Gone but not forgotten

Damn, now I remember why I stopped running a personal blog. Where do I find the time?

I have plenty of friends who blog, and some blogs I like to follow, blogs with nicely prodigious authors...

Anyway, update (for my sanity):
Work is going well. Not as overwhelmed as last week, which is nice. Got a troublesome manuscript out, albeit a couple of days late. That's a nice feeling, and I rewarded myself by bumping myself to second author. I wrote the fucking thing!

Looking at my "to do" list I see only 14 things, two of which are non-work related, so that's more manageable than it's been for a while. Some things can't be tackled until the Current Bastard of a Project is finished. I'm not working on the CBP (thank fuck) so I can ignore the screams, late night phone calls and mayhem that are ensuing as computers-meet-people-meet-disaster happens as predicted. Those items are more of a "wishlist" than a to-do list right now.

The non-work things are OK too. The main one is part of the charity I "work" for. We have a noisy member, who in genuine Comrade Lenin style wants to overhaul the entire postdoctoral training "issue" and thinks we are the right voice for him. Part of the problem is his ideas, at root, are good, but his methods are insane. He cannot stand criticism and balks at being "ignored": i.e. discussion is proceeding through regular channels, as it must when a committee of a dozen volunteers works on behalf of 90,000 constituents with such august entities as the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Government. If he doesn't get an immediate reply to one his brash and antagonistic emails or forum posts, he starts ranting even louder.

He has already pissed off the chair of the committee he serves on, and he thinks is a good thing because it highlights what he sees as the shortcomings in the system. As opposed to highlighting his naivete. Unfortunately, has the potential to do a great deal of harm. We have the backing of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the NIH, the National Science Foundation, The Sloane Foundation and indeed such individual personages as Dr. Elias Zerhouni, former head of the NIH. If left unchecked he will damage these relationships. I'm curious how to handle him because i really think he will try and form his own "organisation" and that would be bad. Guilt by association and all that.

Home life: Moving house this weekend is psychically killing me, thankfully Musicgirl is doing all the packing right now. I hate moving, but I am eager to be out of my shit hole apartment. I wish I could just take a day off and get it over and done with. Weeks, time in general, progresses very slowly right now, and I won't be moved in properly until the weekend. And my former housemate has taken it upon himself to invite himself down for the weekend...indeed, week.

On top of all that I have a cold/bug thing. Typical of someone like me, I work and play myself into the ground on a semi-regular basis. I was OK, but had a hellacious weekend (celebrating payday, finally), and burned out. I feel like shite, but not having interchoob access at home, indeed, not currently really having a home, means I have to come to the office and deal with shit.

Speaking of which, time for a teleconference with the Board regarding our recalcitrant member...