Goffee day

Its Thursday, almost the end of the week!

I received my order from http://www.uptontea.com yesterday - next day service, not too shabby. And I'm amazed at how much tea you get for the price! B was even impressed and said he wants to peruse the catalog and make notes for our next order (when this batch of tea is all gone) - and he's not even a huge tea person. I like how each individual packet has a label with your name and the date the order was packed. That's a nice touch!

Tonight we'll be doing various things and then heading to Netgoth Coffee (of course). I just love the end of the week!

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On the school front, I need to call three alumns of the program and interview them for one of my classes. The goal of this project is to practice qualitative interviewing for research and then writing up a paper on the results (which will be 15 pages and is due in 3 weeks).

Oh yeah, I have another 15 page paper for the other class due next Wednesday. Its for Research Methods; I need to give him my research question, dependent and independent variables, operational definitions and annotated bibliography.

We found out last night also that we'll be conducting a survey study on IT use with students (not sure exactly what issue we'll investigate - either causes for use/frequency of use or results and benefits/negative implications of use). Looks like I'll be spending some time out of work doing http://www.spss.com/ stuff (whee fun). The professor was impressed when I told him that I just type the SPSS syntax when using it at work (rather than the 'point and click' method that it seems like they teach at Umass). I'm hoping I didn't get myself into trouble with that, putting myself into a tech support role in the class :/

What I really want to get experience with is http://www.sas.com/ (since I've heard it can do a lot more, its more applicable to a broad range of industries and it is faster). The problem is, it costs more money!

And on that note, I'm off to write some SPSS code now.

From the Intranet:

Quote of the Day
"Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor."
- Truman Capote

More stuff

OK, I'm procrastinating. I want to go home right now (only 10 minutes to go).

Max was at the vet today for his BGA curve (the first follow-up visit in 3 months). It seems like this 2nd kind of insulin isn't helping to lower his blood sugar either (he spikes again around 2:00 PM) so he'll be trying something new.

Its a pain in the but (its not FDA approved so my vet actually need to fill out a request form, have me sign it and then submit it to the pharmaceutical company who will then mail the drug to the vet). It costs 2X the different varieties of Humulin that we've tried. But it may just do the trick! And (coolest aspect of it all) he may only need one shot a day! So we can take long day trips or go to afternoon cook-outs and not have to worry about being home at 7 PM.

For any science or diabetes geeks out there its this: http://www.felinediabetes.com/pzi.htm

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And B put up the pictures from last weekend's apple picking excursion. http://www.diabolis.net/albums/netgoth/ApplePicking/

What's not there though (that I was really looking forward to seeing) are pictures of a couple of hawks that were on a tree across the street from our house when we left to head out to Stowe. They were HUGE! Our neighbor Vinnie was standing in his driveway with a pair of binoculars and pointed them out to us; B tried to zoom in with the digital camera to get some good pix of them.

I'm continuously amazed how much neat wildlife we have in our neighborhood. I mean, I know we are a bit further West than we were before and I know the town is considered suburban, but we're right in the downtown trainstation and lots of factory buildings and stores area.

I'm not complaining mind you - I think its great. It just continuously amazes me (which reminds me, we need to put that bat house up so that we can try and get some residents) :)