Blessed by the Potato

The question of the day is “What do you do with a PhD?” (After you’ve already gone to the bank and insited they put “Dr.” on your cheques, that is).

Graduate school is a long, arduous process, and it can be all the more demoralizing when there’s no clear goal at the end of it. Heck, the “default” career option, continuing in research, doesn’t even really have much of an end, at least not within a tangible timeline. After doing a PhD and getting a small handful of papers published, you’re typically expected to do a post-doc, which is basically doing a PhD all over again on a yearly contract while writing your own grants. You look constantly for professorship openings, which can be at some pretty far-ranging universities… and if you do land one of those, there’s still no real security for a decade yet, until you magically get tenure. And the whole time you have to deal with the peculiar headaches of research: broken equipment, misleading results, constant racing to get results out ahead of the nebulous “competition”, the grant cycle, funding shortages, not to mention short-term contracts, moving around, and research-dollars salary. Whoa, no thanks folks, if we learned nothing else during the PhD, it’s that the academic research path is not for us.

The other side of the academic coin is a good option though: teaching. Research makes you plumb the depths of a subject, looking to push the boundries of knowledge and explore all the subtle pitfalls that it contains (even if that is through a process of falling in every one of them). Teaching forces you to take something and break it down into its components, constantly looking for new ways to view, explain, and apply it. The two complement each other rather well: you can get so bogged down in details in research sometimes that you forget what exactly it is you’re doing; teaching can help bring that back into focus (and also provides you with a constant stream of new questions to investigate from fresh minds). The two complement each other well — but you don’t have to do research to teach. In fact, the vast majority of the teaching that goes on is done in elementary and secondary schools by people who only need a bachelor degree and a teaching certification. So really, the time spent getting that graduate degree really wasn’t necessary… seems kind of a waste, and if you’re in the middle of your PhD, it’s no way to stay motivated to finish.

Back to university research: being a tech is an option. You trade upward mobility and self-direction for stability. Again, actually finishing a PhD isn’t always necessary, though.

There are lots of opportunities in industry. Researchers, of course. Job stability can come a lot sooner, and you can settle in since moving around isn’t typically necessary (most companies only have one research park working on one topic, and would hate to lose an egghead to the competition). While funding is usually a vastly different game, with equipment magically appearing before the desire is even uttered aloud, the research can be very results-driven, which can be extremely stressful. Especially if you haven’t seen 7 am as anything but “really really late, man” for decades. Beyond that, being someone who can talk the talk can be useful in the middle-management type roles; someone to talk to the engineers so they don’t have to talk to the customers. A “people person”. Along the same lines, if you’re good at interviewing and padding a resume, you can try to leverage your decade of higher education into some vague form of legitimate experience and catapult up the ranks (even in completely non-scientific fields). But god, can you imagine being 30 years old with no experience in corporate life (or life in general!) and trying to jump right in to any kind of management role? That leaves sales, which can also require someone who can talk the talk, especially when it comes to pitching high tech things like drugs, medical equipment, or long distance plans (shudder). This route can lead to the pitfall of being “overqualified” though — it can be tough to convince an employer that you want to work outside your field out of anything other than temporary desperation.

Then there’s the stay-at-home option: cookbooks sell better if written by someone with a PhD. Discounting that, more school is an option sometimes as well. Extra training can take one from medical research into actual medical practice, or medical physics (that’s a very competitive alternative, though).

Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers — I don’t know what I want to do myself when I “grow up” (though suggestions are welcome). It can just be a little demoralizing sometimes not really knowing what’s ahead (or worse yet, seeing the path ahead and realizing there isn’t enough hair left to lose). Some have suggested the old trick of asking yourself what you’d do if you won the lottery and didn’t have to work. In that case, I’d probably still tinker with science, still keep up-to-date with Scientific American and maybe even Nature, and likely even keep my brain sharp by doing obscure calculations (like figuring out the time for a hybrid car to pay itself off, or the real-world speed vs fuel economy curve)… but there is no way I’d keep up the discipline to go through with rigorous experiments or hinge my hopes and dreams on something likely to go horribly wrong due to random chance. Plus any science writing I did would likely be of a fictional or popular variety (or even advocacy?) rather than technical.

Long after taxi companies in Vancouver and Victoria set mileage records with their Toyota Prius, Toronto finally has a few hybrid taxis.

I’ve long been a proponent of hybrid cars, and they are ideally suited to use as taxis (well, the ones that are big enough: the Civic and Insight are a bit small). Hybrids gain their biggest gain over conventional gas-only cars in stop-and-go city driving, which is where cabs spend most of their time. The ability to run the A/C and radio with the engine mostly off also helps reduce pollution coming from those trains of idling cabs outside subway stations. Also, as the article mentions, with the extreme number of miles that taxis accumulate hybrids pay for themselves a lot faster than other cars. While battery life is a common concern among potential buyers, it’s much less of an issue for taxis since they tend to go through cars in much shorter amounts of time, and battery degradation happens at least party due to time elapsed along with use (mileage/recharge cycles).

I know that you usually don’t get your choice of cabs when you call for one, but if I did I know I’d request the hybrid cab every time.

Now, if only we could get the message out to the other cabbies that while they use up their Taurus or Crown Vic before moving up to a hybrid, that driving around like total fucking idiots costs them more in gas, we’d all be better off.

Also, for Ontario Citizen’s: January 31 is the last day to get your comments in for the Citizen’s Assembly on Electoral Reform! (Look for mine soon)

Canada Customs just phoned to let my mom know that her car was found on a container ship in Halifax. It’ll take some time to get it back here, but it’s good to hear! (Of course, it would have been better to find my brother’s car, since the insurance company was going to buy a brand-new one for my mom with her better coverage). Beyond that I don’t have any details — we don’t know if a large bust was made, or if my mom’s car was just lucky. We don’t know if there’s any damage to it (though if it’s on a container ship to be resold, they probably handled it gently).

Anyhow, I have to leave for my dentist appointment now — getting that tooth I cracked back in December fixed with a new crown :(

Also, I saw something I haven’t seen for a long time on the drive back last night: a guy talking (loudly) on his cell phone in the public washroom. (Then leaving without washing his hands because of course, he only had one free. Ick).

I was really getting into using Sunbird and Icalx to have a synched calendar at work and at home (two big paper ones always end up having things on just one or the other, and small paper ones go missing and can’t be pointed to when coworkers wonder where you are). However, sometime a few days ago Icalx.com has vanished from the tubeosphere, and hasn’t come back up yet. :(

It looks like I’m going to have to look into an alternate way to get this going, because I liked it. If anyone has any recommendations for a WebDAV server, I’d like to hear them, otherwise I may have to see how hard it is to install the WebDAV extensions on my own server…

Update: Hurray, it’s back up with no data loss!

The police called last night around 1 am, and of course it was the first time in a year when everyone was in bed early so no one answered. We just called back and they had a bit of good news for us: the GPS locator in my dad’s car worked and it has now been recovered! Unfortunately, the police computer system is currently down, so they can’t give us any details (arg!). We don’t know if the car’s been damaged, we don’t know if they recovered the other two along with it or not, we don’t know if this lead to a big bust with someone in the driver’s seat or a big warehouse full of stolen cars, or if the display said “tracking active” and they dumped it seperately. Actually, I think I’d like to make a hack for those multifunction displays in cars that comes up after say 5-10 minutes of driving with “recovery tracking active” just to see if it would foil some thieves…

At any rate, the police still have to do their forensics on the car, and then we’ll be able to pick it up later tonight or tomorrow morning. It’s a big relief for my dad, who wasn’t able to find the details of the insurance policy for that car, as it means he won’t have to worry about whether he was covered for the replacement cost, or just the depreciated value of it. My mom’s car we know is covered for full replacement (and even if not, it’s less than a year old so there’s been less depreciation).

Update: Just a bit more information: we know now that the car was recovered in 33 division and will be moved to 32 division for forensics (so it didn’t get too far away…)

Update 2: Well, there are fingerprints on the windows which we don’t think are ours, so the cops have taken those, and aside from the cash my dad keeps in his car, nothing seems to be missing. There is some damage to the centre console (likely trying to tear out the GPS), but we haven’t seen it yet. It has been confirmed that the Mercedes GPS tracking helped find it (dumped in a neighbourhood near Cummer & Bayview), so as much hassle as they gave us to start the track, it did actually work! They are at least partially forgiven for that…

And no sign of the other two cars :(

It’s hard to think of a good introduction to this sort of news, so instead I’ll just get into the nitty-gritty: 3 cars were stolen out of our driveway this morning.

The thieves broke into the house through the side door, took the car keys off the hall table, and just drove off into the night. They didn’t touch anything else in the house, not even my dad’s wallet which was also on the hall table, which sort of indicates that this is a pretty professional operation. The bulldog was asleep on the couch downstairs, not 10 feet from the table and never made a sound. I think she’s fired from guard dog duties now.

So, as we woke up and looked outside this morning, the driveway was empty. Gone was my brother’s ‘03 Accord, my dad’s ‘04 Mercedes sedan (a nice one), and my mom’s brand new ‘06 Mercedes SUV. My car was still there, thanks in part to being shitty, and thanks in part to the fact that I never leave my keys on the hall table. I wonder if some of the other cars would have been spared if we had left my car closer to the street like it usually is (my mom was planning on driving somewhere first thing in the morning and so we swapped cars around just before bed).

The police came shortly after we called, but didn’t find anything useful around the hall table or back door. We went through the process of giving descriptions of the cars and their contents, then tried to call Mercedes to activate the GPS tracking on my dad’s car. That was a complete farce. First, we tried calling the dealership, but they were closed. Then we called the roadside assistance number, and they told us that the tracking would be done through the dealership and they couldn’t help us. We told them that time was of the essence and the dealership was closed, so they gave us another number to try, which just had a recording that business hours are monday to friday, 9 am to 5 pm…

We let the police try after that, and they managed to get someone else (I think it was at the dealership and it was just getting close enough to 10 am that someone was there to pick up). This person was also somewhat useless, needing both my dad’s security word (which was set 2 years ago and tough to remember) as well as a police case number. The officer told him that we didn’t have a case number yet and gave him her name and precinct #, but it wasn’t good enough, so she had to call back to the station to get them to open an empty case report for us (I gather that typically the report is only opened after the cops get back to the station with our statements). “Useless.” she said “Just useless.” We then had a discussion of how such a high-end car company could have such terrible service. Their website wasn’t really any help either (it didn’t even have a search box!)

We still haven’t heard back from them if they found it or not (and going on 5 hours now), so I suspect that we won’t ever see that car again. My dad made a good point: Mercedes has a bit of a vested interest in not recovering the car since if it’s gone it amounts to a sale of a new car on insurance replacement (and as much of a piss-off as this is, and as much as I try to steer my parents towards a more sensible car, they’re already looking for which Mercedes they want to get to replace it).

At this point I’d like to give out the number the police called, in case it helps other Mercedes drivers in the future (not that any of them read my site): 1-800-750-9018 (I can’t quite read her handwriting, it may be 1-800-756-9018). The (useless) operator she spoke to was #8070, though she didn’t give me her name. (I asked her for all this information so I could write a nasty letter to Mercedes, which will basically be a cut & paste of this entry).

Then it was time to call the insurance company (also in the hopes that they would have contacts at Mercedes to light a fire under their asses about tracking the cars). They were also pretty useless. Chubb not only couldn’t tell us how long it might be before we could look at getting replacement cars (whether we would have to wait until they were gone for 2 weeks, or if the police report indicating it was professional and we probably wouldn’t see them again would be enough to start shopping on Monday)… not only that, but they also couldn’t tell us if we were covered at all, so we’d have to wait until Monday to find out. My dad knows that we are covered to some degree, but he doesn’t know if only the market/depreciated value of the cars is covered, or if their new value or replacement value is. He knows that he upgraded to new coverage for the new year that had more than replacement costs (purchase value plus an allowance for a rental car and to cover taxes, etc), but that policy won’t take effect until January 25. They did say it was unbelieveable that 3 cars were stolen at once like that (5 thefts in a year if you count my car going missing twice — I should start a new category for car theft here). At least we were told that they would cover a rental car for over a week, so my parents have a Jeep Cherokee for the next little while. (My dad’s review: “It drives like a North American piece of shit.”)

Anyhow, I don’t really know what else to say at this time. We’re all safe and alive (and were actually going to have a celebration dinner for my dad, since he got his CT results yesterday and doesn’t have a cancer relapse), though the stress has kind of wiped us out for the moment. My car is still here, and as much as I keep offering it to my parents to use for the rest of the week, they keep insisting that I can’t get back to London without it (there are trains). It was a bit of a pain of the butt trying to book a rental car for them, since there wasn’t anything available at the Discount close to us, so I booked one at Yorkdale. My dad blew up at me when I told him, saying it was too bloody far to go to rent a car, even though he wanted to then drive straight to the cottage to see if his insurance policy was there, and even though it’s the second-closest location to us. I ended up cancelling the reservation and we went with Budget, who we’ve had problems with in the past, but at least they’re closer. (I don’t know why closer matters though, since it’s not like my dad is going to walk there).

Well, it looks like in the future Rogers is going to try to break into the home security market (if you’ll pardon the pun). This is kind of interesting because not too long ago we were debating about whether or not to get a security system for the house here. Part of the issue is that it is a pretty safe neighbourhood. There are a lot of students around, but that also means that there are people out and about at all hours of the night and day. It’s also a rental house, so we don’t have quite as much of a home insurance burden that this would help with, and it would also mean paying an installation fee to improve our landlord’s property…

Anyhow, all that aside I find it funny that I find out about these moves by Rogers not by their press releases, or leaks from within the company, but by being invited to take surveys asking how much I’d be willing to pay for this new service from Rogers (it’s the exact same way I found out about Extreme and Elite before they were announced, though the survey for home phone didn’t come around until after that service had already launched).

I just had a terrible departmental presentation. I was half asleep and it just didn’t fly over very well. There was also some last-minute room and time changes which threw my rhythm off. I had to pace with my giant laptop for an extra half hour, and this computer is the least portable computer I’ve owned since my Dad’s 1984 portable Tandy XT, which was just a regular desktop XT with a handle. Well, to be fair it had a 4″ monochrome screen (originally designed for an oscilloscope if I didn’t know better) and a fold-out, full-sized keyboard, but you get my drift.

My neck has gotten a bit better over the weekend, but now my shoulders are all achy from holding my head at strange angles for two days. It looks like this is the result of some sort of strange bug, because Wayfare, my mom, and my sister all came down with severely sore necks in the last few days. I didn’t feel feverish, but I am running a slight temperature at the moment. I only checked after my mom mentioned that it might be some sort of illness, but it was a strange one because it didn’t have any other symptoms…

I got my breadmaker up and running last night. It’s a pretty nifty little device and does a decent job of kneading the dough, which is all I used it for in my first batch. I just made up some basic pizza dough. The dough that came out wasn’t very elastic in the end, so I couldn’t shape it by rolling and stretching like I usually would, but instead had to basically pound it into my pizza pan. However, the final pizza was tasty and had a good texture, so I’ll take it. After that, I decided to make some bread, and started with their “basic white” recipe. I was surprised at how much more had to go into this supposedly basic recipe compared to the pizza dough. When I saw that I didn’t have everything it called for, I started to improvise, first with 25% whole wheat flour, and then throwing in some ground flax too. The bread came out pretty good, though the crust is a fair bit heavier and darker than the “medium” I set it to; I think next time I’ll have to try light. Bread from a breadmaker is very strange because the pan is very tall and not very wide, so it’s almost like the aspect ratio adjustment I’m having to make with my monitor…

When I was talking about my bread at work, I was told that ground flax only lasts for a few weeks in the cupboard and was cautioned to keep it in the fridge. I just googled it, and sure enough it does have a fairly limited shelf life (though the somewhat biased flax council of Canada gives it a few months), and that worries me just a little bit since I have no idea how long ago Wayfare bought the flax. Ah, well, the bread still tastes fine, and now I’m going to set about turning the other half of it into sandwiches (fortunately, I’ve got 3 different bread knifes here to get just the right slices, evenly thick all over).

Growing up, my parents have always have a ton of kitchen gadgets, from cappachino machines to juicers, deep fryers to smokers — even stone-bottomed pizza cookers — and my mom always cautioned my dad never to get a breadmaker, since that would clearly be the last straw. She always considered the breadmaker to be the gadget that people bought because they sounded neat, but never really ended up using. So naturally, sometime after Wayfare bought me this one but before I opened it, I told this story to Wayfare. “This is it,” I said “I can’t think of anything to get my mom. I’m going to have to resort to getting her the last kitchen gadget on earth, the breadmaker.”

As long as my mind is on food I also got the first season of Good Eats with Alton Brown. This is perhaps my favourite cooking show because he takes the time to explain why he does what he does. He actively encourages us to come up with our own recipes, and explains what each ingredient is supposed to do, and how it can be modified or substituted. I find I still get something out of the episodes that aren’t really of interest to me for the food (of which there are a lot; almost every one, since I’m such a picky eater). For example, the one on steaks wasn’t hugely useful to me, since I’m not really one to go to my local butcher and select the cut of meat for me, then pan-fry that (if I make steaks for friends, I’d probably BBQ anyway). But that episode did have some handy information on cast iron skillets. Likewise, I really disagree with his opinion on mashed potatoes in a number of aspects (adding red potatoes to purposefully make them lumpy? And I’ve never understood the appeal of putting garlic in mashed potatoes), but I finally learned why the Yukon Gold potatoes I switched to for a time after moving out on my own (which the grocery store display says should be good for mashing) never worked as well as the plain baking potatoes my mom used (the baking potatoes are starchier and less waxy).

Anyhow, I’m home with a sore neck. I have no idea how I hurt it: my shoulder was sore when I woke up, presumably from sleeping on it funny (or reaching up to the breaker board repeatedly last night; possibly from curling, too) but my neck didn’t hurt at first. Then I had a shower and let the hot water work out my shoulder for a while, and when I went to towel off, I couldn’t move my neck. I walked to work all hunched over, and of course my office mates laughed at me. When I went down to the cafeteria, a small child looked at me like I was the boogieman, so it must have been a funny posture indeed. After not very long at all, I gave up at work and came home where I can sort of plop myself down on the couch and slouch enough that I can still see the screen with my chin on my chest.