Category Archives: statistics

Oh yeah, LiveJournal. I remember this thing…

I’m late with my weekend recap, but there’s not too much to say. Saturday we spent over at takaza‘s mom’s house with his family, playing various games and enjoying the mountain of food she cooked up for the occasion. On Sunday we didn’t do too much, mainly just relaxed around the house. I had gotten a very specific pain on Saturday night that was causing a bit of concern (on my back, just over the right kidney) that left me feeling rather blah and playing havoc with sleeping that night; that has since dwindled to nothing, so I’m hoping it was just a passing thing. Other than that, a rather unremarkable weekend.

This week finds me in statistics class (yes, again), this time learning about Design of Experiments and Variation Transmission Analysis (not Variable Transmission Analysis, which makes a lot more sense to my mind, but probably a bit too automotive). The glorious thing is that I don’t have to be in at work until 8:15 AM or so, compared to the usual 7 AM, though I’m still waking up at 5:30 AM with Dan. I’m able to enjoy my mornings a bit more, so that’s nice.

It’s still two months away, but Anthrocon is weighing heavily on our minds right now. Part of that is the fact that we have three large cash registers sitting on our dining room table. Both Dan and I are teaching ourselves how to program these for the Artists Alley; we’re hoping that these will help streamline the process a bit and make things easier for everyone involved. I’m still waiting to hear back from a few potential staff recruits; I need at least two or three more folks before I can stem the rising panic I’m feeling.

Which brings me to this: I am taking volunteers for Anthrocon Artists Alley/Con Store. In exchange for at least fifteen hours of your time, you will get free entry into Anthrocon, a free T-shirt, dinner on Sunday night (a nice dinner, too!), and the luxury of bypassing the registration lines and picking up your registration materials in Operations! If you’re interested, leave a comment here or e-mail me at alley-2008 [at] anthrocon.org.

Not much else going on this week. We may have a wah crashing at our place for a day or two during his transition to life behind the Cheddar Curtain, but other than that there’s not too much is going on.

Wednesday Morning Random Stuff

So this morning I’m off to the third day of the four-day “Intro to Statistics” course that I started last week (it wraps up tomorrow). I have to admit, having the break in the usual routine is nice, and today should be more enjoyable than last week since I won’t be running a fever or coughing up a lung. As usually happens with these things, I do still have a slight residual cough, and probably will for another week or so. This led me to get up at 2:15 AM to take some cough syrup, and I couldn’t get back to sleep until 3:30 AM. Ugh.

So I did finally pull the trigger on buying a new laptop. I went with the Dell Inspiron 1520 (2 GHz Dual Core 2 processors, 3 GB RAM, 250 GB hard drive) and picked up a very nifty discount through takaza‘s employer. Plus, it’s a color I suspect pinkleader will drool over:

Of course, I’d have felt better if I hadn’t read two scary pieces about Dell in Consumerist right after ordering, but I figure that’s pretty much life in the consumer laptop market these days. And I look at it this way: if anything goes badly wrong, I always have someone I can call. Hey kellicjtiger, would you be OK with exchanging laptop service for dinner at a fancy restaurant? 🙂

So following today’s exciting class, it’ll be over to the Westin to have dinner with MFF’s salesman there. Hopefully we’ll nail down a few important items, and maybe get some pictures of some of the suites that we’ll be offering soon, as well. But now, I’m off to class.

A Lousy Week, But A Better One Coming

It’s been a week since I posted, and there’s a reason. It seems that the time when work gets busiest is always the time you get sick. Those two things buried me last week.

Cleaning up the pieces from a broken project at work kept me busy for the first two days of last week. Then Wednesday and Thursday were the first two days of a four-day course on introductory statistics. Oh my god, you have no idea how boring that was. And me attempting to cough up a lung during it – yeah, I was having a great time. When Friday came around I came in long enough to get all of the paperwork for my project squared away then I went home and relaxed for a while. A brief trip to the doctor showed that the sore throat, coughing, and sinus issues were pretty much just the garden-variety Upper Respiratory Ick that has been going around. She said it was probably viral, but prescribed some antibiotics anyway (um…yeah. Well, OK.)

I felt a little better on Saturday, though I woke up far too early and wound up having to grab a nap in the afternoon. takaza took good care of me and made a run to the grocery store. Then we went up to roho and genet‘s, where were joined by linnaeus, feren, lady_curmudgeon, colliedoc, hypersnazz, and Straif and Hux’s sweet short-haired husky Vic. We had a very pleasant evening of tasty food, good drinks, and good company.

I woke up waaaay too early Sunday morning with reflux issues. I poked at my laptop a bit but then the plug to the computer from the power adapter (which I just bought two months ago) finally shorted and gave up the ghost, leaving me computerless. I still had a pleasant morning of reading, so it was OK. That afternoon, Dan and I met Linnaeus at American Science and Surplus (I was looking for spice jars) and Linnaeus was kind enough to lend me his power supply from his old computer, which is identical to mine. After a brief stop to pick up Dan’s pre-ordered DVD of 101 Dalmatians, we grabbed a quick dinner then went home where I collapsed, feeling pretty drained.

And here we are, the start of a new work week. I’m clearly still not up to 100%, but feeling better incrementally each day. The project I’m working on is now humming along without my assistance (yay!) and I can start looking ahead to future projects. I have the last two days of my statistics course this week as well (boo!), but otherwise it should be a pretty easy week.