Thing1 just brought me a bird. A real one. (Awwww, thanks buddy!) He carried it in through the cat-flap and then yowled at me very insistently until I properly acknowledged his superior hunting skillz. (He yowls as a matter of course and I generally just ignore him so it took me a while to notice the bird.)
When I went to scoop up the carcass to discard it he picked it up and wouldn't let go. Fine. Be that way. So I picked him up and chucked him (with bird) out onto the second story patio and locked the door behind him. It's raining. He's informed me of how cruel I am. I could hear him from all the way across the house. Sorry mister, that bird carcass is not coming inside.
This is one smart cat though. The bird carcass did eventually come inside...in his stomach. When I went to let him in, all that was left on the patio was a few feathers.
Now taking bets on how long before he pukes it up.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
IT IS FINISHED.
I am done with the effing thing. I have a title that I don't hate and 4.5 years of my life in 200 pages that nobody will ever read. Hardcopy to the bossman's desk and I am taking the day off tomorrow. Then one last push to get the seminar put together, but I already feel like the worst is over.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Soooooooo close!
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another - still haven't finished this because the files borked when I downloaded off the server...waiting for time on the scope to upload the raw data again. :P
Still left to do: once figures are really truly finished, must annotate table of contents with appropriate page number and create PDF of figs plus text. Waiting to hear from the bossman about whether he wants to look over this again. Can't wait to send it out!!!
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Crossing things off
Chapter 3 (Project 2/3) - looking more like finished and passed off to labmate who is an excellent editor.
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another - still haven't finished this!
Off to do the figures now. Worried that GrAdvisor and I have miscommunicated about my submission deadline. He still hasn't read Chapter 3, but we've discussed it (last week). Not sure if when I said, "*next* Wednesday" and he said "OK", he was actually OKing the Wednesday after the one coming up.
Motivation FAIL
I was just psyching myself to finish up the last of the dissertation...when my email popped up to say that the ManuBeast was rejected "declined" (PhysioProf tells me that this is not the same thing).
Fuck.
Some of the reviewers' critiques were pretty reasonable, and I now have data in hand to address most of them.
However, the major catch-point for all of them was that they weren't convinced by one key piece of data: that a particular gene was *not* expressed in our tissue of interest. It's kind of important to our findings that this particular gene is not expressed, and I've gone to great lengths to show that it is not, complete with a very solid obvious convincing positive control. They still don't like it. Negative results are tough, but if we need to show that the gene is not expressed, then listen folks, you're going to have to be happy with a negative result. They don't seem to be unconvinced by the positive control, they just don't believe that this gene is not expressed because it makes sense that it would be. PEOPLE, LOOK AT THE FREAKIN' DATA PLEASE.
The editor has "declined" our submission based on the reviewers' critiques but offered to let us resubmit if we think that we can address the reviewers' concerns. I do have other data to bolster the central finding of the paper (which is not actually about this gene, however the non-expression of this gene is important to our conclusions), but I was hoping to put some of it into a second paper. And there is no way to demonstrate that the gene is not expressed without showing that see, it's not there. Look at the positive control - there it is! Look at the experimental samples - not there! Since this is the major sticking point, I'm not sure that I can be any more convincing about this. LOOK AT THE DATA!! I know everyone expects it to be expressed there. I did too when I started this project. BUT IT ISN'T!!! (And that's why it's interesting.) See?!?!? You can see it right here!!
What worries me is that even if we go to another journal, this field is small enough that we're likely to get the same reviewers. As I said, most of their suggestions are reasonable, but if they're going to be irrationally hung up on this gene that is not expressed, then I don't know what else I can do to show them that it is NOT EXPRESSED.
Grrrrr.
Will try to put this out of my head so I can finish Chapter 3 and get the dissertation submitted in the next couple of days. This is really hard to do right now.
Fuck.
Some of the reviewers' critiques were pretty reasonable, and I now have data in hand to address most of them.
However, the major catch-point for all of them was that they weren't convinced by one key piece of data: that a particular gene was *not* expressed in our tissue of interest. It's kind of important to our findings that this particular gene is not expressed, and I've gone to great lengths to show that it is not, complete with a very solid obvious convincing positive control. They still don't like it. Negative results are tough, but if we need to show that the gene is not expressed, then listen folks, you're going to have to be happy with a negative result. They don't seem to be unconvinced by the positive control, they just don't believe that this gene is not expressed because it makes sense that it would be. PEOPLE, LOOK AT THE FREAKIN' DATA PLEASE.
The editor has "declined" our submission based on the reviewers' critiques but offered to let us resubmit if we think that we can address the reviewers' concerns. I do have other data to bolster the central finding of the paper (which is not actually about this gene, however the non-expression of this gene is important to our conclusions), but I was hoping to put some of it into a second paper. And there is no way to demonstrate that the gene is not expressed without showing that see, it's not there. Look at the positive control - there it is! Look at the experimental samples - not there! Since this is the major sticking point, I'm not sure that I can be any more convincing about this. LOOK AT THE DATA!! I know everyone expects it to be expressed there. I did too when I started this project. BUT IT ISN'T!!! (And that's why it's interesting.) See?!?!? You can see it right here!!
What worries me is that even if we go to another journal, this field is small enough that we're likely to get the same reviewers. As I said, most of their suggestions are reasonable, but if they're going to be irrationally hung up on this gene that is not expressed, then I don't know what else I can do to show them that it is NOT EXPRESSED.
Grrrrr.
Will try to put this out of my head so I can finish Chapter 3 and get the dissertation submitted in the next couple of days. This is really hard to do right now.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Killing it slowly
Title - ???? I still got nothin'.
Abstract - DONE
Chapter 1 (Intro) - DONE
Chapter 2 (Project 1) - DONE
Chapter 3/4 (Project 2/3) - Fuck it. I'm just going to merge them. This will require writing some transitions when I stick them together but it's better than writing a whole new intro and discussion.
Chapter 5 (Summary) - DONE
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another - images are taken I just haven't had time to get to this today - tomorrow the figures will be done.
References - Salvaged - Took me the better part of an afternoon fighting with my EndNote library before admitting defeat by a corrupted file. After some tedious copy-pasting into a new document, it seems to be behaving now.
I'm afraid that I'm not going to do projects 2/3 much justice. The findings are really exciting and I'm very proud of these projects. I just. can't. write. about them anymore. I'm not loving this chapter. It's rough around the edges and not so well-organized...or maybe it's fine but I've been looking at it so long that I just can't even tell anymore. You know how if you stare at your own face in the mirror for long enough you start to look like a stranger? I'm having a very similar experience with this chapter. I should pass it off to someone else to look at for a while but I don't feel like it's good enough to even do that yet.
Chapter 3/4 (Project 2/3) - Fuck it. I'm just going to merge them. This will require writing some transitions when I stick them together but it's better than writing a whole new intro and discussion.
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another - images are taken I just haven't had time to get to this today - tomorrow the figures will be done.
I'm afraid that I'm not going to do projects 2/3 much justice. The findings are really exciting and I'm very proud of these projects. I just. can't. write. about them anymore. I'm not loving this chapter. It's rough around the edges and not so well-organized...or maybe it's fine but I've been looking at it so long that I just can't even tell anymore. You know how if you stare at your own face in the mirror for long enough you start to look like a stranger? I'm having a very similar experience with this chapter. I should pass it off to someone else to look at for a while but I don't feel like it's good enough to even do that yet.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dissertation Progress
Title - ???? (Seriously, why is this so difficult!?!? Maybe it will come to me in a dream tonight.)
Abstract - DONE
Chapter 1 (Intro) - DONE
Chapter 2 (Project 1) - DONE
Chapter 3 (Project 2) - all but references and 2 panels on one figure
Chapter 4 (Project 3) - all but references and 1/2 of discussion
Chapter 5 (Summary) - DONE
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another
References - BORKED!! WTF EndNote!?!?
The clock is ticking...only a few more days. And of course now GrAdvisor is suggesting that we merge Chs 3&4. Urg. I don't really want to spend any more energy on that...but maybe then I won't have to write any more discussion for Ch. 4. Fresh eyes on it tomorrow.
Abstract - DONE
Chapter 1 (Intro) - DONE
Chapter 2 (Project 1) - DONE
Chapter 3 (Project 2) - all but references and 2 panels on one figure
Chapter 4 (Project 3) - all but references and 1/2 of discussion
Chapter 5 (Summary) - DONE
Figures - need scale bars on one, and to add 2 panels to another
References - BORKED!! WTF EndNote!?!?
The clock is ticking...only a few more days. And of course now GrAdvisor is suggesting that we merge Chs 3&4. Urg. I don't really want to spend any more energy on that...but maybe then I won't have to write any more discussion for Ch. 4. Fresh eyes on it tomorrow.
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