Interesting news in the world of Science and Genetics today - “An international research team, supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced it has completed a high-quality, draft sequence of the genome of the laboratory rat, and has used that data to explore how the rat’s genetic blueprint stacks up against those of mice and humans.”

I downloaded 2 of the articles that will be published in the April 1st issue of Nature Journal:
Genome Sequence of the Rat
Three’s Company

You can also read more about it on the NHGRI site and the Nature Journal website.

Thanks to the man who pulled up right behind me in my office parking lot, I now know that my car’s right front headlights are out. I wish the lights would not be automatically turned on during the day - its totally unnecessary.

End this madness right now! It was funny in the beginning, but now that its so played out, its downright irritating. You know what I’m talking about - William Hung. And now he’s about to release an album? Being on the Top 10 most downloaded songs on the iTMS? Urrgggh. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - End this madness!

I spent about 2 hours last night trying to exercise my 5 “wishes”, in the form of Pepsi bottle caps. Yes, the free iTunes songs … I have just too many favorite songs! I also got to make sure I don’t get songs that I already have, not that my songs collection is that much, oh, about 17GB of digital music. I finally made my choices, and it was time for bed. I see more free songs coming our way, and Doug has more Pepsi to drink. haha - sounds like a plan.

There were some albums that I was thinking of getting, which might not be good for song redemption since you get a better deal just paying 10 bucks for over 10 songs - Some albums on my list are:

Tesla - Into The Now
Marcy Playground - MP3
Placebo (ALL their albums)

It was only recently that we’ve started tuning in to HGTV, as you know, we got a house and now its time to plan for all the “house” stuff, like painting, landscaping, and furniture shopping. It’s definitely a fun experience, I must say. But, my point is, HGTV covers just about everything! Hard to believe, they have a show for every part of house - designing without the bucks (Design On a Dime), getting your yard done (Outer Spaces), getting a house (House Hunters), and the latest one in the bunch - Designed to Sell, which is a series that educates you on what you can do that will make your house more appealing to prospective buyers. Fascinating.

Thanks to all my friends who have chipped in to give our little birdie a name. We have decided on the name “Mac” - its easy to call, bi-sexual, sounds cute, and of course, you know what my favorite computer of choice is.
Take a look at Mac’s new website, a photo journal that will have pics of his/her life with us.

I think the Apprentice is of those NBC reality shows that’s worth watching. Average Joe was ok, but became boring after a while. This could really start “stealing” viewers from CBS’s Survivor. But in the wake of TiVos and DVRs, who cares? We have two of those shows on Season Pass, so we never miss a single episode.

Its still too early to predict the Sole Survivor, but for the Apprentice, I’m hoping Bill wins, though I have the feeling that maybe Amy will be the winner.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately, and I never knew naming a pet could be that difficult. Not that there aren’t any names we can think of, but none gave us the feeling of “Yeah, that’s it!”. So I’m letting all of you suggest a name for my baby green cheeked conure.

Here’s the details I got so far:
I don’t know if its a HE or SHE, but I’m just calling it a SHE for now.
Her approximate hatch date is February 26, 2004.
She’s the youngest of five chicks from the clutch.
To see how she’ll look like when she grows up, click here.

Just send me a comment and leave your name suggestions there.

Thanks!

We finally found a place that sells those Pepsi bottles with a chance to win a free song - Safeway in downtown Los Altos. I tried to do the “tilt-the-bottle” trick, but got cross-eyed, plus they placed the bottles right by the cashier, so it was impossible not to get attention from people lining up to pay for their stuff. In the end, we got two bottles, figuring we’ll use these two bottles to practice on, so we’ll be better skilled the next time. heheh … A few cross-eyes later, I finally got the “angle-of-tilt”.

The first song I redeemed was “Rock Star” by N.E.R.D., Jason Nevin’s Remix. That song ROCKS!

Oh yeah, out of the two bottles we got, only one was a winner.

The weather was fabulous today - sunny, not too hot. We drove up to the East Bay to visit a bird breeder - she has green cheek conures for sale, and we were just having a look at the babies before they are weaned in a few weeks.

I’d not decided whether or not to introduce a parrot into my life. I’ve had a passion for birds, parrots especially, since as far as I can remember, but this will be my very first parrot. Naturally I’m nervous. When we arrived at the place, there was another couple there picking a chick. The breeder brought out two for me to see, while the other couple had two as well. They spent the whole time on my lap, and the older one tried to climb onto my shoulder. I was sold. How can I not fall in love with such cute faces!

After picking the one we wanted, we placed our deposit. It took a while for me to realize that I’m finally going to be a birdy mom.

Now I gotta think of a name.

Yep, we searched, we visited, we laughed, we cried … and finally, we got our house. I got the yard I wanted, Doug got an attached garage he loved, what more could we ask? We have never spent so much time perusing home improvement magazines, watch HGTV, and visiting IKEA, Ethan Allen, and Home Depot. This is all very exciting.

Lately I’ve been getting comments on my blog from spammers who post links to porn sites, and just leaving quirky text like “hi from Imbudo Daryl amazing page see a later”. It’s such a pain to delete each comment as they appear, coz I think they will not quit. And IP banning doesn’t work either - they post from a variety of IPs. So that’s why I had to change my comments app to BlogBack, which is a cool comments app that allows you to link their app to a number of blogging apps, like Blogger, MT, etc. Once again, I copied Jen.
Oh yeah, if anyone has any solution to this Comments/Spam madness, I’d like to hear ‘em. Thanks.

I’ve been waiting all winter for summer to come, and now that its here, I can’t think of what to do. But I’ve been having those mountain biking dreams again - the ones where I do freestyling on my MTB off a cliff, and land without injury - ahh, isn’t it great that you get to fly, or hover in mid-air in your dreams, where you can’t die, no matter what, well, unless you actually die while you are dreaming … that’s another story.

Man I do like dreaming …

I’m going to take my bike out of the storage, bring it in the shop for a little greasin’, and soon I’ll be hitting the trails! Can’t wait. So what are you planning to do this summer?

I really want that Apple Tee that they gave away on opening day of the SF Apple Store, but I knew that there’ll be a long line even before the day is started. True enough, people started lining up 2 days before! I could never beat those guys.

Hey, check out the cool photo gallery

Yes we are doing just that. Time to stop renting and start owning! So the past couple of weekends were spent looking at open houses, going with our agent to houses for sale, and exploring the different neighborhoods here in San Jose. A pretty fun experience on the whole, getting to know the different layouts, see how big people’s backyards are, and we even got to see areas that we would never have ventured into. For example, I’ve heard of Willow Glen, but it wasn’t only yesterday that we got a chance to drive down Lincoln Ave and discover the little town. It was an awesome place to live. Well, we are still looking and I hope we’ll be able to find a house we love.