Now erasing hard drive. Please stand by.

Those of you who've been unlucky enough to be within whining range recently (greatly extended following the development of the internet) may know that I've been working much of this week on fine-tuning a Letter of Intent for a grant application. In total, it's about 20 pages long, although if condensed to solid text it would probably be closer to eight pages or so. Figures, tables and similar things make up the bulk of the document's real estate.

With it 95% finished (in truth, close enough to "done" that it could have been submitted), I sent it off to the boss for final proofing. As I often do, I clicked on the email attachment just to be sure that everything was all right.

It wasn't.

Microsoft Word presented me with a little dialogue box, the gist of which was "Word can't find the file - the path is invalid, it's lost or broken or something". "Fine", I thought, "the email attachment process didn't work properly, so I'll just do it again".

Nope.

What followed was a long and protracted period of flapping around, the net result of which was discovering that the file couldn't be (a) opened on my computer, (b) opened on somebody else's computer, or (c) emailed to a web-based email account and opened remotely. Mac vs. PC didn't help either. Maddeningly, the file was still there - sitting on the desktop, and I was even able to get its properties, ensure that Windows really thought it was a Word file, of about the right size, and located where it appeared to be. It was just broken, and Word didn't even have the good grace to identify it as a corrupted file, let alone offer to try and fix it. Which, truth be told, has usually worked in the past.

Yes, I know I should have had previous versions backed up in other places, but I've generally never had problems in recovering crashed Word documents. Perhaps this time, I'll learn. Also unusually, there were no previous versions emailed around to others for comments that I could have used; paper copies were circulated at one point (and thank goodness I still had one; if recovering the file wasn't going to work, I was faced with re-typing the thing from hardcopy). Argh.

With some help from a less-panicky graduate student seated nearby, who located the excellent little freeware utility WordRepair v1.1, I was able to grab the text out of the corrupted file. I'd opened it using a text editor previously, and it was pretty garbled; WordRepair (from the good folks at GetData) gave me nice, unformatted text instead. It dropped a few digits from numbers and the odd punctuation mark, but otherwise made life much, much easier.

What followed was a few hours of re-building the document, as compared with what would have been an all-night effort re-typing it. The timeline went something like this:

5:00 PM - rant and fume, thrash about, calm down enough for grad student to help out
5:15 PM - try a few other, unsuccessful ways of recovering the file
5:45 PM - photocopy only existing paper copy of document, just in case
6:00 PM - drive home, blasting loud music in futile attempt to calm down
7:30 PM - arrive home, after battling obnoxious traffic for much of the trip; eat dinner
8:18 PM - addresses and cover sheets fixed
8:23 PM - executive summary pasted back in and re-formatted
8:44 PM - technologies description section (about five pages of text) fixed
8:56 PM - organizational chart pasted back in and fussed around with a bit
9:15 PM - list of "statements of work" done
9:17 PM - budget section rebuilt from another document
9:26 PM - completely fixed, after the usual arguments with headers, footers and pagination

And there I was, thinking I'd be up until 1:00 AM at least. Which, as it turns out, I was, but working on other things instead.

Some days, I hate technology. But I've said that before.

On the road again

No, not another trip down Highway 401, solo in the car, nor to the sunny southern states. This isn't an epic road trip in the manner of Dawn, either - it's just the morning commute. I'm on the road again because we're into the school year, and Mrs. Ricardipus is back in classes.

So, with drop-off duties for the Junior Ricardipi messing up my morning train schedule, I've elected to drive all the way downtown to work, a couple of days each week. Which, although environmentally unfriendly, is actually kind of a pleasure. Good music on the stereo, and the opportunity to explore the city as I negotiate its twists and turns, looking for the best saw-off between speed, scenery and calm traffic. It's even almost cost-effective, since staff parking where I work is only marginally more expensive than the train ticket, and less expensive than the trip should I decide to use the subway in even one direction to or from the train station to the office. What about the cost of gas, you say? Let's just ignore that for now.

Naturally, such a drive affords opportunities for on-the-fly photography of local buildings:


Don't try this at full speed, folks.

The downside, of course, is that I am afforded every opportunity of being distracted by things parked at the side of the road, like this:


You know, I've never seen a 328 GTS before.

and this:


A bit less high-performance, but very pretty.

Not to mention the local Lotus and Aston Martin dealerships. It's surprising how easy it is to modify my route to pass by them.

Ah well, dangers abound everywhere. If I wasn't driving, I'd be walking to the station most days, and I'll confess I was late for a train because I had to stop and take photos of this pretty little Datsun:


A 260Z. Pretty in blue.

And the Ford GT, well that was a different story entirely - I made the train, but did have to run a bit.


Photoshoppery has occurred.

Sad case, me. But there you go. Driving to and from work, a couple of times a week, keeping my eyes peeled, shooting digital from the hip.

Overcast

In the new organizational structure that is life with a teacher-in-training in the family, and the necessity of shuttling around two now very active kids who are too young to be left on their own, I find myself now driving my very own vehicle in the morning to the local commuter train station. Which is a welcome change from the endless parade of buses that I've been accustomed to in recent years.

All this gives me time in the car, to and from, to listen to music and in so doing dig back through my music collection, almost all of which is a) on compact disk, and b) has never been put onto my Minidisc player, let along any kind of iThing. So there's a large back catalogue of music I've been missing out on, and am happily rediscovering.

Albums, for example, like Dead Cities by The Future Sound of London, an indescribably complex electronica mish-mash from the late 1990's, which has some truly incredible pieces on it: from the downbeat grooves of My Kingdom, to the aggressive video-game grooves of We Have Explosive, through the ambient floatiness of Vit Drowning and Through Your Gills I Breathe, to one of my very favourites, quiet and sad and poignantly calm: Everyone in the World Is Doing Something Without Me.




It's the musical equivalent of the far-off rumble of a jet passing in an overcast sky - lonely and bleak and a reminder that there are people all around you, going places, doing things, absorbed in their own lives, completely outside your own.

Quite like myself, isolated away in the green Protege, on my way to and from the station, humming along with the 1990's, oblivious.

[potch]

GNAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!

[potch]

^
that is the sound of my head exploding.


More later. After I finish a lot of work. And prepare two talks. And fly to Calgary and back.

--

In other news, it seems that the not-so-dismal weather on the weekend brought a hopeful Ferrari 360 Modena out of the woodwork for one last fling. Also seen on my trip all the way downtown to pick up the laptop power cord that I forgot to bring home on Friday: a BMW M6, ugly but quick, and a Mercedes E63 AMG, ugly but expensive, powerful and stinking of suburban affluence.

Not the best of days

I've been hibernating, a bit. Well, hiding out, actually, working once again in preparation for today's site visit from a major funding agency. The same review for which I spent much of July writing a lengthy report. And last night was a reprise of the night of a thousand Powerpoints. Because that's what I do, I'm a Powerpoint jockey extraordinaire. I am even a master of Ye Olde Powerpointe Heade Tricke, and have taught it to my disciple, yea verily.

But I digress.

Having also completed reformatting my 105-page report for That Place Where I Work™, late last night (ok, ok, it was only 69 pages long until they asked me to double-space it; it was still long), I hauled myself out of bed at 5:20 AM, rolled in to work by 7:15, and promptly spent the rest of the day closeted in a room with what turned out to be a not-particularly-hostile review panel.

It's what we do around here, it seems.

Anyway, as Black Knight has noted, time management is not one of my greatest strengths and I probably could have gotten this all completed a bit earlier. Either that, or I'm tremendously productive within the last 5% of the allotted time available before the deadline. It really depends on how you look at it.

Returned home, tired, to a couple of hyperactive kids who are well aware that TOMORROW IS HALLOWE'EN AND THERE WILL BE CANDY AND A VAMPIRE COSTUME AND A PRINCESS COSTUME AND THE JACK'O'LANTERNS WILL BE LIT, and a not-as-tired but still overworked Mrs. R'pus.

And the news that our next door neighbour has suddenly died.

As I said, not the best of days.

It's called a knowledge management system, allegedly

There is a pile on my desk at work, a nice, neat pile of papers that I have decided I need to read. Some are reports, some are guidelines, some are entire journals or trade rags, but most are reprints from genetics journals that are more-or-less relevant to what I do all day.

Once in a while, I will take one or more of these and put them in my briefcase for reading on the bus to and from home (or work, depending how you look at it). When they've been read, they get filed appropriately, given to someone else who might be interested, or recycled. Sometimes, they don't get read right away and become ratty and dog-eared. Occasionally, they get put back in the pile. Even more occasionally, they sit around in the briefcase for so long that they're just not relevant any more, and then I can happily toss them in the blue box. Which doesn't help me to learn anything, but certainly contributes to decreasing the amount of paper I'm carrying around. Ignore it until it goes away - the quintessentially Canadian solution.

The pile of papers, as you may guess, expands continuously. It never gets smaller, except by one or two papers every now and then, and tends to experience a net gain of two or three every week. It's been there for months, growing deeper and deeper as time goes by.

When I'm feeling like the office needs tidying, the pile gets straightened up, moved to a more aesthetically pleasing location, and then goes on existing just like it did before. Sometimes when I do this, it winks at me, as if to say "I'm still here, and you know it. Thanks for the new spot in the sun." It makes sense that it's developing sentience - after all, as each week passes, the amount of knowledge contained in the pile increases. In another year or two, it'll be humming to itself and reading Wikipedia when I'm off doing something else. Give it a few millennia, and it'll pretty much be running the joint.

So there you have it. Me and my pile of papers, sharing an office and slowly evolving towards achieving the sum total of all human knowledge. Or at least those specific bits that might be useful for someone like me. I suppose I could make a concerted effort to read everything and make the pile disappear, but I know it would be a losing battle, and I haven't the heart anyway. I kind of like it when it winks at me.

From the HR file, again

Among the resumés piled high on my desk, these little gems:

I also have glory teaching experience.

To which the only response must be: HALLELUJAH!!!

...and experience with ferret.

Which leaves me a little worried. Perhaps Wonderferret can shed some light on this statement - who knows?

Gubernatorial

It really is one of my favourite words. Just say it out loud, and slowly, letting those big, round, slippery syllables slide around in your mouth.

gu·ber·na·to·ri·al. adj. of or relating to a governor. Latin gubernator governor, steersman, from gubernare to govern — more at govern.

Why do I mention this now, you ask? (You know, of course, that I'm going to tell you even if you didn't.) Well, I spent a short period of today standing about three feet away from the Gubernatorial gentleman from this state.

Yes, Arnold Schwarzenneger, the Governator himself, was in the building, talking trade and stem cells and the environment. And he did, in fact, stop just a few feet away from me on his way out, smiling and shaking hands and generally having an informal photocall. The man certainly knows how to work a crowd, doubtless one of the benefits of having a pre-office life as a famous actor, bodybuilder and general popular guy. In the face of such star power, Poor Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty didn't even stand a chance.

Governer Schwarzenegger even stopped on his way in to the building, in more or less the same spot, to allow photos, then apologized that he had a press conference to get to, and told us (I kid you not at all), "I'll be back". I still haven't decided if that was cute, or cheesy. Probably a bit of both. But nobody else could get away with it.

Having finally gotten back to work, compared video and pictures (no, I didn't bring the Sony Monster to work, so I don't have any of my own), resuscitated one of our technicians who had a bit of a meltdown after Governor S. agreed to pose for a photo with her, and generally milked the event for as much conversation as possible, I realized a couple of things:

1. His suit, an unprepossessing tan affair, probably costs approximately six times as much as all of the suits I've ever owned put together. That would be 18 Ricardipus-suit-equivalents, roughly.

2. He's not as tall as I thought... Premier McGuinty, who I'm somewhat reliably told is six-foot-four, towers over him.

3. He's responsible for a state that has an economy and a population that are both considerably bigger than those of Canada. No wonder we pay attention when he visits.

4. He has a very good tan.

And that's about all I have to say about that event. It was different, it was fun, it injected a lot of energy into the middle of the day, and now it's over and we can all get back to doing something else.

HR has been notified, part III

Dear Sir,
find attached my Resume
Urs Faithfully


Sigh.

Also, if you're serious about the job, I strongly suggest actually including your c.v. or resume with your job application.

Sigh.

What does my daddy do?

For Junior Ricardipus #1's school project:


I am a Scientist.

I work at [The Big Hospital Downtown].

Things I do every day are discovering how diseases make people sick, helping other scientists with their experiments, reading about new discoveries and writing about our discoveries.

What I like best about my job is meeting other scientists from all over the world.


Lies, all lies.

It never rains but it pours

Or in this case, snows. Like it did Thursday night. In April. Friday morning looked like a Winter Wonderland, although to be fair it was only a couple of centimetres deep and it all melted pretty quickly. Didn't stop traffic from slowing down to a crawl though. You'd think we'd be used to the stuff by now.

And now it's Saturday morning, and I am tired. I got an emergency call yesterday afternoon from a consulting client who needed information for a meeting this morning. Fortunately, she's two time zones west of here, so I could work past midnight, email the information, and still be confident she'd have time to look at it before she had to get some sleep. Of course, this means I went to bed about three hours later than I really wanted to.

Also in the pipeline is another consulting gig, for a company that used to employ me but saw fit to lay me off and now needs my considerable expertise again. Hear that noise? That's the sound of the hourly rate ratcheting up.

Just kidding. Also just kidding about the "considerable expertise" thing - they could get all kinds of people to provide the information they need, but I guess I'm cheapest, or easiest, or the biggest mercenary they know, or something.

But it all adds up to extra work on top of the full-time gig. What with completing that Government of Canada report (which, by the way, they have yet to pay me for), fighting with email, the day job, the family, reading other peoples' blogs (including this tasty science one I just found), and messing about with Flickr, it's remarkable that I even have time to toss off blog posts of my own. So you should all feel very, very sorry for me and send me chocolate and stuff. Because I deserve it.*


*Some aspects of this statement may not be entirely true.