A decade of blogging

I started blogging 10 years ago, right before starting grad school. This blog chronicled 6.5 years of grad school (approximately 13,507 hours of work) and the 3.5 years since officially graduating. During that time, I lost 3 close family members, got married, spent over a year doing field work in Africa, got a dog, had a baby, moved to a new city, and had three different jobs as a PhD. This has been an eventful decade.

For the first few years, I blogged several times per month (or even several times per week). It was an opportunity for me to reflect on my experiences and practice writing. Looking back on many of my early posts in the writing of this, I am struck as much by the things that haven't changed as much as the things that have. I still love Small Friendly College just as much as in 2007 (and the post made me teary again). I see major parts my current self in these older writings. In some cases, I captured events that I see now had outsized importance in shaping my current career, like a workshop on science communication and an interdisciplinary project. There are threads and early hints of the ideas and concepts that are hugely important to my present work, which makes me feel like I'm in the right place now in my career.

In some ways, I don't think I've changed substantially, but I've learned so much about myself in the last 10 years. I've grown. I wrote in 2009 that I needed to be more of a badass. I most definitely am. My moments of greatest badass-ness are probably still finishing my dissertation before my daughter was born, then giving birth to her and going through (and recovering from) serious complications. To finish my dissertation, I toughed it out and kept my eye on the prize with intense focus to the exclusion of everything else non-essential. When recovering from childbirth, I refused to accept my limited mobility and searched and read until I found the right people and resources to help me heal. During grad school, and especially during field work, I became aware of my common mental traps and I'm much better at avoiding them now that I know the signs (like being indecisive). I am nothing if not resourceful, and as my personal networks and knowledge have grown, I have an ever-growing pool of ideas to draw upon. This last year in my new job has especially helped me realize and appreciate the breadth and depth of skills and networks I have, and given me many more ideas for how I can leverage them to do good and awesome things. I, too, can stand on the shoulders of giants—in life as well as in research.

My favorite genre of books is scientist memoirs (e.g. Richard Feynman), especially field biologists (e.g. Jane Goodall and Robert Sapolsky). I love reading about the adventures that happen in the pursuit of science. I love reading about how they live their science-y lives, what their families think, how they raised kids, what went wrong, and how they overcame adversity. Their stories have helped me imagine what my life could be. Blogs by scientists about their lives scratched a similar itch.

Blogging was also a community, and the other women in science bloggers were my mentors. I learned so much from them. I read blogs of more advanced students describing drama in their committees (I learned years later that managing your committee is a classic example of "managing up"). I read about postdocs applying for faculty positions. I read stories of scientists in all career stages struggling with chronic health issues, infertility, and difficult relationships. I was unquestionably better prepared to be a good graduate student and navigate the potential job market afterwards as a result of the science blog community. I'd like to throw some nonspecific thanks out into the universe to the dozens (hundreds?) of bloggers from whom I gleaned wisdom and advice. Thank you!

While blogging during grad school, I accidentally discovered the identities of a few bloggers I followed, and a few people discovered me (one person anonymously and mysteriously tried to "out" me). I made real life friends because of this blog, and it was a way to re-connect with a handful of trusted people that I invited to read it. A few of you are still reading. Thanks for following my sometimes vague and pseudonymized adventures!

I watched, always with sadness, when other bloggers decided to call it quits for one reason or another. More often, they didn't have closure and just stopped writing, or I just stopped reading. Probably kind of like this—I stopped writing so often. In part I blame the declining popularity of RSS and therefore the declining options for good feed readers. Somewhere along the migration from one feed reader to another, I lost track. It has been a long time since I regularly read other people's blogs, so my blogging is overwhelmingly an introspective exercise.

It would probably be fitting, after a decade of blogging as an "aspiring ecologist", to declare this the end. But I imagine I'll still want to blog occasionally, and I'm frankly not motivated enough to set up another blog, so I'll stick with what I've got. Those of you who are friends in real life know where to find me, and if you've been reading this for years and still don't know who I am but want to be friends in real life, drop me a note.

I'm excited about the next 10 years. I've got big ideas that have been simmering for a while now. With the right combination of preparation and luck (there's always luck), it could be awesome. Or, more likely, I'll end up doing something 10 years from now that I can't even imagine at present. Let's see where the next decade goes!

13,507 hours

By my estimation, it took about 13,507 hours of work to get my Ph.D. Six years. September 2007 until April 2013. By Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hour rule, that definitely makes me an expert in... getting a Ph.D.

But seriously, that's a ton of work. How did I get to this number? Since 2010, I've been keeping careful track of how much time I spend working using a program called Time Tracker. I have breakdowns for different tasks and I can export all of the data as a .csv so then I analyzed it in R. Honestly, I've been excited about doing this for months. I know, I know, sometimes I'm too nerdy for myself.

In 2010 I worked 2,373 hours. That's about 46 hours a week across all 52 weeks of the year. In 2011, I worked an insane 2,829 hours, which is about 54 hours per week. I was in the field for 6 months of 2011, including my most intense field season and my last field season, so I was hardly doing anything other than working during those times. In 2012, I returned to a much saner 2,239 hours (43 hours/week). For 2013, I only counted until the end of April. In those first four months, I worked 954 hours. That works out to an insane average of 56 hours per week. If anything, that's a bit low because the time I spent reading on my iPad before I fell asleep wasn't usually counted. That was the home stretch, and boy did it feel like running a marathon. Every day. Pregnant.

I only occasionally kept track of my working hours for the first 2.5 years of grad school, so I'm estimating that 2008 and 2009 were probably something like 2012 (not 2011 because it was my year of intense field work, and 2010 had a fair amount of field work too whereas 2008 and 2009 did not), so I used the data from 2012. For the fall of 2007, I used the data only from Sept-December 2012 as an estimate (634 hours). I started in August, but for simplicity I've excluded that month since I didn't start at the beginning and was just getting settled in.

I might not have worked quite as many hours in 2007-2009 as I did in 2012, but overall I think this is a good approximation. I taught 2007-2008 and took classes 2007-2009, and I applied for a ton of grants during that time. Keeping track of my working time for the last 3 (nearly 4!) years has helped keep me accountable and on task, and it also helps me feel justified when I'm done working, which is a graduate student conundrum that was wonderfully articulated over at GradHacker.

All these data mean I can calculate my hourly wage. I haven't yet, but it's probably going to be depressing. Stay tuned, because I'll write about that and show some pretty graphs of my work habits later this week.

I Am A Scientist

Sometimes a good email can really pick you up. I hardly got anything done last week (other than feeding my baby) and was feeling overwhelmed and unmotivated. Early this morning I read the suggestion* to have a "feel good" email folder where you keep messages that make you do just that. Jon has suggested something like this before to help me fend off the Impostor Monster. Today I got two feelgood emails that motivated me to have a productive afternoon preparing for ESA.

First I got an email about scheduling a phone interview for a postdoc! I am "one of X highly qualified applicants." It feels good to make the shortlist. (I was not offered the other job I interviewed for, but it sounds like it was a difficult decision for them, and honestly it's for the best. Starting that job this fall would have been incredibly stressful and difficult considering my compromised health).

Then I got an email from someone on a scouting trip to do doctoral research in Nyota. She emailed Sam for advice, and Sam referred her to me! I suppose I'm something of an expert on how to be an outsider. Years ago I started a document with all kinds of notes about things I wish I'd known when I started research in Nyota, so it is rewarding to pass on that information. She also met one of my field assistants who immediately asked her if she knew me, and told her "she's great." Considering the sometimes difficult relationship with my field assistants, that is wonderful to hear.

This month I have also received some email requests for pdf of my first published dissertation chapter. Even better, someone said it "make my day" when they found the paper. I even skyped with that person who wanted my feedback on her project idea. The paper went through 4 or 5 journals and nearly 100 numbered document versions and just dragged on and on in review, but now it feels like it truly was worth it.

On days like this I can own it. I Am A Scientist.



*It was in this excellent post that describes one woman's liberating attitude towards and honest tale of being a tenure-track faculty member (at Harvard!).

Postdoc prospects

I've applied for a handful of post-graduation employment opportunities but I've only got one (now two) that I haven't heard nay from. I just sent an application today for one on a project I've been eyeing for years now. The timing is amazing. I've met the PI. I fit the qualifications. I think my chances with this are better than anything else I've applied for so far. I really hope I make the shortlist!

I thought that I blogged about when I met the PI a few years ago but I could not find a post. I totally have a science crush on her. She's only a few years ahead of me and we have many similar lines on our CVs, except that she's like me x10. If I got a $2000 grant, she got $20,000. If I got interviewed once, she got interviewed 10 times. Anyways, she seems awesome and it's a project I'd love to be involved in. I have some concerns that this job might not be a great fit with an infant because of the field work required, but if I don't get it or can't take it, perhaps something else will be possible in the future.

This time of year

The days are shorter now than I'd like them to be and classes are starting again. I'm not ready for summer to end. We've been in Big City for five years now, and I'm beginning my sixth year of grad school. For a change, I'm not packing up to go to Ukenzagapia like I was this time last year and the year before. I'm finished with field work, and now all that stands between me and my PhD is a lot of data analysis and writing. This might be my last back-to-school season in Big City. Fingers crossed.

Biologist's nightmare

In November I opened up a box of my data sheets for the first time since I packed them up in Nyota and saw a teeny little beetle run and hide between the sheets! I searched between every sheet, paperclip, and postit to find and squish two beetles. Now almost 8 weeks later, I found a similar looking beetle (or is it larger?) hanging out on the edge of my mug, probably in search of water. I have encased this one in scotch tape.

Ack! I hope there aren't any more. We don't need any more invasive species.

Looking forward to 2012

I regret not defining my goals on the blog last year. I fully intended to, but time slipped away from me as I got a grant in early January and then busted my butt to be in the field just 3 weeks later. I thought about it when I was in the field, but then it just felt silly to be writing about my 2011 resolutions in March- or later. I probably should have done it anyways.

Looking back at posts I've written about goals has really inspired me. I reviewed 2007, 2008, and 2009, part of 2010, and defined goals for 2008, 2009, and 2010. I've had several good goals in the past that I want to revive/continue this year, as well as some new ones.

Academic/Career
Get something published in 2012. I've got two things submitted right now. Hopefully they'll both stick this time and get accepted without major revisions (please?). I seriously need to have something that can be cited as Anirak et al. (2012). I choose not to be discouraged by the fact that I don't have anything yet because being down on myself won't help anything.

Submit Best Project for publication. My last project I started is probably also my best. This is my #1 priority this spring, because getting something published on this is probably going to help my career more than anything else.

Conceptualize my dream job(s). Speaking of my career, I'm not going to be a professional student forever. Someday in the not too distant future I'll be "on the market", and I'd like to have a better idea of my goals. I've got a collection of job announcements from ECOLOG that have caught my eye over the years, but I should revisit and reflect on what aspects are appealing and what my strengths and weaknesses would be. I should also answer these queries I made up for myself a couple of years ago.

Give a talk at the big ecology conference and present at at least one other conference. I can definitely do this. I'm not sure what the second conference will be, but there are possibilities.

Do an outreach project. I've got a plan for something awesome, but I don't think I can blog about it because it might just be that. awesome.

Update my webpage once a month. I should just schedule a couple of hours once a month to work on it. I have photos I want to share, videos to upload, stuff like that.

Fitness
Do a sprint distance triathlon and one other race. I loved the triathlon I did last summer, and I think it would be fun to do another race that involves some kind of obstacle course. I'd sign up for lots of these except they are expensive. We'll see what the budget allows.

Exercise 4x or more per week. If I commit to doing a triathlon, then I've got the incentive of trying to improve my time to motivate me to exercise. I've also found that if I just tell myself I have to go to the gym every day that I'm on campus, it helps get me there. It works best for me to go in the middle of the day because I'm not much of a morning person, but if I wait until the end of the day then I just want to go home (and it's slightly in the wrong direction from home). Going in the middle of the day gives me a mental break, and then I go back to my office feeling good about exercising. The one day a week that I'm at the museum it's harder to exercise, and I often don't on the weekends unless I take the dog for a run.

Do yoga once a week. I was super excited when I learned that there are tons of free yoga video podcasts on itunes. I've never taken a class- maybe I should try to do a few? I did yoga fairly often in Ukenzagapia and I'd like to get back in the habit.
 
Go dancing at least 12 times. I love dancing, and there's no shortage of opportunities here. I've even got a couple of dancing friends now who I can carpool with. There's no reason I shouldn't be able to get out once a month to go dancing.

Home
Learn and perfect an easy, delicious vegetarian lasagna recipe. For some reason I just never think to make lasagna, but it's an easy food that non-vegetarians can also enjoy that I could bring to gatherings. Suggestions welcome! I also want to learn a good mushroom quiche recipe. I've got a great spinach quiche recipe from my mother-in-law, but I'd like to switch it up sometimes with the quiche.

No more ugly houseplants. I hate to throw away plants. I really do. But I'm tired of having ugly plants in my house, and that goes for their pots too. I'm going to figure out what size nice pots I need to get, and buy some pretty ceramic ones. Ugly plants/pots are going in the garbage, to someone else, or to my office.

Get the dog to walk better. Our dog is really wonderful at most things (she sleeps in, doesn't chew things she isn't supposed to, doesn't steal food, doesn't beg, rarely barks, stuff like that). Walking on the leash is not one of her strong suits. She often pulls and it's kind of annoying, especially since she's big enough to pull me off balance (though not Jon).

Visit at least half of the places on our must-see list for Big City. Jon and I made a list of things we want to do before we leave this place. If I finish in summer 2013, we've got a year and a half left (assuming I get a job/postdoc somewhere else). It's time to do all of those fun things we've been putting off!

Offset our carbon emissions. This was my goal for 2010. I only did it for half of 2010, and didn't do it at all in 2011. I think this is far more important now that we own a car. I probably need to find a way to do it automatically every month based on an estimate of our annual emissions. Does anyone else do this?

Blogging
Blog at least once a week. I have plenty of interesting things to write about. This shouldn't be difficult.

Label my posts and keep them labeled. When I was in the field I did email posting so I have dozens of unlabeled posts. I need to stop email posting now that I have fast internet, and go back and label all of those posts.

Metagoals
Review goals quarterly. I want to revisit my goals and comment on my progress about every 3 months. I think this will help keep me on track.

Make weekly agendas for myself. I want to have more clear work goals each week and cooking schedules at home. I think taking a couple of hours each week to plan these kinds of things will keep me from wasting time trying to decide what to do.

I think this is a record number of goals for me! I'm excited about all of them and I don't think that any of them are unreasonable. I'll keep you posted on my progress- quarterly.

Happy New Year!

2011 in review

I never reviewed 2010 on my blog or posted goals for 2011, which I regret. I'm not going to make that mistake this year!

Although I didn't write it down, my biggest goal for 2011 was to finish my field work. CHECK! DONE! COMPLETE!

I presented at a big conference which resulted in useful connections and feedback.

I also managed to get two publications submitted in December, one of which has been in the works for 2+ years, and another that is just a short little thing.

2011 was a light blogging year (only 57 posts counting this one). When I fall out of the habit, I write less. I don't think it's much more complicated than that.

It has been a busy year. By my calculations, I've spent 2750 hours this year doing work, which I define as things I wouldn't be doing if this wasn't my career. That works out to an average of ~53 hours/week across 52 weeks of the year. I excluded my plane travel to and from Ukenzagapia because that adds dozens of hours. I think I had about 5 weeks worth of "vacation" where I wasn't working much if at all (a week in the spring, 2 in the summer, a week in the fall, and a week at Christmas). Spending 5.5 months this year in Ukenzagapia really pushed up those numbers since I work crazy 65-90 hour weeks in the field.

I keep track of how many hours I work for a few of reasons. When I'm in my office, logging my hours helps me keep track of when I'm really working and when I'm just reading crap on the internet or at the gym exercising. I aim to work 8 hours a day, 5 days per week when I'm not in the field or on vacation. In the field, I do it to help combat the feeling that I should be doing more. Finally, I figure there might be a handful of people out there interested in my quantification of this aspect of life as a scientist. I'm sure I've missed some things here and there, but I think it's a pretty good estimate of how much I'm working.


2011 has been a pretty good year. I'm halfway through my FIFTH year of grad school now! It's hard to believe. Thank you to all of you who are still reading my ruminations, and I hope 2012 brings more peace, love, and joy into your lives.

What? Where did November go?

I can't let November end without posting anything. For those of you who don't know me in real life and might have been concerned I was lost forever in Ukenzagapia, never fear! I have returned! I have a couple of posts I want to write about field-related stuff. Here's hoping my muses and my free time coincide more often.

On thieves and plans

When we have to leave research equipment in the field, we use a cable lock to secure it around a tree. These types of locks are not common (or available at all, as far as I know) in Ukenzagapia, and B and T covet them for locking their motorbikes. They asked what these locks are used for in the U.S. I said some people use them on bicycles, but you can't use it on a bike in Big City because people will just come and cut it to steal the bike.

T, after a brief reflection, made a keen observation.

"I think, in Ukenzagapia, the thieves are many, but the plan is small. And in America, the thieves are few, but the plan is big."

Keeping your belongings, I've learned, is largely about preventing crimes of opportunity because, as T so nicely put it, "the plan is small". People don't have bolt cutters or hacksaws. If you make it difficult to steal something, they might try and fail, but they generally won't go out of their way to do it.

All that said, people do have machetes. I don't know what exactly happened or how much planning was involved, but this week we discovered that some of our equipment was stolen. They cut through one of the cable locks and in another case broke the equipment to steal it because they failed to break the cable. I have a glimmer of hope that we might be able to recover some or all of it, but I'm not holding my breath.

Just keep swimming...

In spite of living alone this time, I still haven't had much urge to blog. I think I'm getting a lot of my thoughts out on facebook instead. I have less than 3 weeks left in Ukenzagapia! This is it! The end of my field work! I see the light at the end of the tunnel!

It's been a good trip so far. I've had some exciting discoveries (natural history observation type discoveries) that will probably turn into a few minor publications. The electricity has been, dare I say it?- excellent. The weather? Pretty crazy, but I was gone for most of the craziness. I met up with another UBC student and we traveled a bit- kind of a biologist's pilgrimage :-) It was fantastic!

Sam is always thinking of new things for me to do, including setting up a pilot project for a grant of his. I've become the de facto manager for this project because I'm here. Thankfully, I just found a way to simplify the gargantuan task he saddled me with. So, things are rolling along. I'm not panicking yet.

Not here

I've spent more than 13 months abroad doing field work for my Ph.D. My husband was able to come for a month just after we got married, but mostly he's been back at home while I'm out here busting my butt, trying to make my trips long enough to be worthwhile but also trying to minimize my time away from home. 

This is the last trip I have planned for data collection for my Ph.D. There are many projects that I could easily continue working on here, but I have put a firm deadline on the completion of my Ph.D. fieldwork. Will I continue working here as Dr. Anirak? I don't want to rule it out completely, but I also like the idea of having a field site much closer to wherever I'm living. I imagine I'll continue to be involved in research here from a distance, maybe with occasional short trips (less than a month).

One big reason for a fixed endpoint for my field work is so that we can have kids. I can think of no compelling reason that I should not have a kid before I finish my Ph.D. once this field work is out of the way. My American friend here tried to convince me that I'd have no problem doing field work while being pregnant or with a baby in tow, but my husband convinced me that was a terrible idea, and I think he was right. In grad school, but not here.

Geotagging photos and saving tracks on a Garmin GPS

Surely someone else will find this information useful. I use a Garmin GPSmap 60Cx. For the past 3 trips to the field I have been religiously saving my GPS track at the end of the day so I have a record of where I went. I save it with the date, then I clear the track so I can start fresh the next day. At least every few days, I download all of my waypoints and tracks to Garmin's BaseCamp program to make sure I have a backup of all of the points and tracks.

I've known that geotagging my photos using a tracklog from my GPS was possible, but I didn't try it until this trip. There are some simple programs (such as PhotoGPSEditor) that match up the time on your track with the timestamp on your photo, and voila! Your photo is geotagged.

However, this means YOUR TRACKS HAVE TO HAVE TIMESTAMPS. When you "save" your track on the GPS, IT STRIPS THE TIMESTAMPS*. This means that if you want to use your Garmin (GPSmap 60Cx or similar) to geotag your photos, you need to download the ACTIVE track every day.

I could have geotagged thousands of photos this way if only I'd known. Learn from my mistake. Download your active log before clearing it! Don't just rely on that "save" function!

*Apparently this is a space-saving measure- a stupid one in my opinion. You should at least have the option to preserve timestamps or not.

Parallel lives?

At one of the permit offices here I met another American woman getting her research paperwork squared away. As we chatted and talked about our research and backgrounds we found some crazy similarities. We are both 5th year phd students who first came here in 2008. We both have husbands (named Jon!) who we met in college and married in spring 2009. She studied abroad in the same place I did in the same academic year and we graduated in the same year. But these last few really take the cake- she and her now-husband also spent a year in Remote Foreign Country where she applied to grad school and then they lived in Big City for 2 years! Crazy!

Meticulous lists

Each time I've left Ukenzagapia, I have left many things behind. My habit has been to fly with 2 bags at the weight limit, and fly home with one about half-full. You can imagine I've accumulated a lot of stuff here! I've left clothes, books, supplies, equipment, toiletries, medicine, all sorts of things. In order to keep myself from brining, let's say, another unnecessary cipro prescription or bottle of Ivy Block, I make meticulous lists of what I leave and where I leave it.

Actual excerpts from my April list:

Large trunk:
-One roll of masking tape
-Rite in the rain universal spiral bound notebooks (3)
-Set of multi-sided dice
-Assorted small canisters
-Whistle
-1 foldable yellow ruler
-1 plastic pipette

Housewares:
-Electric water kettle
-Electric two-burner hotplate
-Four dinner plates
-Small plates (2)

Cardboard box:
-Box of ~62 sandwich ziplocks
-Hand lens
-Obama shirt
-Black sports bra
-Grey pants (too big)
-Empty hand santizier bottle
-Deck of cards

You get the idea. This has helped me numerous times. I've even recorded a list as a voice memo because I was in such a rush I had no time to write it down, and then I transcribed it later. April's list of things left in Nyota had 200 line items, and then another 40+ left with my American friend.

Thanks to these lists, I've realized that some of my things did indeed go missing- I didn't just imagine I had them. In the time that I was back in the U.S., Sam came and left with his family, and Cam left a month ago. Now I'm missing 8 rechargeable AA batteries and two books. I'm pretty sure Sam is the one who lost track of these things one way or another. Also, Cam used up all of my duct tape and didn't tell me, so I didn't get more. He also said he left his bottle of Ivy Block, but it's nowhere to be found.

I don't mind that they used my stuff- I even gave them permission. I'm just annoyed that, for whatever reason, things didn't end up back where they should have.

Grand delusions?

I'm back at my field site now (Nyota) and I'm super excited about this last field season. I spent today unpacking, arranging, and cleaning things. Cam (my housemate for the last two trips) left 3 weeks ago and I went through the things he left behind for goodies like clipboards, string, and flagging tape.

I'm planning NOT to spend 7 days a week in the field this time. I'm wrapping things up, filling in gaps, and helping supervise other projects. So, I imagine all of this free time that I'm going to have, living in this house by myself. I know I'm not going to be able to do all of these things, but I'm very excited about the idea of running regularly, drawing, shooting things with a slingshot, doing yoga (did you know you can download free yoga podcasts?), making a solar oven and learning to bake with it, and taking awesome photographs, in addition to entering tons of data, sorting lots of research-related stuff, finishing my data collection, and generally keeping up on life. I've also got an exciting trip in the works.

Here's hoping for a great field season! First day in the field tomorrow!

Departure eve

I'm leaving tomorrow for my last data collection trip to Ukenzagapia. Woo hoo! I've got my bags packed (to the max, as usual) and my (new-to-me) iphone unlocked. I've redistributed all but the largest plants to friends so that my black-thumbed husband doesn't kill them while I'm gone. I've got a brand new laptop I'm couriering for Dr. K, a new laptop battery for a friend, and about 12 pounds of printed materials that I'm going to unload. On my way through Europe I'm going to buy a ridiculous amount of cheese for my American friend. Oh, and her son really wanted squeeze jam so I'm bringing a bunch of that too. Two friends requested ipods, which I am not bringing. I found a carryon sized wheelie bag at the thrift store which I'm using to carry a microscope and most of my electronics. I hope I don't forget anything too important!

Eating feces is definitely worse than eating insects

These are the things that field biologists talk about over lunch.

Several of us had lunch today and the conversation turned to what we eat in the field, which eventually turned into a conversation about what kinds of insects people have eaten. Everyone in the room had eaten some kind of grasshopper, ant, termite, cricket, or grub.

Then someone started talking about the sad time when they found a raisin-looking thing in their granola that they realized was actually mouse poop. Now that's gross.

Backups

I wrote a couple of years ago about my backup plan, but it's time to revisit it in light of new information.

While I was at the conference, I brought my MacBook to the local Apple Store to get a minor problem fixed*. My AppleCare extended warranty will expire while I'm in Ukenzagapia, so I wanted to be sure to get it taken care of before I left. They had to replace my whole display, which I figured would be the case. What I didn't expect was that they said it's a 4-5 hour task so I needed to leave my computer for up to 3 days! Still, I was ok with this because I had brought my external hard drive anticipating this separation from my computer. I use Time Machine to back up to 2 different external hard drives. I thought I'd be able to boot from my TM backup onto my friend's MacBook, but no. Time Machine backups are serial locked to the original computer. The only way to get your data off a Time Machine backup (according to the guy at the store) is a full restore onto a different machine (erasing whatever might have been on there).

So, I need a new backup plan. I will keep doing Time Machine backups, but I think I need to do something else too that would allow me to access important files via another computer. What do you do? Should I partition my back up drive and keep part of it for TM backups, and part of it for "manual" backup copies of the stuff I'd need to access from another computer in case mine fails?

Online backup options are out of the question right now because I can't do them in Ukenzagpia. I have some (mostly shared) files in Dropbox but I only have 2 gb. In Ukenzagapia I plan to back up to a third external hard drive.

*The Apple logo on my display became unglued. While this is mostly cosmetic, it does let dust in behind the screen, and I think it increases the risk of my screen getting damaged from behind. I really didn't want to end up with a shattered screen in Ukenzagapia!

Timing is everything

When am I ever going to learn? Once again, I'm leaving for Ukenzagapia right as the term begins. Because some of my grant money has to pass through my student account, all of the money gets held up in the time between when they bill for my tuition and fees, and when they waive it or pay for it. If only I could just remember to start this in the middle of the summer to prevent the hangup! Alas, no. A couple thousand dollars will be tied up. So, the emergency fund goes into action once again. At least we have that.