Trying to get a little work done, after spending the entire day lying around due to a combination of laziness, tiredness, and recovering from a cold. I'm making some minor edits to the paper I drafted back in September, and finally got Barb's comments on a couple of weeks ago. This is the project on which I recorded and reorganized and documented ( Read more... )

I have been sitting in front of the computer for literally the whole damn day. I haven't even been goofing off as much as I normally do. I've just been trying to batter SPSS into giving me results on the data Judy's going to ask me about tomorrow, which I told her I'd have results on two weeks ago (and have promised to provide imminently every time ( Read more... )

Okay, that DOES it. Yesterday SPSS (the brand new patched version) overwrote one file with another. Today I watched it delete all the data in a file right before my eyes and then autosave it without asking. That's quite a bit of work that just disappeared there. Then again, maybe I shouldn't complain. Just before the data disappeared I'd been ( Read more... )

Every once in a while, I go and try to find out what the actual scientific research says about the safety of MSG (and associated free-glutamate additives). Then a little time passes, I forget what a deplorable morass it is, and I try again ( Read more... )

I'd ignored the news for a while, and just caught up. Wow... so the worst-case scenarios did come true, and the tainted wheat gluten got into the human food supply. And it turned out that wheat gluten was being added to pet food brands that weren't supposed to have it, and it turned out that a wider variety of products than initially thought was ( Read more... )

Here are the steps required to get a study running under the new psychology department subject pool computer system ( Read more... )

Airlines make me want to cry. I wasted about seven hours staring at computer screens, waiting on hold, and talking to often surly customer service people in order to find out that my Spirit Airlines Free Round-Trip Voucher is actually good on a vanishingly small class of flights that I can only find out about or book over the phone. Availability ( Read more... )

The patient information brochure for Xyrem (prescription GHB) doesn't say that it's dangerous to take it with alcohol ( Read more... )

We have a study we're trying to recruit for very rapidly. I spent $50 of the lab's money to buy a high-impression ad for UM students on facebook. And then I found out they were processing URLs in some wonky way that causes my link to go to http.com. And you can't edit fliers once they're up. And you can't delete them. And they have no customer ( Read more... )

I finished up the final revisions I wanted to make to the positive emotions chapter. We'd already submitted the Handbook of Emotions version, and I'd just been adding some material that I thought was relevant to the version we were writing for the Handbook of Positive Psychology. I checked the invitation letter for publication information, and I ( Read more... )