I'd probably hire the guy who asked if he could come and get some cake as well. I'd be impressed by the desire to get some free sugar and meet the other employees that the interviewee might be working with in the future.
Then again, I'm a graduate student and the only hires I get to make are work-study students. So far, I've done pretty well. While this is obviously a rather low-level kind of hiring experience, I've tried to make it work well for the students and for myself. I mean, if I'm going to hire a peon, I want him/her to be the best darn peon available.
My greatest weakness? Making snide remarks about stupid questions.
My present job involves a huge amount of cell culture. I'm down with the laminar flow. Oh yeah, baby. Just finished changing the media on those transfected cells to selective media. Ask me about the nice bruises on my upper arms from hitting the edge of the front of the hood. Ask me about the three hundred 15cm plates. Ask me about the total lack of ventillation and AC in the tissue culture room. We were pushing 90oF in there the other day. Just ask me. I dare ya.
It wasn't divine justice, because it made her whine more.
She wasn't a bad person; she just couldn't adjust to living in another country. She was too patriotic. This is like many Americans travelling abroad. So I just never told her that I could speak french.
I worked for an analytical chemist for a summer. Minimum wage. My immediate supervisor was a French woman who hated the US and everything about it. About a month into the summer, she went hiking and hurt her leg pretty badly. She couldn't do much after that other than run the spec. So I took over everything else. I was working in a clean room preparing human urine, fecal and blood samples for analysis. The air conditioning stopped working about when the french postdoc got hurt. I had to strip down under my cleanroom suit because it was in the 80s-90s in there. I was working with a lot of carbon tetrachloride which isn't real good for you. The way you prepare the fecal samples is to put them in a high temp oven. Yeah, we were burning sh*t. It smelled real nice.
The other part of my job was to clean glassware. We cleaned it in a mix of sulfuric and nitric acid. Once, someone didn't rinse the gloves off and I accidently brushed my cheek with them. Ouchie. We didn't have a water purification system in the lab, or lab carts for some reason, so I was dragging a 50L carboy down the hall to fill it with water and then carrying it back full. 50L is 50kilos. At the time I weighed maybe 54kilos. I had great upper arm strength by the end of that summer.
Why not try reducing your caffeine intake slowly. In a manner similar to people trying to quit smoking, change the mode of caffeine intake - instead of drinking coffee or soda, switch to those caffeinated mints and then limit yourself to a specific number of them a day. As the weeks pass, reduce that number.
Alternatively, dilute your fully caffeinated coffee with decaf. Start with a 3caf:1caf mix and then bring that down to 1:1 and then 1:3 and so on.
So I guess this means that I have to work for three years, without taking into account my budget for food and shelter, to actually give Christmas gifts.
Remind me to get a better job next year.
It is pouring rain here
on
Leonids 2003
·
· Score: 1
I'm considering doing an anti-rain dance because I'd really like to see some meteors this year. Last year was fun; a friend of mine has a roof deck, so even in West Philly, we could still see some meteors. But I don't think that I'll get to see anything this year.
Perhaps there is a way to target telemarketers to people talking loudly on their cell phones in quiet public places - like the quiet car on Amtrak trains, movie theatres, and so on. If they can target that advertisement for soup to the person in front of the grocery store, why can't they access the decible level of the person talking and go for the loud ones? I'm intrigued by the possiblity of making someone who annoys me suffer a little bit.
In the past year I've had about 5 items go missing in the mail. Items ranged from annoying but not costly to my birthday present from my parents. This all happened while living at one address in West Philly. So it does happen. As a result, I glare at the local postal workers when I see them and I get packages delivered to my workplace.
You know, if I'm honest about this with myself, I'm not really interested in the miracle cure or the horror story. I am, like many people, in a field that is in the news on a fairly frequent basis. The media does its little dance of distortion and turns research into something mystical that Men In White Coats do (and a few women too) that has Important Results. I just want to see some responsible reporting and I'd like people other than my friends to have an idea of what it means to do research in my field.
I'm not trying to ignore the ethics debates, which are important in their own right, I just want one of those smiling, talking heads to come into my lab and maybe learn how to run a gel. Learn how to purify some plasmid DNA, know how we feel as we trudge through the boring bits just to get to the exciting data. And then understand how far we are in basic research from "curing cancer". I want someone to understand the man hours involved and what we have invested in this stuff.
You know, I don't work with human stem cell lines. I don't work with cute fluffy animals. I do happen to work in a lab which does breast cancer research, but we don't all go around wearing little pink ribbons all the time.
I am a molecular biologist. I regularly read the news about criticisms of genetic engineering and stem cell research. I think that perhaps I should spend more time talking to my non-science friends about the positive things that have come from genetic engineering - insulin, the genetic testing (Tay Sachs screening is a good example), and so on. It is nice to read of more good examples in a not-completely biology setting.
I think this could actually be doable, as long as they use it only as screening device to decide which cases to investigate more thoroughly. I assume that there are already algorithms in place that analyse the types of claims and select those which are most likely to be fraudulant, and then trigger an invesitgation. Why not use another factor to try to improve their methods? As long as the system is not used to automatically assume guilt, why not try it out? Insurance guys are masters of statistics (there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn'd lies and statistics. mark twain), and this just provides them with an additional variable.
I've had similar experiences, mainly with biological companies. If I'm really having a hard time with someone's product, I generally announce to the person I'm interacting with that I'm having a bad day and I know that it isn't their fault. And then try to laugh about the $100/ml reagent and four days of work that I've just wasted. I've had tech support offer to replace the entirety of large containers of expensive chemicals, even after we've used most of it already.
Then again, there have been times when I've gone the nice route and gotten no reasonable help or explanation, then I think I was justified in turning into giant screaming hellion. It helps to have a friend around to play good cop, bad cop in these situations.
Another fun technique is to have a timer going while you're on hold. I let people know how long I've waited. I let people know how much my institute buys from them. I figure that they can look our account up and do some quick calculations.
I figure it is good for my general well being to be polite, concise, and responsive when dealing with tech support. I do think that there are allowable exceptions.
PS. To everyone in tech support who I've ever talked to, thank you for your help. Especially NEB.
When I hear stories like yours, I get so nervous about public education in the US.
Reading the article in the NYTimes, made me think that students being forced out of schools need to be the equivalent of Mirandized. "You are being forced out. You have the right to continue your education until you are 21. You have the right to appeal this decision to..."
Do you think that there should be more emphasis on providing hig school students with the option to take a GED at 16 if they really want to get out of school?
You did, of course, read the article in the NYTimes today about the fudging of dropout numbers by calling them "discharged" rather than dropped out?
The article is interesting and I think may force schools to become truely accountable.
Benton's stuff never fails to amaze me. I can't take a decent picture standing firmly on the ground and he manages to get such wonderful stuff using a kite. It is a neat perspective - not as high as most aerial stuff taken from helicopter or airplane. There is a curious sense of intimacy that you feel in his photos.
I'm glad that you posted the link, because otherwise I would have had to.
which reminds me, I have to do some minipreps. And run a column. And do some tissue culture. And... I'm not going to really list everything because it will just depress me.
But don't I remember something about "biofeedback" where people were trained to alter heart rate and body surface temperature at will? Could this be also used to control a machine? or is that not enough variables and not rapid enough a response time?
I'm probably also not thinking about the kinds of disabilities the people involved might have.
This seems to be one of those technologies that has a good first impression but the more you think about it, the more you see the problems. Of course that's what I said about cloning an entire organism about ten years ago.
Getting a hig quality EEG from a moving person who is presumably travelling over uneven ground sounds like it might be a touch difficult. Are there other brain visualization techniques that are small and portable and are associated with phenomenon that people can consciously control? I'm not a neurologist. Anyone have any ideas?
I guess this is the first step to making a real cyborg.
I don't work with mice, but I'd like to point out that back in the old days (a couple of years ago) when I worked at NIH, our living conditions were worse than those of the lab animals. We had less space per animal by a long shot, and the air quality was much worse. Our work conditions weren't regulated by OSHA.
I know I sure saw some behavior that could be characterized as psychotic. There was definite pacing in small circles. Running around and shouting happened frequently. Repetitive behaviors such as pipetting samples into 96 well plates were not unusual.
Now I work at another research institute and while some of the behaviors seen at NIH are common here, it is much more sane. (well, not normal, but better than NIH, fer sure).
If you're interested in lab animal care, there are a large number of sites that detail it to death. The government is a good place to start, of course.
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, I'm a graduate student and the only hires I get to make are work-study students. So far, I've done pretty well. While this is obviously a rather low-level kind of hiring experience, I've tried to make it work well for the students and for myself. I mean, if I'm going to hire a peon, I want him/her to be the best darn peon available.
My greatest weakness? Making snide remarks about stupid questions.
My present job involves a huge amount of cell culture. I'm down with the laminar flow.
Oh yeah, baby. Just finished changing the media on those transfected cells to selective media. Ask me about the nice bruises on my upper arms from hitting the edge of the front of the hood. Ask me about the three hundred 15cm plates. Ask me about the total lack of ventillation and AC in the tissue culture room. We were pushing 90oF in there the other day. Just ask me.
I dare ya.
She wasn't a bad person; she just couldn't adjust to living in another country. She was too patriotic. This is like many Americans travelling abroad. So I just never told her that I could speak french.
The other part of my job was to clean glassware. We cleaned it in a mix of sulfuric and nitric acid. Once, someone didn't rinse the gloves off and I accidently brushed my cheek with them. Ouchie. We didn't have a water purification system in the lab, or lab carts for some reason, so I was dragging a 50L carboy down the hall to fill it with water and then carrying it back full. 50L is 50kilos. At the time I weighed maybe 54kilos. I had great upper arm strength by the end of that summer.
I love science.
Alternatively, dilute your fully caffeinated coffee with decaf. Start with a 3caf:1caf mix and then bring that down to 1:1 and then 1:3 and so on.
Good luck.
Remind me to get a better job next year.
I'm considering doing an anti-rain dance because I'd really like to see some meteors this year. Last year was fun; a friend of mine has a roof deck, so even in West Philly, we could still see some meteors. But I don't think that I'll get to see anything this year.
Perhaps there is a way to target telemarketers to people talking loudly on their cell phones in quiet public places - like the quiet car on Amtrak trains, movie theatres, and so on. If they can target that advertisement for soup to the person in front of the grocery store, why can't they access the decible level of the person talking and go for the loud ones?
I'm intrigued by the possiblity of making someone who annoys me suffer a little bit.
ah, but i worked friday morning and then again on saturday and sunday. for me vacation is more than a half day off.
Um, what is this thing you call "vacation"? I keep hearing people talk about going on "vacation" but I've yet to experience this phenomenon.
In the past year I've had about 5 items go missing in the mail. Items ranged from annoying but not costly to my birthday present from my parents. This all happened while living at one address in West Philly. So it does happen. As a result, I glare at the local postal workers when I see them and I get packages delivered to my workplace.
I'm not trying to ignore the ethics debates, which are important in their own right, I just want one of those smiling, talking heads to come into my lab and maybe learn how to run a gel. Learn how to purify some plasmid DNA, know how we feel as we trudge through the boring bits just to get to the exciting data. And then understand how far we are in basic research from "curing cancer". I want someone to understand the man hours involved and what we have invested in this stuff.
You know, I don't work with human stem cell lines. I don't work with cute fluffy animals. I do happen to work in a lab which does breast cancer research, but we don't all go around wearing little pink ribbons all the time.
I am a molecular biologist. I regularly read the news about criticisms of genetic engineering and stem cell research. I think that perhaps I should spend more time talking to my non-science friends about the positive things that have come from genetic engineering - insulin, the genetic testing (Tay Sachs screening is a good example), and so on. It is nice to read of more good examples in a not-completely biology setting.
I think this could actually be doable, as long as they use it only as screening device to decide which cases to investigate more thoroughly. I assume that there are already algorithms in place that analyse the types of claims and select those which are most likely to be fraudulant, and then trigger an invesitgation. Why not use another factor to try to improve their methods? As long as the system is not used to automatically assume guilt, why not try it out? Insurance guys are masters of statistics (there are three kinds of lies: lies, damn'd lies and statistics. mark twain), and this just provides them with an additional variable.
This article is written for an ignorant audience. I'm an ignorant audience and its smug tone of condescension even pisses me off.
Then again, there have been times when I've gone the nice route and gotten no reasonable help or explanation, then I think I was justified in turning into giant screaming hellion. It helps to have a friend around to play good cop, bad cop in these situations.
Another fun technique is to have a timer going while you're on hold. I let people know how long I've waited. I let people know how much my institute buys from them. I figure that they can look our account up and do some quick calculations.
I figure it is good for my general well being to be polite, concise, and responsive when dealing with tech support. I do think that there are allowable exceptions.
PS. To everyone in tech support who I've ever talked to, thank you for your help. Especially NEB.
Reading the article in the NYTimes, made me think that students being forced out of schools need to be the equivalent of Mirandized. "You are being forced out. You have the right to continue your education until you are 21. You have the right to appeal this decision to ..."
Do you think that there should be more emphasis on providing hig school students with the option to take a GED at 16 if they really want to get out of school?
You did, of course, read the article in the NYTimes today about the fudging of dropout numbers by calling them "discharged" rather than dropped out? The article is interesting and I think may force schools to become truely accountable.
I'm glad that you posted the link, because otherwise I would have had to.
which reminds me, I have to do some minipreps. And run a column. And do some tissue culture. And ... I'm not going to really list everything because it will just depress me.
all I want to know is if, as a scientist, I can be referred to as a test tube babe? or even a petri dish babe would be nice.
I'm probably also not thinking about the kinds of disabilities the people involved might have.
Getting a hig quality EEG from a moving person who is presumably travelling over uneven ground sounds like it might be a touch difficult. Are there other brain visualization techniques that are small and portable and are associated with phenomenon that people can consciously control? I'm not a neurologist. Anyone have any ideas?
I guess this is the first step to making a real cyborg.
Apparently without a tongue, he would have had to be tube fed for the rest of his life.
I know I sure saw some behavior that could be characterized as psychotic. There was definite pacing in small circles. Running around and shouting happened frequently. Repetitive behaviors such as pipetting samples into 96 well plates were not unusual.
Now I work at another research institute and while some of the behaviors seen at NIH are common here, it is much more sane. (well, not normal, but better than NIH, fer sure).
If you're interested in lab animal care, there are a large number of sites that detail it to death. The government is a good place to start, of course.