meganursula | Entries tagged with work

It is true that you are feeling overwhelmed, and that the work you have to do is less interesting than some of the other projects. Still, procrastinating it for days on end is NOT GOING TO HELP!!!

I have been at my job since May. I remain honored and thankful that I get to work at this company. I think it is an awfully lucky and generous thing that I am able to work at a technical job, maybe even a research-ish job, on a part time basis. I truly appreciate the fact that i can challenge my brain, and learn something new, and get some exposure outside the home, and yet, i still get my kids every afternoon and have some time to give them a sense of home and peace. I respect my boss for his work ethic, and for the fact that he has been extremely consistent about developing a work space that respects every single employee. He is a smart dude, and I appreciate being able to learn from him.

At the same time, the job is approaching, well, work. There are niggling things - like the morning meetings (which i think could be done via chat often, or by reading the email i send with figures to show results - i do not like having to recap the summary from the last afternoon), or the fact that testing a new idea still takes time (and time i spend waiting derails me). There are bigger things - like my consistent doubts about my ability to actually make a contribution, or that William complains a lot about the length of his school days.

My company is research-ish in that my work, right now, looks a lot like the work I was doing for APL. I am trying to understand technology and figure out how to improve it and make it useful. My role in the company is basically egg-head; i worry about the theory of what we do and less about the details of implementation. I am a bit frustrated with the fact that we haven't really stuck to a path towards an application. The one that we have been primarily pursuing doesn't appeal to me that much (and is at the point where there is a lot more in terms of implementation detail than theory), and i'm a little sad that we can't just provide machine learning for hire; worry about the theory and let other people worry about the implementation. Or at least stick to some of the applications that are more appealing to me.

I suppose, if i am going to be working, I end up thinking this is a good place for me. I have learned a lot, and i will continue to learn a lot. I do truly appreciate the part-time option. I feel like it is a gift that i have a more recent thing on my resume, and that it expands my understanding of the art beyond my single (behind the times) shop.

I wish i could break through the barrier of feeling like my computer chops are so limiting. We have another employee who is sort of a jack-of-all-trades, and it remains easier to let him take care of all that other plumbing type of stuff. And yet, and yet its too limiting to feel like i can't just dig in there and modify things at will. I have been trying to make myself do it suck it up and jump in, but it is very hard for me.
There are days that i just want to quit. If i quit now i haven't screwed up entirely yet, i don't hate myself yet, i can leave before things get that bad.

And there are days that I just wonder what i'm doing leaving my kids at home. William, while he always seems happy at school and seems to benefit from some of the exposure, doesn't love it and I wonder if i shouldn't be keeping him at home now. Marie is so small, and while i know she is home and safe, it pains me to leave her every day and to miss out on some of her funny little joyfulness. Madeleine is off doing her own thing during the day, so i don't feel quite like i'm stealing from her, but i do know that the more things are on my plate the less energy i have for everyone, and she still deserves all the energy.
There are days that I just want to be able to stay home, get the house clean, cook healthy dinners, take my kids on field trips, maybe go for the occasional run...

In the end, I evaluate what i'm doing on a really regular basis. I end up staying at the job because I do enjoy working on the technology. I find it to be interesting and challenging and exciting. I also feel much safer having this job in my pocket, because every passing month of my unemployment made me worry more about my possibilities for re-entry, and worry about my solvency in the case where I needed to be a bigger provider in our family. I also end up staying at my job because I find that it decreases the sometimes overwhelming anxiety i had been feeling with. My best explanation is that having the job gives my brain something productive to spin on when it needs to spin, instead of leaving it to something terrifying. I love my kids and miss them daily, but i feel like I am healthier and more reliable right now than I was last spring.

On Tuesday i have a job interview. It is for a substitute teaching position, and i've made it past a phone screen. I think i might try not to think about it very much because I will get too scared to go through with it.

Truth be told, the substitute position is not what i want, i think. There is a part-time position at the same school next year that i think is a better fit for me. I am really nervous about the unpredictability of being called in for an unplanned absence, for any variety of classes. Part-time may be the best thing - it is a small number of hours (comparatively speaking) to start easing back into the work force. But it is predictable, making it so i can set myself up for the classes and get a babysitter, etc.

But even then, i'm terrified of it. I want to do it, because i don't want to find myself ten years from now in the same position i'm in now. But i am terrified of it.

Well, suck it up, i guess.

It is a big week, what with William's school, and the interview. And Madeleine has a five-year well child on Thursday.

I couldn't get William interested in getting a new lunch box for school. I thought maybe if we did some of the things we did for Madeleine in the beginning of her year maybe he would be excited about it, but he doesn't seem to be. He acknowledges that he'd like to play with their hard-hat, but i can't get much more of a reaction out of him. We have these good days. Days when he gets a lot of one-on-one attention. Today he spent long hours with Dad, and that always helps. I think it is encouraging in some ways, because it probably means he will get out of this really difficult stage. But i find it a bit demoralizing, because it also means that i am probably not doing the right things to help us have good days. I can give him one-on-one attention, like when i took him to the locks to watch boats the other day, and have a peaceful period. But somehow it still all ends in him kicking and hitting me instead of getting buckled into his car seat.

Both of my abstracts for the Apr. 20-submission JUA special issue were accepted. On balance, that is good.

There you go, the essence of research, is figuring out what questions a sponsor might ask about what you did, and making damned sure you could answer them during a presentation.

To take a red eye to DC the night before i have an all day and probably grueling meeting, right?
I just don't want to be gone any longer than necessary, but i think this might be NOT SMART.

http://www.andreaair.com/

That thing is super cool. I covet.

I should also order my plant shelves.

Also, we're back from our weekend at the fair and orchards of Spokane. It just hit me that i only have two more weeks before our demo in DC. *spaz*

Right now, on Weekday (KUOW) they are interviewing Gloria Steinem and Amy Richards about modern feminism. I am amazed at how what they are saying resonates with what i have been saying about the state of gender equality today. If only i had her facility with words, perhaps i could express these things in a more compelling way. I must say, i am quite pleased, too, because these people see the same problems that i see, and some how that justifies my sense of injustice. Its not just me feeling out of sorts, but, something that, at least some educated people, really do see as a societal issue.

If you'd like to know more about what i'm trying to say, go find my recent posts of women in the work place, and on motherhood.

One of the things that they talked about today, that really resonates with me, is that our society's balance of work/personal life is out of whack. Its out of whack for everyone - not just working moms. The imbalance punishes working moms more visibly because this group of people is not usually able to compromise on the personal to meet the work demands.

The goal should be that EVERY person has the ability to perform well and succeed in a career, as well as to pursue an outside interest. The goal should be that both fathers and mothers can be working parents, and have the same ability to work and support the house hold. When polled, usually both men and women agree with this concept, but progress towards the ideal is slow.

I also appreciated the comment that, while we see a lot more contribution to parenting by fathers today than we used to, this doesn't mean that it is an equal contribution. This really is my perception, but it is validating to hear someone studying the field agree with me.

Finally, i was interested in the comment that it shouldn't be either/or - you shouldn't have to be EITHER a stay-at-home-parent OR a fully engaged member of society. It is worth remembering, that even parents who choose not to earn money by working outside of the home can still be engaged members of society.

I'm not sure what i'm saying here, but, perhaps if you listen to the recording of this morning show you will also get something out of it.

at least i'm using python as my calculator, instead of Matlab.

I heard a horrible rumor that Matlab is going to prohibit all guis to people who aren't using their gui-interface. (E.g., if i do -nodesktop, i also don't get to plot.) I have to say, this would effectively make Matlab useless to me, as their gui doesn't play nice with linux, and using the software without plotting is just dumb. I wonder if it is true?

My friend Julia says this is good news:

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/women-faring-well-hiring-process-science-faculty-jobs-research-universities-21675.html

I am not so sure. It shows that there is still a real disparity between genders. What it implies is that this is a much more subtle and complex disparity than just blatant institutional sexism. The reason i find that depressing is that it is relatively easy to fight an outright attack on your gender, but very hard to fight the day to day subtleties of how genders are developed in society and how they interact.

(I imagine that the effects of racism are, at this point, quite similar. It is one thing to have laws that prohibit barring minorities from reading programs, for example. It is quite another thing to address the long standing cultural and societal practices that result in young minorities having less access to family-supported early education and literacy resources. In some sense, the gender issue seems easier to attack, because the genders are spread more evenly through society and different programs. Additionally, a lot of the society pressures on gender equality emerge in adulthood, instead of being present from birth. This makes it seem like it is easier for an individual to modify their own experience.)

I think about this sort of thing a lot, actually. I think about it because my experience as an expecting female is far different from my colleagues experience as an expecting male - mostly because the fact of being pregnant is much more demanding than the fact of watching your wife being pregnant. But also because, in my family, their is still a social expectation that the female take on the home-maker role. I don't think that Josh and i are particularly traditional, nor sexist. But because of who we are, we fall a bit into the roles of mom-home-maker, and dad-bread-winner. Add to this societal norms and training, and it is frustratingly hard to find a balance that makes me feel like i can actually pursue a career with any amount of seriousness.

I think about it, as well, because the role models that i am exposed to. I do see female professors and academics who can guide my path. But they are either non-family oriented, or have husbands that are able to do a more complete gender-role-swap than my family seems able to. I suppose the reason that departments with female heads have better success in promoting female employees is that the perception is that those female heads will be more open to creative work structures that allow the employees to deal with their dual roles as scientist and mom. I don't actually know if that is true, and i'm sure it is not always true (women can also fall into the camp of being more demanding and stricter than their male counterparts, probably to dispel the image of 'female').

What i do see, and have seen for a while, is that while the working world is an inflexible as it is towards work hours, length of work week, alternative job arrangements, etc., for both men and women, we are going to have this problem. In the best case i think you will find that, increasingly, men and women do their gender swap so that it is not assumed to be the female who is playing the complicated double role. But even then, i think one person is going to feel at a disadvantage when it comes to professional achievement, in the vast majority of cases. The ability to distribute the extra-career demands is just too difficult in a society where 50 hour work weeks, and dismissiveness towards family obligations are the norm.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/archives/167515.asp

is write software to help those guys determine where to go.

Being out of work (when one wants to be working) is an incredibly hard thing to do. Aside from the soul sucking drudgery of looking for a new job, the mental toll of being an involuntary non-wage-earner has lots of time to fester while you are sitting around aimlessly. Learning to fill that time in a way that you enjoy, and which is rewarding on your personal productivity scale is quite a challenge.

Actually, that latter is true even when you are not an involuntary non-wage-earner. I am continuously trying to develop the organizational and motivational skills required to feel productive when left up to my own devices. Its hard.

Just a thought about that.

I am thankful that my own job appears to be secure right now. In fact, this winter sees me ramping up my responsibilities, which is terrifying, but interesting and challenging as well. Thus far i am enjoying the new portions of my work.

In other news, my department at APL is currently looking to hire a bad-ass admin assistant. Said person will be active in grant writing and financial accounting as well as other administrative tasks. If you, or someone you know, is such a person, and wants to get a job in Seattle, let me know.

I enjoy being a part of academia. I like working on a university campus. I like having seminars every week, that i can choose to go to. I like the idea of being able to take a class. I like the vibrancy of the discussion. I like knowing that i'm surrounded by people who are smarter than i am. I like the feeling of a campus. I like the inevitable open space ('the mall' if you will). I like the near-by bookstores and libraries. I like the feeling of hope and passion. I like that people are simultaneously outrageous and utilitarian. I even like the nearby cafeteria cum convenience store.

It is, apparently, finals week. So my lunch time latte (this is a serious dietary effort, by the way, to inject some protein into my sugar consumption for the afternoon) has an extra shot (albeit decaf) free. I like that.

I like telling people that i work at a university. I like identifying as an academic. I feel comfortable here, in so many ways. It is a scary scary idea that some day it may not be true.

I think i should ride my bike less often, merely so that i can look more presentable at work more often. This isn't really a solution, but its the kind of thinking that may one day make bike-commuters-with-excess-cash happy:

http://gizmodo.com/5054819/cordarounds-dress-pants-hide-blindingly-bright-bike-reflectors

(so far my desire to bike has won over my desire to present, except in cases where i know i have an important requirement to interact with others.)

Question for object oriented gurus:

I am currently reviewing some code implementing a current standard of an algorithm i frequently use. (I want to examine some modifications to the algorithm, but, i need a good baseline to compare to.) In it we see something like:

struct velocity { int size; double v[D_max] };

There are a lot of these structs - position, quantum, etc.

Thing is, in my code, i generally declare
num_dim = n; // this is what they are using size for up above double position[num_dim]; double velocity[num_dim];

(quantum, for the record, appears to be taking the place of what i usually declare as a constant Eps, and is used to get around numerical issues when looking for zero.)

etc. I do not have additional structs. Thing is, i find all this structifying to be sort of pointless and irritating. Pointless because i do not know what the structs are adding to the code. Irritating because i think they add a level of obfuscation, rendering the code not only longer, but also much less readable.

My question - what, if anything, am i missing in this situation? I get, generally, what object oriented-ness does for you. But i haven't used it very much in the past 6 or so years. (Matlab's excuse for object oriented isn't worth bothering with.) Right now i find myself faced with a few examples of modern code that are object oriented up the ass, and it just seems like it all has been taken too far. If i give myself three months will i become a believer? Will i stop feeling like there should be some sort of natural progression through code and adapt to having objects interacting at will?

Are yunz sick of this yet?

Submitting my completed draft to my adviser around 3am. Today is all about implementing whatever edits she wants, and then, hoping that they are not too extensive, submitting it to my committee. (And adding two figures that currently have place holders because i didn't want to stay up late enough for all the data to generate.)

So i was feeling pretty good as i rode into work this morning

Got to work, my newly generated data is weird... doesn't match the preliminary results from yesterday. I'm not sure why.
AND, my submission to JGO was rejected.
AND, my adviser hasn't shown her head since Sunday, so i'm not sure where she is on all those edits.
AND, i still don't have a GSR.

On the up side, my sys-admin finally approved my matlab licensing this morning.

phhbbbt.

big) when i put my computer into hybernation, it doesn't appear to shutdown properly (eg., when it starts back up again i get the 'your computer shut down unexpectedly' messge. Is this normal?

small) can someone tell me how to get friggin file extensions to always show up? who ever thought it was a good idea to hide file extensions anyway?