The Contradictory Feelings Thread

[Torco]

i just called a lawyer to sue my employer. on the one hand, this is a relief since they've abused me for more than a year in various ways, including not paying many thousands of dollars in wages which a lawsuit at this point is the only way i'm ever going to get, and also i have a job offer from elsewhere: on the other hand, my employer is the husband of my mother. things are about to get.... interesting.

[Raphael]

Oh. Wow. That sounds like a really tricky situation. Good luck!

[hwhatting]

Some potentially interesting assistant professorship (tenure-track) positions are opening up in Sweden, and now that I have two years' postdoc experience (plus lots of minion management experience as well), I figure it might be nice to give them a go. Professorships are, however, notoriously competitive to apply for, plus I don't have experience closer to the upper end of what they're looking for (the limit is 7 years, and I'll have had ~2.5 when the call closes). Still thinking of giving it a go, if not to get experience with the process, but...

What's the harm in trying? Isn't looking out for jobs like that what's expected from you in academics, at least as long as you haven't got tenure?

@Torco: I don't envy you. That kind of thing is why I decided early on not to work in my parents' shop - being family can make working together easier, but when things get ugly, they get really ugly.

[Torco]

true tbh, but then again there weren't a lot of job possibilities at the time. it was good while it lasted, but that much wage theft is not acceptable no matter who you are. still, it's gonna be a shitstorm. thanks for the good wishes guise =)

[doctor shark]

Some potentially interesting assistant professorship (tenure-track) positions are opening up in Sweden, and now that I have two years' postdoc experience (plus lots of minion management experience as well), I figure it might be nice to give them a go. Professorships are, however, notoriously competitive to apply for, plus I don't have experience closer to the upper end of what they're looking for (the limit is 7 years, and I'll have had ~2.5 when the call closes). Still thinking of giving it a go, if not to get experience with the process, but...

What's the harm in trying? Isn't looking out for jobs like that what's expected from you in academics, at least as long as you haven't got tenure?

True, and I am giving it a go, but it's always that feeling (when I apply for things) of if I have enough experience for what they're looking for; I do at least have a lot of teaching experience, both pre- and during graduate school (and afterwards), so perhaps that can help compensate for my relatively short postdoc. And the permanent position search is expected (and both current and former boss are quite supportive!), though it's now with juggling a few more things on my plate. At least I can work on the application while I'm home for vacation.

true tbh, but then again there weren't a lot of job possibilities at the time. it was good while it lasted, but that much wage theft is not acceptable no matter who you are. still, it's gonna be a shitstorm. thanks for the good wishes guise =)

Best of luck! I can imagine it's a very awkward situation, but, indeed, "family" is no excuse to be treated like crap or to tolerate being treated that way.

[dɮ the phoneme]

I am back from my self-impose exile, born of shame at totally failing to deliver anything at all for the relay. Yknow, I could say I've had lot going on in life, which is true but it's also always true so...

Anyway, I'll presumably try to finish my language anyway, even if uh, the date of relevancy is passed. So. Yeah, sorry about that.

[Man in Space]

I am back from my self-impose exile, born of shame at totally failing to deliver anything at all for the relay. Yknow, I could say I've had lot going on in life, which is true but it's also always true so...

Anyway, I'll presumably try to finish my language anyway, even if uh, the date of relevancy is passed. So. Yeah, sorry about that.

More material is always good, and I don’t think we’ve been super-strict on the timings of the releases. (My own contribution could stand some expansion…)

[Travis B.]

I have solved my troublesome cannot-write-to-flash-after-booting-the-second-core-on-the-RP2040-even-after-a-reboot problem. That unto itself has motivated me to put out a new release today. However, I just realized that my implementation of EXPORT is incorrect and any new release ought to wait until that is fixed...

[malloc]

Really nervous about doing holiday stuff with my family this week with the new omicron variant. Apart from Christmas, my brother has gotten us theater tickets for tomorrow. Even with my booster, the chances of getting covid are extraordinarily high under those circumstances. Given that my brother hasn't gotten vaccinated at all and smokes heavily, he seems at even greater risk and I genuinely worry for him. Yet backing out now would be an acrimonious mess, particularly with how politicized covid has become.

[Ares Land]

Ah, man, that sucks. I've been there last summer. If 'get vaccinated or I won't come' (which is what I did) isn't an option, can you back out by claiming you've been in contact with a case?

[doctor shark]

I love being home with my mother and the kittens (okay, they're not technically kittens, but still), and it feels nice to be back in NC after two years, but my brother's already managing to drive me up a wall, and it's not even been four days!

[Raphael]

The food we ordered for New Year's Eve dinner tastes really great, except for the seaweed salad. I had ordered seaweed salad because I saw it on the menu and was curious how seaweed would taste like. If I had known how it tastes like, I wouldn't have ordered it.

[doctor shark]

I'm happy to be back in the luscious and moist Nether Regions with the coworkers and friends I like, but I really do miss my mother and the cats, and it feels like the three weeks of vacation just flew by so quickly...

[hwhatting]

I'm happy to be back in the luscious and moist Nether Regions with the coworkers and friends I like, but I really do miss my mother and the cats, and it feels like the three weeks of vacation just flew by so quickly...

It's always like that. We visited our daughter in Vancouver over the holidays, and 18 days was just too damn short...

[Travis B.]

The good news: I have an aggressive multitask, multicore, and multipriority rendezvous channel test on the Raspberry Pi Pico which actually does not lock up zeptoforth anymore.

The bad news: Once this test is started, it sometimes seems like I cannot reboot zeptoforth without physically powercycling the Raspberry Pi Pico.

[Travis B.]

The good: I got a new action (the word is deliberately similar to but not identical to "actor") scheduler working, which supports message-passing between actions, that originally sent message at about 16 kHz, and then when I compiled the code to flash on the RPi Pico ran at about 14 kHz.

The not so good: After I made changes to handle timing out, it slowed to about 11 kHz, which is undesirable, so I feel like I need to optimize it to make it go back up to at least 14 kHz.

[Linguoboy]

A friend of mine works for the Highland Park Public Library. Some of his colleagues were supposed to march in yesterday's parade which became the site of the USA's latest mass casualty incident[*]. Instead, they ended up sheltering in place. He tells me they used this time to plan an exhibit on grief for the benefit of the community when the library reopens to the public tomorrow.

I'm proud of them and sad for them in almost equal measure.

[*] *checks newsfeed quickly to make sure there hasn't been a more recent one*

[Travis B.]

A friend of mine works for the Highland Park Public Library. Some of his colleagues were supposed to march in yesterday's parade which became the site of the USA's latest mass casualty incident[*]. Instead, they ended up sheltering in place. He tells me they used this time to plan an exhibit on grief for the benefit of the community when the library reopens to the public tomorrow.

I'm proud of them and sad for them in almost equal measure.

[*] *checks newsfeed quickly to make sure there hasn't been a more recent one*

For some reason that incident reminds of the Christmas parade massacre near here in Waukesha late last year...

[Raphael]

It's interesting how my relationship with "the news", and what's happening in the world, has changed over the last two years.

I used to by a complete news junkie - the kind of person other people would get their news from. I used to be that way for my whole life. Then, during the last 12-18 months, my attitude towards it changed more and more and I followed the news less and less. Now, I get my news from other people. Part of the process was that I spent less and less time on Twitter, until I finally deleted my account when the Musk deal was announced.

[Ares Land]

Same here!

It's a pretty good thing. Honestly, it's never that important.