Thursday 27 January 2005 at 8:18 pm
Yesterday I got Nero up and running. This evening I ripped. Now I have a sweet John's-best-of hair band mix. Oh, I know, you're jealous. Who else do you know who actually owns Kix and L. A. Guns CDs? That's right, no-one but CD Warehouse. So what is on this majorly sweet 17-track happy pill? The following:
- Bon Jovi, "Bad Medicine"
- Guns 'n' Roses, "Paradise City"
- Cinderella, "Gypsy Road"
- Def Leppard, "Pour Some Sugar On Me"
- Ratt, "Way Cool Jr."
- Bonham, "Wait For You"
- Warrant, "Down Boys"
- Firehouse, "Shake & Tumble"
- Kix, "Blow My Fuse"
- Skid Row, "18 And Life"
- Poison, "Talk Dirty To Me"
- L. A. Guns, "The Ballad Of Jayne"
- Slaughter, "Up All Night"
- Shark Island, "Paris Calling"
- Whitesnake, "Still Of The Night"
- White Lion, "Wait"
- Motley Crue, "Don't Go Away Mad (Just Go Away)"
Thanks to the RIAA I can't post the image for downloading here, but let me know if you want a copy. I think it is legal for me to burn you a copy and mail it off. I know that some of you are asking, "What about Baton Rouge, Danger Danger, Extreme, Jackyl, and Lillian Axe? Haven't you ever heard of Hurricane or Tesla? Don't you know that 'Rocket' is a better track than 'Pour Some Suger On Me?'" Well, I can't seem to find my Danger Danger CD -- it may have been accidentaly freecycled. Send me a copy if you have one! And as to the rest, I agree. Maybe I need a Volume 2. And I know that some of you will die happy if you never hear another Jovi song in your life (what, yoiu were dropped as a child?). If so, I challenge you to post a playlist as a comment. Rich, I am counting on you for some sweet prog rock goodness.
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Wednesday 26 January 2005 at 12:53 pm
John smash! I was recommended for an "Outstanding" performance rating for this past year and may not get it. I have to be intentionally vague here so that I do not get into trouble, but the problem seems to be a disagreement by two people upstream of my boss as to how one of my publications should be counted. What a damned mess. You might think that there would be a policy statement or something so that standards are applied evenly to all SYs regardless of their lab, but that appears to not be the case. The cash award that would go along with an "Outstanding" is fairly modest (I do not even know exactly what it is) but that is not the point. The point is that I exceeded the performance guidelines I was given, and I feel like I may get shafted. I want to be clear, though, that the problem is not with my boss, but at a higher level.
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Wednesday 26 January 2005 at 12:53 pm
John smash! I was recommended for an "Outstanding" performance rating for this past year and may not get it. I have to be intentionally vague here so that I do not get into trouble, but the problem seems to be a disagreement by two people upstream of my boss as to how one of my publications should be counted. What a damned mess. You might think that there would be a policy statement or something so that standards are applied evenly to all SYs regardless of their lab, but that appears to not be the case. The cash award that would go along with an "Outstanding" is fairly modest (I do not even know exactly what it is) but that is not the point. The point is that I exceeded the performance guidelines I was given, and I feel like I may get shafted. I want to be clear, though, that the problem is not with my boss, but at a higher level.
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Thursday 13 January 2005 at 2:36 pm
This afternoon the November 2004 copy of the
Brown Swiss Bullein made its way to my desk. On page 1, in the Executive Secretary's column, was a bit about my calving ease work. I am very happy to hear that the Brown Swiss guys are excited about the forthcoming evaluations, and I am even happier that there is an exhortation to readers to send in their data if they are not already doing so. The Brown Swiss breed is not very large so every bit counts. When I am up for my Big Keep My Job Review in two years I can use this column to make the case that my work has demonstrable impact on the industry. Oh, sure, Tom Cruise gets more press for blowing his nose than I do for doing Science, but I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I am doing something beneficial to society.
Precocity
Last night, Ellery said, "Di-saur"!
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Wednesday 12 January 2005 at 4:13 pm
Apple unveiled
a killer line of new goodies at Macworld Expo 2005. Man, I have to get
one of these Mac minis. My laptop is getting kind of long in the tooth to be my Big Main Machine, and the price on these is really good -- starting at $499. Of course, after tweaking a few options my price came to $903.00...but that is only $20/month with an Apple Credit Account! They are also going to sell the heck out of those
iPod shuffles, mark my words. Kids are going to snap those up like bubblegum. In a few months I will be able to snag one out of the lost-and-found bin at the Greenbelt Metro.
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Tuesday 11 January 2005 at 2:26 pm
So, why the heck does
Kellogg's Cracklin' Oat Bran (R) cost so damned much? Kellogg's is very closed-mouth about it, and there is not even a product page for that sweetest of all cereals on their U.S. website. It has been
favorably reviewed on the Intarweb,
denounced by nutritionists,
baked into cookies, used as part of
a fiendish plot designed to rob Americans of their security, and used to
salvage spoiled milk. Oh,
and it's vegan, too. But none of these things explain why it costs more per ounce than cocaine, heroin, or Ted Kennedy. Of course, Cracklin' Oat Bran (R) is worth more than Ted Kennedy -- it makes people happy and doesn't kill women. Anyway. I think that Google is in on the conspiracy. I typed "Why does Cracklin' Oat Bran cost so much?" into Google...and did not get an answer. Come on! I am sure that there are other people in the blogosphere lamenting this evil! The best I could do was find one short thread in a Usenet group. Look, Tony the Tiger or whomever is in charge up there, don't make me take Greyhound up t Battle Creek, MI, to sort you guys out. I get really grumpy when I have to ride the dog. You have been warned.
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Friday 07 January 2005 at 2:30 pm
Well, things got off to a slow start today. My big achievment early-on was to move the white board down from my old office to my new office. I also re-hung some of the things on my wall so that they are level in the statistical sense. Then VanRaden, Paul notified me that there was, in fact, a non-zero genetic correlation between the persistency of yield breeding values -- I have been working on them for weeks -- and breeding values for yield. This is worrisome because the measure of persitency we are using is supposed to be uncorrelated with yield. Paull proved that when he derived it back in 1997. *sigh* Thankfully, the problem was solved after lunch. I still have to re-run everything, but that is probably doable before abstracts are due. There is a "tipping point" in the calculations that had to me moved to the right a little because lactations are, on average, a little longer than they were back in 1997. Think of balancing a pencil on your finger: if the pencil were to magically grow longer on one end you would have to move the pencil so that the new center of mass were balanced on your finger. "Persistency" is what I have to have to finish this project.
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Tuesday 04 January 2005 at 10:35 am
Comments about LSU's bowl appearance and the hiring of Les Miles
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