When it Rains....

today has been an affirming day. on the plus side.
on the minus side, i can't believe that things happen all on one day.

a month or more back i submitted a cold resume to a company near reno that produces biofuel. which i think is a way cool product and where i think our petroleum industry will move eventually. today i just got an e-mail asking for me to submit an application for a research chemist position there. when i submitted my resume there wasn't a chemist on staff (that i knew about, there were only a handful of people employed there but it is part of a bigger family of companies). the owner of the company is highly intelligent in research in business and highly ethical. it would have been great to work under this old dude.

earlier in the morning i talked with the chair of the department of chemistry & biochemistry where i have an offer to teach next year. we finished discussing the offer they sent me and tidied up some loose ends on that and so i anticipate signing that offer next week.

i really felt like God was holding off on all possible job opportunities for me up here so that i would be available to teach at this college. i didn't recieve a single interview before that one. in fact when i went to the job fair i talked with a couple of companies that sounded interested. one of them pretty much said they would bring me out for an interview the next day. the next day he called up and said when he pitched me to the president of the company the president was totally not interested. the other company didn't follow up until last week and then it was only asking for an electronic copy of my resume.

i must say it is tempting, but i really feel like God is asking me to teach. i know that it won't be as easy a job as the one with the biofuel place. i won't get compensated as highly and my hours during the school year won't be always that great. today the chair of the aforementioned department wanted to make sure we were sure about moving and me taking the job. i said we knew what we were leaving and what we were going to and felt it was what God was asking. God sure likes to keep opportunities open to make sure i know what i am doing.

now if God will just make the way super clear by getting keith a good job. i feel like i am being quite selfish right now by persuing this without keith having a job yet.

Taxes

i hope everyone reading this already filed taxes and even better recieved their refund. i dislike doing the taxes, mostly because i know it shouldn't be as hard as it is sometimes. to be truthful the irs does do its best to make things workable, they have some very nice faqs and worksheets that help out. i was trying to determine if we'd have to pay capital gains next year if we sold our house this year and found a worksheet and publication to help me determine what would be excluded. it was pretty good.

what is broken and annoying is the tax system. we have continually added and subtracted things from the fed income tax and deductions so that now it is unclear what really the base is. i hope someday congress starts over. we can't realistically go on forever with something based in an age where silicon was still found only in sand and glass.

Dangerous Territory

we had a really good time visiting my potential employer (even though it has been previously mentioned elsewhere, i won't mention the name again because blogging about jobs has turned into a danger, and just maybe a small amount of anonymity may be a good thing). east la isn't as bad as downtown. they still have trees and mountains. the traffic wasn't so much fun, but there are ways around it that may work out.

we had a really good time talking with the faculty and the department is definately on the move up, not just trying to maintain being a feeder school for doctors, dentists, etc. those students are the bulk and therefore the money makers, but they still want to graduate some people that want to stay in the field. the administration was nice and seemed to be in decent touch with how things really are (the assistant provost is the aunt of someone i went to high school with). there's always politics, but the head of the department seems to do a very good job protecting his people and fighting for them when needed. we got along well with all the people we met and i think i can really contribute to the students there.

at the end of the trip the dept. head said they would be making an offer on paper, but that he wanted us to know they were interested. so now we are looking for a job for keith and trying to figure out exactly how much we need to get out of his salary, where we can afford to live, and what to do with our houses up here.

MOM! =)

last week my mom took the train out to reno and visited for the week. i had a super good time and love having my mom around. we did some shopping, hung out, and made curtains for the dining room.

they came out really well and make the room look way cool. my is an awesome sewer and i'm glad that i learned a little bit of her knowledge this trip.
yay for my mom!

Linux to the rescue

there is a computer at work that interfaces with the flourimeter. i collect data but how, oh how, can i get it off? the computer runs windows 98 (not se and probably never patched). for some highly curious reason it recognizes one memory stick that a person in the group has, but not others (and when i try to load drivers for my memory stick using the other memory stick and transportation, i get a big fat nothing). so back to good old floppy you say. good idea. it worked once. and then the floppy drive didn't eject my disk and after retrieving my floppy disk with a pair of nice tweezers, the floppy doesn't read disks anymore. oh ya. no network card. not that it matters since there isn't a network drop in the room anyways. sooo how to get my data.
keith came up with the brilliant idea: boot to linux on cd and then copy to usb memory stick.
so yesterday i found and burnt my copy of knoppix and then called up my linux brilliant brother to help me out. the computer didn't have enough memory to load the gui (kde) so i used the terminal. so he stepped me through mounting the hard drive and my memory stick and then copying and unmounting. it was kinda fun.

moral of the story, get yourself a good bootable copy of linux (preferably include tools to reset windows stuff) and keep it at work. you never know when you'll need it.

Misc References

i love it when i recognize a misc. reference as part of a film or tv show. last night i was watching star trek: DS9 and the crew on one of the ships started quoting poetry and another filled in a couple of lines. i remembered the lines and realized i haven't read "Charge of the Light Brigade" in quite a while, which is what they were reciting. sad, but good.
read it here.

Right to Bear Arms

i read an article from an occupational safety website about how the courts are backing up employees rights to bear arms. at issue is if an employee is permitted to have a firearm in his or her car in the company parking lot. the basic arguement of employers is that it is safer to not have firearms at the company. employees argue it is thier right to have the ability to defend themselves in their car... and i would say to go hunting after work or whatever.

i sympathize with the idea of keeping a workplace safe, but i agree with the court in this case. which is a bit abnormal for me since i am not really a big gun rights person. however i think that the companies should be allowed to have people check-in firearms if the proper security is in place on the company premises (i.e. limited acess and regular patrols). it will be interesting to see if this type of thing becomes an issue for reducing the shootings at places of employment.