first blog of the new year (and it's almost march)

dear me, where does the time go?
things that have happened since last i blogged:

1. christmas
2. new year (spent on an air canada flight with 250 other poor souls)
3. started into the phd for real and so far so good
4. also started spending more time with this fellow

feeling the need to blog today because this morning i started a 5-week course in analysis of hierarchical and other dependent data. you'll know, of course, that i'm no statistician. i guess statistics is no different from any other field. stats lecturers like to reassure you with phrases beginning with "you'll know, of course, that..." (do I?) and "like we saw last term..." (oh dear). so here i am sitting down to review regression in...2.5 hours. right from the ideas of correlation to maximum likelihood. oh, and this afternoon we'll be "reviewing" how to do regression in SAS. wtf? instead of burying my head in a bunch of guff i don't understand, i'd rather have a coffee (check) and blog. wouldn't you?