Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel…
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out…
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this – all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice). If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat. Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required). Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years. You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the ‘mommy’ tape made from Lesson 10 above. You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

This is all very tongue in cheek; anyone who is parent will say ‘it’s all worth it!’ Share it with your friends, both those who do and don’t have kids. I guarantee they’ll get a chuckle out of it. Remember, a sense of humor is one of the most important things you’ll need when you become a parent!

The Human Genome project was completed at the start of the last decade, and only in the last two years have we really begun to reap the fruits of the immense undertaking. I talk about some of commercial players and legal issues surrounding the wide spread adoption of personal genomic technology in medicine at the First AMA-IEEE Conference on Individualized Healthcare blog.

Incidentally, I’m also on the organizing committee for the conference mentioned above. Consider attending the conference if you are interested in Individualized Healthcare!

First AMA-IEEE EMBS Medical Technology Conference on Individualized Health Care
23-23 March 2010, Renaissance Mayflower Hotel, Washington, DC

Currently going through hell week. DOE CSGF application due in about 5 hours, BME PhD Quals in about 9 days.. and currently in PHX awaiting my connection to Santa Barbara for the BioImage 2008 conference.

I however, just had to take some time out and write about how awesome the PHX international airport is. They bill themselves as the “friendliest airport”, and it really really is. They have really fast, and yet completely free internet access PLUS plenty of outlets! um.. now back to my fellowship essay.. be back after quals.

The Consumerist blog recently had an entry discussing the results of the 2007 J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Credit Card Satisfaction Survey. As expected, Capital One performed terribly, and American Express led the pack. What I don’t quite get is how the “Industry Average” beats so many banks. The only explanation I have is that there are a lot of small banks, all of which have very high satisfaction ratings. But then, shouldn’t J.D. Power at least make the bar graph more representative by showing the customer weighed average instead?

Consumerist also had another entry about Capital One.

Citing “Market Conditions” Capital One Raises Reader’s APR 4.99% to 13.5%.

I have had a Capital One Mastercard for about 10 years. My interest rate has been 4.99% for as long as I can remember. I received my statement for October to find that my interest rate had jumped from 4.99% to 13.5%.

I called Capital One to find out why. After a completely confusing phone tree and 10 minute wait, I got through to a real person who explained that the increase was not because of anything I did, but because Capital One made an “executive decision” to increase rates “for all cardholders” because of “recent market conditions.”

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Now for anyone who has worked at Capital One M&A, I’m sure this entry is just hilarious. For that matter, I wouldn’t be surprised if I knew who was responsible for this decision =P

If you are in the tri-state area and are in anyway interested in startups, definitely drop by startup camp this Wednesday.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007
7:00 – 9:00 pm
For Your Imagination
22 West 27th Street
6th Floor

About This Event
MatchupCamp – matchmaking for startups – is all about startup networking, creating a place for ideas and talent to meet. There are many events matching professional services to startups – this one will focus on those looking to get their hands dirty and build something new. MatchupCamp has the sole objective of bringing together people looking to start, expend, or join a startup in New York (and the tri-state area).

Peerdecision will also be there looking for developers. Drop by and say hi if you plan to attend.

It’s been over a month since I last wrote an entry, but I promise I’ll explain why in later entries. What brought me out of hiding is the (very much expected, but still depressing) news that the Canadian Dollar has reached parity with the US Dollar yesterday morning (Thursday 09/20/2007).

Many probably no longer remembers this, but this is actually not the first time that the Canadian dollar has parity with the US Dollar. In fact, in the early 1970′s, the Canadian dollar was actually worth more.

I was actually in Canada in the last weekend for a wedding, and was already feeling the effect of the rapidly sinking US currency. McDonald’s dollar menu actually costs 1.39 in Toronto! Though the wedding itself was a great deal of fun, but wow things are now expensive in Canada!

As reported by many blogs, a leaked copy of HP7 is now making the rounds on the internet. The leak is by no means simple to read or indeed complete. Someone has manually taken snapshots of each of the first 495 pages and the book still seems to have at least 1/4 left. The file even made a brief appearance on Oink.cd before the admins removed it.

Deathly Hallows Week, Day 2: News
July 16th, 2007

Update on DH Leak: I did some digging around, and the leak may be a real copy of the book. If the leak is not a hoax, it appears someone got a hold of a copy, is taking pictures of each page, scanning them and uploading them. I saw some of the pictures (without reading any words), and it certainly looks genuine. ..

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Update 1: Well, it looks like the epilogue has also been leaked, so I already know who dies and who doesn’t…. and who else ended up being a hero ….

Update 2: The whole book has been leaked.

Update 3: This is now absolutely confirmed to be the real book..

I haven’t blogged for a while due to a massive amount of work, but I expect to blog more now that I’m caught up.

It seems like the white house is now in a quite a serious bind. President Bush has once again cited executive privilege and refuse to turn over documents subpoenaed by Congress. This time though, the head of the senate Judiciary Commitee, Senator Patrick Leahy, has suggested that he is willing to press criminal contempt charges against Bush.

Incidentally, there is also a bill floating around Congress to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Why this bill has gotten absolutely no media coverage is beyond me.

Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances
by Dave Lindorff | Jul 1 2007 – 9:55am

The corporate media are disgracing themselves even further, if that is possible, on the impeachment story.

On Thursday, three more members of Congress signed on to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res 333), bringing the total number of co-sponsors of the bill to 10. That in itself would be national news, but there is more to it than simple numbers. The new sponsors include two freshman, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who ran for office calling for impeachment, and Hank Johnson, who took over the seat of pro-impeachment Rep. Cynthia McKinney (McKinney filed her own bill of impeachment against President Bush in the waning days of the last Congress), but the group also includes Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).

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The White House is practically an insane asylum at this point, the better question is why hasn’t everyone been impeached yet. Apparently in Japan, the public is so outraged with a pension scandal that the prime minister was forced to give up his bonus and take responsibility for the blunder. If only we in the US could hold our own government to such high standards.

Japan PM Abe’s support rate stuck near danger zone

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Abe, who faces his first major electoral test in a July 29 upper house poll, is trying to soothe voter outrage over mismanaged pension records, but the Nikkei said its survey showed he has failed to do so.

Disapproval of Abe’s cabinet stood at 52 percent, up 8 points from May, according to the telephone survey conducted from Friday to Sunday among 898 voters, the Nikkei said.

The government has come under fire after revelations that no proper record was kept of millions of pension premium payments, meaning some retirees could be short-changed.

Abe will return 2.34 million yen ($18,890) of his summer bonus of 5.36 million yen to take responsibility for the pensions issue, chief cabinet secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.

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Now, for a random but interesting graph:

It seems like Apple is reporting a triple threat this quarter:

• 30% growth in ipod shipments.
• 30% growth in mac shipments.
• Gross margin up 30%.

Even though apple still has some skeletons in its closet, Steve Jobs is definitely the man.

By chance, I was looking at facebook’s mini-feed when I noticed a comment by Lana Goldenberg.

Lana Goldenberg commented on the note Very Cool Seamless Pictures. 10:55pm

Lana
are you a fan of Escher?

Curious, I decided to click on the link and was greeted by the sight of breathtaking artworks! After some investigating, it turns out they were done by an artist named Robert Gonsalves.

I have downloaded some of his pics and you can check out more here.