Smells like... a new semester

As fall begins to hint at its return and coats become mandatory for the ride to work, familiar smells return to remind me that fall is here. Around the MSU campus, these smells seem to be those of weed-killing chemicals and road construction this week. The building has a nice neutral odor. In two weeks that all changes.

The last few weeks have been a little frustrating since the two main conduits into campus from the north have been closed (S. 8th and S. 11th). This has put all the traffic into my biking path on S. 9th and S. 10th. I did "inspect" the new roundabout on my way home recently and I think it will actually be reasonable to use on a bicycle or as a pedestrian. The roundabout is not open because the lights were back-ordered. I have two issues with this. First, you don't start construction until all the "appliances" have arrived - we got this advice over and over again on our upcoming kitchen project. Second, why can't they have it open during daylight hours and close it at dark?

I have been working on starting a neighborhood association for our neighborhood. It has a temporary home as a blog at http://midtownnorthneighborhoodassociation.blogspot.com/. More on this later...


I am writing this while I am sending a loop code off to create vectors of 1.8 million observations. I really don't need or want to do an analysis with 1.8 million observations (over 100 years of monthly observations at over 1200 weather stations), but I want to see if I can do it. First I have to get it formatted the way I want, then I need to see if I can fit the models that I  would want to use for it. I guess this is a little like trying to climbing a mountain because it is there but not really planning to tell anyone about it unless you succeed and find a new route to the top. That is the danger of blogging, I guess, sharing your work before it is completely ready to be shared. I guess I've always known that research is rarely a linear process from initial ideas to final results, but it is even more obvious to me now that I've seen a few projects from beginning to end.

We always write up our research as if it was a direct process from beginning to end. It usually takes knowing someone pretty well or a couple of beers to share the trials, tribulations, and nonlinearities that were encountered between the initiation of the project and its completion. Some people are just repeating other work or sometimes publishing the same thing in multiple places - that is a linear research process until a reviewer finds the redundancy, which happens less often than it should.

As I've gotten more experienced doing research, I have been able to see the upcoming hurdles and either bypass them or be prepared to jump over them. When I am really engaged in my research, I have ideas bouncing around, some good and some bad, so much that I have trouble just working on one project at a time. I have a wall full of ideas for research topics and know some will never get worked on. Some of my great ideas have been found in articles that appeared after I had the idea but before I could even have started working on it. Some of my ideas have been so specific to my collaborative projects that some aspect of the research had to be publishable, sometimes it was even novel and useful in general. The best research is based on accomplishing things that initially looked to be un-accomplishable or maybe it is better to say that they have no direct solution to the problem at first glance.

For those wanting updates on my ruptured achilles, things progress well. I am trying to be rigorous with doing my PT exercises. I have had to face the weakness of the leg as I isolate it in various exercises. It amazes me that I can't lift my body up on my injured foot yet but I am getting close. My gait gets better every day and I have minimal pain as I work the area. I managed to walk to the store this week, which adds to the list of accomplishments on the path to getting back to normal. I haven't told Teresa yet, but I did climb the ladder to clean the gutter. And I've been commuting around town on my bike pushing harder every day. It is a long process but I am managing it well.