Catch-Up ... Again

Well a month or so has passed since my last update (as if anyone really cares), but there is a rationalized reason for this. Put simply my laptop died.

My old laptop has been naughty trying to get cancer, and finally succeeded . By this I mean it has been smoking... literally smoking. When I would insert the power chord it would spark and then release a bit of magical white smoke that smelled like burning plastic. So anyway it has since been condemned and I now have received a new laptop for my birthday (yes it was my birthday on Saturday, I turned 19 on the 19th). I have discovered some fun things about this new beastie. First off it has built in camera, but this is fairly standard now-a-days. Next up it has a nice little light next to the camera I can turn on to read the keyboard at night instead of tilting the screen down, so that's nice. The thing I find the most interesting is that it has a fingerprint scanner on it. GUESS HOW I LOG ON! Further it came with a battery extension allowing to run for about 6 hours on battery. Now I have begun the process of putting things on it.

Oh yeah, they can stand up also.

My reading list has also been modified since last time. By that I mean I finished my book In a Sunburnt Country by Bill Bryson. An informative book about the rich history of Australia as well as stories from his journeys to the Down Under. I rather enjoyed his quick wrap up of the animal diversity there, "In Australia, all the animals want to kill you." And this is so true. 9/10 of the most venomous snakes  live in Australia, the funnel web spider is the most venomous spider in the world, cane toads (introduced) can kill you with the secretions of the parotoid gland (characteristic of true toads Bufo), monitor lizards out there as big as dogs can out run rabbits due to a fun adaptation allowing them to breath and run (most reptiles can't because when they run one lung gets compressed as the other gets inflated). Box jellies are the worst though. They see you as flesh and that's all it takes to inject you with a toxin that will feel like putting your skin up to an open flame for hours. Or how about being killed by a snail? Certain cone shells in Australia have a venom that literally bursts your blood cells. So while the land may seem bad, the sea is worse.

After finishing that book, I read The God Virus by Dr. Darrel Ray. In the book he uses the metaphor to liken religion to a virus and uses numerous examples to try an get his point across. It was an interesting book, but I found that it he made his point rather quickly and then moved on without explaining very well. It felt more like, "Here it is! Get it? OK moving on." Rushed, that's the word for it. Don't get me wrong, I liked the book overall, but that just stuck to me.

Would you believe these are foxes? Breeding for tameness 

has resulted in secondary effects unforeseen by the breeders. 

I finished that book in about a week, I was proud of myself. Now I'm going through The Greatest Show on Earth by Richard Dawkins. So far it has been very enjoyable. He sets up the book as a way to, step by step, make Evolution by Natural Selection very straight forward for the general public to understand. That won't keep the public from trying not to understand though. So far nothing much has been told to me that I didn't already know, but it has been put in a very straight forward manner making it flow smoothly from one step to the next. I would recommend the book for those who don't already understand Natural Selection, and for those who already do it may give you some new insights into just how far reaching it's effects are on organisms genomes, even when selecting for a particular trait (he uses the domestication of foxes as a good example).

Now that books are done with, on to dorm life. Some may have already heard this but Sean will not be returning this year to our suite. In fact it sounds like he won't be returning until after next year. His plan as of now is to continue at community college and get a job to pay for it. So while he shall not be returning we must get a new suite-mate. So to fulfil this requirement we have recruited a guy from the second floor of our building, Tobias. We've gotten to know each other before this whole predicament and he didn't want to be stuck in his current room so we thought it a good fit. On to classes report.

So far I have heard back from the Anthro class and Math class, and they sound like B- and B+ respectively. Anthro would've been much better had I known the midterm was on Tuesday instead of Thursday as I thought it was. So keep that in mind, always make sure when midterms are the weekend before! Still need to wait for ECS and Dinosaurs. I'm hoping for B and A respectively. The ECS midterm was torture. Just when the prof says to not make programs overly complex, he goes and does that on the final... So dreadful.... Next quarter though already got my classes set up, and what a group it is, Chem 2B, Bio 2A, Wildlife 10, and Evo/Eco 12. Two of which I shall be taking with Charlie, and I think one of them with Tyler, EEB STUDY PARTNERS! What's also rather nice is the WFC class already has the lecture slides up so I can prepare way ahead of time. Finally on to more current dealings.

Finished up my last final on Saturday and am now in Bodega Bay for a week. Planning on eating plenty of seafood and expanding my pallet. Our first day here though and Snow decides to go jumping over a 40ft cliff. So yesterday was full of adrenaline and stress. Luckily she landed in some mud so it didn't cause as bad an impact. After rushing over to an emergency veterinary office, and having her checked out seems like she was spared from everything other than some bruising and a sprained ankle. She may not realize it, but she is extremely lucky after that kind of a fall. Hopefully we don't get any more nasty surprises the rest of this trip.

Some future plans to keep everyone informed on. These next few weeks I'm planning on using a nice website californiaherps.com to begin my journey on memorizing all the herps in California, their distributions, identification etc. Then I can truely call myself a (young) herpetologist.