| Adobe LiveCycle: Really, Really Not An Appreciation |
[May. 23rd, 2012|10:55 am] |
Did you know that Adobe – the people who bring you PDFs – has a form editor? It's called LiveCycle, and it's what we use to create Case Report Forms, because it's cheap.
LiveCycle just ate everything I'd done so far today.
I know that other programs balk, crash, corrupt data. This is why, if I'm working on a big project, I make a copy every morning, so that the worst thing that happens is I lose one day's work. Well, LiveCycle crashes a lot. One quickly learns to save after every two mouse movements or keystrokes, and to never work on the shared drive. And every now and then LiveCycle goes to a pawnshop and buys a handgun, takes hostages, and locks itself in a room and won't talk to the negotiators.
I suspected I was in trouble when the program took several minutes to save. I knew I was in trouble when it not only refused to respond, but my entire system froze, and things I have never seen started happening. (Recycler? What the hell is that?) I did notice, before I was able to delete the offending file, that it had gone from 7 kilobytes to 4.5 megabytes. I have no damn idea why. I had to hard-reboot my system before I could delete it; I was certainly not going to poke it again.
Well, off to do everything I did for the last two hours. I was really ingenious, too. *sigh* |
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| Deep Randomage |
[May. 18th, 2012|11:48 am] |
What I really needed – what, I suppose, I desired to make my day so much better – was a nasty, and ironic, surprise. I was asked to change one sentence on a form, and so far it has taken me two days. The project, and the problems, keep getting bigger and more complex.
Day started odd in any case. I woke up with some serious reflux, which stayed with me until I had reached work. I guess I can't have cookies as a midnight snack; this happened the last time I ate them as well.
Nothing quite says "dawn" like an esophagus full of stomach acid.
On the plus side, I just realized that a "mix tape", a phrase I've been encountering since tapes came in – and well after they went right out again – might be the equivalent of a playlist. That would solve another nagging question I've never cared quite enough about to research.
On the doubleplus side, Leonard Cohen is coming to Boston in December! I'm going to call my brother, and maybe Alan, and see if they want to go with me, but I think I'll try to go. I saw him decades ago, and this may well be my last chance. Neither of us is getting any younger.
And on the irrelevant but interesting side – or, on the grabbing hand – yesterday we drove past a man on a bicycle who had a parrot on his shoulder. Not as interesting as the llama I passed in Llexington, but charming nonetheless. |
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| The First Day After A Death, The New Absence, Is Always The Same |
[May. 17th, 2012|04:57 pm] |
I just remembered this one today.
The latest in an irregular series of cultural intrusions. I should warn you, this one usually makes me cry.
The Mower
Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time. |
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| I Could Count Myself A King Of Infinite Space, Were It Not That I Have Bad Dreams |
[May. 17th, 2012|09:25 am] |
17 May, 2012
I have decided to stage a coup and declare myself Emperor of Data Management. It's not as though there's anyone to oppose me.
As mentioned, there are seven desks and two manager's positions in my office. Currently, the department is me, two other DMs, and one coder who's been her for a couple of months. Three empty desks and no managers left. (The one who still works here is recovering from major back surgery.) And, for the last couple of days, everyone else left in the department has been working from home. It's just me, sitting here alone and trying desperately not to go to sleep.
We did get to meet our new Subcontinental Overlord yesterday. He turns out to be personable enough, and not, apparently, immediately dedicated to our eradication. (He's Indian, and his major skill is creating teams in India to do this work.) But he will be working out of North Carolina; there's an excellent chance we will never again meet in the flesh. So, I'm declaring myself Emperor of Data Management. There has to be a Burger King around here somewhere – I'll find it and get myself a crown. I see no weak points in this plan whatsoever. |
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| The Professor Looks Up From His Desiccated Vegetables, Hardtack, And Bacon |
[May. 14th, 2012|06:06 pm] |
So President Obama came out for marriage rights. Some are angry because he invoked State's Rights, but he still stood up on the side of justice.
But it reminds me of a question I have been asking over and over for the last forty years. Why the blistering frack are we still talking about State's Rights?
The ability of states to pass whatever Christ-soaked blithering half-witted legislation they dream up, in defiance of human rights, decency, and the last 600 years, astonishes me. Seriously – this is what the Civil War was about; would the government reside in the states (pretty much going back to the Articles of Confederation), or in the federal government? The answer was pretty definite – if it had not been the latter, for instance, not a slave would have been freed, to this day.
So why, in the 21st century, are 17th century political units still passing 13th century laws? Riddle me this. |
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| The Professor Takes On Water But Settles On An Even Keel |
[May. 9th, 2012|01:26 pm] |
More boring health news. It contains the word "feet".
Went to the Podiatrist this morning. My Pod is a perfectly nice woman I see, like so many other specialists, quarterly. I've known her, professionally, through two pregnancies and on into grade school. My pedal extremities got examined, clipped, sanded with a Drummel tool, and whittled, carefully, with an X-Acto knife. Shop class for feet.
The good news – steady as she goes. My sensation remains about what it was (everything abaft of the phalanges is pretty good); no sores or wounds (unlike the time she announced I'd had frostbite), no increased edema, pulses good.
"What the hell is this?" she asked, peering at the outside of my least toe. "This is new!"
More examination and whittling proved that I had corns, and a bit of a blister (bad when you have neuropathy) on the outside of both little toes. I told her that last year, on the advice of a shoe fitter, I'd gone from a D to a B. (Apparently they do make Cs, but no one actually does.) Close inspection revealed rub patterns where my toes apparently are hitting the shoe.
Well, damn.
That means that I oughtn't wear my nearly-new New Balance shoes, or the identical somewhat worn pair these replace. I guess I need to go back to a D, in which I sort of slosh around at the heel.
Life: Now, With New Complications! |
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| Work Causes The Professor To Make More Squeezie-Faces |
[May. 4th, 2012|11:57 am] |
We just had a quick meeting to announce a new senior management hire.
Not that anyone is going to be interested in this, but –
My little Contract Research Organization (CRO) was eaten last year by the world's biggest CRO.
Since then, we've been told that from now on, most of our tasks will be handled in India, either by a contract organization or by Big CRO's Bangalore office, QBANG. We are supposed to be developing PowerPoint presentations to train the Indians to do our jobs. This office is understrength by better than half; instead of 7 or 8 data managers, we have three. QBANG just hired 25 people to work on our stuff.
They keep assuring us that our jobs are not being oversead, that we are supposed to be working as coordinators of the Indian workers.
My department, Data Management, has people in other offices – notably Geneva and Chicago. There are probably 7 or 8 of us all told. We were recently folded in with the computer people who build the databases, because Big CRO does it that way. We're told that in the future they'll be doing data management, as well, and we'll be coding, as well. That's a different story.
Well, they just hired a new Director of Data Management, who is over my supervisor and the supervisor of the coders. He'll work out of North Carolina. He's an Indian national. And the reason they hired him, specifically, is his history of building working groups in India, from here, to do these jobs.
I have such confidence in the safety of my job. But, I suppose as long as the owner/founder who sold the company is insanely rich, our lives are disposable.
(This field is actually pretty active around here at the moment, and I'm pretty sure I could get another job in less than the year and a half this one took, but I sincerely do not want to start all over again just as I'm getting confident in this chair. **squeezy-faces**) |
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| Füd, Glorious Füd; Hot Sausage And Mustard! |
[May. 2nd, 2012|12:52 pm] |
Various food-related occurrences and alarums!
I ate the last of the Garibaldi biscuits this morning. Garibaldis are an English treat, consisting of a thin, crisp, not overly sweet cookie with dried currants in between the top and bottom sheets. According to Wikipedia, they are referred to as "fly graveyards" due to the currants, and are Gene Hunt's favorite tea biscuit. I'm very fond of them as breakfast, as well as tea; they're not excitingly lush, but are good for a Yankee palate. Dry cookie and a little dried fruit. Tasty, but nothing florid.
There used to be an American brand of a similar cookie, but I haven't seen them for years. The lovely Mrs. Professor gives me a case, or two, of a dozen sleeves as a Christmas present. (She gets me a box of real licorice from the same source.) I space them out carefully, rather than have a frenzied guignol of indulgence – but, now, they're gone. Something to look forward to next year.
Yesterday, around lunch-time, I ducked into a meeting room overlooking the main road to see if it was still raining, since I was considering ducking down the street for a nice order of bean sprout fried rice. It was, in fact, still raining. But as I peered out the window, I heard the merry tootle of the Roach Coach at the tire-and-brake place next to us, and realized that my every happiness depended on me getting a hot dog. So I grabbed my somewhat battered umbrella and scurried out. I got two dogs with relish and mustard ("Yellow's fine – I don't make enough money to eat fancy mustard") and enjoyed them thoroughly.
Last night, I had an astonishment. I had left-over fried rice in the fridge (which is why I was thinking about fried rice, now that I think about it.) It was a bit dried out, so I steamed a portion of it, which worked quite well. I sat down with my current book (The Third Chimpanzee: The Evolution And Future Of The Human Animal) to eat it, and felt a damp tickle in my nose. I dabbed at it with a tissue, and found that I had spouted a nosebleed. Huh.
It has been just years since I had a nosebleed, and I have no idea where this one came from. I wasn't blowing it, I certainly wasn't exploring it (Ewww), and I had not encountered any trauma. I had a friend in high school who was addicted to nose-spray; he had near-daily nosebleeds, and I just carried a pocketful of napkins to hand him. But, and thus, I certainly wasn't using nose-spray.
I still have no idea, and I'm blowing my nose with great caution and reserve today.
(You know, my doctor has me on an inhaled steroid to try to treat my chronic cough, and it seems to be helping, so I'm vigilant in using it. I wonder if that could contribute? Off to google "steroid nose spray side effects"!) (Ha! "Nose bleeds" are in fact reported as a side effect! Though so is mania, and I certainly don't have that.)
Hey, perhaps I'll sooth myself from the trauma with bean sprout fried rice! It could definitely happen! Enjoy your own comestibles and viands, my fuzzy darlings,* and tottles for now!
*It's what Lord Akeldama occasionally calls the werewolves. |
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| The Professor Haint'nt Dead |
[Apr. 27th, 2012|12:18 pm] |
Not dead. Yet. Just crazy busy and without the time to write anything save work-related documents. (Amusingly – for a bitter value of amused – at this point an email popped up from a politely livid project manager demanding a timeline to finish her two Data Management Plans, which are just now in line behind a different politely livid project manager's DMPs…)
So I present you with my reflections on an ad for a ground-breaking revolutionary one-pill-a-day diet plan the people on the radio this morning wanted participants who want to lose weight effortlessly for. (Parse that – I dare you.) It was totally safe and effective, they assured us, since it was composed of all natural ingredients, including green tea extract. It occurred to me that pit-viper venom and rat poops are natural – perhaps I'm missing a market opportunity here.
Hmmm. All-natural guaranteed organic rat poop appetite suppressant. Guaranteed! The more you take, the less you want to eat! Maybe I'll add all-natural stink bug extract and spider pee. I definitely have a marketing opportunity here. Watch your drugstore shelves for the big rollout! |
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| And Now For Something Completely Different; A Beautiful Woman Singing Leonard Cohen |
[Apr. 23rd, 2012|10:14 pm] |
There was, at the church, a retirement service and reception for our outgoing minister, who is stepping down at the end of this church year after twenty-five years in the pulpit. (Of course, he gets tea and bathroom breaks). Janet, my lovely -- and talented -- wife was asked to sing as part of the service.
And here she is.
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