I don't know why saying good-bye is so difficult. Maybe it's the thoughts of leaving and being left. Perhaps it's an overactive imagination exaggerating events. I look at the whiteboard where we scribbled, trying to get a handle on the problem of the day, and I'm half-tempted to save it in some way. I like to keep mementos and reminders. I often wish I had more of them. If I had my way, my wordly possessions would consist of mementos and tools by which I create them. Scrapbooks, journals, still cameras and video cameras.

Having my digital camera, it's much easier to document my life. The pictures I took with my 35mm camera often get lost and scattered; of the pictures that I have, I am confident I've taken at least twice that amount. Film gets misplaced or thrown away. Photo boxes get put into storage.

And this journal/blog/thing also motivates me to try to at least record one good thing from every day and save it for posterity.

It's so easy to save and archive with digital media. Why not do it?

Will you then tell me that this attitude is unhealthy, that I am showing an extreme tendency to be attached to the past? That I should be motivated towards the future? Perhaps, perhaps. But I think it helps to at least know where I've been, if I am to know where I am and to where I am going.

posted by the n00v at 6:39 PM ()

I must have given up on doing work well before I even got to work. I think it was about the time I hit the snooze button for the 500th time. Yeah, must have been it.

Today was Philip's last day at work. He's moving onto greener pastures, leaving me to carry on the work that he's been doing. Only, he was much more competent at it than I am. I can't get my mind to focus on it at all--I'd rather be doing something else. I'd do the work, though, if I knew what the hell I was doing...and also if staring at a computer screen didn't instantly make me either want to go to sleep or play Starcraft.

In honor of his last day of work, then, I decided that I wasn't going to get any work done today.

I dunno--today really felt like a lazy day. We had pizza and cake for our departing staff members; not only is Philip leaving, but one of the nurses, Carol, is also leaving. Philip brought along his wife and son (who's barely a year old), and it just felt so laid back and nice that I forgot what work was. So, when it was all over and I came back to my computer, I hadn't the faintest idea of what I should be doing.

Last night was fun, too. The regular Thursday night meeting was held at Dr. Wang's apartment, where much pizza was had and it was more just chilling out than meeting about work. Although we did talk about work a little bit, it was in a nice, casual, relaxed atmosphere. I took quite a few pictures and video clips of Philip's son being, well, infant-like.

In the end, I guess it was nice being social with everyone.

And now, to confront the weekend...

posted by the n00v at 5:24 PM ()

The Charles M. Schulz Museum is opening this weekend. I am accepting donations for the Fly Me To California fund. Lines are now open! Call now!

posted by the n00v at 6:00 PM ()

Gah! I got spooked when I got an alert on my phone saying my checking account balance was nil. But I checked via phone and internet, and we're all good. We're very good, in fact (when comparing the present situation to the past few months).

posted by the n00v at 6:28 PM ()

Capsule link (autobio) on the left now works. Last thing to do is create a "contact me" page. (So, by how many different ways do you want to be able to contact me?) Then I'll work on converting my resume and photoalbum to match the design of the rest of the pages.

Oh yeah, I'll also be doing actual work somewhere in between, to justify my income.

posted by the n00v at 12:37 AM ()

Imagine yourself lying supine, confined within a cylinder barely wide enough for a human being, its inner surface barely textured. Ventilation pushes cool air past you. A loud rhythmic pumping noise is dulled by the presence of earplugs. There are no distractions. Only you, unable to move... and a large, superconducting 1.5 Tesla magnet.

Imagine remaining in this position for more than two hours with no respite.

Every so often, the magnet will growl at you. It has many different voices. Short, staccato coughs, not coincidentally timed to the beating of your heart. Long-duration buzzing that almost grate on your ears, if it weren't for the plugs. Clicks. Pops. Warning alarms. Sometimes you can feel it pulsing in the small of your back.

A disembodied voice calls to you and issues commands: breathe in... breathe out. Breathe in... breathe out. Breathe in... breathe out... HOLD. And you hold your breath as best you can while the magnet barks at you, and you can do nothing but suppress the urge to take in a healthy volume of air and count the seconds as they slowly tick by. At sixteen seconds, the magnet ceases its ruminations and all you are left with is the rhythmic pumping. You gasp for air, knowing that you can do so freely, that the gods of tomographic imaging will not irreparably corrupt your image data...this time.

Only, there is no data because, oddly enough, you seem to lack enough fat in your heart for the scan to generate the desired image. Back to the drawing board.

Ahh, the life of an MR researcher. Sometimes, you are the one manning the console. Other times, you are the guinea pig.

posted by the n00v at 10:07 PM ()

One of the consequences of being separated from your older brother by nine years is that you never really grew up together. Just when you were becoming self-aware, he's already leaving for college. While we thankfully never experienced the friction that can strain some sibling relationships, we also don't really know each other all that well. Only lately have we been making attempts at changing that.

So, whenever he and I find time to hang out, we kick back a bit and "shoot the shit," talking about life, pretty much. Last time, we got some coffee from one of the caffeine establishments in Shadyside and sat around outside. He commented on my ability to float--to go with the flow, carried where the currents will. (Similar to "rolling with the punches," but it doesn't fit the water metaphor much.) And I thought to myself, yeah... in some way it's out of sheer laziness and a need to find the good in every situation that I adapt to wherever life will take me.

But I tire of it. I need to put up a sail, catch some favorable winds, and actually get some direction. I want to feel like I'm making progress toward the finish line. I'm feeling the urge to put down roots already and not have to think about my next move (both figurative and physical). I want to be in a job where I do what I want to be doing for the rest of my life.

The sad thing is that all I've figured out so far is what I don't want to be doing. I don't want to do any form of system administration, because it doesn't hold my attention long enough. I finish the tasks assigned to me, and I'm left with the better part of a day spent mindlessly surfing the Internet. I don't want to be involved in research (unless it's a topic that really interests me); my work at present fails to hold my attention because I don't have the necessary tools at my disposal to attack the problems we are trying to solve. And it's difficult trying to acquire the skills I need because those skills are what I don't have the patience for, i.e. software programming. The work has grounding in multiple disciplines--physics, medicine, electrical engineering--but our particular work at the end of the day comes down to debugging code. I've never had the patience for it; I'd do it only when it was required of me for grading purposes. People tell me that I'm good at it, people come to me and ask me for help, but if you ask me, I'd rather be doing something else.

My primary motivation for getting my EE degree was my early interest in radios. I'd still love to do something communications-related (RF engineers are a dying breed), but I also started to like DSP and a lot of the math behind it. At the same time, I have to acknowledge the present state of the economy and realize that I might not be able to get what I want. I also have to realize that if I want a job that involves more than mere grunt work, I need to get a higher degree.

What all this adds up to is more time spent just preparing myself to be able to go out into the real world and find myself that juicy position that will allow me to do something that makes me happy.

Will I put up with a few more years of getting ready, only to find that life has passed me by in the meantime? Will I find myself, after having attended all my friends' weddings and remaining steadfastly single, at last financially independent and ready to do some serious mate-seeking, only to find that I can't get a date because everyone else got married while I wasn't looking?

posted by the n00v at 11:24 PM ()

When I woke up yesterday morning, I contemplated my options as to what to do with my paycheck. I could take it to the issuing bank to see if they would either cash it for me, or divide it up such that I could give a check to the management office for the last third of my security deposit and I would keep the rest. Or, I could use this as an excuse to get out of town for a bit and head on down to DC, where the nearest Citibank is (at least according to their web site).

I decided to do the latter.

To make the trip worthwhile, I got in touch with Bob and Mike to see if they were free for dinner. Mike one-upped that with an offer of grilling at his backyard and a place to stay for the night. Can't argue with that!

I headed on down to DC after I had some brunch (the drive only took me three and a half hours), stopped off at the bank to take care of my bidness, and then went over to Mike's place. I rang the doorbell a couple of times but no one answered--it turned out that they were waiting out in the back yard for me. So, hurrah! We sat around for awhile, chatting over a few beers. (Meanwhile, the mosquitoes were having a feast. I still have reminders over my arms. Bob seemed to get the worst of it, though.) The grill got lit at around maybe 6 or 7, but it wasn't a real cooking fire until after the sun had gone down and it was dark. The waiting paid off, as the burgers and cheddarwurst came out muy excellente.

After all the food was cooked, the grill was turned into the garbage incinerator to sate our pyromania, and also because it's tradition. Mike kept the fire going as long as he could, but Judy proved herself to be mistress of the fire that day.

I can only thank my gracious hosts for being so generous--and on such short notice, too.

posted by the n00v at 11:55 PM ()