TMC Volume 2, Issue 2
Section II: BCG and Humble Pie


 Work, work. The daily drudgery of work is allayed (for me at least) by the knowledge of either a paycheck or a day of sleeping in. And after working for a year in the same job (unprecedented), I’ve become familiar enough with most of my tasks that not much brainpower is required to complete them, leaving me with an abundant amount of time (sometimes).

I used to fill the time with video games and Netflix (yes, I am a rather inappropriate grunt, I’m aware), without any detriment to my handiwork. Once in awhile though…
Poor bands.
Which leads me to my current state: Accountability. Aside from a number of psychological forerunners (read: excuses) that I could call on to account for my disdain for accountability, the sad fact is that I’m terribly unreliable. And not as a simple fluke or because I “do too much” or “overfill my plate”. Simply because it’s currently a part of my character. I am a person of great unreliableness, a person who consistently fails to be consistent for any consistent period of time. Even this blog is a testament to my inability to stick to a schedule, whether extrinsically or intrinsically motivated to do so.

This is what gets me in to trouble at work. And, If I’m honest (and the lord knows I am! He’s given me an irreverently incomprehensible desire to be honest to sit beside my inability to keep promises! How ironic), it’s what gets me into trouble in practically every other situation. And it’s so hard to fix. So hard. Like the age-old adage, “You gotta spend money to make money”. And lo, my currency of accountability is pitifully low.

Fortunately, and I’m sure any artist/producer/businessman knows and knows well, most of the money one spends in efforts to make more money is never actually one’s own money. In order to circumvent this problem of “spend money – make money – got no money” the only real solution is to borrow. Borrow until you’ve got enough, make a hefty ROI to pay back your debts, and at the end of the day hope you have enough left over to keep on keepin’ on.  The basis of every problem solution is some variant of this.

This is a problem. SOLVE IT
On a tangentially related note, a seminar I attended today was thankfully one with a purpose. Scientists so often and so easily end up pursuing goals with such nebulous goals in mind (not in my lab of course, NOT IN MY LAB!) that it’s nice to hear something concrete every once in awhile. And relevant, to boot. I’ve said this before, but I don’t have a particularly keen interest in my PI’s particular brand of research (Keloids and scar formation), largely because it seems insular. Keloids. Specifically keloids. This seminar on the other hand dealt with “Novel Strategies to Develop Vaccines for Intracellular Pathogens” which, once you know what it is (which I may explain at another time), you’ll discover (I think) that it is much more relevant than just…keloids. It’s also always interesting to see how similar the whole process of problem solving is despite the increasing complexity of the given problems. It gives me…hope.

In the meantime however, borrow.

Popular posts from this blog

Xenogears: The Article

Hating God is a very easy thing to do. He is big, he is vague, and he is probably kind of smelly. Maybe not smelly in the most traditional terms, but he probably does have some kind of strong and overpowering odor about him that acts like sort of an aura. He has an aura, too. That’s a thing, right? I’d go further to say that hating God is so easy that we probably do it sub-consciously, without real effort, because really, it takes no effort. It’s not that hating God is innate , because that would mean we somehow don’t have a choice to do so, like it’s some instinctual habitual need for us to hate God, which would in turn imply that God instinctually and innately exists in some way else this innate instinct would be pointless and unexplainable. What I am saying is that hating God is the path of least resistance when faced with the idea that God might possibly exist, and I am going to go further and say that eventually everyone must decide what to do with that idea . And
Onward... >>

Mass Effect 3: You're wrong, but that's ok

Image
    I often find myself in conversations with people who seem to think that a particular game really ought to be played and enjoyed by everybody . These people are wrong, but that’s beside the point. In spite of being wrong though, they allow me to bring up a better point: some games just aren’t meant for some people.      Before we start, let’s all just agree that it’s okay to have different goals and different emphases and it’s okay to be someone who enjoys some parts of a game and not others. Still, what I’d eventually like to say is that it’s not okay to misinterpret that dislike for some kind of fundamental error in design logic and subsequently disregard the quality of the game as a whole, because what that does is shut your mind off to the possibility that you might actually enjoy something that doesn’t meet your expectations. Case in point: Mass Effect 3 .     It’s no coincidence that I’m using Mass Effect 3 as an example here. This article is a direct response to t
Onward... >>