Finally got my internet up and running. It was rather embarrassing having to call tech support because I couldn’t figure out the instructions for self-activation, but I’ve got that out of the way now, and will be writing up the details of my trip as I find time. For now: The apartment is great, I’m alive and well, and Berkeley seems to have more Indian restaurants per capita than any city I’ve ever visited!
August 15, 2008
August 3, 2008
Finished In Iowa
I made my final presentation for my summer position on Thursday. Here’s a graphic showing the distribution of sequences of interest over the rice chromosomes:
With that presentation, and the following day of creating readmes for my folders full of blast results, sequences data, and perl scripts, my summer project was wrapped up. My time as a visiting scientist/scholar has come to an end. (Though I still have the ID card to prove it.) Next weekend I’ll be driving down I-80 towards fame, fortune … and San Francisco. Looking over the route on google maps I noticed the giant salt flats I’ll be driving through in Utah. Hopefully I’ll have the willpower to stop to take pictures of that and other spectacular natural scenery (Nevada, Utah, Wyoming are all going to be totally new for me.)
The total drive is looking at around 26 hours, which I’m very tempted to split into two thirteen-hour drives to save on paying for an extra night in a hotel.
Whenever I do make it to my new apartment, there’ll be internet waiting for me there. I decided to go with AT&T’s U-verse DSL. Mostly I picked them because my alternative was Comcast, the company that’s been in the news lately for interfering with user’s internet connections, but it turns out there’s discount involved if I were to ever get an AT&T cell phone, a consideration my current envy of Monty’s new iPhone.