Tuesday, May 27, 2008

A Plan for Moving to Doha.

So, I got in touch with my immediate supervisor in Doha, and I am now scheduled to leave from Pittsburgh on July 28th or 29th (Monday or Tuesday). Here is brief run-down of why these dates were selected and what restricts the move.

  • I want to fly on a Monday or Tuesday, so I do not run into a weekend, either the Western weekend (Saturday+Sunday) or the Qatari weekend (Friday and Saturday).
  • I currently live in Houston, but I want to set my home base (the spot I am returned to after my time in Doha, whether in 2 or 20 years) as Pittsburgh, which is where my wife and I are from. Thus I will fly out of the 'burgh.
  • Nicole (my wife) is due to have our first child on June 22, and we would like to have a couple days to visit some relatives after we get to Pittsburgh but before we leave.
  • The time from when the movers pick up our stuff in PA until we get it in Qatar can be quite a while, so the sooner we can get to PA for the movers to pick our stuff up, the better.


Based on this, Nicole and I have come up with a plan to get us to back to PA.1 This plan includes the help of quite a few people.


  • June 22-27: Nicole gives birth to Henry Stockton Brothers.2
  • July 12: Laura Brothers flies to Houston.
  • July 14: Laura, Nicole, and Henry Brothers fly to Pittsburgh.
  • July 14: Mike Dunmyre arrives in Houston.
  • July 15: UHaul Truck is picked up.
  • July 15: Mike and Ed (plus anyone I can round up) loads small stuff on the truck.
  • July 16: George Brothers and Rick Parisi, Sr. arrives in Houston.
  • July 16: George, Rick, Mike, and Ed load last few big items in the truck.
  • July 17: George, Rick, Mike, and Ed drive to Birmingham.
  • July 18: George and Rick (plus Alabama Christians) unload all the stuff being donated in Alabama from UHaul Truck.3
  • July 18: Mike and Ed drive to Pittsburgh.
  • July 19: George and Rick drive to Pittsburgh.
  • July 20: UHaul is unloaded and returned.

What do you think?

Notes:
(1) By "Nicole and I came up with a plan" I mean I stood there and gaped at Nicole's super-organizational power.
(2) The two names being kicked around were "Henry Stockton Brothers" and "Henry Adventure Brothers." They were running neck and neck, until we realized that some people have their first name and use their middle name, e.g. G. Gordon Liddy, L. Ron Hubbard, J. Edgar Hoover, H. Ross Perot, etc.. "H. Adventure Brothers" is not a name; it is a license for mockery.
(3) This presupposes perfectly accurate labeling on the boxes. Given Nicole's organizational kung-fu, this should not be an issue.

Friday, May 23, 2008

A working definition of "Minimum Awesomeness"

Last month, I was home in PA for my sister-in-law's wedding. While I was there, I got to hang our with my sister-in-law and her fiancé's circle of friends, which are individually and collectively far hipper than me.1 Anyway, one fellow at the gathering was wearing a watch which I have been turning over in my mind a bit, as I could not decide whether is is awesome or awful.

The watch is pictured on the left. It is from a company called Nixon2.

Note the small vertical line on the bottom of the face. There are two disks which rotate on the face; the outer one (with the larger numbers) gives the hour, and the inner one gives the minutes. Because there are intermediate hash marks on the outer disk, it is immediately apparent both how far past the hour you are and how close you are to the next hour. This makes me think the watch is awesome.

OK, let's backup a moment. Why does this make me think the watch is awesome? To explain this, you have to know why digital display watches are less desirable/useful than analog dial watches. When you look at a digital watch, you can only see the hour and how far past the hour you are. You have to do a mental subtraction to see how long until the next hour. When you look at an analog watch face, you get both of those pieces of information at a glance by the minute hand's position, i.e. the display has twice as much information available at a single view. This watch, while not being the standard 2-hand analog face, provides all the information of that arrangement. So, point for awesome.

On the other hand, this watch does not have a second hand3 nor does it provide any clear advantage over the default 2-hand arrangement. Plus, upon seeing it for the first time, it took me second to figure out exactly how to read it. Effectively, this watch is simply a redesign of standard object where the redesigned object confers no additional advantages, besides looking cool. The argument can be made that the watch's design is merely clever, not smart. This is what makes me think the watch may, in fact, be awful.

The more I turn it over in my brain, the more I think the watch is in fact awesome, although just barely. I think this allows us to define the minimum level of awesome. Some thing has achieved "minimum awesomeness" if it is really well/beautifully/interestingly designed in an aesthetic sense with zero loss of functionality.


Notes:
1) I realize, as an overweight geek who makes a living in the hard sciences, that being hipper than me is not a particular challenge. Also, is hip the right word? Or am I dating myself, much in the same way my Mom used to by referring to guys wearing sunglasses inside the mall as "hep cats?"
2) The link above takes you to the page about the watch, not the general
Nixon home page.
3) The lack of second hand is minor, as it could be trivially added by adding another rotating disk.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Advertisements for myself...

...is a terrible book by Norman Mailer, but one you should read to so you know what sort of buffoon he was.

Speaking of advertisements, I am in the process of writing my first advertisement for a post-doctoral researcher, and it is feels kind of weird, for two reasons. First of all, I have never written one of these before.

More importantly, I do not think I have ever read one, either.

Let me explain. In science, the heavy hitters1 all get their post-docs by audition, not by recruiting. They always have more applicants than they have money/space/projects so they are actively turning people away, not advertising. Occasionally, a letter will be passed between heavy hitters with a brief project description attached to it, basically to find someone with a specific skill set, e.g. scientist A has an idea that requires expertise in area B, so he contacts people working in area B for some informal recruiting. But in general, the heavy hitters, who I have worked for all of my career, don't advertise, and thus I didn't get my previous jobs replying to ads, and thus I don't exactly know how to write the ad. Luckily, I have a model to work from for another scientist at the University.

That said, I really want to open it with the line, "Mad scientist seeks hunchback..."

1) As a working definition, a heavy hitter is a scientist in academia or a gov't lab that manages more than $1 million in grants at a time.

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

So, I signed the papers...

...and I feel great.

To be more clear: I received my contract from the local (i.e. in the US) portion of the University in Qatar for which I shall be working, and I signed the papers. The whole process has been remarkably painless, and for that I am very thankful to both the US and Doha staff of the University. For now, all I have to deal with is paperwork, but the whole process will most certainly get more strenuous as the date of leaving gets closer.

It's really cool to sign the papers. I can actually remember both the moment that I decided I was going to get a PhD1 and the moment I decided I wanted to be a professor,2 and now I'm a college professor. It's a remarkably satisfying situation.

Since I am a professor, I think I am going to have to buy a pipe. I found this one on a website you can find from the preceding link. It is made by Dunhill, which makes what are allegedly the highest-end pipes on earth, and the series it is from is called "Dress." This pipe cracks me up because it looks like it is wearing a tuxedo. It is made out of ebony and sterling silver, and costs $600, which is quite a lot for a stick you chew on and use to burn leaves.


Memory 1: I was sitting at the kitchen table at my parent's house, and my dad was home from work for lunch. (This implies that I either had the day off, or I was waiting to go to afternoon kindergarten, but I was first-half-of-elementary-school young.) The subject of college degrees came up, and my Mom mentioned she had a Masters degree. I was trying to get the whole thing straight in my mind, and I asked what a Masters degree was. Mom said first there was bachelors, masters, and PhDs. I asked what came after PhD, and my Dad said, "There are some post-doctoral things, but PhD is as far as you can go in school." The moment he finished saying this, I knew I was going to get a PhD. It was like something mechanical clicked into place; I mean I literally knew at that instant that a PhD was part of my non-negotiable to-do list.


Memory 2: I was in the basement of the science building at RIT talking to some people about industrial research projects during my freshman year. Several of the people I spoke to had co-operative educational experience at local drug companies or Kodak or Xerox, and they were talking about how project X was selected because of market share Y and compentency Z, but no one was talking about whether the science was, well, interesting. During a lull in the conversation, I asked how academics selected their projects, and someone said (sort of dismissively) "Oh, they just work on whatever they think is interesting." I knew I wanted to be a professor. Also, it would take me several years to learn the "whatever they think is interesting" is not in any way correct.