Reward

22 hours in the lab over the past two days, with a few million data points recorded (this actually corresponds to about 5 minutes, but it sounds impressive, doesn't it?) and a whole bunch of rigmarole checked off the to-do list.

I love that rigmarole is a real word, according to the spell checker. It is also a valid scrabble word, in case you were wondering.

Okay.

I consider myself a lucky man. I'm one of the few crazies who never changed majors in college. In fact, it was during my junior year of high school that I knew what I wanted to do. The Plan has been streamlined and adjusted, of course, but here I am, halfway through my 3rd year of grad school, and I'm doing what I love.

I really do love what I'm doing. I'm in love with it.

I'm so in love with it
I'll be forever true to it
But it gives me no reason
That it's making me work so hard
(with apologies to Erasure)

(If you didn't understand that song reference, fear not! There's a series of posts coming that will exponentially increase your cultured-ness, you philistines.)

I'm doing what I love, which means that I'm asking, and trying to answer, questions about the nature of motor control. Highlights of this process have included profound discourse with my peers, educational immersion at conferences, and of course silent ponderings during walks to the coffee shop. I love that chin stroking, far-off gaze inducing, Eureka!-moment enabling nature of my job.

Unfortunately, answering questions is synonymous with data interpretation, and data interpretation requires, well, data. Importing, reshaping, sorting, normalizing, organizing, and plotting data.

This week, I am a data monkey. I am back on my first project, now 2.5 years old. We know what the results are, although it would certainly be nice to get them peer reviewed and published. So that's what I'm working on... not answering questions, but proving the answers. 95% of proving the answers has been reformatting the numbers properly (which is a whole other rant that I will forgo to avoid future entanglements)

This is about as inspirational as... I don't know. Tony Little using his indoor voice? A paint-by-numbers replica of the Mona Lisa? Anything by James Blunt? I'm too tired for figurative language.

Okay, enough blogging. Here's a video of Aaron riding over a log, working on his skillz.