More Tales from Cambridge, MA

1. Giant fungus growing out of the hardwood floor in allegedly climate-controlled room. And somehow we are being blamed for the giant fungus. It is about 1.5 feet across. I am told that it is probably edible. There are smaller, satellite fungi nearby.

   



2. One of my coworkers has a solution to everything: She'll show up at lab wearing a mini-skirt and high heels and ask a (male) post-doc to help.


3. Very awesome conference friend (famous dude) got in touch with me today because he's worried about someone I work with. He explained that one of his (unofficial? official?) jobs is to talk to students who are thinking about dropping out of MIT, and I think the implication is that he sees a lot of commonalities between this situation and that of many potential drop-outs.


4. I wonder what the people at the bank think about my continuing to withdraw large amounts of money all in cash.


5. Making progress with stuff from work. Unfortunately, not everything that I need is installed yet, and when I try to install a local copy, it complains that it can't find the headers that it wants. Not sure which person to ask about this. On the bright side, I did find someone to answer one of my other questions.


6. Over-exaggerated what I've gotten done this week. Need to work on that.


7. Went to a talk here in Cambridge the other day. No one from the regular group volunteered to talk at the next session, so I volunteered to give a talk. Not sure if that was a good idea. As it's likely to be pretty similar to what I'm talking about at the conference in August, it probably is a good idea. But if someone from the regular group volunteers, then I'll be off the hook.


8. After all this time with no a/c, 80F seems cool.


9. I am about ready to protect my water bottle from microorganisms by adding a bit of vodka to the contents.