Daeseage

[Error: unknown template qotd]People with runny noses snnn-ork!-ing it back up in there.  Uggh, it's disgusting.  I don't mind people blowing their noses or anything around me, I just hate the sound of it, and the unpleasant reminder of the sensation of mucus sliding down the back of my throat.

So. Gross.

Also, full cereal bowls left in the sink, but I deal with that very infreaquently right now. =]

I had the idea that I would post every couple of days, try to stay on top of things -- I'm so busy this semester that sometimes just writing out things that I've done is stabilizing.  Instead, I've caught a cold and have spent the best part of the last week reading Sherlock and Homestuck fanfiction, waiting for the sinus pressure to win out and for my head to explode.  Lucky for me it hasn't happened yet.  Unluckily for me, the cold won't. go. away.  Due to the overabundance of meth heads and my own inability to get to a pharmacy during daytime hours, I don't have any Sudafed (which is the most helpful by far), and instead have been supplementing my poor diet with Benadryl and aspirin.  And my roommate probably wonders what is so wrong with me that I can't make it to an 8am physics class.  Grrargh.  I hate viruses!

On a less self-pitying note, I'm up at the Lake with my parents this weekend; it's my mom's birthday so they booked the timeshare for the week and came up to chill.  I'm super glad that I decided to make the drive up yesterday, because this morning my sister called!  Now, S and I have been on bad terms and only marginally better terms for most of since she was born, but she's my little sister, and I do love her, even when she's driving me UP THE WALL, and NO I DON'T LIKE YOUR FRIENDS, I NEVER HAVE, and ARGHGHGHGHG, WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING????!!!  She up and joined the military last Christmas, and finally shipped out to basic training in Missouri last month.  Even though we've been three hours away and I've seen her less than my parents the last three years, it's strangely different to know that she's not just on the other side of the hill screwing around at the feedstore and being DD (usually) for her dumbass friends.  She's having to be Strong, and Self-Sufficient, and Get Along With Other People, and she's 5-7 states over (depending on how you count these things) and I can't just call her when I'm bored after class and listen to her rant about things.  I miss her.  I hadn't really realized how much until I heard her voice on the phone.  It was only a five-minute call, but she sounded so much happier than the last time I heard her speak (she was crying then), and I know she's looking forward to the packages and letters we're sending.  I think she gets those everyday of the week, but she only gets 5 minutes on the phone on Sundays.  She did the gas room last week and got the nice socks that my dad sent her, and I hope she likes the books I sent (my copies of Philip Pullman's His Dark MaterialsI), and I never really got the whole Army Proud thing, and I still don't, not really, but she's my little sister and she's going to be an MP, and she's coming home for Christmas and I really can't wait, even though I'm sure we'll be in an argument with each other and my dad and anyone else in the room within two hours of her being home.  I'm sad that she's so far away, but I'm so proud that she's actually doing something, is going to be someone.  I guess that's what being a sister is?  I just hope my baby sister doesn't decide to go equally far away when she graduates high school.  They were always supposed to stay back home while I went the world over in search of adventure.  =/

So today in Ecology lab we learned how to make plots in R using a data set collected a few years ago at Swan Lake.  Granted, there are no swans at Swan Lake, and most of the time there is no lake, but that's neither here nor there. =]  I then spent the next three hours outside of lab writing a pretty script that will display a histogram of richness and abundance, as well as plots of all 6 combinations on one page.  It probably wasn't the most practical use of my time, but if you have R, you should check it out!  And let me know if there's anything I should do differently.

My lab partners weren't having the easiest time understanding how the program works, so every section of the script has descriptive hashtags.  After running the full script (or even just the add data section), you can then run any single linear regression model and see just the individual plot with the model line!  I'm rather proud of myself for my first try.  =]  Here's a link to a .zip file with the .Rdata file and the data .txt file used.  Hope you find it interesting!

http://www.mediafire.com/?3114jesk1zwd974

Also, does anyone know how to use the attach(data) function?  I keep getting a warning message when I use it, and I'm not sure why.  It didn't show up when my instructor used in in class today.  =/  Everything seems to work peachykeen without it, though, so I'm not too worried!  The only other thing I'd really like to be able to do is show the equation and R-squared value for linear regression in the plot, but I can always do that manually after the fact, I suppose.

In other news, I've got two exams (Calc and Genetics) still this week, and a paper for my Capstone, so I'd better quit screwing around with this and get some real work done!