Wednesday, November 26, 2014

What's happening? (Don't worry it's all good)

I realized that I haven't been really taking part in the blogging community. To answer those who've emailed: everything is good. Sorry I've been vacant. I know you come here when you want useless news and sarcasm. And I've disappointed you.

So a few things have happened recently:

1. Gave a talk at soon-to-be-employer. I treated it like a recruiting/get-to-know me talk. This talk was attended by someone from another school, who then asked me to give two talks: one at his school and one at a conference. I agreed to both and requested vacation time at work to do so. By the way, I'm going to be soooooooooo ducking [sic] glad when I get to take off without asking for permission. Anyways, this took up some of my time and I think that the experience will make for a good post. So look out for that. It's funny how I could barely get any interest from schools when I was looking for a job and now several places want me to give talks.....about my industry work.

Taking the time off came at a bad time. A new medical device of mine I've been working on is reaching full prototype level and that means I have to test the crap out of it. This has required a ton of travel and testing...while also trying to balance the unpaid academic duties.  The travel had been so busy to the point where I do a study, have to process data on the plane while traveling to the next place, then process that data on a plane to present the results. Then rinse and repeat. Actually...no rinsing. Just repeating. I've slept in hotels more than my home the past few months and I've slept on a plane for more than hotels for the past few weeks.

In addition, I've been on a few outreach panels and helped out in some youth STEM stuff when I can.

Finally, I've got a house in the new city (I'll talk more about that too soon). Been a packed up couple months. This has all been on top of me getting a new phone I have to figure out. I've found a decent blogging app but it's not quite everything I want. Mainly, I want an app that's easy to use, do offline stuff with, and keep separate from my personal Google account so I can maintain some anonymity. Any of you have advice?

So that's what's been happening. I'm not going to ramp up to the old frequency of posting yet since I plan to first catch up of reading all the posts I've missed.

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An old coadvisor keeps asking me when I will start the faculty work. He wants to collaborate NOW! I haven't answered yet because doesn't it look bad for tenure and grants if you're teaming up with old advisors? He has said he's tired of crappy students that take forever to get their work done. This comment made me think "how do you know my first year student will be any better than your 4th year?". Then I realized that he's implying that I will be doing it. Not sure how to approach this. I know that if my main advisor asked me to do this work I'd politely tell him to fuck off but I really like this other advisor.

Wednesday, November 5, 2014

OMG! I've been blogging for a year!

I created this blog as an outlet for myself and as a way for anyone interested to see how things are in industry, the progress of an academic pursuit, and miscellaneous other musings. I've 'met' cool people and gotten advice while giving out a couple tidbits.

I never thought I would have so much fun blogging, but it's been a super blast!  I had a shitty hang-up taking things down for a while, and I honestly thought I would be writing for years in the blog before getting a faculty job.   Now that I have one, it's crazy to think my journey started a year ago.  And looking at old posts, it really brings back memories, good and bad.  I'll eventually be transitioning to a new blog covering the academic switch (title TBA...but I'll try to make it funny) :), but I will look forward to looking back at this blog.

Thanks again for reading!  I've had a blast!!!