Desk Wars Episode IV: A New Cube

My bit of the office move happened! I got everything either boxed up or out of my cube by 4pm on Friday, and went down to help out with the rainbow table. Usually I'm able to keep my purse and all securely tucked up in my cube, but this time I brought it with me. Then when everything was done, I went off home and had a weekend. (A weekend with social, even.)

I did wander through the new building on my way out, just to see what they were doing. I saw that they were in the middle of wrangling around the desk surfaces in my destination cube, and it was kind of how I didn't want them. I decided I could live with it at least for a bit, and if I had a problem, I could ask for a switch sometime when they were a bit less busy with massive cross-campus moves.

I got in on Monday to find a thank-you note on my desk from the movers, and about a third of the candy gone. :D

There's been a lot of unpacking, and I've been shuffling things around to get them just right. ( All the things, including both workplace woes and fun with siege engines. )

Purple is out of the office for the better part of this week, on account of construction in and around his place. He hasn't seen my new cube yet. It's gone from bare and stacked with boxes to quite homey. The coffee syrups are racked. The box of rainbow nerds and the Caution: Bees sign are hung. The rubber chicken is dangling. The calendar has started to appear. The office status chart is visible, if not in its final form (as the outer metal rail isn't there as the cube configuration is slightly different). The doorbell has been installed. My monitors have been adjusted, the extra keyboard has finally been ditched, and I've swapped out the PS/2 mouse for something a little more this century. The candy dish stands proudly by the door, and the catapult stands above it. And the large metal rooster watches over it all.

Tumblr post (this is likely a reblog, and may have more pictures over there)

Posted in full at: http://ift.tt/1noJHH0 at May 21, 2014 at 04:30AM
Scientists find new mechanism underlying depressionScientists find new mechanism underlying depression:

andrewhickeywriter:

Researchers have shown that changes in a type of brain cells called microglia underlie the depressive symptoms brought on by exposure to chronic stress. In animal experiments, the researchers were able to demonstrate that microglia-stimulating drugs served as effective and fast-acting antidepressants, producing complete recovery of the depressive-like behavioral symptoms and increasing neurogenesis to normal levels within days. This suggests new avenues for drug research, using microglia stimulators as antidepressants.

Interesting for several reasons. Firstly because it links depression with the immune system, which makes sense from an intuitive point of view — all the other stress-related illnesses I’m aware of (because I’ve got most of them) boil down to inflammation caused by autoimmune reactions, so it’s unsurprising that the depression caused by stress would have a similar cause.

Secondly, it explains why a lot of people with situational depression report little or no improvement from SSRIs — if the serotonergic system isn’t what’s going wrong, then it’s unlikely that messing with that system will fix it.

And thirdly, it’s yet more evidence of something that should be obvious — that the glial cells have a role in cognition. This is something that has become blatantly obvious to anyone who’s been following neuroscience (even as a semi-interested layperson like myself) for years, but is still denied by a huge number of the glibertarian singulatarian fringe who are convinced that they’ll be able to “upload” themselves Real Soon Now.

(NB I’m actually very keen on the idea of uploading as an idea. The combination of immortality with not having to deal with a horribly faulty, physically unattractive body that won’t do what I tell it seems a good one. The problem is that none of the people who talk about it as something that’s actually likely to happen have presented a single shred of evidence that it’s going to happen any time in the next century.)

My tweets

• Tue, 22:25: Today at work I got light yellow dust from my rubber chicken all over my cardigan. #officejobproblems
• Wed, 01:04: My fitbit #Fitstats for 5/20/2014: 7,879 steps and 3.4 miles traveled. http://t.co/gFMrr7qBz6
• Wed, 07:46: Dear uterus: So it's going to be like *that* today? Ok, thanks for the memo. *pops ibuprofen, staggers back to bed for a bit*
• Wed, 08:17: Impressed and a little disgusted. #bloodcannon #PCOS
• Wed, 10:36: @conceiveplease sorry, my uterus is for decorative purposes only, and your follow strategy is spammy & rude as fuck.
• Wed, 10:37: @DrRaewynTeirney sorry, my uterus is for decorative purposes only, and your follow strategy is spammy & rude as fuck.