Blink and It's Gone

It's like that. You blink and a month has gone past. Incredible.

From my last post to the middle of June, I was busy writing a proposal for a recent set of DoD Small-Business Innovative Research (SBIR) solicitations. It was the first proposal I had spearheaded (I'd contributed to one before, but the level of involvement there was significantly less) and it was in an area outside of my usual stomping grounds. So there was a lot of work to be done there. I'm pleased with what we submitted, however: it has great potential to make a real, solid research contribution and is also practical for near-term application. I'll find out if it's funded in October (at which point I can even share more details!).

The week after that was a lot of scrambling on projects that had been shoved aside during the proposaling. I had my annual performance review (my first ever). I caught up on stuff around the house.

This past week, I've been slamming another project as hard as I can: it was funded a month and a week out from its due date, when we initially planned for a two-month effort. Furthermore, I've two weeks of vacation planned in that time slot, so I basically have 3 weeks to complete the effort. If you consider that I have 2 other projects, neither of which I can drop completely.... Bottom line: I was given 2 weeks to complete the bulk of the work; after that, I'm in a supervisory role, delegating tasks out to other people and doing minor tweaking on the product.

But: vacation. Next weekend (July 6th) I head to Litchfield Beach, SC for a week with my family. Expect pictures and news after I get back. Then, on August 4th, Tracy and I leave for the O RO Ranch for 10 days. Again, pictures and news will follow.

And I expect to post and such between now and then. But then again, I never expected to take a month break from posting.