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!

Continuing Resolutions

No, not the kind that you renew every New Year's Day. I'm talking about the ones that Congress passes and the President signs almost every year to keep federal facilities operating in lieu of a budget appropriation. In my 14 years in government science research, my agency has never had a budget passed before the start of the new fiscal year. It leads to fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and is a drag on long-term planning (I wonder if FUD has ever been used in this way). Every year we're warned to spend at some reduced level under the CR until a budget is passed. Every year this tends to slow decision making in that time frame.

This year though, appears especially bad. With the switch in the balance of power in Congress, a second CR will presumably be passed tomorrow that will be in place until February. It is not expected that a budget for most agencies will not be passed until then, after the new Congress takes a whack at it. What makes it bad is not the time (not unusual after all), but the fact that we have been under a CR that restricts spending to a unexplainably low budget mark in the House draft budget. If the CR doesn't change this we could be in big trouble. The agency has a number of contracts and grants it must honor first. Then what ever is left gets doled out.

Since it's not enough to even pay the salaries of the federal employees at my research center, the hit will come by canceling or not renewing all contract technicians, travel to scientific conferences, and the inability to buy supplies for the lab. Research will stop and we could end up just sitting. I can keep some busy as there are some papers to write, and I'm writing grant proposals (not the norm for government science but has been for me). But for others, they could just be sitting.

For a group of dedicated, talented, and hard working researchers, this could be devastating in the short term. In the long term, we could lose some of these people back to academia or biotech if they get too frustrated. I know that's what I'm thinking after my 14 years.

random thoughts of the month

November's bullet statements:

• Democrats take control of the House and Senate for the first time in 12 years (it was interesting being in DC on election night and walking past the White House the day after when final projections wrapped up the Senate for the Dems).
  
  
• We've had the most precipitation in one month in the recorded weather history of Seattle (rain, floods, wind storms, snow storms, quick freezes, and now more rain).
  
  
• What's the difference between sectarian violence and civil war? To me it seems to mean the same thing....countrymen killing countrymen (and woman, and children). I think too many base their idea of civil war on the American one, with armies against armies. "Modern" civil war appears to follow the same definition as terrorism....creating fear to advance a political agenda.
  
  
• Iraq exit strategy? Go long, go strong, or get out?
  
  
• Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld finally is booted. Why did Bush wait so long?!
  
  
• The election results seem to be pushing the Bush Administration towards finally figuring out how to get out of Iraq. The policy now appears to be one of saying that the Iraqis need to figure out how to take care of their own problems. Granted, they existed for a long time under a brutal dictator. But haven't we created the environment that now exists there?
  
  
• I've been reading Bob Woodward's book, State of Denial. Talk about screwups. It's hard not to wonder how things would be if Rumsfeld had been fired a long time ago.
  

It's almost December 1!

and we have to trust them?

After the last post, I turned off automatic update on the Windows XP lab computer. Now, everytime I log in, it nags me about a new update.

After ignoring it a few times, I checked to see what it was about. Why, it's an update of Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications!

Evidently, there's now two class action lawsuits over WGA, calling it spyware. Not to mention the fact that it would erroneously label some Windows XP installs as non-legitimate. What a pain. I suppose I will have to install the update though. At least then it phones home less often.