a very specialized kind of loneliness

This company does not need two analytical chemists because I am so overwhelmed with work that only an analytical chemist can do. I am just tired of being the only one here who understands (without extensive explanation) that:

1. Using more freely varying parameters in the regression analysis will produce an equation that comes closer to fitting the data. It will not necessarily come any closer to describing physical reality. Thinking of these 6 data points as following a 4th-order power law lets us draw a beautiful curve with no noise at all, but it makes no more sense than numerology. Thinking of them as "approximately linear" gives a physical explanation that agrees with what we know of optics and physical chemistry, but it demands an admission that our data is not quite perfect. This is terribly difficult for some people.

2. Not all measurements are equally useful. Consider a situation where we are interested in composition, trying to keep it very consistent between batches. Nobody makes any effort to control temperature, or knows of any way temperature could change the composition of this stuff. Buying a highly accurate thermometer and using it to measure every batch would be a waste of time and money. Yes, bad batches have uncontrolled temperature. Good batches have uncontrolled temperature, too! Controlling temperature is not likely to help anything.

3. The do-overs are important. If we only save enough material for one test, there's no way to know if anomalies came from the material or the equipment. (Or badly timed power breaks.)

haircut

Get one. You're a turtle, not a sheepdog.

This has been a private service announcement.

location and timing

I've been thinking about buying a place to live for some time now. If I commuted to work by car, as most people do, I could just take a map, and draw a (lopsided, distorted by traffic) circle of moderate commuting distance, centering on my workplace. While eastern Massachusetts is all very expensive, compared to a lot of other places, there are less expensive areas where I could live that way. Because it's very important to me to be able to take public transit to work, and my workplace is only served by a couple of buses, my options are a bit limited. Last year, I started looking at condos that would be convenient to the Red Line, or to Mass Ave in Arlington.

There seem to be a lot more small condos in Arlington, Medford, Somerville, and Cambridge than there used to be, so I was encouraged. Unfortunately, they all presented a choice between parking and access to transit. Some places had a lot where residents could each park 1 car, but visitors need to search for parking more than 1/4 mile away. (I have friends who would not be able to visit me under those conditions.) It might be good for my financial situation to own my own place. And I wouldn't mind moving to a slightly smaller place, especially if I could add air conditioning and acoustic insulation. But now I have a bus stop, resident parking, and visitor parking, all on the same block. And the supermarket is on the same block! It didn't seem worthwhile to go to all the trouble of moving, to make bus stops and supermarkets so much harder to reach. It looked like my only options that would have a parking place and be near a bus stop were MUCH more expensive, being either new construction, or larger condos. I stopped thinking of home buying in terms of trying to save a few thousand dollars more for a down payment. I thought I'd be staying in my apartment quite a while, so I should make it comfortable. And if it looks like I'm going to need many tens of thousands more dollars for the down payment? *shrug* It's so far out of reach I might as well spend a few hundred and go on vacation and not worry about it. I stopped worrying, so thoroughly I didn't even fill out the mortgage pre-approval paperwork from the credit union. I thought I wouldn't be in the home-buying market for years.

My perception is changing fast. Just the other day, I stumbled on an ad for a small condo with a splendid location near my public transit, that comes with 1 space for a resident to park and 1 for a visitor. While it's a little more expensive than I had been looking at before, I know I had been pretty conservative in estimating what I could afford. So I could probably manage it. I'm going to look at it this weekend. The problem is the mortgage pre-approval. I'm wanting to do this NOW and accelerate the process as much as possible, in hope of being able to put a bid on the condo before someone else buys it. That would mean submitting the forms Friday. Before considering how much money they might theoretically lend me, the credit union wants to know how much money my current employer pays me. (No problem. Pay stubs right here.) They also ask how long I've worked here. (I started 2/13/2003) Questions about my previous employer, when I worked there, why I left, are only supposed to apply "if less than two years in current position." I'd just as soon not go into any of that. Do any of you have any advice? I'm afraid that waiting until Monday will be too late.