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After much research at Caltech, I’ve recently made two important discoveries:
- In order to keep shirts from coming out of the dryer from being wrinkly (and thus causing people to think that you sleep in your clothes all the time), I realized that one must: (1) Use less detergent. (2) Use less fabric softener. (3) Put a smaller load into the dryer (so that the clothes come out fully dry). (4) When you load the dryer, try to pack it by clothes density type. This means putting the jeans, rougher stuff, and wrinkle-okay items (like socks, boxers, etc.) towards the back while putting the shirts closer to the dryer door. The result is less folding and distortion of the shirts. (5) When you unload the dryer, put the jeans, rougher stuff, and wrinkle-okay items in the hamper first. Then put the shirts on top (sometimes, it’s good to even to a semi-quick folding of the shirt). This minimizes compression on the shirts.
Now I am finally able to get wrinkle free shirts.
- Dust wipes commonly sold under names like Swiffers or pledge wipes are just made to be disposable microfiber cloths. Well, the companies seem to want you to throw out the cloths after using them so that you can continue buying from them. However, there’s no reason to suggest that they cannot be reused. And thus, I’m here to report that they can be reused!
The trick, I think, is to use hot water and soap/detergent to wash the cloths. The heat is necessary for the microfibers to expand (hereby releasing the dust and other stuff trapped in there).
I tested this idea on a very small piece of dust cloth (like 2 in. by 3 in. area), and I reused it 4 times before I decided to just throw it away (mainly because the fibers in the cloth were becoming scratched up). The dust trapping ability doesn’t seem to decrease much at all in between washes. I daresay that one can reuse such cloths for >10 times if one is careful with it.
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There’s this guy who’s part of the Goddard Research group at Caltech, and after listening to his lectures and observing his personality, I really think that he’s a genius-level scientist.
Not only is he tackling some of the toughest problems (ie. theory of high temperature superconductors) in physics and chemistry with good progress, but he can also explain them in a very clear matter. When he lectures, he’s calm and his voice is instructive. You get this feeling that he really knows what he’s talking about. You can ask him any question, and he can answer it.
He’s like the perfect role model for a scientist: Without ego and with the ability to solve just about any problem given time and interest. I’m so impressed by him that I felt a need to say it on my blog.
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One thing I really dislike is people who message me online and then either don’t say anything or don’t get to the point until like 30 minutes later. I sometimes know what you are trying to get at, but I don’t really feel like trying to guess at what you are going to say during that 30 minute silence. Additionally, I dislike if I respond to something you say right away with a simple question, and it takes you 30 minutes to reply to me. Also, if you want to continue a conversation, don’t end your statements with a period all the time and expect me to pick up the slack since I usually don’t feel like doing so (you’re the one who is messaging me, after all!). I finally felt annoyed enough to post this on my blog.
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I just finished watching Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Live at Slane Castle DVD, and it was awesome. The producers and camera crew made me feel like I was there. The visuals had crystal clarity, and of course, RHCP rocked.
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Alex (my roommate): I go through these periods sometimes…
Me: What?! You go through periods?!
Alex: Damn you! You were just waiting to pounce on that weren’t you?!
Me: Hahahaha, yes.
…
Me: So what were you saying about your period again?
Alex: … Fuck you Mike. Fuck you.
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Whoa. This month has been double-plus-good for japanese rock. You have the pillows releasing their new single (Tokyo Bambi) and touring the US. Then you have Asian Kung-Fu Generation with their new album (World World World). Just now, I realized that Ikimono-Gakari released their new album last month (Life Album). This is epic stuff! I can’t wait to hear IG’s new album since their first major label one was most excellent.
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I just spent the past 2 hours setting up emacs on windows. By setting up, I mean doing the whole .emacs thing along with installing some of the extensions that I like (icicles, tabbar, and cursor-chg so far). For some reason forcing all the backup files to be saved in only one directory doesn’t seem to work. But oh well, I should work on my problem set now.
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Today is a glorious day: Asian Kung-Fu Generation’s newest album, World World World, was released! Their last album was in 2006. I currently listening to it right now, and it rocks!
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Sigh, I spent a lot of time yesterday and today writing a file monitoring script in python that was tailored towards my computational (chemistry) simulations on large clusters. Then after I finished the glorious script, I realized that I didn’t really need the monitoring feature if I had a way to copy files from the node in one command. Well, I wrote one line of bash code that allowed me to do the file copying. So I just spend a lot of time coding this elaborate script for nothing.
On the bright side, I did learn a lot more about python.
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I’m really grateful for have such awesome research mentors here at Caltech. One is a director of force field development and the other is a post-doc. Both will soon be professors so right off the bat, I have access to some pretty important people! Even though I don’t interact with the Professor of the group that much, he is also a mentor, and he is very accessible and friendly. They all manage to somehow put up with my stupidity and slow progress.
So far, I’ve compiled a bunch of results on EtOH reactions with TiO2, and my mentors think that I can work on writing up the results for the goal of publication. They commented that it would be helpful when applying to grad school to have some publications under the belt so they are really looking out for me!
If I ever mentor other people, I will definitely repay my mentors by following their examples.