That’s right, it was more than a year ago that I started posting weekly updates about my life in the fast lane. But things have slowed down recently as I prepare to depart Boston, and I expect things to go from 0 to 900 in about 4 seconds once I arrive in Berkeley. For these reasons, I’m going to stop posting regularly on here for now. I’m sure that this will come as a shock to a lot of people (OK fine, just one person… sorry, Gaga!), but I’ll take some questions to clear up any confusion.

• How’s work going these days? Great! 15 days left, and there’s no shortage of things for me to be finishing up. My main project now involves writing up a draft of a paper that covers the genome-wide association studies I’ve been working on during 2010, but there are some other, smaller projects that I’m wrapping up as well. And a paper that I coauthored based on last summer’s work was recently accepted with revisions and resubmitted, so that’s cool.
• Are you glad you took a year off between undergrad and grad school? Absolutely. I’ve matured so much in the past year, both emotionally and intellectually. I had the time to step back from the microcosms of individual statistics classes and appreciate the big picture, which has energized me for my upcoming studies and research. I’m almost positive that working for a year made a stronger grad school applicant, and I think that the things I’ve learned this year (technical skills as well as stuff like how statisticians fit into a team effort and what working as a number cruncher in industry is like) will come in handy as well. Plus, the money that I earned will definitely come in handy when the glamour of being a poor grad student wears off.
• Did you read any good books this year? I did, actually. Books that I flagged as “GREAT!” over the past year include The Alchemist, Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, Born to Run, Good Calories Bad Calories, Youth in Revolt, The Lady Tasting Tea, Cat’s Cradle, Ender’s Game, and Pride and Prejudice. Honorable mentions include the Harry Potters, some Edward Tufte books, Getting Things Done, and Angela’s Ashes.
• What are you doing for the next month or so? For the next three weeks, mostly wrapping things up at work. Then the fun starts! My first Red Sox game in ~20 years on July 17th, followed by the arrival of Ackermen Daddy and Nate on the 18th. The three of us will be spending about a week hiking and exploring up in New Hampshire, and it’s going to be a blast. When I return, I’ll have a few days to sell what I can, then pack up the rest and ship it across the country. And on July 31, at 7 AM, I depart the East Coast in style: a one-way ticket to San Francisco, California.

• You’re going to be so far away! How will I get Hoxie updates? I think I’m going to be moving towards the “quarterly email” model of information dissemination, so if you’re interested in occasional updates, leave a comment on this post with your email address or email me and I’ll be happy to include you.
• Will there be new blog posts here in the future? Considering how much I enjoy dominating the Google results for “hoxie ackerman”, I certainly won’t be taking this website down. I might even make posts occasionally, if important things happen in my life. And in the mean time, I’m thinking of uploading cell phone pics documenting my Berkeley adventures. Could be fun; would certainly be less time-consuming than text.
• Will you miss me? Dearly. But we’ll talk soon. And in the mean time, enjoy your summer and thanks for reading!

Describe your ideal position or career objective.

Easily the most interesting question on the form, I thought for a couple of minutes and then wrote:

My ideal position is located in a temperate, sunny place. After a relatively short bike ride, I arrive at a company or institution full of brilliant people who are working passionately on interesting problems. My private office is relatively spare but totally functional and features a beautiful view. I have total control over the noise levels and lighting in my work environment, and I’m allowed to use whatever tools I’d like to perform my work. A portion of my time at work can be spent on the topics and projects of my choosing, and I’m encouraged to set my own hours. There’s healthy, delicious food available throughout the day. Meetings are held only when necessary, though it’s a joy to talk with my colleagues at lunch or during the day. Salary is relatively unimportant, though benefits for myself and my future family should be fairly comprehensive. My contributions to the organization are appreciated, and the work that I do is intellectually and emotionally engaging and fulfilling.

Some of these things I already enjoy, and many more I hope to see down the road.

A couple days later, this popped up in one of the (relatively) few RSS feeds I subscribe to:

Cool stuff.

It was a great week, in fact. Stealing the show was my week at work. On Monday, I was given an assignment: figure out if it would be feasible to predict individuals’ blood types in three blood groups based on available (limited) genetic information. I knew virtually nothing about blood on Monday, but after reading about 20 journal articles covering the molecular basis, genetics, and immunology of blood groups, I was able to put together a pretty comprehensive report about prediction feasibility for a meeting on Friday. This was a neat project for a few reasons:

1. Deadline. Needing to know my stuff at Friday’s meeting kept me motivated without overwhelming me. If I had been given more time, I’m sure I would have used it, but forcing me to do it in a week kept me on top of things. The meeting went great, by the way.
2. Research. Because my master’s degree didn’t entail a thesis, I didn’t read many journal articles while I was at BU. However, reading and digesting articles is a skill I need to acquire sooner or later, and like most skills, I think that 99% of it is practice. This project gave me some great exposure to finding and understanding journal articles. Granted, I think that articles about blood are slightly more approachable than articles about statistical techniques or algorithms, but it’s a step in the right direction.
3. Competence. When I started going to project meetings, I’d often get worried when I didn’t know the details of a complicated laboratory procedure or ongoing experiment. Then I realized that, if I had an advanced degree in the field and 10 years experience doing this stuff, I’d feel pretty comfortable talking about it too. Even after only a week of research, I was feeling pretty comfortable with the basics of blood. It felt good to know something about a topic that was previously a mystery.   

I also read a great book this week that I’d highly recommend to all of my 20-something and 30-something readers: I Will Teach You To Be Rich. The book is full of down-to-earth, easily digested, often humorous personal finance writing. I used to read the IWTYTBR blog frequently, but it had been a few years since I had given personal finance a lot of thought, and I decided to update my finances before heading to grad school. Based on his blog a few years ago, I started using credit responsibly, maxing out my Roth IRA whenever possible with a low-cost index fund, and keeping intermediate-term money in a high-yield ING Direct savings account. Since reading the book, I’ve opened a Charles Schwab High Yield Checking Account to replace my current checking account and I’ve applied for a great cash-back credit card to save money and boost my credit rating further. I’ll also be using low-cost Vanguard lifecycle funds to automatically take care of asset allocation, enrolling in a 401k at work (this option just became available to me), and automating my entire financial setup using websites like Mint and direct deposit so that I don’t have to give personal finance much thought for a while. The benefits of taking action now far exceed the time it would take you to pick up the book and get your financial situation under control, so check it out.

I’m also reading one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read: Good Calories, Bad Calories. But that’s a post for another time.

I decided to try something new for 2010, so I enrolled in a class down at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education: Improv Comedy. Every Tuesday night for the next few months, I’ll be heading down to Harvard Square to work with three other students and two teachers (excellent teacher:student ratio if I ever heard one) on my improv skills. Why improv comedy? Well, Ryan and Colin always looked like they were having fun on “Whose Line Is It Anyway,” plus I thought it would be a good way to meet some people and improve my conversation skills. Our first lesson was great… we learned the ground rules and then hit the ground running with a few games designed to get us thinking quickly and working with other people. Really looking forward to doing this.

The other activity I’ve been spending a fair amount of time with lately is the guitar. I’ve played for at least 45 minutes every day but one this month, and believe it or not, practice makes perfect. My basic open chords are sounding pretty good, including the transitions between them, and I’m getting much better at picking and strumming. Barre chords are the next major hurdle, but once I build up a little more hand strength and coordination, the sky’s the limit. Rock on!

It was a busy week at work… I found out on Tuesday that I’d be giving a 30 minute presentation at a department meeting on Wednesday afternoon, so a couple of days were consumed with making slides and perfecting the delivery. Things went well there, and I made it back to my desk just in time to see the completion of an R program that I submitted more than a month ago. I’m juggling a couple of projects right now (including processing the 10GB of text files that were generated by this little 35-day computing adventure), but they’re all interesting and I’m still enjoying my time at Biogen Idec.

Speaking of enjoying work, the Drug Discovery group had its New Year’s party on Friday evening. After a quick bus ride across the river and an even quicker elevator ride up 50 floors (my ears actually popped), we were greeted with a spectacular view of Boston and Cambridge from the Top of the Hub. Despite living 10 minutes away for 4 years, I had never been to the top before. It was very nice… I actually knew enough people there to have some interesting conversations, and the food was delicious: hors d’oeuvres and red wine, a couple different pasta dishes, steak, and chocolate-covered strawberries for dessert. I tried everything at least once and wasn’t disappointed.

Saturday was a balmy 45 degrees, so I took the bike out for a spin around the city. I had almost forgotten how good it feels to ride a bike in nice weather instead of just putting your head down and pedaling until you get there, but it was wonderful. I wasn’t the only one who noticed the sunshine and warmer temperatures; the Newbury Street area was crawling with shoppers, joggers, and dog owners. I know that spring isn’t for another couple of months, but it was a nice taste of things to come

Very productive week at work. After the office being relatively empty for the last couple of weeks, people were back from vacations and ready to start the new year. I suppose it’s a bit of a strange time to be working at Biogen Idec, though… our president of R&D, Dr. Cecil Pickett, retired earlier this year and has yet to be replaced, and it was just announced that our CEO, Jim Mullen, will be leaving in June. As a lowly statistical geneticist, I have no idea of the political turbulence behind the scenes, but there are definitely going to be some new people in command in the coming year.

More directly relevant to my day-to-day operations is the fact that the woman who sits next to me, Lena, had her last day on Friday as she starts a new job at another Cambridge biotech company. Lena and I used to arrive at the office early and have fun chatting for a few minutes; it was a really nice part of the day that’s disappearing. Lena, the four individuals she supported, and I went out lunch yesterday to say goodbye (I’m not sure why I was invited, but it was really nice of them). Good luck at your new job, Lena!

In other news, when I was at BU, the artist Girl Talk became popular with the college crowd. When I listened, I actually wasn’t that impressed… I love mashups, but I had heard most of the stuff he was doing. Where, you might ask? Best of Bootie. If you’ve never listened to mashups or are looking for some awesome combinations of popular music, head over to the BoB archives and go crazy. Some years are better than others, but I’ve been downloading these every year since 2005 and have yet to be really disappointed. 2009 is excellent, too. And once you’ve seen what can be done with the genre, you should check out the best mashup album I’ve ever heard: A Night at the Hip-Hopera. (This is all free and legal, by the way, so go wild.)

Finally, I learned late this week that I’ll be going skiing at the end of the month! Biogen Idec runs trips/events every once in a while, and at the end of January, I’ll be going on the company ski trip. We’re going up to Mount Stratton for what will be my first skiing experience ever! Let’s hope that those years of rollerblading pay off…