I really should just shut up

So a few days ago I noticed that on the course schedule for the upcoming semester I was listed as only teach the intro analytical chem course. I taught this one the past two semesters and expected to be doing that this fall as well, but I was also half expecting to have to teach another course.

See the faculty have to teach a certain number of "credits" per semester. The first year we get a break, only having to teach half the number (3) of credits. So since I last year was my first year and I taught this analytical course I figured it was only worth 3 and I needed to teach more to make it up to 6 for this semester. I was anticipating that I would be teaching a graduate level analytical course, analytical separations. But since it wasn't listed I figured I should check with the chair to see what was up.

Well, after a quick chat I learned that the intro analytical course would be sufficient to count as my 6 credits for this semester... So that means that either I was fucked over last year in teaching twice the load I was supposed to, or I was getting a nice break this fall, which would give me far more time to do research since the course gets easier with each time you do it.

Unfortunately, the joy I felt at having a lighter teaching load for the fall was quickly quashed. A few hours after talking with the chair he realized that I really should be teaching the separations course; I need it for my tenure review and a large number of students had been asking him for it. So now I have to get that course ready in less than a month, which will be real fun since there's no text that is suitable for the course.

Of course had I not said a thing to the chair I would have been left just to teach the intro course and nothing more, leaving me with plenty of free time and far less stress this fall. Now I've effectively doubled, if not tripled my workload for the fall...I really need to learn to keep my mouth shut and let others make their mistakes, particularly if they benefit me.

Maintenance

So we all know that there are things that need to be taken care of from time to time with everything in life. Of course we never really want to do those little cleaning and maintenance things don't we. After all, there is usually something better (more entertaining/pressing) that we could be doing with that time. Well in today I learned a pretty good lesson on why I really should just take the time to deal with those things sooner rather than later.

The first example was related to my bike. Since I moved down here and have been commuting to work by bike I have noticed that my shifting is far from ideal. Namely I was having issues getting into and staying in the lower gears on my cassette. Stupidly I let myself live with the grinding noise and occasional phantom shift, but it really did suck. Of course I knew I could fix things easily if I just took some time to work on it, but I never feel or even think of working on the bike after a ride; typically this translates to the rest of my free time, why would I want to get so greasy and dirty. Well, thankfully a former teammate blogged about adjusting his derailer this weekend, inspiring me to get dirty and check mine out. And what do you know, after taking up a bit of slack in the cable I was able to shift perfectly. On the commute today I had perfect shifting, in all gears, and less than ten minutes of work was all it took.

The second example was a bit more subtle. In my research one of the instruments I use is also used by one of my undergrad students. While I was moving she continued to work and a few things didn't go quite as planned. Among them was an accidental contamination of the instrument. It took a couple of days to figure out what had happened and about a week to clean it out. Unfortunately that wasn't all that had gone wrong. Along the way the fiber optic coupling had gotten dirty, a bit of a sucrose solution had dried on it, leaving a transparent sugar crystal over the inlet. Well, this didn't cause any evident problems, but I had been having an oddly high incidence of unexplained light intensity errors (low light signal). Well, after getting about three of them this morning I actually took a close look at the fiber and noticed the crystal. Sure enough, just soaking the tip of the fiber in water for a minute cleaned it right up and decreased the background signal, which I had been trying to get down for about a week, by about 100 fold, to the point where there really is none.

So take this as a warning, if there is some little bit of maintenance you should have done last week, do it now, it'll be worth it in the long run.

Bike commuting rocks

So my best intentions of posting more regularly have been shot to hell already. Though in my defense the reason is primarily a desire to get outside and check out the neighbourghood after work, something that never happened at the last place. So far Deirdre and I have checked out a few restaurants in the area and I'm happy to report that they are all quite good.

As for the commuting by bicycle, it's been going really well. After a couple of days of riding in I learned that if I just head two blocks further north before heading east on my trip I get a much smoother road to ride on. The one I was first riding was severely cracked and bumpy, the new route is virtually all new pavement, score! The commute itself is quite good, only 10.5 km each way, though the morning ends with a 1.5 km climb which kind of bites, but is getting better through repetition. There are a couple of less than convenient sections to the ride, namely a couple of intersections where I'm at the mercy of other cars to trigger the change of lights for me (the joys of riding the less traveled roads).

The other inconvenience is a bit more dangerous. The section of road that I take to the base of the 1.5 km climb is a rather fast downhill (stupid valleys making me climb more). It's a relatively heavy traffic road and I'm sure it will get worse once the semester begins, though thankfully it has a marked bike path on the shoulder. Unfortunately the palms on the side of the road are overgrowing the bike path. I have to ride the line for a number of sections to avoid riding through a few small tropical trees. Thankfully the city has an online road maintenance reporting page and it seems as though they are now going to take care of the trees, eventually.

With all the riding carrying my clothes and laptop I've come to realize that the no-name $30 messenger bag that I picked up years ago really does suck. After the first few trips my shoulder was starting to get sore and now I find the shifting of the bag to be annoying. So I've placed an order with a local shop for a new bag, a double strap one so that I don't have to deal with all the shifting, hopefully it should be in next week.

So all in all things are good, though there really isn't much that's exciting enough to really merit a blog post on it's own. Oh, a little word of warning, take care of tooth problems right away, just because the pain goes away in a few days doesn't mean it won't lead to the need for a sucky ass root canal, with crown lengthening as a bonus, years later. So needless to say I had a few sucky days in the past weeks, but it's all better now.

I love this place!

Wow! I hadn't realized that it had been over a month since I posted to this blog. Good thing people are using the RSS feed, otherwise I'm sure nobody would be reading this now.

So a lot has changed in the past month. Of note on the work front, I fired the student who wasn't putting in the hours. It happened about a week after I posted about his lack of effort in the lab. After having a discussion with him about this things did not change the following week. So at that point I just fired his ass; things in the lab have been more productive ever since.

On a more personal note Deirdre and I finally moved the hell out of Newport Beach. I really have no way of describing what living there was like other than to repeatedly use the word 'awful'. Sure the area is pretty, in an artificially manicured and maintained way, but the same can be said of the residents and that's where things start to get creepy.

Now we're living down in San Diego, a place which is much more normal in my books. There are tons of little shops and restaurants in our neighbourghood and everything is in walking distance. Hell, I'm only blocks from Balboa Parkwhere you will find the only velodrome in San Diego, I think it's time to get a track bike. It's also the single gayest neighbourghood I have ever lived in and that makes things really cool and friendly. It really is a refreshing change from Newport Beach; did I mention that it seems to be one of the key spots for McCain to stop and raise funds in California... it really is just an awful place.

Of course the best part of the new apartment, beyond the fabulous, gigantic apartment itself, is the fact that I'm now living about 10 km from the university. This means no more dealing with the train schedules, traffic, border checks or toll roads. I'll probably just bike to and from work but if necessary there is a bus that would get me there in about the same time that stops only a few blocks from our place.

So with all the free time hopefully I'll be able to get some more blogging done after work, rather than collapsing into a comatose state after a 2.5 hour one-way trip. Have I mentioned that I love this place?