28 June 2000

Today was an amazingly productive day at work.  I finally finished the reading that had not been done in roughly a month's time, then began working on some other projects, most notably converting the old political risk ratings Access database into a scaled down, simpler, quicker Excel spreadsheet.  Now that the base spreadsheet is configured, the goal is to bring in historical data from the old databases so that I can do some statistical analysis of political risk trends over the last five years.  I hope this will lead to a presentation topic and/or journal paper or two.

I also had lunch with Maxwell and Callie at Rodizio.  It was yummy!

A strange thing about work today:  two more people have been brought in, apparently to help this idiot I call Howard (after the Andy Griffith Show) on a project of his that is probably going to flop and cost us a ton of money in the process.  For some reason, the fellow seems to have a gas problem and belches out loud on occasion.   I jokingly asked Graham what he suggested I do about this problem.  The answer:  "A match, perhaps?"  Thanks Kellas.

Finally, I picked up Kiwi tonight.  She had been staying with Callie's huskies while we went to London, and there's been so much to do I still hadn't picked her up.   She was one dirty little creature!  But we had a good bath, and now a very fresh smelling Kiwi seems quite happy to be home!