This sounds like it could be a line out of The Hobbit! But at the time of my last blog, my son had left Xanga and moved to L.A., while we were firmly ensconced in our Illinois farmhouse and the girls were living elsewhere in Illinois. Fast forward almost 8 years and the whole family is living in L.A., where Joel and I work for tech companies and all three of the kids are married.

Joel used to work for Xanga, so the Xanga blogs have a special place in our heart and memory.

And let me add a book tip – which is, I think how Xanga got its start: if you’re an introvert, be sure to read Susan Cain’s book Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. Great read and full of practical observations that can help introverts give their best to the rest of their fellow women and men.

My last entry was around our wedding anniversary – about 5 months ago.  Does that make me an “inactive account”?  At least from my perspective, I have been anything by “inactive”!

To mimic Tolstoy, it’s been a period of war and peace. 

WAR:  At work our department is “in default”, which means that we are spending more than we are taking in and continue only by the grace of the Dean of the medical school.  Of course, we’re working like crazy to turn things around, but this ship has been headed the wrong direction for some time and coordinating the efforts to turn it around will take time – that is, unless at some point the powers that be decide that the time has been long enough and the department gets forcibly combined with some other department that is not in arrears.  We’ll know more next July 1, when the new fiscal year starts – or doesn’t.

Oh, and I should mention that the chairman stepped down a year and a half ago.  We currently have an “acting chair”, which adds to how tenuous the situation is.

PEACE: This is the last of five years for my NIH training grant.  It has been a phenomenal opportunity to learn and do research.  God has been good!  The American Journal of Epidemiology has accepted my functional data analysis paper which focuses on hormones.  I also helped a colleague do the analyses for a paper he was writing that has been accepted by the Lancet (#1 British medical journal).  The clinical trial I helped design and run over the last 4 years has our primary outcome paper on which I am a co-author coming out in the Journal of the American Medical Association in November.  And we have a baseline paper for the same clinical trial that we hope will soon be accepted by another good medical journal.  I hope to have a couple more papers submitted before the end of April (when the grant ends) comes upon me.  It’s turning out to be a very profitable year.

WAR:  This is the last of five years for my National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant.  (Didn’t I already say that?)  That also means: find more $$$ or become …. hmmm … unclear what that something else is.  I am a co-investigator on two grants that have been submitted already.  I have two that I hope to submit for a February 1 deadline.  I know that I will be able to return to teaching some next year (about 20% time), so we’ll have to see how things go.  I hope to be able to always have some of my own funding to do my own research in addition to my participation on others’ grants as biostatistician or co-investigator.  NIH is currently only funding about 9% of the grants submitted, so competition is fierce and success has become rare.  I do have tenure, but for those who aren’t aware, at medical schools in the US this means that you have a guarranteed position – not that you have guarranteed pay.

More WAR:  Becky went back to teaching this year and we thought we had erected some boundaries that would make it “do-able”.  While she is teaching only one more course than other teachers, because the science classes are over-full, she has 176 students per day rather than the normal 120-130 that most teachers at school have.  On another front, at church we lost three of nine board members during a six month period this year, good friends who chose to leave for a variety of reasons.  Add to that that we are in the midst of a building program and that there is some tension around the progress of the building.

And more PEACE:  Becca has settled well in Normal at ISU and been blessed with a good job and success in her classes.  We see more of Anne than we have for a couple of years and both enjoy her and are happy about choices she is making and success she is having at work.  Joel found and married a wonderful young woman this summer (TeeTee), so our family has expanded.  (Their experience was rather like the biblical description that says:  2 Chr 29:36  Then Hezekiah and all the people rejoiced over what God had prepared for the people, because the thing came about suddenly.)

And REAL PEACE:  I haven’t forgotten:  Jesus is still Lord.  I don’t know how often you read through Revelation, but I pass through it at least once every two years as part of my Bible reading program.  I am going through it now and what an encouragement it is!  I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is who He said He was, and that He will return to judge wickedness and rule the earth in kindness and truth, as He said He would.  I will be delivered from my sinful inclinations and freely and joyfully serve Him the way I wish I would now.  And so, regardless the external circumstances (whether seemingly good or bad), I have good reason to have hope and to live worthy of the life He called me to, loving others and making a difference in the world.

Somehow we associate enthusiasm and excitement with the term “Birthday”, so it seems more appropriate for the annual celebration of our marriage than the term “Anniversary”.  Scanned pictures don’t always turn out as well as the original, but you can still see the smiles on both faces.  It was good to be married and it’s still good to be married, 29 years later.

Last fall my wife and daughter were blessed with a horse as an answer to prayer.  Oh yeah – I got to buy it.  That sounds negative, but it really isn’t.  I’m really happy that Becky and Becca get to have Ivy.  In terms of my own interests, though, Ivy is primarily one more animal in the pasture.  Or at least, she was until this afternoon.

I was working at my desk – windows closed.  Becky had left to get ready for a Nettlecreek Watershed meeting tonight.  I wasn’t particularly interested in the fact, but in the back of my mind I assumed Ivy was quietly munching grass out behind the corn crib.  And then I heard Ivy whinny – a very unusual, very distinct whinny.  I figured the call wasn’t for me, so I ignored it and continued working.  Then came another whinny.  More ignoring.  After the third I figured I might as well go look.  Even a persistent horse deserves an answer.

As I walked out the back door, I saw 120 lbs of Great Pyrhenees foolishness headed east along the creek – Toby!  The chickenhouse door had come unlatched.  After helping himself to all the chicken eggs he could find (probably about 6), he decided to see if he could fit through the little (about 9×15 inches) door we let the chickens out in the morning.  I suspect he didn’t feel real good after he got out, because when I called to him, he turned and came to me.  That is a sure sign that he isn’t feeling himself, because Toby NEVER comes when you call him!

Well, I got Toby deposited back into the pasture and shut the chickenhouse door again.  But I looked at the little old white horse with new appreciation:  she had called me.  Okay, so it probably wasn’t me she was calling, given how little attention I’ve shown her since she came.  But she was calling somebody, and I think that’s a pretty good trick.

Mice are a favorite research tool.  Medical researchers love to work with mice that have this or that gene “knocked out”, because it enables them to look at the effects of specific genetic defects.  In terms of programming, mice can be a wonderful enabler, too, with added wheels and buttons introducing shortcuts and speeding up code generation.

Several years ago for Christmas Joel gave me my first MS Intellipoint Optical mouse.  At the time I am sure it far exceeded what he had to spend, but he was excited to give his dad a new tool that only the two of us in the family would really appreciate.  I was skeptical at first, but I quickly got over my skepticism.  I programmed buttons to cut, paste and execute within my favorite stat programming software.

A year ago I got a new Mac.  Of course, at the time I was excited about the Blue Tooth mouse you could get and I dutifully bought one.  It’s beautiful.  It has no wires.  Unfortunately, it only has one button.  So, yesterday when I got the message that the second set of batteries (that drive the Blue Tooth) were on their way out, I looked over at the old Intellimouse sitting on the shelf and thought …. hmmm?

I plugged it in yesterday and the Mac immediately recognized it.  Today I downloaded a MS app that allows me to program the buttons (all five of them).  It’s great.  I still love it.  A wheel to move within documents and five buttons:  left, cut, paste, copy, execute.  I can live with the wire.

Life is good.

Thanks, Joel!

While athletes might worry about the kiss of death, for Windows users its the BSOD that strikes fear into your heart.  When it happens, you immediately begin to pray – which might be a good thing.  You remember all the recent work that you’ve done and how you meant to back it up and, if only given the chance, you promise yourself you’ll turn over a new leaf and backup regularly – if only you can resolve whatever is causing this BSOD!

Of course, it was on my wife’s laptop.

All kinds of jokes come to mind at this point.  (“If Momma ain’t happy, …”  etc.)  But the truth is, I’d be in more of a fix but less concerned if it hit one of my research machines.  I just want Becky’s things to work.  It’s how she communicates with the family, with a special relative/friend in Arizona, etc. – cutting that off is worse than me losing temporary access to my research data.

The Dell Inspiron 1100 had been giving warnings over the last few weeks, rather like a volcano getting ready to blow.  You’ve seen the movies – the ground starts to raise 1/4″ over a 500 mile radius, Old Faithful slows down (or speeds up, depending upon the movie), fissures open in the Marianas Trench.  And so Kokochinski (Becky’s laptop) first began to show signs of slowing.  Then came the heat – the fan was running all of the time.  (Those should be clear clues to any geek.)  I kept putting off looking at it because I “just didn’t have the time right now” and then it happened: the first BSOD.

You always hope that the first BSOD is an outlier.  And, in fact, it may be a long time between it and then next, but there’s always a next.  And the dump info, if there is any on the screen along with the hated blue background, is seldom useful.  I mean, it could really be that one of your drivers took a left turn or dropped a bit, but it could also be (as was in this case) that some poor devil of a routine was randomly selected to be the object of ire for the real culprit.  A random crime.

I think the first BSOD hit last Wednesday or Thursday.  By Friday there were several more and Becky gave up trying to pretend that it wouldn’t hit before she got the next email sent.  Have you ever written a long email to a friend, knowing that the next keystroke could be your last?  It’s not the kind of environment to produce transparency and scintillating openness, let alone long emails.

Saturday morning I began where every wife’s geek husband begins:  return to the scene of the crime.  Turn on the machine, wait a few minutes.  Sure enough, that’s what a BSOD looks like.  And then you reboot the machine.  And sure enough, that’s what another BSOD looks like.  More prayer.

Well, let’s see what we know.  Inspiron’s collect dust in that little copper device connected to the P4 processor that’s supposed to be responsible for keeping the little bugger cool.  Take off a bunch of little screws:  off comes the keyboard, screen, fan guard, video processor heat sink, video processor, another heat sink and … what are those 200 pins sticking out of the bottom of the heat sink for?  Oh yeah, that’s the processor … forgot.  Gee, the fins in the copper heat sink look so clear, that can’t be the problem.  Put it all back together – oh yeah, and realize that half the stuff you took off could have stayed on in the first place.  (But this insight will pay dividends, because you are about to repeat this process about 5 times.  Of course, you don’t know that at this point and so the fact that you won’t need to take it all apart again is at this point no consolation.)

This is getting much too long, so let’s cut to the chase.

The second time you take it apart you discover that all the dust on the fins is on the INSIDE of the heat sink – and there is a lot of it.  It’s amazing that any heat escaped by way of the fins at all.  Melted solids would have been more likely.  But when it is all back together there are more BSOD’s.  Check the internet – sure enough, heat sink connections some times dry out and need to be reestablished.  (Becky ran to town and got the new tube of heat sink paste for me.)  You resink the video processor, but the P4 seems tight still.  Well, you’ve had 5 hours of fun so far – enough for one weekend.

By the following Wednesday you’ve spent some more time online and discovered that memory problems produce the same kind of random BSOD’s.  Download memtest86+ and run it, one memory module at a time.  The two original 128M’s seem fine, but the “new” Black Diamond memory (512M) that is a year old throws some errors on the screen.  (Did it get “cooked” when system temp was too high?)  Run without the 512M module and things seem stable.  What do you know about that?!

Becky’s had 3 uninterrupted hours of internet email and browsing.  Well, there have been a few phone calls and the call of the current book, but no BSOD interruptions.  Even if I thought the 512M memory might be okay, it’s hard to argue with experience.  Leave it out and the thing works.  I’ll probably run memtest86+ all night on the 512M module, but even if there are no errors, I think I’ll take it out of the laptop for the last time tomorrow morning.

Popcorn has the status of a tradition in our family.  Microwave popcorn is okay in a pinch, but for serious munching it falls somewhere below second rate.  How did things get this way?

When I married Becky, I discovered I had married the world’s best popcorn maker.  Popped in a pan, topped with real butter (and much too much salt in the opinion of my Preventive Medicine colleagues, I’m sure) and served in “rauhen Mengen” (German for “huge quantities”).  This was life big-time.

There aren’t many things I’ve ever learned to cook well.  Hmm … actually, I can’t think of anything I could claim to have cooked well.  But I made sure that Becky showed me how to make popcorn her way.  In fact, over the course of 22 years I managed to destroy an aluminum pressure cooker we got as a wedding present.  How?  One pot of popcorn at a time.

I am such a popcorn fiend, that early in our married life I took over the responsibility for making the family tradition.  Now the height of levity in this regard came some time in the last year when Becky, Becca and I were sitting in the living room one night and I expressed an interest in repeating a family tradition.  My wife, who loves me more than life, offered to do it for me.  Becca, caught off guard by Becky’s offer, turned to her and said, “Oh, do you know how to make popcorn, too?”

It’s Sunday night – time for the winddown of the weekend before the week starts up again.

I was reviewing a paper for a journal tonight.  I really liked the idea behind the paper and they had a great dataset.  But they really botched the analysis.  The reason for it is not that hard to understand, so let me try to explain it.  I can’t tell you about the paper, so let me choose an imaginary example:  the number of parking tickets written on a given day.

If someone asked you, “Does the number of parking tickets written on a given day in the average American town vary by day of week?”, you’d look both directions and wonder where the hidden camera was.  (Does anybody remember Alan Fundt and Candid Camera?)  If you got beyond that, you might think: I could get this info for a number of towns and pool the info.  But the towns differ in size, so how can I pool information over towns that somehow takes account of the size of the town?  I know, why don’t I calculate for each town and each day the expected number of parking tickets for that day.  For example, assume Bigtown had 313 days on which tickets were written and 31,300 issued tickets that year.  You’d expect 100/day.  If they had 150 on the fourth of July, that would be what percent higher than expected?  (OK: (150 – 100)/100 = 50% above expected.)  That makes sense.

Now, does it make sense to pool these relative percentages over towns?  You wouldn’t want to pool just the numbers, because then Morris, IL, (population 12,000) would be dwarfed next to Chicago, Milwaukee, etc.  So, you might hope using relative proportions would make sense.

But here’s the problem: what if Podunk only issues on average 1 ticket a day.  (Imagine Podunk as being rather like Mayberry, USA, on Andy Griffith.)  On July 4 they might issue 50 to all those out of town people who don’t know how to behave in a small town.  This would be a 4900% increase in one day!  Do you think that should carry the same weight as a change from 100 a day 150 a day in Bigcity or more like the difference between 100 a day and 5000 a day?

It’s probably safe to assume that you’d think there is a difference between 50 on the fourth of July in Podunk and 5000 in Bigcity (or even 149 in Bigcity).  Relative proportions just aren’t a useful way in combining information across cities that differ widely in size.

The paper I was reviewing was not about parking tickets, but about deaths.  So, we need to be both careful and respectful in the way we analyze the data.  We need to combine in an appropriate fashion so that the conclusions we draw reflect the variability in the data.  The people who wrote the paper were calculating these intermediate statistics (relative proportions) and then treating them as if they were infinitely accurate – and ignoring the fact that knowing about the deaths of a few people is not as valuable as knowing about the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people.

For those who are curious, Poisson regression would be a better (and more honest) way to combine information across cities.  The estimates produced in that fashion would reflect the fact that larger counts (and larger denominators!) give us more information.

We have an adult class at church that is looking at the way Jesus touched the lives of people.  We chatted today about something that occurred while Jesus was talking to people in the house He lived in at Capernaum.  Jesus had a home that He consistently came back to at Capernaum.  One day He was talking with a group that filled His home.  Some men approached the house carrying a friend of theirs on a stretcher.  They quickly realized they couldn’t get to Jesus simply by going through the door, because the entire house was filled with people.  So they got this crazy idea:  we’ll make a hole in the roof and lower him down in front of Jesus!  If we can just get him to where Jesus is, we know Jesus will touch and heal him.

Imagine having a front row seat to a teacher, who even His enemies feared because He was such a captivating speaker.  Suddenly you start feeling dust and dirt filtering down – and then a torrent of dirt and roofing material collapses upon you as a hole in the roof opens above!  I am guessing that they were not happy campers.

Jesus was teaching – who dared to interrupt!  Who dared to rip apart the roof – didn’t they know that would make a mess and require costly repairs?  How would people react today?  I’ll sue this guy!  This is my house!  He can’t do this to me!  I’ll make him pay!

Jesus knew that the true value of real estate is sum total of the lives of the people that are loved and changed within its walls.  The hole in the roof was adding value to the house!  So He healed the man and sent him on his way.

We talked about the importance of using our homes to show love to other people.  That’s the real key to increasing the value of our real estate.

So here I am in my office, hiding out, while the house is taken over by women!  No, the door is not locked.  But from the volume that is sometimes attained on the other side of it, maybe it should be.  Becky and Becca have three other mother/daughter pairs over and all indications are that the evening has been a success.

A few weeks ago I told the story about an analysis I did that I got excited about.  The sequel to it is that it looks like, though it was a better way to do things, the final message wasn’t much different.  The major players have to decide whether it is worth spending an extra month of spare time stolen here and there to rewrite the paper.  Based on the straw poll so far I’d guess the majority will vote for efficiency of action.  No problem.  You can’t know until you try something whether it will turn out to produce a really interesting result.  It was good work.  In some sense that is it’s own reward.

Oh – and the consolation is actually that the “other paper”, the one I was working on with a different colleague when I came up with the way to analyze this data, did find some neat stuff and will see the light of day.