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Class warfare article; Why do I bother with Dr. Zivago anymore?; More photograghs! 2004-02-22 - 10:01 p.m. 
I read an interesting article today on the widening class gap in America. It certainly opened my eyes to why buying a CD would be better than, say, stocks:'Face it, you'll never be rich.' ---- Dr. Zivago's rampant idiocy and madness continue. A trend of his is to come up with a new and dazzling project just when we've hurdled over his last scheme. We already have 7 upcoming projects and a few grants that are on hold for various reasons. Now he's switched the game entirely. He wants us to gain electrical engineering experience. Specifically, he wants us to learn how timers, circuit boards, and relays work. Why this magical jump into this utterly fucking arbitrary magical mystery bus? First, it's Dr. Ziv; he prides himself on being utterly fucking arbitrary. Besides that, though, we have a glucose project that needs lots of hardware to function--that old school, circuit board type of hardware. I could kinda sorta understand if we had no functioning hardware. Thing is, though, we can get glucose-lick readigns of 8 rats at a time--and that's just fine and dandy for our purposes. But obviously not for Dr. Ziv. For some reason he wants to get a second switchboard working. I guess he wants to do 16 rats at a time. I also guess he's just desperate to throw work at us. Of course, who is supposed to blaze this new educational trail inside this magical mystery bus? Yeah, me. After all, I have no electrical engineering experience, no related physics background, and very little inclination to learn about the stuff. My mother's grandfather was a superb electrical engineer, though, so the genes for it are somewhere. And I'll goddamn well need them, too. Why? Well, just for some twisted pleasure, here's one of my reference sites: The guy had me won at, "Now, you should remember from your basic electronics course that..." I'll admit that I got several piece-meal explanations about what each of those symbols means, but I have no idea what the logic of creating a circuit board is. I have almost next to no idea what I'm doing. So, for tomorrow, I'm supposed to come up with a circuit board diagram for connecting that 8-pin '555 timer' to a 4-pin '255 relay chip'--and make it a .PDF document so Professor Fuckhead doesn't look at it for one second, wave his hand around, and grunt about not seeing it because the asshole left his glasses downstairs, again, during a lab meeting. Fortunately, though, I finally got some help. I tooled around some websites and found a schematic that will probably do what it is Dr. Ziv wants. I modified it alot so it'd kinda look like you could just slap it on a circuit board. He'll probably throw a tantrum about it, but I'll kindly remind him of a few basic facts: 1) I'm a fucking psychologist. I was trained to study behavior. I have as much business screwing with electronics as he does free-basing while dropping acid at a desert rave. 2) He wasn't exactly Dr. Clarity when he chicken-scratched how to set-up a circuit board diagram. I had a fart, a prayer and some web pages to build an electronics temple in a weekend. ---- But I'm largely cool with all that shit. I've got my acceptance letter from Dr. Crisco at Madison. I've already decided there isn't a fucking chance in hell I'm staying with Dr. Zivago; it'd be career suicide, and I'd probably end up maiming the man out of sheer frustration. You might ask why I'm still doing stuff at Ziv's lab, then. While I basically pay 40 bucks a week for the privilege of running his lab, it is damned impressive looking on a resume. More importantly, I can squeeze myself onto whatever papers and posters the undergrads do. Come to think of it, I can also doctor up those results from 1986 and make it look like they're from 2003. Dr. Ziv already said I could author that paper. Still, this electronics thing was unexpected. One thing I'll say for volunteering for Dr. Zivago's lab ('Discordia'): it's never the same day twice. That goes for an agenda, too. ---- Yes, new stuff! And I'm even getting re-involved in the DA comunity. Aren't you proud? Ok ok, the photos, I know.. Comment: This was from my Huntington Beach photo trip. I couldn't find the on-shore refineries, and the off-shore refineries didn't take well--even with the moon to accent them. When I was walking back, though, I meandered through a mostly full parking lot, near around a bar. And there he was: skull with a cellphone. I had to set up shop and get him. Eerie as hell, no? Comment: Very different from my usual stuff is what a few people have said. First, this a day shot and it doesn't rely on color as much as texture and perspective. I actually wanted to focus on the nails more. That bright patch was unintentional. Still, I think it's kinda cool. Comment: Remember that time I said I was thinking about going to the City of Industry? Well, I ended up kinda sorta near it. I drove for about 40 minutes trying to find the refineries and urban decay, but I didn't see much of anything. When I looped back around to where the 60-E is, though, I found a freeway overpass for pedestrians. I decided to check it out. This one is pretty basic, follows my usual style of taking things at a slant to achieve depth. Tell me what you think about them. If you just like them, cool. If you have anything specific to say, that's great too. |
