Second post and already faltering

Another post.  Mostly just to try to develop the habit.  

Gads.

OK.  I read the first entry and realized there are probably some problems with the approach I'm taking.  I was hoping to write in a somewhat generic style without too much reference to the particulars of my own life.  I was hoping to avoid the narcissism that now seems unavoidable in  these public- diary-type blogs.  Well, it seems generic alright, and so boring I'm not even interested.

So here are some particulars to be followed with more on other nights:

My name is P. Scott Carney.  I am a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois.  I got my PhD in Physics from the University of Rochester in 1999.  I was an undergrad in physics at the U of I.   I grew up in upstate New York.  My wife is a full-time mom and formerly a development officer with the university.  We've been married ten years.  my boys are 5 and 1.  

I'm fairly athletic, or at least active.  I bike a lot.  I am a weightlifter (all one word, if you don't know the significance, you won't care). I play basketball very badly but am getting a little better.  Today I  dislocated my right pinky at two joints playing ball.  Lucky one of my friends on the faculty is a bad-ass martial artist and he came over after four other guys had been tugging at the thing (yes- please pull my finger, no really, look, it's hideously twisted...) and just popped the thing straight.  He might have sneered at us a little for our unmanliness, but I think he's too nice for that.  

I also submitted a paper for consideration in a pretty good optics journal today.  I do this far too often.  That is, I participate in the extreme overproduction of scientific literature.  Much of it goes totally unread because, if it didn't, all scientists would do is read the literature. Sigh... anyway, I try to only submit things I am really excited about and genuinely believe may help someone else in her own research or might be important in another field.  I have to admit though that  after a few years I have become consistently unimpressed with my own work.  So I think the stuff I'm doing now is good and important, but ask me again in 2012.    OK, I take that back.  I still like two of my old papers.  I have 55 peer-reviewed publications.  

OK.  I'm going to take some more pain meds and go to bed.

Here's apic of my poor swollen pinky.  Whah.  And yes, those are diaper ans wipes behind me because that's how I roll.