Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Weird 18 months

We have seen a number of friends and family pass away in the last 18 months. This has been very surreal for us as I can't recall a time in my life in which more people dear to me have died. So my mortality has been very much on my mind. While I am still grieving for my friends who have passed on, in general I feel numb. Most of these people have been far too young to pass away. One of my mentors at work (68), a colleague in the department (54), a good friend from church (47), a classmate from high school (43), and a little baby (9 months). All have had some impact on my wife and me.

I have been making efforts to live more in the moment: to "be here now" for the last 5 years and just be thankful for everything I have (both the material and immaterial) and everyone I value. I am not very good at telling people that I care about them or that I miss them but I DO care and miss them very much. Facebook has become a little lifeline to our family and friends for both my wife and me. It is definitely NOT the same as talking on the phone with our loved ones but neither of us is good at the "phone thing" unfortunately. What can I say? :-(

Thursday, February 12, 2009

Python is GOOD!

I'm becoming a devotee of the programming language Python (www.python.org). I first heard about Python in the early 90's and wasn't too impressed because I was using awk and Perl for most of the script stuff that I needed to do to munge my data. Recently I was talking with a colleague whom I respect a lot and he kept pushing me to check it out again. So I started working through the tutorial that comes packaged with the code on a long road trip and was truly impressed with how easy it was to get usable programs up and running quickly. Then, last week, I was sent a link to a brand new issue of a major informatics journal that was entirely devoted to the use of Python in neuroscience. Okay, okay, I'm sold. So I'm diving into that when I'm not frantically busy with EVERYTHING else I need to do.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Heat wave!

Today it is supposed to be close to 60 degrees F here in Cleveland, Ohio. It feels very good and is a welcome change from the last two months of cold and snow.

In other news, my work continues to pile up and I'm having a difficult time with life-work balance. I will continue to work on this and get back to you. Sorry for the paucity of my updates of late.