For several decades, I taught statistics in Departments of Sociology and used them in my Labs in research centers and institutes. Much of my academic career pioneered the use of computers in social science research. There I frequently hired electrical and computer engineering students to work in my Lab. In fact, I’d get a stream of both undergraduate and graduate students sent by CS and CE faculty over to try and get a job in “that guy Howell’s Lab.” The comment was usually based on the student receiving the CS/CE faculty advisor’s advice: you’ve got what we’re teaching you down well. Go work for Dr. Howell if you can. He’s always doing weird stuff that you supposedly can’t do.” Plus, I paid well. OK, weird stuff being defined as what others say you can’t do was always taken as a badge of honor! Like Artisoft who sold us Lantastic saying we could not use their LAN software in a TCP/IP stack. We did. Later Microsoft Workgroups and Novell pushed them out of the marketplace because they didn’t officially adopt that stack and couldn’t compete.

OK, this is a cheesy blog post title. But it’s true. Here’s the picture…and it leads into more important things about Field Day.