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Being a perpetual student has its advantages and disadvantages, including the reliability of an academic schedule and the qwerks of certain instructors. Tuesdays and Thursdays are, without question, the craziest: General Parasitology, Developmental Biology, Immunology and a three-hour MCAT review class. Basically, I’m on campus 8am to 10pm.

Mondays are quite a bit more relaxed as I only have one admittedly mediocre (in terms of academic rigor) class. “Myth, Magic and Medicine” incorporates history, sociology, medicine and a grab bag of other fields. The teacher is a typical San Francisco free-spirit type, and likes to enclose just about anything he writes on the chalk board in parentheses. His syllabus contains numerous interesting artistic enhancements, including a hand-drawn school bus that is labeled “The Mystery Ship”. The list goes on and on, but I’ll save that for another night/entry.

Tonight’s important finding:

I don’t know who you belong to, Apple Network 2a8c8a, but I love you. I can now update this site, waste time on Google Reader, and further develop my appreciation of PubMed. The only downside: “borrowing” wifi can land one in jail.

(In-class update: my instructor regularly offers a random assortment of items to the class, including toothpaste, course readers and as of two minutes ago, Starkist canned tuna. Yeah, I’m not really sure what it means, either.)

I should probably get back to paying attention, taking notes and all that other stuff a good student is supposed to do. The good news: this blog should probably be updated on a weekly basis now. Be excited.

Being sick affords one certain opportunities that just aren’t available to a healthy person. For example, one can set up their own cough-drop comparison (complete with leaderboard), catch up on late-night infomercials or update a blog at 6am.

As you might have already guessed, I’ve decided to indulge in all three. The only problem is that this trifecta has me thinking that my current regimen (lots of water, zinc gluconate glycine tablets, Nilla wafers and irregular amounts of sleep) is making me a bit delirious.

Is it normal to wake up every every ninety minutes, starting at 2:30am? Should I be worried that I’ve been dreaming about the complement system, Dog the Bounty Hunter and potential MCAT questions (in that order)? The only difference between this cold and any other I’ve weathered thoroughly enjoyed is my little friend zinc.

Perhaps I just happen to be crazy, or maybe the zinc does make me loopy but either way, this cold is nothing short of awesome. That being said, nothing lasts forever… time to check my addiction and hit the hay yet again.

This post brought to you by my inability to motivate myself to make parasitology flash cards.

Note: I have to give credit where credit is due. Greg saw this before I did. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to share it with the world.

So Facebook is running a fundraising promotion where you can send people “gifts”. The first one is free and every one after that is $1, which goes towards the Susan G. Komen Foundation. You can choose from a bunch of different icons, but this one stands out:

Requisite background information here.

I’m a big fan of Flickr but Yahoo’s 2005 acquisition of the company has meant a number of changes in the way the community works. Most recently, Flickr has decided to drop the “Old Skool” login routine in favor of unifying everyone on a username@yahoo.com-based system.

Splitting hairs, right? Yeah, you might have a point.

The more onimous change comes in the form of a Terms of Service shift, from a short, reasonable and acceptable agreement to the more corporate Yahoo one, which requires that users who publish non-private content allow Yahoo Inc. to use it any time, for free, forever.

The extact text is as follows:

c) With respect to all other Content you elect to post to other publicly accessible areas of the Service, you grant Yahoo! the royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive and fully sub-licensable right and licence to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such Content (in whole or part) worldwide and/or to incorporate it in other works in any form, media, or technology now known or later developed.

Lame. I know I’m not a professional photographer or anything, but I don’t want to give up the rights to my pictures which I choose to share with the world, and especially not to corporate America.

So, what’s the alternative? I’m playing around with Zen Photo in hopes of setting up something a little less archaic than Gallery2. If the beta-y nature of ZP doesn’t work out, I’ll make my way to SmugMug which provides (paid) hosted photo storage much like Flickr. Now I just have to figure out how to move hundreds of photos from Flickr to whatever I use next.