Broken headphones

So, as I have previously discussed, music is very important to me.  I normally get my daily allotment of tunes while riding the bus to and from campus.  I do try to respect my fellow commuters though.  Therefore I must use headphones to use whatever music playing device I have on hand.  I just recently had to buy a new pair of headphones.  This makes the 5th set I have bought in the last 3 years.

I understand that our current stage of technology pushes cheap and replaceable products.  That doesn't make this cycle suck any less.  At a point I realized that this break-and-buy method became a process for my headphone choice.  I first started with big flashy headphones, and they broke.  I then bought a pair of less flashy, equally as large headphones, and they broke.  Next up were smaller, weird-shaped headphones, and they broke.  After going through all these I bought the smallest, simplest set of headphones I could find.  To be fair they did end up lasting the longest out of any pair I have had (about a year).  But they still broke due to simple wear and tear. 

So, needing tunes, I was once again forced to buy a set of headphones.  I have now decided that my process for these purchases will be to find a pair like my last ones that costs the least amount possible.  Quality is obviously not a concern, as they WILL break.  If I assume they will break, then I can feel good about buying cheap ones. 

Connecting the world

I am still relatively new to social networking.  I started on twitter originally.  I got an account so that I could keep up with some of my friends from around the country.  Those same friends finally convinced me to get on facebook.  Before then I had avoided facebook and myspace and any other social networking site like the plague.  I had some idiotic notion that I was standing up for individuality by not signing up like everyone else (this mentality developed during undergrad, when facebook was just becoming popular). 

Once I finally got onto facebook I used it pretty irregularly.  I gradually got more used to the ins and outs of the site, as well as the proper uses for it.  Eventually it became my primary way of communicating with friends that I had developed here in Oklahoma.  I was also able to keep up with the lives of my brothers and friends from Purdue.  Thinking about it now, I realize that I have already started to take that opportunity for granted.  I remember how hard it was to keep in touch with my friends just a few years ago, and now I can stay just as close as they want me to be.



"Twitter is like being in a chatroom with the world, but you can only see comments from people you want to listen to."

A semi-unhealthy addiction.

Diet Dr. Pepper.  It is the best diet soda on the market, hands down.  I know this because it is the only one I drink.  I used to drink a lot of normal soda, but in the last year I have stopped taking in as much sugar.  To avoid the sugar I have switched to diet sodas but Diet DP is the only one that I really like.  It tastes as good as a diet soda can, but it does have some downsides.

It may not be triggering a possibility of diabetes, but the stuff is still full of preservatives and artificial sweeteners.  Those fillers are bad for me yes, but that isn't the part of drinking soda that annoys me most.  What really gets me is just how cluttered with soda cans that my apartment gets.  I am currently staring at half a case of cans strewn all across my living room.  Yes, this can probably be explained by my general apathy toward keeping my apartment clean.

Regardless, my apartment would look better if I simply installed a fountain drink machine...

Committee Selection

So, I met with my advisor yesterday.  He reminded me that I need to start assembling my graduate committee for this degree.  The committee has to contain my advisor, 3 professors from within the Zoology department and one professor from outside the department.  The outside professor is the only member (besides my advisor) that I have made a decision on.  I worked with Jeff Johnson at the University of North Texas last year; Jeff's lab was specifically created to process and analyze DNA samples that are more than 10 years old. 

The genetics portion of my dissertation work will be important.  It may be the most important part of my research scientifically.  I will be assessing the changes in genetic structure of an entire species over the past decade.  This assessment will give us insight into the past and possible future of the lesser prairie-chicken.  If successful, it will also show the scientific community that existing programs (currently used for spatial analysis) can be applied temporally.  This means that my findings could lead to some very exciting future research in the field of population genetics.

Fingers crossed.....

Teacher Appreciation Night

I just got out of teaching lab for the evening.  I have to say that these Monday night students are starting to shape up.  I am always glad to see a class of freshmen become better students as the semester goes on.  You can usually see the change as they start to understand how college classes work.  They begin to pay more attention, they ask better questions (or questions at all), and they can actually demonstrate their understanding of the material.

Tonight's class has actually been the best this semester.  It is odd to have a night class doing so well.  I have taught night classes before and they usually are just drifting through the lab for 3 hours until I let them leave.  But these Monday night students are outshining both my Tuesday morning and Wednesday afternoon labs.  I hope that this evening begins a trend for my classes in general.  I would especially like to see the Wednesday lab shape up...there is something off about that group.

Either way, we shall see, and I'm sure you will hear all about it...

Quick, like a bunny

This post will mostly be about my family, but I don't have a lot of time...so, it will just be a primer for later entries.  I am currently in the longest stretch of time I have ever gone through without going back home to Indiana.  My parents came to visit a few weeks ago, and I was very glad to see them.  But, man do I still miss home.  I haven't seen the rest of my family since January.  Within this time away from home I have missed 5 birthdays, both Mother's AND Father's day, and the birth of my newest nephew.

I am very big on family.  I have 3 sisters and a mother and father who all live back in the midwest (the real midwest...Oklahoma is NOT in the midwest) and I love spending time with all of them and their own families.  Our family get-togethers involve lots of incredible food, laughs, and a very high volume.  Most people miss "Mom's cooking," but when I miss that food I am missing the company and epic jokes that come with it.

Thanksgiving can't possibly come soon enough...

Life as it should be

I definitely can't say my life is perfect at this point in time, but it is doing it's best impression.  Sure, my schedule wrecks me for 3 days a week, but once I hit Wednesday night every week makes a full 180.  I love my current circle of friends and the community of nerds that I have fallen into.  I am very happy to say that my current situation reminds me of my time in the fraternity house.  I could never be as close to any group of people as I am to my brothers in Theta Xi but these dudes I hang out with now are not far off. 

We have such an amazing community of gamers here in Norman.  I love spending time at the shop (which is good because that's where I am if I am not in a classroom or in front of this computer), I trust the core group of people that hang out there, and the store owner is one of the best people I have ever met.  We encourage fair play, fun, and a social atmosphere, which is NOT what you get at most gaming stores.  But my nerdy fun isn't contained within those walls.

I am blessed to have a whole other set of fiends with which I game with outside the store.  This group is made up of people that I can truly trust and who have helped me build my life into what it is now.  Without the help of Ashton (especially, since he was my roommate for so long) Carrie, and Sylas I'm sure that I would have caved at some point down the line. 

Thank you guys, without you I wouldn't have reconnected with this side of myself, and would be much worse off for it.

Life is good.

The Science of Balance: Section Gamma

Today I want to talk a bit about this current semester.  It is already 3 weeks old and I believe I am just about settled in to the routine of my new schedule.  I have one thing to day about that new schedule: It sucks.  I do everything that a regular graduate student does on a weekly basis (minus research...mostly) in the first 3 days of each week.  I teach one section each day, I have all 3 sections of my 2 classes in those 3 days, and I have all my weekly meetings packed in there as well.

This compaction of activities means that I am constantly running around, both on and off campus, from about 7 am to 11 pm Monday through Wednesday.  The only upside to this at all is that I get both Thursday and Friday completely to myself.  I typically use those days to catch up on everything else (grading, research, homework, emails, etc.), but as these weeks have started to accumulate I am finding it harder to be motivated given the opportunity to just sit back and relax for a bit.

This is 100% me complaining, but hey, you asked for it by coming here... I made the comment several times on Tuesday that I was feeling much better about my week since Monday didn't exist this week.  Now I am trying to devise a way to make Monday not exist every week.  I will keep you posted on how that goes...

The Science of Balance: Part B

Today's edition in my multi-part series is about balancing fun with a graduate degree.  After recently going through the penultimate part of getting a Master's degree I believe I can finally sum it all up.  There were many points during my last degree where I slacked off a bit.  Figuring out exactly how to do a degree that is completely self-driven was pretty difficult at points.  But, that is really why I decided to get a Master's degree in the first place.  I have known for a long time that I want to go all the way for a PhD, but I also knew that I didn't want to go into that big of a commitment cold.  So, the plan was to get a Master's simply to figure out how grad school works.

Now that I have a 2nd degree under my belt I "know the ropes" and still want to keep going.  I figured out during undergrad just how important taking regular breaks is.  I believe that my learning how to balance school and fun is what has kept me from getting burned out up to now.  I think I may have let me "breaks" get a bit out of control during the Master's but I do have a much better appreciation for how to weave work and break time into one free-flowing thing.  I have already started to practice these findings this semester. 

I am pleased to report that the system is working, to now.  But I do think I will need a but more schedule structure throughout this degree...just to make sure I don't have a year-long repeat of this last summer...

The Science of Balance: Act 1

I had a fantastic talk with a friend last night.  My buddy Matt was in town for a fantasy football draft (which we were actually doing online) and ended up coming over to use my internet (luckily he brought his laptop).  Now, I have been doing fantasy drafts for about 6 years, ever since a couple fraternity brothers decided to run one during undergrad.  Those first few drafts (when everyone in our annual league was actually in the same state/town/building) were the most fun, because everyone was together and we could all yell at/slap/smack talk everyone else.  So, when one of my favorite people asked if he could hang out and draft with me in my living room, there was no question.

It was a lot of fun getting to talk football and make fun of everyone else and their terrible picks with Matt for a few hours.  Fortunately, Matt was in no rush to leave after the draft and we simply started chatting about life afterward.  He and I hadn't seen one another in a couple months and it was really nice to get to catch up with him.  We had both been pretty busy of late and, since his busy time usually kept him out of town, he couldn't come to our weekly card game. 

We also talked about that card game, and how that was how we had met, and how we met a few of our other close friends here in town.  Today I am still a bit baffled by the fact that something as simple as a weekly card tournament could have gotten me to where I currently am in life.  Before I started playing that game I was miserable out here in Oklahoma.  I only had a couple of friends, was coming out of soul-crushing relationship, and wasn't even sure if I had the chops to finish my degree.  After just a couple of weeks of showing up the "cool kids" started bringing me into their conversations and even going out for drinks after the games were over.

I am happy to say that those first few interactions have led to so much more.  I now have some of the best friends I have had in my life right here in and around town.  I have developed an enjoyable life here in Norman.  And I got my act together and finished my degree.  Life is going pretty well, even with some recent bumps, and I am in a good place.  My new friends out here have helped me through so much, even if they don't know it, and I can only hope that I will be able to help them just as much or more in the future.

Music as a Sanctuary

Music is very important to me.  My most practical use for music is as a personal divider I set up between me and the world when in public.  I just don't care to hear about the ongoings of people I don't know on the bus...and so I pop my ear-buds in and press "up" on the volume until everything else goes away.  This is usually pretty easy as my preferred genre is heavy metal. 

I love metal for its flat out, no holds barred style.  In my opinion it is the purest form of music, emotionally.  Generally, you can tell from a song that the artists were pissed when they wrote it, but they can also slow down the tempo and be "more expressive" or at least more comprehensible.  Regardless of the song, there is no mistaking how they felt, which makes the music very honest.  I am often asked why I choose to listen to metal, and my reply is normally, "Because listening to it is like punching someone in the face...with your ears."

There are other virtues of course, not the least of which is the way music can focus you on yourself and relate to things you are going through.  Taking 3 minutes at a time for yourself to think about life around you and your place in the world is a good thing.  My favorite quality that music has is it's ability to connect you to someone that you have never met.  When you hear lyrics written by someone else, in a different time, in a different place, that perfectly describe something that you are going through...there simply isn't another feeling like that in the world.  Simply knowing that someone else, typically someone you admire, has been there is a powerful support tool in this life.



TL;DR: Music kicks ass...go listen to some now.