I’m in Dallas for the weekend. I flew here from Boston after ASM. This year’s conference was okay. It seemed to have more of a clinical focus than in previous years. I went to several seminars on both traditional and non-traditional career paths for Ph.D.s, but they all sucked and none will help with the decisions I will be making in the coming year. My poster session went very well and I think I am close to punlishing the data I presented. I didn’t get much from the other poster sessions and seminars, but I’ve been keeping up with the curent literature pretty well while preparing my manuscript.

Kyllan and I are going to try and catch a movie or two while I am in town. I think the plan is to go to a parade of homes tomorrow.

It’s that time of year again. I am in Boston this week for the American Society for Microbiology general meeting. This is largest conference in my field and the only one I mark on my must attend list every year. I will be in meetings and seminars all day for he next three days and I have a poster presentation Tuesday. After the conference I am traveling to Dallas to spend the weekend with Kyllan.

I have a presentation today and just finished putting together my slides. I think I’ll start preparing a little earlier next time. I’m hoping to submit the data I am presenting for publication within the next month. I’m going to try and get a little sleep now.

Any time I am browsing through (main stream media) news articles and find a science related story I feel obligated to stop and read it. The effect of scientific studies on public policy has been an increasing interest of mine since I started graduate school. (Especially with stagnating research funding under the anti-Science Bush administration.) I didn’t find this article on a survey indicating 85% of Americans wanted a Presidential debate on science all that interesting until I reached the part on other findings.

Only 19% say it is acceptable for elected officials to hold back or alter scientific reports if they conflict with their own views

What? Only 19%? Only 19!?! I had to look at that sentence for moment just to make sure I was reading it correctly. I don’t even know what to say about this. The lack of logic hurts my brain.

From the Press Release

I am finally “all but done.” Usually this means that a graduate student is done with course work and can focus on research for the rest of their graduate career. It also means that they have officially been admitted to candidatecy. (If you want to get all philosophical, it marks the transition from a consumer of knowledge to a producer of knowledge.) Me? I’ve been done with course work for a long time, but two transfers, a hurricane, a “special student admission” and a laboratory move created a unique situation. It doesn’t matter now. Simply put, it’s all downhill from here. Pretty soon I will sit down with a committee and we will determine just how much more data I need to graduate.

For those that don’t know, here is the story. I transfered from Cornell before reaching the point I could take their exam. At TU I was missing one course; It ended the semester before I arrived and was only offered every other year. Hurricane Katrina hit at the beginning of the semester the next time it was offered. I finished my course work at UT Southwestern, where my lab temporarily setup after Katrina. A year later, after returning to a barely functioning TU that had completely restructured its’ graduate program and couldn’t decide how to proceed with qualifying exams, my lab moved to UCHSC. As a condition of my transfer to UCHSC, I had to take their exam, which consisted of two parts: a written exam based on coursework and a grant proposal and defense. The fact that I didn’t actually take any of their coursework only made it more interesting. I took the written portion this past summer and defended my proposal this past Friday.

As my beautiful wife informed you, this past weekend I attended a conference in the middle of nowhere. (Nowhere as in 22 miles up a dirt road to 9,000 feet to sleep in a cabin.) It was a regional meeting for the Rocky Mountain Virology Club and The Rocky Mountain branch of the American Society of Microbiology. I gave an oral presentation detailing my recent work in the lab, that apparently went over very well. After the conference I hiked about 4 miles and up another 1,000 to see the wreckage of a B-17 that crashed in 1943. Pictures can be found on my flickr account.

I really meant to make a post on 7/7/07. I was going to tell everyone how it had been such a lucky week for the Cody family. For those who missed it, the 2nd was my mother’s last chemo treatment. On the 6th I found out that I passed my qualifying exam at Colorado. For those that don’t know, I transfered from Tulane to Colorado (it’s just easier now that the lab is here). Passing their exam was a condition of the transfer and I was a little nervous about it, considering that I hadn’t taken a course from any of the professors giving it. I had been waiting for about 20 days to hear back from the university. (If you don’t know what the qualifying exam is, you can think of it like boards for a physician or the bar for lawyers).

Kyllan and I saw “knocked up,” “Oceans’ 13″ and “Transformers” in the theaters and watched “Music and Lyrics” and “Stomp the Yard” on DVD while was in town. “Knocked up” was hilarious. It’s been a long time since I laughed that hard in a theater. I thought “Oceans’ 13″ was just barely just okay, but Kyllan liked it. “Transformers” was a little campy, but I still found it very entertaining. “Music & Lyrics” was formulaic, but not necessarily predictable. For a chic flick, it was pretty good. “Stomp the Yard” was horrible. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give it a 0.5 (p<.001). I would tell you why it is so bad, but it is not worth my time to even type it out.

It's back to work this week. I've been having some success in the lab recently. With the new found motivation that has come with knowing the exam is behind me, hopefully I will experience some more.

Below is the mandatory photo from our trip. It is a picture of the board game "Scene It," which I beat Kyllan at three times in a row. More photos of the trip are on my flickr, including a couple of my nephew Drew, who told his Aunt KyKy that the two of them had brown thumbs and I had yellow… He later asked me if I was white..

So, I am back from ASM. If you don’t know, ASM stands for the “American Society for Microbiology.” What I am referring to is the ASM general meeting. Last year I had a great time. This year, it was just okay. Seminars, symposiums, keynote speakers, posters… all the same things went on, but they just weren’t as enlightening as last year. I also think think the organization wasn’t so great this year. The Pseudomonas talks were scheduled at the same time as the majority of the Pseudomonas posters. Those were the two things I was looking forward to the most, but I didn’t have enough time for them both. Also, me and the PI got stuck with a Friday morning poster presentation date. Friday is the last day of the conference and is always poorly attended. Last year, we held court and had a lot of interesting discussions about our posters. This year, we spoke briefly to the people that trickled by. Overall it was still worth going. It’s always interesting to see what other people are working on. As a student, it is always interesting to see what things are completely over my head. Next year it is in Boston. (Sorry, no pictures.)

I am currently in Toronto for the American Society for Microbiology General Meeting. If you noticed the lack of posting or my comments the past few days, it because I was gathering data up until the last minute for my presentation. Everything came out pretty well and I am excited about the meeting. I doubt that any of you would actually get all that excited about anything going on here, so I will wait until I return to give a recap. I’ll be pretty busy with events at the conference, so I am afraid there won’t be to many pictures.

I meant to post earlier about the lab. How do I like it? I love it. I have no idea where the state of Colorado came up with the money for this place. It is beautiful. Core facilities, prep rooms, on-site freezer programs and I’ve never seen seen administration and facilities run so efficiently. I spare you the particulars. Let’s just say I once dreamed of the perfect place to do research, and it wasn’t this nice. Below are a couple of pictures of the unboxing two weeks ago. You would have to go a few pages back to find them in my flickr account. This is of one of our two bays. And yes, you can see snow capped mountains from my PI’s office. I will have to take some better pictures of the view sometime this week.

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