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Back in August my boss hired two more assistants for the lab. This was very welcome because in addition to having some help with the numerous projects on which I've been working alone for the past nine months, this meant that someone else was going to take over making fly food. So I spent the past two months training the new minions for all of the various tasks they would perform. One minion was sent off to work on finishing up The Unending Project of Doom, and the other minion worked with me. My minion was the one taking over the fly food duties.
Unfortunately, she quit. Her last day was today. When dealing with rejection, I find it hard to not look back and try to identify things that I might have done wrong. Did I overwhelm her with too much too soon? Was it the fly food? Was it because I repeatedly referred to her as "my minion," to her face?
Now I must begin the arduous task of raising a new minion. It was really nice that the previous minion was able to start in August, because that allowed me to spend two 40 hour weeks training her. Now I'm left with 15 hours a week, whenever our schedules align. And really, when it gets down to it, I'm just not sure if I have room yet in my heart for a replacement minion.
Posted at: 21:46
[path: /work] permanent link
Starting Monday we're going to participate in a program through which we will host two teachers from smaller Kansas City middle schools and show them how we do science. I'm pretty excited about this, but there are a few things that give me pause.
My boss is out of town all next week, so it falls to me to introduce these folks to all of the research projects we have going. While I feel pretty confidant in my understanding of what we do, I'm sure they'll find questions to ask that I'll have no answer for and I'll end up looking like a jackass.
Also, they're going to be in the lab from 8:00 to 5:00 every day, while I'm only in the lab from 12:00 to 5:00 once classes begin on Tuesday...and most of the other research assistants in our lab graduated in May. So, I have a three hour block of time on Monday, after their orientation, to teach them how to do enough tasks independently to fill four hours every day while I'm in class.
I spent hours today printing and collating lab protocols as well as a number of journal articles published by our lab and other related labs. I know that if I showed up on my first day and was handed a giant binder full of jargon I'd feel pretty fucking intimidated. I really hope I don't scare them off.
I want to assume that these teachers have either some collegiate background in biology, or at least a personal interest in the subject, since they volunteered for this program. They are getting paid for it, though, so I guess they could just view it as an easy second paycheck for the summer.
There's this woman who proselytizes for a program for science and math majors to expedite the process of getting qualifications to teach K-12. She says that there's a dire need for people who are experienced scientists and mathematicians to teach at that level. This seems like a really noble goal, since science literacy in this country seems abysmal, but I just can't see myself teaching middle or high school. I remember what I thought of my teachers back then, and the prospect of putting up with little shits like my younger self for $30K a year is not very appealing.
So, yeah, I hope my new friends are cool.
Posted at: 20:41
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After deleting all of my previous entries from the bad, old, wordpress days I had resolved to not write anything about my job. While some people would have me believe my work stories were my most entertaining, I found the practice a bit worrying for several reasons. The first is entirely caused by my inflated sense of self-worth: I worry that I will write something that is unintenionally scandalous that will get noticed and bring shame and embarassment down first upon the nice people who give me money and then invariably upon myself.
The second can be explained by my vanity: going to the trouble of writing something and then not shamelessly self-promoting it? You clearly don't know me very well. So what I ran into at my last job was that I would write something obliquely about a co-worker or a call that I found frustrating, and then I'd pass the link around to my friends at work. Pretty much every story that I have to tell is borne from my desire to share how ridiculous people can be. The problem was that I didn't really know how wide my audience was among my co-workers so when something appropriately mockable occured I was unsure whether I could sling arrows securely protected by a veil of passive-aggressiveness.
Related to the first point is also the fact that I seem to recall seeing a sub-heading in the employee handbook that advised against blogging. I must consider that warning means that we shouldn't publish anything about the company because it could be misconstrued as being the ruling opinion of the company at large, which is certainly not how I am trying to present myself.
There we have three very compelling reasons to completely steer clear of posting anything to the internet that is even remotely connected to my place of employment. This is problematic, however, because living at home and saving money to finish my degree hardly make for scintillating conversation. I just can't seem to get very passionate about decrying the people I encounter in the infrequent errands and dinner dates that fill the time between work and sleep. These people are rarely ridiculous at all, they're just shopping or lazilly performing their own simple, unfulfilling jobs.
So, in the interest of living a shame-free, drama-free, and continually employed life, I am not going to write anything specific about my job. Further, I will not pass this along to anyone at work. I also ask that once I finally add the ability to leave comments that any commenters who know me personally please respect this and not identify the company that pays my bills.
With all of that said, I was talking to Justin last night and he reminded me of a story that I told him a few months ago that I thought was worthy of a few paragraphs of melodramatic buildup.
I was speaking with an older gentlemen who had just recently purchased one of our products. As is common for the neophyte, he wanted to cut his teeth on something he knew: setting the device to his home. I held his hand through this process for about twenty minutes or so and I was getting ready to end the call. He said that he just needed one more thing, one last bit of help to satisfy him. He wanted to change the name of this label he created to "home." So I show him how to bring up the keyboard and change the name of the label, when he floors me with the following exchange:
And that was good enough for me!Him: Oh! I misspelled it! It says "Iome."
Me: That's okay, just use the left arrow button to get back to the first character so we can change it.
Him: *muttering incoherently to himself for about a full minute* Oh! Okay, I got it. *begins to read the alphabet to me as he is cycling down through the letters* I, J, K, L, M...okay, I got it!
Me: *shaken, struggling between wanting to set this right and wanting to not talk to this man ever again* I'm sorry, I'm pretty sure that was an "N." *internally: GOD DAMMIT WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME*
Him: What? No, it says "Home," just like I wanted!
Posted at: 21:32
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I know I've bitched a lot about work, but here goes again:
Background: We're setting up an e-mail account in Outlook Express
Caller: It says "Display name"
Me: This is where you enter your name as you want it to be displayed when you send mail to people
Caller: So I want it to be [caller's name].com?
Me: No, you probably just want to put your name there, this is how people will know that the e-mail you send them is from you.
Caller: *long, long, long pause, peppered with loud, melodramatic sighing, and sporatic, slow typing*
Me: *muted sound of me bashing my head against my desk*
Caller: Okay, what now?
Me: You entered your name?
Caller: Yes.
Me: Okay, click on the "Next" button.
Caller: "Next?"
Me: Yes.
Caller: Click on it?
Me: Yes, please.
Caller: Okay.
Me: Okay. Now, you're going to enter your email address, please enter [his email address].
Caller: ...so this is where I do the shift thing?
Me: Yes, the @ is "shift-2."
Caller: *the slowest typing I've ever heard, seriously like 3 whole minutes passed here*
Caller: I'm sorry, I not very good at this.
Me: That's okay. If you've got the e-mail address entered, please click next.
Caller: Click next?
Me: Yes, please.
Caller: Okay, "my incoming mail server is a POP3 server?"
Me: Yes, please click in the entry field and enter [incoming mail server]
Caller: Click it?
Me: Yes please.
Caller: Nothing happens.
Me: Please click in the field marked "My incoming mail server:" and type [incoming mail server]
Caller: Nothing happens.
Me: Nothing happens when you click in the white field, you don't see a flashing cursor?
Caller: Yes, I see a flashing cursor.
Me: Please type [incoming mail server]
...
And so on.
God help me. Fucking AOL expatriates.
Posted at: 22:00
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Should all people be allowed internet access?
I just got done speaking with a gentleman for 30 minutes about his new computer, internet access, and e-mail. He's one of those types that feels compelled to interrupt constantly to mention, again, that he knows nothing about computers. They're so mystified by computers, in fact, that they can't follow simple instructions. I had to spend five minutes helping him find the delete key on the keyboard, amid his constant protests of "There ain't no delete key on mah keyboard." Calmly as I can: "Sir, the delete key is most likely just to the right of the backspace key, underneath the insert key."
I don't care that you don't know anything about computers. That's why I'm here, that's why they pay me. However I can't do my job if you can't function as a medium and relay the evidence of your OWN FUCKING EYES.
So I wonder, what do we, as a cyber-society, gain from this new member? Someone who can't read the keys on his keyboard. Someone who has no intention of learning anything about his box, for whom the PC is an ebay terminal. Hard to imagine that in a few hours, his PC will serve as a zombie for some worm, serving it to the rest of the internet at large.
Maybe there should be some sort of certification required for internet access. I know this seems ridiculously elitist, which it is, but bear with me. In order to be able to operate a car, you're required to be certified by the government. One reason for this is that when you're behind the wheel, you're steering a monstrous weapon down through heavy traffic. You have the potential to do a lot of damage. I know as I type this that I'm reaching, but connecting a WinXP pc to a cable modem also carries the potential to do damage. Unless it is thoroughly secured by OS updates, a firewall of somesort, it only takes a few minutes for the pc to get infected by some kind of trojan that will in turn launch attacks against similarly unsecured boxes, forming a vast, DDoS army. There's only so much that the ISP can do. We can inform you about PC security, provide documentation, even provide AV software, but unless the customer actually installs, upgrades, and runs this software, unless they keep the OS up-to-date, and keep abreast of security issues, education is in vain.
I know that this is a problem largely caused by security exploits in Microsoft OSs, but Windows is not the only vulnerable OS. We've had some calls from people running Mac OSX who are infected with similar worms, which will most likely burn like wildfire through the security un-conscious Apple community.
I feel that it's important to note that I know that no one is born with PC savvy. I don't expect everyone that I speak with to be an expert, I don't scoff at minor mistakes in terminology and laugh in their face. The people in question here are those that refuse to learn, refuse to accept that there is any kind of discernable pattern or logic with their computer...people that feel that it is powered by some kind of magic, and who only learn to ape the incantations necessary to access email and ebay.
So, I guess the question is this: Is the money that fools will pay for a piece of equipment they refuse to understand, and the money they will routinely pay to repair this equipment when it fails through their negligence, worth the network congestion their zombie boxes cause?
Posted at: 22:00
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I'd like to start off today's discussion of my co-workers, and work environment with the following quote:
"Seriously, and without euphemism, fish tacos are really good."
--Kristin
So, for some reason Steve has been googling information about various animals for the past hour, and sharing this information with those of us around him. This has spurred some of the most ridiculous conversation I've had the pleasure of witnessing in some time. For example, Steve found that the platypus is poisonous, and has been ranting about it for some time. Suddenly, Brad appears over the cube-wall and lets loose the following:
"You know what mammal's not poisonous? The hippo. Hippos are awesome!"
...
I really have nothing to add to this.
Posted at: 22:00
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