For the first time in my entire life, there is almost no dog hair in the house. What has brought about this incredible turn of events? What angel has descended from on high to remove all the detritus from my house?
This animal right here. Actually, ours isn't purple, but it is otherwise this particular thing.
Today we brought it home, put it together, and let it do its job. It sucked mightily. It took away the dog hair, the dust...whatever else was buried in the carpets. It is my new best friend. It is so handsome, I love it. I would marry it, except that it doesn't make martinis very well.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
Long Weekend Random Punches
We are watching Nelson Mandela's 90th birthday celebration, and Queen is on. Not as in HRH Queen Elizabeth, but Queen as in Freddie Mercury is dead but the rest of the old guys can still put together Tie Your Mother Down. Dr. Brian May is playing lead guitar, of course. Dr. as in PhD in theoretical physics from Imperial College. Granted it took him almost 40 years to do the degree (he started in the 70's) but what the hell, interstellar dust hasn't changed much; 40 years is a small slice of the millions/billions of years of its existence.
Even though I loved Queen while on the cusp of my teenagerhood, and still can recite pretty much every song from both A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera, there's no need to watch the old fellows perform. I'm not so interested in live music, partly because on tv it's pretty much canned, and live? It's too loud.
It's always been too loud, that's not an old lady thing. My poor ears are sensitive, and after a concert (or social, or wedding, or whatever...) they ring for days. My new hearing aids cut out after a certain decibel level and act as earplugs, to save me from noise damage. Not that I would notice noise damage even if it did happen, but might as well prevent any more damage than occurs via regular life. So concerts are a write-off.
It is summer time now, as we're past the solstice and school has ended for the next nine weeks. The weather has warmed and is remaining relatively steady. I wish I hadn't chosen to continue working, but I chose that anyway, and now will work more or less full time until the end of the summer. According to the department chair, I agreed to stay another six months, but I don't remember doing that.
I am editing SOP's at work as part of my new summer duties. Agh!! incorrect verb tenses! awkward phrasing! At the same time, it's the perfect assignment for me, because I need practice with all these things. Chances are that come fall, I'll be doing a lot more writing, and I need to be more precise with my own literary expression. I also need to be less lazy.
Today was Long Weekend Crazy Driving Day. I did not sign up for this seminar and yet found myself in the middle of the lecture hall. I absolutely did not fill in the online form to enlist to be a participant, but I could not escape the madness. The Cutting Off and Slowing Suddenly portion of the afternoon was especially thrilling, and as usual in these things, Random Drifting Into the Next Lane occurred with alarming frequency. Prime candidate for a road rage smackdown was In My Trunk Trina, but luckily she was bored with the whole show and did a few slinky moves to get past me and several other drivers so that she could get to the red light first. First is where it's at during Crazy Driving Day.... and I didn't want to be first. I didn't even want to be there, but Hub said that no signup was necessary, everyone was automatically enrolled in the course. Next time I'm just not getting out of bed that day. Let's see if they can force me into August Long Weekend Crazy Driving Day....haha...
Even though I loved Queen while on the cusp of my teenagerhood, and still can recite pretty much every song from both A Day at the Races and A Night at the Opera, there's no need to watch the old fellows perform. I'm not so interested in live music, partly because on tv it's pretty much canned, and live? It's too loud.
It's always been too loud, that's not an old lady thing. My poor ears are sensitive, and after a concert (or social, or wedding, or whatever...) they ring for days. My new hearing aids cut out after a certain decibel level and act as earplugs, to save me from noise damage. Not that I would notice noise damage even if it did happen, but might as well prevent any more damage than occurs via regular life. So concerts are a write-off.
It is summer time now, as we're past the solstice and school has ended for the next nine weeks. The weather has warmed and is remaining relatively steady. I wish I hadn't chosen to continue working, but I chose that anyway, and now will work more or less full time until the end of the summer. According to the department chair, I agreed to stay another six months, but I don't remember doing that.
I am editing SOP's at work as part of my new summer duties. Agh!! incorrect verb tenses! awkward phrasing! At the same time, it's the perfect assignment for me, because I need practice with all these things. Chances are that come fall, I'll be doing a lot more writing, and I need to be more precise with my own literary expression. I also need to be less lazy.
Today was Long Weekend Crazy Driving Day. I did not sign up for this seminar and yet found myself in the middle of the lecture hall. I absolutely did not fill in the online form to enlist to be a participant, but I could not escape the madness. The Cutting Off and Slowing Suddenly portion of the afternoon was especially thrilling, and as usual in these things, Random Drifting Into the Next Lane occurred with alarming frequency. Prime candidate for a road rage smackdown was In My Trunk Trina, but luckily she was bored with the whole show and did a few slinky moves to get past me and several other drivers so that she could get to the red light first. First is where it's at during Crazy Driving Day.... and I didn't want to be first. I didn't even want to be there, but Hub said that no signup was necessary, everyone was automatically enrolled in the course. Next time I'm just not getting out of bed that day. Let's see if they can force me into August Long Weekend Crazy Driving Day....haha...
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
What the Neighbours Think
Last night I was at a school council event; I'm on the executive and we had a last social evening at a roadhouse sort of restaurant. It was half price margarita night (and don't think I don't have the urge to write "nite"... it was that kind of place) and there were all these different flavours like mango and strawberry and raspberry and who knows what else. Made from powdered sugar and bright colouring and flavouring, the mix is added to ice cubes and tequila and put into a blender, then poured into a water glass rimmed with salt or sugar, as appropriate. I had a regular lime one because I like lime and tequila. Everyone else said that mine was the only kind of margarita they didn't like, and I guess this is because it isn't sweet enough? I didn't comment, thinking it was rude to pass judgement so early in the evening.
The menu was full of deep-fried, fat-filled goodness: potato skins (ordered), supreme nachos with lots of cheese and ground beef (ordered), bruschetta (ordered x 2), chicken wings (ordered, and luckily they come with carrots and celery sticks) and the like. No one asked if anyone was vegetarian, I guess because only weirdos don't eat meat. (Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, I just don't eat a lot of it, especially in the summer. For dinner at home last night we had had red rice, lentils, soybeans and a vegetable medley, including some swiss chard that I had to thin out from the garden. No meat, and luckily, everyone at home seems to have survived the night.) At one council meeting where we had to decide on fundraising strategies, we chose to continue selling chicken from a local poultry company, because after all, "Who doesn't like chicken?" I did point out that perhaps the people who don't eat meat don't like chicken, but that elicited the response: There are so few of those people. In my head I responded, "And clearly they should be eliminated from the population," but didn't say it, because I am discussing alternative eating strategies with a Brick Wall. A loud Brick Wall, and one with perhaps less brainpower than the average Brick Wall, but a Brick Wall nonetheless.
I do realize that the previous set of words is not a sentence, thank you.
Anyway. We are drinking margaritas, eating high-fat "food" (don't for a second think that I turned my nose up at it. I ate everything, and as yet another 14%m.f. sour cream- and orangey-cheddar cheese-coated potato skin passed my lips, I considered that I might be shortening my life span considerably.) and discussing various aspects of children and schooling and merits of the teachers, and whether or not we're actually going to get the money from the provincial government to build a new school, and then the Brick Wall starts asking about the transition from grade eight to high school.
"What kind of track will B choose? Does he have to know what he wants to be? How does he know that? I can't imagine having to choose a track (either academic or applied) in grade nine. We never had to do that."
I would have argued that you definitely had to do that, because I had to do that and I am >10 years older than you. At this point the brick wall status of this person had sunk into my head, and I knew that resistance was futile. You aim high, you either succeed or you take another path. Always aim high. Learn to push yourself into thinking beyond what's right in front of you. Take the high road. Don't be so stupid.
"I just cannot understand people who go to university and who spend eight years there and then don't do any work that is related to what they studied in university. This doesn't make sense, why would they go? About 90% of the people I went to high school with went to university, and spent all this time there, and then did nothing with it. At least if they went to college they got a job." This person, despite the fact that she's known me for a couple of years, has no idea what my former position was or what I do now, or how many years I attended university wasting my precious time.
(In Canada, college is technical school/trade school, where university is ... well, university. In the U.S., college is the undergraduate portion of university. We don't normally split up undergrad as college and grad school as grad school, it's all university. Law, dentistry and medicine are also undergraduate programs, but they fall under "professional programs" within the university system. I think in the U.S. these are considered graduate programs.)
The principal of the school was with us, so she tried, very patiently, to explain the difference between university and college, especially because each of her sons has chosen a different path. I was becoming quite tired of trying to explain anything.
"And another thing I don't get. I can't figure out people who don't get married until they're 35, or don't have kids until they're 40. I got married at 23, had my first kid at 24, and then had three more. I don't get this 'waiting' stuff. What's to wait for?"
I couldn't stop myself here, so I said, "Well, sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to marry until later. I had a child when I was 38, and another one six weeks before I turned 40." No comment, although the brain seems to be trying to incorporate this information. Here is someone who did not have a child until she was 38. Here is someone who .... oh darn, I can't understand this. Have I embarrassed myself? No, I'm sure I haven't. I'll just say something else here to cover for the fact that I might have said something out of line. "It worked for you then. You had two kids."
I will give BW the benefit of the doubt. Here is a woman who was brought up in a well-off Italian family, who left home when she got married, who has never had to look for a job because she and her husband work for her father, who is in a panic because she is supposed to go to Italy for 10 days with her mother, grandmother, sisters and cousins, and can't imagine going. Then again, if my husband said something like, "It'll be okay honey, ten days isn't long. I won't even have to do laundry in the course of ten days..." Four Boys at Home,
I should point out that the evening wasn't entirely like this, but mostly it was. I was terribly bored for most of it, and while that might make you ask why I stayed, it made me ask what I was doing on a committee with people who couldn't see past their own faces. Honestly, I was waiting for the next topic of conversation: Why Isn't Everyone Catholic? but I left before that happened. It was very interesting from a backwards perspective, but not that interesting...
The menu was full of deep-fried, fat-filled goodness: potato skins (ordered), supreme nachos with lots of cheese and ground beef (ordered), bruschetta (ordered x 2), chicken wings (ordered, and luckily they come with carrots and celery sticks) and the like. No one asked if anyone was vegetarian, I guess because only weirdos don't eat meat. (Don't get me wrong. I eat meat, I just don't eat a lot of it, especially in the summer. For dinner at home last night we had had red rice, lentils, soybeans and a vegetable medley, including some swiss chard that I had to thin out from the garden. No meat, and luckily, everyone at home seems to have survived the night.) At one council meeting where we had to decide on fundraising strategies, we chose to continue selling chicken from a local poultry company, because after all, "Who doesn't like chicken?" I did point out that perhaps the people who don't eat meat don't like chicken, but that elicited the response: There are so few of those people. In my head I responded, "And clearly they should be eliminated from the population," but didn't say it, because I am discussing alternative eating strategies with a Brick Wall. A loud Brick Wall, and one with perhaps less brainpower than the average Brick Wall, but a Brick Wall nonetheless.
I do realize that the previous set of words is not a sentence, thank you.
Anyway. We are drinking margaritas, eating high-fat "food" (don't for a second think that I turned my nose up at it. I ate everything, and as yet another 14%m.f. sour cream- and orangey-cheddar cheese-coated potato skin passed my lips, I considered that I might be shortening my life span considerably.) and discussing various aspects of children and schooling and merits of the teachers, and whether or not we're actually going to get the money from the provincial government to build a new school, and then the Brick Wall starts asking about the transition from grade eight to high school.
"What kind of track will B choose? Does he have to know what he wants to be? How does he know that? I can't imagine having to choose a track (either academic or applied) in grade nine. We never had to do that."
I would have argued that you definitely had to do that, because I had to do that and I am >10 years older than you. At this point the brick wall status of this person had sunk into my head, and I knew that resistance was futile. You aim high, you either succeed or you take another path. Always aim high. Learn to push yourself into thinking beyond what's right in front of you. Take the high road. Don't be so stupid.
"I just cannot understand people who go to university and who spend eight years there and then don't do any work that is related to what they studied in university. This doesn't make sense, why would they go? About 90% of the people I went to high school with went to university, and spent all this time there, and then did nothing with it. At least if they went to college they got a job." This person, despite the fact that she's known me for a couple of years, has no idea what my former position was or what I do now, or how many years I attended university wasting my precious time.
(In Canada, college is technical school/trade school, where university is ... well, university. In the U.S., college is the undergraduate portion of university. We don't normally split up undergrad as college and grad school as grad school, it's all university. Law, dentistry and medicine are also undergraduate programs, but they fall under "professional programs" within the university system. I think in the U.S. these are considered graduate programs.)
The principal of the school was with us, so she tried, very patiently, to explain the difference between university and college, especially because each of her sons has chosen a different path. I was becoming quite tired of trying to explain anything.
"And another thing I don't get. I can't figure out people who don't get married until they're 35, or don't have kids until they're 40. I got married at 23, had my first kid at 24, and then had three more. I don't get this 'waiting' stuff. What's to wait for?"
I couldn't stop myself here, so I said, "Well, sometimes you don't meet anyone you want to marry until later. I had a child when I was 38, and another one six weeks before I turned 40." No comment, although the brain seems to be trying to incorporate this information. Here is someone who did not have a child until she was 38. Here is someone who .... oh darn, I can't understand this. Have I embarrassed myself? No, I'm sure I haven't. I'll just say something else here to cover for the fact that I might have said something out of line. "It worked for you then. You had two kids."
I will give BW the benefit of the doubt. Here is a woman who was brought up in a well-off Italian family, who left home when she got married, who has never had to look for a job because she and her husband work for her father, who is in a panic because she is supposed to go to Italy for 10 days with her mother, grandmother, sisters and cousins, and can't imagine going. Then again, if my husband said something like, "It'll be okay honey, ten days isn't long. I won't even have to do laundry in the course of ten days..." Four Boys at Home,
I should point out that the evening wasn't entirely like this, but mostly it was. I was terribly bored for most of it, and while that might make you ask why I stayed, it made me ask what I was doing on a committee with people who couldn't see past their own faces. Honestly, I was waiting for the next topic of conversation: Why Isn't Everyone Catholic? but I left before that happened. It was very interesting from a backwards perspective, but not that interesting...
Sunday, June 22, 2008
What a good day feels like
Today was a good day, and tonight I'm doing a bit of work .... although I'm not doing much of anything because I have to search for a missing cd of data in the basement. Searching the basement is yucky.
A good day started with getting to mass on time with a minimum of fuss, and a homily that wasn't preachy and which was relevant. A good day took the kiddies to yoga right after mass, and mum and dad home to make plans for the rest of the day. A good day then picked up the kiddies after their yoga class and then went out for brunch/lunch and had chicken coriander that is consistently fantastic.
Then a good day dropped the kids off at Zia's, and drove to Niagara to get some wine. Wine that had to be tasted first of course, and then cases had to be bought. 30 Bench had a wine "event" where they're releasing some of their 2007's....and last year was a banner year in Niagara, so most of what we tasted was quite good. They also had a little pinot noir rose that will go nicely in the hot sun this summer, and we bought a case of that. Then over to Hidden Bench, where they were only pouring whites. The fume blanc from 2006 is excellent, and their estate riesling (also 2006) can sit for a bit but is nice. We did end up with a lot of white wine today, just because there aren't a lot of reds out this early in the summer.
Off to Organized Crime, where we were berated for having ruined our palates on all that heavy oaky phlagh...and where a pinot gris was surprisingly good (we were also slapped for turning up our noses at even tasting the stuff, never mind buying it) and the rose was again, quite nice.
Finally to Alvento, where friends of ours had visited the weekend before. Our friends are distinctive, not just because E is very small and S is quite a bit bigger than her, but because they were on about having come down to Niagara not just for the wine, but also to buy a new rabbit. They keep rabbits as pets, I see them as food; to each his own. Anyway, at Alvento their 2004 Elige was very harsh, but the 2005 was lovely, as was the viognier. We went to the back to sample the 2007's out of the barrels, and as expected, both the merlot and the cabernet franc were making sultry promises for later. The chardonnay out of the barrel was still carbonated, so a bit like champagne, hadn't even been filtered yet.
After that, we'd tasted about 15 wines and still had to drive 1.5h home, so left with our car full. Kids were next door at Zio's, we ordered pizza and discussed with Big One why some kids turn out okay and some have a lot more difficulty. She is a good conversationalist, especially when it comes to discussing the behaviour of others. The pizza was definitely the low point of the day.
A good day makes the rest of the week easier to face.
A good day started with getting to mass on time with a minimum of fuss, and a homily that wasn't preachy and which was relevant. A good day took the kiddies to yoga right after mass, and mum and dad home to make plans for the rest of the day. A good day then picked up the kiddies after their yoga class and then went out for brunch/lunch and had chicken coriander that is consistently fantastic.
Then a good day dropped the kids off at Zia's, and drove to Niagara to get some wine. Wine that had to be tasted first of course, and then cases had to be bought. 30 Bench had a wine "event" where they're releasing some of their 2007's....and last year was a banner year in Niagara, so most of what we tasted was quite good. They also had a little pinot noir rose that will go nicely in the hot sun this summer, and we bought a case of that. Then over to Hidden Bench, where they were only pouring whites. The fume blanc from 2006 is excellent, and their estate riesling (also 2006) can sit for a bit but is nice. We did end up with a lot of white wine today, just because there aren't a lot of reds out this early in the summer.
Off to Organized Crime, where we were berated for having ruined our palates on all that heavy oaky phlagh...and where a pinot gris was surprisingly good (we were also slapped for turning up our noses at even tasting the stuff, never mind buying it) and the rose was again, quite nice.
Finally to Alvento, where friends of ours had visited the weekend before. Our friends are distinctive, not just because E is very small and S is quite a bit bigger than her, but because they were on about having come down to Niagara not just for the wine, but also to buy a new rabbit. They keep rabbits as pets, I see them as food; to each his own. Anyway, at Alvento their 2004 Elige was very harsh, but the 2005 was lovely, as was the viognier. We went to the back to sample the 2007's out of the barrels, and as expected, both the merlot and the cabernet franc were making sultry promises for later. The chardonnay out of the barrel was still carbonated, so a bit like champagne, hadn't even been filtered yet.
After that, we'd tasted about 15 wines and still had to drive 1.5h home, so left with our car full. Kids were next door at Zio's, we ordered pizza and discussed with Big One why some kids turn out okay and some have a lot more difficulty. She is a good conversationalist, especially when it comes to discussing the behaviour of others. The pizza was definitely the low point of the day.
A good day makes the rest of the week easier to face.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Tomorrow Came and Went, and I Worked Through It
Babies, that little boy birthday party? Eventually went well. How badly can a party with ten six-year olds go? Really, why would I worry about such an event?
Well, probably because one little boy was coming from another city and didn't know the others. One little boy was a younger cousin with a penchant for digging bugs. One little boy doesn't talk much, and eats less, and after a while I was afraid he was going to fall over but he soldiered on and didn't complain. And one little boy, whose mumma also attended the party, has Aspberger's syndrome.
Obviously then, no need to be concerned. Just a normal group of six-year old boys. None of them ate anything except carrots and cake and ice cream, and they drank about 50 litres of juice and water. They were uninterested in hot dogs! Six-year old boys who'd been running around a soccer field for an hour did not want hot dogs! what is this world coming to?
Really though, it was fine. Better in fact, than most adult parties could ever go.
*****
I haven't posted for a while because I have been working all the time, and when I'm not working I'm ferrying children around to soccer, doing volunteer work, attending a meeting of some kind, or going to yoga class, which is actually an okay thing to do. Mostly though, I've been working.
Crystallographers collect data that sometimes isn't used for years by the researchers. Some people grow crystals and get all excited about a structure, but they don't publish the paper that contains the structural data for another two years, maybe three, maybe five. Sometimes things get published very quickly, sometimes data is critical for a conference presentation, sometimes it's important for tenure, promotion, whatever. Sometimes it's not.
Some datasets are easy to solve and fall out very quickly, and can be sent off to their owners for future use. ... whenever that might be. Some are very difficult, either because they're twinned (that is, because there are two interpenetrating repeat lattices in the same crystal, and we have to deconvolute the data. While this has become more routine, it is still not always a straightforward process.) or because the crystals aren't physically single, and instead there's a main crystal and maybe a couple, or more, "friends" hanging around. These multiple crystals are more difficult to solve, not because we can't get the structure of the molecule, but because we can. We can solve the structure, but it's not a pretty picture, and the synthetic chemists who've made the compound always want the data to be better than it can possibly be.
It takes a long time to do this.
It used to be that we could collect data on about 50 crystals a year, and solve the data fully for publication. During my crystallographic lifetime we've gone from that 50 datasets a year to as many as 500, due to advances in technology both in detectors and in optimization of data collection strategies. I don't know what any one crystallographer would do with 500 datasets a year, because right now between two of us we're having enough trouble solving 200 per year. People submit crystals to us that anyone else would turn away, and why? because my boss can almost always solve them. I can usually crawl through a difficult dataset but it is agony to find the right pathway to a solution.
Solving difficult crystallographic data is what we do. Of course my boss does all kinds of other things, leaving him little in the way of spare time to carry out the work that sometimes needs his attention. I can handle most of it, but not all of it. I don't work in the X-ray diffraction area full time, to start with, and even if I did, even full time isn't enough time.
I've been working at night, reading emails and then "just taking a quick look" at data before I go to bed...and then I don't go to bed for another two hours or more. My problem is not that I have difficulty sleeping, but rather that I don't go to bed. Tired and bad-tempered, I've been waking up thinking about how to solve various small problems with data, and I do not like this. I walked away from being a tenured associate professor because I no longer wanted to be defined by my work. I didn't want to wake up thinking about how to solve x, y or z work issues, because really? I didn't think they were all that important. I still don't, and yet, here I am, dreaming about work so that I can fix problems. Yeesh. Good thing it's not a permanent gig.
Well, probably because one little boy was coming from another city and didn't know the others. One little boy was a younger cousin with a penchant for digging bugs. One little boy doesn't talk much, and eats less, and after a while I was afraid he was going to fall over but he soldiered on and didn't complain. And one little boy, whose mumma also attended the party, has Aspberger's syndrome.
Obviously then, no need to be concerned. Just a normal group of six-year old boys. None of them ate anything except carrots and cake and ice cream, and they drank about 50 litres of juice and water. They were uninterested in hot dogs! Six-year old boys who'd been running around a soccer field for an hour did not want hot dogs! what is this world coming to?
Really though, it was fine. Better in fact, than most adult parties could ever go.
*****
I haven't posted for a while because I have been working all the time, and when I'm not working I'm ferrying children around to soccer, doing volunteer work, attending a meeting of some kind, or going to yoga class, which is actually an okay thing to do. Mostly though, I've been working.
Crystallographers collect data that sometimes isn't used for years by the researchers. Some people grow crystals and get all excited about a structure, but they don't publish the paper that contains the structural data for another two years, maybe three, maybe five. Sometimes things get published very quickly, sometimes data is critical for a conference presentation, sometimes it's important for tenure, promotion, whatever. Sometimes it's not.
Some datasets are easy to solve and fall out very quickly, and can be sent off to their owners for future use. ... whenever that might be. Some are very difficult, either because they're twinned (that is, because there are two interpenetrating repeat lattices in the same crystal, and we have to deconvolute the data. While this has become more routine, it is still not always a straightforward process.) or because the crystals aren't physically single, and instead there's a main crystal and maybe a couple, or more, "friends" hanging around. These multiple crystals are more difficult to solve, not because we can't get the structure of the molecule, but because we can. We can solve the structure, but it's not a pretty picture, and the synthetic chemists who've made the compound always want the data to be better than it can possibly be.
It takes a long time to do this.
It used to be that we could collect data on about 50 crystals a year, and solve the data fully for publication. During my crystallographic lifetime we've gone from that 50 datasets a year to as many as 500, due to advances in technology both in detectors and in optimization of data collection strategies. I don't know what any one crystallographer would do with 500 datasets a year, because right now between two of us we're having enough trouble solving 200 per year. People submit crystals to us that anyone else would turn away, and why? because my boss can almost always solve them. I can usually crawl through a difficult dataset but it is agony to find the right pathway to a solution.
Solving difficult crystallographic data is what we do. Of course my boss does all kinds of other things, leaving him little in the way of spare time to carry out the work that sometimes needs his attention. I can handle most of it, but not all of it. I don't work in the X-ray diffraction area full time, to start with, and even if I did, even full time isn't enough time.
I've been working at night, reading emails and then "just taking a quick look" at data before I go to bed...and then I don't go to bed for another two hours or more. My problem is not that I have difficulty sleeping, but rather that I don't go to bed. Tired and bad-tempered, I've been waking up thinking about how to solve various small problems with data, and I do not like this. I walked away from being a tenured associate professor because I no longer wanted to be defined by my work. I didn't want to wake up thinking about how to solve x, y or z work issues, because really? I didn't think they were all that important. I still don't, and yet, here I am, dreaming about work so that I can fix problems. Yeesh. Good thing it's not a permanent gig.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Tomorrow Never Comes
Yes, I said I would finish that post the other day, "tomorrow". I just read it over, it was done. There was nothing else to write, I was just so exhausted that I thought I had more to say. I didn't, and I don't have a lot now. I managed to finish all the data crunching, as of about 11:30 last night. Tuesday night was very very late, but I got a lot done.
I think I was going to follow up on the idea that a tenure application should not be any secret to the candidate. It wasn't, but things were left to the last minute. I hope it goes well, tenure is so scary...
I am trying to figure out what to do at this birthday party this weekend....six little boys at my house, one with Aspberger's syndrome...the mumma is coming too. Should be interesting. If I don't totally freak out for this thing, I'll be amazed.
c'est tout. Believe it or not I'm a bit sleepy.
I think I was going to follow up on the idea that a tenure application should not be any secret to the candidate. It wasn't, but things were left to the last minute. I hope it goes well, tenure is so scary...
I am trying to figure out what to do at this birthday party this weekend....six little boys at my house, one with Aspberger's syndrome...the mumma is coming too. Should be interesting. If I don't totally freak out for this thing, I'll be amazed.
c'est tout. Believe it or not I'm a bit sleepy.
Monday, June 9, 2008
When Being Staff Sucks
Today was a terrible no good very bad day.
The diffractometer died, just as I got everything set up and ready to go. Not sure what happened because on the APEX II system I don't know how to turn on the generator. I think that the stuff I need to get at is behind a big metal panel, but you have to understand my hesitation with opening up a diffractometer. High voltage (cue Dirty Deeds by ACDC) and all that. When the boss is away, everything breaks. I'm blaming the weather, as the humidity has been very high for the last week, and the temperature has soared. The diffractometer room is mostly climate-controlled, but it is not immune to thunder and lightning. A UPS (uninterrupted power source, not a handsome man in a brown uniform, although that might help too) would be useful, but a) they are expensive and b) we'd need three of them, and even then it might not cover all the bases.
So that was one thing.
The other thing is missing data and data that will not solve well. Let's say that young Professor X needs to apply for tenure this spring, and naturally he has several papers to write and submit to reputable journals before his full application goes out. I have no feeling one way or the other as to whether Professor X should get tenure, because I haven't seen his application and I don't know what all is in it. I do know that when Professor X emails me on a Friday night about data from six structures, that his chances of getting anything from me are slim and none until Monday. This is especially true because it was the Little One's birthday this past weekend, and he is a demanding little six-year-old. [aside: Party next weekend, because LO didn't hand out the invitations on time for this past weekend. Fine with me, gives me more time to figure out how to feed the little darlings something other than hot dogs.]
Six datasets I needed. Eight if you count the two I had to finish up on my own. The six datasets? three are available, but not all the files. Three I could not lay my hands on at all. We are in some kind of trouble, but I don't even know what kind of trouble that is yet. I do know that by the end of the day I nearly broke down, worried about putting the tenure application together.
Having applied for tenure I know that it's very scary. I also know that submitting papers is very scary, which is why Prof X hasn't done it up until now. It's hard to listen to people criticize the work that you've practically killed yourself to produce.
It's very difficult, but at the same time? it's not like the application is a secret to the candidate.
And I'm so sorry, I'd love to finish this but I'm exhausted and going to bed. I will finish it tomorrow.
The diffractometer died, just as I got everything set up and ready to go. Not sure what happened because on the APEX II system I don't know how to turn on the generator. I think that the stuff I need to get at is behind a big metal panel, but you have to understand my hesitation with opening up a diffractometer. High voltage (cue Dirty Deeds by ACDC) and all that. When the boss is away, everything breaks. I'm blaming the weather, as the humidity has been very high for the last week, and the temperature has soared. The diffractometer room is mostly climate-controlled, but it is not immune to thunder and lightning. A UPS (uninterrupted power source, not a handsome man in a brown uniform, although that might help too) would be useful, but a) they are expensive and b) we'd need three of them, and even then it might not cover all the bases.
So that was one thing.
The other thing is missing data and data that will not solve well. Let's say that young Professor X needs to apply for tenure this spring, and naturally he has several papers to write and submit to reputable journals before his full application goes out. I have no feeling one way or the other as to whether Professor X should get tenure, because I haven't seen his application and I don't know what all is in it. I do know that when Professor X emails me on a Friday night about data from six structures, that his chances of getting anything from me are slim and none until Monday. This is especially true because it was the Little One's birthday this past weekend, and he is a demanding little six-year-old. [aside: Party next weekend, because LO didn't hand out the invitations on time for this past weekend. Fine with me, gives me more time to figure out how to feed the little darlings something other than hot dogs.]
Six datasets I needed. Eight if you count the two I had to finish up on my own. The six datasets? three are available, but not all the files. Three I could not lay my hands on at all. We are in some kind of trouble, but I don't even know what kind of trouble that is yet. I do know that by the end of the day I nearly broke down, worried about putting the tenure application together.
Having applied for tenure I know that it's very scary. I also know that submitting papers is very scary, which is why Prof X hasn't done it up until now. It's hard to listen to people criticize the work that you've practically killed yourself to produce.
It's very difficult, but at the same time? it's not like the application is a secret to the candidate.
And I'm so sorry, I'd love to finish this but I'm exhausted and going to bed. I will finish it tomorrow.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Science Boyz
On Sunday, on Roger's Cable channel, we can watch a lecture from the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo. It's on right before Family Guy, so you know we're all glued to the screen. We have seen lectures on quantum computing, probabilities and particle physics, to name a few topics. The public lectures are all geared for actual people, albeit those with some kind of science background. I don't know if I could actually sit through an entire lecture without becoming distracted and pulling all my fingernails off, but watching it on television with the occasional switch to something a little easier on the brain (Family Guy) is okay.
What is insane is that even the nerdiest, pants-pulled-up past the actual waist, pocket-protecting human calculator guy eventually starts to look pretty damn sexy when he's throwing all these esoteric theories around like so many grocery list items.
Almost everyone at the Perimeter Institute is a man, except for one woman faculty member in the Quantum Gravity department. Many, if not all (I haven't double-checked this) are white, or variations on white. There are some female postdocs and grad students, but not many. Overwhelmingly male. I have never seen a woman give one of the public tv lectures, but I don't watch every one of them.
The PI is a privately-funded place where people go and just do research. No teaching, although several faculty are affiliated with the University of Waterloo and have graduate students that way. On the home page there's an announcement that Mike Lazaridis (founder of PI) has just donated another $50 million to the institute, bringing his total personal contribution to $150million. Mike Lazaridis is also the founder and president of Research in Motion...yes, the people who bring you the Blackberry. Crackberry. He appears to have a lot of money.
(Detroit just won the Stanley Cup. It appears that Gary Bettman is as hated in Pittsburgh as he is everywhere else. Nice to see that kind of consistency.)
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to point out that the PI exists and that these smart boys all start to look really handsome when they're up on a stage using an overhead projector to explain the unification of Einstein's relativity with quantum theory. To point out also that there is a paucity of the female species at PI, and while that could be bothersome, it isn't particularly. Theoretical physics is hard, Barbie. Let's just go and do some chemistry instead.
What is insane is that even the nerdiest, pants-pulled-up past the actual waist, pocket-protecting human calculator guy eventually starts to look pretty damn sexy when he's throwing all these esoteric theories around like so many grocery list items.
Almost everyone at the Perimeter Institute is a man, except for one woman faculty member in the Quantum Gravity department. Many, if not all (I haven't double-checked this) are white, or variations on white. There are some female postdocs and grad students, but not many. Overwhelmingly male. I have never seen a woman give one of the public tv lectures, but I don't watch every one of them.
The PI is a privately-funded place where people go and just do research. No teaching, although several faculty are affiliated with the University of Waterloo and have graduate students that way. On the home page there's an announcement that Mike Lazaridis (founder of PI) has just donated another $50 million to the institute, bringing his total personal contribution to $150million. Mike Lazaridis is also the founder and president of Research in Motion...yes, the people who bring you the Blackberry. Crackberry. He appears to have a lot of money.
(Detroit just won the Stanley Cup. It appears that Gary Bettman is as hated in Pittsburgh as he is everywhere else. Nice to see that kind of consistency.)
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to point out that the PI exists and that these smart boys all start to look really handsome when they're up on a stage using an overhead projector to explain the unification of Einstein's relativity with quantum theory. To point out also that there is a paucity of the female species at PI, and while that could be bothersome, it isn't particularly. Theoretical physics is hard, Barbie. Let's just go and do some chemistry instead.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Random Randomness
Driving into work today, it hit me: the truth about music is that:
Bands named after cities suck.
Face it: Boston, Chicago, Kansas. I don't mind these places to visit, I've been to all of them, but agh!! their music!! is terrible!!
****
Today was the first day of the food out of the yard season, and rhubarb crisp was eaten for dessert at our house. The beans and peas and swiss chard are making their debut, the zucchini and peppers and garlic chives and onions and tomato plants are all very happy.
I have planted pasta sauce.
****
At a party recently, someone asked me what I do. Seeing as I was standing next to the chair of the department, I said well, essentially, I save his (pointing to the chair) ass. And I'm not bitter about it.
****
I am planning another birthday party for the Little One this coming weekend. He will be six years old, and we will have a houseful of little boys for a Saturday afternoon. I'm fine. Everything is fine. No need to panic. We have a soccer field across the street, and I will toss a ball at them and make them run for two hours before I feed them. It'll be great.
It better bloody not rain.
****
Pittsburgh!! you've got 3:36 left in the first overtime period! skate already! score, would ya? and somebody tell your coach that Sidney Crosby will have a heart attack if he doesn't get a chance to catch his breath and take a break!
****
We were at the wedding of Hub's nephew on the weekend. The hair tells it all, as BF1 said to me. Oh the hair! between the giant, curly heads and the mullets, I could have sworn it was 1980. Remarkable.
The food was pretty spectacular though. Italian weddings and three hours of dinner....and still, Hub's comment after he read the menu:
What? No fish?
****
Due to the afore-mentioned wedding, we had to download this week's episode of BG. No captions means I only heard about 1/3 of the whole show. I'll have to watch the thing a few more times before Friday night so I'm totally up to speed.
****
I think that about wraps it up. No knitting to report, I'm reading The Ghost Map and learning everything I ever wanted to, and more, about cholera. Previously read The End of the Alphabet, after slogging through Why I am a Catholic by Gary Wills. I'm being generous when I say slogging; that was some slow read....I don't have a good link for this book. Suffice to say it's informative about church history, it degrades a bit when he gets caught up in his issues with the papacy, and it's very academic. It is not light reading.
The End of the Alphabet got mixed reviews. The publisher thinks it's a beautiful story, ethereal...and it is, if you read it that way. If you read it and expect it to be more tender, more real, more something that you're not finding, then it's going to disappoint you. It's a short novel, almost a novella, and it survives on a paucity of words. I liked it quite a bit.
****
Now I am done for the day. I just saw a centipede scamper across the floor. They totally squick me out and I am not a bit fond of them, even though I know that they don't actually do anything except hang out, look ugly, and move fast. They eat other bugs. We have an old house, there's no way to get rid of the garden variety bug, but man, I do not like those ones.
Bands named after cities suck.
Face it: Boston, Chicago, Kansas. I don't mind these places to visit, I've been to all of them, but agh!! their music!! is terrible!!
****
Today was the first day of the food out of the yard season, and rhubarb crisp was eaten for dessert at our house. The beans and peas and swiss chard are making their debut, the zucchini and peppers and garlic chives and onions and tomato plants are all very happy.
I have planted pasta sauce.
****
At a party recently, someone asked me what I do. Seeing as I was standing next to the chair of the department, I said well, essentially, I save his (pointing to the chair) ass. And I'm not bitter about it.
****
I am planning another birthday party for the Little One this coming weekend. He will be six years old, and we will have a houseful of little boys for a Saturday afternoon. I'm fine. Everything is fine. No need to panic. We have a soccer field across the street, and I will toss a ball at them and make them run for two hours before I feed them. It'll be great.
It better bloody not rain.
****
Pittsburgh!! you've got 3:36 left in the first overtime period! skate already! score, would ya? and somebody tell your coach that Sidney Crosby will have a heart attack if he doesn't get a chance to catch his breath and take a break!
****
We were at the wedding of Hub's nephew on the weekend. The hair tells it all, as BF1 said to me. Oh the hair! between the giant, curly heads and the mullets, I could have sworn it was 1980. Remarkable.
The food was pretty spectacular though. Italian weddings and three hours of dinner....and still, Hub's comment after he read the menu:
What? No fish?
****
Due to the afore-mentioned wedding, we had to download this week's episode of BG. No captions means I only heard about 1/3 of the whole show. I'll have to watch the thing a few more times before Friday night so I'm totally up to speed.
****
I think that about wraps it up. No knitting to report, I'm reading The Ghost Map and learning everything I ever wanted to, and more, about cholera. Previously read The End of the Alphabet, after slogging through Why I am a Catholic by Gary Wills. I'm being generous when I say slogging; that was some slow read....I don't have a good link for this book. Suffice to say it's informative about church history, it degrades a bit when he gets caught up in his issues with the papacy, and it's very academic. It is not light reading.
The End of the Alphabet got mixed reviews. The publisher thinks it's a beautiful story, ethereal...and it is, if you read it that way. If you read it and expect it to be more tender, more real, more something that you're not finding, then it's going to disappoint you. It's a short novel, almost a novella, and it survives on a paucity of words. I liked it quite a bit.
****
Now I am done for the day. I just saw a centipede scamper across the floor. They totally squick me out and I am not a bit fond of them, even though I know that they don't actually do anything except hang out, look ugly, and move fast. They eat other bugs. We have an old house, there's no way to get rid of the garden variety bug, but man, I do not like those ones.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
