Yet another summary blog

I am drunk on a Friday night. I almost never get drunk, but after the last couple of days...

First the good:

1. I rode my bike yesterday. 28 miles (14 to work, 14 home). I felt like a real man. I didn't eat dinner yesterday or lunch today. I think I have lost a little weight. Which is a good start. I still need to lose about 15 pounds, but, for the beginning of spring, I have a relatively good start on things.

2. Uh... The dog hasn't taken a crap in the house in like 2 weeks. And she hasn't peed in the house in a week. Good times!

3. Hmmm... more good things.... Did I mention that I am drunk?

Now the bad:

1. Work. Pretty much every f*cking aspect of it. We have given our codes to this place that makes runs available to the general community. They run and run and run and let people request runs and do all sorts of stuff for people. They are having problems with our code. Months ago, they were having issues because they were getting a result that they liked (a non physical current at the boundary). I explained why this occurred, but they wanted me to fix it. Well, it turns out that they were using nonphysical conditions to begin with - they want to run with these nonphysical conditions and get physically meaningful results. I tried to explain to them how this wasn't really the way the code worked. They basically threatened to use someone else's code. Ok. I explained that I wasn't really making up the laws of nature here. If you runs this other guy's code with nonphysical conditions, then you are going to get the same nonphysical type of answers - unless he cheats. Well, they didn't use the other guy's code and the issue was basically dropped. Now, it has surfaced again. They are running the code in a completely different regime and they are still using the nonphysical condition. They didn't tell me this, though. They just told me that they were having problems, and another person in my group pointed at my code, and said, it's probably this code's fault. So, I spent all day yesterday and today working on this problem, only to find out tonight that it was most likely all due to them using nonphysical conditions. And, when I said, don't use those conditions, they came back with "well, what SHOULD we use..." Uh, physical conditions. Like other runs that you do. You know. When the code works (like 95+%) of their simulations). Do those types of runs. It just pisses me off that I have to spend my time on this crap when I could be doing real work.

2. I haven't cooked a real meal in ages. Our kitchen is a complete disaster. We have to do our taxes. I have to do my brother's taxes. I have to do laundry again, and last week's laundry hasn't even been put away yet. The toilet bowl cleaning consists of me wiping it with some toilet paper and calling it good. I didn't get home until 8:30 last night. There are shredded toilet paper roles all over the basement and first floor, because we don't have enough energy to sweep them up. And the dog will just produce more, so, what's the point? We have had pizza boxes in our recycle bin every week for the last month (not a good sign). You get the point.

3. My Post Doc sucks. It's only been two weeks. I have to give him a break. I am trying to. I am trying to be extremely patient. I am trying to not be myself. Except, that by not being myself, I am actually being myself. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt for long periods of time, and then get so incredibly frustrated with them, that I explode all over everything. Which is basically what I am doing, giving him the benefit of the doubt. I need to have more open communication. That is the real issue. When someone starts disappointing me, I start avoiding them, since I am pissed off. What I really need to do is talk to them (only, where do you find the time??? It is so much easier just to avoid the issue all together!) As an example, I gave him an extremely concrete thing to do - figure out this model output from this web site. If you can't figure it out, e-mail the author and ask her an extremely simple question. Then we can implement the model in our code and see what it does. We discussed this a week ago, and he has not done it. I completely understand that he is adjusting to living here and has not had a desktop computer (but has a laptop) to do work on, but this is a very, very easy task. Now what???

Ok, I am going to give up on life and try to flush myself down the toilet. Wish me luck!