). The other characters were dumb as can be. The leading man literally walked out of the story for 2/3 of the musical because he was being given a hard time by the other characters. Is that how you repsond when you've found the love of your life? You just pout and leave? Please. When the intermission came around I was tempted to leave. I really did consider it, which was a first for me. In the end I decided to stay - I have one of these personal rules which is to always finish something I start, even if it sucks, that way if I'm ever in a situation where the suck comes up in discussion and I'm there, I can thoroughly and intelligently rip the bitch apart.

Pumpkin Carving

2005-10-30T20:16:00.000-08:00

When I was younger Halloween was a big thing. Running around and getting candy was like heaven. I never ate candy during the year, so when Halloween came around and I did actually get to eat candy, it made it that much more joyous. As I got older fewer and fewer houses in my neighborhood were giving out candy and I turned to being one of those mischievous teens that dishes up tricks. Of course, I was terribly bad at it; I always felt guilty about doing anything to peoples' houses and lawns. Of course, I feel differently now, but of course I don't have any desire to get candy from my neighbors now. I do miss the spirit of Halloween, though, which is even more nonexistant in the city where kids trick or treat within their apartment buildings and Halloween parties take place prior to Halloween. In light of all this I was very pleased to get the chance to participate in some Halloween festivities. Last friday my friend Rob and I went to a pumpkin carving party held by one of his friends. The party had a number of families present with their children, all of whom were carving pumpkins. On such short notice, it was pretty hard to find a good-size pumpkin, but I got a good-looking small one and managed to carve it up pretty well. The kids at the party all thought it was great. There's something adorable about little guys pretending to be wickedly bad.

Sexy (Birthday) Party

2005-10-23T19:48:00.000-07:00

In celebration of all that is glorious (poker, my 28th birthday, Stewie), I decided to hold a Sexy Party at my apartment Friday night. The night started off a bit slow with my calling Mike, only to find out he was moving inches per hour trying to get through the Lincoln Tunnel. Apparently this was not the best plan for entering Manhattan on a Friday night (who knew?), but his call to Matt for suggestions went unanswered (Matt did call back telling him that the Tunnel was probably not the best plan, but by then Mike was in a Gridlock). Amazingly though, Mike made great time overall and arrived before 8 pm (scheduled start time). Erich and Steven arrived shortly thereafter and then Chris and Bonnie. We held out a few minutes so Matt and Emily could arrive and get in the first game. Initially, I did pretty well in this game despite mediocre pocket cards. I think I actually doubled my chips by mid-game, but then Lauren arrived with awesome cupcakes and then Steve from LI showed up (it wasn't a 4 hour drive from MD like Mike made, but still, a one hour drive is nothing to scoff at...and neither was the Game Stop birthday gift he gave me).

My roomates Patrick and Ilya showed up for some socializing/beer and that completed the party. With everyone now in house, things got bumpin' and the temperature started to rise - literally. You see, my apartment building is a climate nightmare. Whoever designed it, created a building that traps in heat like gangbusters. In the summer it's sweltering. In the winter, it's still sweltering. With 10+ people in my apartment common room, it got hot real fast. Can you believe we had the air conditioner on even though it was 49 degrees out? Can you believe it didn't help?

With the temperature rising and 1/3 of the original Poker group out of the game (and starting up a game of Taboo), things got real ugly. There was lots of distraction, lots of joking, and lots of Taboo guesses like "Hayden's Mom!" I rapidly lost focus with the game I was playing and was staying in on hands like Q/7 off suit. The blinds were also really high at this point (because we wanted to make another game happen) and I wasn't prepared with how to handle this. So, I lost all my chips and moved on to the Taboo. Rather than have teams we just took turns having one person read the clues and let everyone guess. This resulted in a multitude of guesses that were raunchy and at my expense. I can't possibly list them here, but let's just say the funnies exchange ended in a reference to D.P. - to which Matt's girlfirend had to ask, "What's that?"

When it got late things wound down as people had to do various things before the witching hour, so we lost most of the gang. Still, we got in one last game of hold'em with a bit of a lower buy-in...thank God. I was dealt crap the entire game (7/2, Q/4, 6/3, 10/2, etc.). The blinds still raised every round and I simply couldn't keep up. The board wasn't giving me anything and people were pulling pocket pairs so that was that. At least Mike won that game, which in retrospect was particularly nice seeing as parking at the Chelsea Piers parking lot for soccer (what we did Sunday night) cost him $7.50 an hour.

So, Friday was a first for me. It was the first time I had a party where a large number fo my friends, many of whom didn't know each other, got together. It was great fun and my only regret is that I couldn't get all my local friends to make it (Dan and Greg were sick) and all my gaming friends from around the country. Had all of friends been there, that would have been unbelievably fun (nevermind that we would have had to carry people out on stretchers from heat exhaustion).

A full picture collection from this event can be found at http://singleh.shutterfly.com

Two Stars

2005-10-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

I unexpectedly had this weekend free to myself with nothing in particular to do. I was pretty excited about this as it hasn't happened in a while. I decided to head to Neutral Ground on Saturday and actually play some Magic. They had a release event which I played in, but being the first time I've seen the cards (I missed the PreRelease because of Nashville) I lost repeatedly. I dropped out early and BDM needed another body to complete his 6-man Ravnica draft, so I stepped up. I didn't know what I was doing and this was pretty evident to onlookers. I believe the comment was, "Why does your deck suck so much?" Well, that set the stage for some really sad news. I found out that my Level 3 DCI judge mentor got laid off from work. Given that there are zero pharmaceutical jobs in the NYC area it means that come 2006 he won't be around anymore. I've been judging under him for nearly 6 years now and it's because of him that I've been able to be as good as I am. I've been thinking about testing for Level 3 for quite some time, but always put it off; we already had a NY Level 3. So, things are almost certainly going to change. I don't know if the TO will bring in a new Level 3 from another state or if I'll head judge more PTQs, but regardless, I appears I can't sit back with my feet up anymore - maybe this is life's way of saying that I need to step up to the plate.

On the work front, I've been laboring tirelessly in an attempt to get the Specific Aims, Introduction, and Preliminary Data sections of my Thesis Proposal in an acceptable form. It has to be in NIH grant form, which was a first for me and explains why it's been so hard. Well, today I got the lastest version back from my advisor with only a few stylistic changes! In addition, the introductory paragraph got a "Fantastic!" and two stars (which is a lot coming from my advisor). I spoke with him later about it and he said that it was excellent and it was great to read - it gave him goosebumps. Go me!

Bean Town

2005-10-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

Continuing (and ending) my coverage of visits to cities I hate, is a synopsis of my visit to Bean Town (aka Boston). I've never been a fan of Boston, so when my friend Trevor said I should visit because he'd be at Wizard World Boston (a comic and toy convention), I was reluctant. However, when Triple G (Greg) said he'd be going up with a rental car, well, I caved in. How could I pass up an opportunity to spend a weekend with my friends?

The drive up to Boston was spectacular and I think Triple G and I made it in like 3.5 hours. The plan was to pick Trevor up at the airport, but unfortunately there was some confusion as to when he was landing, so we abandoned the airport in search of the original hotel we were to stay in. This hotel was found to be too far away from the convention center, but Trevor's product was still being shipped there (supposedly). It turns out it didn't go there, so we headed back to the airport to pick Trevor up. Our trip to the hotel emphasized reason #1 I hate Boston - ungodly, unjustifiable traffic. We've got traffic problems in NYC, but nothing like this. Later that evening we come to reason #2 - the Boston Red Sox. It seems like everybody in the city is a Red Sox fan. Why is that? Sure there are a lot of Yankees and Mets fans in NYC, but you'll see plenty of people wearing other team hats too. Not true in Boston. Well, there was this one kid wearing Yankees attire, but we agreed that he probably lost a bet.

Since Trevor and Triple G were occupied most of the time with promoting FMA, I had plenty of time to tour the convention hall. As you'd expect, it's mostly about nerds and geeks wandering around and buying comics and toys for their collections. I used to be the epitome of this culture when I was younger, but now, not so much. I find myself selling a lot of my collectibles because the prospect of having to move all I've accumulated is downright scary. At any rate, you have to love the intelligence of marketing in the comic industry. If you know your consumers are nerdy guys that can't get dates, what better way to promote your product than to have hot girls in skimpy outfits by your booth. I took a picture of two of them at the request of Triple G and then got scolded by him for not capturing what was (or wasn't) below their waistline. Now I know.

After a hard day's work at the convention, Triple G, Trevor, myself and one of the other volunteers decided to go to Harvard Square for dinner Saturday night. For some reason we couldn't drive there (the reson being that the local Boston volunteer didn't know how to get there by car), so we took the T. That is, we took it after waiting like 30 minutes. You see, at the JFK stop, the red line forks. The way it's designed, you have to choose a platform to wait on and hope that the next train arrives on the one you are on. Well, needless to say we chose poorly - reason #3 I hate Boston. We did eventually get to Harvard Square which had people loitering everywhere. We soon found out that it was because every restaurant had a wait for seating (reason #5 I hate Boston). After sitting down and running out of a restaurant that was way too expensive, we settled on Bertucci's. Like the pros we are we ordered way too much food, but it was darn good so no complaints there.

All in all it was a good weekend. I may not like Boston a whole lot, but at least it's better than Nashville...mostly.

Nashville

2005-09-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you that were looking for me over the past few days, I apologize for not being around, but I had to go to Nashville. I was presenting my research there at the 2005 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research. This was my first time in a "red state," so it was an adventure to be sure. So, for all interested - strap in because it's gonna be a hella long entry I reckon!

September 23 - The Opulence of Opryland

The conference was held at the Gaylord Opryland resort in Nashville. I know, try not to laugh, but that's what it's called. Apparently Gaylord was some wealthy guy. Steve T tried looking him up on the web, but details were hard to find. At any rate, the hotel is a resort to be sure. It's a fully enclosed mini-world with forests and waterfalls about (again, this is all indoors - think BioDome). This was all a bit much, but it was infinitely better than the country music singers awaiting me after getting off the plane and the shuttle bus driver that decided we should all listen to some sort of Bible-thumping fundamentalist...I don't even know what it was.

The highlight of the first day was getting to see the Vine Lady who strolled around the shopping area with a myriad of suggestive poses. I decided to take a picture of her and when I did, she mounted a nearby lamp post and proceeded to caress it, well, intimately. Apparently the lamp post wasn't doing it for her, so she approached me (email me if you want the 128 MB video file) and, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 24 - Wild Ride

What's great about the ASBMR meeting is that it's backed by a lot of money. You've got exhibitors pushing all kinds of expensive drugs and equipment to counter osteoporosis. To entice you they give away free stuff like cookies, frozen yougurt, smoothies, ice cream, engraved pens, and plush osteoclasts. Gotta love big Pharma! But of course, when the day ends and the exhibit hall closes, reality sets in. Chris, Steve T. and I went to Wild Horse Saloon for dinner on Saturday and the atmosphere was pretty cool, but then the line dancing started and the country music got louder and I began to miss the north something fierce.

The next stop was a little bar around the corner were Chris, Steve T. and I had some drinks. Soon after our arrival the bar owner asked if we could condense ourselves to accomomdate a "party." The party soon arrived and it seemed to be headed by a brunette. She had a bulky guy who looked like Mr. Clean with her and he dimmed the lights around her. Chris and Steve T. suspected the brunette was famous. I was too sick from the country music to notice. Chris then suggested I take a picture of her so we could look her up on the web. Well, that attempt failed (see Mr. Clean's intervention behind Chris). Chris then decided to be direct with him and it turns out he's super nice (and one of her guitar players). He told us the brunette was Gretchen Wilson. Gretchen currently has the #2 country song in the nation. It turns out, though, that's Gretchen is, in addition to being a red-neck, a bitch. She refused to allow picture taking or to give autographs even to two guys heading out to Iraq the following day. Still, when she saw me trying to snap pictures of her, she gave me a long, deep smile and, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 25 - The General Jackson

The highlight of Sunday night was a social event on the General Jackson showboat. Basically all the science geeks from the conference get on a big paddle boat and set sail for a couple of hours on the Mississippi. The key aspects of this event are the open bar and the god-awful dancing. Much to my dismay the open bar consisted of only beer. My attempts to swindle some vodka out of the bartenders failed and even Captain Morgan wouldn't give it up for me (rare indeed). So, I was forced to drink soda all night long.

Sadly, some of the most enjoyable experiences on the General must not be spoken of here as they may incriminate me and affect my career. Nevertheless, it was great to see Bob rockin' it on the dance floor and even the chair of my supervisory committee, Sandy Masur, was there. Towards the end of the night I was snapping some pictures and this girl (see right, the younger one) came over to me and said, "That's right. Now's the time to take those incriminating pictures of people you work with!" I turned to see her adjusting her camera phone to take a picture of me. Startled, I responded, "But you don't even know me!" She snapped the picture anyway, so, well yeah, she wanted to lick me.

September 26 - Poster Session

Monday was my "big day" as I present my research in the form of two posters. The downside to this was that I was standing in an exhibit hall for three hours. By this time I had also developed a cold. At first I thought I was just allergic to Nashville, or the south, or Big Pharma, but it got pretty rough and I'm still not fully better. The reason for my illness I'm sure is because of the wacked out climate control in the Opryland. Some rooms were down-right freezing and then you head outside and it's 80 degrees. Recipe for disaster my friends, recipe for disaster. At any rate, there was a lot of positive feedback on my posters, mainly from attractive females who...yup, wanted to lick me.

Hope you all enjoyed my summary. The next stop is Boston, MA with Triple G. this Friday.

Family Guy

2005-09-21T05:53:00.000-07:00

Some time ago I took a quiz to see whch family guy character I was. Well, I just recovered the result: