Not the usual stuff

I kept myself away from WCOB work today, even though there were several important tasks left undone from last week (and I never did get to working on Digital Measures.) I took this stance as a reminder that my way of working for the semester must be to put adminsitrativa aside by Friday's end. Every time I had a guilt pang today I tried to direct my thoughts to how I could manage my time -- and space -- more effectively. Not that I had any breakthoughs on novel processes of time management. I need to return to categorizing activities on the urgent and important dimensions. Whatever I do differently next week, I hope it will be more effective than how I handled this week!

Instead I did do a little work with Diana (research will be allowed on the weekends!) caught up on gossip with our house guest for the weekend -- Tina, who used to have a house close by. We had a pleasant sail into Stonington harbor (not my photo, I forgot my camera -- again!), though the wind was barely sufficient, and enjoyed the excitment of the annual Lord's Point bluefish tournament (sorry, no photo of the whole "town" at the weigh-in but I forgot my camera!) Jack and I (and Tina) toasted Ulla's Golden Celebration with a dinner of Swedish Salmon ("not -Nigella Express recipe) and strawberries. (When Ulla puts part photos on her blog, I'll add the link.)

Frustrating Friday

I had earmarked today for working with the Donor Decisions Database. But when I didn;t finished what I wanted to do with the DD database yesterday, I told myslef it would be OK to use the first hour and a half to complete this part of the research project.

WRONG! I woke up remembering a whole list of small things I needed to complete today. SO I got to work . I never did work on Digital Measures, and it was after supper before I could work on the database.

And even that was a failure!

I created a merged dataset we had theorized would give us something interesting to analyze. First I created a list of all AIP charities with their letter grade, then a separate list of he Charity Navigator charities with the number of stars. Finally, I put the two datasets together and sorted on the charity name so I could create cases with both ratings and stars. Out of over 500 charities in one list and 278 in the other, only 18 are listed in both. This dooesn't make sense. Maybe I don;y have the true complete list from CHN. seraching for the others is a task for tomorrow!

And I need to confess that I didn't work for a couple of hours this afternnon when we went for a sail. We sailed down to Noank, and went into the mouth of the Mystic River by using the channel markers to enter from the Groten Longpoint side and leave by the chanel on the Stonington side. It was a beautiful day and I wished I had my camera -- there was a Coast Guard buoy tender at work, with seamen climbing up a reef marker to reset the radar reflectors. We also saw a kayak like Daniel's under sail.

Thursday throughput

Activities: Today was earmarked for research. That's after Skype calls with Petra in Luxembourg and Steve on Cape Cod, and concurrent with several email conversations. But it didn't compete with sailing beacuse by the time the wind came up Jack had to leave for a meeting elsewhere. And of course I kept being distracted by "to do" items that I had forgotten to do yesterday.

Achievements: The donor decisions database is starting to bear fruit -- SPSS crunched out significant correlations and anovas so we (Diana and Jill) can tell a story. But now we need more data -- so I've been creating another database while watching the Olympics. Soon we'll need to satrt writing. And as for the WCOB stuff: lots of odds and ends to hold together. Much the same as before and yet to come. And hopes of some sailing tomorrow.

Somebody

Today was the first meeting of the A-sq (Adminsitrative Affairs Committee) under I-Dean Lim. In the process I earned my new middle name -- "Somebody" (or Someone for short). We had a full agenda and made some decisions that will affect policies and processes. After a decision was made a follow-up action needed to be taken by Somebody. And invariably this rsponsibility was one that fell within the role of the A-Dean.

It's a change from being a nag or a scary lady!

Tuesday tidings

I went to my campus office. Steve Brown was there too, moving into his new office. It was good to see him again. (He's talking to Steve Scarpati in the photo.) I prepared materials for a meeting with department chairs. We met for an hour and a half. They went to transfer-student registration and I went to more meetings. Lynda, Steve and I approved the final copy of the AACSB Annual Report for AY07-08 (dated July 1, 2008). Then we went out to celebrate. I did not do any research work today. I am tired tonight.

Monday musings

On the beginning of a work-week. Diana and I spend an hour or so checking my data entry and refining the code book for our project. We made some important decisions about rules for removing charities from the database, and at the same time made our research questions simpler. Not very exciting work, but absolutely essential to do "up front."

Then I was on the road to Fairfield. A traffic alert warned me of an accident between exits 71 and 70, so as soon as the traffic crawled to standstill I headed off the highway and used a combination of following the stream of cars and using my GPS until I rejoined I95 just before the bridge over the Connecticut river. The detour took about half an hour -- but I assume it was faster than staying in the stop-and-crawl mode. I had plenty of time to get to school, but the experience served as a good reminder of statsitical variation.

Then meetings, chatting, meetings, pondering, meetings, and so on, till the workday was over. I still can't get a grasp on the daily workflow, yet alone a week at a time, and I know my time horizon needs to be longer than that! Maybe I should give up trying to create a mental schema for a while, and just let things settle down.

On the other hand, maybe I need an A-Dean Troll! Which of my troll-family -- ranging from one 45 cms high from an Ikea in Sweden, to a little 3 cm high 'angel' -- would best fit my needs? Or maybe some of them would like to visit others who are in need.

Enough! Tomorrow is another day, and according to advice given me by a Dean of another SHU college, my list will grow even longer -- never shorter. I think I'll watch the Olympics sailing competition, then settle down with my free-reading book for a while.

Connections

First the physical: It was a "pretty morning" and with a forecast of freshening winds in the afternoon, we went for a sail in the morning. There were lots of power boats out -- which meant plenty of wake-related chop, another reason for a morning sail because it only gets worse on a summer Sunday afternoon. The wind freshed as we were running back to the morning and we had our worst pick-up -- or connection with the mooring -- of the season. On deconstruction afterwards, we were going too fast, Jack overshot the dinghy, then turned too sharply. I had trouble keeping my footing on the deck (that's why I choose to wear a lifejacket), and caught the dinghy painter (line tied to the mooring buoy) on the backside of the boathook. I shouted to Jack, "I missed it!" he came up to the deck grabing the pickup buoy line -- I shouted "get back in the boat" (with flash-visions of us both ending up in the water and Wind 'n Go sailing into the rocks) when he realized that the mainsheet was jammed and we were still sailing. He released tthe cleat, I grabbed the mooring line, and everything wass back to normal. Three minutes of drama, maximum! We connected to the mooring again!

Then connections by phone. To the west coast and a conversation with Karen to catch up with tales of Chapter One of her dissertation. Way to go, Karen! Keep those fingers connected to the keyboard! To the northeast across the Atlantic to Ulla on Ockero. It seesm ages since I was there! We each told the other of our current challenges. Ulla is in the final stages of planning her "golden" birthday party -- with an academic seminar as a lick-off, then over 80 guests, and a 17 piece band for dancing. I recommended a "party troll" with hair she could stroke every time she was worried. I can only send her this photo of a 3 cm tall troll (with hair stretching another 3 cm). Jack and I wish we were going -- we'll just have to look for photos on the party blog.



And, last but not least, connections to SPSS and first results from the donor decision database. Diana looks quite pleased!