[Babase] conference call summary 28 July 2004

Stephanie Combes babase@www.eco.princeton.edu
Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:35:39 -0400


Hello Babasers!

  Time for your weekly dose of babase related news!  My wrist is beginning 
to hurt from the evils of computers, so please forgive any typos that may 
pop up...

  Due to meeting times and schedule conflicts we had a 2 part conference 
call today.  First, Jeanne, Daphne and Steph had a chat.

News from Call 1:

1. Steph warned the Princeton team about the upcoming power outage that 
will occur from late this Friday afternoon through the weekend here at 
Duke.  (I think the sound of drills in the background during the calls 
really helps emphasize the construction point.)

2. Project status:  Steph updated babase-north on the state of various 
projects here in the humid south.  Hybridity - waiting on a few xeroxes 
from Ambo team.  But, Steph sent JA the raw data file of the juvenile 
scores.  Steph is going to compile/average the scores as Susan did for 
these juvies in a nice spreadsheet and forward it on to Jeanne.  Steph will 
use the methods section of SCA's paper as well as the calculations in SCA 
spreadsheets.

  Predation - Daphne emailed Gabriel about the state of Princeton predation 
info.  She will also send a note to his alternative email address.  Gabriel 
is apparently hiding out in Math camp right now.  SO, when we hear from 
him, Daphne will forward the appropriate files onto Steph.  Jeanne 
remembers that Gabriel wrote a number of internal, computer program data 
checks.  Steph will old-fashion style (yes, folks, it happens to the best 
of us...we get old and stuck in our ways while the young upstarts create 
new and better ways to make computers do all of their work!) proof a good 
chunk of it to see how well Gabriel's internal checks worked before 
compiling and organizing the Princeton and Duke sets into one magnificent 
predation file.

Extra male data - Steph and Jasmine are making some headway into proofing 
this enormous file. Stay tuned.

3. Daphne update: Daphne needs to create a new bstatus code of 6 months for 
some of the new male age estimates.  Daphne will email us so that we (read: 
Karl) can think about whether Daphne can just go in and do this or if she 
shouldn't change it manually because it might mess other things up.  Again, 
stay tuned!

Conference Call 2: Jeanne, Karl, and steph (AND a successful, one try 
connection. thank you. thank you.)

Karl will be on vacation starting 8 August.  He will be gone through at 
least the 17th, but maybe through the end of that week.

Conversion: Some trouble getting the speed-ups going.  Currently, the issue 
is one of revealing passwords.  Temporary solution, Karl will put the 
passwords in a file so that re-entering of passwords won't be necessary 
every time we try to go into the conversion program and run it.  We all 
need to remember that the passwords will need to be changed before we do 
the final conversion!!

  By the end of this week (and perhaps into the weekend if Karl can get 
things to work on his own machine vs. biology.duke), Karl hopes to have 
speed-ups done, odds and ends of repro info done and the repstats changes 
in (repstats changes are likely to take a day of effort).  Next to tackle: 
census, demog, members.

  We have planned a September trip for Karl to come to Duke for 2 weeks. 
(Susan - Karl will be contacting Robert about the possibility of staying at 
your house during that time).  So, the plan is Karl will come to Duke Sept 
1-15ish.  Jeanne will be on stand-by for consults during that time.  Expect 
great things! miracles even! (ok - that might be getting carried away, but 
certainly progress!!).

That's all folks.  Tune in next week for another babase adventure!
steph