Daddy!

Since she moved into our room, Carys has made our alarm clock obsolete. Every day, she would get up anytime between 5-6am, and either start crying or (on a good day) crawl over and give Daddy a whack on the face.  

These few days, however, I have been waking up to a cute voice yelling "Daddy!" and a smiley face that seems to delight in her latest trick. I am not sure any language can quite describe that feeling I had.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/03/collins.commentary/index.html

"I have found there is a wonderful harmony in the complementary truths of science and faith. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. God can be found in the cathedral or in the laboratory. By investigating God's majestic and awesome creation, science can actually be a means of worship."

- Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.,  Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Pay Raise

I totally didn't expect this, but today I found out I got a pay raise for my second year on this job. In fact, I'm not even sure it's legal in academic circles to give cheapy postdocs a raise.

Obviously it's just peanuts compared to how much some of you out there makes. But I am grateful.  

The death of togo

Who's togo you asked? Of course that's the LINUX box I have been using at work for the past year. She got to the ER at about 1pm and was pronounced dead at about 3pm on Dec. 11th, 2006. The docs (the IT guys) said the following of her death: "She really crashed hard. We plugged her onto various life support devices and nothing worked. She lost all her memory before she died. Ignorance is bliss; she must have died a peaceful death. Fortunately for us, she is on warranty from Dell..."

We have always wanted to know why they named the box "togo." According to Wikipedia, it can mean a country in West Africa, a famous dog's name, and not surprisingly, a bunch of Japanese things. Maybe she's Japanese? Sayonara, togo.

We are now having a hard time trying to piece together togo's life. She started off a blank slate in this world of proteomics, very much like her owner did. She's churned through terabytes of data during her life time. At 2.0 GHz, she's considered a fast runner of her time. She has seen a piece of software -- her owner's brainchild -- grow from version 0.1 all the way to version 3.0. She witnessed all the seg faults and memory leaks that we all experience in life, and without a word of complaint, she perservered. Today, she has become an expert in computational proteomics, and she will bring a remarkable wealth of knowledge to her grave.

Her owner is grateful for her service and dedication to a honorable cause, and she will be missed. In her loving memory, her owner has started a Togo Memorial Data Loss Anonymous Help Group to help others cope with the trauma of data loss. She is survived by her owner, who is pulling his hair out at this moment, a keyboard, and a mouse. 

I've been waiting for the most opportune time to bring my blog back from the dead. And today seems to be it.

What else could be a better excuse for goofing off at work? My work computer just became unbootable with a ton of data on the hard disk. Our IT team has taken her away from me, perhaps forever.  

If you stumble across this page irrationally hoping that there'd be a new post, here's your reward:

Back up your work, NOW.