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The last couple days have been filled with the crazy bustle of the holiday season, yet I haven't done anything particularly holiday. Today is (e:enknot)'s birthday celebration party at our house It is a little strange to have lots of people that we do not know over at the house but it ha sthe potential to be really fun.

(e:lilho) cut my hair finally. It looks much better now.




Had a great lunch with the gang at Ambrosia. I love their ambrosia chicken and fried calamari. However, their octopus is really sub par in comparison with the one at Kostas. I think the one at Ambrosia is out of a can.


There was was ant on the wall at work. I have never seen an ant in the winter.


All of the furniture is upstairs for the party.














The office is basically empty, just like I like it. I really hate excess furniture in that room. Its like rocks in a stream that ends up in an eddy. The shear fact that an extra piece of furniture exists in the room, brings life to locations such as "next to the furniture", "on the furniture", " behind the furniture", and "on the piece of furniture."

Then those laces fill up more. E.g "On the box next to the piece of furniture" or " under the desk in a box." It really makes me insane.



(e:robin) came to town with her cute boyfriend but they were too cold to stay in our house.




(e:terry) took this pic, I think it looks nice so I decided to post it.

Yesterday was my one year anniversary at Roswell. It is amazing that the year went by so quickly. I still love working here even though sometimes it makes me crazy how many different directions I end up going in. Actually, maybe that is why I like it. It is much more dynamic than teaching was and there are consistently new more complicated problems for us to solve, instead of me teaching people to solve the same basic problems over and over again as I was doing at Canisius.

What is even more astounding is that I got promotion that I was totally not expecting. I am now a systems analyst/senior programmer for the web team. Thanks Nick Barone, I owe you for directing me here that one day in class and to my boss Del for promoting me.

Everything is going so great right now that I keep expecting to get hit by a car. Hope to see everyone at the party this saturday.

Home of the Hits
I wonder what the elmwood strip will be like without Home of the Hits. I will always fondly remember it as the first place I got to buy blue hair dye during my rebellious years. I used to love having blue hair. I am not sure why because blue isn't anywhere near my favorite color. I probably looked like gonzo.

I wish I could say that I remember all the music I bought there but I think I have never purchased music in my life. Maybe one year for christmas I got a gift certificate for a CD and I bought a german learning on.

Headaches
Tonight I had another massive migraine. That makes like 5 in a month. I know they are gonna start because I get dizzy and it hurts to look at light. Then my nose runs a bit and bam. I feel like I am gonna puke. It has something to do with my my neck look at the ocmputer screen at weird angles. Especially, the laptop.

Luckily, a study came out today saying there is no connection between brain cancer and cell phones. Yet the doctor whose study it was still sai don TV today that he likes to change sides of his head that uses and use speaker phone. Oh that makes me feel freakin' better.

Tasty Animals Are Smart Animals
I ate octopus which was nice. I like to eat the smartest animals, which makes me think that monkey's and dolphins probably taste good.



Running Back and Forth
Last night running home was so cold. My hair filled up with ice because for once I forgot my hat.





Luckily, work is so close to work. I really thought I was gogin to get hypothermia. I came home and sat right by the heater. These are the worst videos I ever took I think. I am glad I went to school for computer art instead of video.

::Download Flash Video::

::Download Flash Video::

I wonder what it like to have so many people blog about your dissapearance.


Matt and the squirrels in the zoo



I get so excited about my heater. It can get my office to 90 degrees of moist heat. Now it just needs a sofa kind of thing. I am going to buy one soon.

I seriously had the most stressful day today. It seems like everything is out of control for the moment. Then we had and oh so fun screaming match at the house when I got home from work at 10:30PM. That's always a fun way to cap off the day.

I decided to finally brave the cold and walk home at 10:30 because I was hungry. I didn't go get lunch because the rest of my team was going to McDonalds for lunch and I haven't eaten there since 1994. I like to keep it that way. Not to say that I will not eat the occasional fast food meal but McDonalds is never going to be part of my menu.

On the web design front I finished surebert 2.09 which is even better than before. I want so bad to integrate it into the new estrip. It would make the site much better but I really don't have time for that right now.

I would do anything to have a week of programming time to work on estrip. I have like 10,000 ideas and re-factoring jobs I want to do. Sometimes, I miss being a student/proferssor for that reason but most of the time I don't so I am not going to dwell on that.

There was an article in the Buffalo News about the salaries of all the hospital CEOs. I know this is my boss's boss's boss so I probably shouldn't even comment on this, but I am surprised that Dr. Hohn, the CEO of Roswell gets paid $644,000/year plus benefits. It's just way higher than I expected. Apparently, he, like many other CEOs in the area helped make the hospital profitable and so that makes him worth so much. He oversaw it's transition from a state organization to a public benefit corporation (WIKIPEDIA - Public benefit corporation).





Quote from the Buffalo News

Roswell is unique in the area because it's not a community hospital. Although it serves cancer patients from a broad geographic region, its other missions are medical research and education, and it gets significant funding from grants, especially from the government.

Founded in 1898, Roswell employs 2,700, including 227 doctors and scientists. But with only 101 beds, it handles less than 5,000 admissions and 153,000 outpatient visits in a year. However, it has about $89 million in grants and contracts, with 522 research projects.

It's one of 39 national comprehensive cancer centers designated by the National Cancer Institute. And it's one of only 10 of the 39 that are separate from a university. So when setting compensation, the board and a consulting firm look at seven hospitals that are most similar to Roswell, including Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York and the Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston.

"Ultimately, supply and demand drives compensation. There's no way to get around that," said Richard D. Paris, Roswell vice president of human resources. "Ultimately, you get what you pay for."

Hohn, an experienced surgeon and current chairman of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, has led the hospital for about a decade since being recruited here from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. In that time, he's overseen the hospital's conversion from a state entity into a public benefit corporation.

Yet his pay, as well as that of three other top Roswell executives, is actually less than that of three-fourths of the seven comparable cancer centers, and right at the midpoint for all cancer centers and teaching hospitals, Paris said.