The dawn sky was very pretty this morning as I made my way around the Stanford corral. I bumped into good dawn community friend Judy, who was kind enough to halt her jog and walk with me for a quarter mile or so. Judy is a lawyer and very organized: I don’t usually think of ‘Judy’ and ‘random’ at the same time.

But, random events, aka noise, are not necessarily bad things. The scene above, which some may find pleasing, captures many random events. The pattern in the high clouds, the trees, the sun, at a certain essentially random angle and moment create an interesting picture.

I’m going on about noise because it’s something I’m dealing with daily: I have better and worse days as I deal with brain cancer. I’d like to say every day I feel better than the day before: I wan’t progress, I want to be better every day. However, there are days, Sunday was one, when I just don’t feel very good.

I think this is sort of like a stock chart. If you look at, say, Apple, over time, the trend is clear. But if you’ve lived with the stock, as I have for some 12 years now, you know that there are better and worse days. It’s only over time that the trend becomes clear…

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