When I first started back to school at University of Nebraska, people talked about something called an h-index. It was almost universal that I got told two conflicting things about it. The first was that it was not a good measure of the quality of academic output and no one really puts much stock in it. The second was that, if a recently graduated PhD wanted to have a chance at getting a tenure track position, it was good to have an h-index of 10 or above. My future academic goals and age diminishes the importance of a high h-index even more. Still, it has been pretty cool to watch my h-index inch up. I have enough patents in process and technical articles in the pipeline that I have a decent chance of hitting at least 10, maybe even before I die!