The Problematic of the Unproblematic

Anne: And the craziness has not ended! These last two weeks have pretty much took away my much needed sleep. I would never have thought that my job would involve me rushing documents with quality at 3am Saturday morning to take care of lot release issues. At this point, I might as well find a job where I am expected to take care of these things. Maybe I'll get paid more...well...probably not as the industry is contracting. Besides my lack of sleep, there is also a work issue that has been bothering me for weeks. Although today, I'm wondering if I am an idiot because I haven't been in lab for so long that I've forgotten how to do stuff. Sigh...at this rate. One of my younger team members will forbid me from getting anywhere near lab instruments in case I mess something up. Ah... how ridiculous is it that I am now at the end of this point in life! It's almost like me being on the other side of the parent/child abyss. Now I'm rolling my eyes inside my head at the ...

Anne: Hello Everyone! I survived jury duty and again did not get picked. Now, despite the usual voir dire (which for some reason in Texas, decided to put a very Southern accent to these French words), I met a woman who was the juror immediately in front of me that exemplified the 7 degrees of separation hypothesis. Now, I have no idea what her name is, because by the time I remembered to ask her after a bathroom break, she had already left the building. Let me set the stage...I met a woman who was probably only a few years older than me, who emigrated from Taiwan to the same little city in south Texas, whose parents also had a restaurant in the same little town, and we both ended up in Houston with consecutive juror numbers. Why is this epic? It is because in this little town... there were probably only <10 far east Asian families. I really wanted to ask her what part of Taiwan she came from because I would have been floored if we came from the same town. Oh well... a myste...

Anne: Hello Everyone! Happy Thursday and then some. I'd spent the last week trying to figure out why we have a invention project for a first grader. Now, I thought that this would be more of an imagination exercise rather than them expecting an actual protype. Nope...I was wrong. He has a presentation and need a semi working protype. Not only that, they had to search the US patent office to see if something similar was already patented. We only got through the first 10 patents...out of a search that yielded >10,000 patent applications. I really think that these project are more of a parent/child co-project than a student project, at least not for a six year old. However, I don't know enough about mechanics to make a personal automatic seed planter. I know just enough to know that I cannot make a functional prototype. So...I guess he will just need to settle for one that "looks" like what he intended, without any moving parts. I am making him do most of the work, in...