I can say, however, that the class continues to be challenging just to follow. I follow along with the gist and I can usually understand the really quick sentences packed with statistics-ese, but it's not easy. The book reading is also on the level of philosophy. I'll look at an equation for 15 minutes and try to conceptualize exactly what it means. When I've got it, though, it's much easier to remember or re-memorize.

The main thing I'd wondered about this week was the second Brain Damage class meeting. We'd been given three articles on edema (water influx into the brain) and possibly new treatments for it. Did you know there's a protein that actually transports water? No kidding. Won the 2003 award in Chemistry. So naturally, since I expected that we'd have a discussion--and discussion participation counts for 50% of the grade--I read the papers closely...and then re-read them all on the day of the class (Thurs.). Now one of my majors was in the Neuroscience department, so I have a good background in reading about brain stuff. Even so, alot of these techniques they mentioned were very hard to follow. The language was rough and mostly just boring or put in a really fucking weird format, but in the end I came up with same bad-ass observations.

And so when the primates class had ended and I'd learned a great deal about prosimians and the island of Madagascar (where many of the critters reside), I went toward the Brain Damage class in a fairly confident mood. When the actual class started, we got a one hour lecture on the molecular mechanisms of how action potentials (AP's) are propagated. AP's are electrical "messages" sent by neurons to other cells to get shit done. This is bread and butter stuff for any neuroscience person, you see, but our prof. went from the fundamentals all the way through. He did so at a break-neck pace. I could barely jot down the short-hand summary stuff, let alone the complicated explanations he had up on powerpoint.

Thankfully we never get tested on this stuff, and if I wanted I could check the powerpoint presentation online.

So after a 10 minute break, I expected us to bust into discussion. Not so much. What followed was another 1 hour lecture on one of the papers we'd read. He'd picked up on some stuff I didn't, but I got to see first-hand what a "class presentation" format was like:

Just explain the article in lots of detail. Lots and lots of detail, and make the authors' case for them.

So after class finished, I naturally went up to talk with the prof., since he's about 1 of 3 people on campus who understands what in the hell I'm studying. I asked him if we'd only have discussion when students presented. He said yes. Since I'd gone to all the trouble of getting ready for a discussion, though, I started talking with him about some observations. He seemed to listen and pay attention, a quality damn few people I know seem to have when I'm talking.

So I scratched my mental itch, went back home, then did stuff for several hours until open mic night. Xtian, Carolyn, her husband Will, and Jess showed up roughly on time and much beer and card playing was had by all. The acts that night were overall pretty good. There was the usual "I am a fucking old doofus, laugh at my good-natured stupidity" guy who purposefully can't play his guitar and uses a kazoo. I usually like his 'The Republicans are coming' song, but he'd changed some lyrics since it had started to become popular. Don't ask me, yo. The only major highlight, however, was this sveltly muscled young white dude who looked like he was from the islands. He brought up a pair of Cuban-African drums, big suckers, and went on a loving tirade about existence and how cool it is and how he's happy each of us can exist, where we can remember this night as an uplifting experience for years to come. It sounded so genuine and new agey that some of us couldn't help lambasting him..but in a playful way.

Then he started playing. Ye. Gods. That guy wailed the living hell outta those things, completely losing himself in the experience. He could shame Southern Baptists and revivalists with the trance he put himself in. Started screaming out words that began forming a song and just going all out. Needless to say we were impressed.

So after 2 hours, we all went our separate ways and I dodged back online to talk with peeps, do d-land chat, the usual. I handled a crisis, cleared up some misunderstandings not related to me, and thoroughly enjoyed talking to an old friend of mine, Rachel. Bizarre you might say: on the surface we seem to be two completely opposing types of people, but we've alot in common when you start getting to well water level.

As far as friday goes, I felt both guilty and pleased at not doing much most of the day. I still took care of emails, arranged a rescheduling with Sara (the other grad student in our lab) because of reason X, read some stats...but compared to last semester, yesterday was like a vacation.

I feel a little spoiled with this free time. I know there'll be more to do later and all, but for the time being the pace I'm going at is about right. Hell, since the Brain Damage class doesn't have a student presentation this coming week, I technically don't have to do anything. I'll still do the reading, though. It makes for a good break from stats.

And so far as announcements go, I have a geeky one that largely seems cool.

So as I've mentioned sometimes, I belong to a game production team that's been together for about 2 years or so now. We lost our original leader, had industrial sabotage committed by said ex-leader, went nowhere with two co-leaders at the helm, finally merged with another team in order to get new management in Germany, dealt with restructuring, and FINALLY we're back on track.

But fuck we were off-track. Out of the restructuring came some new developments, including me becoming the lead dialogue writer and editor. I'm the best person for the job at the moment, but it's a bit more responsibility than I was looking for. I originally signed on as a pro-bono freelance writer.

In short order, though, I've gotten things organized and taken care of developing logistics.

Now the only problem is my staff. As it is, I've got one guy who used to be lead dialogue (and ain't that gonna be a ham-fisted jack fest right there), along with a new recruit. I haven't seen their work, but let's assume they're competent. That makes a writing staff of two people and myself. 3 people. If we were all full-time this'd be enough. As it is, though, this ain't a realistic staff to take care of the 260+ remaining dialogues that need to be written for various non-playing characters in the world. Hopefully we'lll get a few more brave souls in the coming months, so that we can get an alpha version completed before the end of the Mayan calendar.

Another chink in the armor came when I was talking with the project head last night. He told me that of the old staff, I'd been the only one writing dialogues.

I was taken the fuck aback. I knew some of the others had been lazy, but NOTHING? I know at least one guy was working on a monastery setting, even if the quality of writing was crap. So as it stands, officially, all we've got is what I've written: 50 dialogues or so. Everyone on administration or the lead story board thinks they're superb.

Good or no, though, we're not making a demo until the game is near complete. I don't agree with management on this. We need a corpus of work to entice new people to come on board. As it stands we're just waiting for people to come to us. I do not like that at all. The engine we're using for the game is almost 3 years old, so we're nearing the point of being obsolete. If the thing ain't out by the end of this year or beginning of next, it's not going to get much press or praise.

On the good side of things, though, we've got a solid staff working now. The project head is also extremely committed, so I think this thing'll see the light of day.

I've yaked enough. I'm gonna go read stats now and have painful epiphanies.

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