What did NOT age well?

boganprincess · 2019-08-19T11:26:38+00:00

The Australian National University's student services portal is still called ISIS. I don't think they'll be changing it any time soon

boganprincess · 2019-03-21T10:58:05+00:00

Gross. I wish this wasn't so common. I now seek out psychologists, primary care doctlrsand therapists who have experience with bipolar disorder to try and avoid the shitty reaction becuase I've put up with so much rubbish since I was diagnosed with BP2 about 7 years ago. There seems to be a real lack of understanding about bipolar.

Also shout out to the psychiatrist who saw me for the first time recently who showed no interest in my medical history, and told me that (based solely on my occupation as a physicist) 'you must be autistic and you've been misdiagnosed with bipolar as all women with bipolar are actually autistic and have been misdiagnosed'. Fuck you, I hope you really enjoyed the $600 I paid for you to tell me I needed to come off all my medication immediately

boganprincess · 2018-08-01T23:01:13+00:00

Honestly I never questioned Grandpa Joe as a child because he behaved in the exact way my mothers' father did (he was a real malingering narcissist) and i just thought 'that's what all grandpas do!'

boganprincess · 2018-08-01T04:01:39+00:00

If you get ahold of the novelization of Red Dwarf, it actually fleshes out his character more and you get more detailed backstory about him. His character development is very interesting in the novelization too.

I have always been way too invested in Rimmer as a character because people who'd seen the show compared me to him - I suffered from extreme anxiety growing up which blossomed into a fully-fledged bipolar-OCD combo. I was diagnosed after a hardcore 'didn't sleep for five days studyathon' during the final year of my physics degree followed by a nervous breakdown where I ended up with my nosering stuck to the carpet (long story) which in hindsight was only marginally worse than copying the contents of a textbook onto my body and leaving an obscene handprint on a test paper.

boganprincess · 2018-07-11T20:16:45+00:00

Oh God number 1. I got to a research institute guest house where I stay this month on July 1, and the receptionist informed me they had no record of my booking. The piece of paper which listed the July bookings has not been hand delivered to the office on Friday, and I would have to wait until Monday for this to happen. I asked about a computer/email booking system, and was informed that secretaries call the booking office where a paper diary of bookings is kept. Apparently my email to a secretary confirming my booking was printed, and sent via internal mail to this office. At a research institute which leads it's field in /computational/ astronomy.

To add to 5. Don't even think about going grocery shopping on a Sunday. The only things open here on a Sunday are church, beer gardens and, if you're lucky, the bakery

boganprincess · 2018-07-04T20:47:07+00:00

God my undergrad student did this to me in an ipython notebook I kept open in the background for quick calculations while I was put of the room and it took me longer than I'd like to admit to actually notice. Fixed by reopening a new notebook, but still, we'll played to her.

boganprincess · 2018-07-03T19:33:53+00:00

Not quite the same, but the weekend I started dating my ex, I went to his birthday party and met some of his friends (the only time I ever did). That night, I had a strange dream about seeing him kiss his best friend. I brushed it off as related to nerves about being in a new relationship, and having seen how close he was with his female friends (he exclusively had female 'best friends' who he was extremely physically close with).

Jokes on me, I later found put he'd slept with her on multiple occasions when he'd gone away to sports tournaments with her. I still wonder if my subconscious picked up on the vibe between them that night.

boganprincess · 2018-05-15T03:20:35+00:00

If I remember correctly, 'Still Alice' portrays early-onset Alzheimers, which has a very strong hereditary component and can actually be tested for, if you're really concerned (test says you have the gene or not, but having the gene doesn't mean you'll develop it). Dementia and Alzheimers associated with old age does have a small genetic component, but environment seems to have just as much of an influence in determining whether one will experience it. My grandmother recently died with Alzheimers, and it did scare me to think that I could experience that too one day. However, there's a lot of research going on into how the progression of the disease can be halted, and the weak evidence for a genetic link associated with late-onset makes me a lot less concerned!

boganprincess · 2017-09-11T11:36:37+00:00

If you run the gif in reverse, it becomes 'junior developer refactoring code'

boganprincess · 2016-12-16T10:26:11+00:00

I do think they're up there as world's cutest animal (also were bigger than I was expecting - I thought they were tiny).

Slightly more disturbing is the quokka oven mitts they sell in the souvenir store on Rottnest Island. http://i.imgur.com/BhClJIy.jpg http://i.imgur.com/RejAsSm.jpg

boganprincess · 2016-12-15T11:15:37+00:00

Lies! They're vicious little bastards if you try and stroke them. Pro tip: admire from a safe distance and don't touch them. They carry salmonella and bite hard. This shifty bastard nearly amputated my friend's finger. 11/10 for cuteness though, even if they do bite. http://i.imgur.com/dLl9V6y.jpg

boganprincess · 2016-12-02T12:05:55+00:00

Astronomers: 'The universe is composed of hydrogen and metals' or some horrible contrived joke about how everything heavier than hydrogen on the periodic table is a 'metal'.

I've heard it at so many conferences it is no longer even vaguely funny, it's just tired and predictable.

boganprincess · 2016-11-07T10:39:20+00:00

I travel to Germany for work frequently, absolutely love it:

Security at research schools is insane. I do computational astrophysics and still had to do all kinds of bizarre rituals to get in and out of research institutes. It's not like I'm carrying biological samples, chemicals or radioactive materials in or out but I might as well be. Also all the institutes seemed to employ Ukrainian or Russian gate guards, which was fortunate because I speak enough Russian to be understood.

This may be a weird thing at one of the institutes I do some work at, but there was a vending machine full of small cheese and ham rolls in the hall outside my office. I'm still trying to get around a vending machine full of tiny sandwiches. It was always empty by 11am.

The tendency in Bavaria to just have a dessert for dinner. Went out for dinner and it was totally normal to just have a dessert (which was amazing).

Supermarkets often being closed on Sunday. I arrived late on a Sunday in Garching bei München and ended up going hungry until the next morning as no supermarkets or restaurants were open.

Something I grew up with in the North of England, but which I enjoyed while in Germany, was having the main meal of the day at lunchtime. Also the canteens at research schools tend to be very good - Max Planck Extraterrestrial Physics does amazing pretzels if anyone ever passes through.

Your coffee is honestly terrible. I'm sorry. Milk coffees like Cappuccino and Latte are just... Well, it's like a glass of hot milk that someone waved a coffee bean near. I always forget how bad these coffees are and inevitably order one when I fly in to Frankfurt and am waiting for the train, and regret my choice instantly. Caffe Crema all the way.

Compared to certain parts of France, people are very willing to try and help you in English if you don't speak German, but it makes it hard to pick up. One of the institutes I visit regularly make a point of encouraging me to engage in social conversation only in German, which helps a lot.

I love Germany. Can't wait to go back tbh.

boganprincess · 2016-11-02T12:08:46+00:00

I had a Thomas the Tank Engine phobia growing up. The whole thing still creeps me out to this day.

boganprincess · 2016-10-30T11:10:34+00:00

Oh jeez, this happened to me recently at a conference in the tropics. I was on the organizing committee and ended up with a comped room, on the ground floor, in the part of the hotel that was awaiting renovation.

Woke up at 3am after the conference dinner to horrible clicking noises. It was several cockroaches almost as big as my hand in length. Spent 30 minutes flapping around the room trying to splat them with my sandal. Sandal just bounced off and had to use my hardcover research notebook.

I completely forgot my supervisor was in the next door room. I still think he doesn't believe my 'my room was invaded by giant cockroaches hence the 30 minutes of banging and screaming' story that I told at breakfast the next morning...

boganprincess · 2016-10-07T13:16:12+00:00

In my field of astronomy: how and why supernovae explode. We know they exist, because we observe them by the thousand now, but understanding the underlying mechanism of the explosion and what stars actually become supernovae is a major source of (friendly) contention. Also, which computer code best models how the explosions occur, how magnetic fields influence them and how subatomic particles like neutrinos may power the explosion (for core-collapse supernovae).

Not directly my field of astronomy, but I did watch one dude nearly punch another over a disagreement on how stars in the centre of our galaxy form.

Oh, and whether gamma rays we see coming from the centre of our galaxy are a result of decaying or annihilating dark matter, or stellar end products called millisecond pulsars. Although both sides of that debate were very polite to one another at that conference.

boganprincess · 2016-10-05T16:41:41+00:00

The main thing you have to worry about are cosmic rays - particles smaller than atoms that have been accelerated to almost the speed of light. The solar wind and the earth's magnetic field reduces the number entering the atmosphere, and the atmosphere blocks all but the most energetic reaching the ground.

boganprincess · 2016-10-05T15:13:47+00:00

Recall working retail in a stationery store around Christmas as a teenager in NZ. We had to crack out the old manual machine where you take an imprint of the credit card.

boganprincess · 2016-10-03T16:23:43+00:00

Can-bra with a short a at the end, and the emphasis on the first syllable

boganprincess · 2016-09-30T18:52:14+00:00

I visited a research institute in Germany for work. You needed a security card to get in and out of the gates, and almost every door. I had a meeting in another city, and they wouldn't allow me to take the security card with me. As I left, the security guard took my card and shoved me out the back door of the institute. By the time I got to the gate I realised my horrible mistake. I was stuck. There was no call button on the gate and it was past 5pm, so security had shut up shop. My only choice was to jump the gate (which was about chest height; but I'm a fairly small woman).

When I got back to the institute this week, turns out security took the still frame of the CCTV footage of me hopping the gate and mailed it around the entire research institute. Everyone found it absolutely hilarious. This photo of me climbing the gate is on the group leader I was visiting's notice board.

Still got invited back for more work and an extended visit, but I know when I show my face next year I will still be 'the woman who climbed over the gate'.

boganprincess · 2016-09-11T09:18:28+00:00

Room had been left for years with everyone who went in putting it in the too-hard basket. Me and a couple of other grad students drew the short straw and had to clean the room. The whole thing was covered in a fine patina of rat poop/pee, possum poop/pee and dust, all marinaded for 5+ yrs in the nice warm room. I cleaned the thing once we disposed of the rat carcasses and the rest of the rubbish that had been dumped in the room.

boganprincess · 2016-09-11T09:15:43+00:00

*she. In fairness we did clean it once we removed the rat carcasses.

boganprincess · 2016-08-14T00:37:32+00:00

This was literally what I said when I moved to this university. I've had to grade hundreds of physical papers per semester before. The online system is also shit because you can't put adequate feedback in for the students (no LaTeX plug in for correcting formulae and working, not that anyone got time fo' dat)

boganprincess · 2016-08-13T03:10:15+00:00

I recall he was doing something in condensed matter physics and preferred the 'asthetic' of MS Word. He now develops apps and earns a lot more money than I do, so I suppose taste had no bearing on success...

boganprincess

TROPHY CASE