First Real Day of Work

Not much happened yesterday. I suppose now that I'm getting settled in there's not some new confusing predicament at every corner. It was my first full day of actual work. I'm writing a program to analyze and organize some different types of data. In between staring blankly at the computer screen and typing, I took a couple snack breaks. For lunch I had this tasty smoked salmon sandwich. I actually paid the cashier with exact change—a minor feat but I was nonetheless very pleased with my counting skills.

Salmon sandwich for lunch As I left work, Rony informed me that nobody would be in the lab Friday because of the weekend. What!? Apparently the weekend is Friday and Saturday; people go back to work on Sunday. I'm not exactly sure what my plans are for the weekend (since it kind of sprung itself on me), but I'm a bit concerned since most everything will be closed from Friday afternoon until Saturday evening. What's more, I also found out that Monday is a holiday (now I'm even more confused. Holiday!? I'm used to going into work regardless of whether it’s the weekend or a holiday!?). I'm not exactly sure what the holiday is (Rony can't exactly remember either), but it has to do with harvesting and a big part of it has to do with cheese. A lot of non-Jewish people here just call it the "cheese day," because they serve a lot of foods made with cheese, especially cheesecake. Doesn't sound like a bad holiday. Perhaps I'll bring that tradition back to America. Of course, I think I'd spruce it up a bit with some meat; "cheese and meat day" or "cheese and sausage day" sound pretty dang good! (As you might guess, although I had chicken last night, I'm missing meat in my diet. I can't get any meat at the cafeteria! Last night I went to the grocery store to get cold cuts but they were charging 35 shekel per package (about $10.00)!! To add to the dilemma, the only meat they did have were variations on pastrami: honey pastrami, bbq pastrami, peppery pastrami. Absolutely no turkey and of course no ham!).

Well, I know this entry has been rather dull. I don't think you'd like to hear anymore detail about my computer program. To prove how boring an entry like that would be, I've copied and pasted a small snippet below. I've also pasted a couple photos from earlier this week. Enjoy!

count2=0;
channelNum=input('What channel would you like to look at?');
markerNum=input('What marker would you like to look at?');
[File,Path] = uigetfile('*.*','pick a file wit a cut cell (.smr) ',currentDir);
fid=fopen([Path,File]);
while(markerNum~=0)
count2=count2+1;
chanMark(count2,1)=channelNum;
chanMark(count2,2)=markerNum;
header=['SpikeChan_', num2str(channelNum)]
[DATA.(header)]=SONGetChannel(fid, channelNum);
count=0;
[rowMark,colMark]=size((DATA.(header).markers))
header2=[header, '_', num2str(markerNum)];
for i=1:rowMark
if (DATA.(header).markers(i,1)==markerNum)
count=count+1;
DATA.(header2).markTimes(count)=DATA.(header).timings(i);
end
end
channelNum=input('What channel would you like to look at?');
markerNum=input('What marker would you like to look at?');
end

Rony's apartment building

Sculpture on campus

View from my bedroom window