Category: Announcements

Pictures, Blogs and Katrina

William 1 Comment

Kyllan has posted some more pictures of the house to her flickr account. It seems like just yesterday she was complaining about rain delaying the pooring of the foundation. It’s amazing to see how far things have come.

The House

After much “discussion” my good friend Neil has decided to start a blog. If you check out the url you will notice that he wasn’t very creative. He and his wife Tammy are expecting the birth of thier first child sometime this week. I know a few friends from Xavier have been reading my blog. You guys should visit Neil’s and say hello. There is now link to his blog in the right sidebar under the “Friends and Family” section. We will see if he actually updates it.
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Just in time for the anniversary of hurricane Katrina this news story popped up. A man took a boat and saved over 200 poeple during the flooding is being sued by the boat’s owner. “Embarrasment” and “mental anguish” are cited sited as some of the reasons. I will not be making a Katrina anniversary post. I wouldn’t know where to even begin. I tried watching Spike Lee’s “When the levees broke,” (the first Lee film credited “A Spike Lee Film,” and not “A Spike Lee Joint”) but it was too much and I turned it off. Here are a few news articles if you to see what other people are saying about the upcoming anniversary. I’m sure plenty more will pop up on the 29th.
Here, here and here

Better yet, if you want to get a sense of what life is like here in New Orleans one year after Katrina, check out “B’s” flickr page and blog. He is a faculty member at Xavier, my alma mater, and lives in an area of mid city that was flooded. His blog, “Life in the flood zone,” really provides a peek into how the aftermath of Katrina has effected our daily lives. Even if you don’t read a single post you should scroll through a few pages just to get a sense of what life is now like in their neighborhood post-K. His flickr page is filled all to familiar images of the damage that still remains. If you go back far enough, he has pictures of Xavier’s campus about a month after the hurricane. I am adding links to his blog and flickr page to the “favorite blogs” section of the sidebar.

Closing time!

Kyllan 2 Comments

It is official…. I am set to close on the house next Wednesday, August 30th!  I am very excited.  I am already making plans to move next Friday so I can take advantage of the long Labor Day weekend to unpack.  I am also excited b/c it worked out perfectly with my lease that ends Sept. 2nd.  I was hoping I would not have to pay September rent, so that worked out great!  The only thing that has not worked out so well is that DirecTV can’t come install my new dish until September 11th!  But, there is nothing really on TV during this time of year anyway.  I tried to take pictures yesterday, but my camera was out of batteries!  I will try to take pictures at the walkthrough on Saturday.  So… the next few weekends will be packing and unpacking for me and trying to remember to make all the proper contacts to change my address.  More pictures and updates to come! Stay tuned…. 

Treatment

William 9 Comments

As many of you know, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year. The diagnosis occurred before I started the blog and while many of you inquired about her health in e-mails and phone calls, I have never discussed it in a post. I asked my mother to send me an e-mail about her treatment so that I could post it to the site and she could tell everyone in her own words about the progress she has made.

Hi William,
I was diagnosed with breast cancer on April 13, 2006. Chemotherapy started May 1. I finished chemotherapy on August 7. I have been on immunotherapy for one month and have 11 months to go. I will be having several weeks of radiation sometimes during the immunotherapy. When radiation starts, it will be 5 days a week. My chemotherapy was once every two weeks. My current treatments are once a week. I’m hoping the oncologist will change my treatments to once every 3 weeks soon. This will mean that I will get 3 times the Herceptin that I’m getting now but only once every three weeks. The toxins should be out of my system in 4-5 months. I look forward to seeing all of my side effects from the chemotherapy disappear. I have been very fortunate not to have had severe side effects and I have been very blessed to have so many caring family members and friends supporting me through this.

Love,
Mom”

Thank you to all my friends and family for your continued support. As my mother’s treatments continue, I will post updates on her progress to the blog.

Move Date, Dallas & Vendors

William 2 Comments

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about the move to Colorado from friends and family the past few days. The word is that we will move out of the lab on November 1st. Our start date in Colorado will be November 15th. I will keep everyone update as I continue to get information. My PI will be out of town for the next week, so information will be sparse. I will try to get some pictures he took of the new lab space on his last trip when he gets back.

I will be in Dallas this weekend. Kyllan and I are going to meet with a couple of photographers while I am in town. Kyllan will also give me a tour of the Hilton, which is where our reception will be held. (Please send all complaints on lack of wedding and house updates to Kyllan.)

Good bye New Orleans

William 6 Comments

I’ve have known that this deal was in the works for several months, but it now appears to be coming to fruition. At the end of the year the lab will be moving to the University of Colorado. A few months ago, one of the preeminent Pseudomonas researchers in the country asked my PI to apply for a position opening. My PI once described this scientist as being his personal hero in the field, so of course he obliged. None of us, including my PI, thought that they would make him an offer, being that they already had one of the top minds in the field in their department. No doubt they would like him, but surely they would decide to go a different direction. First interview, second interview, third interview…What do you mean Tulane did not counter?… Now they counter?… Wait, they call that a counter? Bam. William is now collecting card board boxes to pack his things. I can’t complain. Colorado made him a really good offer and the facilities are top-notch (NMR, Mass Spec. BioCore, Spinning disc confocal microscopes, EM… the list goes on, and that is just in our building.) I have been instructed not to say anything negative about the current state of our facilities at Tulane… so I will just say that I am positive my PI would have taken this offer even before the hurricane.

How does this affect William? I am taking the qualifiers this summer (delayed due to the transfer from Cornell and hurricane Katrina) and that means that I will get my PhD from Tulane regardless of the move. The move also means a lot of down time. Tack on at least three months to that mysterious date known as graduation (Actually, that would be my dissertation defense. Graduation will just be a ceremony that takes place some time after I receive the degree).

I’ve been in this city a long time. After 4 years at Xavier and the two years I’ve been at Tulane, it really did feel like a second home. DID. This city is not the same and I am not convinced that it ever will be. 2/3 of the city looks like it did the first time I returned after the hurricane. The boats and abandoned cars haven’t even been moved out of the medians (we call them neutral grounds in New Orleans). Every single person I knew from undergrad has left the city. Phone, cable, internet? It may work, it may not. Restaurants? good luck finding one open. Grocery store? Good luck finding more than a fruit roll-up. Rent? It went up? Hole in the roof? Still there… blah, blah, blah. And I am in better shape than most. Still, I think it is time to leave.

The new lab will be in Aurora, just outside of Denver, on a former Army base (Fitzsimmons, named after the first American casualty of WWI). It was closed during the last round of BRAC in 1995 and then was brought by the University of Colorado. We will have more space in the new lab and it will be in a brand new $500 million dollar building. The university is the midst moving the medical school and research from the down town campus to the Fitzsimmons campus in Aurora. In total they plan to spend $1.5 billion over the next 5 years. Our current plans are to move during November or December of this year. The two post-docs plan to stay. The MD/PhD student who was going to join the lab this summer, is no longer joining and the other student is undecided.

In other news, we just got our official Tulane Hurricane evacuation plan today, which includes full evacuation of the facilities 48hrs before a Cat1 makes landfall in the gulf. I think it is safe to assume that if New Orleans receives a major hit this season, we will pack everything up and move immediately.

Upgrades, schools and posters

William 5 Comments

How do you guys like the new site banner? I am running out of things to add. I think a Cody Report icon for the address bar will be next. Maybe next weekend. It appears I owe my father an apology. He did in fact post his pictures from the reunion on his flickr site. He also removed some of the more graphic photos of his trip to Haiti, so those with a weak stomach can now take a look.

In other news, I somehow missed the Newsweek report on the top U.S. High Schools. Check out #5. It’s seems Stanton has slipped since my days as a Blue Devil. (It was still ranked #2 as late as 2003)… I could spend hours discussing my opinions on why Stanton is dropping, but I will save that discussion for when it falls out of the top ten. The #1 school is in Dallas. This list is made up of only public schools. I’ll leave it up to Kyllan to speculate where Hockaday would be on a private school list. The last person from Dallas that asked me where she went to high school let out small whimper and gave a look of awe when they heard the name.

You heard the story in a previous post. Below is a picture of my ASM poster. After conferences we put old posters in the hallways of the department. If you would like to hear about the research, give me a call.

ASM poster