I have a pretty descent collection of house plants- cacti, ferns, etc… and I take care to repot them all on even years.  Well, yesterday it was the peace lily’s turn and guess who I found hiding in it’s roots?  A little gray treefrog.  I need to get more batteries for my camera, otherwise I would post a picture of the cute little bugger, but here is a pic from the internets:

(from http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov)

He (or She, for all I know.  I’m going with boy for simplicities sake) presents an ethical problem for me.  Do I: A) put the tree frog back in the roots of the peace lilly when I finish repotting it, knowing he will surely find his way out and become a froggy mummy in the over dry air.  B) put him outside where he will freeze because he didn’t have a chance to enter hibernation like other froggies or C) attempt to keep it him a terrarium and let him go in spring after it warms up.  It seems like option C has the highest probability of a favorable outcome, but I’m loathe to pin the poor little guy’s survival on my herp care kills.  But I don’t really have another choice.  There aren’t animal rescue centers in the area.  Guess Kermit’s bunking with me this winter

Well, I played Star Trek Online (hitherto referred to as STO) and I have mixed feelings about it.  On one hand, it’s Star Trek.  On the other hand, it feels less like an MMORPG and more like a tactical game for Xbox (yeah, Xbox, not Xbox 360).

There’s little player interaction and, as far as I can tell, the only way to communicate is via a cumbersome chat window.  Yeah, I’m not going to be chatting much when I’m getting my @ss handed to me by Borg drones.  When you finally do get to a star base, the only way to communicate is STILL the chat box.  I had hoped you could join other players to form a team (think WOW guilds), but that doesn’t really seem to be built into the game.  Sure, you could get together with people outside of the game and decide to do missions together, but whats the fun in that?  Part of the appeal of MMORPG is meeting and working with new people.  I really like teaming up and helping people out, but I really don’t feel like I get much of that with STO.  The character creation is pretty cool and the controls aren’t bad, though moving through the world is a bit annoying.  Basically, you move with the standard W,S,A,D buttons and look using your mouse.  Now I really like it if you also move in the direction your looking, but nope.  If you’re looking left and you push W, you’ll go in whatever direction your toon is pointed in before you looked.  You actually have to press A or D to reposition yourself.  It’s not a big deal, but I think it could have been smoother.  It’s just in Beta right now, so it’s not like I’m viewing a finished product.  Given this, I think I will subscribe to it for a few months when it comes out.  It is Star Trek after all!

As I write I’m downloading Star Trek Online.  I was fortunate enough to obtain a beta key and I’m literally minutes away from playing.  I’ve always been a Star Trek fan.  I don’t know if I qualify as a Trekkie or not.  I’ve been known to geek out over Trek T-shirts and partake in the odd TOS marathon.  Perhaps most damningly, I have a Bones action figure who likes to sit on the thermocycler when I run PCR.  Still, I’ve never been to a convention and that seems like a right of passage when it comes to Trekkiehood.  Also, I don’t own Vulcan ears.  I am obscenely excited about this game though.

Anyway, we’re up to 937.4 mb, so it shouldn’t be much longer!

Yep, it’s confirmed.  “That DNA looks human” is from Mission to Mars: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0183523/goofs

From the link: “When looking at the DNA model, only a few base pairs of the DNA are shown. All DNA is exactly the same regardless of what organism it comes from. The only differences lie in the sequences of the nucleotide bases. It is absolutely undeniably impossible to distinguish human DNA from any other type of DNA based on the very short stretch of bases shown in the figure at which the scientist proclaims “that DNA looks human.” Humans have over 3 billion bases, and almost all of them are in common with other primates. A few bases will never be enough to prove that any DNA is human in any time period or technology level. It is thus a gross contradiction of scientific fact.”