Cancer Research Keeps Me Warm

It's freezing today. 15 degrees Celsius (59 degree Fahrenheit). To those in the US, that might not seem that cold but it's different in Taiwan. Buildings here either have no insulation or very little insulation. So if it's 15 degrees outside, it's 16 degrees inside.

Usually this means my hands are freezing, they're always the first to get cold. But not anymore. Many months ago I downloaded a program called Folding@Home. It allows me to donate my computer's extra unused CPU cycles to simulate protein folding. I don't really know what that means but from the Folding@Home website it says:

". . . when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. "misfold"), there can be serious consequences, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer's, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington's, Parkinson's disease, and many Cancers and cancer-related syndromes"

So I'm guessing the goal is to try to find out why proteins don't fold properly. This information could be useful in finding cures for many types of diseases.

What does this have to do with warming up my cold hands? Well, when I set my CPU to run at 100% high performance mode, Folding@Home basically turns my notebook computer into a the world's flattest space heater. Right now my CPU is running at a toasty 87 degrees Celsius (189 degrees Fahrenheit). The hot air it's blowing out the side and the now slightly heated keyboard keeps my hands nice and warm.

It's a Win/Win/Win situation. . . Win for disease research, win for keeping my hands warm, win for . . . . . .

Oh yeah, hopefully a win for getting me a new notebook soon. I'm hoping running the CPU at 100% utilization all day (and the CPU fan at max RPM all day) will blow something up in this old computer. Then it's new notebook time! :)

Pizza Night turned into Tonkatsu Night

This past Saturday, some friends and I went out to try a NY style pizza place. I was looking forward to it as I haven't had real pizza in a real long time. When we got to the place, we realized it was just a hole-in-the-wall/takeout type place. We had a group of 10 people, we would've needed a giant shoehorn to fit everyone inside. Oops, my bad. I should have did a little more research before choosing this place.

So we ended up going to some random Japanese Tonkatsu place nearby. While we were ordering, my friend next to me gets a call from another friend that's on his way to meet us but needs directions. The friend next to me gives out the directions over the phone, the friend on the phone then asks him what the name of the restaurant is. So the friend next to me flips to the front of the menu and scans the pages with his index finger for a few seconds, stopping near the top of the page. . . and then yells into the phone "The restaurant is called Menu!"

He immediately realized his mistake, but it was too late. We all burst out laughing.

After dinner we went to a tapas bar had some drinks/snacks, talked about random crap. . . reminisced about some of the wilder stuff we did back when nobody had a real job. How things have changed. . . I think we left the bar and headed home before 12AM.