In the past few months, my team of data specialists has suddenly shrunk from the 5 to 7 FTE range it's been for years down to now, effectively, 1.6 FTE of which I'm 1 FTE. Two people left, one was a recent hire that wasn't a match and the other was donezo with the high work pace. One colleague is now completely out because of long covid. The other two and myself all are now senior enough that we want to move to project management roles. They largely succeeded in doing so. I did not because of various reasons (covid, bad luck, mostly). We're hiring, but every hire we want to do is scrutinized by the Big Conglomerate that has bought us two years ago. They're looking to start wringing money out of us and it'll be ugggly. So I have not been okay the past days, knowing that I will probably bear the brunt of whatever work we've committed to, knowing that it will be extra hard to let go of the slightly-more-difficult-than-junior work that I'm sick and tired of doing, knowing that there's a recession on the way, knowing that whatever ambitions I had for this year in all likelihood will bite the dust. I'm debating again whether I should jump ship, but I still haven't found a place that has the potential that I feel still, barely, exists where I'm at here. Maybe I need to look harder.
Data analyst, basically. The idea at my workplace is to blur the boundary between consultant and data analyst. Part of my week is doing (geo-)analytics, part is being a consultant in sustainable mobility policy. I’ve been trying to significantly increase the second part but to my frustration circumstances make that very hard to do.
Turns out it’s pretty simple to diagnose a bad burner on an electric range as a switch problem or a burner problem. Mine turned out to be a burned-out spot in the heating element. In our post-apocalyptic world, badly corroded burners harvested from old appliances go for $40, so I plan to try to bridge the gap with a copper ferrule. Melting point is 1984°F, but I haven’t found a good estimate for how hot the resistance wire itself might get. There are stories of unattended aluminum pans (mp 1221°F) melting on a stovetop.
Copper may melt at 2000 degrees but it gets soft much lower than that - the annealing temp for oxygen-free 99% copper is around 700c, which is coincidentally where nichrome starts to glow. The expansion coefficient of copper is also different than the expansion coefficient of nichrome. Finally, the impedance of copper is different than the impedance of nichrome, which means your heat concentration and spark potential at your repair site are high. Nichrome can be crimped with nichrome. Keep in mind, however, that you have only found the worst failure point and that others may reveal themselves. I have melted copper in nichrome furnaces dozens of times. I've never seen the heat shielding common in melting furnaces in stove tops but I haven't been looking. In general, heating elements are not repair objects. They are replace objects. My furnace that ate shit because I plugged it into a power strip and the thermocouple died? They replaced the heating element. My furnace that ate shit because it was chinese and crap? My buddy replaced the heating element.
I'm leaving for the rural deep south soon. Start on Monday, will probably leave Friday and take a day or two vacation to go hiking before going to my beautiful motel room for the next seven weeks after that. I'm stressed but excited about the move. The internship needs paperwork signed and completed by my supervisor, who I believe has still not done that. I also have a good bit of training to do come Monday when I start, including CPR certification since my old certification has lapsed. It's going to be a busy few days and a big adjustment. I didn't really get a break between my finals and this starting, and that's a shame. I need the income, but it's lead to further exhaustion. And my parents were in town which lasted for five days and again lead to less relaxation and lost income because part-time student employment. I'm incredibly fortunate that my job pays very well and is extremely flexible for me, but the lack of regular schedule from the real world is greatly missed. This is just pure chaos. I've got the internship, the thesis, and my job to juggle without taking into account self care and a social life. Grad school is dumb and I'm very excited for a year from now when I'll be done.
About a month into the new job and seeing that my manager interviewed well in our 1-on-1 during the hiring process… but hawt damn the company itself is ass backwards. The older team members (in age and seniority) can’t seem to stop railing the company, but hey, they are making double their last job’s salary. Starting to wonder if I should consider opening a line to the old place or keep job searching ahead of what seems to be an inbound recession.
I'm excited for a few trips I've got on the horizon: Next week: music festival outside St Louis June: bluffs of NW Arkansas with a visit to Crystal Bridges July: myself and four other family members are going to visit family in the Dominican Republic, it's been over a decade since my last visit August/September: burning man :) October: visual artist residency in Mexico City
The weather has finally beaten me down. Too warm to be snowing below like 5k feet, what snow we are getting is heavy and wet and generally bad for skiing, and the rain means no rock climbing, more wet running, and temps generally haven't broken out of the 50s yet. Feels like we've had 7 months of fall at this point with a couple of weeks of winter sprinkled in. The good news is, our snow-water equivalent is through the fucking roof compared to historic median, so hopefully that will work in our favor in the summer! Outside of that, thinking about a convergence. Still trying to figure out when, how, and what to do about a possible long-travel trip. By which I mean, the PCT, or maybe the CDT, or going West to East (or East to West) across America. There's a lot of allure in that to me.
Yes. I follow him on Strava and it’s been amazing seeing the daily progress he’s been making. I also just finished the classic book, Ultramarathon by James Shapiro and am now trying to track down a couple of rare, out of print books from two South African runners from the 70s (or so). Any tips for finding rare, niche books? Nothing on eBay, ThriftBooks, Amazon, or other small retailers I’ve looked at so far!
eBay is my best source, but I just pick up disposable paperbacks. Maybe you could use a saved search and get a notification when a listing appears. Are you assembling a collection of rare running books? There are only two copies of that Shapiro book on eBay and the cheaper one is $83.
Yeah, might have to just put it as a notification and maybe reach out to the local library and some Facebook groups (crazy that that might be the best bet). What if I told you that there was, finally, a 2nd edition of Ultramathon published and you can pick it up for less than $20 (less tax and shipping) from the publisher? https://www.echopointbooks.com/sports-recreation/ultramarathon UPDATE: I found one of the books I'm looking for, Four Million Footsteps, through a one-person publishing company out of the UK. How fitting. The single 1st edition copy available on Amazon is $250, so you should consider the $80 for a 1st edition of Ultramarathon to be a bargain!
Update for you and wasoxygen - found that book, and the white whale, My Run Across the United States last night!!! Took 3.5 months...
Interesting, one eBay listing says the publisher of the Shapiro book was Bantam Books, that venerable house of pulpy paperbacks. The new edition is printed by Echo Point, an aptly named print-on-demand service for out of print titles. With shipping, the paperback is 50¢ cheaper than on Amazon, and the up-to-10-day lead time to run off a copy gives me time to make progress in another eBay book.