Category Archives: Random Neuron Firings

Various & Sundry X

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You know…this is the stuff of which Movies of the Week are made.

  1. Defraud your investors of their hard-earned cash.
  2. Park motorcycle in storage facility in Alabama.
  3. Leave fake suicide note.
  4. Take off from Indiana, flying private plane.
  5. Put in fake distress call en route.
  6. Parachute out. Ditch plane over Florida.
  7. Go to Alabama; retrieve motorcycle.
  8. Vanish.
  9. Get caught.

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Remember Vicks Vapo-Rub? My mom used to make Mavis and me eat a teaspoon of it if we had a cold. (Yikes.) I used to put a spoonful of it in a hot steam vaporizer unit when my boys were sick or congested. I just put some on Jake’s chest a few weeks ago. Well, I won’t be doing that anymore.

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I am not a Bono fan in the least. But either he has a ghost writer, or he wrote a fantastic op-ed piece on Frank Sinatra. Very well done, wouldn’t you say? And I totally agree with his take on Frank’s two versions of “My Way.” A really good read.

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In 331 consecutive posts (I’ve never missed a single day) and 819 comments, no one at RtB has ever invoked Godwin’s Law.

Which means, of course, that someone will reply to this post and invoke it today.

Heh.

Contentment.

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As promised. And this one made me think…about a lot of things.

1. My entire existence has been slowly eaten away by these comp exams coming up in April. I have realized that this particular scenario is largely choice-driven, to wit: I am allowing it to happen. Actually, I’m making it happen. So I’m choosing now to stop it. If I can’t design a quantitative study to BU’s specifications in two hours, writing by hand in a Bluebook, well then I’ll take my lumps, fail the exam, and try harder next time. I’ve got to stop thinking that if I fail the first time, I’ve failed completely. I do have three chances. And as Mother used to say, “Worrying changes nothing.” In fact, she and Dad also said that worrying is actually a sin; it’s the belief that God is not in control and He might screw stuff up. Yikes. (Latent guilt, anyone?)

~
2. No matter what my students may think (I can be difficult in rehearsals, I know that), they’re pretty OK in my book. I count myself fortunate.

3. Even though I’m growing to hate 2-hour delays, I am grateful and content, sitting here drinking my coffee and writing to you.

4. The two girls doing that tap feature in Dinner Theatre are going to be très cute. That makes me happy.

5. Even though the present article I’m reading in the Journal of Research in Music Education makes absolutely zero sense to me, I am determined to figure it out, which gives me a much-needed feeling of resolve, and just a little confidence. I will, this day, discover what “…the majority of loadings exceed .40 and only one cross-loading exceeded .40…sampling adequacy was established using the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure…assumption of sphericity was also met as evidenced in the Bartlett Test of Sphericity” means.

6. And when it all shakes out, as I’ve said before, it’s your family who count. They are your “now” and your legacy. I remind myself of this, and I am content.

Fink out (for more coffee).

Dread.

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You know, it’s a brand-new year, and I should be looking forward to all the great things 2009 will bring. But right now, one feeling threatens to override the others: dread.

Now of course, I will follow up this post with things that I’m really looking forward to, but that will be later, when I’m in a better mood and the sun is out. For now, here’s what I’m dreading:

  1. The thought of a Super Bowl where both teams are from Pennsylvania. The Eagles I can stand, but the St*****s…God hates me. And shut up, Kody.
  2. Buying a new dryer today. My 12-year-old Kenmore died last night.
  3. Up at 5 a.m., school, rehearsal, home by 8 p.m., study until midnight, sleep, repeat.
  4. The knowledge that my knees probably won’t take too many more years of tap dancing.
  5. April.
  6. Waiting until July for the 3rd season of Mad Men.
  7. The drive to school this morning in the freezing cold. (Must start the Mighty Ford Ranger extra-early.)

Commiseration, anyone?

Fink out. (At least there’s yummy coffee in the kitchen.)

PS — I guess I can’t really be *completely* depressed. Mad Men won again.

:-)

Statistically speaking

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I’m not a fan of statistics as a field of study. Not only because of the math (actually, math is only a part of the stats picture), but because I struggle to find the key elements that combine to point a researcher to the desired statistical method for collecting and analyzing his or her data.

Was that ambiguous? Poorly stated? Yeah, I know. Let’s try this:

On my comprehensive exams coming up in April, I will be given two educational scenarios or problems, and two hours. My job is then to design a complete research proposal on each one. I will need to know what kind of research “lens” to use, and which of a dozen different tests will most accurately measure the data and facilitate the interpretation of my findings. This is all apparently an effort to test my synthesis abilities when it comes to the two basic divisions of research (qualitative and quantitative).

I know: this is boring, get to the point. Right.

The quantitative stuff is pretty scary to me, so I bought a book at the suggestion of some classmates. I started it last night, and I’m on chapter 3. It’s actually not too bad.

For instance, why didn’t my prof say in his lecture months ago that, simply, measures of central tendency are also called “averages,” and that they come in 3 flavors: mean, median and mode? How simple is that? But noooo…we’re doctoral students so we had to take the long way around and avoid such elementary statements that I would have understood immediately. Maybe that’s a bad example, but you get where I’m going with this.

When I read the reviews for Salkind’s book (“It really is easy to understand,” “This is the book that will finally open up statistics for you”), I thought, Yeah, yeah, right. But they haven’t met me.

Well, surprise surprise: actually, I do get it so far. So there is hope for the mathematically — and in some cases, logical-thinking — challenged. If you’re taking a stats class now, or you plan to in the future, I highly recommend the book.

In fact, I will save it for you and you can buy it from me. Such a deal.

Now, back to X bar equals sigma X over N. Cuz, you know, that’s how I roll.

Fink, waitin’ for the blizzard to get here (it’s started already…photos tomorrow for the Florida, Texas, or otherwise snowless people).

PS — Aw. I just read that the other Hager twin died. I didn’t even know the first one passed away. :-(

RNF XV

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Random Neuron Firings

  1. I’d like to meet the “neurosurgeons” who apparently allowed the Travoltas to think it was OK to take Jett off his seizure meds. I don’t know…maybe sometimes, doing nothing is better than continuing the fight to find something.
  2. Last night, I transcribed an arrangement for a Dinner Theatre tune using a YouTube video. I’d been working about 30 minutes on it, and paused it so I could write down more notes. When I released the “pause,” I got the message: This video is no longer available. Now that’s kinda weird, ain’t it? Talk about timing. Out of 30 bazillion videos on YouTube, mine gets the ax while I’m working on it. Terrific. Is this how my week is going to go??
  3. Girlz: what do you do when you absolutely must rock? (Hilarious — thanks, PK — I’m still trying to figure out whether or not it’s a joke!)
  4. There really is an animal that can break its own bones in order to grow claws. Would I lie?
  5. Ah, yes. The Thriller is happy.

All right, it’s 5:59. Quiet time’s done for this morning. Why does this hour always go by so fast?

Fink out.