How do you keep a blogger in suspense?
Two things.
I'm leaving Thursday for Arrakis, but need to have a RT-PCR test 72 hours before my arrival and the only place that will do a same day test is at JFK so I'll be going to the airport tomorrow and then again on Thursday. Meanwhile I've had an eye infection since Sunday and I'm worried it's a sign of COVID that I might have picked up in Florida despite being fully vaxxed. Hypochondria most likely, and hopefully.
Second thing is the following, and I could use some advice.
So before I heard from my new job that I had an offer which I accepted I also got an interview with a university in the midwest. Great map collection. But it would be a step down and I doubt they would be able to offer me even a quarter of the money I'd be making at the new place in Arrakis. Thing is I have a phone interview on Monday. Should I go through with it? I mean things could still go sideways. Or should I tell them either before the interview or maybe sometime afterwards?
Way to ruin my joke Barry. Also, hope you feel better. Eye infections aren't fun regardless.
barry! i have zero advice re: interview conundrum, and mucho sympathy re: eye infection, what a drag.
i have shaken off the shackles of one giant law firm, to willingly embrace the shackles of another giant law firm! on improved terms. the entire experience has been illuminating in various grubby cynical ways. happy to have moved on!
am back to incessant travel, ugh. luckily i usually stay at the same hotel (client gets an excellent rate) and the staff are sweet and take care of me. last night a lady grifter tried to pick me up at a bar! i eventually managed to fend her off via diligent reading of a handy issue of the lrb, but my she was dogged. also cute, but i'm happily shacked up, so, sorry grifter lady.
If you do the interview, you can honestly tell them you're looking into other opportunities as well, which might help negotiate.
An accomplishment that feels non-trivial: we cycled into Kings Cross from Cambridge on Monday. Hot tip: avoid the Lea Valley towpath. Today am exiled from my workroom by builders. Tomorrow we will have a back (main) door that (a) locks securely and (b) opens outwards, rather than shutting off the space behind it whenever anyone uses it. That's the last building job for maybe a year.
8 is right about the interview. If you can imply without being explicit that they're having a giraffe over the money, it puts the ball back in their court to either rule you out or indicate that they're open to negotiation. But don't undersell yourself.
And be careful of women in hotel bars who seduce you to steal a kidney.
11: Apparently "having a giraffe" means joking.
Anyway, if someone is trying to pick you up in a hotel bar, casually mention you have high creatinine levels and see if they are still interested.
You may find the phrase "having a giraffe" frustratingly unclear, but don't have a cow over it, man.
I'm not sure which would be worse to birth. I suppose I never tried, though. Or I did, but kept being unsuccessful.
Is it possible to inject supplemental oxygen intravenously and if not why not? Oxide of something or other, oxygen bonds with haemaglobin instead, piss out the something or other. Should be trivial.
thanks, mobes! for both congrats & advice!
I don't know the answer to 18, but the pseud is great.
18: Pick up people in hotel bars to test it.
Presumably, the diffusion of the O2 gas across a membrane is important for it being absorbed by the hemoglobin.
wasn't the hotel bar just to clarify, was around the corner from the hotel. altho why i'm bothering to clarify is a mystery as the hotel's big claim to fame is a movie that's all about picking people up in a professional capacity. so i hear, i've never actually seen the movie. pretty frumpy hotel tbh but the staff are sweet.
Just had my PCR test, negative thanks be.
Still could use some additional advice for how to handle 5.
(Congrats dq!)
Barry, if you're worried about your new job falling through, then do the interview. Giraffes notwithstanding, I'd endorse chris y's 10 and Minivet's 8: You're having this conversation from a strong negotiating position. You can (if you'd like) make clear that if they want a shot at you, they'll have to pay.
To repeat chris y: Don't undersell yourself! Let them decide that you're overqualified and they don't want to pay you.
I've been the interviewer in this situation, and it always pisses me off when I realize that they were talking to me pretty much knowing they would take the other gig, but I don't hold it against them. (I can think of a couple examples of this, and frankly, I'd hire 'em if they came back to me.)
Also: congrats on PCR, and congrats, dq!
I am at a playoff tournament in Houston for 10 year olds for the next five days.
Just competing to be the best ten-year-old in general?
haha. whoops. Baseball.
Jammies can't be here and asked me to track the game in some baseball app, and it seems very stressful and ill-suited for my skillset, the closer it looms. Like I can't concentrate on ANYTHING that closely, let alone what happened on each pitch over two hours.
On average, nothing very much happens.
Tell Jammies the only outcomes that truly matter are walks, strikeouts, and home runs so you'll just be tracking those.
Intravenously injecting oxygen - not exactly, the membrane does seem important. But there's heart-lung machines and similar so blood can be oxygenated, just not while in the body.
Alternatively, consider rectal oxygen: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/14/science/rectum-breathing-oxygen.html
Congratulations, Barry. I'd do the interview. The practice is worth it, and you can enjoy it in a relaxed fashion.
I was a bit sick over the weekend, which mostly meant a lot of sleep on Monday (instead of the hike we'd planned for that day) and an afternoon nap yesterday.
I don't have good advice for Barry -- I agree with the commenters above who said that it's probably worth doing, and that as pf notes, you might as well sell yourself accurately and let them choose to disqualify themselves, or rise to the occasion.
They played the national anthem at Pokey's game just now. I spent the whole time wondering under which circumstances Unfoggers would take a knee, and decided if at least one player had, I would in support. But then realized the song was ending and I forgot to take off my hat and was fidgeting the whole time and that it's just moot.
Do women have to take off their hats for anything except doing their hair?
Maybe they're not cis and still getting used to new habits? Or maybe norms have changed since the 50s?
I guess I was assuming it was like church where women and bishops could wear hats.
Almost all the restaurants at JFK are closed but I finally found a bar with some ok beer on tap.
36: I was proud of myself for thinking it out in advance at the opening of symphony season a couple of years ago. They always play the national anthem at the first concert of the season. Pretty sure I was the only one in the hall. AJ was sort of embarrassed, as we were deep in DeVos country.
And yeah, ladies don't have to remove hats but I figure if it's a baseball cap rather than something with a chin strap or held in plate by hairpins, it seems like good manners to remove it.
heebs, waving at you from somewhere in Houston. We're visiting friends for the weekend.
37-39: Ladies were always allowed to wear hats inside but not gentlemen. Maybe, because baseball caps are gender-neutral, people are applying a gender-neutral standard.
I think in the old days, women were required to cover their hair in church. Maybe there was a similar thing about the national anthem.
46. Certainly true of Catholic women.
I don't know what goes on in Protestant churches. I've never gone because I've heard things about snakes.
Well the same day I got my offer letter for my new job about a week and a half ago one of my best friends here and my number one drinking buddy learned he was being made redundant by one of the other American unis here. He applied for a similar position that was open at the uni I'll be going to work for and just learned that they made an offer to someone else.
Aw, that sucks. Would he be a good fit for the other job you're interviewing for?
Unfortunately no, he's Comms and it's a librarian job. (Also he's British fwiw)
British people can survive in the midwest, kind of.
And just because he's a Communist doesn't mean he can't be a good librarian, even in the midwest.
That why they want to bring back loyalty oaths.
That's great. Now you can stop washing your hands. This reminds me that tomorrow I'm having dinner with people who live in Britain. Everyone is vaccinated, but England has supercovid or something.
Also, the Southside Burger King, the one of legend, apparently closed tonight because the manager and entire staff walked out. Maybe it's just wages, but probably something less comprehensible.
I also finally got vaccinated (I don't remember if I've already mentioned it).
Coronavirus has gotten out of control here again, because of the delta variant, so while indoor things are open I've been avoiding them. My kids are home, but we've been reluctant to travel, in case we get stuck in a foreign country.
My family wants to find a restaurant with a patio so we can eat outside. I want to sit inside because it's hot and we're all vaccinated.