I’m a huge geek, and what my geeky heart loves—in much the same way that a heroin loves their syringe, needle, and some good tar—is mecha. Mecha is often used refer to a genre of Japanese animation (anime) involving giant, and sometimes not so giant, fucking robots. Giant fucking robots are truly a marvellous thing that greatly pleases this blogger and one particular mecha franchise I love to bits is Gundam. I’ve watched most, but not all, the shows. Along with watching the anime I also got into building models called Gunpla (portmanteau of Gundam Plastic models).

So this weekend I got a very belated birthday gift that made me all happy and sparkly. Here is the completed model:

My lovely 1/100 scale Gundam Exia. Ignore the sexy shoes and bra, they're there as an inside joke

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Accepted

I got up this morning bright an early after 3 hours of sleep (entirely my fault)and reluctantly dragged my ass to work. I expected I would spend several hours sleepily attempting to read up on how to program something I was asked to do. I got a pleasant surprise upon opening my email, 2 of the previously mentioned abstracts that I'm an author on have been accepted! This is my very first piece of published science.

Needless to say, I'm now awake and stupidly excited

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Important life lessons

When somebody tells you that they know how to get to a particular address, never ever fucking trust them. What they actually mean is; "I've been there before and I know there is a right turn involved".

I think I just drove through every dinky, little residential street in a large suburb trying to get my friend to her relatives' house.

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Someone is wrong a fucking dumbass on the internet

I’m exhausted and I barely did anything today. I woke up, cleaned my room, and did a few other trivial things. Then I got on the internet...

...and spent a substantial part of my day arguing with misogynists on the internet. I don’t mind most internet arguments, but arguing with women hating syphilitic cum buckets leaves me utterly emotionally exhausted. I’m pretty sure this is partially to do with the fact that the arguments get pretty heated but are completely devoid of any intellectual stimulation. I like getting in debates where people can barely hold themselves back from shouting, but when the other side is can do is produce neanderthalic grunts about how poor, weak women need to be protected I lose my shit.

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Should I even bother with GREs?

For me, "more free time" usually means "more time to worry about the future". I have a lot of things that I've previously put off worrying about, but now I have the time to worry about them. I need to book my driving examination because my licence expires in September. I need go to an optometrist because my prescription seems a bit off. I need to learn a particular statistical test so that I can wave possible results at my supervisors and possibly move along the writing of a manuscript. But lately what I've been thinking about the most is GREs.

I need to do the General GRE soon, probably in the spring. That means I have to start studying and setting deadlines to motivate myself (I can't pick a specific date until I know what my exam schedule is like). I also need to start thinking whether I should do a Subject GRE. This is more problematic because I really don't know if it's worth bothering with. I'm confident that with a bit of prep I can do well on the General GRE, but I'm not so sure I can manage a decent score on either the Biochemistry, Cell, and Molecular Biology or the Biology test without a lot of studying. I've looked at past tests and the amount of detail that I would have to relearn is staggering. Additionally, I would need to learn about subjects that I have barely touched previously and will probably never really look at again in greater detail. None of this is that objectionable in principle, but the time I would have to put in is insane. It is especially insane when I my plans for the summer include doing research and taking a course.

Taking a Subject GRE seems even more pointless when most of the schools I've looked at in the US only recommend taking one but don't require it and Canadian schools couldn't give a rat's ass about GREs at all. What I want to know is if there is actually any significant benefit to taking a Subject GRE and doing well. And if there is some advantage, does it outweigh the cost I pay in time and anxiety?

Right now I'm leaning towards not bothering, but I'm open to changing my mind.

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Challenge

I've been keeping somewhat off the internet for the past 2 weeks due to assignment and exam insanity. Now, I'm officially done with this semester. This means that, aside from the 12 to 20 (+ 4 to 9 hours it takes to defrost the car, dig it out of the snow, get to the subway, and finally arrive at work) hours a week I spend at work, I'm free. I'm not quite sure what to do with all this newly found spare time, but I've come up with one plan to occupy some of my time: I'm challenging myself to make at least one blog post a day.

So far I haven't posted much and I've used the excuse of not having time when the problem is that I'm not in the habit of actually thinking about blogging or even remembering to post. I'd really like to get in the habit of posting because I like it and I have gotten some good advice in previous posts. So hopefully, forcing myself to do it for the next 3 weeks will work.

 

On a slightly related topic: I'm trying to find a decent blogging client. This is the only thing I've missed since I made the switchover from Livejournal* and I can't find anything that looks good and is free.

*Lies. I actually really miss the drama and the trolls and the amount of insanely stupid people posting

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