It's a tall order but we're taller

Sorry, this is a bit long, but I'm absolutely confounded as to what happened here.

I was doing a DNA extraction with phenol chloroform. The protocol we use in lab has us use phenol, then phenol:chloroform, then chloroform. When I got the phenol:chloroform step, however, I used a bad bottle, which only had one phase (the wrong one, apparently, although I still don't understand where the right phase had gone). I noticed that after adding it, it didn't separate into two layers (organic and aqueous, as it is supposed to). So I centrifuged it. No dice. So I took the whole volume and added the right phenol:chloroform to it, and continued with the rest of the extraction. This involves using isopropanol, then two washes with 70% ethanol. Surprise surprise, no pellet precipitated out after using the isopropanol. So I spun it down anyway, got rid of the isopropanol, and then added 70% ethanol and stuck it in the -20 overnight.

I came in yesterday, spun it down, found a pellet (yay!) and then decided to wash it again with 70% ethanol. After adding the ethanol and spinning it down, the pellet disappeared. I put it in the freezer again, and this time, there was no pellet after spinning it down.

Where has the DNA gone? I didn't throw out the ethanol from the second wash, so it should still be there, right? How do I get it to form a pellet again?

Any light any of you could shed on this matter would be greatly appreciated.

i carry your heart with me
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

— e.e. cummings.

Wow:

A new report released today by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows one of every five Americans watches birds, and in doing so, birdwatchers contributed $36 billion to the U.S. economy in 2006, the most recent year for which economic data are available.

More information and links to FWS data are at the link.

Last night I was forced into rebooting for an update of Safari and iTunes. Supposedly, a web browser update required the entire OS to restart (yeah, right). Since the reboot failed (I didn't have the time to waste sticking around to supervise a Mac rebooting, I was on my way out), it basically resulted in a denial-of-service attack on the entire wireless shared internet portal here - the mac is the nameserver.

So I'm reading the news this morning and as it turns out, Apple fucked the entire Mac family RIGHT UP THE ASS for no purpose other than to rape anyone who happened to buy a Palm Pilot instead of one of those crappy phones they offer - phones that would remain pieces of shit no matter how well Apple made them simply because they only work with the extremely crappy AT&T network.

So the reboot was really necessary as a way to disable hardware, and it was labeled as coming from the Safari part of the update instead of the iTunes part of the update to conceal the fact that this was going on. Assholes.

I miss the Apple of the late 1980s and very early 1990s that gave us awesome tools to use our Macs any way we wanted, tools like ResEdit.

Subjecting every customer to a corporate sponsored denial of service attack just for the sake of engaging in anticompetitive business practices is a fucking outrage.

Didn't Mac users used to whine and bitch that Microsoft's OS was only popular because they did this sort of crap? Next time I hear a Mac user say something like that as a means of suggesting a Mac is somehow better, I'm going to throw a fucking pie in their face, same as was done to Bill Gates back in the day.

From http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20090716/ap_on_hi_te/us_tec_apple_palm_pre
SAN FRANCISCO -

Apple Inc. has shut down one of the most compelling features on Palm Inc.'s rival Pre smart phone, crippling the Pre's ability to act like an iPod.

Users of the recently released Pre had been able to put music on it by using Apple's free iTunes software — a unique twist for a device not made by Apple. But Apple updated iTunes on Wednesday to block this feature.

Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr said the update "disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre."

Palm spokeswoman Leslie Letts said Apple's move is a "direct blow to their users, who will be deprived of a seamless synchronization experience." For a workaround, she noted, Pre owners can stick to the older version of iTunes, move music from computers to a Pre with a USB cable or consider third-party music applications.

The iTunes software smackdown is the latest example of tensions brewing between Apple and Palm, which since June has been led by the former executive behind the iPod, Jon Rubinstein. Rubinstein became Palm's executive chairman in October 2007.

The $200 Pre includes a "multi-touch" screen like Apple's iPhone, letting users do things like pinch photos to zoom in and out. Apple was granted a patent in January related to certain multi-touch functions, though the effects on Palm are unclear.

Avian Securities analyst Matthew Thornton said Apple's move to squash the Pre's iTunes function could turn off some people looking to buy the Pre, since they might have considered the device as a way to consolidate their music player and cell phone.

Still, "it's not like 10 out of every 10 people who buy a Pre are going to use the device for their MP3 player," he said.

Right. I hope someone DDoS's Apple's entire fucking domain for the next month or so. It'll keep those of us with Mac's from being attacked like this again, second, maybe it'll teach 'em a lesson. After all, It's not like 10 out of every 10 business transactions Apple conducts flow thru their website, right?

I have a web service that generates raw XML files.

I need this data in Excel.

If I curl http://fooservice -o foo.xml and try to open "foo.xml" in Excel, Excel pukes on it and refuses to open it since it's not an Excel XML file.

The only way I've found thus far to get the data into Excel is to do it manually. Load the URL into Firefox. Let Firefox do the graphical translation of the page from XML into HTML tables for viewing, then copy/paste the Firefox table into Excel. That works.

Problem is... i need a way to automate this. I can cron the curl call and have it grab raw .xml files, but I need a way to get them into HTML tables for Excel to be able to read it.

Any ideas? Help?

Update:

Got the solution:
curl http://foo.com//admin/tabular.xsl -o tabular.xsl;
curl 'http://foo.com/select/?q=SELECT+*+from+hardware&rows=5&format=xml' | xsltproc ./tabular.xsl -

why why why? miss you all. meet me on facebook. writing bug is crawling all up in me, so look for an update soon.

Has anyone else in here that uses Bluehost been having issues lately? Twice in the last few days there was an issue with my client's site where PHP seemed to stop functioning altogether and instead of reading the page, the browser kept trying to download the PHP file. This is a Wordpress-run site in case it matters. The first time I called them about it I got a useless moron who basically said "I tried everything, can't fix it." I called again shortly after and got someone who actually TRIED and said he'd put in a ticket and have people keep working on it. A couple hours later it was fixed (though I never got notice of a ticket). Apparently the same issue occurred again this morning, though it's resolved now without me having to call them.

This does not seem normal and it's totally unacceptable for my client who is trying to run a business. Just wondering if anyone else has had this happen and if I should advise my client to get new hosting elsewhere.

*cross-posted to webdev

The Night, The Porch
by Mark Strand


To stare at nothing is to learn by heart
What all of us will be swept into, and baring oneself
To the wind is feeling the ungraspable somewhere close by.
Trees can sway or be still. Day or night can be what they wish.
What we desire, more than a season or weather, is the comfort
Of being strangers, at least to ourselves. This is the crux
Of the matter, which is why even now we seem to be waiting
For something whose appearance would be its vanishing---
The sound, say, of a few leaves falling, or just one leaf,
Or less. There is no end to what we can learn. The book out there
Tells us much, and was never written with us in mind.


from Blizzard of One

Picture 1
Originally uploaded by greenchick

Sorry for the annoying entry, but: I'm looking for a quote, I think it's from a Neruda poem, something along the lines of "when my soul recognised something from your soul"? I've been looking all over for this & can't find it anywhere, but I could swear I didn't just make it up.

As a trade-off, here's a gorgeous poem by Mull poet Carla Jetko.

Advice to Virgins

When planting, consider the moon.

Trees : never place an oak and a walnut together.
wear blue velvet gloves to garden in,
Decorate your hope chest with origami birds,
Do the ecstatic hand dance.

Your roots go all the way down to zero.
plant horsehair in your bean trench to catch the cutworm.
Brush against the magnetic fields of purple sprouting broccoli.
To fulfil your desires, weave a hazel chaplet and wear it in your hair.

A necklace of violets is your charm against deception.
Feel the waterplant tides, xylem, phloem,
through the ebony of your otter hands.
Fatal to mint, is the ash from the fire.

Cradle armfuls of vervain for power over locks.
Use tea leaves leftover from fortune telling as a mulch for poems.
Pour yourself into the space between breaths.
Make wearing your wellies a walking meditation.

When planting consider the moon.

The Value of Modesty
Simeon Dumdum Jr.

As when a half-clad dockhand, blinded
By hunger, steps into the dusk of
A shack selling food, and while he
Trains his eyes at the naked girl
in the wall calendar, a woman
In a fresh and bright house dress motions
Toward the pots lined up below it,
Some of them without lids, and then
she warns, waving the flies away,
"Food's the same in all of them, but
Pot with cover will cost you more."

• Richard Metzger interviews Julien Nitzberg about his documentary film, "The Wild Whites of West Virginia" - Boing Boing
  (tags: documentary read friends)
• The Dead Weather, Recorded Live In Concert : NPR Music
  (tags: concert listen rock)

I posted an essay about the "Mysterious Russian Soul" a few months ago. My humble little essay was accepted for publication in a minor collection of essays in the Russian language at my university. I am supposed to edit it and submit it for final publication sometime soon, so I was hoping you could look it over and inform me of any mistakes. Thanks very much in advance. Read below( Read more... )

Is there anyone out there who knows how to drive stick and would be willing to teach me? I really need to learn ASAP. My fiance has a stick shift car, but it's rather new and he doesn't want to teach me on it because of the transmission. However, at the moment it's the only car we have and I need to be able to drive it. I would be willing to pay a teacher and I am available any time. Write back if you are interested. I live off of Lake Boone Trail, near exit 5.

Back to work again
After being sick so long
It was a shit day.

New Notes Feature
Automatic Detect Location
Pingbacks for All
Birthday Wishes

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When I am dead and over me bright April
Shakes out her rain-drenched hair,
Though you should lean above me broken-hearted,
I shall not care.
I shall have peace, as leafy trees are peaceful
When rain bends down the bough,
And I shall be more silent and cold-hearted
Than you are now.

-- sara teasdale, i shall not care.

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You--

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

Hi-
Helpful hint if you want to move to Durham- don't rent from Bull City Restoration. They claim to be lovers of old buildings and into community development. Actually, they do half-assed restoration jobs that do not hold up and they will act VERY cheap when you move out, making up bogus repair jobs and charging ridiculous fees for them. In addition, we were poisoned by carbon monoxide for several months while the landlord's son denied our furnace had a problem last winter. Only after the pilot light refused to stay lit and we had a real furnace man over did we learn how broken and dangerous that furnace was. The landlady has zero consideration for her tenants- she wants what she wants.
There are other rental agencies that rent out historic buildings in Durham for living in, I'd reccomend even Bob Schmitz over Bull City Restoration.

my father moved through dooms of love
E.E. Cummings
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