might as well post the graph

Now I must work to maintain this weight (166 today).  Actually, what I'd like is to get it down to 160, and then tone up some muscles (which may add a few pounds).

Goal reached!

I made it.  26 pounds lost as of yesterday.   OK, OK, I got an extension regarding the deadline....the new one is/was today.   I feel pretty good, and I don't think I'm done.  Resting heart rate less than 60.  More energy during the day.  Moving around more easily at soccer practices.  Ye ha!

No Reason

I've started reading Al Gore's book, Assault on Reason. While an increasing number of Americans are finally expressing their collective loss of confidence in the President, his administration, and their policies in Iraq, in the "war on terror", foreign policy, domestic policy, and the destruction of fiscal responsibility, Gore systematically and coherently shows how they got us here, and how we (the Public) let them, following like sheep and believing every unsubstantiated untruth used to justify their actions. We are just as responsible, along with our media, because it is us that swallowed every dire warning about how we needed to bring the war to the terrorists, that Saddam was behind 9/11, that it was and will always be a fight against the evildoers, that you're either with us or against us.

Bush needs to reduce every situation and decision to simplistic language, often in very black and white terms without any nuances. He does not listen to points or evidence contrary to whatever belief he may hold on a subject. He stubbornly holds on to those beliefs no matter what the outcome may be. While this in itself is a simplistic analysis (read Gore's book for the comprehensive one), it does explain the quagmire we now find ourselves in. More than 3500 dead servicemen and women. Tens of thousands maimed for life. More than that with significant psychological problems that may last a lifetime. Yet the Administration blithely goes on, now vetoing any congressional bill that would force the President to start a logical and phased withdrawal. We've created one hell of a mess that will take years, and maybe generations, to fix. And there's so much to fix. Our standing in the world as a moral authority (now pretty much gone). Our economic status (maybe not teetering on the brink, but sure leveraged to the hilt). 

Lab personnel woes

I finally have time (sort of) to take a few minutes and do a little brain dump while on my way to San Diego/La Jolla for a Metagenomics meeting. My 'boss' and I are attending, mostly just to learn about a new and emerging field of research that can be used in all sorts of ways to study populations (usually microbial) in various environmental niches. Basically, 'sequence everything' in a sample to tease out relative populations, identify new species and/or new genes, etc. The power of high throughput sequencing and advances in bioinformatics is making this possible. But this is the fun stuff...

The problems in the lab are still a huge drain on my enthusiasm and energy. It is finally coalescing around the actions (and sometimes inactions) of two individuals. Both are full time government employees (which I only bring up because while I have considerable 'power' and influence over the direction of the research as program manager and their supervisor, there is no hope of ever moving them elsewhere). Both try to work hard, and in most ways both seem to truly care. However, lately due to both my dissatisfaction with their overall performance and emerging facts about their behavior towards the techs and students, I am going to be forced to sternly confront them about many of these issues.

I've already had one run in with one of them. She is feeling very insecure, seems to think she has ownership over much of the lab research, and resents the fact that indeed she does not getting what she feels is some sort of entitlement. It blew up over my plans to bring in a new post doc to jump start a relatively new area of research for the lab in evolution of pathogenesis of one of the marine species we are working on. Frankly I do not have the confidence that this individual is able and capable of moving this area of research in a manner and speed that is necessary, but even if she did, she does not have the drive to ensure success. I ended up telling her that she can work on some of it, but instead of working in an area that would better suit her capabilities and need to develop project leadership on something of her own, she will again be subordinate to my overall direction. So be it. She will not like it but it's what she's asked for. What I cannot stand and will not stand for, is how she has taken to treating a few of the other younger technicians in the lab. It is close to blowing up now and is something I cannot let go any longer. Thankfully, I have my direct supervisor's support and understanding in my want and need to utilize "hungry" post docs and students to truly move the research in novel and state of the art directions.

The second individual approached me yesterday to first complain about one of the aforementioned technicians asking too many questions (I say so incredulously since isn't that what a student is supposed to do?), and then to tell me point blank that he wanted to make sure I had X's (person discussed in preceding paragraph) back! Frankly after speaking with the technician later in the day, I wanted to can both of the more senior staff on the spot! I'm now hearing about instances of rudeness, complaining, verbally dressing down for mistakes, all dumped on anyone unfortunate enough (at least the way it sounds) assigned to work with them.

So yes, I need to handle this. As of right now, I'm not sure exactly how. I'm wracking my brain to figure out why they are acting this way because they are and have been great people showing plenty of empathy for others. One wants everything right now and seems to feel that getting a PhD gives some sort of inalienable right to "run" everything. The other has had some significant health issues (and I found out yesterday about some very severe health problems of his long time partner), and this may be influencing his actions and his work. Their is both explicit and implicit pressure to move the research and get manuscripts out the door, and yes much of this comes from me. Somehow I need to make the point, without further exacerbating how they treat the others, that they need to be better teachers and team leaders, that they need to nurture the scientific curiosity that the younger folks have, not try to stomp on it over some misguided attempt to exert control.

Or I'll stomp on them (!)

I truly find myself wishing I'd gone farther with the faculty position application at WSU. I'm not sure I can continue to do this for another 10-15 years with this laboratory dynamic.

Better get the weight loss update out of the way. Slow steady progress. Running going ok, and generally have more energy. Runs are now between 3-5 miles, averaging a little under 8:30/mile. All runs since the trip to Sarasota have been on the roads, no treadmill. The only "problem" is that all possible runs from my house generally involve signicant "hillage." Great for cardiovascular conditioning, tough on any speed gain desires. Of course, I really don't care about speed anymore. Just get in shape and stay uninjured!

Fathers and Sons

Yesterday was Father's Day, and unfortunately, I had to spend all day traveling to Sarasota FL  for  a  meeting (leaving home at 3:45 AM PDT and arriving at the destination hotel at 8:00 PM EDT is not my idea of a fun day).  (In yet another digression, it's really not all that bad to be sitting on my Holiday Inn balcony overlooking Lido Beach while I write this!)  Anyway, on Saturday my son celebrated the day with me by giving me one of his now famous homemade cards and  a book titled "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy.  The book and author were recently highlighted by Opra, otherwise I may not have heard about it.  That's a shame really since after reading this one book, I do believe he is one of the great American authors.

The Road is about the travels of a father and son who after surviving a nuclear holocaust that wipes out much of the world are traveling south towards the ocean in order to find other survivors (good guys) that they might hook up with.  The book starts several years after the nuclear exchange and the world has been plunged into a nuclear winter of  grey rain and snow, little sunlight and decreasing temperatures, and no living vegetation, birds, or other wildlife. It's a story about trying to survive, where the sole purpose is the feeling of the father that he must do anything in his power to ensure his  son's survival.  At times, this drive is at cross purposes with the father's moral compass, when he teeters on killing others who threaten his main goal.   The father is challenged constantly, in search of food to avoid starvation, and to continue the journey while avoiding marauding gangs that have taken to slavey and cannablism to survive.  As the story progresses, you realize how intertwined the father and son have become, and it's the young pre-teen son who becomes the reason of morality for the father.  

I finished the book before my connecting flight.  All I can say is that I had to move away from a crowded waiting area in order to read the last chapter by myself.  If you have children, you will feel the same emotions welling up inside you that I did, stemming  from the most basic, almost primal feeling of protectiveness that parent's feel.  I so much wanted to hug my son and daughter when I finished the book, with tears in my eyes.

Better update the weight thing...

So here's where I'm at, after updating the graph to show the real starting point of 193 pounds.  Making progress, feeling better but still flabby around the middle.  I can run up to three miles with the pace getting down in the low 8's per mile (not all three miles at that pace yet thought). About 12 pounds from the goal of 168.

Weight loss update #2

I didn't take it seriously enough until last weekend. This week I managed a strict caloric-limited diet, staying around 1100/day. Supposedly that's below the "safe" limit of 1200 but I'm feeling fine. If I keep lunch light, and add a granola bar in the afternoon, I've been feeling OK. Night is the toughest since one really bad habit I've had is eating something, yogurt, a dessert, something, after 9 PM. That's the biggest no no right there. I've also been getting back on the treadmill more (finally did move it to the garage), and even though I've been a little sore, 3 miles on it today felt pretty good. Not much speed yet though, that was at 11:08/mi and included some walking. It'll get there if I'm patient and persistent.

How do you make sense out of the senseless?

It's been a little over 36 hours since 32 people were murdered at Virginia Tech University. So many young students and professors, shot to death for reasons only truly known to the young man responsible, before he killed himself.

Why?

News programs are parading 'experts' in front of the cameras and microphones, all with their theory as to why the 23 year old student decided to take out his anger by killing so many before turning the gun on himself. But can anybody really explain what drives this thought process? I know there are a lot of rational psychological explanations, but none of them can adequately explain what would drive someone to commit such a horrific act of violence.

I've felt an almost overwhelmng sense of sadness today. I'm sure most people in the country feel the same way. As a father of two, one in college and one in high school, it's so easy to imagine what if that's one of your kids. Tears come easily.

Why?

Weight loss update

OK, I could be doing a lot better. I've lost five pounds to date, to 188. I got a ways to go, for sure, and only 2 and a half months left.

My goal is to move the treadmill down to the garage where I don't have any excuse not to use it. It's also time to start exercising on the bike trainer.

time to start losing it

Yep, I've been putting this off too long. I need to lose at least 25 pounds. My wife made me a bet....we could keep the new DVR from Comcast that I brought home after we added a new HDTV (our first), if I lose the weight in four months. I'm using a diet calculator on my old Palm Tungsten that figures what your basal caloric intake is based on your weight, age, and activity level. You then tell it how much you want to lose and by when, and it calculates what your daily caloric intake should be. It uses a database of foods containing calories, protein, fat, fiber, carbs...this is so you monitor that you eat the right foods during a diet.

So, today I'm 193 lbs. My basal metabolic rate is ~ 2365 calories. To lose 25 pounds by June 4 my average calorie intake should be 1435 calories.

Day 1 is over and I held myself to 1404 calories!

health care for those who served

I've been watching a special news documentary on ABC "To Iraq and Back," about and by Bob Woodruff, the ABC News anchor who was severely injured in Iraq. Woodruff suffered major brain trauma after a roadside bomb hit the tank he was riding in, essentially exploding one side of his skull. The story was poignant, particularly in the depiction of the impact on his family and his recovery over the period of a year. One view of his caved in skull while learning to recognize objects again was shocking. Yet he is very lucky and knows it.

The rest of the hour documentary is spent visiting injured soldiers and marines with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and the impacts not only on them but on their families. He does not sugar coat the problem. The VA and the military states that there have been about 23,000 non fatal battlefield casualties in Iraq. However the Veterans of America says over 205,000 soldiers have been treated at VA hospitals since the war began. In the main VA hospitals the medical care for the intense treatment and physical therapy required for these patients is among the best available in the world. Yet, once these service people are sent to VA hospitals close to home, the availability of such highly skilled treatment is not always available. The report ends with a discussion of closed brain injuries, the type of injury many soldiers may suffer because of the high blast pressure waves, even though they may not have any visible injuries. It is now thought that up to 10% of returning veterans of the war in Iraq may suffer closed brain injuries with varying impacts on cognitive thinking, moods, socialbility, and other quality of life issues.

When you think that over 1.5 million Americans have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, that means that about 150,000 may suffer injuries like these. Yet they have come home to their own health care war here at home.

More needs to be done for these soldiers. There should be no question of getting the care they need, no matter what the cost, no matter what politics are. The administration needs to step up to the plate for these people. We all do.

practice

Heard on a TV show (aimlessly watching while away on a work-related trip)

"The first recorded war was in 2700 BC; there were probably more before writing was invented."

"That's almost 5000 years of killing each other."

"It's something we've always been good at."

Organization, #1b

OK, this only has a little to do with the previous post. My organization changed over to a new IMAP mailserver last night. Instantly my email quota went from a measly 80 Mb to 1 Gb, not Google Gmail standards but pretty darn good. This will allow me to keep my organized and project emails with large attachments available via IMAP longer without the constant need to archive to my local hard drive. The web interface is better too, and they've instituted SSL for both retrieving and sending mail. This means less to worry about when I'm on the road using free or hotel access points.

Organization, #1

I've finally gotten most of the backlog cleared off. While I still have a few major reports to complete and manuscripts to review in order to get them submitted, at least I don't feel inundated. In the past several weeks I've cleaned up my office a little, at least getting some of the older stuff filed. I've started a reorganization of my work email inbox following GTG principles and an article about it that was in Macworld (March 2007 issue, not available on line). Right now I'm working from the following concept for my work email, at least the email that is still stored on the IMAP server.

Inbox - mostly messages read and not filed; my goal is to keep this relatively small in number; working to quickly file/archive/delete email I will never need in the future

Act on/Flagged - messages I need to act on within a few days, some that I flagged where a rule puts them in this folder from the inbox; these should be no older than 1 week.

Read and Review - messages I have read but want to review before filing or deleting; some of these will be the literature searches from various journals or PubMed that contain papers I want to at least read the abstracts; I hope to keep these rotating so no more than a week or two old

Waiting For - messages that contain items I need to act on but I'm waiting for further information

Archives (on IMAP server)
-- subfolders for specific topics, already acted on and stored
-- project specific folders, for quick access (also using MS Entourage Project Center with many of these)

Archives (stored in local folders) - these are messages either with big attachments that by necessity I have to move off the IMAP server (limited quota), or when older messages get to an age where I don't really need to act on them anymore. By default all archived work emails are stored on my work desktop computer. To confusing to try to synch work and laptop computers for this.

Regarding archived mail, my agency was reminded today about the regulation that we must preserve all e-mail that constitute agency records. While I'm not sure that much if any of the email correspondence I have constitutes "agency records" I'll have to review this regulation. The reminder also talks about keeping paper copies, which would be a big burden.

Anyway, it's a start!

time passages

We visited the newest member of the family today, my youngest sister's new baby boy. It's always wonderful to see new life. And it always makes me reflect about my children, how fast time seems to have gone now that they are almost 17 and almost 21.

On top of this, my wife and I celebrate our 24th wedding anniversary tomorrow as well. It all seems so fast! What is it about the passage of time? It seems so slow when you're young, and then moves so fast when you get into that late middle-aged time frame. My wife and I have both been thinking about the fact, that all other things being equal, we are facing the downward slope of life. It's hard not to think of accomplishments, of legacies. Have we done enough? Could we have done things differently? What's the best way to proceed from here for our careers, day to day work life? Can we find a better balance?

Always something to work on.

Hear the echoes and feel yourself starting to turn
Don't know why you should feel that there's something to learn
It's just a game that you play

-Al Stewart, Time Passages

hasta la vista

Computer OS wars. Bill Gates has hurt feelings about Apple's PC-Mac ads. Especially the ones that poke fun about the difficulty people will have with upgrading to Vista, including the method used to implement security. He claims it was Apple that stole all the great features now being released in Vista. He says that the Mac is cracked every day, and brags that Vista was built with security in mind. Numerous articles and blogs have already shredded the Mac exploit statement. It was really an odd statement to make.

Steve Jobs put out an open letter about digital music. He states that there are three things Apple and the RIAA could do; keep things as they are (purchased music from iTunes retains the FairPlay DRM), license FairPlay to other vendors, or simply drop DRM on downloaded music. He says the second one won't happen, since it would be too hard to work with many other companies with the DRM code and keep it secret. He clearly feels dropping DRM would be the best solution for the recording industry and consumers alike. Should be interesting how this plays out.

End of a season

I've felt a little lost this week. Not because of work...actually getting caught up with things there, including getting a manuscript submitted yesterday. It's because...soccer season is over, at least for the select team by son plays for that I co-coach. We lost in the quarterfinals of the state tournament for mid-level select teams. We should have won! Actually, if we had won or tied our last divisional game (after winning the first two) we would have stayed at home for the quarterfinals and played a bit of a weaker opponent. As it was, we had to travel down to Vancouver (~170 miles), many of us the night before, play on a sub-optimal field. Close game, we couldn't hit open shots, and at 1-1 with less than 10 minutes left, the center ref called a handball on one of our players in our penalty box. PK, and that was the game. I know refereeing is hard, but damn, it was not a call you make in a close game...there was no intent on the player to touch the ball (a point blank cross, that hit his elbow besides), and it gave them the game.

So, I'm lost because now there are no practices or games to look forward to for awhile. It really is a lot of fun, and we had/have a team of quality young men. My son starts high school soccer in a few weeks, and then we have tryouts for the summer/fall/winter club team in a month. One more year, and then my son graduates. I will miss it once it's over. I've been doing this for 11 years!

funerals, hopefully the last for awhile

Yesterday we traveled to the other side of the state for the funeral of my wife's cousin. It was a beautiful day to cross the Cascade Mountains. There's been a tremendous amount of snow this winter; I'm not sure if I've ever crossed the pass when there's been that much snow. But the road was clear and the sun was shining, although it was as cold as 16 F just on the east side of the pass.

The funeral was in a small funeral home. A lot of tears, some quiet, some not. The man had a lot of family and friends from different parts of the state. It was hard to see the pain and sorrow on the faces of his mother, stepfather, and daughter (16 years old), other family (and of course my wife and mother in law), his many childhood and current friends. He had served in the Marines, and there was an honorary color guard, some made up of contemporaries when he served, a couple of active servicemen. It was complete with a 9 gun salute, Taps, and presentations of the American flag to his mother, daughter, and significant other.

After the funeral, we traveled back towards the mountains to a small town where my wife had lived for a time with her grandmother, in fact right across the street in the community hall behind the fire station. There was a reception, food and stories about him. The community hall has been there for decades, and it looked like some of the photos of local sports teams went back to the 1940's. In fact, my wife's grandmother had once served as president of this club years ago. Anyway, even though coming to small town like this sometimes feels like a movie, it felt right.

During the funeral, three songs important to the man were played (from CDs), including the Eagle's live version of Desparado. It got me thinking about what songs I might want played. I just told my son that a song called "Icarus" by one of my favorite groups of the 70's and 80's Kansas (still and active band) is one I'd like played. I'm not sure how well it would go over; after all it's a rock anthem. But the words are relatively appropriate.

Early in the morning sunlight
Soaring on the wings of dawn
Here I'll live and die with my wings in the sky
And I won't come down no more

Higher than a bird I'm flying
Crimson skies of ice and fire
Borne on wings of steel I have so much to feel
And I won't come down no more

chorus
Sail on, sail on, I will rise each day to meet the dawn
So high, so high
I've climbed the mountains of the sky
Without my wings you know I'd surely die
I found my freedom flyin' high
I've climbed the mountains of the sky

Floating on a cloud of amber
Searching for the rainbow's end
Earth so far below me,
I'm here alone, free
I can't come down no more

Why not?! It would be my funeral!

successfully submitted

All bits put together, all the corrections made. The latest proposal, the one to NSF, is out of my hands. the University should be submitting it to NSF shortly. It wasn't the most challenging one I've written or co-written, but it did take some effort to put it into a coherent whole. It was an intellectually stimulating exercise though, so it was definitely worth doing. Let's hope some funding comes out of it. Taking a molecular genetics approach to study pathogen (virulence gene) evolution and subsequent selection for increased pathogenic potential is a new way to look at ecology of infectious disease. In addition, the proposal describes how we'll try to determine if local/global environmental changes (higher marine water temperature, etc), is influencing this selection for more virulent bacteria in the environment.

Felt good to do it.

I'm pretty wiped out trying to get this particular grant proposal done. I think it's turning out ok but it has been a bit of a challenge to complete. I enjoy working with the two collaborators. I feel like I'm getting back to where I should be scientifically. I needed the challenge (I think I'm being a little mixed up here). Anyway, the university grants office wants it posted tomorrow. It's a proposal to NSF so everything gets uploaded to their site. But the university grants office wants to ensure it's all there and complete so then they're the ones who actually hit the submit button and send the proposal. I'm on the last set of edits, I hope.

Must get sleep.

funerals, more...

It's almost difficult to write the post below without thinking that, while deeply personal to friends and family, the deaths seem less important when one thinks of the death and suffering that is constantly happening on a broader scale.

The past weekend saw the 3rd deadliest day for American service people in Iraq since the start of the war almost 4 years ago. Over 100 Iraqis were killed in a double car bombing at an outdoor market. Almost that many students were killed the week before in a bombing at a Baghdad university. I wonder if the administration really, truly believes that an influx of more troops into Iraq will have any impact on the insurgents. Or, and to me more likely, they don't have a clue as to what will work and not work. I don't see how we can ever get out of this with any kind of victory.

funerals

We attended my brother-in-law's father's funeral today. These are always sad, emotional days, even though in this case, the man had lived a long life and was suffering from Alzheimer's. Next Saturday we travel across the state for the funeral of my wife's cousin. This will be even more difficult given the relative suddenness of his illness and his age (40).

conclusion

My wife's cousin passed away today, only a few hours after he was moved from the hospital to a hospice. Even after it became inevitable, it was till hard to hear.

sad situation

About a month ago, my wife's cousin (40 year old male) evidently fell while shoveling snow and hurt his leg. There was no obvious wound but those around him said he complained of a lot of pain. Within a couple of days, he was lapsing into a coma and was diagnosed with a severe septicemia, an infection coursing through his bloodstream. He was flown to Seattle to the university hospital where extraordinary measures have been taken to try to save his life. The infection was eventually diagnosed as a methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, one of so called superbugs that is resistant to most available antibiotics. At various times his blood pressure dropped to almost non-existence, he has had severe liver damage, one cardiac arrest, and eventually it's progressed to the point he has significant brain damage. A week ago it was made clear he will not come out of the coma and will not survive. The only measures being taken now are to make sure there is no pain, although it's doubtful he can feel any.

Now it's just the waiting left. It's hard on the family because there is no closure. Once hope is gone, waiting for the inevitable can be difficult; it's sad, emotionally and mentally draining. One of the major decisions the family had to make was when to stop efforts that all of the attending physicians came to regard as futile. It makes us all think about the value of life, but also how fragile it can be. It also makes me think about what I would want done (and not done) if this were me. My wife and I know we need to prepare living wills that spells out how far we want medical procedures to be taken if something like this were to happen to one of us. Having those kind of instructions available can only make a potentially very gut-wrenching decision easier to make.

Why it's sometimes hard to stay focused

As I wrote previously in a post about "Getting Things Done", I'm struggling with trying to define a system or work pattern that helps me to finish things and not get so caught up in distractions. I picked up David Allen's book, and while I've just started reading it, there is one quote in the first chapter that kind of sums up the problem. After writing that in the old days, knowing what you needed to do to get a job done was self-evident (getting a field plowed, working on an assembly line, etc.). When you were done you were done. Now in many professional jobs, and I lump basic science into this, it's harder to figure out what you need to do today, do it, and coming away with a feeling like you accomplished something.

"...for many of us, there are no edges to most of our projects. Most people I now have at least half a dozen things they're trying to achieve right now (my emphasis), and even if they had the rest of their lives to try, they wouldn't be able to finish these to perfection."

I think recognizing this is one step towards at least feeling better about what happens (or doesn't happen) in any given day.

sure I want one, but...

Yes, the new iPhone is more than I expected Apple to come out with. And yes, I want one. And yes, I need a new phone and I'd be willing to switch from Verizon to Cingular to get one (although I do have the problem of having two of our four family plan phones still under contract). Actually I more than likely will be switching to Cingular (the new AT&T) anyway since Verizon service sucks at the house and I know Cingular works. In fact I've been thinking about getting a so-called smart phone for quite awhile. And the iPhone is, what else can I say, very cool and would be very fun to have.

But in the end, I'm not sure I really need it. I have two iPods and am not one to listen to music wherever I go (but that is one cool interface). Watching short videos might be fun but wouldn't use it too much. On the go email would be nice, especially for work email (which is IMAP), but I end up getting a lot of large Word attachments that the iPhone cannot open (at least yet), so for all practical purposes I'm still tied to a laptop or desktop for email. Text messaging? Only occasional use. I would use the calendar and address book (I'd have to wean myself off of Entourage and move to iCal and Address Book), and the phone itself seems so easy and powerful to use. So maybe what I really need is a decent but less expensive cell phone that will synch contacts and calendars (Entourage or iCal/Address Book) with my Macs; I've even heard of one or two.

But (sigh....) I still want an iPhone.

I'll be staying put

As I wrote in several earlier posts (top 5, possible change), I have (had) been seriously considering a job change and had applied for a faculty position at a regional university. While I had made it into the top 10 of over 200 candidates, I was informally informed this week that I didn't make it into the top five. I'm frankly not surprised. The department in question is apparently going to go with selection of a younger, assistant professor (pre-tenure), and I wouldn't have accepted less than a full professor with tenure. I don't think for a minute this constitutes some form of age discrimination. Any basic science department is going to want a mix of early, mid, and late career faculty. A perusal of this department's web site shows a predominance in the latter two categories, and I would imagine there would be a strong desire to bring in a senior scientist only if that person is a superstar. I think I'm good, but not in that category. Otherwise, a junior faculty member is less of a financial risk; the starting salary is lower, and they are tenure-track, not tenured...a big difference. However, I did have my ego stroked a bit when my contact told me that I was the only senior/tenure applicant that made it into that top 10, so I have to feel a little good about that.

So what's next? I do have some things to think about. I'm going to have to work hard to turn things around to the point I don't feel as much frustration as I have been. It's starting to paralyze me in the sense I'm having trouble focusing on some key things I need to be doing, specifically writing some grant proposals!

Yet another modification

With some of the new tools provided by Blogger, particularly the "labels' capability, I'm switching templates (again), and will just keep the one blog for any and all stuff I write. I'm not really interested in publishing family names, and I'll continue to semi-disguise where I work (I suppose if somebody really wanted to they could find out from very early posts), the people I interact with, etc., but otherwise everything will be here.

MacWorld in two days

There's been so much hype about just what Apple and Steve Jobs will announce this week at MacWorld, I'm afraid anything short of the release of the new "iPod" cell phones AND Mac OSX 10.5 Leopard will be a huge disappointment. We'll see. In the meantime, i got a kick out of the following video of Leo Laporte regarding the Zune:

trying to get things done

I've been working hard lately trying to get myself better organized, mostly mentally. I'm writing a new grant proposal, but mostly I stare at the pages I've written, or distract myself with other things to do (or not do). Many of my distractions are real, that is, they are things I must do, respond to, etc. But many are not, and could be put off until later. Sort of like this.

During the past couple of weeks, I've been reading some stuff about Getting Things Done (GTD), a book and task philosophy marketed by David Allen. Actually, I first heard about this through listening to MacBreak Weekly, a TWIT podcast, specifically from contributor Merlin Mann, and his 43folders.com blog. I haven't spent too much time incorporating any major changes into my own work style yet, although I did spend some time this past week organizing my desk and office, filing, etc., basically clearing the decks. Part of the GTD plan is to come up with a system where you really can focus on a major task for long enough to accomplish whatever it is you need to accomplish. I've always been more of a last minute type of person, letting panic carry me through completing a task that didn't need to wait until the last minute.

Like writing my grant proposal.....which I will now get back to for awhile!