Had a classic project brief today.
Please do this thing that even though you’ve been helping out we can’t do it. So you must be able to solve it.
Hmmm
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“10 people have broken their careers on this one. It’s yours now. What can you have by next week?”
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This past weekend, my former-neighbor needed some help tearing down the rotting-and-unsafe deck in his backyard. I went over Saturday morning and we used powertools to great effect. While there, and between the loud electric saw noises, we decided to start up in-person gaming again – initially just the two of us, alternating between our two houses (what used to be 2 doors down the road is now a 25 minute drive… sadly). So I’m very excited for that. I believe we both have many games to be explored, much less being able to return to some favorites.
Yesterday, my real estate agent was hosting an event as the local zoo; we took the family and got free admission. We got there around 10 am, caught the sea lion show a little after that and then visited the African exhibit (which my partner and I had never actually visited, due to needing to ride a tram to (reasonably) get that far into the zoo). My daughters got to see lots of really interesting animals (and it was my first time seeing many of them). The highlight of the day was probably either the Aldabra Giant Tortoise or maybe the lions – we found that two of the lionesses were napping in a shaded area, right up next to the glass; literally 1 inch of glass being all standing between my two daughters and a full-size lioness.
Then, we made it back to the front of the zoo in time to catch some free lunch (also provided by my real estate agent), and on the way out of the zoo we went through the Penguin exhibit – a custom-built aquarium/terrarium building where you can view the penguins both above and below the waterline. I feel as though perhaps we should have been wearing masks while in the penguin exhibit, but it was already very hot and I worried that it might be too stifling for my kids to wear masks and we just tried to maintain a good distance.
Also over the weekend, I heard from a good friend of mine and former colleague; the company that lured him away from where we both worked last year (he left in Feb of 2020, I left in April) just announced layoffs. His organization lost 25% of their workforce and his team in particular lost 6 (? I think he said?) people, leaving only him and his manager to do the work of 7. He told me his fulltime job, as a result, will be studying for and applying for his next position while doing the bare minimum to maintain his work responsibilities. I can understand that some industry sectors are really suffering and layoffs just sometimes make sense… but this particular company’s industry should be booming.
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Had a BIG job interview today, for a job I thought was at “manager” level, and turned out to be “deputy director who spends all their time saying NO to the UK government” level. Which I am… not qualified for. Needless to say that wasn’t remotely what was on the job advert.
NEXT…
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Sort of, more we’re not effectively outsourcing the problem to you (we have different employers) so we can blame failures on an external party.
Every job ad ever.
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Yeah, this one did the classic turning “paying well for a manager job” into “no, paying extreeeeeemely poorly for a Director job while putting precisely none of that on the ad”, which… I should stop being surprised, really.
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Thesis: all jobs are really one of (a) we want you to fix all our problems or (b) we won’t allow you to fix any of out problems.
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Wow, a tram within the zoo. Then again, I used to be spoiled by living 45 mins away from Longleat, the first ever built safari park in the world. I still remember the large tiger slowly walking half a meter away (or less) from my car window as one of my “wildlife” highlights. Big cats are so spectacular to watch. Having a killing machine like that so close is still quite something.
Sadly, this seems a trend in the job market everywhere. The COVID excuse is just another one in the long line of “ways to exploit you while you should be grateful we are paying you at all”…
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I was stressed waiting for test results, so I spent some quiet time consolidating my Unmatched collection down into two boxes (from six). Now I just have to muster up the backbone to get rid of the fantastic art on those four empty boxes…
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I must admit, I have a cemetery of empty expansion boxes in the garage… 
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We probably have seven small Carcassonne expansion boxes rattling around the house, serving as sock/battery/bolt organizers.
Unfortunately, the Unmatched boxes are just a tad too big. Except for the Bruce Lee one. I’m keeping that one forever.
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[quote=“pillbox, post:1079, topic:1622, full:true”] maybe the lions – we found that two of the lionesses were napping in a shaded area, right up next to the glass; literally 1 inch of glass being all standing between my two daughters and a full-size lioness.
[/quote]
We had similar experience with a tiger at the san diego zoo a couple years ago. My daughter was totally obsessed with tigers, this totally made her trip.
Shortly after that, he woke up, walked up the glass and roared.
wish I’d got that on video, it was so cool. And loud.
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Bit of a rough evening. Older kiddo had a number of crying meltdowns, just suddenly really sad. First bunch were triggered by a video online, the last was at bedtime. Very emotionally draining.
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I hope things are brighter this morning. I never quite get used to the rapid emotional seesaws of being a parent.
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More revision for my pathology exam.
Today’s revision has got me thinking about how the xenomorph in Alien manages its acid-base given that it has concentrated acid for blood. Those dudes must have some serious kidneys. And I can’t even begin to think what kind of urine they produce.
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I think you have to assume that the whole system is running at a low baseline pH rather than having massive gradients between blood and everything else. How you get the membrane chemistry to work is another matter; presumably there’s lots of mucus and fast regrowth, like a gut wall.
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There is an esoteric subfield of chemistry that studies chemical reactions with nonaqueous solvents such as ammonia or sulfuric acid. They’ve worked out an extension of the pH scale for this sort of thing, to deal with, for example, substances that are such effective H+ donors that they can force surplus H+ ions onto sulfuric acid, changing it into H3SO4+. Scary stuff! Sulfuric acid’s freezing point is 10°C, so lifeforms with sulfuric acid blood could survive Earth’s thermal range, though they might have to be extremophiles.
For a creature with sulfuric acid as its solvent, water (for example) would be a strong base, because it readily accepts H+ ions from sulfuric acid—about as strong, relatively, as sodium hydroxide is to us.
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Accepted a job offer so thats neat! I only have 2-3 weeks of “holiday” according to them, as they have to sort out the paperwork.
A big jump to my salary (I was underpaid in my last job) with bonus and everything they do is mostly new! So thats exciting (and scary).
At least thats one anxienty gone. But I now have a new anxiety over my new job.
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Undergrad and PhD flashbacks
Chemistry and Organic Chemistry. PhD underpinned by strong base chemistry.
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Congratulations!
I just (Monday) started a new job. Not only do I have no idea what I’m doing, I have no idea what I should be doing. (This, apparently, is expected, and a shared experience.)
One big advantage to starting a job at home is not having to figure out where the bathroom is…
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