There are at least two suggestions out there for a Fun Challenge, like we used to have when the world was young and we were foolish.
One is for a troll fun challenge, hoping for something to compete with the troll that brought scoop to its knees.
The other one is for another music fun challenge, heavy on the sampled sounds.
Or maybe combine them into another WTFC... do something fun and share it.
If anybody feels like organizing such a thing, go for it! It's mostly just posting a diary with rules and guidelines and deadlines, extending the deadline a few times, reminding people there's something going on, and then calling a halt & putting up a voting poll at the end. Nowadays hosting files is not nearly such a big deal as it once was.
----
And now for the whining. There's a process here that's imposed from the Institution level, that's used for promotions, senior-ish people who live on their own grant money, folks like that. It's more or less the same idea as a tenure review in academia. Everyone in the known universe is contacted for letters of reference, and then the committee ignores all that, counts papers in your vita, and decides. Now they've decided to extend this process much further down the food chain.
My last tilting match with this windmill resulted in a grudging admission that it was okay with them if I stayed where I was, and further commentary to the effect that they were shocked, shocked, to learn that people who work here do something other than basic science for a living (like working on facility-class instruments, the overhead from which cover the salaries of most support people in all divisions at this institution. But I digress.). My then-boss was on the newly minted Council, and he managed to push through a reform that [a] got them to at least on paper consider programmatic work, and [b] not review people who aren't PIs on their own grants, or 50%+ on grant money. Which included me for years. It was embarrassing to all concerned, not least to the institution.
My new supervisor offered to sponsor me in another run at a promotion, but just thinking about the process gives me panic attacks, so I politely declined. Still, the periodic review thing applies, though it doesn't involve letters from beyond the pale. So after resolutely ignoring the problem until last week, I spent much of this week pulling together the package, which weighed in at 120 pages. Thankfully it's no longer required in octuplicate, but one copy was a weighty tome, and the pdf was 13 megabytes, just small enough to fit in a gmail message. It was due today, and it's in. The best case scenario is nothing; it's like the military, where in contests the first prize is nothing. All the lesser prizes are worse than nothing.
Oh, and the annual review is also due as of the first of the month. That should be no problem; it's just gleaning the stuff I did in the last year from the massive package onto a 6-page form (most of it full of HR boilerplate language).
----
What else?
I have some cool ideas for plot twists. I still have no idea how to make a comprehensible tale out of this. Perhaps my writing group can advise.
Somehow the summer is ending already. And my long September of not being on call has gone. Oh well.
Things have been pretty uneventful work-wise. The sun and the spacecraft are behaving themselves. Or at least the former is not shooting stuff at the latter.
Busy weekend coming up. Saturday afternoon a friend and his wife are having a party. They recently moved to a house about two miles from mine. She likes having themed parties, so last time it was about blue since they'd recently painted their house. This time, "because we also like green." So on the green party theme, it seems perhaps one might get some political swag from the lefties and bring it along. I think Jill Stein lives around here. For example. Just sayin'.
Our esteemed choir director has decided to actually try to finish his thesis and find a post-doc job this year. However he's found a friend in the stats department to try to carry on. First rehearsal & get acquainted session is Sunday.
Oh also Sunday the usual half-hour of writing crammed into about 2 hrs by the clock will be expanded since everybody's invited to bring a prompt. Could be fun. Be there. Where "there" is the #writing IRC channel on slashnet.org.
Yesterday and the day before it rained about 1.5 inches (more to the southeast of here). Unlike this summer's deluges, the basement stayed dry, perhaps because I hooked up a hose to the middle-level spigot on the rain barrel which is parked next to the foundation (and is fed by a downspout off the roof), and opened the stop cock, keeping the barrel no more than half full (plus windage for when the downpour goes faster than the hose can). Dumping lots of water into the soil next to your foundation is a great way to get water into the house.
One is for a troll fun challenge, hoping for something to compete with the troll that brought scoop to its knees.
The other one is for another music fun challenge, heavy on the sampled sounds.
Or maybe combine them into another WTFC... do something fun and share it.
If anybody feels like organizing such a thing, go for it! It's mostly just posting a diary with rules and guidelines and deadlines, extending the deadline a few times, reminding people there's something going on, and then calling a halt & putting up a voting poll at the end. Nowadays hosting files is not nearly such a big deal as it once was.
----
And now for the whining. There's a process here that's imposed from the Institution level, that's used for promotions, senior-ish people who live on their own grant money, folks like that. It's more or less the same idea as a tenure review in academia. Everyone in the known universe is contacted for letters of reference, and then the committee ignores all that, counts papers in your vita, and decides. Now they've decided to extend this process much further down the food chain.
My last tilting match with this windmill resulted in a grudging admission that it was okay with them if I stayed where I was, and further commentary to the effect that they were shocked, shocked, to learn that people who work here do something other than basic science for a living (like working on facility-class instruments, the overhead from which cover the salaries of most support people in all divisions at this institution. But I digress.). My then-boss was on the newly minted Council, and he managed to push through a reform that [a] got them to at least on paper consider programmatic work, and [b] not review people who aren't PIs on their own grants, or 50%+ on grant money. Which included me for years. It was embarrassing to all concerned, not least to the institution.
My new supervisor offered to sponsor me in another run at a promotion, but just thinking about the process gives me panic attacks, so I politely declined. Still, the periodic review thing applies, though it doesn't involve letters from beyond the pale. So after resolutely ignoring the problem until last week, I spent much of this week pulling together the package, which weighed in at 120 pages. Thankfully it's no longer required in octuplicate, but one copy was a weighty tome, and the pdf was 13 megabytes, just small enough to fit in a gmail message. It was due today, and it's in. The best case scenario is nothing; it's like the military, where in contests the first prize is nothing. All the lesser prizes are worse than nothing.
Oh, and the annual review is also due as of the first of the month. That should be no problem; it's just gleaning the stuff I did in the last year from the massive package onto a 6-page form (most of it full of HR boilerplate language).
----
What else?
I have some cool ideas for plot twists. I still have no idea how to make a comprehensible tale out of this. Perhaps my writing group can advise.
Somehow the summer is ending already. And my long September of not being on call has gone. Oh well.
Things have been pretty uneventful work-wise. The sun and the spacecraft are behaving themselves. Or at least the former is not shooting stuff at the latter.
Busy weekend coming up. Saturday afternoon a friend and his wife are having a party. They recently moved to a house about two miles from mine. She likes having themed parties, so last time it was about blue since they'd recently painted their house. This time, "because we also like green." So on the green party theme, it seems perhaps one might get some political swag from the lefties and bring it along. I think Jill Stein lives around here. For example. Just sayin'.
Our esteemed choir director has decided to actually try to finish his thesis and find a post-doc job this year. However he's found a friend in the stats department to try to carry on. First rehearsal & get acquainted session is Sunday.
Oh also Sunday the usual half-hour of writing crammed into about 2 hrs by the clock will be expanded since everybody's invited to bring a prompt. Could be fun. Be there. Where "there" is the #writing IRC channel on slashnet.org.
Yesterday and the day before it rained about 1.5 inches (more to the southeast of here). Unlike this summer's deluges, the basement stayed dry, perhaps because I hooked up a hose to the middle-level spigot on the rain barrel which is parked next to the foundation (and is fed by a downspout off the roof), and opened the stop cock, keeping the barrel no more than half full (plus windage for when the downpour goes faster than the hose can). Dumping lots of water into the soil next to your foundation is a great way to get water into the house.
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