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angharad_gam...but I am starting another course this week.
It's only four weeks long, with two programming assignments, so I figure it won't be too much of a drag on my time. It's a course on the software/language R, which is becoming big news among statistical software, and although we primarily use SAS at work I have been using R a lot more lately (it is cheap and has a lot of fancy new methods included) and it makes my brain hurt. This is in part because it is an object oriented language, with which I have very little experience, and in part because it is an open source entity, and support/manuals etc leave somewhat to be desired. I am hoping a more systematic approach to learning it will make it all a bit clearer.
It's good timing in some ways because I am taking this coming week off. I have been meaning to take some time off lately, but since I keep getting sick it has never seemed to be a good time. But since my current supervisor usually takes time off in the school holidays I figured he wouldn't complain too much about me doing so. We're actually going to Victor Harbour for a couple of nights, from Monday, and I'm guessing we'll all be offline for that time.
We're also thinking about moving house. Not soon, but soonish. Andy's elderly relatives were very kind to us in their wills, and we are shortly (any time now, it's been more than twelve months, but it's really very close now we keep being told) going to come into rather a lot of money. After briefly considering various wild schemes, we've decided to keep it simple and just buy a new house. This place seemed pretty large when we moved here, from living in townhouses/units, and having only a small Erin and a toddler Liam. Now we are five, and I am only a few years off being the shortest person in the house (the perils of procreating with someone eight inches taller than you) this house is beginning to seem a trifle crowded.
It also seems a good chance to move into a catchment of a slightly nicer public high school than the ones in this area. The trouble is this means moving out of our established suburb into a newer development, where the ratio of house to garden is rather smaller, and when you look out over the landscape you see not trees but roofs. And, of course, giving up this garden with so many mature fruit trees, and ready-made vegetable garden, compost heap, and so on. Which is a shame. But it would certainly be nice to live in a house with a proper linen cupboard. And enough storage space for all the board games, costumes, books, computers and other geekery that is spilling out all over the place here (or mouldering away in the Shed of Mildew). And as several people have pointed out, this house is rather damp and may be contributing to the spells of ill-health we (but mostly me) have had in the last few years.
So we're in a bit of a wierd place at the moment. It's Spring, and planting season, and everytime I plant something I think 'I may not be making use of this'. I'm planting a lot of things in pots at the moment. I look at the cherry tree and see that there are going to be masses of cherries this year (assuming we can keep the bloody parrots off them) and I wonder if we'll still be here to pick them. We might well, of course. Buying and selling a house is not a speedy process by any stretch of the imagination. But it's wierd.
It's only four weeks long, with two programming assignments, so I figure it won't be too much of a drag on my time. It's a course on the software/language R, which is becoming big news among statistical software, and although we primarily use SAS at work I have been using R a lot more lately (it is cheap and has a lot of fancy new methods included) and it makes my brain hurt. This is in part because it is an object oriented language, with which I have very little experience, and in part because it is an open source entity, and support/manuals etc leave somewhat to be desired. I am hoping a more systematic approach to learning it will make it all a bit clearer.
It's good timing in some ways because I am taking this coming week off. I have been meaning to take some time off lately, but since I keep getting sick it has never seemed to be a good time. But since my current supervisor usually takes time off in the school holidays I figured he wouldn't complain too much about me doing so. We're actually going to Victor Harbour for a couple of nights, from Monday, and I'm guessing we'll all be offline for that time.
We're also thinking about moving house. Not soon, but soonish. Andy's elderly relatives were very kind to us in their wills, and we are shortly (any time now, it's been more than twelve months, but it's really very close now we keep being told) going to come into rather a lot of money. After briefly considering various wild schemes, we've decided to keep it simple and just buy a new house. This place seemed pretty large when we moved here, from living in townhouses/units, and having only a small Erin and a toddler Liam. Now we are five, and I am only a few years off being the shortest person in the house (the perils of procreating with someone eight inches taller than you) this house is beginning to seem a trifle crowded.
It also seems a good chance to move into a catchment of a slightly nicer public high school than the ones in this area. The trouble is this means moving out of our established suburb into a newer development, where the ratio of house to garden is rather smaller, and when you look out over the landscape you see not trees but roofs. And, of course, giving up this garden with so many mature fruit trees, and ready-made vegetable garden, compost heap, and so on. Which is a shame. But it would certainly be nice to live in a house with a proper linen cupboard. And enough storage space for all the board games, costumes, books, computers and other geekery that is spilling out all over the place here (or mouldering away in the Shed of Mildew). And as several people have pointed out, this house is rather damp and may be contributing to the spells of ill-health we (but mostly me) have had in the last few years.
So we're in a bit of a wierd place at the moment. It's Spring, and planting season, and everytime I plant something I think 'I may not be making use of this'. I'm planting a lot of things in pots at the moment. I look at the cherry tree and see that there are going to be masses of cherries this year (assuming we can keep the bloody parrots off them) and I wonder if we'll still be here to pick them. We might well, of course. Buying and selling a house is not a speedy process by any stretch of the imagination. But it's wierd.
