redfiona99

Back from Chicago

Fri, 02 Aug 2024 22:41:21 GMT

Yet another place where I know only the conference centre. It's a very *big* conference centre.

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Jerk Halloumi

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 21:21:49 GMT

This is another one of those weird "must write about this" notes I've left myself

Some time ago (like pre-COVID ago), there was a departmental barbeque that we were all expected to contribute to. Not a problem, I don't cook often but I am not completely incompetent.

But, because I am not a horror, I wanted to cook something for the vegetarians.

Cue a level of panic because the only veggie barbeque dish I know of is tinfoil bananas (which are a delight) but 1) they're a dessert, 2) someone else was already cooking them.

Waitrose came through for me and suggested Jerk Halloumi, and let me assure you, it is the future!!!!

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Leg update - only a week late

Sat, 17 Feb 2024 22:53:05 GMT

1) I am now back in the office, oh yeah, so good. Like, I have the utmost sympathy for people who don't like working from offices, and I am very happy to have 2 days a week where I don't, but I do prefer being in the office regularly to full time working from home.

I have been promised the fire marshals have been trained in evacuating those with mobility issues. The fire marshal on our floor was away at the end of the week so I haven't had it confirmed by a trusted source.

2) I'm back to fencing. May have overdone it this week. J, who is one of my favourite training partners, not just because he's excellent left-hander practise. But he also gave no quarter so ... pain. Well not pain, just sore. Not helped by going over on that ankle walking to fencing. Also not helping is item 6.

3) Before the recent oops, I could do 2 1/2 hours on feet nonstop before they complained. Now that's down to maybe 1 1/2 hours but a lot of that was uphill, which also did not help.

4) Getting into and out of the shower no longer a thing of terror, which is a very good thing.

5) I am now allowed to go to the gym. Was meaning to go on Wednesday before last, but it was so cold and wet I decided to skip it.

6) The reason I didn't go last Wednesday was because I was in the Netherlands. First business trip since the break, first big customer visit ever. To quote Australian role equivalent, "they're nice in real life than in print". I will get back to Utrecht for fun reasons because that was some really interesting architecture.

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Travel

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 20:22:50 GMT

Given the travelling I have been doing with work, I thought it was worth chronicling where I have travelled to, and lucky, there's a website for that ;)

The US and Germany are explained by big conferences, as is Stockholm. I got sent to the Czech Republic and Poland to cover for someone else because I have regional experience.

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I require some California knowledge

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 18:43:13 GMT

So the good news is that work are sending me to a really cool conference.

The bad news is they're insisting on black and white as the colours, which means a black suit for me, for a conference at the end of July. Not a problem, except the buying of the item (because I do not own a black suit). Fine, I'm sure somewhere will be selling them.

What I want to know, is how broiled am I going to be in a suit in Anaheim at the end of July.

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Working from Home

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 17:55:07 GMT

I want to start with saying that if you prefer Working From Home, I will happily stick up for you in an argument, but I am so glad we're back in the office.

Work have switched to hybrid working for our role. Interestingly, they've also switched to hybrid for my old job, which is interesting after 4 years of them insisting that was impossible (basically 3/4 of that dept. can't work from home so it was decided that the remaining 1/4 wouldn't either).

For me, that's great, I live in a 1 bedroom flat, I do not enjoy working from home because I have enough space for 1 laptop and no screens, and really, I need at least 1 extra screen. In the office, I have 2 screens, a comfortable table and better lighting. So much better for me.

I admit that I probably wouldn't feel quite so enthusiastic if I didn't have the 2nd shortest commute of my colleagues, but basically, I get up at 7 am 3 days a week and 8 am the other two. This system works for me.

The other bonus is, because other people don't like being in the office, and I've chosen Monday and Friday as two of my days, there's so few people at work when I am that it's almost as quiet as my flat.

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Work (conference), fencing and F1

Sun, 12 Dec 2021 18:01:18 GMT

To do list for this weekend

1 - attend virtual conference running on Georgia (US) time zone
2 - attend fencing competition, that I could only attend because physical attendance at (1) was cancelled
3 - watch the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix

3/3 achieved but only due to whichever demon looks after the clumsy and foolish.

1 - the chaos started on Friday. Conference attendance no longer happening so I got switched to virtual attendance. Not a problem.

Conference website crashes when I try to log on, but I finally get in half an hour late.

I'd blocked the afternoon out at work, but everyone decided that "[real name redacted] is in a meeting" on Teams means I am available to be called. Normally, I'd just type them a message going "in a meeting, will call when available". Unfortunately, because of the way Teams is set up, it shuts off the talk I am in. This happens, I get rid of the people who decided a phone call was needed for something that could have been an email. Return to conference just in time to hear "[something out company does] is useless in situation", without any of the context. Cue panic.

Thankfully, talk was recorded and have been able to listen today.

The other talk I missed for similarly reasons is also up on the website so I will survive.

2 - the fencing competition is an odd set up, teams of 1 epeeist, 1 foilist and 1 sabreur and at least 1 of the 3 has to be female. (As you can imagine, that means most teams only have 1 woman because fencing needs more women.)

I was going to be in the US so didn't have a team. Tell the organiser that I will be available, there's already one team who needs a female foilist (their foilist was poached to go ref in France) so I am loaned out to them.

Different team need a female epeeist and ask 3 days later. It is explained to them that I am already on a team. There is sulking.

Competition rolls round - ack 1 of my teammates is 18. I am now old enough to be my teammates mother.

It goes well, we win a silver (after a stewards's enquiry about the indicators [goal difference but for hits scored Vs hits received]).

It goes badly; teammate dislocated his thumb, I make two opponents cry and slash another one across the wrist.

I also miss one of the talks at (1) that I have to hear but see previous re fools and clumsy people, and it's been recorded.

3 - so I can see a different set of talks at conference (1) I had to listen to the Grand Prix on the radio. BBC app started late so I was 10 minutes behind. I think the main problem is that the stewards made the wrong decision first and then had to fix it.

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An RL update

Thu, 14 Oct 2021 21:36:02 GMT

Work can be summarised by an image

( Giant image of Kate McKinnon as Angela Merkel with text saying 'Once again, everything has fallen to me )

But I now have 9 days off in a row. I will snooze while Rome burns.

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Fri, 21 Feb 2020 19:22:34 GMT

Tonight, I am mostly avoiding company.

Colleagues are having a meal out. I am not going. Partly it's because I want to strangle them, and they are going somewhere that even this degenerate hipster regards as excessively hipsterish*. And partly because I have already had to people three nights this week and will be having to people on Sunday, and ... too much people-ing.

If I didn't want to strangle them, I would probably be more willing to people tonight, but I do, so I am skipping tonight. I am blaming fencing and I am sure the fencers will cover for me.

*Of course, I was a hipster before it was cool ;)

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Stockholm

Tue, 11 Sep 2018 18:38:05 GMT

So the main reason I am so far behind with *everything* is that, much earlier this summer, I went to a conference in Sweden. Stockholm to be more precise.

1 - Stockholm is lovely, and is definitely on my list of places I want to visit properly.
( Three pictures underneath )

2 - The thing about everyone in Stockholm speaks English is a lie. Now of course, both times this happened, it was when I didn't have my Swedish pocket dictionary to hand, but the urge to say "I told you so", remains.

3 - The conference was huge, like at least as big as the biggest NMR conference I've been too, and I've been informed that it "wasn't that big". I blame the medics. I also blame the medics for the fact that it was significantly tilted toward clinical stuff (and away from sciencey stuff). According to boss, this year it was particularly medicine-based. That was, at least in part, because a bunch of big clinical trials were reporting in. Because big clinical trials *have* to have cool names, we heard from pretty much every member of the Greek pantheon. My eternal respect for the speaker who started his talk with "this trial doesn't have a good name, it has good results instead."

It was very different to NMR conferences. I don't know if that's because it was so much bigger, or because I am completely new to the field, but it felt a lot less collegiate. Despite the fact that I ran into another one of the old NMR lot there, who has also joined the dark-side.

Other things that were interesting were the lengths to which the vendors would go to get their company name out there. The company who were selling a generic version of (important drug), I could understand why they were going with racing cars as their theme, especially as they're the first to make a generic version of (important drug) and it being a difficult drug to make as a generic because it's a biologic. The much bigger company who went with a JCB digger, I am less sure about.

Also, dear one big company who wouldn't let me have a cup of tea on satellite symposium day - know that it cost you about 10 cups of coffee throughout the rest of the week. I am small, petty and had my revenge.

It was the first conference I'd been to where speakers have had to put the "conflict of interests" bit at the start of their talks. It smacks significantly of "people in power have decided they must be seen to be doing something", rather than anything effective. For those who have no idea what I am talking about, speakers now have a compulsory 10 second slide at the start of their talks listing their various honorariums.

If I see someone with none, I don't think, "my, what a clean pair of hands", I think "ah, this is an early career researcher". If I saw someone who was obviously not an early career researcher without any, I wouldn't think "my what a noble scientist, untouched by industry", I'd think "so, they've not worked on anything important."

The basic problem is that, if you're working on a cancer and company x develop a drug which might treat it, the only way they're going to be able to find out if it works is by running trials. If they're running trials, they're going to have to be giving you the drug and paying for some of your time. Everyone in the field knows this, everyone in any medical science field knows this. There is no other way that the system can work until the drug is tested and approved.

You also get glorious situations like Austrian Prof who obviously thought the declaration slide was BS and therefore said, "Obviously I run trials for x and y because their drugs are the best available," while her declaration slide was up. I don't think the people who came up with the terrible idea intended it to be an advert but ...

You also get aged profs who can't work the technology who accidentally skip backwards in their talk (twice) and therefore we have to sit looking at their COI slide for 30 actual seconds.

I completely understand the idea behind it but it isn't any better than the previous "comment at end of talk" and I don't see the point of showing them at scientific conferences where everyone is going to be a medical science person who knows what the deal is. And I do not exaggerate, the conference is ~ 350 Euro to attend so everyone that's there is there because they are in the field and need/want to be there.

4 - After the conference, we fly back on a different route (note, people flying to/from Stockholm, Broma airport is still at the tiny, barely-one-terminal stage of its development) and because we are flying via Brussels, my colleague I is introduced to the Brussels Shuffle. Of course we came in all the way at the end of one terminal and had to rush all the way round to the middle of another.

The one upside is that I got to see the Brussels Airline Smurf plane. Brussels Airline have painted 1 plane with Smurfs (aerosmurf, more details here - https://www.brusselsairlines.com/en-be/misc/meet_aerosmurf.aspx), one with Tintin characters (Rackham), one is Magritte (Magritte), one is for a Belgian music festival (Amare) and one is for the football team (Trident). Sadly I didn't manage to get a picture of it, but I did manage to get a photos of the Smurf statue in the airport.

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