Tuesday, December 23, 2014

The lost art of Winter Break

When I was a kid (including being a teenager) I have very fond memories of leaving school on the last day of the Fall semester and going home with nothing to do.  I had chores and an easy department store job (when I turned 16), but for the most part I was free.  A few weeks with no real responsibilities.  I would hang out with friends all the time, sleep in, exercise, read.  It was awesome.  In grad school my university shut down for winter break (no heating means I’m not coming in).  I would plan it so I didn’t have any wet-lab for the shutdown.  So I would still have a relative amount of freedom.  I would still work during break, but it still felt pretty relaxing.  Even when I would go on a ski vacation, I would still be plugging away on my laptop, but I still felt relaxed knowing that I didn’t have to go in for a few weeks.  Since coming to industry, I work up until the 23rd and take off until the 27th.  And it’s just family time during that period which I’m not fond of.  So I don’t feel relaxed at all during this time.  This is combined with the end-of-the-year push my group has become known for.  We usually complete 10 animal studies in the last two months each year.  This is because we know every other group is slowing down, but yet patients don’t seem to magically get better during the holidays.  This is on top of very selfish reasons: bonuses for the preceding year get locked in the first week of January.  And a lot of it is making lists of what we’ve done throughout the year, but there’s always a “what have you done for me lately? (thanks Janet)” undertone.  This is partly why my group gets the biggest bonuses in the company.

In grad school my advisor took off the entire break with no way to get ahold of him.  He said he was taking vacation and working.  I would freaking love to take a few weeks off to work at my own pace.  There would probably be the week of familial obligation then I would have 2 weeks of relative peace.  I understand I’m going to have to be preparing for the next semester of teaching, research, etc. but not being under such hard deadlines will bring the blood pressure down a few mmHg.  The holidays have become far less enjoyable because of this.  So I propose this: a nationally sanctioned Winter Break.  Everyone gets 2.5 weeks off to spend time with/away from family.  Leadership is forced to delay deadlines.  Obviously, critical jobs like doctors (real ones), police, firemen, etc. wouldn’t be able to really take the time off, but there could be another incentive.  I don’t know what, but I’m sure there’s something out there.  I just really miss having a long winter break without feeling guilty about it.  I sometimes wish there was a pill I could take to just get rid of my guilt….though that could have some REALLY bad consequences.


With that, here’s to the new year, I hope you all have a great Christmas (or tail end of Hanukkah)!  My academic peeps out there: use this time to take in some fresh air and see your town, while trying your best to avoid bugging your students about their projects.  Cheers!

Monday, December 15, 2014

Frequent flyer report 2014

I hate ignoring the blogosphere, but every time I see a light at the end of the work-life tunnel a contractor adds some extra segments to the tunnel.  I never remember being this busy ever.  I love having stuff to do, but I freaking hate being busy.  I don’t want to complain, but I feel a complaint-post creeping up my back.  I’ll try to stomp it down. 

I’m doing some year-end accounting for all the travel I’ve done this year to make sure I didn’t miss any expenses I can put on this year’s budget.  Business travel is different than I remember my academic travels to be.  In academia I would talk to the department’s coordinator to schedule travel, then book and track every last receipt along the way.  Then submit a long report and get money back.  On the corporate side, I buy all travel (plane, hotel, car) with my corporate card, pay for everything along the way with the card, then go online at the end of the month and say what the travel was all for (no receipts).  Going online to check the statement is also when I put in miles (like to the airport) or out-of-pocket expenses to get reimbursed for.  This means I have to have notes on every last expense and all the locales I've been to lately.  And this means I can start counting my trips.

As I’m reviewing all of this, I realized it would be interesting to put up some numbers about this past year.  So here we go:

Total number of cities I’ve been in for more than a night*: 36 (I thought it was fewer cities)
Number of countries that represents**: 10
Number of airports: 26
Number of cities that had repeat visits within the same year: 16
Number of cities for vacation: 8 (wow, I slacked off this year)
Number of cities with both vacation and work travel overlap: 3
Number of work cities classified as conference travel: 4
Number of cities for upcoming academic transition and past interviews: 7
Number of academic-related trips: 13
Total number of trips***: 70

*Major metros count as one city.  ie, not counting Queens and Brooklyn, or Los Angeles and Santa Monica as two separate cities.
**The USA is included in this count, as are separate countries that are part of the United Kingdom
***Rounded.  I can’t remember every last road trip.  Road trip counted if city is more than 2 hours away

My summer was quite light on the travel, but things blew up after the summer was over.  There were a couple months where I slept more in hotels and flights that my comfy bed.  Though, I’m really glad because I’ve reached super-high status in all my frequent flyer clubs.  I’ve been getting upgraded on personal flights to first class nonstop while also getting access to all the lounges and free meals.  Even though I’m experiencing the meals in a daze where even my watch hands have trouble catching up.  I’ll be going to my spouse’s family in a couple weeks for the holiday.  Visiting family feels more like work than work does, so I’m trying to arrange some R&R (instead of R&D) for January.  But if nothing else, I know that I’ll be taking two months off before the move to my new university.  I can’t wait. 


One kind of weird thing about all of this travel is that I don’t feel extra busy because the work is pretty cut-and-dry, I just feel taxed because I can’t sleep the way I want.  Business class has fold-down seating, but it’s still not my bed with my blankets and the smell of my fabric softener.  This travel is simply a time-sink, I don’t really feel stressed because of it.  I talked to an old mentee and she asked about the traveling and she beamed because she said she likes to travel.  My comment was something like, “traveling to Cancun with your friends is different from traveling by yourself to random destinations for testing”.  Knowing which terminals in airports throughout the world have the best restrooms and food is information I prefer to erase.

Friday, December 5, 2014

Bad software!

I love computers (I'm including smartphones). People will complain about them because they're difficult to use, slow, etc., but I love them unconditionally.  I'm like the smartphone's dog.  It's one of the few unconditional loves in my life.

Lately though, software developers have been starting to irritate me. I don't want to blame computers for the issues, since it's the software developer's fault but the computer is the only thing here to blame. Here's what's going on:

1.  I have 3 computers for various tasks running Ubuntu, Windows, and Mac OS. In the analysis software I run with Ubuntu, when I use more than 14 GB of RAM (I know, I should switch to VRAM...I'm working on it) I get some matrices with zeros in bad spots and end up with some unstable analyses. I scale back the analysis to 13 GB an allow it to use the hard drive as temporary space and suddenly the analysis works. In Windows....everything bad happens. In Mac OS everything has been slower even though I haven't changed the software except for updates. 

2.  I used a cloud service for my phone that has decided lately to randomly not sync my contacts or photos. I've lost some great photos lately.   It's been laggy at times, and also dropping signal at weird times. 

3.  I play video games (3 brothers=mandatory video game playing) and a few games have come out the past couple years which have horrible network connectivity, glitches all over the place, and software holes that ruin the game for some players. 

Yes,the common factor across all of this is me, but I've been using this type of software since 2011 with no issues whatsoever. Why lately, has all this software come crashing down around me?  Am I getting old and there's a rule against old people using software?  My guess is that software developers are lazier.

My company has software modules for some of our medical devices.  And we have deadlines just as tight as the rest of the software industry with software that I feel is much more complicated aside from the fact that if our software goes bad we kill someone.  We don't settle for barely working buggy software, so I hold everyone else to the same standard.  I understand alpha and beta releases will have bugs, but fully released and sold software should only have very minor bugs.  My theory for this is that the internet is to blame.

Once most software studios realized they could just push updates to fix bugs and people would still buy their stuff they started shortening deadlines.  They were okay with the "we'll release and fix it later mentality".  What if the medical field, car manufacturers, and house builders did this?  They would be screwed.  Perhaps I'm jealous that the software people get to make craploads of money with inferior products, but as a consumer I spent my (sometimes) hard-earned money and I want something that freaking works!  Why not have some pride in your work, put in the extra hours and release something I can use out of the package?