Month: October 2005

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Oh, it’s yourSQL all of a sudden?

Sorry to write so intermittently this week. It’s not a sign of depression or that I’ve run out of things to ramble about: I promise!

I’ve just been spending the last few days learning (teaching myself) some programming stuff, so I can do a little more with this blog. You’ll have a pretty clear idea of when VM 2.0 launches, insofar as it’s got a pretty cool look. (I can’t guarantee that my posts will be any more interesting, but hey: you’ve made it this far.) It’s taken some long evenings of trying to figure out SQL and CSS, as well as reinventing some wheels with Photoshop, but I think it’ll have a great new look-and-feel.

In other news: Congrats to my mom for coming over to the dark side! My brother helped her buy a Mac Mini last night. It’s a long way from when she had to deal with her first office word-processor, back in 1989 or so.

Also, the official VM fiancee & I discovered Firefly this weekend. Official VM buddy Tony gave me the complete series DVDs for my birthday last January, but we didn’t get around to watching them till last weekend. We saw the first 3 episodes (out of 15), and were thrilled. Amy’s a big fan of Joss Whedon’s shows (Buffy, Angel), and I’ll always try to give SF a shot. The characters were a hoot, the plot holes weren’t too immense, and the libertarian slant of the crew was pretty enjoyable. Plus, the prostitute character was hot.

We’ll get around to the wrap-up movie later, I guess. Maybe when it comes out on DVD. . .

Also, we’re getting ready to head down to New Orleans this weekend. We’ll be staying with her parents, who live about 25 miles from the city, but we’ll be making a trip or two into New Orleans during our stay. I promise to take plenty of pix and try to give you guys a good description of the place.

I heard Michael Lewis’ piece in the NYTimes magazine this Sunday was great, but I haven’t had time to read it yet.

And I’m reading Number9Dream by David Mitchell right now. Picked it up a week ago, and didn’t even think about the fact that John Lennnon’s birthday was coming up. Freaky to think that he was born 65 years ago, but that calendar sure does wreak havoc.

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Sports Fans

Big rain here in northern NJ tonight, and the official VM fiancee and I found that our street was blacked out by the time we got home tonight. Fortunately, my dad and brother were willing to call my cell periodically to let me know that the Red Sox were just about to be swept by the Chicago White Sox.

We did some grilling on the back patio, in the rain and dark, and had a nice candlelight dinner of steaks & gin (Julia Child’s favorite meal, Amy sez). Power was restored around 9pm, so we were able to page through some of that Calvin & Hobbes collection while watching the Yankees make their comeback.

Most importantly, the Red Sox got swept!

I’ll take some glee in that, and some solace after last year’s humiliating Yankee loss to the Sox. Meanwhile, I’ll share a question that occurred to me earlier this week.

I’m a sports fan. Those of you who’ve read this blog a while know that. And you likely know that my favorite pro sport is basketball. This is partly (or mainly) because I played it for a bunch of years. I can watch just about any two teams play, at any time of year, and find something interesting to focus on.

For the longest time, I’ve said that my sports hierarchy is basketball, baseball and football. Now, though, I’m starting to rethink that.

See, the thing is, I’m a big Yankees fan. But I’m not sure I’m a big baseball fan. If the Yankees are out west, and there are two other teams playing on ESPN on the east coast, I likely won’t tune in to watch that primetime game (and I won’t stay up to watch the Yankees’ west coast game).

On the other hand, even though my fandom of the football Giants is nowhere as large as my support for the Yankees, I can watch just about any two NFL teams play on a Sunday. If the Giants game is boring (or even if it’s in commercial), I’ll jump over to another game on the NFL season pass.

So now I’m starting to think that I’m more of a Yankee fan than a baseball fan, and that I’m more of a football fan than a baseball fan.

Does anyone even think about this crap, or do I have way too much free time on my hands?

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HDeification

There’s something else I wanted to write about in the past few weeks, but I was afraid I’d come off as a whiny bitch. Now that I’ve experienced two major sports in HD, it’s time for me to ramble about my TV.

This all started about a month or so ago, when my slightly-less-than-three-year-old 36″ Panasonic TV started shutting off spontaneously. The warranty is still active, so I called in a repair. The two repairmen who showed up realized that they were getting stuck with a not-so-nice job, since the TV needed to be taken into the shop.

The thing to know about my TV is that it’s made of dwarf star matter. It’s so dense, I’m amazed that light actually escapes the screen. When I moved into this house in 2003, I had three burly friends carry it upstairs. They groused at first, but then realized that I’d moved everything else singlehandedly a week earlier, including a queen-sized bed.

So the repairmen were stuck having to haul the world’s heaviest TV down the stairs to their van on a Friday afternoon. On the way out, they warned me that it’d be gone for 5-15 working days. I thought, “I’m not a TV maniac. But I do like watching the Yankees. And football season IS starting up this weekend . . .”

So, that night, the official VM fiancee & I went out to PC Richard and bought a 50″ Samsung DLP HD TV.

Don’t get me wrong; this wasn’t a super-impulse purchase. I mean, sure, we’re saving for the wedding and, sure, she’s going to need a car after she moves out here and, sure, we probably could’ve spent the money on relief donations for people on the Gulf Coast.

But, MAN, does it have a good picture.

So we bought it on the spot (after the requisite haggling and warranty issues), then drove out to the warehouse the next morning, where we amazed everyone by being able to fit the package into the back of my Honda Element.

The satellite dish and receiver at my home only picked up standard-definition TV, so we decided to try out a DVD from the component video feed. We figured Hero (the Jet Li one, not the Andy Garcia one) was the most visually amazing flick either of us had seen in a while, so we popped that in.

And we were agog. The color and clarity were just incredible. Standard-definition programming was kinda dull, but I figured I’d order an HD dish and receiver.

There my sorrows began.

The installer failed to show up or call on its Saturday installation. I called DirecTV the next morning, pissed off. I was going to be away the next Saturday, and my weekdays were off-limits, what with the heavy work schedule. So, this past Saturday, the installer was scheduled to show up from 1-5pm. Near 8pm, he got to my place. At least this time, I was able to get his number from the installation contractor, so I knew he was going to make it here eventually.

In the dark.

Up on my roof.

Where he dropped one of his tools, which slid off the roof and clanged against my aforementioned Element, denting and scratching the hood. “This has to be one of the worst days I’ve ever had on the job,” he told me.

By 9:30pm on Saturday, he was done. At which point DirecTV’s various phone numbers were down, so we couldn’t activate the HD service. Sigh.

Sunday morning, I tried again, got through to the service desk, and that’s when I entered a new world.

Like I said, I’m not a big TV guy. But I have NEVER seen a picture like this in my life. The color is impossibly vivid, the resolution is like looking through a window, and the depth-of-field seems to deft the laws of optics.

When I clicked from an HD channel over to a standard-def one, I shuddered at how terrible “regular” TV looks. I’d seen a couple of HD programs before (occasional Yankee games at my Dad’s, the last Superbowl at a friend’s place), but it sure was great to have it in my living room.

I called DirecTV back and added the NFL HD package. Hours later, I was clicking among 7 or 8 1pm games, marveling at the picture. I don’t take hockey seriously as a sport, but I can’t wait to see what it looks like in HD.

All of which is to say, I’m decompressing a little, after a stressful month.

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Biomarkers & Bulls

[Here’s my From the Editor page for the October issue of Contract Pharma]

I was all set to write about disaster response and the ways we should prepare for cataclysms both natural and manmade, but another subject came up, so I have to cut that sermon-ette down to a single piece of advice: the more time you spend blaming other people for not helping you, the less time you have to help yourself.

What subject could possibly have been more important to me than the opportunity to pontificate about the hurricanes that struck the Gulf Coast and the good and the bad of our responses to them? Longtime readers of this space know about my unhealthy preoccupation with sports, thanks to my repeated attempts at bridging the gap between that world and the Pharma business. Now my favorite pro sport has run headlong into my pro life as we finally achieve the intersection of biomarkers and basketball!

Last March, late in the season, Chicago Bulls center Eddy Curry experienced heart arrhythmia before a game. Doctors began testing him, and he was benched for the rest of the season and the playoffs. The tests were inconclusive, and Curry planned to come back this season, angling for a long-term contract before training camp opened. However, the NBA’s insurance company considered him too much of a risk and refused to cover any contract for Curry.

Eventually, at the behest of a top cardiologist, the Bulls asked Curry to take a DNA test to see if he was predisposed to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, a potentially fatal heart condition. This way, the team would know if there was a significant risk both to their investment in Curry (which would’ve added up to around $70 million, given the market for young centers) and to Curry’s investment in the first 22 years of his life. Curry refused to take the test, citing medical privacy issues and advice from his own cardiologist. The NBA commissioner backed up the Bulls’ request for the DNA test, but the players’ association supported Curry, evidently under the logic that the right to die on the basketball court is protected by the union. Or at least that it should be negotiated.

The two parties were stuck at an impasse right up until the deadline for offering Curry a one-year deal was about the expire. At that point, the Bulls gave up and traded Curry to New York, where he’s been offered a long-term deal and will undergo standard medical tests, but not the DNA exam for the biomarker that Dr. Maron was concerned with. At the press conference to announce the trade, Bulls general manager John Paxson revealed that if Curry “failed” the DNA test, the Bulls had agreed to pay him $400,000 annually for the next 50 years. It wasn�t real-world, lump-sum dollars, but it was $20 million to carry him into his 70s.

So now he can go to New York, play center for the Knicks, and pray that his cardiologist was right. After all, Curry’s people argued, there’s no assurance, even if he does possess that biomarker, that he’ll have a fatal heart attack during the years of his contract. Alan Milstein, a lawyer representing Curry, remarked, “If employers could give employees DNA tests, then they could find out if there’s a propensity for illnesses like cancer, heart disease or alcoholism. They will make personnel decisions based on DNA testing.”

Now, I�m all for privacy rights–tattered though they may be–and I don’t want to see an age where biomarkers for long-term diseases are used by employers to discriminate. That said, I also watched the 1993 playoff game in which 27-year-old Celtics forward Reggie Lewis keeled over from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (he survived that episode, but died a few months later when trying to come back to the Celtics). Eddy Curry wasn�t asking for a $7.50/hour job greeting people at Wal-Mart. He was trying to get guarantees of $70 million or so for demanding physical activity, but was unwilling to assure his employer that he’d be medically fit to, um, survive the contract, much less perform at a high level during its span.

Trying to make this kid�who jumped straight to the pros from high school�into a poster boy for genetic discrimination is a near-criminal act.

–Gil Roth
Editor