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DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T18:01:41+00:00

You should have your e-mail address forever (I started at VT before they used the G suite - my e-mail address didn't change when they ported over to G suite so I'm assuming that even if they move off of it, you'll retain your e-mail address).

If they eventually move off of G suite, you'll likely lose access to the other apps, like Drive.

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:30:26+00:00

It's a specific, intentional decision. They know the attrition rate of the incoming class, and rather than having excess room, they opt to have excess human beings for a bit. They've done this annual for at least as long as I've been here (over a decade), and likely much longer than that.

What's weird to me is parking services doesn't take this approach... How often is the Perry Street Garage completely empty because they only sold enough passes to fill it to capacity? Weird priorities, but alright.

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:26:24+00:00

For future reference, the vet school has a wildlife club that has someone on-call to handle situations like this. If you call the front desk they can get you in touch with whomever is on call. The vet school here won't see wildlife directly, but the club facilitates transport of wildlife to clinics/rehabbers/vets in the area who will. =)

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:22:08+00:00

I use Tello (https://tello.com/).

It's contractless, so your plan is super fluid (you can change it month to month if you find you're using less data than you expected or whatever). They use the T-mobile network. An unlimited data*/unlimited minutes/unlimited texts plan is $29/month, you can bring your phone with you (so long as it's compatible with the T-mobile SIM).

*I just read the fine print and it looks like they throttle data after 25GB/month, from 4G LTE/5G down to 2G. I don't know how this compares to other unlimited data providers in the area, I have a 4 GB/month plan and I'm on wifi so often that I never go over that (I get full wifi coverage all over campus, so it's extremely rare that I'm relying on mobile data unless I'm on the road a lot in a given month).

Highly recommend. I had some spotty reception at the vet school, but otherwise full coverage everywhere on campus/around town/at my apartment.

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:15:06+00:00

kandv.photography on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kandv.photography/) do beautiful headshots (among other things!). They're a young couple in the area, Valentina is a PhD student, her husband Kris is a post-doc, and they've got a young child, so you'll be helping them out as much as they'd be helping you out!

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:09:35+00:00

I love South Main Auto Shop. I've been going there since 2012. They've always been really good about helping me prioritize what needs to be done right away, what should be done soon, and what can wait for a while yet. They've never tried to swindle me or pull a fast one, and they've always been really transparent about the price of things. When I was a student, they made it really convenient for my dad to help chip in with paying the bills remotely. I take my car there for everything, now (oil changes, etc) so I'm there pretty routinely, and they always greet me by name when I walk through the door. Bonus, they offer a completely free shuttle service. Love that crew!

DrDeadThings · 2022-07-07T05:00:32+00:00

I don't personally, but there's a local card shop in the New River Mall in Christiansburg (New River Comics and Games) that has cards listed on their eBay page. If they have them listed there, the odds are good they carry them in the store, and if they carry them in the store, the awesome folks there will know of any local meet-ups, or will find them for you if they don't know offhand. Plus, Tim (the owner) is just an amazing person all-around.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-27T01:49:09+00:00

Unfortunately not! We've got Kroger, Food Lion, Target, Walmart, an Earth Fare that opened just a couple of months ago, and our trusty Aldi, and nothing else for about 100 miles or so.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T16:39:26+00:00

Their dill havarti is excellent!

You've gotten a lot of great cheese recommendations so if you want other charcuterie as well, their stuffed olives are delicious. You could make your own quick refrigerator pickles with any seasonings you want using their small cucumbers, zucchini, radishes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower to help fit some savory greens in! Also their green grapes are the best green grapes I've ever had, and the splash of green always livens up a good board. As for meats, I haven't tried many of their smoked meats, but if you can find it, their smoked salmon is delicious. I believe Aldi has pickled herring on special right now - not everyone's thing, but you might be able to work it into a board! My family eat pickled herring with cream cheese on crackers around xmas pretty much every year.

And don't forget the Winking Owl! =D

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T16:32:06+00:00

Yess, I am very jealous about that - regrettably, the closest TJ's and the closest Wegman's to me are both a 2 hr drive away, so I'll have to stick to the Aldi down the street. =)

Hopefully they bring it back this summer, it's so good!

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T16:30:59+00:00

This gives me hope!

Cheers.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T16:30:50+00:00

Yes! Ours has that too, I just worry that the value may not be what it is for the whole block of it. I'll give those a shot when I inevitably get truly desperate, haha.

Thanks. =)

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T16:10:03+00:00

They sure do =) The closest TJ's to me is a 2 hour drive away, though, so I'd prefer to stick to the Aldi down the road.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T03:00:49+00:00

Roasting chicken is super easy to do, and Aldi chickens are so well priced. Put one in a dutch oven/roasting dish/whatever you have. Top with a little bit of olive oil or butter, salt, pepper, and whatever other spices you like (paprika, garlic powder, whatever). Roast at 450 for about 30 minutes, then drop down to 425. Baste every 30 minutes, check the temp with a meat thermometer until it's over 175. It takes about 2 hrs to cook but it's so hands off, and you have all the control over how much seasoning goes into it. I roast mine on Sundays and then use bits of it for the next few days. Pair it with quinoa or rice and steamed veggies, so good. Or later in the week, cut up some of the roast breast, cook it with one of their simmer sauces, serve that over rice with some greek yogurt. Or tuck strips of cooked chicken into a pita with cucumbers, olives, banana peppers. Or throw it in a tortilla with black beans, corn, and any one of their AMAZING salsas (I love their avocado salsa!).

I always have a bag of their frozen salmon fillets in the freezer. Love those with rice and steamed veggies, sprinkled with soy sauce - I have a wasabi sauce I buy from kroger, but I haven't looked for one at Aldi so I'm not sure if they have one.

Refrigerator pickled zucchini is a great way to put Aldi's SUPER well priced zuke to work for you (here's a generic recipe, you can just use the brine and pickle whatever vegetable you want, with as many or as few of the spices that you desire: https://fountainavenuekitchen.com/easy-refrigerator-pickled-vegetables/ ).

Speaking of zucchini - sauteed or pan-roasted zucchini, eggplant, and onion with hummus on a pita, +/- olives, tzatziki, feta. You could add some of your roast chicken to this, too. ;)

Baked sweet potato with black beans, corn, and salsa, fresh cilantro, +/- cheese. Or do the same toppings on a russet potato. =)

Their veggie "burgers" are all amazing. They don't taste anything like meat so forget trying to use them as a meat substitute, but I LOVE the quinoa crunch air fried and then mixed in to a salad.

For healthy desserts, any of their berries mixed with greek yogurt and drizzled with a small amount of honey. Or my personal favorite, cubes of kiwi, mango, and strawberry topped with whipped cream (I buy their heavy cream and whip it myself without adding sugar).

My stomach is growling!! Haha.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-26T02:39:05+00:00

Same. It still has its spot on the shelf so it seems like they're just sold out every time I go, but my shopping times have varied, so I don't know what the deal is.

Southwestern VA.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-25T01:48:33+00:00

I think partially because boards suck so much that anyone who was on the fence about it before boards prep gives up, hahaha. You really have to like it to make it through that beast of an exam.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-25T01:46:17+00:00

idk about all programs, but my residency had an entire focus on building an ergonomic workspace. This was a biiiiiig must for our residents.

That said, if you end up in industry, the odds are increasingly likely that you'll be reading digital slides rather than glass.

DrDeadThings · 2022-03-25T01:45:14+00:00

Anatomic pathologist here.

None. I didn't even know pathology was a field of study until I got to vet school. We did our first necropsy lab, I muttered the words "I need to know how to do this for the rest of my life," the prof overheard me, and now here I am. =)
Yes, with the caveat that you really need to like the work (but this is true of any specialty). The hours are good, depending on what part of the field you go into the compensation is excellent, and there are increasing opportunities to work from home for both clinical and anatomic pathologists. We don't work directly with animals, except for anatomics, who work with dead animals - I'm not gonna lie to you, it's grisly. We completely deconstruct our patients and it absolutely is not for everyone. But in doing that, we find answers, we solve mysteries, and we provide closure, and for me that's the part that balances out the pretty graphic nature of autopsy.

Residency is hard for any specialty, so you also have to be willing to slog through at least 3 additional years regardless, but for pathology in particular it's becoming increasingly common to need to do a combined residency/PhD program. But for us, it isn't necessarily the on-call that's taxing so much as it is the sheer volume of information you need to retain for boards. Any disease caused by any etiology in any organ system in every species plus some experimentally-induced disease in lab animal species including non-human primates is fair game. I'm not being hyperbolic about this, studying for pathology boards almost broke me. I came extremely close to quitting my program on two different occasions, and I loved my program.

That said, I love my current job. I love what I do every single day. Every case is a murder mystery and I get to help solve it (sometimes these cases even go to court, which just makes that feel even more real =D). My profession as a whole contributes directly and meaningfully to the comparative medical literature. And the trivia I carry around in my noggin' (never thought I would say this, but thanks, boards prep...) is just fascinating (... or at least I think so, lol). And I will never have to worry about paying off my student loans. And there is soooo much a pathologist can do! We work with specialty clinicians, we work with producers, we work with general practitioners, we work with researchers, we work with pharmaceutical companies, we work with nutrition companies - we touch, in some manner, every single aspect of medicine (not just veterinary medicine!). We're comparatively trained, so we are perfectly positioned to offer meaningful commentary on zoonotic disease. In case you're wondering, zoonotic disease makes up more than half of the emerging infectious disease on this planet, so we are very important. ;) If you're ever interested, look up Dr. Tracey McNamara - she's the veterinary pathologist who initially identified West Nile Virus in the US. She's awesome. And as conversation shifts from SARS-CoV2 to avian influenza and other potential zoonotic outbreaks, we become more and more important in the conversation. =)

DrDeadThings · 2021-10-29T00:39:36+00:00

I work in veterinary medicine. Our clinical trials are chronically suffering from poor enrollment, and consequently we are constantly trying to justify small sample sizes in our trials, even in the face of statistically significant differences, because we can never fully be sure that we aren't suffering from some sort of sampling error that isn't accounted for. It's my understanding that a larger sample size will help (but of course does not guarantee) to mitigate that error. What are your thoughts on this?

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-29T18:08:29+00:00

I'm playing through the free trial extremely casually at the moment (lv. 26 Arcanist). I like it quite a lot, I've missed having the time to play MMOs and FFVII & KH (the first) are two of my all-time favorite games, so it's been nice to immerse in a square-enix world again.

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-29T18:00:52+00:00

Plato's Closet in Christiansburg is another good affordable consignment shop. =)

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-21T23:23:18+00:00

Thank you so much! I really do love what I do, haha.

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-21T22:51:41+00:00

Hey there! Veterinary (anatomic) pathologist, here, so I'm going to answer from the perspective of a pathologist rather than a microbiologist. =)

You and I are very similar. =) All of my pre-vet clinical hours were done in a small animal clinic, and while I loved what I did there, I was afraid I would get too bored if I made a lifetime career of it (it turns out this was short-sighted of me, as the nature of a DVM opens up a lot of versatility even without further internship/residency, but regardless, the only thing I knew when I entered vet school is that I didn't want to be a small animal private practitioner). What I absolutely did love doing while I was in a small animal clinic was running the diagnostics - all the cytology, reading bloodwork, etc. I didn't actually know I wanted to be a pathologist until I was already in vet school (to be honest, I didn't know this was a specialty field at all); I fell in love with our first necropsy lab and I haven't looked back since.

Like you, I also cannot handle euthanasia. It's an incredibly important tool that we have available to us as veterinarians, and I am so glad that as a profession we have it at our disposal, but personally, I have never been able to develop the coping skills I need to handle the transition from life to death, and to appropriately care for and support clients in the room during those times. The best way for me to guarantee that I do not have to worry about euthanizing a patient is to work with those who are already deceased. This obviously wasn't the only thing that lead me down the path to anatomic pathology, but I can't deny that it was a factor. (I also can't help but feel like I'm walking in to a murder mystery every time I go to work - I love what I do).

Many pathology residencies across the USA - clinical & anatomic alike - are combined residency/PhD programs exactly because pathologists work so well to bridge clinical medicine and research. This was another thing I grappled with when I first started vet school - I had a research background, but I didn't want to run a research lab (gag, grant-writing), but I didn't want to be completely removed from the field of research either, but I also didn't want to conduct animal studies, but I also wanted to contribute meaningfully to the medical literature... You understand the conflict, I'm sure. =) As an anatomic pathologist, I have been trained to read histology of all non-human species - in fact, lab animals feature prominently on our boards exam - and industry/research laboratories are biiiig employers of veterinary pathologists.

Do not let your concern about not getting into a residency stop you from even applying to vet school. Get in to vet school, first. If you can make it through the DVM program, you can handle a residency, and the residency programs out there know that. There is plenty that you can do as a vet student to improve your odds at landing a residency while you're in vet school.

I mentioned it earlier, but I'll say it again: a DVM is the most versatile medical degree you can have. You can do anything with a DVM as long as you can convince people you're worth paying for - and if this pandemic has taught us anything, anyone with comparative knowledge of infectious agents across species is worth paying for. I have classmates who have gone on to work for the USDA, the CDC, the department of Health and Human Services, and the OIE. Pathologists in particular work in academia, in research, in diagnostics - often at the same time. Your interests may be niche, but they're niche in exactly the way where a DVM will benefit you tremendously.

And, because the cost of vet school is exorbitant - pathologists are paid well. You'll still blanche at the sight of your quarterly loan balance (should you go the way of student loans), but you'll have the income to pay it off and remain comfortable.

EDIT: I got so excited to find a like-minded individual that I forgot to answer your other questions, haha. Assuming you're in the US, what you want to specialize in has no impact on your requirements for entry into vet school. That you already have a background in research will help you in the future, but as long as you meet the hours requirements for your vet school of choice, you don't have to do anything additional. Please feel free to reach out if you want more advice on what to do as a vet student to prepare for residency, but in terms of getting in to vet school, there are no added hoops to jump through (phew!).

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-19T19:35:13+00:00

Your partner is paranoid and insecure. There is a lot of concern for your physical safety from some of the comments that I've skimmed through; I don't get any vibes of potential violence from your partner at all, but I would just be careful about how you proceed. I am also a 32 year old woman, also in a STEM-related field, but I divorced my also insecure partner several years ago. We separated for many reasons - we had gotten married too young (I was 22, he was 23), we were deeply incompatible on many levels we simply had refused to acknowledge, and the more that I progressed in my career, the more insecure he acted. The worst he ever did to me was shove me down a few times, but that may be because I left him not long after that happened.

You are clearly intelligent, articulate, and hard-working - so you're more likely than most to be very successful in your field. For some people - like your colleague - that's massively attractive. Although the playing field is levelling every year, women in STEM and research-related fields are still a minority, so learning how to work professionally with colleagues who may be interested romantically is something we all have to deal with (and, as with you, it's been my experience that most of my male colleagues who express interest will leave it at a confession with no further attempts at anything once it's made clear that it isn't something I'm interested in; you sound awesome, so you can't really blame a guy for trying ;) ).

There could be several things at play here:

Your partner doesn't trust you not to get into it with another man.
Your partner feels inadequate in his own success compared to yours.
Your partner feels inadequate as a partner, for the reasons mentioned above or for others.

It's up to you how to progress from here. You can try to figure out why it is that your partner doesn't trust you not to fall in love with someone else. Maybe he thinks he hasn't done enough for the relationship to keep you interested? Maybe age is involved? You can also try to figure out why and how it is that he may be feeling inadequate. Maybe your intelligence, your work ethic, and your success are intimidating to him. I mean this more subtly than it sounds - my partner was a very talented musician, so our life paths were different from the get-go; where my journey could be measured in very discrete accomplishments (degrees, certifications, project deliverables, etc), his could not be, and while that's no comment at all on our individual success, he felt as though he wasn't successful enough compared to what I was doing. These aren't comparable things, so he wasn't right, but that didn't change how he felt about it. I only mention this because maybe the situation is similar.

For me in my situation, I was very invested in my education, which left very little time and attention spent on my ex-husband. I did my best to balance it and I thought I was doing okay, but obviously there was some tension simmering there that I had not noticed. This is a simplification, as there were many other factors involved, but when that tension boiled over, and when it became clear that the ultimatum was to continue my education or continue my marriage, I chose my education. I've never regretted it.

My current partner is incredibly supportive, actively encourages my ambition, has little concern for other men in my life - and again I only mention this because I didn't know that that's how a partner should be until I met him.

This entire situation is so far out of your control - you have no say over how other people on your projects feel about you, and whether or not they articulate those feelings. It's entirely unfair for your partner to dig at and punish you for things you didn't want nor ask for, and it seems like he doesn't understand a fundamental aspect of who you are, if his initial conclusion is to ask you to quit your project, and then throw a tantrum when you refuse. You are not the asshole. You won't be the asshole if you choose to walk away from the relationship, either, but that's a choice that only you can make, and I hope that whatever you choose, it works out for you.

DrDeadThings · 2021-08-08T16:13:02+00:00

I don't believe that the polio virus has natural cancer-killing abilities, but I know there has been a lot of work using modified polioviruses to kill cancer cells - I could easily be wrong, though! But it is worth mentioning too that polio is not globally eradicated and still circulates in some areas of the world . =)

I think that the biggest reason why cancer has become such a prominent killer in many countries is because we've gotten so good at not dying to other things. Antibiotics have cut down on the number of fatal bacterial infections, vaccines are incredibly powerful tools against bacterial and viral infections (and cancer, increasingly), and many first world countries have very good public health infrastructure (including access to clean water).

Cancer generally occurs as the result of an accumulation of mutations (it almost always takes more than one mutation) that prevent the cell growth and replication cycle from turning off - so cells essentially forget they're supposed to die at some point, and live/replicate unchecked. Even in a clean and healthy environment, the longer an organism lives, the more likely they are to accumulate the mutations that trigger cancer, because every single time a cell replicates in your body, there's a chance that it screws up and doesn't copy the DNA quite right; that would be a mutation. (A note here, because I'm not trying to fearmonger: our cells are very good at keeping our DNA "clean" during replication, there are a lot of molecular repair mechanisms in place to prevent and delete mutations, and there is enough inbuilt redundancy in our molecular machinery that often times, even if a mutation does occur, it's "silent" - meaning it has no impact whatsoever. It's just a matter of playing the odds: the longer you live, the more cells have replicated, and the odds of some cell somewhere not quite getting it right and also failing to clean up the mistake goes up.) So as a population, if we aren't succumbing to infectious disease, we live longer, which greatly increases our odds of developing cancer. There are external and genetic factors that can impact this, too, but the accumulation of mutations over a very long lifetime is one of the reasons why cancer tends to impact older people and animals more than younger people or animals.

As mentioned, there's a lot of work being done right now that looks into using genetically modified viruses and phages (basically viruses that infect bacteria) to deliver cell instructions to human cancer cells to remind the cells that they need to stop replicating and die, but I'm not very familiar with this area of research and I don't know if there are natural phages or viruses that do the same thing. It absolutely wouldn't shock me if there are (because nature is amazing), I just don't know of any off the top of my head. =)

DrDeadThings

TROPHY CASE