It's Derby Weekend!
And my former boss, Carl Nafzger, has his best chance in a long time to win again. His horse is Street Sense, which is presently 2nd favorite. His only Derby winner, Unbridled, was no where near being a favorite in 1990 when he started at 20-1. For the human interest pick of the year, I choose Storm in May. This horse is blind in one eye as the result of an accident when he was just a week old. One of his exercise riders says he's the stablest horse she's ever ridden.
Banging Out the Code
I spent about six hours trying to get a 15 line bit of computer program to do what I wanted it to do today. For three hours of that, I was manually concatenating the names while pondering the code in my back brain. I never did find the error in the initial bit of code, but I did find a workaround that did the trick. I did discover that the import wizard in SAS is now smart enough to figure out how long to make variable fields for you when you let it import an Excel file. That solved 1/2 my problem. I had initially tried to import a comma delimited file, which resulted in the fields being truncated at 8 chars. My attempts to expand the fields was unsuccessufl and resulted in "stealing" characters from the adjoining fields, which mean the name was combined with date of birth, etc. But in the end I got it fixed. Being a smart girl, I also saved my code for future adventures in concatenation. I save *all* my SAS code.
The next bit of code I'll need to write will be to flag those TB contacts who have had less than 56 days since their last exposure and their most recent TB skin test. Ideally, we'd like 70 days (10 weeks), but 8 week is acceptable. With a 4000 line database, I'd rather not do all those calculations by hand. I've already got the conditional statement written, just need to write the bits to pull the correct data and generate the output. Barring any silly coding errors, it may take less than an hour to write the code *and* execute it.
Working Out
Yeah. It's a nice idea, but I haven't been doing much of it this week. At least I've not done much running/walking. I've been pretty exhausted after work and not sleeping well either. I have done some strength work though, so that's better than nothing. I need to do more of that.
Eating Better
There was an interesting conversation at lunch the other day. One of the women was saying she really doesn't eat poorly, so doesn't understand why she weighs more now than she's ever weighed (>220 lbs). Mind you, she's saying this as she eats two large pieces of cheesy, meaty, greasy pizza and a quart of chocolate milk. She also said that since she can't power walk how she wants to at work (she'd get too sweaty and we have no shower facilities, which is a valid concern) that she just doesn't bother working out if she can't get in just exactly the right workout. I dunno. I figure *any* working out is better than sitting on the couch watching TV, even if it isn't exactly the workout I want to have.
As for how I'm eating, I've not been vegan lately. Dairy has been sneaking into things. I have, however, strictly avoided meat/poultry/fish and eggs. It's really hard to eat at a Mexican restaurant and not have cheese in something. Next week I have three more days of training. I don't think lunch is provided, so I ought to be able to do OK with the vegan plan. The hotel is right across the street from a big park, so I can walk or run in the morning before class. The hotel also has a small workout facility (treadmill, stair climber and stationary bike) and I'll take my workout DVDs with me. w00t!
Now, if only it would rain....
The weather forecast keeps threatening, but nothing ever happens. I need to get the last four hedge shrubs in the ground this weekend and mow the lawn (and whack the weeds). I hope things don't dry out too much while I'm gone. I'll definitely be watering the night I get back.
Banging Out the Code
I spent about six hours trying to get a 15 line bit of computer program to do what I wanted it to do today. For three hours of that, I was manually concatenating the names while pondering the code in my back brain. I never did find the error in the initial bit of code, but I did find a workaround that did the trick. I did discover that the import wizard in SAS is now smart enough to figure out how long to make variable fields for you when you let it import an Excel file. That solved 1/2 my problem. I had initially tried to import a comma delimited file, which resulted in the fields being truncated at 8 chars. My attempts to expand the fields was unsuccessufl and resulted in "stealing" characters from the adjoining fields, which mean the name was combined with date of birth, etc. But in the end I got it fixed. Being a smart girl, I also saved my code for future adventures in concatenation. I save *all* my SAS code.
The next bit of code I'll need to write will be to flag those TB contacts who have had less than 56 days since their last exposure and their most recent TB skin test. Ideally, we'd like 70 days (10 weeks), but 8 week is acceptable. With a 4000 line database, I'd rather not do all those calculations by hand. I've already got the conditional statement written, just need to write the bits to pull the correct data and generate the output. Barring any silly coding errors, it may take less than an hour to write the code *and* execute it.
Working Out
Yeah. It's a nice idea, but I haven't been doing much of it this week. At least I've not done much running/walking. I've been pretty exhausted after work and not sleeping well either. I have done some strength work though, so that's better than nothing. I need to do more of that.
Eating Better
There was an interesting conversation at lunch the other day. One of the women was saying she really doesn't eat poorly, so doesn't understand why she weighs more now than she's ever weighed (>220 lbs). Mind you, she's saying this as she eats two large pieces of cheesy, meaty, greasy pizza and a quart of chocolate milk. She also said that since she can't power walk how she wants to at work (she'd get too sweaty and we have no shower facilities, which is a valid concern) that she just doesn't bother working out if she can't get in just exactly the right workout. I dunno. I figure *any* working out is better than sitting on the couch watching TV, even if it isn't exactly the workout I want to have.
As for how I'm eating, I've not been vegan lately. Dairy has been sneaking into things. I have, however, strictly avoided meat/poultry/fish and eggs. It's really hard to eat at a Mexican restaurant and not have cheese in something. Next week I have three more days of training. I don't think lunch is provided, so I ought to be able to do OK with the vegan plan. The hotel is right across the street from a big park, so I can walk or run in the morning before class. The hotel also has a small workout facility (treadmill, stair climber and stationary bike) and I'll take my workout DVDs with me. w00t!
Now, if only it would rain....
The weather forecast keeps threatening, but nothing ever happens. I need to get the last four hedge shrubs in the ground this weekend and mow the lawn (and whack the weeds). I hope things don't dry out too much while I'm gone. I'll definitely be watering the night I get back.
Comments