[Rant] Minor Rant III: For a Few Hollers More

M

makare

Hehe I sent my last paper to my friend to edit. At one point she commented, "If this is a law-citation-induced comma, leave it there. If it is a Michelle-induced comma, take it out."

I thought you guys might be amused by that given the general mockery my use of commas and lack of apostrophes garners.
 

fade

Staff member
So here's my rant.

Quick recap: I quit professor position last June, started in oil & gas industry, immediately hated it, tried to get old job back, was told EEO prevented it, but I could reapply, wife decided to stay in old town 4 hours away until future was resolved, have been living alone, commuting on weekends, reapplied for old job and a few new ones.

So my old job... The app due date was November 15, 2011. I heard nothing until just before Xmas when I wrote, and was told "oh yeah, you're still in consideration, we forgot to tell you". Nothing much from them through Jan and Feb. In Feb I asked if I was out. "No, you're still in. We just started interviewing!" Wtf. Feb, March, I keep asking, they keep telling me I'm in. It's freaking May now, and now they're telling me they're interviewing for a related position in physics, and the dean wants to see the outcome of that first. What the hell. I would've written a school off back in March normally, but they keep telling me not to yet. They had three postings in our department, and the other two have been filled. My old job hasn't been yet, supposedly. My former colleague/friend who has been feeding me info is obliquely telling me that I am the chosen candidate, but that things are stalled at the dean level, and it's out of their hands. I have been communicating with this friend, so I finally sent an official inquiry to the search chair (who I don't know due to other upheavals that happened just as I left--part of my reason for leaving in fact). No answer.

My theory is that since they think I'm a sure thing, they think they can keep the position open until the last minute, hoping for some hotshot. That or they're hoping the physics candidate can cross-teach with my job. But I can't wait. If the answer is no, I've got a house to sell, a family to move, etc. They want to string me along as much as they can. I am sending an ultimatum today, I think. If it makes them reject me, so be it. I'm tired of being kept in the dark. It has been half a year since I applied, and nearly a year since I lived with my wife and kids. My wife thinks they just don't want to tell me "no", but I don't think my friend would do that to me. I hope not.

I'm also pissed I apparently didn't even get a phone interview for a position at another school, since it was precisely in my small area of expertise, and the only people who are better at it than I am are already happily employed and unlikely to apply.

Life has been one huge ball of stress lately. I know. Easy to dismiss it because I have an extremely well-paying job in industry R&D. But stress is stress. This doesn't feel any easier than when I was dirt poor stressing about different things.
 

fade

Staff member
Well... heard back. Didn't get my old job back, apparently. Well, can't say that's not depressing.
 
S

SeraRelm

Any news is good at this point. Being able to accurately assess your situation and act upon it is far better than being left in the dark.
 
Trying to run our product on another teams hardware when it suddenly goes off line. What are they doing?

Rebuilding all their racks.
 
What a convenient time for them to rebuild. Sounds like the horror stories my friend used to tell me about Amazon; like the time (I believe it was on Black Friday or Cyber Monday) when one of their main public interface server clusters dropped offline. Luckily, they'd anticipated possible trouble and had backup units standing by, so the order went out to the team with the backup units to plug them in and start them up. Unfortunately, the backup units weren't quite configured appropriately, and needed a simple script run on them, but the team in question only had instructions to plug boxes in until the overflow went away. The problem, of course, was that they only really needed to plug in a fraction of the total backup units that they had, but they wouldn't listen to any other team's instructions to stop plugging things in and run the script; so what could have been a 10 - 15 minute outage wound up being 2 hours long because it took that long to find someone sufficiently high up on the chain of command to get that team's boss to tell them to stop plugging shit in and run the script.
 
MindDetective 's signature just made Avast antivirus go apeshit about twitpic.
Something on this board keeps filling up my download folder with 4kB downloaded files. I don't know where it's coming from. The files vary in size a bit and always start with "CWS" so I wonder if it's Cool Web Search trying to sneak in or just YouTube being nosy.

--Patrick
 

GasBandit

Staff member
Something on this board keeps filling up my download folder with 4kB downloaded files. I don't know where it's coming from. The files vary in size a bit and always start with "CWS" so I wonder if it's Cool Web Search trying to sneak in or just YouTube being nosy.

--Patrick
It's not youtube, I don't think. My money's on greyware/malware.
 
Hmmm, installed a new video card tonight, really the first upgrade that I've done to my current computer, but now I don't have sound... Gonna try a few things tomorrow, but tonight I'm just tired, but I do see a marked improvement on my processing speed and video response.
 
Also, if the card has HDMI and your sound output settings are correct, make sure you didn't do what I did and forget to plug in the little "optional" cable to the video card that actually enables the sound.
 

Cajungal

Staff member
Man my professor was right... When you've worked hard to make a lesson fun, and the kids don't respond, you DO feel something a lot like moral outrage. I worked hard, damnit. Stop being jerks!
 
That sucks Ceej. I wish kids would always appreciate the work their teachers go to in order to make their lessons fun. Not that I was always the most appreciative kid, mind you, but the older I got the more appreciative I became. Maybe one day you'll get thank you letters/cards from kids that you're teaching now who realize later on that you were a great inspiration.
 

Cajungal

Staff member
D'ah they're a sweet bunch. They've just got spring fever something fierce. I get it... I'm feeling it too. I'm just getting over laryngitis, and it's still hard to talk.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
Man my professor was right... When you've worked hard to make a lesson fun, and the kids don't respond, you DO feel something a lot like moral outrage. I worked hard, damnit. Stop being jerks!
I know that feeling all too well. Just add a "fuck you, you dumb white fatass faggott ass lookin" bla bla bla. At least they aren't there yet, right C?
 
Yes, it does have HDMI, but the system itself is saying that "No audio devices are installed." Still have to pick up a short HDMI cable, and figure out the problem.
 
Today has been fairly bleh for me so I decided to go and get some frozen yogurt and a fruit smoothie to cheer myself up but sadly it didn't help. Now my day is still bleh and I feel bad for not eating healthy. I think I am going to go take a hot shower and crawl into bed and wait for this day to end.
 
I'm sorry to hear that Hylian. I was having a day like that recently and decided to watch the Speed Racer movie. Cheered me right up it did, because Speed Racer is awesome.

Fuck yeah, Speed Racer.
 
Well my night last night did get a bit better towards the end. It ended up being really nice outside so I went and took my telescope out and looked at the moon and a few planets.
 
S

SeraRelm

We had what I like to call a "Castlevania Moon" going on last night when we got home.
 

ElJuski

Staff member
I forget what the term is, but it was both the height of the full moon as well as the closest the moon gets to the earth in its rotation within a minute of each other last night. And me forgetting to look up during the whole goddamn concert.
 
S

SeraRelm

Ok, it's a minor rant and it's not against anyone's religion BUT...

We just got out of a friend's wedding, a very catholic wedding mind you, and while that's not generally my kind of thing, it was made all the more uncomfortable by the context of the priests comments on marriage. Yes, I understand they don't believe in gay marriage, but to continually stress "man and woman" over and again (12. Times, I counted), while deliberately looking over to us each time, is a bit much. I'll not bash someone's religion when they are respectful of others, but it felt a very poor reflection of how to treat others.

/rant


Edit: We're heading to the reception in a bit.
 
I hear ya, SeraRelm. At my grandfather's funeral, they had me and my cousin (his only grandchildren) carry the water and oil, but it was announced that anyone not currently "in a state of Grace" would not be permitted to take communion.

He then proceeded to get my grandfather's name wrong repeatedly and just generally did not seem to care as much about this parishioner as much as he apparently does about his parish.

--Patrick
 

Cajungal

Staff member
That's harsh. You know, ever since I started working at an Episcopal school, I really enjoy attending the monthly services. What Mother Annie says before communion is, "you can come up an receive a non-denominational blessing if you don't feel comfortable taking communion, but please remember that you are all welcome at God's table." It's such a positive place with such a kind person leading the congregation. :) That's how it should be.
 
S

SeraRelm

I don't mind that. Someone inviting you to share a belief is not the same as someone trying to force it on you then condemn you if you refuse.
 
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