18 people who are about to have a really bad day

Saw this earlier on facebook and I cannot stop laughing.
http://www.pleated-jeans.com/2012/12/28/18-people-who-are-about-to-have-a-really-bad-day/

The Oscars/Academy Awards

So I caught the last half hour of the Oscars (Academy Awards?) although I am very confused what to call them now. I thought I had all the award ceremonies sorted out but apparently I do not. Anyone my point is I caught the last half hour of this award show about movies after I threw in the towel studying for my test. I was pretty pleased to see I managed to catch the only 3 awards I really was interested in which were best actor, best actress, and best picture. I was pretty pleased with each of the results. Jennifer Lawerence won Best Actress for Silver Lining's Playbook which I saw last Sunday and thought was a good movie and a good choice for the award. Daniel Day Lewis won Best Actor for Lincoln which I'm sure we all saw coming. He was very good in the movie and it was unfortunate for some other great performances this year that they happened to be on the same year. He also had a very funny acceptance speech joking about having originally been cast as Margaret Thatcher or having to convince Spielberg that the movie shouldn't be a musical. The result that pleased me the most was Argo winning Best Picture. I have seen it twice now and I think the movie is fantastic. Obviously it isn't 100% accurate as movies never are but I don't really see the need for all the blogger haters out there on the movie. The movie takes place in a rough time in our history and it has a fantastic story and lot's of drama. Honestly you know it's a great movie when you know the ending to the story but the story still keeps you on the edge of your seat the entire time it's happening. It's also nice to see a movie in the day and age of blood and gore (example Django Unchained) that can have high drama but really no violent scenes. Very pleased to see Ben Afleck win this award and George Clooney was involved along with some other great people. I have tremendous respect for both Ben Afleck and George Clooney not just for their acting and producing abilities but the charitable work they do around the world is just tremendous and they set a great example for other influential people to do the same.
I have the time to write this in depth analysis because I am now done with my test and all my cell lines have managed to die :( so I am out of work for the day. I will begin remaking them tomorrow so hopefully I have not been set too far back but needless to say I was not very pleased.
I hope you all are well. And go see Argo if you haven't seen it! I also recommend Lincoln and hope to see Beasts of the Southern Wild (also has a tremendous back story with a young writer/producer and a very low budget making) and Flight with one of my favorites Denzel Washington in it.

More pics of cells

Took these this morning. The green ones are infected and I made everything else glow red. Aren't they beautiful ;)

Foods I Cook pt 1

Part one of my "Foods I Cook" series is one of my favorite. Swedish pancakes are essentially thinner pancakes but thicker than crepes (and much better). The recipe is simple but I make them and then roll them up and put cinnamon/sugar, a little agave, and some fresh fruit which this time was strawberries and blueberries inside. Needless to say it was delicious.

Insane body weight exercises

So earlier in the year I got a book called "Convict Conditioning" and started working out using only body weight exercises. The book taught a progression of body weight exercises based off the push up, pull up, leg raise, squat, bridge, and hand stand push up. I did it for about 2 and a half months and progressed a lot but ultimately I went back to doing some weight lifting and recently I have been swimming in the mornings as well. I came across this insane youtube video of a guy doing 43 (not 44) crazy body weight exercises that I would like to share. For the record I have done 19 of them and think I can do or quickly learn to do 5 others. My only criticism of the video is the missing hand stand push ups or bridges but I have no doubt he would rock those as well.
I think my favorite part of the video is the super fit looking people in the background looking on in awe.

Changing the feel of the blog

So lately I've been posting a lot of online stuff and less about my personal life. This has gotten some good reviews but I want to get more personal again. While my daily life gets pretty monotonous in grade school I've decided I will start some miniature series. These will be things like "places I've been", "food I like to cook", "music I like" followed by photos/audio/video, and a short synopsis. I will also try to do some more introspective posts but I like to keep it all positive (online and offline). It's gonna be big! Also if you are an advertiser stop spamming my blog. It's lame.
That's all for now!

A 15 year old creates a way to screen for pancreatic cancer

So pancreatic cancer has notoriously been one of the most deadly forms of cancer due to its inability to be detected early and its metastasis in early forms. This 15 year old boy has apparently discovered an incredibly cheap screen to detect pancreatic cancer at early stages. Here is his story.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnnosta/2013/02/01/cancer-innovation-and-a-boy-named-jack/

Liam Neeson

In reference to his infamous line "I don't know who you are but I will find you and I will kill you"

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

People are awesome

So I'm not sure who these people are or how you even get into trying some of these students but they certainly live the YOLO (you only live once) live style.

The Arena District

So this week has been a pretty solid week for me. I have been productive in lab, I got a good grade on my exam, watched some Champions League, and tonight I finally went to downtown Columbus (aka the Arena District) for a friend in the programs birthday. I've been to Short North a few times (a younger/hip neighborhood on High Street) and I went to the North Market when my parents were here but this was my first glance at downtown. Obviously Columbus isn't the biggest city in the country but the downtown is fairly big and I've heard lots of good things about the social scene down there. With a few guys in my program we went to Brothers which is a restaurant/bar down there. It seemed like a cool place. The area seemed nice the lofts in the area seemed awesome and it looked like on the weekends it would be a very lively place. Although after this short respite my semester will get very busy again I look forward to checking out the Arena District in the summer.

Not your typical Tuesday

So today seemed like it would be a fairly normal Tuesday. Woke up at 7 to go swim before going into lab. Went through my daily routine of lab work and homework while bouncing to main campus and back for classes and seminar. Overall not much was different but two big news things change the whole feel of the day. The first was known as today is the President's State of the Union address. After the election, especially in Ohio, I am pretty politically exhausted but I have decided to watch as it will come on in a few minutes and I finished my take home exam already. I think we can all recognize the downsides of partisan bickering but I wish all of them the best regardless of party or political belief as they all attempt to tackle the issues facing our country. The second event was the Pope resigning. As a Catholic I am fairly aware of the procedures that go into choosing a new Pope but not in over 700 years has a Pope resigned. I think this is likely the new trend we will see in the future. With modern medicine the Pope can now stay alive while in poor health for a very long time but would be unfit to serve or make any real decisions. It's really something rare when people step down from positions of power but I likewise wish him the best and his replacement as well.

Personal note from ER doctor written after woman’s death goes viral

This is a touching little story I found on Yahoo news.

http://news.yahoo.com/personal-note-from-er-doctor-written-after-woman’s-death-goes-viral-000236336.html

Champions League Returns

So since the NFL/NCAA Football are over, I'm not that into hockey anymore or basketball and all the leagues in soccer seem to be decided there's really only only sporting competition for me to follow (and OSU tennis but they lost this weekend). The Champions League is a Europeans soccer tournament between the best teams in the European leagues and now they are down to the last 16. Each round pits a home and away match and the winner on goal aggregate advances. This round (which has some games today and tomorrow as well as next week) has some very interesting match ups. Manchester United play Real Madrid which is fascinating because Real Madrid star Christiano Ronaldo used to play for Man United. Barcelona play AC Milan which is two traditional European powers playing early. Paris St. Germain, similar to the New York Yankees, play Valencia which is a team that sells its best players every year to pay off their debt but are still somehow a top team every year. There are several other good ones as well. My point is that today and tomorrow around 4 o'clock I will try to clear up my schedule to watch because if I don't there are really no sporting events for me to follow now. I will try to get some of my take-home exam done before this afternoon so I don't feel guilty about watching.

"The Ceiling Can't Hold Us"

So the last few months everybody has been going off about this Macklemore guy. His song "Thrift Shop" is pretty catchy but other than that I just figured he was a One-Hit-Wonder type of guy. Turns out I was wrong. I ended up downloading CD and found one of the best songs I've heard in awhile.

"Can't Hold Us" pretty much has everything I like in modern music. Well I like rap and dubstep they tend to either get too repetitive or lose the musicality and just focus on the beat. Here you have a guy rapping with a live band behind him and to top it all off an old school barber-shop type singer. The melody and the beat are fantastic and the bridge is pretty solid as well. Personally I like the trumpet and trombone in it. It actually doesn't sound quite as good on the recording as it does in this live video so I might download this and replace my version on iTunes. We will see. Enjoy the video.

CBS 60 Minutes videos about Barcelona

They are really good. Check it out!

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138328n

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50138631n

No hope for the human race

So another good facebook page "No Hope for the Human Race" has some pretty good photos. I woke up to this one this morning.

Buckeye basketball

So last night after our test (let's not talk about the test) a few of my classmates and I went to Chumley's (a bar on campus) to watch OSU vs Michigan basketball. I haven't really watched too much basketball this year but it was hands down the best game I've seen in a long time. Both teams went after it with tough defense and hard drives to the basket. OSU was definitely the better team on the night but Michigan made 14 three pointers completely shooting out of their mind and forced the game into overtime. The crowd in the bar was going pretty crazy it was a very fun atmosphere. OSU was the victim of a few questionable calls in OT and ultimately lost by 2 when one of the players was hacked on a drive to the basket but no foul was called. It was fun to get out and do something social the only fun things I've done since I've gotten back is have people over to my place for football. The waitress spilled salsa and guacamole on a few of my classmates and did not apologize or return to our table so that was definitely a dampener on the night but overall glad I got out to watch. Unfortunately I have another test on Monday and lot's of other things to do but I will take a break long enough to watch the US' first World Cup Qualifier in Honduras on my computer in an hour or so. Hopefully we can bring home a W but a draw would be a good result as Honduras is a good team and they will have 40,000 screaming fans there.

Superbowl Commericals

So this year I wasn't overly wowed by the commercials but there were a few solid ones in case you missed them. Numbers 4 and 3 of this top video were some of my favorites but the Jamaican VW accent guy was my favorite by far although I've unfortunately never met anyone like him in Minnesota. That video is posted below.

So the actual game this year was really good. It looked rough for awhile but the 49ers managed to come back and the goal line fourth down stand at the end of the game by the Ravens was pretty dramatic. Flaco had quite the game and but although I've been making the "Elite" joke (#Elite) a lot because that's what he's been calling himself I would personally have to see another run from him before I call him that. However last night certainly showed he had it. The the black out was pretty funny but after 40 minutes it got pretty old. I also thought the halftime show was the best I've seen in a long time, certainly post Janet Jackson fiasco.
Former Viking Matt Birk got a ring which is a cool story for me. He went to high school in the Twin Cities, went to Harvard, and then played a bunch of years for his hometown team the Vikings. He also serves on the NFL Players Union (or did, and I'm not 100% sure that is the name of it) so I think he was definitely deserving. Doesn't look like Moss will get his but that's the way it goes. And off course the battle between the two brothers was intriguing and obviously it was Ray Lewis' last game but I was pretty pleased that the commentators laid off those two stories once the game started and focused on the game. Now for sports I have the upcoming Champion's League games to look forward to as most of the leagues already seemed decided and maybe I'll start to follow basketball a bit more seriously.

Mike defeats MRSA!

So thankfully Mike (who is rotating in my lab) was able to get over his MRSA infection and as back in the swing of things. He spent the night in the ER and is on heavy antibiotics but his knee will be fine despite some nasty looking photos of the wound which I will not share here. The first years in the program were originally going to visit him but opted instead to make a card for him. I decided to buy flowers and a huge "Get Well Soon!" balloon to top it off. Here is Mike reading the card which had some rather quotable notes on it from other first years. We presented it to him watching the Superbowl at my apartment.

Here is everyone from the program there. Not the best turnout but we do have exams coming up.

And here is the balloon.

The best moment was probably when I went to Giant Eagle to buy flowers and ultimately spied the balloon and knew I had to have it. As I was checking out the clerk caught me smiling and asked "there's someone special in your life isn't there ;)". "Yes" I replied, "yes there is."

Big tennis day

 So today after studying all morning I drove out to the Buckeye tennis center to watch the #4 Buckeyes take on #6 Georgia. Just viewing the parking lot (I actually had to go move my car after doubles along with half of the crowd) told how big the crowd was going to be. I walked in to the building shaking because the team was playing some prematch dubstep similar to what my team would have done. I got a poor spot to view doubles but it was still great to watch. Watching the team warm up doing some volley drills was incredible. They had such fast hands and anything above their shoulders they smashed and rarely missed. They raced out to leads in two of the doubles matches and took the doubles point (doubles is 2/3 for one point in division 1) and were unlucky not to be leading on court two. They quickly won 4 singles matches to win the meet which was surprising to me. I ended up watching court 5 a lot due to the Buckeye player having similar characteristics to my game. Likewise his opponent spent the match talking to himself, arguing with the line judge, and at one point kicking over a chair. Oh the memories. The top court matches were pretty awesome to watch. The number one singles match came down to a super tiebreaker. The OSU player had a big lead in it but ultimately lost and the meet ended up 5-2 (#6 singles also lost in a super) but overall a lot of fun. Plus it didn't take very long the meet was mathematically over in 2:20 although I stayed for another twenty minutes to watch the end of the match. Now I'm having people over from my program to watch the Superbowl and were going to surprise my friend Mike who is now out of the hospital with presents. I will get a picture and post.

Doubles play

Warm up for doubles

The OSU player that looks like my friend James "Keith Stones" Hanson. He even kind of acts like him. I will get a better photo in the future. Also the number 1 player looks a lot like Daken Starkenburg and he even hits his forehand and serve very similarly. He does hit both of them significantly harder however, sorry Daken :)

No Superbowl prediction

Can't decide who I think is going to win so I am not making a prediction. I will predict that #4 OSU will beat #6 Georgia in tennis in Columbus as I am about to eat and go watch that match.

Grand theft poultry?

So I saw this story on the news about how on Superbowl Sunday the most chicken wings are consumed compared to any other day of the year. Then I saw this story from Yahoo news about how $65,000 of wings were stolen! Truly remarkable heist by these two men not that I condone it but apparently they used a fork lift and a truck in a warehouse and got out unnoticed. Now what exactly they plan to do with these wings remains a mystery but I can only assume they plan to throw the most glutinous Superbowl viewing party the earth has ever seen.

Kohawk tennis opening the season

Best of luck to everyone involved in Kohawk tennis this morning! Start the season off right. Wishing Ohio was a few hours closer

3000 views!

Just passed 3000 page views! And my own page views are turned off so don't even try to tell me I looked at my blog 3000 times (Adam Becker). Thanks for viewing! I will continue to try to post frequently about any and everything that comes to mind. Except my daily life that gets boring.

Dropping like flies at the Wu Lab

So my lab, the Wu lab is now down two members. One of the post Doc Corine is getting her wisdom teeth out due to a check infection caused by the wisdom teeth and one of the rotation students and one of my classmates got a painful knee infection and had to go to the ER. This turned out to be MRSA which is a nasty bacterial infection (don't google image if you don't know what it is, trust me) so hopefully he will be ok. Also our lab technician mysteriously took the day off.... In the meantime I am exercising utmost precaution staying away from the HIV room because I do not want to be the next one to fall!

Comparing Ohio winters to places I have previously lived

Not too shabby although the snow covered library does look nice.