My time with the Health District is winding down. With only about 6 or 7 weeks to go, it's not quite in the "it's over" phase, but it's coming up quick. The time has been productive and educational, which is what I wanted. It is a little unfortunate that the timing wasn't ideal, with both COVID increasing the amount of work and the specific timing of my sabbatical relative to the state of the informatics department. In the time that I've been there, I think they've hired 4 new people, and those processes have taken up a lot of the leadership's time and attention. So I probably could have done even more with the time if things had played out differently. But I don't get to choose those things, and I have still found the time to be good. My primary tasks is mostly updating the internal COVID dashboard as the reporting requirements and expectations keep shifting. I'm considering remaining "on call" with them even after the sabbatical is over so that the dashboard will continue to be updated as needed.
But it's possible that such things won't be needed. Not because COVID is going to go away (I'm still expecting at least another 6 months of this), but because some of the new hires are part of building out some new capacity that will supersede the existing dashboard. At least, maybe. On my docket for sometime in the next couple weeks is to spend some time with the new hires and help them try to set up a new ETL and dashboard system. One of the things that has happened since COVID is that more people are becoming aware of the type of data that exists, and so more people are asking questions and wanting information. Now that people have a sense of what dashboards can do for COVID reporting, there are people wanting to have similar types of reporting for other diseases. And so they're working on figuring out how they can do that without killing themselves. It's kind of an interesting time for data science.
Which is great, because the data science degree is 100% approved. The new faculty is just getting started with connecting to all the people he needs to be in contact with (recruiting, advising) to help get this thing off the ground. I'm feeling pretty good that this thing that has been floating around now for about 4-5 years is finally happening.
It's kind of a big transition time anyway around campus, at least in my corner. We're about to lose another of our full time faculty, at least for the next calendar year and maybe forever. The decision for him to go on leave was officially made a couple weeks ago, and word is slowly working its way out. It's a good opportunity for him, as he's testing the water with self-employment as his wife's YouTube concept has simply exploded during the pandemic. It's been kind of fun watching their journey. A year ago, Science Mom was basically trying to decide whether she should give up on creating/growing the brand and simply leave it as a hobby that she does sometimes, which led to a kickstarter campaign (the "do or die" moment for her), and that success put her in position to launch something right at the start of the calendar year. But then when COVID hit, she was in just the right position to provide science education content for people who were looking for *something* for younger children. And now they're large enough that they may be completely self-sustaining through their various avenues of support.
And so while it sucks to be losing another faculty, it's for the type of reason that I can really support and feel good about. But it does mean that we're going to have yet another transition. We're going to hopefully be able to hire a couple more math faculty this Fall and Spring, which will help carry the load next academic year, but for the upcoming semester, it's going to be an extra lift to keep things going. (Again.)
The direct impact is on my teaching load for the coming semester. I was scheduled to have one new prep, but that's probably turning into three new preps. And I'm also having to transition to online teaching, which will require some other types of adjustments. I'll also be taking my last class at UNLV to complete the MIS certificate, so that's yet another thing that's piling up on my time. But that's for future me to worry about. Present me is doing a little bit of prep work right now, but will probably not start to really lean into it until later this month, if not into early November.
I have finished hacking my home alarm system. That's been a fun diversion over the last month that I'm glad to bring to a close, even though the project is only about 90% done. It does the main thing I want it to do which is to beep when any of the doors open. And it does that. There's an LCD screen that I'm mostly sure is displaying what it's supposed to display, but the contrast is off and I didn't want to fix it. The LED is a little bright, and the red LED doesn't work. I've also got it wired so that I could relatively easily use the phone jacks to run an LED when something is open. That was something that I wanted to do as a "proof of concept" to myself, but I just ran out of steam and didn't want to keep going with things, at least for now.
I learned quite a bit from the experience, which is always one of the things I'm trying to do. It brought together my general electronics knowledge, programming, 3D printing, and my general interest in taking things apart. And the end result basically looks like something that really seems like it belongs where it is. It's not until you get up close to it that you might start to realize that it's just a hack. I did remember to take a couple pictures along the way:
Thor is doing fine. He has a new toy, which is just a toilet paper roll with one end capped off with a 3D printed plug. I put some food in the tube and he rolls it around trying to get the food out. I've also got a stack of them glued together in a triangle so that he has to "dig" down into the tubes to get the food out. He's not very good at that one, and so I've moved the plug up to the halfway point so he doesn't have to reach as far. Hummingbird season is basically over, so there's nothing exciting going on right now with that.
Other stuff: No regular piano time. The car is in the shop, hopefully fixing something that I think has been causing a battery issue for the last several years. I'll hopefully have it back on Monday (which is fine, because it's not like I go anywhere anyway). We're moving forward again with doing market research for our test tube suspender product. Church is good, though not a whole is happening right now. I'm still watching remotely on principle. We're up 50% from mid-September in terms of cases per day, so I'm in no hurry to get back (even though I think the risk is relatively small since it's a small church -- again, it's standing on principle). The election is less than a month away, and it's a weird time in politics.
