this week i

visited kristina's new house in hampden.  stopped in lexington market, bought a fifteen minute parking stamp from a hawker.

ate gas station gourmet with dad and emma.  only overlapped in town for about a second, but i'll take it.

fought a cold.  won, obviously.

arrived in rainy-ass orlando..

 to present

 ..and be presented to.

 watched epcot fireworks..

 ..but don't kid yourself.  disneyworld a terrible place.

found more d.a.b.

shared a cab to the airport, talked shop with the unc director of hsr.

picked up my rental car.

drove through a tropical depression.

set up on tampa bay.




had to do it.

visited kitschy ybor city.

tried the dali museum, but - given it's the only reasonably cool thing to do in tampa - the line deterred me.

spent the morning hitting refresh on my browser. and hate cnn. and love america. we did this. we're just getting started.

work for an organization that got cited three times in the final decision.  (p. 51, 108, 172)

pinged the lively r-help community for a way to remove missing values from logical tests.

6/28

this week i

published four short dental analyses for an oral health briefing.

received my first citation as 'phone call with authors' in this study of auto-enrollment as an alternative to the mandate.

hung around vanderbilt..

..to present a poster on my r contribution at the 2012 user conference.

had a few people recognize me from twotorials.com.  one remarked, "oh you're the two minute guy" - "shhh, don't call me that in the presence of ladies thanks."

love you too.  oh, and crossed the 50,000 views mark.

leaned toward not pursuing a phd in statistics.  a biostat dissertation requires the discovery or refinement of a new method, but our society doesn't need that sort of niche research.  we need broad dissemination of the techniques we already have.  this parallels our challenges in global health: we have the tools to end stupid diseases - there's no malaria in florida.  let someone else chase the silver bullets.

didn't attend as much as i would've liked to, although this snappy guy quoted one of the two other guys who taught me r.

woke up in a beautiful home..

..not without protest.

had a shower.

brushed.

took a leak.

ate locally.

smelled the roses.

walked in the park.






greeted the neighbors.

got an idea for my next do-it-yourself project.  replace the gowns with a statistical distribution. or something.

celebrated a birthday..

..adults don't do this because?  after a couple of drinks, the swinging ability evens out.

hit the flavor ceiling: those are cheese-filled.

met middle tennessee entrepreneurs..

father


son


got drunk..


..beat bubble bobble.

have forgotten boredom.


miraculously timed my visit with dale ann bradley.  again.

'ppreciate cha.

read a little..

(1) the five categories of rebels

when the cold war abruptly ended in 1990..africa exploded.  ethiopia's dictator, mengistu haile mariam, supported for years by the soviet union, and somalia's despot, mohamed siad barre, backed for years by the united states, were both ousted in 1991.

shabab recently opened a twitter account

(2) in bombay slums

a procession of broken-toothed, profit-minded santas

turned his snot black

"stupid pimp with the brain of a lemon!" she'd say in mock outrage.  "you think my babies will go hungry without your cans? i ought to take down your pants and slice off what little is inside!"

most of them would gladly blow their noses in your last piece of bread

6/21

this week i

published our annual report on medicare advantage enrollment.  one-fourth of older and disabled americans belong to the privatized medicare insurance market.

flew to nashville.  but not before bumping into roy at bwi.

deplaned, caught my ride, sunset-drove straight to memphis.

ate four consecutive barbeque meals.

checked out sun studio.  elvis sung here.  johnny cash too.  and now us three.




saw about twenty horse-drawn carriages, ~80% with companion dog like so.

realized 'memphis' comes from egypt.  too bad this is surrounded by interstates and parking lots - and isn't in use.

trammed..

..for both replica and real mississippi rivers.

drove to arkansas for a few hours.

population: me

wonder exactly how many people missed that typo before it went to print.

can't visit the south without re-enactments.

headed to beale street..

for performance art


for live music


for colorful characters


..and late night magic.

drove right past graceland.  yeah no thanks.

zoomed in on a telephone pole.


praised jesus on a nondescript sunday in june, in a crowd of just three hundred.  best music in memphis.

made it back to nashville for a rough 2012 ehbs workweek in good company.
6/14