^ Her character is so obnoxious. I used to feel sorry for her when she was with Don. Now it's just downright annoying. But she plays it so well. I wish that they would give Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) more of the screen time. Last episode with Dick (Don) and Ana was amazing. Even though he is as screwed up as ever, he seems so much at ease around her. It's a pity that she is going to die.

It's back tonight! Yay. Perhaps one of the very few reasons to live thru this dreadful summer!

Finally watching Autumn's Concerto. It dragged on towards the end but yeah over all it was nice. I loved the little kid..!! The supporting characters were great as well.

Thank you for the link! Since it's pretty close to my budget, I think that I will go with it. =] Btw, you said that own a Tokina lens, the link that you posted of the wide angle -- is that what you have?

I saw the Tokina 10-17 mm lens that you posted. It's going to be easily 600-700 dollars with the additional costs of tax and shipping. Like you said that everything is distorted and it is a special lens, therefore I dont want to spend that much on it. I mean if I were to spend that much, I can add few more bucks and get a decent 'useful' lens as what you suggested: wide angle lens.

As for why? I want to see the world and people with a different (non-traditional) point of view. Call it boredom.

I need a beginners fisheye lense for Nikon D80/D90. The only one I like thus far is the Samyang 8 mm f/3.5 Aspherical IF MC Fish-eye (because it gives the angle view of 180 and is pretty cheap $350ish). I didn't do extensive research due to lack of time on it so that might not be the best choice. Any recommendations? My budget is three-five hundred dollars. Thanks in advance!

Ahah! so true. LeBron in NY was too good to be true.

So... Lakers vs Miami next NBA Finals?

I saw the first 2-3 episode of Autumn's Concerto on my iphone (on the youtube link posted) during my lunch break this week. I should have been studying during that time but no regrets. Well, okay, just a little. =] It's so girly and romantic...and everything that I usually stand against...but I loved it. Again, probably because it is something different from the type of shows I usually watch. Thank you for sharing.

Happy belated birthday.

One of the world's most awkward position to be in is when your mentor (read: your boss) gets yelled at by a Senior doctor (read: his boss) for not doing his job properly. In the meantime, you stand a few feet away in a state of fear and confusion, pretending that you don't hear anything (when infarct you do and everybody knows it). At times like these, I actually like being on the bottom of the chain....and playing the role of practically nobody (aka a student).

I have never really been an apple fan therefore I always bought phones that were different and supposedly better. Like from LG or HTC. My last phone was HTC Touch HD which at that  time (or still perhaps?) wasn't sold in USA. So I think that I paid about $500+ for one. It was pretty good. But three weeks after, my sister dropped it on a concrete floor and it just stopped working. Wtf? Since I didn't have insurance, I was bought the iPhone. After using it for about a week, I realized that it is one of the best phones that I have used (in comparison to LG Viewty, htc touch, or Nikia nx). So I think that at the end of the day, it's what works for you or is compatible to ur needs. I honestly don't understand the point of bashing one or another type of brand.

My birthdy isn't until another 1.5-2 months. Sigh. I think that I'm depressed even more now.

Edited:

@ MM, everybody is allowed to have a bad day - and that was mine. Not very proud of it but there it was. Sometimes one has the tendency to get tunnel vision and forget about some of life’s details in pursuit of a goal. Happens to all of us, I guess. I just whine about it alot more than others.

Happy 31st Birthday. =D

- Your favorite hater.

It isn't a job.

I'm going to hell. That's a fact. The sins I've committed in over the past month are enough to send me there straight with a first class ticket. No matter how many "get out of hell" cards I possess in my hidden hand. Sighs. Let me be clear. When it comes to animals, I have the worst luck of all time. If you leave an animal around me, it's either going to try to commit suicide (my cat who jumped out of the 6th flood window), blow up and die (my fishes), bite me and then run away and never come back (my dog) or just randomly get pregnant (my snakes).

Such is my curse.

As any mature grown up, I accept it and have learned to live with it. Life was fine until I was told that we would be doing some drug testing on animals. "Great," I told myself, "I am a professional, I can do this." And I did 'till the past month when I gave our mice the wrong (read: higher) dose of an antibody causing them all to die. Upon informing N of my theory of being cursed and telling her what had happened, she replied, "Oh my God! You O.D'ed your mice."

"No I didn't," I responded, "It was simply a miscalculation on my part." Moving on. And that's exactly what I did and breed(ed?) another colony/generation. When genotyping the newborns, it requires one to extract the DNA (by cutting a 1-2 cm of the tail) to determine whether they carry the gene you require or not. So to make the story short, when I did that...and figured out that 3 newborns out of the 12 had the gene I required, I went to the animal facility. And lo behold, what do I find?

Two mice (which were the parents) and nothing else. What happened to the newborns?

The parents killed and ate them. Like...ate them for dinner. All 12 babies!

All of my hard work. Gone. Just like that. But I was right about being cursed. It's my new belief that perhaps I am this amazing phenomenon that needs to be studied by the scientific community.

Either that or there is a divine being playing a joke on me for his/her entertainment.

I caught up...but Im still an episode behind I think? I feel so bad for Hank! He gets so closed to catching Walt (thru Jesse)...but then gets shot. =[

Why does the hospital staff feel so compelled to have their air conditioning on full blast when it’s a documented fact that it spreads and prolongs cold/flu etc. It’s 90 degrees outside. However, I feel like I am sitting in the arctic in an ice box. And there is no bloody thermostat on this floor. Calling the central control is equivalent to not doing anything. There are times when I get tempted to bring a blanket because it gets so cold - but that might be going a little overboard. However, today I am tempted to go home and ask my mother to sew me insulation under my lab coat.

I am going to start a new trend.

Considering that the weather is nice today (and I am free), I went by the waterside to do some reading and relax. As I was becoming comfortable, I realized that there was a "Twilight Lovers Club" meeting going on -- which was filled with bunch of emo teens sitting around a table with ice cream and life like dolls of their favorite characters from the series...talking about why they would want to be with the characters. Seriously? What is wrong with our youth today? Are teenagers no longer primarily motivated by what other people think about them? Whatever happened to the drive to be popular? God, aren't kids even ashamed to be dorks anymore?

What is the world coming to?

All I wanted to do was read....in peace.

I regret clicking on this link. Thankfully nobody has responded yet...or I would have needed hours of thearpy in an office filled with dolls, rainbows and bunnies.

One of the best summer T.V shows! I didn't realize that season 3 was back on air -- so I am behind. I only saw the first episode of it where he is claiming that he is done with this business and Jesse is in the recovering mode. However, I loved both seasons one and two - particularly for its writing as well as Cranston's andPaul's performances!!

Oh wow @ Lymphatic Filariasis/Elephantiasis. That's scary considering one couldn't even properly diagnose this disease until like.....yesterday. So it sort of makes sense as to why the woman on Oprah said no to having children.  

Anway, I think tht after posting my response, I realized that you were asking the question in philosophical terms (than the scientific mumbo jumbo I posted). I dont know why....but I found myself thinking about this topic and ended up asking the same question to my bestfriend and my mom just to see what their responses would be? My bestfriend gave a similar reply to some MPian here and said that she will leave it up to God and have faith. That was surprising because she isn't very religious. Hm. I'm not sure if I agree with it...but I respect that descision (for whatever reasons).  

My mom said that having a child with chronic illness is insufficient... but does that mean that never having been born would have been better? I think that's what you are questioning as well. How can anyone truthfully ever know? As a parent, she also added that if (God forbid) she was ever put in that position -- she would do her best with to face the difficulty...and would give her life for the child but would never give him/her up, nor second-guess a decision to have given the child life in the first place. That doesn't make sense to me. Why would one take the risk of having a sick child (who depending on whatever disease) is going to suffer along with you? Is there a point of giving birth to a child that you know is going to turn into a vegetable (Hunington disease), forget you and eventually his own existance (alzhemier's disease), or doesn't have a 'life' due to a physical disability (caused by another disease)?

* Reaponse is typed from my iPhone at 2 in the morning. Sorry if it's half-arsed.    

It's a personal decision that depends on many different factors. Like to start of, what type of incurable disease is it? Because there are alot of diseases where you can do DNA sequencing or gene mapping on the fetus to find the flawed gene that marks for that specific disease. I believe that's what they are doing for the patients who have the Huntington disease (where an unborn offspring may or may not carry the disease). They do amniocentesis on the fetus to see it's carrying the bad gene. Though there is still a slight chance that the baby will develop Huntington's later in life. So maybe that's a bad example?

Oooh, there is also the option of vitro fertilization where they screen the embryos and only implant those without the gene for the disease.

Anyway, to answer your question -- if all of the above fails -- then no. I wont have a kid. Why take the chance/risk of bringing a sick child into this unsettling dying planet with bad politics, bad economy, crappy people, wars/violence, and non-ending suffering. Plus I dont think that I would have it in me to take care...or see somebody close to me suffer. Just my personal opinion.

P.S: I don't know if you're more interested in this topic but I read a book while back called Still Alice by Lisa Genova that's sort of questions this topic. It's about a woman (Harvard graduate professor) who develops early onset Alzheimer’s. She finds out that it's genetic and has to have her children screen for it. At the sometime, one of her daughter's is trying to conceive. So the novel is written from a first person point of view in which the main character is questioning what she would have done had she known before -- and what should her daughter do?

I'm watching the Indians beat the living day lights of the Afghani brothers.

No. Why? What's in DC?