Although it wasn't my intention, I ended up having a very interesting night last night. I stayed in town to listen to Jorge Cham talk - he's the guy who draws PhD comics, which are funny and eerily accurate. After which, I got caught up talking to a student's friends, joking around and so forth. Theresa asked us if we all wanted to meander to The ( Read more... )

The Utes won the sugar bowl.

Was I supposed to give a damn? Did I forget to?

I am the king of procrastination. Today, I was supposed to have a test written, and then take a test. I started on either activity last night, which involves plenty of procrastination to begin with. Well, along with a measure of `forgetting about stuff ( Read more... )

Dear ma'am. I'm glad to have you in my building. I'm sure you were hired based on your lengthy qualifications, and your glowing record. And I wish you the best. However, I've just got one tiny request ( Read more... )

We've got students back on the campus. They are numerous. They are legion. They are noisy and stealing my parking spaces ( Read more... )

I didn't end up politicking like I planned on, for one of the reasons I was tempted not to in the first place: It was too cold. Well, I should add it wasn't too cold for me. I'm still nice and warm. My truck, however, got home and cooled off faster than a louse in liquid nitrogen. By the time I finally worked out where I'd need to be for the ( Read more... )

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Graduate level tuition makes my bank account cry a thousand anguished tears. But that seminar is highly relevant to my job.

I wonder if I can get a staff waiver of some sort. It's at least worth asking about.

Oh. I forgot to mention. I've been scooped for the first time. For the non-scientist audience, that means someone publishes a bit of research saying what you were going to say. If someone beats you to publication, rarely is any of the work you did to generate data worth your while. This is one of those cases ( Read more... )

Capecchi. Capecchi got a Nobel Prize. I know this guy. My ex-lab collaborated with him quite a bit. Wayne had been saying for years that Capecchi was in line for a prize, but lots of people didn't really believed him because of how long Capecchi had gone without one. Wayne just won a lot of bets ( Read more... )