cjsmith: (Default)
cjsmith ([personal profile] cjsmith) wrote2008-05-15 09:45 am

An evening off!

Yesterday I did the dutiful things I was supposed to do: I fought with Microsoft drivers at work, I paid some bills, I went to get a bone scan, I did my meds and the kitties' meds and and and...

By the time Rob got home I didn't have much energy or motivation to do anything else. He needed to study neutrinos / particle physics, but after teaching flight students all day, he was wiped too.

We were so bad.

WE TOOK THE EVENING OFF. Both of us.

We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I got sufficiently relaxed on red wine that we really should have stayed awake longer after the movie, if you catch my meaning, except that I was so tired that it just wasn't going to happen.

(Most annoying thing about that movie, aside from the bit about throwing cats against stone walls: they couldn't figure out how to end it. Guys, you were doing great up until the last scene. It's worse than the ending of Blazing Saddles, and that's saying something.)

Y'know what's the problem with taking the evening off? You get used to it. It's fun. Now I'm back fighting with Microsoft drivers, phoning insurance companies and medical imaging clinics, and just generally being good and dutiful and stuff. That's less fun.

[identity profile] billeyler.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 05:07 pm (UTC)(link)
"I fought with Microsoft drivers at work"

I had an image of delivery drivers coming down from the Microsoft headquarters in Washington state picking a fight with you about a delivery issue.

Then I realized what the context was!

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 05:27 pm (UTC)(link)
That image gives me a chuckle!

Hey, off topic, feel like sending me a test e-mail to squaredance at my lj handle dot org? I saw something in my spam filter that looked like you MIGHT have been trying to send me mail, but I wasn't sure, and of course all I had was the From address -- I do not have the disk space to keep things marked as spam.

[identity profile] billeyler.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)
I shot you an email from my AOL account about 30 minutes ago.

[identity profile] bendoutdoors.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 05:24 pm (UTC)(link)
As you know, I've done my fair share of "fighting with Microsoft drivers". My solution...I switched to Mac. :-) Okay, in the work situation you have less control over that. Good luck!

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 05:25 pm (UTC)(link)
Especially since for the tools suites I need to use, there is no Mac solution. That happens a lot. *sigh*

Thanks for the luck. I'll take all I can get! :)

[identity profile] jupiter29.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 06:24 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you had such a good night last night, though I am sorry to hear about the earlier than preferred end to it. :)

Being good and dutiful is commendable as well, although not nearly as much fun. Wish I could offer you a suitable reward.

[identity profile] tmc4242.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 06:33 pm (UTC)(link)
"needed to study neutrinos / particle physics"

Why does he need to do that ? Just curious. High energy physics and the machines used to conduct said experiments are interests. I might still be doing that sort of work but for a shortsighted act of congress.

[identity profile] psi-star-psi.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 08:03 pm (UTC)(link)
6-year-old boy: "But Dad, I don't want to go back to math class."

Enterprise crew member: "Everyone needs a basic understanding of Calculus."

From that ST:TNG episode where a bunch of kids, plus Wesley (sigh, I look forward to Wil Wheaton's review of this one), get kidnapped. I watched the episode in my college dorm at Caltech. The room erupted in cheers at this exchange.

My point being, the same with particle physics. I may be biased, though. Did the death of the SSC take you out, or a different pinheaded move?

[identity profile] tmc4242.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 08:41 pm (UTC)(link)
You perhaps took my question differently than intended.

That was not "Why on earth would you want to ?"

It was "How is he going to get to ???". As in I'm glad someone is.

As for me - I found out in grad school that I can't quite hack the math for doing the theoretical side of high energy physics. The SSC came to Texas around that time and I decided I liked building things better than math anyway, so I went to work in the Cryostat and Interconnect group with an MS in physics. The PhD was going to be more fun than I could stand. :)

If we'd been able to keep going, I have no doubt I'd still be there. It was a tremendous place to work. I even had a boss planning on sending me back to school to work on an advanced degree in robotics so I could work on systems at SSC.

Let's review: That's get paid to learn to build large radiation resistant robots which would take apart and reassemble superconducting magnets in the world largest particle accellerator.

I just can't see having left that job voluntarily... :)

I went from SSC to a large defense corporation for WAY too long. ( Only bonus points there - business cards to back up the "I'm a Rocket Scientist" T-shirt. )

And now I'm looking for path number three.

BTW, in the small town where I went to college by some twist of fate there were 4 different episodes of TNG on every week night if you channel surfed in the right order. I was working physics problems with a classmate when the episode you mention ran. We cheered too. :)

[identity profile] psi-star-psi.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 09:18 pm (UTC)(link)
I think my user info describes my exit from grad school, but the short form is that I was studying theoretical particle physics and decided, like too many others at the same time, that it wasn't going to fly for me. About a week after I decided to quit, the SSC died, so any possibility of future employment in the field changed from vanishingly small to truly zero. Shortsighted Congressional idiots. Bah, I say to them.

I think you pulled a better deal on the Wheel of HEP Jobs than I did, but then I only aspired to theory. I had a summer job as an undergrad working in a calorimeter assembly shop. We built the modules in Pasadena, then shipped them to SLAC. I love the checkboxes on medical insurance forms:

"Have you ever been exposed to?"

Lead, lead dust, mechanical soldering stations, solder flux fumes, ultrasonic alcohol baths, high voltage, spot current welders, and probably a few other things I don't remember. I didn't end up with a dosimeter badge until a couple of later jobs or it one would have covered everything.

Now I just watch my ergonomics. Ah, youth...

[identity profile] rfrench.livejournal.com 2008-05-16 06:10 am (UTC)(link)
I'm doing a MS in Astronomy, and one of my project papers for this semester is on the solution to the solar neutrino problem. See my journal for the ongoing saga.

And I can't hack the math, either. Heck I don't even know what most of the symbols mean in my astrophysics text.

[identity profile] klwalton.livejournal.com 2008-05-15 10:35 pm (UTC)(link)
My favorite Monty Python movie is "The Life of Brian". Especially because it has a kick-ass ending.
curmudgn: (Default)

[personal profile] curmudgn 2008-05-17 01:38 am (UTC)(link)
The reason MP&THG ended the way it did was that the group, literally, ran out of money before they could get the ending onto film. They couldn't raise the price of a cup of coffee by that point, so they just threw together the least expensive "ending" they could manage, to get ANY kind of a wrap on the movie.

[identity profile] cjsmith.livejournal.com 2008-05-20 03:35 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh weird. Well, that does explain quite a bit. That's too bad; I liked the creativity throughout the rest of the movie.