About this site
Approximately five years ago my web page served the singular purpose of distributing a small repair guide for my vpr Matrix 175B4 laptop that had a poorly designed and malfunctioning DC power jack. I repaired the internal jack with an external one so that if I ever needed to repair or replace it again, I would not have to desolder any connections from the motherboard. A repair best made just once. Gladly, the laptop has continued to work and runs beautifully in linux to this day. The DC jack repair guide can be found to the right. More information relating to the vpr Matrix laptop, repair, and old incarnation of this site is filed under the "Fun" tab.
I am a little leery about superficiality in social sites. Not that people who use them are superficial, but that the interactions that I would mostly partake in them would be superficial ones. Theoretically speaking, it just seems strange to me to be connected to 100 or more individuals on a daily, hourly, or minute basis. I like people. But, do I really want to be informed about everyone's life in minutia? The pizza finally arrived. The diapers are changed before bedtime. A new on-line game level is finally achieved. When does it stop? Is the resulting social contact worth the time and effort? By the more than 800 million users whose time spent per month on Facebook is no longer reported, I clearly must be wrong or naïve. When I rewrote my site in the spring of 2010, there were only 400 million users spending 500 billion minutes per month. My better half says that I am wrong — Facebook provides her with efficient and meaningful communication with her many friends and family members. Anyway, I would rather spend my time with people than being socially connected through a computer. If you are a friend and you want to tell me something, then call me or send me an email!
About me
I am incredibly fortunate to have been given the opportunity to pursue a Ph.D. under the guidance of Dr. William Pearson and study medicine at the University of Virginia. It was a pleasure to work with the attending physicians and the nursing staff who both have a desire to teach and who made the clinical experience so enjoyable. I leave the University of Virginia and Charlottesville with fond memories. I am now in Albany, New York pursuing a residency in Internal Medicine/Pediatrics at AMC. Professionally, I find patient interaction to be the most rewarding aspect to to my career. As a life-long learner, I hope to intertwine patient care and research while never forgetting that patients are much more important than their pathology.
I am the son of an auto mechanic (and yes, I have no legitimate excuse for not working on my own car) who has had a fascination with science since being a kindergartner. Well, weren't we all fascinated as kids? The "why's" are some of my favorite aspects to being a parent. If my mom did not know enough to answer a question, she would have me wait for my dad to come home from work. No questions asked were too difficult to at least attempt to answer. I see many parents ignore their children's questions; mine never did.
Research
I have been especially interested in proteins after being exposed to Introduction to Protein Structure — a thin book full of seemingly hand-drawn protein structures while taking an undergraduate Biochemistry course at UC Davis. The unassuming book was simply captivating. I continue to admire the beauty inherent in proteins although I approach their study from a sequence perspective.
For the non-biologists who may read this, we have known since the 1960's with experimental work done by Anfinsen that the information needed to encode a functional, correctly folded protein resides solely within its linear sequence of amino-acid residues. Within one protein family, there are often many conserved residue positions within an alignment of protein family members from distantly related species. Are there constraints on protein sequences that members between unrelated families share? In other words, what are the sequence constraints on a protein from the requirement that it spontaneously folds into a tertiary structure with regular α-helix and β-strand secondary structure? The answer is largely none. The distribution of short fragments or "words" from protein sequences is largely indistinguishable from those synthesized randomly with the exception being a small subset of "exceptional" words with an α-helix bias. Globally, unrelated protein sequences appear random.
DC Jack Repair Guide
Publications
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About Unplanned Happiness
I contemplated what to call my home page for a few days. Then, while
having a blast playing with my kids it occurred to me that I am
happier now than I had ever thought possible less than a few years
before. Well, more than a few years ago, but seemingly very recent to
me. My path in life has always involved side-steps. Thankfully,
mostly happy ones.
