A Christmas Miracle!

So, tonight we went to the store for this:



But came home with this:



Only a dollar a bag! Merry Christmas to ME!

Med School update

The semester finally finished, so I can give some attention to my poor little blob. A lot has happened since last update post, here's the skinny: Went to Ohio State, was very impressed, the interviews went well. Two weeks later I heard back from them--I got accepted! This was a huge weight off my shoulders because now I know that I will be going to med school now no matter what. All that remains to be seen is where.

I interviewed last Thursday with Duke via Skype. Kind of a strange experience having the interview by online video conference, but it actually worked out pretty well. I spoke with the assistant dean of admissions for an hour and forty minutes, and it was a great conversation. I felt like we got along well and that I was able to respond well to the questions he asked me.

I also found out last week that OHSU (Oregon) would like to interview me in January. More to come on that. Still no word from Stanford and Johns Hopkins, nor any further word from Utah. Chances are I'll be hearing back with decisions from Utah and Duke at the end of February or early March.

This one's for Christian

(He's a theater/media arts major)

(h/t to graphjam.com)

Where I'm at application-wise

So, I ended up applying initially to 9 schools: Washington, Oregon, Stanford, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, Ohio State, Johns Hopkins, and Duke. All but Washington asked for a secondary application (no big surprise as I have no ties to the state). I have filled out secondary apps for everyone except Duke, Colorado, and Arizona, and hope to finish Duke within the week. I probably won't finish the applications for CO and AZ because they each want $100 to process the application, and I don't feel strongly enough about going to either of them.

I interviewed at Utah a few weeks ago and have an interview scheduled at Ohio State in late November. Unfortunately, they scheduled for right around Thanksgiving, so airfare is a little higher than I would like it to be. Oh well. One of my old roommates offered transport and a place to crash out there, for which I'm grateful.

Still just waiting to hear back from Oregon, Johns Hopkins, and Stanford. A post in the near future will talk a little more about my interview experience.

P.S. Anyone know of any good deals on airfare? What do you use when you are traveling to get the best deal? My interview is on a Monday morning--is a particular day or time most conducive to cheaper tickets?

The only good use of autotune

I found this video today, and it made me really happy inside. For those who don't know, autotune is a cop out to make people who are not musically talented sound like they are. :) Basically it's meant to "fix" small off-key slip ups. A lot of artists overuse it, and then they don't have to sing well, because the machine does it for them. Case in point, the scientists in this video are simply speaking, yet this sounds like it could be on a hip hop or electronica station.

Med School Application Process

One day short of two months with no posts. The paucity of posts is explained by the fact that I have been busy between school, work, and applications. Here I'm going to give a basic rundown of the application process for med school.

Back in May I took the MCAT, which is the admission exam for medical school. The next step of the process was to fill out the primary application, which is a basic, centralized application for every school you want to apply to. You fill out personal information, all of the classes you have taken in college and grades from those classes, different activities you have participated in during college (service, research, etc), write a personal statement essay, and select all of the medical schools you would like to send the application to (~30 bucks a pop). You also must find several professors and supervisors to write letters of recommendation, which are associated with your application file. The application service takes about 30 days to verify your application and transcript.

Schools that are interested (either in you or just your money) send a request for you to fill out their particular secondary applications, different for every school. Some are fairly simple, but most require another handful of essays to be written. After filling out the secondary, you get to pay another 75 - 100 dollars each.

After they screen the secondaries, schools then contact you to set up a time for an interview at the school. Of course, you get to pay to fly yourself to the school and find yourself food and lodging for your time there. If you make it this far, you basically qualify for acceptance at the school--they're checking to see if you're a good fit.

Now you wait. And wait, and wait. Schools make their decision and contact you via email, letter or telephone. Their deadline for decisions is in April. Some may decide and let you know sooner. In the meantime, you put all of your plans for the future on hold, because you don't know where you'll be living for the next four years.

Next post will be about my experience thus far in the process.

Our square footage

Out of curiosity, I measured today the square footage of the apartment we've been living in for the past (almost) two years: 337.5. Less than I thought. I'm proud of us.

Some political thoughts

For the past few months I've had a few thoughts rattling around in my head regarding our current political situation. Short version: I'm still finding my political stance, but there seems to be too much name-calling and too little actual political discussion to work towards solutions. Biased shouting is preventing reasonable dialogue. (See Limbaugh and Hannity vs. HuffPo and DailyKos. Note: I tend to ignore all four of these sources.)

Longer version: As far as I can tell, there is an entire spectrum of political beliefs. To simplify, we'll call one end of the spectrum the "extreme liberal" end, and the other we'll call the "extreme conservative" end. It seems to me that the people on the extremes of the spectrum are shouting very loudly at each other, and this prevents meaningful discussion. Name-calling doesn't help--I believe that most of the people leading our country at any given time are doing their best not to drive it into the ground. They want to help the nation and its people. Unfortunately, the people at each end of the spectrum have their own ideas about what is the right way to make that happen and then demonize others who happen to take a different viewpoint.

A very simple example: In general, liberals subscribe to the "tax and spend" ideology, where the public is taxed and government uses the money in different programs to meet needs of individuals/groups. Conservatives generally believe that the market should be left to operate on its own, and that individuals and communities should altruistically care for the needs of individuals/groups.

Both of these ideologies are valid ways of thinking and caring for the public. Each has their pros and cons. My point in this post is not to advocate either stance, but rather that neither side is made up completely of idiots. Smart, good people have found reasons to sway one way or the other. Maybe we should find out what those reasons are before we criticize what they choose to support. In the end, we may not be able to come to a perfect consensus. That's ok. At least we know what the others think and why. And then we can vote on it. The majority vote will win. Sometimes there's a stalemate and compromise is required. That's ok, too. That's the way this country was set up to run.

But let's not call each other names. That wasn't appropriate in Kindergarten, and it's not appropriate now.

We got a convertible!!

For more on this story, see Jess's blog here.

Hi, my name is Brad, and I'm a bookaholic.

So I have to let you in on a couple of secrets. First: I have a reading queue in my blog side bar... but it's not super accurate. Yes, I plan to read all of the books in it, but my to-read queue is a bit longer than what you can see there. There are 18 books listed on my blog, but the true queue actually contains 797.

Second: reading pays. I've received 5 free books in the past 6 months or so, plus a $10 gift certificate to a local restaurant. All for reading... woohoo!

The summer reading program at the local library is pretty great--they were the source of the gift certificate. The books came from a website called Goodreads, which just so happens to be one of my favorite websites ever. Basically it's a giant database of books with social network functionality. So you create a profile and start telling the website books you've read, and marking other books that you want to read. You can rate books and leave reviews on them. You can be friends with other people who use the site and see what they are reading and what they think about it, etc. So anytime I hear about a book that sounds interesting to me, I'll go to the website, find it, and mark it as "to read". Then it doesn't have to sit in my brain anymore. I also haven't lacked for new books to read since I started using it--I know exactly what books I'm wanting to read rather than trying to remember what that cool book my buddy told me about is called. I've outsourced a nice little non-essential portion of my brain.

Now, I can't possibly read all of these books in my queue in any reasonable amount of time (at best it will be over 10 years...), but it'll keep track of them for me nonetheless. I've also figured out how to choose what to read next: I go to a random number generator and give it the number of books in the list, and the number it gives me is the next book. Sweet.

There's a section on the site called "Firstreads" where you can enter free drawings for books that are coming out soon. Publishers and authors put them up, and if you see one that strikes your fancy, you can enter for it. If you win, they send you the book for free, end of obligation. They hope you will read it and give a review, but you don't even have to do that. If you do, though, it makes it more likely that you will win more drawings in the future (as it plays into their algorithm for choosing). Out of the 5 books I've received, only one was a real stinker, so after I read it I sent it off to the DI.

Anywho, I really like Goodreads. Feel free to add me as a friend on it if you wish. Goodreads + libraries = reading bliss. Also, I've linked to my profile if anyone cares to see what it looks like.

Pain and puns

These are the two elements of great summer television. Case in point: I Survived a Japanese Game Show! and even more so, Wipeout.

These two shows bring me waaaaay too much joy. Seriously.

Application is in!

Today is momentous: I finally finished my med school primary application. This thing a beast and has taken me about a month to fill out. One of the worst parts was inputting every college class I have ever taken, one at a time. And I have to send them my transcript. So why do I have to put the info in manually? I dunno.

Anywho, it's finished. I submitted it this afternoon, and it feels really good to be done. Here's the list of schools I applied to: (drumroll, please)

Utah
Colorado
Washington
Oregon
Stanford (CA)
Ohio State
Duke (NC)
Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MA)

Texas schools have their own, separate application (do they seriously still want to be their own country or something?). I'm currently thinking about applying to three of their eight schools, but 1. feel too lazy to basically fill out the same long thing again, 2. don't have any particularly strong reason to apply to Texas, and 3. each application costs money, and I'm pretty happy with my current list.

Any thoughts? Can anyone convince me to apply to Texas? Any other schools I should have included in my list? Why? Should I be avoiding any of the schools that I did apply to? If so, why?

And the waiting game commences...

MCAT

First, a quick breakdown of the test: it has four sections--physical sciences (physics and inorganic chemistry), verbal reasoning, two essays, and biological sciences (biology and organic chemistry). Each of the three non-essay sections is given a score from 1 to 15. These three numbers are added together to give your total score out of 45. The essays are scored separately and given a letter from L to T (T is better). Your final score is reported as a number and a letter, 45T being a perfect score on all sections of the test.

I took the MCAT on the 28th of May, and had to wait until June 30th for my score. Needless to say, it was kind of a long month. And here are the results: 36O, with a 12 on each of the multiple choice sections. The score report also gives what percentile you rank with your score. Interestingly enough, a 36 ranks in the 96th percentile (confusing, since 36 works out to 80% of 45), and I should be able to get in somewhere for medical school. Now we'll just see if it's where we want to go.

Now it's time to finish the stupid application.

P.S. My "O" score on the essays turns out to be in the 50th percentile. I couldn't help but laugh when I saw that. Fortunately, the number score is the one that schools look at more.

Old fambly picture

Hey all, I was digging through some old photos tonight and found this treasure.



Mandy looks stunning on her stool, Jord's the little stud on the left, Mom is dazzling as always, and you can see the devilish look on my face there on the right--one hand on the hip, the other on my sister's knee! We're a gifted family. Dad was busy taming lions, and Kelli wasn't quite talented enough to make it into our little performing group so she got stuck taking the picture. Middle-child syndrome?

Just kidding. Kelli is actually the most talented amongst us, and this picture isn't really my family. It's from Awkward Family Photos, a pretty fabulous site.

Heads up

Hey everyone (mostly any ladies, probably, who happen to view my blog and not my wife's), my wife and her friend are having a cool giveaway at their new craft blog, floralshowers.com. Check it out and enter to win!

Good news, bad news

It's done. Thanks everyone for your well-wishing and prayers and such. I feel like the test went pretty well, and I'll find out my score in a month. There is an essay section on the test that has to be graded, and so we don't get to walk out of the testing center knowing our score. Bother. When I got home, we went out to dinner to celebrate--Kentucky Bourbon burger from Carl's Jr. Mmmm, my mouth salivates just remembering it.

Sadder news: the blasted check engine light came on again today on my way home from Salt Lake. Hopefully it turns off again on its own soon like last time.

That is all. Good night and good luck.

Two small things

I've updated the song of the moment. Catchy tune, and amusing lyrics--seriously, have you ever heard a song that used the word "ampersand" before? I highly recommend it.

Tomorrow is the MCAT, at high noon. Place: OK Corral. Only one of us will walk away.

Surprise!

So, yesterday morning I would have expected this post to be about how glad I am that the MCAT is over. But things changed. I got an email yesterday afternoon from Prometrics (the people that run the testing centers for these big graduate school tests) saying that tomorrow's proctoring of the exam was cancelled. I was rather incredulous. All of this work, all of my psyching up, and for... nothing?

I called up the phone number that was listed in the email, and after waiting almost half an hour, I explained my predicament to the guy on the other end. He was very helpful, and we were able to get me scheduled for May 28th at noon at a testing location in Salt Lake. It sounded like they had to pull some strings but everything is on track, just with a new date.

My feelings on the matter: mixed. I was pumped and ready to take the test and be done with it. I was kind of upset yesterday. On the other hand, I get an extra month to study for the test, and I get to take it at noon instead of 8am. Also fortunate is that they were able to reschedule me before it gets too late in the application cycle--if they tried to reschedule my test for late June or July, I would have been fairly angry.

So anyways, thanks everyone for your kind thoughts and prayers. Keep 'em going for another month. :)

I'm not contrary.... Oh.

When I was in Bolivia on my mission, the lady who cooked lunch for us said to me: "Elder, usted es muy contrario." This translates to: "Elder, you are very contrary" (but it doesn't rhyme in Spanish). Just last night, I came to the realization that I haven't changed much in that respect in the past 3 1/2 years (side note: can't believe it's been that long already). I mentioned this to Jess last night, and she just sort of laughed at me and said "yep." We discussed my contrariness for a few minutes, which helped me understand my standard reaction to so many things.

I think a lot. I analyze things. Probably too much. I find that a lot of issues have multiple facets, and that makes it harder to make snap judgments. Because of this I tend to want others to see these other facets, and my subconscious method for doing this is to play devil's advocate. I don't always espouse the idea that I present--mostly I just want the person that I'm talking with to think about it. Have they considered this aspect of what they are talking about? If they have, great! I'm not looking to argue, just to show that things might be more complicated than initially realized. I actually don't like contention--I just like to explore ideas.

So what's the bottom line? Two things: 1. If I have ever offended you because I came across as argumentative or disagreeable, that was not my intention. I apologize. Hopefully what I have written here will help you understand what is going on inside my head. 2. Finding character defects is kind of a painful process. However, recognition is one of the first steps towards fixing a problem. I still think that thinking things through is good, but maybe I just need to be more careful in how I present the things that I've thought about. I need to harness this power for good instead of evil. :) Any ideas on how to do that? Did any of this make any sense?

Yaar, thar be pirates

Interesting news this week: pirates off the coast of Somalia took an American ship (the Maersk Alabama), but the situation has been resolved. The crew of the ship acted quickly and disabled it so that the pirates wouldn't be able to sail it. So three of the four pirates hopped in a lifeboat with the captain of the Maersk. After a while at sea, US Naval forces showed up (the SEALs), ready to rescue the captain. At least one of the pirates had an AK-47 assault rifle aimed at the captain's back, so the commanding officer gave the order to fire. Three Navy snipers dropped the three pirates at the same time, one head-shot each. The captain was rescued, safe and sound.

I have two main thoughts about the whole situation. The first is that it breaks my heart that things are so bad in Somalia that people are having to resort to piracy to make a living. The country basically has no government, and hasn't for a while. There is no easy solution in sight. Even sadder is that these men lost their lives essentially because of the situation they were in.

However, these men did have agency and they used it poorly. The life of an American citizen was in danger through no fault of his own. So my second thought is that how impressed I am with our military men and their skill. They took care of the situation quickly and efficiently, and saved the life of the captain. This is the sort of thing that you read about in a Tom Clancy novel, not hear about in real life.

So I'm glad the captain is ok, that the SEALs are awesome, and that the crew were quick on their feet to prevent bigger problems. But I'm also wondering, what can be done to help the Somali people and prevent this sort of thing from continuing/happening again?

More cool science pictures

I found these pictures a while ago and thought they were pretty awesome. They come from National Geographic's Best Science Images of 2008. Basically they provide further validation for studying what I study.




(Note: this is sort of a cop-out post meant to take care of something that I had backlogged for a while. I've got something better [a real post] coming down the pipe, have no fear.)

Happy first of spring!

 

 

I'm glad I got the other shots yesterday, because these made a nice comparison. Perfect timing!

Spring is coming...

 

 

And I'm very excited. Those are some of our daffodils that are coming up. Sweetness!

Open mouth, insert foot.

I've been volunteering at a hospital on a weekly basis for the past seven or eight months. It's been a good experience--I enjoy spending time at the hospital and helping out in small ways (it also gets me some of my requisite volunteer hours for medical school). One of my responsibilities is to help move patients from their beds or stretchers to the CT beds so that they can get scanned. Tonight was one of the funniest moments that I've ever had there.

One sweet older woman was wheeled in to the scanner room, and the first thing I noticed was her hair. Most people who are in the hospital aren't too concerned about their personal appearance because they have other more pressing matters to attend to (like cysts, rupturing appendices and the like). Her hair looked amazing. Something like these two photos, but blonde and less of a tousled look. And no nose piercing (like Alyssa Milano).



So, needless to say, I was impressed. She looked really good for an old lady laying on a hospital bed. So I figure I should let her know--who doesn't love a nice compliment, especially when they're not feeling well? And that's when my foot entered my mouth. I say, "your hair looks really nice," and at that very moment, her blonde coif slid back on her head, exposing her real hair, which was brown with a lot of thick gray streaks. I could feel my eyes widen in shock as I realized that her nice-looking hair was actually a wig. Her eyes were closed, so she didn't notice, and she said, "thank you. It takes a few hours a day to comb it and make it look nice." I could feel myself turning red, and caught a few funny looks from Susie and Michelle, the techs who were on duty.

As soon as I got into the room where they operate the scanners (not the same room that the scanners are in, to prevent the workers from getting a lot of exposure to radiation), I lost it. I busted a gut, and so did everybody else. Some of them had totally noticed that it was a wig from the moment they saw the lady, and they gave me a hard time about it while we waited for the scan to take place. This was probably one of the funniest things that has happened to me in CT.

P.S. I would like to add that it didn't seem like the woman thought I was making fun of her. It sounded like she took my compliment the way it was offered--in a totally and completely sincere manner. She was a sweetheart, and I wish her the best.

Slime molds!

So the other day I found a website with really cool pictures of slime molds. Slime molds are amoebas that are similar to fungi, and they look really cool. I've included a couple of the pictures that I liked best from the site, but I highly recommend that you go to the site and look at the rest for yourself (as there are about 40 pictures there).

These sorts of things are why I love microbiology. Nature is just plain awesome.

(Edit: Apparently when you link to online pictures, it's hard to control the size--therefore some of these photos don't actually fit on my blog. Just another reason to go see the site. Seriously, check it out.)






Yeah, those last two are a picture of the same thing at different times. Cool, eh?

(Edit: I figured out how to change the image size, so I did. Now you can see the whole thing. Hooray!)

6th challenge from Maren

So my sis-in-law put me up for a challenge, and here's how it works:
In your pictures folder on your comp, go to the 6th folder of pictures, then the 6th picture in the folder and post that picture on your blog. I probably would have been content just to see which picture it was, but then I felt bad for not living up to the tag. So here it is for you all to see.



This comes from Christmas beard 2007, and is a picture of me and the wifey right before I shaved it off. It only grew for one week compared to last year's 2-weeker, so it almost looks thin. I figure that for Christmas beard 2009, I'll let it grow until it's shoulder-length. Mmm, boy. Just trying to Follow the Prophet. (Lorenzo Snow or Joseph F. Smith, to be precise.)

This would be the point in the post where I would tag six other people, but I'm not really that into that part of it. So go for it if you like, but I won't put you under any imaginary obligation to continue this trend.

It's me... super-hero-ized.

I found this website today by happy chance. It's called Hero Factory, and you can make different superheroes. So I made myself into one. Notice the patch and the spork. Please feel free to visit the site, make one of yourself, and then post a link to it in the comments. (Edit: By "post a link to it," I guess I really mean that you should click "download" to get a copy of the image, then put it up on your blog, and then put a link to it in the comments.)

Faith

I study the sciences, and as a result I've run into a lot of different ideas about the world and the universe. There seems to be a growing shift to atheism (or at least agnosticism) in the world (and even one or two people that I know) which has led me to think more about faith, what it is, and why we need it. I ran across a post at Mormon Matters that articulated a lot of the same ideas I had been mulling over.

I think that faith is a decision. We choose to believe or to not believe. God has provided enough evidence (or sufficient lack of evidence, if you choose) on either side so that we can make our choice about what we want to believe. God will generally never give us incontrovertible, sensory evidence about his existence and science cannot definitively prove that God does not exist. Andrew at MM states that God wants this to be a difficult choice, and thus we must struggle and work to make our faith grow. He says, "by concealing himself and his doings, God had demonstrated he wants faith development to be a soul-searching, heart-wrenching, and mind-bending experience." Essentially, I think God wants to see how bad we want it.

Two particular scriptures come to mind that help provide me some reassurance in this process. One is in Ether 12:6--"ye receive no witness until after the trial of your faith." This implies that after our faith has been tried, we will receive further witness (=personal evidence). An example of this shows up in Alma 32, where the prophet is teaching a group of people about how to know if his words are true. He compares his words (and God's word) to a seed. That seed requires nourishment and care in order to grow. When we see the growth, we have further evidence that what we have worked on is worthy of our work.

I have chosen to believe. I don't have all the answers to all of the questions that might come up. Some of my questions have to be put on the shelf until I receive further light and knowledge. However, in my decision to believe I have found more and more evidence that there is indeed a Creator, and I grow stronger in my faith that we have a Savior who loves us and will help us be our best and return to live with God.

Sad day.

A picture is worth a thousand words, and these are very sad words. See the two arrows? Those parts should be connected, but they're not. Also, you can see our lovely green floral print chair in the bottom of the photo. On a brighter note, I won two games with broken strings tonight, and it's the first time that I've ever busted strings--makes me feel manly. Manly and sad.

Christmas Beard 2008

Here it is, two-and-a-half glorious weeks worth of beardage. And the tragic end.

 

 

Jess is happy because it's all going away.

 

 

Probably the weirdest thing I tried. And it looks like I'm trying to look hard. 'Sup.

Who doesn't love a good mustache (more mustache pictures to come...)?

My best Charlie Chaplin impression. Notice the lack of any (colored) hair directly beneath my nose. That's probably my weakest "growing spot."

So sad.

But this is why it's worth it. :)

Nobody ever seen him again... He got eaten.

How's that for weirdness? I made a post about the songs of the moment and even received two comments on it. And then I checked my blog today and it's all gone. Like it never even happened. Anyone else have something like that happen on their blog?

Bonus points for the title reference.

I want one!

Apple's newest product. I can't wait!!


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Soylent Heat

I read an interesting tidbit yesterday. Apparently there is a town in Sweden where they are going to use heat from a crematorium to help heat the town. My first feeling about it was shock and little bit of disgust, but the more I think of it the better an idea it sounds. Since people are going to be cremated anyways, you may as well harness some of the energy that comes from it.

That does not entail tossing limbs into your home fireplace instead of logs. That's just plain creepy.