Catching Up

End of the summer and fall school preparations have kept me away from this site for too long. Here's a snap shot of the last week or so.

End of the summer and fall school preparations have kept me away from this site for too long. Here's a snap shot of the last week or so.

Beer in the Closet!

Jen and I have started our first batch of beer. It's a porter, and I predict a good amount of hoppiness. We boiled all the good stuff on our stovetop, though with some trouble keeping the boil going as strong as I wanted. It's all sitting in a five-gallon plastic tub in the living room closet, where the yeast are doing their primary fermentation magic.

Beer geek note

The starting specific gravity was only 1.030, where we should have expected more like 1.045. But we're beginners, and this should be tasty, if not that alcoholic in the end. (Higher SG at the start of fermentation is more sugar to convert to alcohol and carbon dioxide.) Potential culprits in this newbie brewing experience are too much boil down during the hopping (we had to add over 3 gallons of water in the end, rather than the 2.5 we expected, so perhaps we diluted too much), not enough mixing before taking the SG reading, or sloppiness in the reading itself, since I haven't used a hydrometer since high school chemistry.

Jen will probably say that I'm harping on the negatives too much here. I guess I'm being the analytical scientist brewer at the moment. This was a lot of fun, and we'll be doing it again and again, I think.

School update

Orientation for my program at UCLA is Thursday. I'm a little nervous, but not too much, as I've been on campus already for three months, and know some people and know my way around already.

My first research rotation in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department (proteomics, mass spectrometry, and data visualization) finished up yesterday. I have a tentative arrangement to work with a professor in the Human Genetics department in the fall. This will involve microarrays, another hot topic and excellent skillset to get my feet wet in. I'm happy to take advantage of the opportunity to try out different departments through this program, as Ph. D. students usually are locked into rotating in one department.

I'm spending the next two days chilling out before the crazy schedule begins, and reviewing calculus. I decided to start fulfilling pre-requisites in math and computer science that are missing from my previous attempt at academics, so I'm taking linear algebra in the Fall quarter (UCLA does 3 quarters a year instead of 2 semesters). Expect me to grumble about this schedule a few times, though, as this class is at 8am four days a week, to free up my afternoons for research seminars. Bleh. It's only for three months, but at least I'm motivated for this whole school thing!

Posted by rick at September 16, 2003 11:17 AM | More General Stuff