I think I am done with this one. That's from two Pubski's ago. It was the right choice. Covid exposure happened on the business travel. One of those checklist days.
I cancelled some upcoming business travel and a annual friend get together in NYC due to Covid. I don't want to bring it home with me. It wasn't an easy decision, but it feels like the right one.
Remind me to never commit to speaking at a conference 3 months in advance ever again. In two weeks, I'm speaking at a single-track conference for public transport professionals. My talk is scheduled right after four senior executives and one well-respected academic have had their turn, and boy am I struggling with the fear of saying dumb shit in front of a very large group of people I respect. Whenever my mind wanders, it wanders to the talk. This Monday I finally locked in the topic, next week I need to submit my slides, so any advice beyond "stay true to yourself" is welcome. Besides the low-key anxiety, I do feel happy about finally getting back to connecting with people in my field again and having something to say to them. It's one of the things I didn't expect to miss the past year.
The best advice I ever received for giving talks is don't assume your audience knows a lot about your topic. Any academic field has minutiae that you come to forget is minutiae when you live it every day. Even someone in a closely related field may be totally oblivious to concepts that you see as mundane. So while I'm not suggesting you dumb anything down, I am suggesting that background and an emphasis on what you're talking about means are to be encouraged. My former boss, who gives dozens of invited lectures per year (at least before covid), used to always crib the marketing strategy of tell them what you're gonna tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them. Everyone in attendance, from the undergrads to the emeriti, will gladly trade a few minutes of review of things they already know for actually understanding what the fuck you're talking about.
Can confirm. I know stuff about casting. I have actually shown people all the stuff that goes into making a thing out of metal and the reaction is a blend of "wait wait wait what now?" and "holy fuck this is involved." That's just hobby-level bullshit I taught myself. Seven pieces to go.
Sounds like the people speaking before you will be "big picture" kind of talks. Future. Plans. Blue sky stuff. People will be tired of that. Get practical with your talk. Bring people back to earth, and think how to connect their big-picture ideas with your feet-on-the-ground viewpoint. It might be a real service to your audience, helping them draw the lines from Today to The Future.
The longer you practice a trade the less interest you have in Teh New Hotness. The longer you practice a trade the more likely you are to learn new things from people you interact with than you are from journals, news items, etc. I'ma guess you're ten years younger than anybody else at that conference. The easy move is to discuss how some new-school method or technology addresses an old-school problem, particularly as 95% of the technology exposure any seasoned professional is exposed to comes through marketing channels.
My work-contract is getting renegotiated in about 3 weeks. I've been preparing a little, by writing down what I would like to get, with my negotiable vs non-negotiable demands. I've also made a little list of things accomplished vs things I'd like to develop/improve in the near future. It's a little nerve-wracking because the hiring process was a bitch, and they made me wait crazy long before giving an answer. I don't want to be working in limbo past my contract until we agree to the new terms. I also want to be paid 25$/hour (vs my current 20$) - the salary I've asked for initially 6 months ago. I don't really want to leave for money affairs, since I actually don't really need the money. But I feel it's a question of respect and self worth. My side-gig literally doubled my salary to 50$/hour when I told them I was leaving. I know I do good work and it will be hard to find someone as competent and committed as I am. But it's also the only job I feel like doing at the moment, and 20$ is better than 0$. I think they know that, so I'm scared we'll end up in an ultimatum-type stuck negotiation situation. But time will tell! My cousin works in HR and has agreed to help me position myself the right way, and be proactive in my contract re-signing, and giving me ideas of "benefits" I could ask for to soften the blow. I guess I can agree to be paid less in exchange for a shitton of vacation time...
Man everyone at my new job is smarter than I am.
That's awesome! Plenty to learn and use to grow as an individual! I worked with a PhD who was terrible, and her replacement is a new grad with a BS. The replacement is way better because of how he works with a team. How you work with others is often more important than being "smart."
I had a second interview Monday with the full team I'd be working with if I'm offered the job. I think it went well. They said all the right things, and I think I gave the right impression. I looked at my current employer's Glass Door today, and the ratings are taking a dive. Partly because of me because I gave a genuine, neutral review, but there are others saying things like mine. My hopefully future employer is a slightly higher current score but not taking a dive.
today I learned that the crash test dummies covered XTC's "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" and for some reason it made me very sad. I love that song, and to hear it covered just didn't work for me. but I also learned that I've been wrong about a lyric for 29 years. I thought the song's lyrics were "any kind of love is love alright" which I kind of like more than the real lyric which is simply "any kind of love is alright" I'll still sing the extra words when I'm driving.
Ever listened to the Primus album, "Miscellaneous Debris"? Five cover songs including "Making Plans for Nigel", and they are all wonderful.
I’m close to a month into the new job and I still like it a lot. Things are going well. Also having no regrets about the move. Last time we moved, we had major remorse about where we ended up. Yet we still stayed there for like 5 years? Honestly this times things seems like an all-around improvement. Also enjoying city life quite a bit. I wasn’t sure I would actually like living in LA, but it’s pretty cool so far. My drive home takes me past Griffith park, so I can stop and job to Griffith Observatory on my way home when I feel like it. Pretty neat. Are people still doing Hubski music stuff? I have a track I’ve been thinking about getting people to add to.
As mentioned in chat, I am feeling very overwhelmed these days. Today is the one week anniversary of classes starting. And I've already had a ton of homework. One class alone has already had three assignments due, and they're incredibly poorly worded and confusing. Professor feels quite anal too so it's gotta be done very specifically. At least the shituation has allowed the class to bond so that's nice I guess? I'm terrible at programming. I've tried it before and it didn't work well. Well these days Epidemiology is a lot of SAS/R which is all programming. I'm stuck in the one online class section for that. I have yet to make it through an entire zoom meeting without it failing in some way. Video or audio cuts out or it kills the whole apartment internet. It makes learning the material I'm trash at impossible. Professor for that class is different than the in-person sections. Add/drop ends tonight at midnight so I've been refreshing the page constantly but nothing is opening up. I'm very not optimistic and I'm pretty sure I'll have to poorly teach myself programming this semester and hope that knowledge holds me through these next two years. It sucks the foundational course is such shit and I may be set up for failure this early. I talked to my advisors about it and they basically said tough shit. I know no one in the online class. Everyone I know has the in-person, so I don't even have them to lean on. Different homework and assignments in the classes. It's rough yo. Update: ya boi got into the Wednesday night in person class bless tf up
R wasn't the first programming language I learned, but successfully used this beginners course to get a gentle overview/tutorial on the basics nontheless. There are also full-fledged books available, like Hands-On Programming with R or R for Data Science, with the first one being more project-oriented though perhaps too much to start with. Finding resources isn't difficult, for sure, but I used those three to greater or lesser extent and figured them worth recommending. I'd be happy to help you if you're stuck or find something to be too much.
I convinced three people to get vaccinated. Dunno what happened, but I noticed people in general are finally listening to what I have to say instead of just assuming it can't be worth their time and dismissing it seemingly before I even stop talking. Then again, I gained a lot of bulk over the last year and a half, so maybe they're finally intimidated enough to stop treating me like that. Either way, fun. Some skills, apparently, just evaporate if left unpracticed. It's like my brain completely lost any juggle-related wiring and downgraded from casually dealing with four balls in high school to barely able to swap two. I found How to read a book by M.J. Adler while trawling card catalogues over weekend, and it's an honestly good guide for becoming a more demanding reader. I'm experimenting with some of the advice, like writing in my books as I read to see if it does anything (yes, I remember that post about reading with a pen), though it's still kind of a mental block against ruining it. I have some textbook on knot theory where the margins are filled with stuff that's simultaneously distractingly superficial and straight-up wrong half the time, and on a lowkey anxiety level I wouldn't want that to be the impression of me. Humorously, How to... dwells a lot and falls into reiterating same thing numerous times in slightly different contexts/complications, but I suppose it's a way of hammering the point home. Also while looking for books, I scored an eight volume, hardback series on painters, their works, and general art critique for a price of a sub sandwich. It was still in cellophane and the 'new book' smell is overwhelming despite them being about my age. The literal title would be White Man's Paintings (Malarstwo Białego Człowieka), and I'd probably leave it at that since there likely isn't a more idiomartic word for "Europe and northward of Panama." I'm in this shock-like state where time perception doesn't exist. It's usually preceeded by something bad, and having it as a standalone feeling of flow is very alien. Last time I was like that, my father died and the last three months were a blur. It's hard to disassociate the state and memory, especially when everything feels immensely absorbing.
Our patients and colleagues have moved from "I have a different opinion" to "I'm not going to discuss this" to just straight-up lying to us, fuck your consequences I gots my freedoms. Good friend of mine lost a family member not to COVID, but to an overwhelmed hospital that couldn't treat him properly because of too much COVID. Colleague is thinking of closing her facility, which has been open for 25 years, because she's got an entirely-vaccinated customer base (they're all military and have no choice in the matter) and two of her employees are Q. As of October 19, it's a gross misdemeanor for a healthcare facility to have unvaccinated employees or contractors. That's a year in jail and/or $10k in fines. She'd rather fold the practice than fight the war (yes she'd love to come down and deliver babies with us because we don't have to deal with this shit, we've got Brazilians with families full of dead people thanks to Bolsonaro this shit ain't no joke). Another colleague has been prescribing Ivermectin at 3x the therapeutic dose, 5x the therapeutic frequency, because "well there's this study." Which says "mainline Ivermectin for its anti-inflammatory properties if you're in the midst of a cytokine storm and about to die, it seems to cut mortality by 68%, what's the worst that could happen" not "megadose known teratogens as if they were fucking Vitamin C". We called three pharmacies to find out about side effects in pregnancy and all three volunteered that they're not filling Ivermectin prescriptions at the moment, they don't care if you have guinea worm it'll wait. It's like hydroxychloroquine a year ago - "Tough shit about your lupus we got freedom on the line here." We know nurses. They're now posting on FB about teenagers dying of COVID. I just finished Patrick Wyman's The Verge. He casually mentions that most of the innovations of the Renaissance were economic, and the driving force of that economic innovation was the massive redistribution of wealth brought about by the megadeath of the Bubonic Plague. Stands to reason; Tony Judt made the argument that the Long Boom was entirely due to the massive redistribution of wealth brought about by the Holocaust. Shit tons of death - - - shit tons of liquidity - - - shit tons of innovation - - - shit tons of upheaval - - - shit tons of death Black Death - - - Mercantile class - - - printing press and mercantilism - - - Protestant reformation - - - Thirty Years War Holocaust - - - Marshall Plan & Globalism - - - Space Race and the Internet - - - Facebook and Q-anon - - - ???
Capitalism survived the Economic Crisis of 2008 because everyone believed deeply in capitalism - hell, 95% of the central bank leaders in the Western World were Goldman Sachs alums. I think Xi wants Evergrande to be an example about the dangers of not living Confucianist Communism.
On Monday I have a preliminary interview for a job which, if successful, would require moving to Sydney for three years. The pay would be great, though, and my current role has been pretty idle since my old boss moved back to the states two months ago.
Ever since my rugby event, three weeks ago, I don't go out. I don't socialize. I stay at home and work, watch TV with my wife, walk my dog, water and trim my garden, play Fallout 76, and once in a while go to the dog park, where I keep distance from anyone else and conversation to a minimum. And now I have a head cold. Sheesh.