This Boy Elroy

Meme

I was tagged by Gooster to do a meme, here it is. I haven't done one in so long.

1.) What was I doing 10 years ago?

I was in my senior year of high school, had just broken up with my girlfriend and admitted to myself that I was gay. It felt great.

I was also holding a job with my best friend Heather at an animal kennel in N. Scottsdale where we would care for the pets of Scottsdale's elite. Some of the dogs of note were two Terriers named Gucci an Dior who ate a diet of cottage cheese, baby food chicken sticks, and bottled water. There was also the Dachsund, Ruby Selph, who had a condition that required daily application of an ointment to her vulva. I left that to Heather because, like I said, I was still feeling good about being gay.

2.) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today (not in any particular order)
1. Breakfast
2. Sell the condo
3. Coffee
4. Work
5. Work out

3.) Snacks I enjoy
Yogurt, granola bars, Chef Jay's Tri-o-Plex Chocolate Chip Cookies, Fruit, air-popped popcorn.

4.) Things I would do if I were a billionaire.

Set the family up for life with trust funds

Philanthropy

Travel

Save the Orangutans and Tigers in southeast Asia

Promote energy conservation and alternative energy sources

Go back to school and study architecture

5.) Three of my bad habits
1. Impatient
2. Condescending
3. Cannot resist clicking retractable ball point pens over and over again.

6.) 5 places I have lived:
1. Staten Island, NY
2. Scottsdale, AZ
3. Tucson, AZ
4. Dallas, TX
5. Moving to San Francisco in June

7.) 5 Jobs I have had:
1. Sandwhich maker
2. Kennel attendant
3. Lab whench
4. Research Technician
5. Research Assistant

I'm supposed to tag 5 people but I don't like that. Do it yourself if you like.

Show Jay Leno your "Gayest look."

There's no question that Jay Leno is a talentless hack. I never fully understood why Johnny Carson chose someone who had a lackluster stand-up career and who was more well known for hocking Doritos thank for comedy to succeed him.

That aside, Leno also seems to have a penchant for making horribly off-color jokes at the expense of gay people. So much that it prompted he creator of Avenue Q and author of the blog Whitless, Jeff Whitty, to write a letter to Leno after he asked Ryan Phillipe to show him and the audience his "gayest look." You can read brilliantly penned letter here.

Related to the photo at the end of Whitty's open letter to leno, another blogger and self described "Huge Bitch," Melissa McEwan, started the blog My Gayest Look, a place where anyone can take a simple snapshot of themselves so they may show Jay, and the world, their gayest look.

Here's mine:

Neverland in decay

Builder's Plate for Bumper Cars
Originally uploaded by TunnelBug.

I was reading Homotron.net and came across some photos taken last week at Michael Jacksons famed Neverland Ranch. The ranch has been more or less abandoned for some time now and is set to be auctioned off. Before the auction there was a public viewing of the property and the proprietor of the blog Bearings: A Geographer's Blog took some eerily beautiful photographs of the property in it's current state.

When you think about the backstory of how this place came to be and where it is now, and the man behind it all...it's like a Tim Burton Citizen Kane.

The Anna Madrigal School for Biochemistry

Because there's absolutely nothing going on in my life right now I was going to post an American Idol video showing a recent contestant doing a superb cover of Billie Jean. However, there are things that can top even that fine performance.

I present to you a video from 1971, a musical psychotropic happening representing protein synthesis inside a cell. Skip forward to 3:30 to avoid scientific explanation, or listen and learn.

I did something similar in college actually. In immunology our professor choreographed the class in a dance that represented the V(D)J recombination that occurs in our DNA in B Cells so that we may develop a diverse repetoire of antibodies against bacteria, viruses, cancer cells and other antigens. I never forgot that dance, and I never forgot my V(D)J recombination.

Found through Cynically Optimistic.

Aw buttons!

Brad was in L.A. this past weekend and came home with some souvenirs, three new buttons for my hat.

They're so perfect! I love them all but "Trophy" wife is probably my favorite.

The Hello Kitty button was given to me in June by Kalvin.

Update: I squinted hard enough and was able to read the web address on the buttons, JaneJenni.com.

Bill Clinton knows what's best for gays.

Bill Clinton: Will there be more or fewer gay couples free of harassment if the law is that every gay couple could go to Massachusetts and marry would then have to be recognized in Utah?

Interviewer: When is that going to change though if you're not willing to set a firm stance in either for or against it?

Bill Clinton: So you don't care what the practical implications are?

Well I don't think that needs any explanation, Bill was good enough to be blatant about his political skullduggery. Wow, what a champion of gay people!

Working from home.

I didn't buy a MacBook Pro. I did take the work MacBook Pro home this weekend to do work because of a looming deadline. The deadline is my own though and it's a month in advance of the real deadline. I like to have things ready early so finishing touches can be made not in a last-minute frenzy.

Typically, working from home is not an option for someone like me who is working on a lab bench with blood and who uses sophisticated instrumentation that requires large footprints of space and abnormally large voltage requirements. Now I know some of you may have seen "I Am Legend," and you saw the lab that Will Smith's character had in the basement of his Washington Square townhome in a post-apocolytic New York city and you're saying to yourself, "Maybe you're not trying hard enough Adam." That aside, when I've heard about people working from home and always thought that it would never work for me, too many distractions. However, this weekend I surprised myself with productivity I never knew I could achieve. Even with episodes of Arrested Development (provided by Hulu) playing in the corner of the screen I was able to finish more analysis in one night that I usually finish in two days at work. I pondered that for a moment and I thought about what made home a more productive environment.

Biggest advantage to being at home I think is that I'm not stuck in a coffin-like cube. Seriously, my cube at work is more like a slip for a toy boat. I often feel like a lion in a cage, needing several breaks a day to get up and walk around. One of the things I'm really looking forward to at my new job is the open office layout it has, now more sardine-tin cube.

There is natural light at home. The office that my cube is in has the worst lighting ever and the only sunlight we get comes in the afternoon blasting directly onto my computer so the blinds must be shut so I can continue working or they stay open and I cannot see my screen. With the blinds shut the office becomes a cave and not conducive to work. If I were staying I'd ask to move to another office.

There are no interruptions at home. If it isn't my crazy boss telling me something insanely personal because she has no one else to talk to, it's a colleague asking me questions about how to do "blah blah blee bloo." I want to be collegial and all but I get interrupted so many times a day I feel like most of my time is spent walking to and from my coffin-like cube.

This won't be a regular thing for me by any means but seeing as I need to finish up a lot of analysis before I leave I may ask my boss if I can work from home a few days so I can make more progress finishing up.

Under Barack Obama

I'm so amused by this.

The guy who plays Obama is very attractive IMO.

BSG - S4

This photo makes me giddy as a school boy.

In the Wired article that this photo accompanied one of the cast member let it slip that "Hillary's the final Cylon." Who said there's no truth on TV?

If you're a fan be sure to check out Letterman tonight, the cast will be presenting the "Battlestar Galactica" Top Ten.

Found through Justin

Nerds, Salute!

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars... A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

-Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke, futurist, author, and inventor, died March 19, 2008. Most know of him from his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was brought to the screen by director Stanely Kubrick.

His biggest impact was his promotion of the once fantastical idea of geostationary satellites for telecommunications, laying the groundwork for modern telecommunication. His proposal was first published in 1945 in Wireless World magazine and was considered nonsense. As of March 11, 2008 there are 359 satellites in what is now known as the Clarke Orbit (list of geostationary satellites). How's that for being vindicated.