def send_email(self, message, subject=''):
        ''' A convienince function that allows for the sending of emails to
            the Supervisor's self.email adress. If self.email is none, the
            method does nothing. Otherwise, Supervisor will start a subprocess
            that sends the email with the specified subject and message to
            self.email. subject defaults to ''. The funciton will always return
            None.
        '''
        if(self.email is None):
            return
        else:
            # message = ''.join([c if(c!='\n') else '\\n'for c in message])
            cmd = "echo '{0!s}' | mail -s '{1!s}' '{2!s}'".format(message, subject, self.email)
            subprocess.call(cmd, shell=True)