Nightmares

Lately, I've noticed that my nightmares have evolved from when I was a kid. In the old and golden days, my nightmares were of monsters and clowns attempting to hurt me. Today, they are often about me going to school near the end of the semester, and I learn that there is a class that I have no attended the whole semester. And I finally show up to class to learn that there is a final. Then I'll wake up in a layer of sweat (actually, no, I was jk).

Also, I've noticed that Utahn drivers have become worse and more unsafe on the road. Now they'll dare to run straight through red lights. Turrible. Just turrible.

Fuk Utahn Drivers

Seriously. They are serious dangers of the road. On my way home from a good day at SLCC, I turn on to Creek Road, which is under construction where they shifted lanes and eliminated the middle turn lane. I'm behind a Volvo s60 going about 32 mph. The Volvo signals left to get into his/her neighborhood just before mine and has to stop since the middle lane is gone. We wait a bit since opposite traffic is present. Abruptly, a big truck appears my rear view mirror and he's not showing any sign of slowing down! Knowing what might happen, I braced myself and honked my horn. He finally notices, brakes hard, and has to turn to the right off the curb! Bastard. He literally missed my tail by about a foot. My guess was he came at me about 40 mph. Fuk'n Utahn drivers. 

Well, I'm glad I got home safely. Got a friend's bday tonight so I'll get to enjoy the night and relax (or party hard) a bit. My biology test today was rather easy. A classmate told me that he makes it easy so it'll keep students from dropping. Something about being able to drop the class should the first midterm performance be poor. Odd but interesting concept.

My bio lab class afterwards was interesting. This was going to be a long lab but the teacher split the class into four big teams to cut down the time. I joined the electrophoresis group since I've never done that stuff before.  Easy but fun stuff with preparing and watching things move towards the poles. The other groups were doing column and paper chromatography. The groups that did the paper chromatography messed up. Instead of using pencil to mark the level they used markers. lol. So it ended up with the marker oils being sporadic and all over the place. LOLOL.

Since I'm talking so much about school I have another story from this week. Gen chem II lab was frustrating. Easy lab but frustrating partner. Tweek is his name, as you may know. We're doing simple acid v. base titrations. When I read the procedure it mentioned about the accuracy of the volumetric burets to be to the 0.10 ml. I mentioned that to Tweek and he refutes that because the hundredths digit would be uncertain. I murmur "that's the point".... moron. 

On to what did frustrate me. I did the first titration to show him how to work it. Our indicator was phenylphaline, which goes to pink as a indicator (just reminding). We did three initial trials and the measured volumes of NaOH used came out to be: 5.2 ml,  4.7 ml, 4.9 ml. He got  worried because the first trial took more amounts to titrate than the rest while actually being a lighter pink than trial 2 and 3. One of the possible reasons that I gave was that we used top loading balances that could easily be affected by air current. He just wouldn't accept the first trial. 

So I just did another trial to shut his blah blah mouth. When weighing the solid, I demonstrated the errors that come from top loading balances and blew my breath onto the balance and showed him that the balance can give off a wrong reading. Then after titrating that fourth sample, the volume titrated came to be 4.3 ml. Tweek says let's keep that one and throw out the first trial. (Anyone see something funny here? ) I told him that we should keep all trials. We began arguing, and it ended up being stupid and pointless so I just let him be. He even ERASED all his first trial data. Sigh*. Of course, the average of the trials with calculation of the sig figs ended up both of us having the same results. 

Upon cleaning up there was some NaOH left in the buret. He took it while I took the E. flasks. He was about to dump the NaOH into the original NaOH container. Of course, Super Beeho steps in and tells him not to for ethical reasons. He decides to still do it since he just saw someone else do it while I was ordering his dumb ass not to. What's worse is that the teacher told others to do the same. LOLWTFBBQ. I don't like Tweek. Of the four labs classes I have, this is the worst.

However, I really like my elem gen chem lab class. My partner is a cool guy named Jeremy. He's open minded and really wants to learn how to do things right in the lab; asks me lots of valid questions and we enjoy and learn from the mistakes we make. And he's very opposite of Tweek so not all is bad at SLCC.

That was a long read, I know. But you're just bored at work, aren't you? So I don't have any guilt from typing this. I hungry. BYE.

 

1st Experiment Day of Gen Chem 2 Lab

At least one of you know that I'm taking courses at SLCC to get prerequisites done for dental school. One of them is Gen Chem 2 Lab. I must say that today was rather interesting. I must note that the chemistry lab facility there is horrible. No surprise there. 

I've learned that my partner is a very panicky person. He kept forewarning that we wouldn't get done in time. He also is too worried about others around him. He got frustrated that people started leaving before we were done. I'll name my partner as "Tweek" after the south park character Tweek Tweak.

We were measuring out different chemicals that were already filled in "community" volumetric burets. Apparently, they don't have enough burets for everyone or maybe they're afraid someone will swallow chemicals. Anyways, I was reporting the buret measurements to the hundredths place such as 2.02 ml iodine. Tweek said that we were supposed to do it to the tenths place and I asked him why. He replies with 'because the teacher said so' to which I began explaining why the uncertainty lies at the hundredths. He stubbornly agreed but I later took a peek at his paper and kept them to the tenths. Later the teacher looked at my data table and said I should be reporting that to the tenths. Once again, I explained where the uncertainty lies is the location of the last digit of reported measurement. She gave me a baffled look so I then pretended to be mistaken and changed my data to the tenths. LOL.

Another interesting moment: we were mixing acetone and H+ from HCl in water in a test tube of iodine, and we calculated the time for the reaction to complete by waiting for the colors to go clear. On our first trial Tweek was using a stirring rod but he only stirred horizontally. This of course resulted the top layers to clear up first. On the following trials I told him that he should mix up and down as well. He stubbornly did it but had to be reminded over and over. The mixtures from there on were going clear throughout the test tube. So he learned that the first trial had to be thrown out, right? Wrong! Tweek wanted to use the data of the poor trial for our reaction rate calculations. Apparently, he chose that trial because the time to react was similar to the other students around him. I placed my foot down and said no. 

I mentioned that Tweek was frustrated others were leaving befuse us. He failed to realize that we only had to finish the lab and not the calculations. However, I was not responding to him because I wanted to get all my calculations done before leaving campus. Later I told him that others were leaving earlier because they postponed their calculations.

This semester is going to be fun. I wasn't mad at anyone today but rather, I was entertained. But I did get mad at stupid Utahn drivers going 50 mph on the freeway for reasons none other than being stupid.