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quietannI was greeted this morning by peeping baby rats. Matilda gave birth to an unknown number of squeakers during the night, and wasn't in a mood to let me see them this morning.
Having my clothes out in the morning really helps me get ready. I had time to make myself a cup of coffee and an instant "oatmeal cup" (like a "soup cup') for breakfast. I still forgot my lunch, though. The oatmeal cup (which was actually a barley and banana cup) was too sweet, so I won't get more. I think I need to get some sort of plastic container so I can just make up oatmeal in the morning the way *I* like it, and eat it on the train.
Sitting at a desk all day is making an old stress point flare up. I get pain under my left shoulder blade. At least part of the problem is that I can't use my keyboard tray, because the office is so narrow that Jin, my officemate, can't get out if I have the tray open. The tray is too low for me, and the desk is too high. I am going to try sitting on a pillow, and maybe get a footrest as well.
I find that I need to get up and take breaks fairly often. Luckily, I am getting through the work I need to do; I have my first meeting with an investigator tomorrow and did enough SAS work on what she is interested in to have a little handout ready. I probably need a little more work to do, and a few more pointers on weird things in the dataset. (today's example: if I want to grab only the data from a patient's last appointment, but exclude patients that haven't been for a visit in several years, I need to include only those who had HDL cholesterol and triglycerides measured at their last visit, because it's only within the last few years that these things have been measured.** This is completely obscure knowledge of course!)
** Why? Because when the study started, no one expected HIV patients to live long enough to develop any blood lipid issues of consequence, so measuring blood lipids wasn't done. Now it turns out that one of the side effects of anti-HIV drug therapy is blood lipid issues!
Sally, my helper for the first few weeks, is an older lady who started out as a FORTRAN programmer. SAS is Fortran-based, so it was easy for her to switch (and also easy for me to learn, way back when, because the first programming language I learned in any depth was Fortran.) She's very nice, and knows lots of interesting tricks for data manipulation, e.g. the obscure example above.
Last night was New Years Eve for the Chinese, but according to Jin most Chinese will have their big parties this weekend. I did see a lot of Chinese women out buying flowers yesterday.
I found out that my predecessor left because her father (in China) has cancer, and she has gone home to care for him. Also, her husband lives in New York City, and they have a baby daughter, so when she comes back she wants to live with him.
Having my clothes out in the morning really helps me get ready. I had time to make myself a cup of coffee and an instant "oatmeal cup" (like a "soup cup') for breakfast. I still forgot my lunch, though. The oatmeal cup (which was actually a barley and banana cup) was too sweet, so I won't get more. I think I need to get some sort of plastic container so I can just make up oatmeal in the morning the way *I* like it, and eat it on the train.
Sitting at a desk all day is making an old stress point flare up. I get pain under my left shoulder blade. At least part of the problem is that I can't use my keyboard tray, because the office is so narrow that Jin, my officemate, can't get out if I have the tray open. The tray is too low for me, and the desk is too high. I am going to try sitting on a pillow, and maybe get a footrest as well.
I find that I need to get up and take breaks fairly often. Luckily, I am getting through the work I need to do; I have my first meeting with an investigator tomorrow and did enough SAS work on what she is interested in to have a little handout ready. I probably need a little more work to do, and a few more pointers on weird things in the dataset. (today's example: if I want to grab only the data from a patient's last appointment, but exclude patients that haven't been for a visit in several years, I need to include only those who had HDL cholesterol and triglycerides measured at their last visit, because it's only within the last few years that these things have been measured.** This is completely obscure knowledge of course!)
** Why? Because when the study started, no one expected HIV patients to live long enough to develop any blood lipid issues of consequence, so measuring blood lipids wasn't done. Now it turns out that one of the side effects of anti-HIV drug therapy is blood lipid issues!
Sally, my helper for the first few weeks, is an older lady who started out as a FORTRAN programmer. SAS is Fortran-based, so it was easy for her to switch (and also easy for me to learn, way back when, because the first programming language I learned in any depth was Fortran.) She's very nice, and knows lots of interesting tricks for data manipulation, e.g. the obscure example above.
Last night was New Years Eve for the Chinese, but according to Jin most Chinese will have their big parties this weekend. I did see a lot of Chinese women out buying flowers yesterday.
I found out that my predecessor left because her father (in China) has cancer, and she has gone home to care for him. Also, her husband lives in New York City, and they have a baby daughter, so when she comes back she wants to live with him.
