Saturday 14 March 2009

Congratulations to Mr and Mrs Canspice

Mr and Mrs Canspice welcomed their first baby into the world the other day. Congratulations to both parents and I hope Elizabeth has a long, healthy and happy life ahead of her. She has wonderful parents so she's off to a very good start!

Mr Canspice (Brad) has worked with us for quite a few years now, but I suspect I must take some blame for him and family living here. Brad was an intern/student of mine for a few months many, many years ago when he was still an undergraduate at a Canadian university. He wrote some fantastic code to enable those foreign astronomers (i.e., those that are not British) to reduce and analyse data from what was then a revolutionary infrared spectrometer - and it still is in many respects.

Despite being supervised by me, Brad decided to come back. Now he writes code to allow people to reduce and analyse data from several revolutionary instruments - and now he gets a wage as well! I suspect, however, that his productivity will decrease for the next few months. I'm sure everyone at work will be able to accept this, but can I now feel a little less guilty about calling the father at night when we have a technical problem at the summit knowing he's likely to be awake anyway?

No, I won't do that. I promise!

4 comments:

Zuzana said...

That was nice of you to congratulate your friends here.;))
I know nothing of writing a code, but I know a bit about being a scientist and I recognize what you mean about calling someone regarding work in the middle of the night.;))

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the congratulations!

And no, you can't call me in the middle of the night. :-)

Beep said...

Brad, of course I don't know you, but I want to wish you and your wife every happiness on this occasion!

Although Tom may as well call you when he wants to...you *will* often be awake in the middle of the night ;) Unless you are in an economic bracket I can only read about, and have a full-time nanny and good earplugs...

Maren aka hilobeads aka Palms, Etc. said...

A very late comment on this post: when I saw that Brad was interviewing for the job he then was offered and later accepted I asked another friend/co-worker of ours (not mentioning names) "We can have Brad?!"

Brad came, did a lot of good work, and then left us again, in between getting married to Alice and them having Elizabeth. I hope things are good with them.