MIT Sport TKD Blog

I just ate a cookie, it was delicious.

As of right now, I’m sitting in lab, waiting for my post-doc to come in. This is a routine we have, I sit here and wait, because if I don’t wait I might kill something. So I decided to be productive and update you all about my summer.

This summer I’m working twice as much as last summer, which means that now I actually work more than a few hours a day. Instead of working 1-3 hours a day like last summer, now I go up to 8-9 hours. It’s pretty fantastic. I still have a fair amount of time to relax and, as many people that do biology research, I have plenty of time during experiments to browse the internet and check my e-mail.

I’ve discovered a few things while working this summer. First, everyone uses gtalk when they’re at work. It’s pretty interesting how my gtalk contact list has about 20 people logged in during typical ‘working hours’ (usually ‘busy’ or ‘away’ like I am), and after ~6pm it goes down to about 5 people. The other thing I discovered, 1 minute in lab can feel like an hour when you’re weighting out 10.00mg samples to a 1% precision.

Outside of lab, I’ve had a life. I’ve done extremely satisfying things such as eating, sleeping, and watching TV. Also, my mother got a trial of Amazon Prime and shared it with me, which means that I can order anything I want from Amazon.com and get free 2nd-day shipping as long as they have it in stock. I ordered two things already. By the way, if you order frequently from Amazon, an Amazon Prime account is totally worth it. You pay $80 a year, but you can share it with 4 other people, and you all get free 2nd-day shipping, so evenly split, you’re each paying $16 a year for unlimited 2nd-day shipping at a huge online store. =) Okay, that was not a paid ad, I swear.

Other than that, I’ve been meaning to do things, but often fail at it. I did succeed at something, spending money during the 4th of July weekend. Got a haircut, and a few things I wanted to buy at Newbury, and now I’m officially broke. Not really, I’m getting an iPhone 3G tomorrow. =)

Hope you’re all having an exciting summer. I’ll go back to my procrastination routine in lab and then I’ll go grade chemistry exams for a few hours. I’ll try to come back to TKD practice soon, I want my injuries to heal a bit more so I don’t start dying after a few kicks.

-Omar

PART I

I would like to explain the motivations behind the creation of this blog.

As the cohesive group we are, a big family we proudly call ourselves, some of our club members [Mary] are feeling uneasy, and completely lost, considering the prospect of a summer disconnected from some of their TKD buddies. Didn’t you feel the stress of having to say goodbye to other TKD folks knowing you won’t see some of them until the fall term? That’s what I thought, tragic. Well, don’t stress, for this blog is here to bring some hope to your lives and help you cope with the situation. The main purpose of the blog is to keep each other updated about our super interesting summer activities *so Mary can easily stalk all of us*. Sharing your summer experiences with Mary the rest of your TKD buddies is a honorable thing to do, and something we’re all looking forward to.

What can you possibly share in this blog? Anything you want. Let your imagination fly, and reach new limits, and once you find that special thing you would like everyone else in the club to know about, use your magnificent writing skills to tell us all about it, through this blog. Topics can range from your current internship or research project (we’re all very interested to hear about it, I swear), to how much ice cream you ate yesterday and how much you’ll have to kick in order to burn those extra calories. There is simply no limit in what you can talk about, just use your common sense and keep things clean.

Now, some of you might have used the WordPress platform before and will be all excited to jump right in and write a blog entry. For those of you who don’t know how to do it, these are the easy steps to follow to publish your entry:

1. Register for a new account.
2. Send me and Mark an e-mail so we can set your account as a contributor.
3. Once your account is set as contributor, Login to your account
   
4. Once logged-in click on Write to write your post. [you can just use the link in this line if you can't find the 'write' button once you're logged in]
5. After your done, click on Submit for Review [a very cute button to the right]
6. Send us another e-mail, and we’ll approve it unless you said mean things about my cat.
7. Done! Mary can now officially stalk you more effectively.

• note that after your first blog entry you only have to repeat steps 3-6 for your following entries! easy, huh?!

If you think all of this is simply too much work for you, given that you are already dedicating your life to lab or something, you can just write your post in an e-mail or word document and send it to me and I’ll publish it for you.

PART II - Here we get graphical

There is another thing I wanted to share with all of you. We wouldn’t be able to effectively stalk each other only through blog entries… right? How often have you found yourself looking through other people’s pictures on facebook just to see how much fun they were having? Right. We have also set up our own beautiful TKD gallery. The concept is easy and clean, everyone can post pictures of what they’ve been up to for the enjoyment of the rest of the club! These pictures can be, again, about anything you’re doing this summer. To access the galleries to the following:

1. Visit the Gallery site [http://MITSportTKD.com/gallery/]
2. Register! [An error screen might show up at the end, but your registration should have been received anyways, don't worry]
   
3. Send Mark and I an e-mail to notify of your registration [we need to approve the account]
4. Login
5. Follow the instructions to add photos to your gallery! You can add albums and photos to those albums.

• If you don’t know how to add photos let me know and I’ll help you.

That is all for now, we have two beautiful stalking tools up and running and I’m eager to see what you all have to share. I hope you all are having an exciting summer and I hope to see many blog entries and photos soon!

-Omar